Luke 16:16 Meaning The Law and the Prophets Were Until

For long ages the way was one of law and prophecy, of rules to keep and a future to await, and the mind loves this, forever reaching toward some later fulfillment. Then something shifts, and the kingdom is no longer merely promised but present, here to be entered now.

And every man presseth into it, driven by a longing older than thought. Yet the kingdom does not yield to force, for pressing is still the ego straining after something it lacks. It opens only through surrender, through the stillness in which you cease striving and grow aware of the presence already within you. That is how one truly enters.

The law and the prophets stand for the long season of rule and prediction, of earning by conduct and waiting for what is foretold. John marks the close of that season. After him the message changes: the kingdom is not out ahead of you and not owed to your behavior, it is a state of consciousness you enter now by assuming it.

Every man presses into it, and the pressing is inward. It is the effort of holding a chosen state against the pull of the facts, of feeling yourself to be the person you want to be while the senses still show the old life. The kingdom is entered by force in this sense alone, that a person must lay hold of the wish fulfilled and refuse to let the outer evidence talk him out of it. What a person presses into and keeps is what he becomes.