fig tree

• fig tree

60:3.790,000,000 years ago the an­giosperms emerged from these early Cre­ta­ceous seas and soon over­ran the con­ti­nents. These land plants sud­denly ap­peared along with fig trees, mag­no­lias, and tulip trees. Soon af­ter this time fig trees, bread­fruit trees, and palms over­spread Eu­rope and the west­ern plains of North Amer­ica. No new land an­i­mals ap­peared.

• parable of

166:4.9“There was a cer­tain man who planted a fig tree in his yard, and when he had many times sought fruit thereon and found none, he called the vine­dressers be­fore him and said: ‘Here have I come these three sea­sons look­ing for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut down this bar­ren tree; why should it en­cum­ber the ground?’ But the head gar­dener an­swered his mas­ter: ‘Let it alone for one more year so that I may dig around it and put on fer­til­izer, and then, next year, if it bears no fruit, it shall be cut down.’ And when they had thus com­plied with the laws of fruit­ful­ness, since the tree was liv­ing and good, they were re­warded with an abun­dant yield.

• parable of branches of

176:2.6“And now con­cern­ing the tra­vail of Je­ru­sa­lem, about which I have spo­ken to you, even this gen­er­a­tion will not pass away un­til my words are ful­filled; but con­cern­ing the times of the com­ing again of the Son of Man, no one in heaven or on earth may pre­sume to speak. But you should be wise re­gard­ing the ripen­ing of an age; you should be alert to dis­cern the signs of the times. You know when the fig tree shows its ten­der branches and puts forth its leaves that sum­mer is near. Like­wise, when the world has passed through the long win­ter of ma­te­rial-mind­ed­ness and you dis­cern the com­ing of the spir­i­tual spring­time of a new dis­pen­sa­tion, should you know that the sum­mer­time of a new vis­i­ta­tion draws near.