The "were"....

"Luke 16:16 reads as follows:
“The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presses into it.”
Place beside this the parallel passage in Matthew 11:13:
“For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.”

The word “were” in Luke 16:16 is a supplied word. Luke simply

wrote: “The law and the prophets, until John.”

---If the translators had compared his words with those of Matthew, they would have seen that Luke did not mean that the law and the prophets ended in John’s day, but that they “prophesied” until that day. 

The difference is very great and provides the key to the meaning of the passage. 

*When Christ was resurrected from the dead He came that same day to the troubled, bewildered disciples and inquired, “Why are you troubled? And why do thoughts arise in your hearts?” Luke 24:38. 

Then He reminded them that what had happened to Him on that fateful week end was what the prophets had foretold, that all things must be fulfilled, “which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me.” Verse 44.

*Paul declared that his mission in life was “witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come.” Acts 26:22

Obviously, what Moses and the other Old Testament prophets wrote was one of the most important proofs Christ offered the apostles in support of His claim to be the Messiah.

---Prophets “prophesy” until the time when their prophecies meet fulfillment, after that prophecy becomes history. 

*Thus, our Lord, in declaring that the prophets and the law prophesied until John, was simply announcing that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” 

He was not implying the Old Testament was now abolished, much less that the ten-commandment law had come to an end." 

F.D. Nichol