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Abstract John is not part of the Kingdom of Heaven because his role is to point to and prepare the way for it. Jesus is speaking in the language of eschatology and not in the framework of modern Christian theology. The context of the passage is that John has been imprisoned by Herod: Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he ...

The end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the new. John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets. Hence Jesus Christ was mentioning him as being the least in the kingdom as in a timeline of prophets.

Although John the Baptist was the greatest prophet among all prophets (Mt 11:11), he was spiritually dead. Up until the time of the giving of the Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13), all peoples of all times in the Old Covenant (Old Testament) were spiritually dead notwithstanding that only some were righteous-by-faith. Not until the inauguration of the New ...

In this case of the speech Christ gave about the Baptizer the translation suffers (and not only the English but the Greek from Hebrew/Aramaic already). What Jesus here was contrasting was the greatness of John as shown in his time and life compared to the coming greatness of the Sons of the Kingdom. It is not at all excluding this man whom Christ held in ...

I think the answer lies in what Jesus told his disciples about who was greatest in the kingdom. There are children born of the law (flesh) and those born of the Spirit (Grace). In God's kingdom, children born of Grace are of higher rank. Those born of the flesh still see wealth and fame and power as being associated with greatness. Those born of the Spirit, ...