Is John the Baptist Really a Prophet?

The temple leaders are in a bind and they recognize this. They say, if we say it's from heaven, he will say, well, why didn't you not believe him? What if we say from man, we are afraid of the crowd because they all think that John was a prophet? And so the beautiful thing about this is they didn't recognize John the Baptist. He wasn't given licensing and privileges from the temple or from the Sanhedrin. Jesus is answering their question by the by the very example and the question he poses with John.