Morpheus = John the Baptist

Morpheus is wanted by the authorities. He's outside the regime. He brings others into the truth. He baptizes them into a new way. Morpheus asks Neo: "Do you want to know what it is?" If Neo chooses the blue pill, the avoid reality pill, then he wakes up in his bed and "believes whatever you want to believe." Unreality is not fixed; it's changeable and subject to opinion. The red pill, the reality pill, will allow you to see the matrix, the truth. Morpheus has exited the dream world, lives frugally in a ship called "The Nebuchadnezzar." And he brings in those who have escaped and heals and rebuilds them. He's sure of what he's doing, his calling. He pulls Neo out of the baptismal waters and into his ship. Morpheus explains the Matrix and its structure to Neo. Morpheus explains the limits of reality to Neo and how what is real can be changed, imitated, recreated. He shows Neo the world as it exists today, a desert, a wasteland, like the spiritual reality of the human world destroyed by sin. What we ourselves had created were the cause of our own destruction. Like the law of God, Morpheus explains the slavery, how it works, the condition of humanity. Like that of John the Baptists, Morpheus' mission involves hardship and suffering. Most importantly, Morpheus tells people about the Messiah, the One who "had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the matrix however he saw fit, . . . who freed the first of us, taught us the truth." Morpheus believes "the oracle," what we would call the prophet. The oracle speaks of the One to return. Therefore, Morpheus has spent his entire life looking for him. And Morpheus believes he has found the One in Neo. Morpheus trains Neo in spiritual warfare, or digital warfare, as far as the movie's concerned. Like the catechism question about having a soul as well as a body and the scripture in James about the body not living without the spirit, Morpheus catechizes Neo about the reality of dying in the matrix, even though it's just in the mind: "The body cannot live without the mind." Near the climax of the move, Morpheus is caught and imprisoned. Sounds like John the Baptist, who leads the way for the One, the Messiah.