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Matthew 24:23 · World English Bible

Matthew 24:23 Meaning Then If Any Man Tells You

Then if any man tells you, ‘Behold, here is the Christ,’ or, ‘There,’ don’t believe it.

What does Matthew 24:23 mean?

Christ is not a person to be located in a place, but your own imagination, the creative power awakening within you. So a voice pointing outward, here or over there, to a man, a shrine, or a distant coming, is pointing away from the only place the power lives.

From the Manifestation reading below.

Matthew 24:23 through 2 lenses

The same verse, read by 2 traditions.

MANIFESTATION

Manifestation

Christ is not a person to be located in a place, but your own imagination, the creative power awakening within you. So a voice pointing outward, here or over there, to a man, a shrine, or a distant coming, is pointing away from the only place the power lives. Belief given to any such external Christ scatters the attention that should rest inward, and the seeker who chases these signs is looking everywhere except the one center where the power actually stands.

The warning holds because nothing outside you carries this authority. Every "here" and "there" is a rumor, and a rumor cannot save. The awakening comes from within, where your own awareness of being does the work. The Christ you seek is the imagination in yourself, and it is found nowhere on the outside.

Manifestation lensGo deeper in the app

ESOTERIC

Esoteric

Christ is the oil rising in the spine to anoint the brain, and anything sold as Christ in a place outside the body is a false pointer meant to pull a seeker away from where the work actually happens. The anointing is an internal event, the sacred fluid climbing the column to reach the higher centers, so a voice announcing it over here or over there is trafficking in a gimmick, exploiting the search for healing by locating the sacred anywhere but within. Every external claim splits attention from the one place the oil moves.

What rises in a person cannot be shown across a room or a distance. The direction to disbelieve is a direction to stop looking outward, because nothing announced at a location is the thing that anoints the brain from inside.

Christ: the oil of the spine rising through the body to anoint the brain

Manifestation lens

Live Matthew 24:23 today

  1. When you reach for your phone today out of a vague feeling that something out there has what you need, stop and name what you are actually looking for. Then sit with it for a minute instead of scrolling for it.
  2. If someone tells you the answer is this course, this person, this app, this move to another city, hear them out kindly and keep your own center. You can be interested in what they found without handing over where you stand.
  3. Under pressure at work, when everyone is looking around the table for the one who will fix it, stay quiet for a breath and find your own footing first. The steadiness you were hoping someone else would bring is yours to bring.

What am I hoping to find out there that was never located anywhere but here?

The same truth in other traditions

Zen

If you meet the Buddha on the road, keep walking. Anything you can point at and call the answer is a signpost someone left, not the place itself.

Tao Te Ching 1

The way that can be named is not the way. The moment it is fixed in a place or a word, you are holding the label and not the thing.

Sufism · Rumi

Do not go looking in the world for what you keep in your own chest. The treasure is buried under the house you already live in.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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