(i) Beheading of John the Baptist Introduction

The Beheading of John the Baptist is a holy day observed by some Christian churches and commemorates the beheading of Saint John the Baptist on the orders of Herod Antipas through the vengeful request of his step-daughter Salome and her mother. According to the Synoptic Gospels, Herod  sub-king, of Galilee under the Roman Empire, had imprisoned John the Baptist because he reproved Herod for divorcing his wife (Phasaelis) and unlawfully taking Herodias, the wife of his brother Herod Philip I.

This article looks at the spiritual significance of ‘beheadings’ which has nothing to do with a physical event. We will now look at the events in scripture.

 

(ii) Beheading of John the Baptist Scripture Interpretation

Matthew 11: 14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

Here Jesus is talking about John who was Elias from a previous life.REINCARNATION.

Matthew 14: 1 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus,

tetrarch = king, ruler.

2 And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.

shew = show

 John the Baptist had risen from the dead.

We can look upon this story as an allegory for what is taking place inside of us. Johns significance is that he represents the turning of our consciousness from our lower mind to our higher nature, and the characters involved in his death represent the carnal nature of man as we shall see as the story unfolds. This whole episode was not meant to be read as a factual event but rather a mystical teaching.

King Herod = our carnal mind & the lustful ambitions of the flesh.

Herodias =  (left) mother of Salome traditionally known for her seductiveness in Christianity = emotions, the feminine counterpart of the carnal mind and that which gives us our strong emotional & sexual impulses.

John the Baptist = our higher mind/spiritual nature

So from this we can show that the whole of these events were between the higher and lower nature that exists inside of us today.

Romans 8: 6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.

The mind can never be a servant of God and does not follow his laws. We can never know God through our intellect.

Matthew 14:3 For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife.

 

John put in prison = being imprisoned by our lower nature, our spirit is not free to express itself.

Matthew 14: 4 For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her.

We cannot have relations with our brothers wife does not make sense if we take this literally.. Mystically we have 4 ‘brothers’ and these refer to the 4 fold nature of man, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual. The brother’s wife is the emotional desire or desires of the flesh.

Husband mystically = higher or lower mind depending on context,

wife = emotions in lower context, spirit in their highest expression 

so both male and female have higher and lower expressions of their nature.

Here brothers wife = the desires which come from the carnal mind. These passages have nothing to do with actual people.

We cannot have relations with our lower nature if we want to ascend to Christ – this is what is meant by not having relations with our brother’s wife.

So when any religious text says that the wife must be subjected to her husband, or the wife must be covered, it is not talking in literal terms, it just means that our higher mind should have some check over our desires. This misinterpretation has led to immense cruelty toward women through inaccurate reading of this fundamental principle.

King Herod = he is King as he has held dominion over our lives for so long and robbed us of our spirituality.

Why does the Bible talk about Christ being the bridegroom. We are all female in relation to the father as we are from Gaia or mother earth which is female.

The Bible talks about not committing adultery = not intercoursing or having relations with our lower nature and being unfaithful to Christ. Of course as people we have desires so it’s not referring to sexual abstinence but rather having Christ as our number one priority. When Christ said take no thought he meant the silence of meditation. We do not mean the worship of Christ through churches alongside the indoctrination of sin.

2^nd Corinthians 11: 2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

Virgin = virgin consciousness, without thought then we can have a relationship with Christ.

Jeremiah 13 : 27 I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?

Neighings = crimes. We are made clean through meditation. Being able to meditate on the spiritual light and sound that can be accessed inside one find that communion directly with spirit washes away the dross of what we collect from our worldly pursuits that collect in the aura. Meditation helps to cleanse the chakras and redress the balance of our energies. We begin to come to grips with our problems when we communicate with Christ in the ‘upper room’ as the bible puts it or in other words our higher self.

Matthew 12:39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

People who look for miracles or outer signs of the work of the father are committing adultery which as we have said is being in our lower nature and not being with the Christ within us. So it is only their minds which are asking for miracles and the mind cannot obey God’s laws. Jonas underwent a spiritual change within. The story of Jonas has is an allegory and nothing to do with a man being swallowed by a fish for 3 days.

So looking for miracles is just the desires of the flesh to see some magic.

Matthew 14 : 5 And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet.

There is some sense that not expressing our spirituality is wrong as there is something unique about it.

Matthew 14 : 6 But when Herod’s birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod.

Birthday = the height of recognition physically. So when the desires of the mind grow strong, the emotions lead us a dance and we get drawn in and loose our spiritual path.

7 Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask.

We have now completely given in to our lower nature, senses etc.

8 And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger.

 

Charger = plate. This is the cutting off of the higher (head) by the desires (Salome), so our path back to spirit is lost. We are completely lost in the world of materialism.

9 And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her.

Again we have this nagging doubt that when we just live a life of materialism that there is something missing that we are missing. We constantly search for the next goal e.g. a house, new car, new phone, but we never quite get the lasting happiness that we think we will. A glimmer of a deeper meaning in life can well up inside of us.

We are afraid to offend people, our family, and society so we conform (and Johns head is severed). This is through fear and our egos fall in line with the expectations of the above.

Luke 11 : 52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

Lawyers = lawmakers = priests, government, religion which have subsequently taken away the key of knowledge or the keys to the kingdom of heaven within us by replacing it with external ceremonies and literal thinking. They have not entered in themselves but have sought God without i.e. externally. We can see the results in the world today.

In conclusion this story represents, as do many of the Biblical stories, the struggle between the higher and lower self, with the beheading being symbolic of the separation of the higher self (head with higher chakras)  from the lower desires of the body and so the ascent of the soul into spirit.Beheadings are therefore ALLEGORICAL and not literal and this is often misunderstood in scripture.

 

(iii) Beheading of John the Baptist Video Links

67 Death of John The Baptist : Bill Donahue

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