LOST

Here's my running theory.

Man #2 who we'll call the man in Black (a Stephen King reference after all) is, evil. He is represented by the Smoke Monster, ALL the dead characters we've ever seen appear on the Island and now Locke. He has been trapped in the cabin and as Brian pointed out released once the circle of ash was broken.
This brings up some interesting points, what does it mean for every appearance of a dead person we've seen? If you think back to Christian appearing before Locke in the Frozen Donkey Wheel scene it was obviously Man in Black telling him to push the wheel to get him to leave the island and die, to further along his plan to find this "loophole".
Also this means that Claire is now with the Man in Black, since the last time we saw her she was leaving with Christian. It also makes sense why Smokey killed Eko. Eko was poised against Locke. He would have NEVER followed Locke around even after a supposed resurrection. Smokey/MIB/Man #2 realized they needed to get rid of him so It looked into his past and led him away with a promise of Yeman and then murdered him.


Jacob, on the other hand, as we saw, is just a man. Perhaps there is something more to this. Perhaps since the evil side can take on many shapes there is significance in the good side only having one form, Jacob. What if Jacob knew he was going to die? Perhaps that's why he calmly told Ben to make his choice. Maybe he knew when he DID die it would make Ben FINALLY chose a side (because if dead characters on island are always evil the manipulation of Ben goes as far back as him seeing the ghost of his dead mother in the jungle) and since up until this point Ben has been "taking orders" now he finally was making his own choice and he choice vengeance. The questions "why not you" is a God saying to a single man, "what makes you special? Why should you not suffer as ALL (Jack, Kate, Sayid, etc) my children have suffered in my service?"
That line of "They're coming" did refer to the Survivors but why? Because Jacob was a representation of something larger. The man was the embodiment of something greater. I believe that one of the Survivors is his replacement and just as we saw Jacob and the man in Black on the beach discussing Faith vs Science...the ongoing struggle....perhaps we'll end with Locke and Jack having a similar conversation waiting for the next group of people to begin fighting over their special island.

It's late and I should have been asleep two hours ago, sorry for the typos.