Who is Jacob? — part 2

After I posted my “Who is Jacob?” post (directly below), I started thinking that Jacob might be John Locke.

In Follow the Leader, we saw present-day Locke, using Richard Alpert as his messenger, give instructions to time-traveling Locke to bring everyone back to the Island. In other words, Locke was giving (and getting) his marching orders to (and from) himself.

Many times over the seasons, we have seen Locke attribute his actions to orders from Jacob. But now we know that Locke can (also?) get orders from himself. Could it be that Locke’s encounters with Jacob were really encounters with himself, that Jacob was really Locke from a different time? Were the meetings similar to what we just saw in Follow the Leader, with Locke meeting a time-traveling Locke from the past and giving (and receiving) his orders to (and from) himself?

Since I didn’t think of this until after I posted my earlier poll, I didn’t include Locke as one of the choices. So let me ask you that now:

Here’s the scene from Follow the Leader of present-day Locke telling Richard Alpert what to say to time-traveling Locke:

Notice that when Ben says to Locke, “Your timing was impeccable, John. How did you know when to be here?” John answers, “The Island told me.”

Could “the Island” also be Jacob? Would that make the Island = Jacob = John Locke? Has everything that has happened so far been the result of John Locke talking to himself across time?

And when we last saw John, marching down the beach, saying he wanted to kill Jacob, was he really setting off on a quest to kill a time-traveling version of himself?

Boing boing boing, goes my head.