Jesus Holds Wheat and Tares in the FieldBible World
13:40Matthew 13:40
As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
As the tares are gathered and burned, so it shall be at the end of the world, when the Son of man who sowed the good seed sends His angels as reapers to separate the harvest, for the field is the world and also His church, the good seed are the children of the kingdom born of truth, the tares are the children of the wicked one sown secretly by the devil, and the harvest is the close of earth's history. At that time the angels will gather out of His kingdom all that offends and them which do iniquity and cast them into a furnace of fire with wailing and gnashing of teeth, while the wheat is gathered into God's storehouse and garner and the righteous shine forth as the sun and receive eternal life. Wheat and tares remain together until the harvest and tares are never changed into wheat, so evil is not removed beforehand and righteousness does not universally reign before the end, which rejects any temporal millennium of worldwide conversion and triumph before Christ comes. Judgment and separation have not been given to men, for in the church militant no person may measure fellow members or root up the tares, but Christ alone who understands human weakness and His angels who know character by fruits will gather without mistake at the harvest. Even now the wicked are binding themselves in bundles ready to be burned in the fires of the last day through unions, confederacies, combinations, secret societies, strife between labor and capital, and force to compel unity, so those who claim to be God's children must not join them but sow good seed by obedient lives and form faultless character to stand acquitted when every man is judged according to deeds done in this life.
Parable Symbols and Setting
The verse belongs to the parable in which he that sowed the good seed is the Son of man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the tares are the children of the wicked one, the enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. The gathering and burning of the tares pictures what shall be at the end of the world, when the Son of man shall send forth His angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity and shall cast them into a furnace of fire where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. In the church militant the tares grow together with the wheat until the harvest, for the gospel calls together in church capacity those who come out from the world, yet the kingdom of God must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world. The Holy Spirit will impress the minds of those who desire a clear perception of this instruction.
The field also signifies Christ's church in the world, describing God's work of saving people through the church, where they grow and ripen for God's harvest. The good seed represents children of the kingdom, born of God's word and truth, and the tares represent children of the wicked one, embodying error and false principles. The tares include those who bear Christ's name while denying His character, sown by Satan among the good grain of the kingdom, whose presence dishonors God, misrepresents salvation, and imperils souls. Satan sows harmful teaching among the good doctrine that should be sown, pictured as cockle and darnel, and the image of tares gathered and burned points to their removal at the end of the world, which warns religious leaders who spread error instead of good doctrine.
Satan, not God or His angels, sows the tares. He secretly sows evil and error in human minds, while Christ sows good in people's hearts, and these seeds of sin can crowd out and destroy what is good, waste the heart's power to produce good, and spread their harmful influence to others. The parable of the wheat and the tares illustrates a conflict between divine and satanic powers that continues until the close of earth's history. Evil may work secretly and long imitate what is good, with the tares resembling wheat for a long time, but at the harvest the wheat is gathered for Christ while the tares are rejected. This does not authorize mixing or corrupting church associations or tolerating evil in Christian assemblies.
Final Separation and Judgment
The harvest is the end of the world, when as the tares are gathered and burned the wicked are separated from the righteous and destroyed, while the wheat, the precious grain, is gathered into God's storehouse, garner, and barn. The tares are the children of the wicked one, and their gathering and burning describes the final separation of evil from the kingdom. The righteous are ripening like wheat for God's garner, while the wicked ripen like tares for the fires of destruction. The final harvest ripens as the gospel is spread, and Christians hasten Christ's coming by bearing fruit to God's glory.
He that sowed the good seed is the Son of man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the tares are the children of the wicked one, the enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity. They shall cast them into a furnace of fire where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, while the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father and receive eternal life. The tares remain tares rather than being changed into wheat, so there is a final separation and judgment, not a worldwide conversion before the end. The gospel calls together in church capacity those who come out from the world, and the kingdom of God must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world.
At that time the separation of evil from good will be complete. Those who only appear to be Christ's followers will be revealed, for until then they may mingle with the true followers, share the same advantages, resemble genuine faith outwardly, and deceive people. Outward resemblance and religious profession will not determine destiny, but character will. Christ will decide who is fit for heaven, judging each person by words, works, and character. Then the difference between good and evil will be plain, the righteous will be gathered, and the wicked will trouble them no more forever.
The wheat is selected and sealed or bound for the heavenly garner, while the tares are separated from it. This work belongs to the third angel's mission and is of urgent importance. Its picture of separation is applied as a call to distinguish the vile from the precious.
The burning is the fires of the last day, in which God gathers those who love and serve Him, but the wicked are bound for destruction, with each person's choice determining whether they belong among the good wheat or among those bound for the fire. The earth will be purified by fire, with fires from within the earth joining fires from heaven, and it will not be cleansed by another flood. The great day of final ingathering is foreshadowed by the Feast of Tabernacles as the feast of harvest, when the Lord of the harvest will send forth His reapers to gather the tares together in bundles for the fire and to gather the wheat into His garner. At that time all the wicked will be destroyed so completely that they will become as though they had not been, and then every voice in the whole universe will unite in joyful praise to God.
Timing Refutes Earthly Millennium
The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest, which is the end of the world, when the tares are gathered and burned in the fire. Evil is therefore not removed beforehand, and righteousness and peace do not come to prevail throughout the world before the end. The kingdom of darkness continues until Christ's advent, when it is destroyed, with evil continuing and even worsening until He comes.
The tares remain tares to the end rather than being changed into wheat by miracle, and at the end they are utterly destroyed. This rules out a temporal millennium in which everyone is converted and the whole world is brought to righteousness before the end, including the expectation of a worldwide triumph of the church before Christ's coming. Instead the world and even the church remain far from God amid worsening evil until the end. At that final separation the angels as reapers remove evildoers from His kingdom to punish them for their deeds, while the righteous receive eternal life. The final harvest ripens as the gospel is spread and Christ gathers the precious grain, and Christians hasten His coming by bearing fruit to God's glory.
Angels Alone Separate People
The church on earth is the church militant, where wheat and tares grow together until the end of the world, and it is not yet the church triumphant. The wheat are the true children of the kingdom and the tares are counterfeit Christians and children of the wicked one, yet not all who claim to be sons and daughters of God truly are. No person has the right to measure the character of fellow members or to root up the tares, for the work of judgment and separation has not been given to men. That work belongs to Christ alone, who lived humanity and alone understands human weakness and striving, and to His angels as reapers at the harvest when the tares are gathered and burned. Until that final judgment church membership does not prove a person a Christian, so the lesson is humility and distrust of self rather than condemnation of others, with Christ making the final distinction between righteous and wicked.
Human beings cannot reliably distinguish wheat from tares now because the tares so closely resemble the wheat that no one can read the heart. Even those who hold the truth in unrighteousness may appear outwardly wise, so that none can tell who are wise and who are foolish, and people have no authority to separate them now. The separation belongs to the end of the world, not to human judgment in the present. God's angels know character by fruits and will gather the wheat from among the tares without mistake and never make an error in that gathering. They are commissioned to counterwork those who fight against the truth of God's word.
The presence of flawed members and wrongdoing does not erase God's church, disorganize it, cause it to cease to exist, or justify breaking it into independent separate groups before the harvest. Tares and wheat remain together until the harvest, when the tares are gathered for burning and the wheat is gathered into the garner. The separation is the angels' work and not the work of people. Faults in some members are therefore no reason to break up Christ's church beforehand.
Tares are present among the wheat as hypocrites in the churches all through the land. Their sins give no excuse for sin in any other soul and give no ground for blaming Christ and His ministers. Those who really believe in Jesus are genuine Christians with no pretense, true to one another in heart and soul and action. The true Watcher knows the false from the true and never makes a mistake in His estimate of men's characters, and after a time He will separate the tares from the wheat.
The tares to be gathered and burned in the fire at the end of the world are counterfeit Christians in the church. Those who make defective members their theme of conversation and feed on their real or supposed faults will themselves be ranked among the tares for that burning. All must instead feed on Christ the perfect pattern and Sin-bearer, whose work alone takes away sin and gives eternal life, or they will perish miserably.
Present Bundling for Burning
The wicked are now binding themselves together in bundles ready to be burned, and this is the fulfillment of the gathering of the tares at the end of the world. The binding is seen in turmoil and confusion filling the cities through labor unions and strikes, gigantic monopolies, trades unions, confederacies, combinations, and secret societies. It appears in strife and discord between labor and capital, hypocrisy in the churches, misuse of power, cruelty, and force used to make men unite with confederacies and unions. Men seek to bring those engaged in the different trades under bondage to certain unions, combining to grasp business and forcing all to join under penalty of being marked men and even losing life.
This bondage is not God's planning but the planning of a power that must not be acknowledged. It is controlled by Satan as the leader of rebellion, who devises the schemes and works through human agents to lead every soul to take sides with him, so that those who yield become tempters and helpers in leading others, and this bundling is the working of satanic agencies. These unions that wrap men in the folds of the enemy are one of the signs of the last days and one of Satan's last efforts. Because of this hindrance the work is not to be centered in the cities.
Those who claim to be the children of God are forbidden to join the labor unions that are formed or shall be formed. Those who remain joined to secret societies will share the fate of their companions, like tares gathered in bundles for burning. Even church members while belonging to these unions cannot possibly keep the commandments of God. But God has a people who see the evil of oppression and refuse to unite with the enemy, while at the harvest the wheat are gathered into His barn.
Those connected with God's work who are not true and faithful, who cannot discern the sacredness of the work, whose will is not on the side of God's will, who do not love the truth so that it sanctifies and refines them, the sensual, the proud, the careless in heart, and those opposed to the truth, will be separated and gathered in bundles with the tares to be destroyed by fire in the last day. Darkness closes about them and their time of salvation ends unsaved. The burning is eternal death that will soon be the portion of all who reject Christ, when a world absorbed in selfish pursuits meets sudden destruction and shall not escape.
Warning and Holy Living
The chapter is a warning to be taken to heart, instruction to be read as for life concerning the future destiny of the beings for whom Christ gave His life and the destruction of the wicked at the end of the world. It presses the searching question who shall stand acquitted before the judgment seat of Christ, without spot or stain upon character. Those who are saved must form characters without fault in the sight of a pure and holy God, for at the great day of judgment every man will be judged according to the deeds done in this life.
Students are not to sow tares by wrong conduct but to sow the good seed of the kingdom by faithful, obedient lives that draw others to Christ, since tares will be gathered and burned at the end of the world. Sowing tares is the enemy's work upon human minds through doubt and questioning suggested by Satan. Those who pick at straws, allow images of straw to be created as something to attack, and keep proffering new objections as fast as old ones are cleared away are sowing tares. To dispute over small things like the meaning of the words I, we, and us in messages of truth, instead of taking hold of grand and soul-saving truths, educates mind and heart to become Satan's agent and channel for communicating his suggestions.
Children's minds are to be filled with what is good and pure before Satan can plant evil in them, and such early training prepares character for God for the harvest. Evil learned in childhood, like sown weeds allowed to grow, can increase faster than good and may be difficult to remove later. Parents must therefore guide children's learning and guard them from harmful influences rather than assume that good will eventually overcome evil.
The parable warns religious leaders who sow harmful teaching pictured as cockle and darnel among the good doctrine that should be sown, for the tares so sown will be gathered and burned and removed at the end of the world. It describes a conflict between divine and satanic powers continuing until the close of earth's history, in which evil may work secretly and long imitate good while the tares resemble wheat, with the wheat at harvest gathered for Christ and the tares rejected. It does not authorize mixing or corrupting church associations or tolerating evil in Christian assemblies. Until the final separation and burning at the end of the world, good and evil may grow together and church membership does not prove a person a Christian, a teaching that calls for humility and distrust of self rather than condemnation of others, leaving the final distinction between righteous and wicked to Christ.
The image of tares among wheat also applies to unreliable workers who may join the faithful, work eagerly for a time, then complain, become dissatisfied, and spread harmful suspicions.
As the tares are gathered and burned, so it shall be at the end of the world, when the Son of man who sowed the good seed sends His angels as reapers to separate the harvest, for the field is the world and also His church, the good seed are the children of the kingdom born of truth, the tares are the children of the wicked one sown secretly by the devil, and the harvest is the close of earth's history. At that time the angels will gather out of His kingdom all that offends and them which do iniquity and cast them into a furnace of fire with wailing and gnashing of teeth, while the wheat is gathered into God's storehouse and garner and the righteous shine forth as the sun and receive eternal life. Wheat and tares remain together until the harvest and tares are never changed into wheat, so evil is not removed beforehand and righteousness does not universally reign before the end, which rejects any temporal millennium of worldwide conversion and triumph before Christ comes. Judgment and separation have not been given to men, for in the church militant no person may measure fellow members or root up the tares, but Christ alone who understands human weakness and His angels who know character by fruits will gather without mistake at the harvest. Even now the wicked are binding themselves in bundles ready to be burned in the fires of the last day through unions, confederacies, combinations, secret societies, strife between labor and capital, and force to compel unity, so those who claim to be God's children must not join them but sow good seed by obedient lives and form faultless character to stand acquitted when every man is judged according to deeds done in this life.
Parable Symbols and Setting
The verse belongs to the parable in which he that sowed the good seed is the Son of man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the tares are the children of the wicked one, the enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. The gathering and burning of the tares pictures what shall be at the end of the world, when the Son of man shall send forth His angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity and shall cast them into a furnace of fire where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. In the church militant the tares grow together with the wheat until the harvest, for the gospel calls together in church capacity those who come out from the world, yet the kingdom of God must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world. The Holy Spirit will impress the minds of those who desire a clear perception of this instruction.
The field also signifies Christ's church in the world, describing God's work of saving people through the church, where they grow and ripen for God's harvest. The good seed represents children of the kingdom, born of God's word and truth, and the tares represent children of the wicked one, embodying error and false principles. The tares include those who bear Christ's name while denying His character, sown by Satan among the good grain of the kingdom, whose presence dishonors God, misrepresents salvation, and imperils souls. Satan sows harmful teaching among the good doctrine that should be sown, pictured as cockle and darnel, and the image of tares gathered and burned points to their removal at the end of the world, which warns religious leaders who spread error instead of good doctrine.
Satan, not God or His angels, sows the tares. He secretly sows evil and error in human minds, while Christ sows good in people's hearts, and these seeds of sin can crowd out and destroy what is good, waste the heart's power to produce good, and spread their harmful influence to others. The parable of the wheat and the tares illustrates a conflict between divine and satanic powers that continues until the close of earth's history. Evil may work secretly and long imitate what is good, with the tares resembling wheat for a long time, but at the harvest the wheat is gathered for Christ while the tares are rejected. This does not authorize mixing or corrupting church associations or tolerating evil in Christian assemblies.
Final Separation and Judgment
The harvest is the end of the world, when as the tares are gathered and burned the wicked are separated from the righteous and destroyed, while the wheat, the precious grain, is gathered into God's storehouse, garner, and barn. The tares are the children of the wicked one, and their gathering and burning describes the final separation of evil from the kingdom. The righteous are ripening like wheat for God's garner, while the wicked ripen like tares for the fires of destruction. The final harvest ripens as the gospel is spread, and Christians hasten Christ's coming by bearing fruit to God's glory.
He that sowed the good seed is the Son of man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the tares are the children of the wicked one, the enemy that sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity. They shall cast them into a furnace of fire where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, while the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father and receive eternal life. The tares remain tares rather than being changed into wheat, so there is a final separation and judgment, not a worldwide conversion before the end. The gospel calls together in church capacity those who come out from the world, and the kingdom of God must be kept free from the sinful practices of the world.
At that time the separation of evil from good will be complete. Those who only appear to be Christ's followers will be revealed, for until then they may mingle with the true followers, share the same advantages, resemble genuine faith outwardly, and deceive people. Outward resemblance and religious profession will not determine destiny, but character will. Christ will decide who is fit for heaven, judging each person by words, works, and character. Then the difference between good and evil will be plain, the righteous will be gathered, and the wicked will trouble them no more forever.
The wheat is selected and sealed or bound for the heavenly garner, while the tares are separated from it. This work belongs to the third angel's mission and is of urgent importance. Its picture of separation is applied as a call to distinguish the vile from the precious.
The burning is the fires of the last day, in which God gathers those who love and serve Him, but the wicked are bound for destruction, with each person's choice determining whether they belong among the good wheat or among those bound for the fire. The earth will be purified by fire, with fires from within the earth joining fires from heaven, and it will not be cleansed by another flood. The great day of final ingathering is foreshadowed by the Feast of Tabernacles as the feast of harvest, when the Lord of the harvest will send forth His reapers to gather the tares together in bundles for the fire and to gather the wheat into His garner. At that time all the wicked will be destroyed so completely that they will become as though they had not been, and then every voice in the whole universe will unite in joyful praise to God.
Timing Refutes Earthly Millennium
The wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest, which is the end of the world, when the tares are gathered and burned in the fire. Evil is therefore not removed beforehand, and righteousness and peace do not come to prevail throughout the world before the end. The kingdom of darkness continues until Christ's advent, when it is destroyed, with evil continuing and even worsening until He comes.
The tares remain tares to the end rather than being changed into wheat by miracle, and at the end they are utterly destroyed. This rules out a temporal millennium in which everyone is converted and the whole world is brought to righteousness before the end, including the expectation of a worldwide triumph of the church before Christ's coming. Instead the world and even the church remain far from God amid worsening evil until the end. At that final separation the angels as reapers remove evildoers from His kingdom to punish them for their deeds, while the righteous receive eternal life. The final harvest ripens as the gospel is spread and Christ gathers the precious grain, and Christians hasten His coming by bearing fruit to God's glory.
Angels Alone Separate People
The church on earth is the church militant, where wheat and tares grow together until the end of the world, and it is not yet the church triumphant. The wheat are the true children of the kingdom and the tares are counterfeit Christians and children of the wicked one, yet not all who claim to be sons and daughters of God truly are. No person has the right to measure the character of fellow members or to root up the tares, for the work of judgment and separation has not been given to men. That work belongs to Christ alone, who lived humanity and alone understands human weakness and striving, and to His angels as reapers at the harvest when the tares are gathered and burned. Until that final judgment church membership does not prove a person a Christian, so the lesson is humility and distrust of self rather than condemnation of others, with Christ making the final distinction between righteous and wicked.
Human beings cannot reliably distinguish wheat from tares now because the tares so closely resemble the wheat that no one can read the heart. Even those who hold the truth in unrighteousness may appear outwardly wise, so that none can tell who are wise and who are foolish, and people have no authority to separate them now. The separation belongs to the end of the world, not to human judgment in the present. God's angels know character by fruits and will gather the wheat from among the tares without mistake and never make an error in that gathering. They are commissioned to counterwork those who fight against the truth of God's word.
The presence of flawed members and wrongdoing does not erase God's church, disorganize it, cause it to cease to exist, or justify breaking it into independent separate groups before the harvest. Tares and wheat remain together until the harvest, when the tares are gathered for burning and the wheat is gathered into the garner. The separation is the angels' work and not the work of people. Faults in some members are therefore no reason to break up Christ's church beforehand.
Tares are present among the wheat as hypocrites in the churches all through the land. Their sins give no excuse for sin in any other soul and give no ground for blaming Christ and His ministers. Those who really believe in Jesus are genuine Christians with no pretense, true to one another in heart and soul and action. The true Watcher knows the false from the true and never makes a mistake in His estimate of men's characters, and after a time He will separate the tares from the wheat.
The tares to be gathered and burned in the fire at the end of the world are counterfeit Christians in the church. Those who make defective members their theme of conversation and feed on their real or supposed faults will themselves be ranked among the tares for that burning. All must instead feed on Christ the perfect pattern and Sin-bearer, whose work alone takes away sin and gives eternal life, or they will perish miserably.
Present Bundling for Burning
The wicked are now binding themselves together in bundles ready to be burned, and this is the fulfillment of the gathering of the tares at the end of the world. The binding is seen in turmoil and confusion filling the cities through labor unions and strikes, gigantic monopolies, trades unions, confederacies, combinations, and secret societies. It appears in strife and discord between labor and capital, hypocrisy in the churches, misuse of power, cruelty, and force used to make men unite with confederacies and unions. Men seek to bring those engaged in the different trades under bondage to certain unions, combining to grasp business and forcing all to join under penalty of being marked men and even losing life.
This bondage is not God's planning but the planning of a power that must not be acknowledged. It is controlled by Satan as the leader of rebellion, who devises the schemes and works through human agents to lead every soul to take sides with him, so that those who yield become tempters and helpers in leading others, and this bundling is the working of satanic agencies. These unions that wrap men in the folds of the enemy are one of the signs of the last days and one of Satan's last efforts. Because of this hindrance the work is not to be centered in the cities.
Those who claim to be the children of God are forbidden to join the labor unions that are formed or shall be formed. Those who remain joined to secret societies will share the fate of their companions, like tares gathered in bundles for burning. Even church members while belonging to these unions cannot possibly keep the commandments of God. But God has a people who see the evil of oppression and refuse to unite with the enemy, while at the harvest the wheat are gathered into His barn.
Those connected with God's work who are not true and faithful, who cannot discern the sacredness of the work, whose will is not on the side of God's will, who do not love the truth so that it sanctifies and refines them, the sensual, the proud, the careless in heart, and those opposed to the truth, will be separated and gathered in bundles with the tares to be destroyed by fire in the last day. Darkness closes about them and their time of salvation ends unsaved. The burning is eternal death that will soon be the portion of all who reject Christ, when a world absorbed in selfish pursuits meets sudden destruction and shall not escape.
Warning and Holy Living
The chapter is a warning to be taken to heart, instruction to be read as for life concerning the future destiny of the beings for whom Christ gave His life and the destruction of the wicked at the end of the world. It presses the searching question who shall stand acquitted before the judgment seat of Christ, without spot or stain upon character. Those who are saved must form characters without fault in the sight of a pure and holy God, for at the great day of judgment every man will be judged according to the deeds done in this life.
Students are not to sow tares by wrong conduct but to sow the good seed of the kingdom by faithful, obedient lives that draw others to Christ, since tares will be gathered and burned at the end of the world. Sowing tares is the enemy's work upon human minds through doubt and questioning suggested by Satan. Those who pick at straws, allow images of straw to be created as something to attack, and keep proffering new objections as fast as old ones are cleared away are sowing tares. To dispute over small things like the meaning of the words I, we, and us in messages of truth, instead of taking hold of grand and soul-saving truths, educates mind and heart to become Satan's agent and channel for communicating his suggestions.
Children's minds are to be filled with what is good and pure before Satan can plant evil in them, and such early training prepares character for God for the harvest. Evil learned in childhood, like sown weeds allowed to grow, can increase faster than good and may be difficult to remove later. Parents must therefore guide children's learning and guard them from harmful influences rather than assume that good will eventually overcome evil.
The parable warns religious leaders who sow harmful teaching pictured as cockle and darnel among the good doctrine that should be sown, for the tares so sown will be gathered and burned and removed at the end of the world. It describes a conflict between divine and satanic powers continuing until the close of earth's history, in which evil may work secretly and long imitate good while the tares resemble wheat, with the wheat at harvest gathered for Christ and the tares rejected. It does not authorize mixing or corrupting church associations or tolerating evil in Christian assemblies. Until the final separation and burning at the end of the world, good and evil may grow together and church membership does not prove a person a Christian, a teaching that calls for humility and distrust of self rather than condemnation of others, leaving the final distinction between righteous and wicked to Christ.
The image of tares among wheat also applies to unreliable workers who may join the faithful, work eagerly for a time, then complain, become dissatisfied, and spread harmful suspicions.