Tarrying and Teaching by the Seaside

151:2.1Pe­ter and the group about him came to the con­clu­sion that the para­ble of the sower was an al­le­gory, that each fea­ture had some hid­den mean­ing, and so they de­cided to go to Je­sus and ask for an ex­pla­na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter ap­proached the Mas­ter, say­ing: “We are not able to pen­e­trate the mean­ing of this para­ble, and we de­sire that you ex­plain it to us since you say it is given us to know the mys­ter­ies of the king­dom.” And when Je­sus heard this, he said to Pe­ter: “My son, I de­sire to with­hold noth­ing from you, but first sup­pose you tell me what you have been talk­ing about; what is your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble?”

151:2.2Af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence, Pe­ter said: “Mas­ter, we have talked much con­cern­ing the para­ble, and this is the in­ter­pre­ta­tion I have de­cided upon: The sower is the gospel preacher; the seed is the word of God. The seed which fell by the way­side rep­re­sents those who do not un­der­stand the gospel teach­ing. The birds which snatched away the seed that fell upon the hard­ened ground rep­re­sent Sa­tan, or the evil one, who steals away that which has been sown in the hearts of these ig­no­rant ones. The seed which fell upon the rocky places, and which sprang up so sud­denly, rep­re­sents those su­per­fi­cial and un­think­ing per­sons who, when they hear the glad tid­ings, re­ceive the mes­sage with joy; but be­cause the truth has no real root in their deeper un­der­stand­ing, their de­vo­tion is short-lived in the face of tribu­la­tion and per­se­cu­tion. When trou­ble comes, these be­liev­ers stum­ble; they fall away when tempted. The seed which fell among thorns rep­re­sents those who hear the word will­ingly, but who al­low the cares of the world and the de­ceit­ful­ness of riches to choke the word of truth so that it be­comes un­fruit­ful. Now the seed which fell on good ground and sprang up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hun­dred­fold, rep­re­sents those who, when they have heard the truth, re­ceive it with vary­ing de­grees of ap­pre­ci­a­tion—ow­ing to their dif­fer­ing in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ments—and hence man­i­fest these vary­ing de­grees of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.”

151:2.3Je­sus, af­ter lis­ten­ing to Pe­ter’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble, asked the other apos­tles if they did not also have sug­ges­tions to of­fer. To this in­vi­ta­tion only Na­than­iel re­sponded. Said he: “Mas­ter, while I rec­og­nize many good things about Si­mon Pe­ter’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble, I do not fully agree with him. My idea of this para­ble would be: The seed rep­re­sents the gospel of the king­dom, while the sower stands for the mes­sen­gers of the king­dom. The seed which fell by the way­side on hard­ened ground rep­re­sents those who have heard but lit­tle of the gospel, along with those who are in­dif­fer­ent to the mes­sage, and who have hard­ened their hearts. The birds of the sky that snatched away the seed which fell by the way­side rep­re­sent one’s habits of life, the temp­ta­tion of evil, and the de­sires of the flesh. The seed which fell among the rocks stands for those emo­tional souls who are quick to re­ceive new teach­ing and equally quick to give up the truth when con­fronted with the dif­fi­cul­ties and re­al­i­ties of liv­ing up to this truth; they lack spir­i­tual per­cep­tion. The seed which fell among the thorns rep­re­sents those who are at­tracted to the truths of the gospel; they are minded to fol­low its teach­ings, but they are pre­vented by the pride of life, jeal­ousy, envy, and the anx­i­eties of hu­man ex­is­tence. The seed which fell on good soil, spring­ing up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hun­dred­fold, rep­re­sents the nat­u­ral and vary­ing de­grees of abil­ity to com­pre­hend truth and re­spond to its spir­i­tual teach­ings by men and women who pos­sess di­verse en­dow­ments of spirit il­lu­mi­na­tion.”

151:2.4When Na­than­iel had fin­ished speak­ing, the apos­tles and their as­so­ciates fell into se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion and en­gaged in earnest de­bate, some con­tend­ing for the cor­rect­ness of Pe­ter’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion, while al­most an equal num­ber sought to de­fend Na­than­iel’s ex­pla­na­tion of the para­ble. Mean­while Pe­ter and Na­than­iel had with­drawn to the house, where they were in­volved in a vig­or­ous and de­ter­mined ef­fort the one to con­vince and change the mind of the other.

151:2.5The Mas­ter per­mit­ted this con­fu­sion to pass the point of most in­tense ex­pres­sion; then he clapped his hands and called them about him. When they had all gath­ered around him once more, he said, “Be­fore I tell you about this para­ble, do any of you have aught to say?” Fol­low­ing a mo­ment of si­lence, Thomas spoke up: “Yes, Mas­ter, I wish to say a few words. I re­mem­ber that you once told us to be­ware of this very thing. You in­structed us that, when us­ing il­lus­tra­tions for our preach­ing, we should em­ploy true sto­ries, not fa­bles, and that we should se­lect a story best suited to the il­lus­tra­tion of the one cen­tral and vi­tal truth which we wished to teach the peo­ple, and that, hav­ing so used the story, we should not at­tempt to make a spir­i­tual ap­pli­ca­tion of all the mi­nor de­tails in­volved in the telling of the story. I hold that Pe­ter and Na­than­iel are both wrong in their at­tempts to in­ter­pret this para­ble. I ad­mire their abil­ity to do these things, but I am equally sure that all such at­tempts to make a nat­u­ral para­ble yield spir­i­tual analo­gies in all its fea­tures can only re­sult in con­fu­sion and se­ri­ous mis­con­cep­tion of the true pur­pose of such a para­ble. That I am right is fully proved by the fact that, whereas we were all of one mind an hour ago, now are we di­vided into two sep­a­rate groups who hold dif­fer­ent opin­ions con­cern­ing this para­ble and hold such opin­ions so earnestly as to in­ter­fere, in my opin­ion, with our abil­ity fully to grasp the great truth which you had in mind when you pre­sented this para­ble to the mul­ti­tude and sub­se­quently asked us to make com­ment upon it.”

151:2.6The words which Thomas spoke had a qui­et­ing ef­fect on all of them. He caused them to re­call what Je­sus had taught them on for­mer oc­ca­sions, and be­fore Je­sus re­sumed speak­ing, An­drew arose, say­ing: “I am per­suaded that Thomas is right, and I would like to have him tell us what mean­ing he at­taches to the para­ble of the sower.” Af­ter Je­sus had beck­oned Thomas to speak, he said: “My breth­ren, I did not wish to pro­long this dis­cus­sion, but if you so de­sire, I will say that I think this para­ble was spo­ken to teach us one great truth. And that is that our teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom, no mat­ter how faith­fully and ef­fi­ciently we ex­e­cute our di­vine com­mis­sions, is go­ing to be at­tended by vary­ing de­grees of suc­cess; and that all such dif­fer­ences in re­sults are di­rectly due to con­di­tions in­her­ent in the cir­cum­stances of our min­istry, con­di­tions over which we have lit­tle or no con­trol.”

151:2.7When Thomas had fin­ished speak­ing, the ma­jor­ity of his fel­low preach­ers were about ready to agree with him, even Pe­ter and Na­than­iel were on their way over to speak with him, when Je­sus arose and said: “Well done, Thomas; you have dis­cerned the true mean­ing of para­bles; but both Pe­ter and Na­than­iel have done you all equal good in that they have so fully shown the dan­ger of un­der­tak­ing to make an al­le­gory out of my para­bles. In your own hearts you may of­ten prof­itably en­gage in such flights of the spec­u­la­tive imag­i­na­tion, but you make a mis­take when you seek to of­fer such con­clu­sions as a part of your pub­lic teach­ing.”

151:2.8Now that the ten­sion was over, Pe­ter and Na­than­iel con­grat­u­lated each other on their in­ter­pre­ta­tions, and with the ex­cep­tion of the Al­pheus twins, each of the apos­tles ven­tured to make an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble of the sower be­fore they re­tired for the night. Even Ju­das Is­car­iot of­fered a very plau­si­ble in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The twelve would of­ten, among them­selves, at­tempt to fig­ure out the Mas­ter’s para­bles as they would an al­le­gory, but never again did they re­gard such spec­u­la­tions se­ri­ously. This was a very prof­itable ses­sion for the apos­tles and their as­so­ciates, es­pe­cially so since from this time on Je­sus more and more em­ployed para­bles in con­nec­tion with his pub­lic teach­ing.