Ok lets get to the parable of the tares and the wheat.
This one is definitely a favorite of mine. Really all the parables are incredible. They are so densely packed with wisdom and at the same time they unlock bits of other Scripture for us; things that only the wise can access. It is impossible that these parables are the work of mortal men. They are the Word of God.
The first thing I want to show you about this parable isn't in the parable itself but what Jesus says right before he explains it:
Matthew 13
35 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
Jesus is unlocking secrets by way of these parables, secrets which have been hidden since the foundation of he world. He is telling us that we need to pay attention to this and figure out how it relates to the foundation of the world.
This is how the parable begins, it is about the Kingdom of God:
24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
There is a good seed and an evil seed, the evil seed was sown by the enemy.
Some people want to argue that these seeds are not genetic, that this isn't about race or bloodlines. Lets take a look at the words being used:
The word for seed here is sperma, this is basically a mic drop moment.
I don't think there is an intellectually honest person who will disagree that this message is about bloodlines and about genetics.
Jesus is giving us a key to understanding secrets "from the foundation of the world" so lets go back to
Genesis and see if we can unlock this mystery.
Genesis 2
9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
We are told about two trees in the above. We'll get to what the tree of life is soon but lets deal with the tree of knowledge of good and evil first. The keyword here is evil because this evil is the origin of the evil seed.
You'll recall that at the end of
Genesis 1 God declared everything he made was good and he gave only one commandment to life; that life should beget life "after it's kind":
Genesis 1
25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Only life begotten after it's own kind is good. This was God's commandment to all the life he created.
Something obviously happened between
Genesis 1 and
Genesis 2 because now evil exists in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We aren't told what has happened exactly. There are some indications and we can gather the various clues together (
Job 1, Job 38, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, Luke 10, 2 Peter 2, Revelation 12 etc.). There are gaps in the story, other sources fill in the blanks for us but we don't have the whole story in Scripture. My opinion is that the truth is beyond our reasoning on this matter. It is ineffable and outside of our comprehension.
Anyway, the next thing that happens is Eve eats of the tree:
Genesis 3
13 And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Eve is beguiled by the serpent. Beguile can mean to seduce or to use trickery in a sexual way. The very next time beguile is used in the Bible it is in the context of Jacob being tricked by Laban who substitutes his daughter Leah for Rachel, who was promised to Jacob:
Genesis 29
25 And it came to pass, that in the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?
Jacob was beguiled and had sex with Leah on his wedding night thinking it was Rachel.
Consider
Proverbs 30 in the context of Eve:
20 Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.
Paul gives us another hint. He mentions Eve being beguiled in the context of a chaste virgin:
2 Corinthians 11
2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Why mention Eve in this context unless Paul is telling us she was a virgin until the beguiling by the serpent? There is no other context in which Paul's message here makes sense.
Eve desired the tree:
Genesis 3
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
God's punishments always relate to the sin committed and included in Eve's punishment is a command for her to desire her husband:
Genesis 3
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Eve is also told that she will have sorrow regarding her children and this is fulfilled when Abel is killed by Cain and then Cain is exiled and cursed for the murder of his brother.
In an earlier post I went through how Cain is not listed in Adam's genealogy and some of the numerous Scriptural indications that he is the offspring of the serpent and the forefather of modern jews. I won't go through all that again. Scroll back up and take a look at that if you missed it. The bottom line of Cain is his existence is in violation of God's
Genesis 1 commandment that life must beget life "after it's kind". His blood is tainted with evil through Eve being seduced by the serpent.
His bloodline represents the evil seed in the parable of the tares and the wheat. The battle between good and evil centers on these two seeds, it is the very first prophecy in the Bible:
Genesis 3
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
This time we are looking at the OT so the word here is the Hebrew word zera which has basically the same meaning as the Greek word sperma:
Race, children, descendants, posterity etc. Again this is about biology. There is nothing to suggest this is about any other factor.
Lets see how the parable ends:
Matthew 13
29 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
So Jesus is telling us that the tares can't be destroyed initially because some of the wheat will be destroyed along with them. This is because the tares look much like wheat in the early part of their life cycle, but as they age they look very different from the wheat.
This mirrors exactly the situation with the lifecycle of individuals of Cain's bloodline. They almost look like White people when they are young but as they age the difference becomes quite obvious:
This is consistent with all of their seed:
Female and male, it is the same story:
I don't know if their noses get bigger or their heads get smaller or really what it is but these jews get increasingly jewey as they age.
The disciples then call on Jesus to explain the parable to them:
Matthew 13
37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;
38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;
39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
41 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;
42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The tares are the children of the wicked one, the enemy who sowed them is the devil and the harvest is the end of the age. At the end of the age the tares will become so obviously different from the children of God that no doubt exists as to their identity. This likely doesn't refer to their individual appearance so much as their manifestation as a group.
Matthew 7
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
This same story, of two distinct types, one good and one evil, is told again and again in Scripture. It is a consistent theme from
Genesis to
Revelation and it ties the entire narrative together. In every case these two types are described in biological terms. If anything other than this was meant then we would expect them to sometimes be described as "students", "followers", "adherents" etc.
They are the good fish and the bad fish in the parable of the net:
Matthew 13
47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind:
48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.
49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The figs and olives, which I mentioned in an earlier post:
James 3
11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
12 Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.
The goats and sheep, which are nations. Nations means groups of people related by heredity; I mentioned this in an earlier post as well:
Matthew 25
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
The evil seed are also described as wells without water. They are called this because they lack the capacity to serve God or do good:
2 Peter 2:17
These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
We are warned that they will infiltrate but they are clouds without water and trees without fruit:
Jude 1:12
These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
Jesus tells us that the Pharisees had been gathering these bad seeds from far and wide:
Matt 23
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
Just as the tares are children of the wicked one, the good seed are the children of God. In
Genesis 4 we see that Cain and his offspring are building cities and multiplying:
Genesis 4
16 And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.
17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
While the good seed, through Seth, are established as a bloodline on the Earth:
Genesis 4
25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.
26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.
Men begin then to call on the name of God because now they are at war with the evil seed, who already outnumber them.
The tree of life is Jesus Christ and we, the good seed, are his branches:
John 15
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
When Adam and Eve are driven out of the garden of Eden the tree of life is mentioned:
Genesis 3
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Some have interpreted the above to mean that God intends to keep us from the tree of life and that the Cherubims are placed there to prevent us accessing it. In fact, the Cherubims are "keeping" the path; meaning they are establishing a path for us through Jesus Christ.
Just as death was brought to us through Adam's disobedience, likewise eternal life is brought through the tree of life:
1 Corinthians 15
21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Over the centuries the children of God have sinned and fallen short of God's commandments again and again. We have been chastised, taken into captivity and even had the branches of our tribes broken off from the tree:
Jeremiah 11
16 The Lord called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he hath kindled fire upon it, and the branches of it are broken.
17 For the Lord of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done against themselves to provoke me to anger in offering incense unto Baal.
Eventually the tribes were brought out of captivity, became nations and were grafted back into the tree of life through Christianity.
Paul's entire ministry is an effort to bring the message of Jesus to the lost tribes of Israel in order to reunite the good seed with the tree of life.
In an earlier post I went through some of Paul's statements to the Romans, Galatians, Corinthians and Ephesians showing that they were the lost sheep of the house of Israel whom Paul was sent to.
Paul also tells the Romans that they are a wild olive tree being grafted back in to the tree of life. They were wild because they had lost their way and become pagan after escaping captivity:
Romans 11
17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;
Later he tells them that all of Israel shall be grafted back into the tree of life even thought they don't know who they are; "blindness" having obscured the truth from them:
25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
Then Paul tells the Romans that God will use them to "bruise" Satan soon:
Romans 16
20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
The above further proves that the Romans are part of the good seed, which is the seed of the woman. Paul wrote this sometime before 60AD and he was clearly predicting the destruction, by Roman forces, of the 2nd Temple.
Recall:
Genesis 3
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
This also proves that the Edomite jews, who were bruised by the Romans during the destruction of the temple, are the seed of the serpent.
The grafting of the tribes back into the tree of life is fulfillment of the prophecy of the two sticks in Ezekiel :
Ezekiel 37
16 Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and for all the house of Israel his companions:
17 And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
18 And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?
19 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.
The prophecy of the two sticks predicts the future reunification of Biblical Israel and their becoming one with the tree of life, which is Jesus. It is also symbolical of the cross. Two sticks form a cross and the cross represents the tree of life.
At the end of the age the seed of the woman will be in open warfare with the serpent and his seed:
Revelation 12
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
We will prevail through the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. The seed of the serpent will be destroyed:
Matthew 15
13 But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.
The Kingdom of God will be established:
Revelation 21
12 And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
Notice above that the gates have the names of the twelve tribes. If you don't think you're part of the twelve tribes then I have bad news for you; you have no place in the Kingdom of God. You can't get in.
Notice that there isn't a gate with the word "jew" on it. There isn't one for negroes or Arabs or Chinamen either. They will have to learn to code or build their own kingdom or something.
Within the Kingdom of God we find the tree of life:
Revelation 22
1 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Twelve manner of fruit have access to the tree of life. Again, this is the twelve tribes.
The concept I am presenting, of competing Biblical seedlines, is not new. It is not some 20th century contrivance but instead was commonly held understanding in the Scriptures and among believers during the early centuries of Christianity. Several apocryphal books, such as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Adam and Eve, make mention of the admixture of the blood of fallen angels into the bloodline of men. These works are not canon but they do provide an understanding that this doctrine existed at the earliest times in Christianity.
Tertullian (c. 155 – c. AD 240) wrote that a wicked race of demons had propagated themselves on Earth. In Chapter 22 of
The Apology we read:
“We are instructed, moreover, by our sacred books how from certain angels, who fell of their own free-will, there sprang a more wicked demon-brood, condemned of God along with the authors of their race, and that chief we have referred to. It will for the present be enough, however, that some account is given of their work. Their great business is the ruin of mankind. So, from the very first, spiritual wickedness sought our destruction.”
Featuring the Church Fathers, Catholic Encyclopedia, Summa Theologica and more.
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Justin Martyr (c. 100 – c. 165) blames these "offspring" and "children" for much of the evil that exists on Earth. In his
Second Apology Chapter 5 we find this quote:
"But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begot children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions; and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate deeds, and all wickedness. Whence also the poets and mythologists, not knowing that it was the angels and those demons who had been begotten by them that did these things to men, and women, and cities, and nations, which they related, ascribed them to god himself, and to those who were accounted to be his very offspring, and to the offspring of those who were called his brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their offspring. For whatever name each of the angels had given to himself and his children, by that name they called them."
Featuring the Church Fathers, Catholic Encyclopedia, Summa Theologica and more.
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The belief that a seedline or race of demons, descended from Cain, exists in the Earth was widespread enough that it even found its way into other forms of literature and poetry. The epic poem
Beowulf, which may date from 700AD, has the following lines:
