seeds

• mustard seed

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

151:1.1About this time Je­sus first be­gan to em­ploy the para­ble method of teach­ing the mul­ti­tudes that so fre­quently gath­ered about him. Since Je­sus had talked with the apos­tles and oth­ers long into the night, on this Sun­day morn­ing very few of the group were up for break­fast; so he went out by the sea­side and sat alone in the boat, the old fish­ing boat of An­drew and Pe­ter, which was al­ways kept at his dis­posal, and med­i­tated on the next move to be made in the work of ex­tend­ing the king­dom. But the Mas­ter was not to be alone for long. Very soon the peo­ple from Ca­per­naum and near-by vil­lages be­gan to ar­rive, and by ten o’clock that morn­ing al­most one thou­sand were as­sem­bled on shore near Je­sus’ boat and were clam­or­ing for at­ten­tion. Pe­ter was now up and, mak­ing his way to the boat, said to Je­sus, “Mas­ter, shall I talk to them?” But Je­sus an­swered, “No, Pe­ter, I will tell them a story.” And then Je­sus be­gan the recital of the para­ble of the sower, one of the first of a long se­ries of such para­bles which he taught the throngs that fol­lowed af­ter him. This boat had an el­e­vated seat on which he sat (for it was the cus­tom to sit when teach­ing) while he talked to the crowd as­sem­bled along the shore. Af­ter Pe­ter had spo­ken a few words, Je­sus said:

151:1.2“A sower went forth to sow, and it came to pass as he sowed that some seed fell by the way­side to be trod­den un­der­foot and de­voured by the birds of heaven. Other seed fell upon the rocky places where there was lit­tle earth, and im­me­di­ately it sprang up be­cause there was no depth to the soil, but as soon as the sun shone, it with­ered be­cause it had no root whereby to se­cure mois­ture. Other seed fell among the thorns, and as the thorns grew up, it was choked so that it yielded no grain. Still other seed fell upon good ground and, grow­ing, yielded, some thir­ty­fold, some six­ty­fold, and some a hun­dred­fold.” And when he had fin­ished speak­ing this para­ble, he said to the mul­ti­tude, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

151:1.3The apos­tles and those who were with them, when they heard Je­sus teach the peo­ple in this man­ner, were greatly per­plexed; and af­ter much talk­ing among them­selves, that evening in the Zeb­e­dee gar­den Mat­thew said to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, what is the mean­ing of the dark say­ings which you pre­sent to the mul­ti­tude? Why do you speak in para­bles to those who seek the truth?” And Je­sus an­swered:

151:1.4“In pa­tience have I in­structed you all this time. To you it is given to know the mys­ter­ies of the king­dom of heaven, but to the undis­cern­ing mul­ti­tudes and to those who seek our de­struc­tion, from now on, the mys­ter­ies of the king­dom shall be pre­sented in para­bles. And this we will do so that those who re­ally de­sire to en­ter the king­dom may dis­cern the mean­ing of the teach­ing and thus find sal­va­tion, while those who lis­ten only to en­snare us may be the more con­founded in that they will see with­out see­ing and will hear with­out hear­ing. My chil­dren, do you not per­ceive the law of the spirit which de­crees that to him who has shall be given so that he shall have an abun­dance; but from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he has. There­fore will I hence­forth speak to the peo­ple much in para­bles to the end that our friends and those who de­sire to know the truth may find that which they seek, while our en­e­mies and those who love not the truth may hear with­out un­der­stand­ing. Many of these peo­ple fol­low not in the way of the truth. The prophet did, in­deed, de­scribe all such undis­cern­ing souls when he said: ‘For this peo­ple’s heart has waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hear­ing, and their eyes they have closed lest they should dis­cern the truth and un­der­stand it in their hearts.’”

151:1.5The apos­tles did not fully com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of the Mas­ter’s words. As An­drew and Thomas talked fur­ther with Je­sus, Pe­ter and the other apos­tles with­drew to an­other por­tion of the gar­den where they en­gaged in earnest and pro­longed dis­cus­sion.

• growth to harvest

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.”

• mustard seed

151:4.2Af­ter the peo­ple had asked a few ques­tions, Je­sus spoke an­other para­ble: “The king­dom of heaven is like a grain of mus­tard seed which a man sowed in his field. Now a mus­tard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is full grown, it be­comes the great­est of all herbs and is like a tree so that the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof.”

• mustard seed
• seed of living being

178:1.15This gospel of the king­dom is a liv­ing truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mus­tard seed; and now I de­clare that it is like the seed of the liv­ing be­ing, which, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, while it re­mains the same liv­ing seed, un­fail­ingly un­folds it­self in new man­i­fes­ta­tions and grows ac­cept­ably in chan­nels of new adap­ta­tion to the pe­cu­liar needs and con­di­tions of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. The rev­e­la­tion I have made to you is a liv­ing rev­e­la­tion, and I de­sire that it shall bear ap­pro­pri­ate fruits in each in­di­vid­ual and in each gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of spir­i­tual growth, in­crease, and adap­ta­tive de­vel­op­ment. From gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion this gospel must show in­creas­ing vi­tal­ity and ex­hibit greater depth of spir­i­tual power. It must not be per­mit­ted to be­come merely a sa­cred mem­ory, a mere tra­di­tion about me and the times in which we now live.

• afforded animals better food supply
• appeared in Permian

59:6.7Through­out these times of cli­matic change, great vari­a­tions also oc­curred in the land plants. The seed plants first ap­peared, and they af­forded a bet­ter food sup­ply for the sub­se­quently in­creased land-an­i­mal life. The in­sects un­der­went a rad­i­cal change. The rest­ing stages evolved to meet the de­mands of sus­pended an­i­ma­tion dur­ing win­ter and drought.

• evolution from spores

65:6.3The most im­por­tant step in plant evo­lu­tion was the de­vel­op­ment of chloro­phyll-mak­ing abil­ity, and the sec­ond great­est ad­vance was the evo­lu­tion of the spore into the com­plex seed. The spore is most ef­fi­cient as a re­pro­duc­tive agent, but it lacks the po­ten­tials of va­ri­ety and ver­sa­til­ity in­her­ent in the seed.

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.