Tarrying and Teaching by the Seaside

151:3.1The apos­tles were para­ble-minded, so much so that the whole of the next evening was de­voted to the fur­ther dis­cus­sion of para­bles. Je­sus in­tro­duced the evening’s con­fer­ence by say­ing: “My beloved, you must al­ways make a dif­fer­ence in teach­ing so as to suit your pre­sen­ta­tion of truth to the minds and hearts be­fore you. When you stand be­fore a mul­ti­tude of vary­ing in­tel­lects and tem­per­a­ments, you can­not speak dif­fer­ent words for each class of hear­ers, but you can tell a story to con­vey your teach­ing; and each group, even each in­di­vid­ual, will be able to make his own in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your para­ble in ac­cor­dance with his own in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. You are to let your light shine but do so with wis­dom and dis­cre­tion. No man, when he lights a lamp, cov­ers it up with a ves­sel or puts it un­der the bed; he puts his lamp on a stand where all can be­hold the light. Let me tell you that noth­ing is hid in the king­dom of heaven which shall not be made man­i­fest; nei­ther are there any se­crets which shall not ul­ti­mately be made known. Even­tu­ally, all these things shall come to light. Think not only of the mul­ti­tudes and how they hear the truth; take heed also to your­selves how you hear. Re­mem­ber that I have many times told you: To him who has shall be given more, while from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he thinks he has.”

151:3.2The con­tin­ued dis­cus­sion of para­bles and fur­ther in­struc­tion as to their in­ter­pre­ta­tion may be sum­ma­rized and ex­pressed in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

151:3.31. Je­sus ad­vised against the use of ei­ther fa­bles or al­le­gories in teach­ing the truths of the gospel. He did rec­om­mend the free use of para­bles, es­pe­cially na­ture para­bles. He em­pha­sized the value of uti­liz­ing the anal­ogy ex­ist­ing be­tween the nat­u­ral and the spir­i­tual worlds as a means of teach­ing truth. He fre­quently al­luded to the nat­u­ral as “the un­real and fleet­ing shadow of spirit re­al­i­ties.”

151:3.42. Je­sus nar­rated three or four para­bles from the He­brew scrip­tures, call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that this method of teach­ing was not wholly new. How­ever, it be­came al­most a new method of teach­ing as he em­ployed it from this time on­ward.

151:3.53. In teach­ing the apos­tles the value of para­bles, Je­sus called at­ten­tion to the fol­low­ing points:

151:3.6The para­ble pro­vides for a si­mul­ta­ne­ous ap­peal to vastly dif­fer­ent lev­els of mind and spirit. The para­ble stim­u­lates the imag­i­na­tion, chal­lenges the dis­crim­i­na­tion, and pro­vokes crit­i­cal think­ing; it pro­motes sym­pa­thy with­out arous­ing an­tag­o­nism.

151:3.7The para­ble pro­ceeds from the things which are known to the dis­cern­ment of the un­known. The para­ble uti­lizes the ma­te­rial and nat­u­ral as a means of in­tro­duc­ing the spir­i­tual and the super­ma­te­rial.

151:3.8Para­bles fa­vor the mak­ing of im­par­tial moral de­ci­sions. The para­ble evades much prej­u­dice and puts new truth grace­fully into the mind and does all this with the arousal of a min­i­mum of the self-de­fense of per­sonal re­sent­ment.

151:3.9To re­ject the truth con­tained in parabol­i­cal anal­ogy re­quires con­scious in­tel­lec­tual ac­tion which is di­rectly in con­tempt of one’s hon­est judg­ment and fair de­ci­sion. The para­ble con­duces to the forc­ing of thought through the sense of hear­ing.

151:3.10The use of the para­ble form of teach­ing en­ables the teacher to pre­sent new and even startling truths while at the same time he largely avoids all con­tro­versy and out­ward clash­ing with tra­di­tion and es­tab­lished au­thor­ity.

151:3.11The para­ble also pos­sesses the ad­van­tage of stim­u­lat­ing the mem­ory of the truth taught when the same fa­mil­iar scenes are sub­se­quently en­coun­tered.

151:3.12In this way Je­sus sought to ac­quaint his fol­low­ers with many of the rea­sons un­der­ly­ing his prac­tice of in­creas­ingly us­ing para­bles in his pub­lic teach­ing.

151:3.13To­ward the close of the evening’s les­son Je­sus made his first com­ment on the para­ble of the sower. He said the para­ble re­ferred to two things: First, it was a re­view of his own min­istry up to that time and a fore­cast of what lay ahead of him for the re­main­der of his life on earth. And sec­ond, it was also a hint as to what the apos­tles and other mes­sen­gers of the king­dom might ex­pect in their min­istry from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion as time passed.

151:3.14Je­sus also re­sorted to the use of para­bles as the best pos­si­ble refu­ta­tion of the stud­ied ef­fort of the re­li­gious lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem to teach that all of his work was done by the as­sis­tance of demons and the prince of dev­ils. The ap­peal to na­ture was in con­tra­ven­tion of such teach­ing since the peo­ple of that day looked upon all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena as the prod­uct of the di­rect act of spir­i­tual be­ings and super­nat­u­ral forces. He also de­ter­mined upon this method of teach­ing be­cause it en­abled him to pro­claim vi­tal truths to those who de­sired to know the bet­ter way while at the same time af­ford­ing his en­e­mies less op­por­tu­nity to find cause for of­fense and for ac­cu­sa­tions against him.

151:3.15Be­fore he dis­missed the group for the night, Je­sus said: “Now will I tell you the last of the para­ble of the sower. I would test you to know how you will re­ceive this: The king­dom of heaven is also like a man who cast good seed upon the earth; and while he slept by night and went about his busi­ness by day, the seed sprang up and grew, and al­though he knew not how it came about, the plant came to fruit. First there was the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And then when the grain was ripe, he put forth the sickle, and the har­vest was fin­ished. He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.”

151:3.16Many times did the apos­tles turn this say­ing over in their minds, but the Mas­ter never made fur­ther men­tion of this ad­di­tion to the para­ble of the sower.