Matthew 11:13 Meaning For All the Prophets and the Law

The prophets and the law are the long season of promise, all that points ahead and prepares. They run "until John," and John is the last state before the turn, the reform readying a person for what promise alone could not give. Prophecy carries a person to the threshold; it cannot carry him across. At John the pointing ends. The fulfilling begins.

These figures are not men who once lived but states within you, and everyone passes through them toward the final state, Christ Jesus. The whole plan of redemption is worked out inside a person, not staged once in history. What the prophets foretold is the awakening of God inside your own skull, his first act of unveiling himself as you. Only the Son can reveal the Father, and when he does you learn you are the Father. The words end at John so the experience begins in you.

The prophets and the law reaching only as far as John mark the end of the old order of consciousness, the outward striving and rule-keeping that carries a person up to the threshold but no further. John is the last of the preparatory states, the highest reach of the natural man before the inner Christ awakens.

Everything born of law and prophecy is preparation, the disciplining of the lower self that readies the ground. It runs up to John and stops, because what comes next is not more effort but a birth from within, and beyond that edge the higher life begins on a different principle.

John: the last preparatory state, the highest reach of the natural man before the inner Christ awakens