Jesus Holds Wheat and Tares in the FieldBible World
13:39Matthew 13:39
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
The enemy who sowed the tares is the devil acting from enmity to Christ, the harvest is the end of the world and the close of probationary time, and the reapers are the angels. The wheat and the tares are left to grow together in the world until that harvest, when the angels gather and separate them without mistake, binding the tares for burning and gathering the wheat into the kingdom. That final separation has not been given to people now, because men cannot read the heart and the tares closely resemble the wheat, while judgment belongs to Christ alone. Out of enmity to Christ the devil secretly sows his people, his error, and his evil influences among the good seed in the church and in the heart, where they take root and remain in decided conflict with the work of God until the close of earth's history. Because good and evil thus continue together until the advent, there is no conversion of the whole world into a temporal millennium before Christ comes, and every person must form a faultless character to stand acquitted in the final judgment.
Symbols and Setting
The enemy who sowed the tares is the devil, also called Satan, working out of enmity to Christ, and neither God nor His angels sow seed that produces tares. The harvest is the end of the world and the close of probationary time, and the reapers are the angels who carry out the final separation. The close of probation is the time when people face judgment and must stand acquitted with character without spot or stain. The ripened harvest is gathered when Christ comes, and the spread of the gospel and the fruit Christians bear hasten that harvest and His coming.
The field is the world, and the parable sets the conflict between the children of the kingdom and the children of the wicked one within that world and points to the angels' role at the end. It concerns God's work of salvation in the world carried out through Christ's church, where the field signifies the church in the world and believers grow and ripen for God's harvest. That sowing reveals the controversy between Christ and Satan continuing since the fall, with departure from Christ's principles keeping the warfare going and delaying the proclamation of the gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and delaying entry into the promised land, the same work of Satan appearing in the parable of the sower in catching away the seeds of truth from minds.
The tares are the children of the wicked one, the fruit and embodiment of error and false principles introduced by Satan among the good seed. He mingles error with truth and vigilantly guards his sowing, seeking to make error grow until it eclipses the truth, so Christ's truth must be clearly presented in contrast with error that people may recognize and discard it. He actively spreads false teaching, pictured as sowing cockle and darnel among the good doctrine God's servants should sow diligently. At the end the angels gather out of Christ's kingdom all things that offend and those who do iniquity, and these are cast into the fire.
The good seed are the children of the kingdom, true Christians and Christ's true followers, while the wheat and tares mean true Christians and counterfeit Christians found in every church growing together until the end. The tares include hypocritical and sinful people who mingle with true followers and may long closely resemble them, and Satan's method is bringing into the church people who bear Christ's name but deny His character, dishonoring God, misrepresenting salvation, and putting souls in danger. Making the real or supposed faults of church members the habitual theme of conversation and spiritual food puts a person among those tares, whereas believers must feed on Christ as the perfect pattern and Sin-bearer and obey the truth rather than feed on defective character. The parable thus presents two opposing working forces, God and the enemy, whose divine and satanic influences and agencies remain in decided opposition and vital conflict until the close of earth's history, when God will test and prove His people and shake everything that can be shaken so that only what cannot be shaken remains. At that harvest the wheat is gathered for Christ while the tares, which can look like wheat for a long time, are rejected, marking the separation of the true from the imitation.
Harvest and Final Separation
The wheat and the tares, true Christians and counterfeit Christians found in every church, are left to grow together until the harvest at the end of the world, when the angels as reapers will gather and separate them. The harvest is not preceded by a thousand-year reign of righteousness and peace or a temporal millennium in which the whole world is converted, for good and evil continue together until the personal coming and advent of the Lord. The gospel calls those who come out from the world together in church capacity, the kingdom must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world, and a clear perception of this is impressed by the Holy Spirit on those who desire to understand it. The presence of bad people in the church is therefore no reason to abandon efforts to reach and save souls, nor to gather the tares prematurely lest the wheat be uprooted with them.
At that harvest the angels gather out all that offends and those who do iniquity, bind the tares in bundles for burning and destruction, gather the wheat into the garner and kingdom, and the righteous shine in their Father's kingdom and trouble the righteous no more. The tares remain tares and are not changed into wheat but are gathered out and destroyed, while the righteous receive eternal life. Those who merely belong to the church without belonging to Christ may long resemble true Christians and falsely claim piety so as to deceive others, but profession and church membership do not decide destiny or make them Christians. Character shown in words and works does, the difference between righteous and wicked will be fully revealed and unmistakable at the end, and Christ decides who is worthy to dwell in heaven and judges each person by words and works.
The harvest is the final judgment in which God distinguishes the righteous from the wicked, presenting the Bible's clear account of the rewards of the faithful and the punishment of the guilty. It is a warning about judgment to be read as for life, urgent instruction to take heed to oneself and not be blinded by human sophistry and mocking of sacred things. Every person must prayerfully ask who will stand acquitted before the judgment seat of Christ without spot or stain of character, must form a faultless character before a pure and holy God, for at the great day every man will be judged according to deeds done in this life. The ripened harvest is gathered when Christ comes, and the spread of the gospel and the fruit Christians bear hasten that harvest and His coming.
The harvest imagery connects with the Feast of Tabernacles as the feast of harvest pointing forward to the great day of final ingathering at the end of the world, when the Lord of the harvest sends forth His reapers. That reaping takes place after the priestly work in the heavenly sanctuary ends and Christ comes in kingly glory, when the saints cry for Him to reap and God delivers them from Jacob's trouble. At that time all the wicked are destroyed so they become as though they had not been, and every voice in the whole universe unites in joyful praise to God. The separation of wheat from tares is the fearful, solemn work of the third angel, in which the wheat is selected and sealed, or bound, for the heavenly garner and the vile are separated from the precious, a work calling for the whole mind and attention.
Faithful missionary labor illustrates the harvest, as the seed scattered through preaching produces churches and souls whose full harvest the day of God will reveal. The harvest also serves as an image of what faithful labor brings in the present life, for work to enlighten and bless others makes the worker's own understanding of truth grow clearer and broader. In Sabbath-school and temperance work, explaining truth with love makes it plainer and opens it with renewed beauty and force.
No Human Separation Now
The separation of wheat and tares belongs to the end of the world and is done by angels as reapers, not by people now, and no person has the right to measure the characters of others or to undertake that separation. Wheat and tares, true Christians and counterfeit Christians found in every church, must grow together until the harvest, which is the end of probationary time. The church is not to be broken up before that separation, for the angels do this work at the end.
Human beings cannot rightly separate them because the tares closely resemble the wheat, human judgment is imperfect, and men cannot read the heart or judge character, motives, and who belongs among the wise and foolish. To attempt uprooting those considered false believers could harm people Christ is drawing to Himself. The angels of God know people by their fruits, for fruits declare character, and commissioned to counterwork those who fight against the truth of God's word, they gather the wheat from among the tares without mistake and never make a mistake.
The work of judgment has not been committed to humans but to Christ alone, because He lived humanity and alone can understand human weakness and human striving for Christian perfection. The present church is the church militant, mixed with wheat and tares because the devil sowed them among the good seed, not yet the church triumphant. It contains chaff with the wheat and faults such as pride, self-sufficiency, stubborn unbelief, and refusal to yield even when evidence is piled upon evidence, yet it is loved and remains. Its faults do not mean it will cease to exist before the separation, when angels will separate to burn the tares and gather the wheat.
The gospel calls those who come out from the world together in church capacity, and the kingdom must be kept free from sinful practices of the world, while the Holy Spirit impresses a clear perception of this parable on those who desire to understand it. The presence of bad people in the church is no reason to abandon efforts to reach and save souls. Until the harvest when angels gather and separate them, their presence does not mean the church should be broken up or disorganized or broken up into independent atoms. The commandment-keeping church is not to be pronounced Babylon, there is no call to come out of it, and those who teach that false message and leaven others will be deceived, prepared for advanced delusions, and come to naught.
The parable teaches humility and distrust of self rather than judging and condemning others, and shows that not all who are in the church are genuine Christians. Those persisting in open sin must be separated from the church, but the final judgment of character belongs to God. Tares are now among the wheat, meaning hypocrites are in the churches all through the land, yet sins committed by professed Christians excuse no one and do not justify blaming Christ and His ministers. Christ gave His life to save all who believe in Him, and those who really believe have no pretense and are genuine Christians, true to one another in heart and soul and action. The true Watcher knows the false from the true, never makes a mistake in His estimate of the characters of men, and after a time He will separate the tares from the wheat.
Making the real or supposed faults of church members the habitual theme of conversation and spiritual food puts a person among the tares, for the tares are counterfeit Christians present in the church until the final separation. Christ alone is the perfect pattern of Christianity and the Sin-bearer who takes away sin, so believers must feed on Him and obey the truth rather than feed on defective character and obey unrighteousness.
Satan's Sowing at Work
Out of enmity to Christ the devil sows evil among the good in God's kingdom, and neither God nor His angels sow the seed that produces tares. The tares are the fruit and embodiment of error and false principles, and he introduces them by bringing into the church those who bear Christ's name while denying His character. Their presence dishonors God, misrepresents salvation, and puts souls in danger.
He has mingled error with truth and vigilantly guards his sowing, seeking to make error grow until it eclipses the truth. His active spreading of false teaching is pictured as sowing cockle and darnel among the good doctrine, while God's servants should be diligent in sowing good doctrine. Christ sows truth, and truth must be clearly presented in contrast with error so people can recognize and discard error.
The enemy works upon the human mind and heart, for Christ sows good seed in the heart but Satan secretly plants evil, error, and doubt. What he plants takes root and bears harmful fruit, and it can crowd out and destroy what is good while spreading sin to others. People can become his agents by passing those suggestions on.
The untrained mind of children and youth is like an uncultivated field and uncultivated soil, where the devil sows tares unless parents keep watchful guard, and those tares will spring up to bear evil fruit. Neglecting children in their early years leaves room for Satan to plant evil in their minds, so parents should instead fill their minds with what is good and pure. Evil learned in childhood may grow faster than good and be difficult to remove later, so parents should teach their children faithfully and protect them from harmful influences rather than assume good will eventually overcome evil. They must with unceasing care cultivate the mind and sow it with the precious seed of Bible truth, teaching children to reject trashy, exciting tales and to turn to sensible reading that leads the mind to take an interest in Bible story, history, and argument. Reading that throws light upon Scripture and quickens the desire to study it is beneficial and not dangerous, and God's angels help form a child's character when parents work in harmony with God's plan.
The sowing reveals the controversy between Christ and Satan continuing since the fall, with the good seed as the children of the kingdom, the tares as the children of the wicked one, and the field as the world. Departure from Christ's principles keeps that warfare going today, and the warfare has delayed the proclamation of the gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and delayed entry into the promised land. The same work of Satan appears in the parable of the sower in catching away the seeds of truth from men's minds.
This sowing of tares also appears in the worldly display of wealthy Sanitarium guests, which becomes a temptation and sows tares in the hearts of young helpers and nurses. Among a group of Christian workers, unreliable people may join it and sow evil surmising, while the harvest is the end of the world when angels are the reapers.
After humanity disobeyed God, people had to struggle against the seeds of Satan's sowing, whose sowing brings evil into the world. Toil could help make Satan's temptations ineffectual and stem evil, and Christ's life showed how to thwart the enemy's plans.
Prophecy and Daily Warning
The harvest at the end of the world, reaped by angels, leaves wheat and tares growing together until then, so good and evil continue side by side until the advent and there is no thousand-year reign of righteousness and peace on earth before Christ's personal coming. The final separation comes only at that end, when the wicked are separated from the righteous and destroyed while the righteous receive eternal life. The world is not to be wholly converted beforehand, for the harvest is not preceded by a temporal millennium of universal conversion.
The gospel calls those who come out from the world together in church capacity, yet the kingdom must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world. Faithful servants ripen as wheat for the garner while worldly people ripen as tares for destruction, divided in thoughts, sympathies, purposes, and allegiance to God and the world. In the church militant the devil-sown tares grow with the wheat until the angels separate them to burn the tares and gather the wheat.
The chapter is a warning about judgment to be read as for life, calling every person to take heed to himself and to pray to stand acquitted without spot or stain of character before the judgment seat of Christ. Those who are saved must form faultless character before a pure and holy God, for at the great day every man will be judged according to deeds done in this life. Christ looks forward to the future destiny of those for whom He gave His life at that angel-reaped harvest. The warning not to sow tares reaches conduct directly, bidding students and workers to do what is right and sow the good seed of the kingdom and work with Christ to draw people to Him rather than discourage or mislead others. The Holy Spirit impresses a clear perception of this parable on those who desire to understand it, while the chapter warns against the enemy's deceptive wiles, human sophistry, and mocking of sacred things, and calls people to turn from ways God has not appointed.
The enemy who sowed the tares is the devil acting from enmity to Christ, the harvest is the end of the world and the close of probationary time, and the reapers are the angels. The wheat and the tares are left to grow together in the world until that harvest, when the angels gather and separate them without mistake, binding the tares for burning and gathering the wheat into the kingdom. That final separation has not been given to people now, because men cannot read the heart and the tares closely resemble the wheat, while judgment belongs to Christ alone. Out of enmity to Christ the devil secretly sows his people, his error, and his evil influences among the good seed in the church and in the heart, where they take root and remain in decided conflict with the work of God until the close of earth's history. Because good and evil thus continue together until the advent, there is no conversion of the whole world into a temporal millennium before Christ comes, and every person must form a faultless character to stand acquitted in the final judgment.
Symbols and Setting
The enemy who sowed the tares is the devil, also called Satan, working out of enmity to Christ, and neither God nor His angels sow seed that produces tares. The harvest is the end of the world and the close of probationary time, and the reapers are the angels who carry out the final separation. The close of probation is the time when people face judgment and must stand acquitted with character without spot or stain. The ripened harvest is gathered when Christ comes, and the spread of the gospel and the fruit Christians bear hasten that harvest and His coming.
The field is the world, and the parable sets the conflict between the children of the kingdom and the children of the wicked one within that world and points to the angels' role at the end. It concerns God's work of salvation in the world carried out through Christ's church, where the field signifies the church in the world and believers grow and ripen for God's harvest. That sowing reveals the controversy between Christ and Satan continuing since the fall, with departure from Christ's principles keeping the warfare going and delaying the proclamation of the gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and delaying entry into the promised land, the same work of Satan appearing in the parable of the sower in catching away the seeds of truth from minds.
The tares are the children of the wicked one, the fruit and embodiment of error and false principles introduced by Satan among the good seed. He mingles error with truth and vigilantly guards his sowing, seeking to make error grow until it eclipses the truth, so Christ's truth must be clearly presented in contrast with error that people may recognize and discard it. He actively spreads false teaching, pictured as sowing cockle and darnel among the good doctrine God's servants should sow diligently. At the end the angels gather out of Christ's kingdom all things that offend and those who do iniquity, and these are cast into the fire.
The good seed are the children of the kingdom, true Christians and Christ's true followers, while the wheat and tares mean true Christians and counterfeit Christians found in every church growing together until the end. The tares include hypocritical and sinful people who mingle with true followers and may long closely resemble them, and Satan's method is bringing into the church people who bear Christ's name but deny His character, dishonoring God, misrepresenting salvation, and putting souls in danger. Making the real or supposed faults of church members the habitual theme of conversation and spiritual food puts a person among those tares, whereas believers must feed on Christ as the perfect pattern and Sin-bearer and obey the truth rather than feed on defective character. The parable thus presents two opposing working forces, God and the enemy, whose divine and satanic influences and agencies remain in decided opposition and vital conflict until the close of earth's history, when God will test and prove His people and shake everything that can be shaken so that only what cannot be shaken remains. At that harvest the wheat is gathered for Christ while the tares, which can look like wheat for a long time, are rejected, marking the separation of the true from the imitation.
Harvest and Final Separation
The wheat and the tares, true Christians and counterfeit Christians found in every church, are left to grow together until the harvest at the end of the world, when the angels as reapers will gather and separate them. The harvest is not preceded by a thousand-year reign of righteousness and peace or a temporal millennium in which the whole world is converted, for good and evil continue together until the personal coming and advent of the Lord. The gospel calls those who come out from the world together in church capacity, the kingdom must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world, and a clear perception of this is impressed by the Holy Spirit on those who desire to understand it. The presence of bad people in the church is therefore no reason to abandon efforts to reach and save souls, nor to gather the tares prematurely lest the wheat be uprooted with them.
At that harvest the angels gather out all that offends and those who do iniquity, bind the tares in bundles for burning and destruction, gather the wheat into the garner and kingdom, and the righteous shine in their Father's kingdom and trouble the righteous no more. The tares remain tares and are not changed into wheat but are gathered out and destroyed, while the righteous receive eternal life. Those who merely belong to the church without belonging to Christ may long resemble true Christians and falsely claim piety so as to deceive others, but profession and church membership do not decide destiny or make them Christians. Character shown in words and works does, the difference between righteous and wicked will be fully revealed and unmistakable at the end, and Christ decides who is worthy to dwell in heaven and judges each person by words and works.
The harvest is the final judgment in which God distinguishes the righteous from the wicked, presenting the Bible's clear account of the rewards of the faithful and the punishment of the guilty. It is a warning about judgment to be read as for life, urgent instruction to take heed to oneself and not be blinded by human sophistry and mocking of sacred things. Every person must prayerfully ask who will stand acquitted before the judgment seat of Christ without spot or stain of character, must form a faultless character before a pure and holy God, for at the great day every man will be judged according to deeds done in this life. The ripened harvest is gathered when Christ comes, and the spread of the gospel and the fruit Christians bear hasten that harvest and His coming.
The harvest imagery connects with the Feast of Tabernacles as the feast of harvest pointing forward to the great day of final ingathering at the end of the world, when the Lord of the harvest sends forth His reapers. That reaping takes place after the priestly work in the heavenly sanctuary ends and Christ comes in kingly glory, when the saints cry for Him to reap and God delivers them from Jacob's trouble. At that time all the wicked are destroyed so they become as though they had not been, and every voice in the whole universe unites in joyful praise to God. The separation of wheat from tares is the fearful, solemn work of the third angel, in which the wheat is selected and sealed, or bound, for the heavenly garner and the vile are separated from the precious, a work calling for the whole mind and attention.
Faithful missionary labor illustrates the harvest, as the seed scattered through preaching produces churches and souls whose full harvest the day of God will reveal. The harvest also serves as an image of what faithful labor brings in the present life, for work to enlighten and bless others makes the worker's own understanding of truth grow clearer and broader. In Sabbath-school and temperance work, explaining truth with love makes it plainer and opens it with renewed beauty and force.
No Human Separation Now
The separation of wheat and tares belongs to the end of the world and is done by angels as reapers, not by people now, and no person has the right to measure the characters of others or to undertake that separation. Wheat and tares, true Christians and counterfeit Christians found in every church, must grow together until the harvest, which is the end of probationary time. The church is not to be broken up before that separation, for the angels do this work at the end.
Human beings cannot rightly separate them because the tares closely resemble the wheat, human judgment is imperfect, and men cannot read the heart or judge character, motives, and who belongs among the wise and foolish. To attempt uprooting those considered false believers could harm people Christ is drawing to Himself. The angels of God know people by their fruits, for fruits declare character, and commissioned to counterwork those who fight against the truth of God's word, they gather the wheat from among the tares without mistake and never make a mistake.
The work of judgment has not been committed to humans but to Christ alone, because He lived humanity and alone can understand human weakness and human striving for Christian perfection. The present church is the church militant, mixed with wheat and tares because the devil sowed them among the good seed, not yet the church triumphant. It contains chaff with the wheat and faults such as pride, self-sufficiency, stubborn unbelief, and refusal to yield even when evidence is piled upon evidence, yet it is loved and remains. Its faults do not mean it will cease to exist before the separation, when angels will separate to burn the tares and gather the wheat.
The gospel calls those who come out from the world together in church capacity, and the kingdom must be kept free from sinful practices of the world, while the Holy Spirit impresses a clear perception of this parable on those who desire to understand it. The presence of bad people in the church is no reason to abandon efforts to reach and save souls. Until the harvest when angels gather and separate them, their presence does not mean the church should be broken up or disorganized or broken up into independent atoms. The commandment-keeping church is not to be pronounced Babylon, there is no call to come out of it, and those who teach that false message and leaven others will be deceived, prepared for advanced delusions, and come to naught.
The parable teaches humility and distrust of self rather than judging and condemning others, and shows that not all who are in the church are genuine Christians. Those persisting in open sin must be separated from the church, but the final judgment of character belongs to God. Tares are now among the wheat, meaning hypocrites are in the churches all through the land, yet sins committed by professed Christians excuse no one and do not justify blaming Christ and His ministers. Christ gave His life to save all who believe in Him, and those who really believe have no pretense and are genuine Christians, true to one another in heart and soul and action. The true Watcher knows the false from the true, never makes a mistake in His estimate of the characters of men, and after a time He will separate the tares from the wheat.
Making the real or supposed faults of church members the habitual theme of conversation and spiritual food puts a person among the tares, for the tares are counterfeit Christians present in the church until the final separation. Christ alone is the perfect pattern of Christianity and the Sin-bearer who takes away sin, so believers must feed on Him and obey the truth rather than feed on defective character and obey unrighteousness.
Satan's Sowing at Work
Out of enmity to Christ the devil sows evil among the good in God's kingdom, and neither God nor His angels sow the seed that produces tares. The tares are the fruit and embodiment of error and false principles, and he introduces them by bringing into the church those who bear Christ's name while denying His character. Their presence dishonors God, misrepresents salvation, and puts souls in danger.
He has mingled error with truth and vigilantly guards his sowing, seeking to make error grow until it eclipses the truth. His active spreading of false teaching is pictured as sowing cockle and darnel among the good doctrine, while God's servants should be diligent in sowing good doctrine. Christ sows truth, and truth must be clearly presented in contrast with error so people can recognize and discard error.
The enemy works upon the human mind and heart, for Christ sows good seed in the heart but Satan secretly plants evil, error, and doubt. What he plants takes root and bears harmful fruit, and it can crowd out and destroy what is good while spreading sin to others. People can become his agents by passing those suggestions on.
The untrained mind of children and youth is like an uncultivated field and uncultivated soil, where the devil sows tares unless parents keep watchful guard, and those tares will spring up to bear evil fruit. Neglecting children in their early years leaves room for Satan to plant evil in their minds, so parents should instead fill their minds with what is good and pure. Evil learned in childhood may grow faster than good and be difficult to remove later, so parents should teach their children faithfully and protect them from harmful influences rather than assume good will eventually overcome evil. They must with unceasing care cultivate the mind and sow it with the precious seed of Bible truth, teaching children to reject trashy, exciting tales and to turn to sensible reading that leads the mind to take an interest in Bible story, history, and argument. Reading that throws light upon Scripture and quickens the desire to study it is beneficial and not dangerous, and God's angels help form a child's character when parents work in harmony with God's plan.
The sowing reveals the controversy between Christ and Satan continuing since the fall, with the good seed as the children of the kingdom, the tares as the children of the wicked one, and the field as the world. Departure from Christ's principles keeps that warfare going today, and the warfare has delayed the proclamation of the gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people and delayed entry into the promised land. The same work of Satan appears in the parable of the sower in catching away the seeds of truth from men's minds.
This sowing of tares also appears in the worldly display of wealthy Sanitarium guests, which becomes a temptation and sows tares in the hearts of young helpers and nurses. Among a group of Christian workers, unreliable people may join it and sow evil surmising, while the harvest is the end of the world when angels are the reapers.
After humanity disobeyed God, people had to struggle against the seeds of Satan's sowing, whose sowing brings evil into the world. Toil could help make Satan's temptations ineffectual and stem evil, and Christ's life showed how to thwart the enemy's plans.
Prophecy and Daily Warning
The harvest at the end of the world, reaped by angels, leaves wheat and tares growing together until then, so good and evil continue side by side until the advent and there is no thousand-year reign of righteousness and peace on earth before Christ's personal coming. The final separation comes only at that end, when the wicked are separated from the righteous and destroyed while the righteous receive eternal life. The world is not to be wholly converted beforehand, for the harvest is not preceded by a temporal millennium of universal conversion.
The gospel calls those who come out from the world together in church capacity, yet the kingdom must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world. Faithful servants ripen as wheat for the garner while worldly people ripen as tares for destruction, divided in thoughts, sympathies, purposes, and allegiance to God and the world. In the church militant the devil-sown tares grow with the wheat until the angels separate them to burn the tares and gather the wheat.
The chapter is a warning about judgment to be read as for life, calling every person to take heed to himself and to pray to stand acquitted without spot or stain of character before the judgment seat of Christ. Those who are saved must form faultless character before a pure and holy God, for at the great day every man will be judged according to deeds done in this life. Christ looks forward to the future destiny of those for whom He gave His life at that angel-reaped harvest. The warning not to sow tares reaches conduct directly, bidding students and workers to do what is right and sow the good seed of the kingdom and work with Christ to draw people to Him rather than discourage or mislead others. The Holy Spirit impresses a clear perception of this parable on those who desire to understand it, while the chapter warns against the enemy's deceptive wiles, human sophistry, and mocking of sacred things, and calls people to turn from ways God has not appointed.