Your ShelfYour Projects

A SHORT CATECHISM

4%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 6, 1879

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 53, No. 10.

Read the full edition

A SHORT CATECHISM.

LET BOTH GROW TOGETHER TILL THE HARVEST.

What does Christ say in the parable of the wheat and tares, Matt. 13: 24-30?—“Let both grow together until the harvest.”
Both what?—The wheat and tares.
What is represented by the wheat?—The children of the kingdom, or righteous and godly persons. Verses 38, 43.
What is represented by the tares?—The children of the wicked one, or wicked, ungodly persons. Verses 38, 41.
Where do they grow together?—In the field. The householder “sowed good seed in his field.”
What is the field?—“The field is the world.” Verse 38.
Is not the field the church?—“The field is the world.”
Is it not some particular people, place, or dispensation?—“The field is the world.”
Is there anything but tares and wheat in the field?—Nothing.
How many of the wicked are represented by the tares?—“The field is the world.”
Who is the householder who prepared his field?—God.
What is the field?—“The field is the world.”
When did God prepare it?—When he made the world.
When did he sow the good seed?—When he set in motion those agencies through which he designed that the world should become filled with righteous beings.
How did he do it?—He made man in his own image and likeness, innocent and upright, gave him the advantage of every favorable circumstance and golden opportunity, hedged him in with law, and guarded him with all needful instruction and warning, and designed that he and all his posterity should be pure wheat, to be gathered into the heavenly garner when sufficiently ripened by standing the test of a requisite period of probation.
Who was the enemy that sowed the tares?—The devil.
When did he sow them?—When he introduced sin into our world, and all those seeds of evil through which men have become wicked and made themselves tares.
When the blade had sprung up and brought forth fruit, that is, was so far developed as to show the unmistakable marks of wheat, what appeared also?—The tares.
Illustrate this. It is illustrated by the first two individuals born into this world. Abel, governed by principles of loyalty, righteousness, and truth, was wheat. But Cain then gave place to principles of disloyalty, envy, hatred, and murder. “The tares appeared also.” And from that day to this there have been in this field tares and wheat,—Cain-ites and Abel-ites. And there have been more of the former than of the latter. The tares have sometimes almost choked out the wheat. The world is in a terribly tare-y condition at the present time; and when the tares are gathered into bundles to burn, they will furnish a good many bundles and make an awful fire.
Who are the servants whom the householder employs to care for his field?—The angels. “The reapers are the angels.” Verse 39.
When the tares are separated from the wheat at the harvest, who will do the work?—The angels.
If, when the tares first appeared and the servants said, “Wilt thou that we go and gather them up?” the Lord had said, “Yes, gather them up,” who would have done the work?—The angels.
Have men anything to do in the work of rooting up the tares?—Nothing.
Has this any reference to the question of rejecting unworthy members from the church?—Not any.
Why cannot the church be the field?—Because the field must be prepared, and the good seed must be sown and spring up and produce wheat before there can be a church. The church is the wheat; and the wheat is not the field.
Is it right for the church to discipline its members, and reject those who are unworthy?—It is not only the right of the church to do this, but it is its imperative duty, 1 Thess. 5: 14; 2 Thess. 3: 6, 14, 15; 1 Cor. 5: 9-11; Matt. 18: 17; Rev. 2: 14, 20.