sower

• parable of

95:0.1As In­dia gave rise to many of the re­li­gions and philoso­phies of east­ern Asia, so the Lev­ant was the home­land of the faiths of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies spread out all over south­west­ern Asia, through Pales­tine, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, Egypt, Iran, and Ara­bia, ev­ery­where pro­claim­ing the good news of the gospel of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek. In some of these lands their teach­ings bore fruit; in oth­ers they met with vary­ing suc­cess. Some­times their fail­ures were due to lack of wis­dom, some­times to cir­cum­stances be­yond their con­trol.

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.

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.

• parable of

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.

• parable of

152:6.3The sec­ond night of their so­journ at Gen­nesaret the Mas­ter again told the apos­tles the para­ble of the sower and added these words: “You see, my chil­dren, the ap­peal to hu­man feel­ings is tran­si­tory and ut­terly dis­ap­point­ing; the ex­clu­sive ap­peal to the in­tel­lect of man is like­wise empty and bar­ren; it is only by mak­ing your ap­peal to the spirit which lives within the hu­man mind that you can hope to achieve last­ing suc­cess and ac­com­plish those mar­velous trans­for­ma­tions of hu­man char­ac­ter that are pres­ently shown in the abun­dant yield­ing of the gen­uine fruits of the spirit in the daily lives of all who are thus de­liv­ered from the dark­ness of doubt by the birth of the spirit into the light of faith—the king­dom of heaven.”

• parable of

155:2.3When it ap­peared that no more peo­ple were minded to seek en­trance into the king­dom, Pe­ter, on Tues­day, June 7, called his as­so­ciates to­gether and de­parted for Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi to join Je­sus and the apos­tles. They ar­rived about noon­time on Wednes­day and spent the en­tire evening in re­hears­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences among the un­be­liev­ers of Cho­ra­zin. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions of this evening Je­sus made fur­ther ref­er­ence to the para­ble of the sower and taught them much about the mean­ing of the ap­par­ent fail­ure of life un­der­tak­ings.