In my last
post, I wrote about the harvest that followed the end of the Apostasy and began
with the Restoration. I have been thinking about it ever since and even though
there is great importance in being engaged in such a harvest of spreading the
gospel throughout the world and in being profitable servants of God, an even
greater harvest yet awaits us.
The gathering
of the wheat is taking place in this dispensation in preparation for the last
and final harvest that will occur at the Saviour’s coming. This will be the
harvest of the righteous souls who will stand to inherit life eternal in God’s
Kingdom. It will also be a harvest of another kind, that of destruction of the
wicked at the Saviour’s triumphal return (D&C 101:63-68).
The Saviour
spoke of this harvest in His parable called The Wheat And The Tares. We may
think of it as an assessment of how well the gathered wheat in the first
harvest fared by nourishing the seed that was planted in their hearts to
withstand the lure of the world.
The Saviour
compared the hearts of the men to different soil which received the seed, being
His word, and emphasized how that soil should be tended to in order to let the
seed grow. It is worth the study of this parable to understand the importance
of the soil (Matthew 13:24-30).
In
summary, the hearers of the word who have received the seed and nourished it in
good soil are metaphorically, the wheat. The hearers of the word in whose
hearts the seed does not grow are the tares.
The
tares which are spoken of in Jesus' parable is the weed called 'bearded darnel'
which is very similar in appearance to wheat with the roots of the two often
intertwined. The darnel 'is easily distinguishable from the wheat and barley
when headed out but when both are less developed, the closest scrutiny will
often fail to detect it' (James E Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 301). For this reason, even the farmers do not attempt to separate
the one from the other whilst it is developing and so the wheat and the tares
grow together until the harvest comes.
Joseph
taught that this separation is applicable to the Church:
"Now
we learn by this parable (the wheat and the tares) not only the setting up of
the Kingdom in the days of the Saviour, which is represented by the good seed,
which produced fruit, but also the corruptions of the Church, which are
represented by the tares, which were sown by the enemy, which His disciples
would fain have plucked up, or cleansed the Church of, if their views had been
favoured by the Saviour.
“But
He, knowing all things, says, Not So. As much as to say, your views are not
correct, the Church is in its infancy, and if you take this rash step, you will
destroy the wheat, or the Church, with the tares; therefore, it is better to
let them grow together until the harvest, or the end of the world, which means
the destruction of the wicked...." (Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp 97-98)
Now this
is the interesting bit. Before the Saviour spoke of the harvests, He placed
Himself at the head of His teachings, as the Sower of the good seed (Matt
13:37)….for this reason: To become golden grain of God we must look to and
follow the Sower. Our hearts and our works must reflect the teachings of the
Lord of the Harvest. It is not enough to just receive Christ's teachings, but
to be valiant in the testimony of Jesus.
It
behooves us not to allow the tares to choke the word within us lest we also be
discarded at the last day. When Jesus came, He brought good tidings of
salvation, to disperse the darkness of unbelief and to bring light to the
world. He came to give every man as much of the truth as he was willing to
receive but most of all He came to gather His own.
He will come back and He
will gather His wheat in the greatest harvest of all…..”Then shall the
righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).
The day you ploughed the sacred ground
of my heart
You scattered Your seeds of love,
Like golden stars along the deepest
night.
I water and nurture them gently,
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Ready to Harvest, AI Generated by LeafyTreeCo)
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