21. “Well then, who are you?” they asked. “Are you Elijah?”“No,” he replied.“Are you the Prophet we are expecting?”“No.”
22. “Then who are you? We need an answer for those who sent us. What do you have to say about yourself?”
23. John replied in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “I am a voice shouting in the wilderness,‘Clear the way for the lord’s coming!’”
24. Then the Pharisees who had been sent
25. asked him, “If you aren’t the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet, what right do you have to baptize?”
26. John told them, “I baptize with water, but right here in the crowd is someone you do not recognize.