by Nadine Drayton-Keen

Created on: June 18, 2008   Last Updated: June 22, 2008

A Bible Study on the Wheat and Tares' Parable

During Christ's earthly ministry, He frequently used the very effective teaching tool known as the parable, which is a word that means to "lay one thing down by another." Jesus taught His initial followers (both the crowds and His disciples) through parables, because not only do parables provide a vision of life in God's eternal Kingdom but also parables make spiritual statements (Divine Truths) about God's everlasting Kingdom very coherent.

Thus, by using a parable to illustrate how the Kingdom of God really works, Jesus impressively sharpens His believers' fundamental understanding about what life in God's eternal Kingdom is like. Christ vividly draws His illustrations by comparing one of God's Divine Truths that is operational in Heaven to a very familiar and well-comprehended earthly principle (or earthly narrative, or earthly fact) that is operational either in nature or in humanity. For example, in the parable of the wheat and tares, which is found in Matthew 13, Christ is comparing the supernatural harvest of His end of the age believers to an earthly farmer's spring or winter wheat harvest.

Moreover, in Matthew 13, Christ is using the parable of the wheat and tares to reveal His angelic reapers' inappropriate an inopportune eagerness to separate the wheat and tares from maturing along side each other. These angels' impatience and lack of spiritual discernment are why Christ refuses to let them pluck up Satan's tares, for Christ knows that some of His wheat might get uprooted by mistake.

Many scholars believe that the "tares" mentioned in this parable are "bearded darnel," which is a weed similar to ryegrass. When examined during its early developmental stages, "bearded darnel" will resemble wheat. The similarities between the early developmental stages of wheat and tares are not only the Divine reasons why Christ refuses to allow His angles to pluck the tares before His full crop of wheat has matured, but also the agricultural reason why human farmers refuse to place a time factor on when their crop of wheat successfully will reach each stage of development. Moreover, both Christ and earthly famers know that when wheat matures that the differences between wheat and tares will be very obvious.
Perhaps the uncertainty of knowing the exact time when wheat will mature is why the separation of wheat and tares is dealt with in Revelation. In John the Revelator's first harvest vision, the apostle depicts how the

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