A Prolonged Growing Season

      As we’ve stated throughout this series, God’s chronos plan is scattered through the types and shadows of the Old Testament and the accounts of the Old Covenant prophets. In this way, it remained hidden until the appointed time for portions of the plan to be revealed. We see this same principle in action in Jesus’ ministry.
      Quite often He taught the people using parables. He didn’t develop this teaching technique just because He was fond of telling stories. No, it was intentional. For one thing, the images He described were drawn from the people’s everyday lives. He used these real-life examples to help the people picture the ways of Heaven that were so different from the ways of their world.
        These word pictures were not always obvious. It is the nature of a good parable to draw in the listeners, pique their interest, and propel them to seek out more about the meaning of the story. When His disciples asked Jesus to clarify the meaning of the parable, He willingly explained the spiritual truths displayed in the word pictures. This is why Jesus prayed that they would have ears to hear and eyes to see.
        End-Time Lesson: Two prominent parables highlight the chronos of the plan. Both are recorded in Matthew 13—the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Wheat and Tares. The Parable of the Sower describes our current assignment of preaching the Gospel and making disciples. We are the sowers and the seed we scatter is the seeds of God’s Word from our own personal testimonies. [Hint: John 1:1 calls Jesus the Word.] Believers have been sowing the Word concerning Jesus’ finished work for almost two thousand years.
        This assignment will be taken over by the newly revived Jewish saints who have finally accepted Jesus as their Savior when they see Him come to gather His Bride at the rapture. They pick up the baton and run the rest of the race for the remainder of Christ’s 1,000-year reign, for we are now seated with Christ before the throne of God.
        As Jesus explained the parable to the disciples afterwards, the key to spreading the Word of God around the world is the soil in which the seeds of God’s words are planted. No matter how anointed the message, some will refuse to hear it (stony ground). Some will hear it but it will not produce anything in them because the weeds of this world—the counterfeit messages—will choke it out. And some will fall on softened ground. The seeds will take root and produce a godly harvest.
      Then Jesus offered another parable, one that highlighted the prolonged growing season—the two great Days of the Church Age. In this scenario, the field workers notice tares amidst the crop of wheat. Tares are a particularly difficult weed to remove because the plants look similar to the wheat. Tares leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Hmm, sounds a lot like lawlessness.
       The workers are stunned because they know they only sowed good seeds. They can’t figure out how these bad seeds got into the field. But the owner knows: “An enemy has done this.” Our enemy (Satan) loves to destroy a potential crop of believers. 
        The owner tells the workers not to remove the tares from the field. They will be harvested at the end of the “growing season,” in the fullness of the times. The owner then tells the workers that at the final harvest, the tares will be removed first, bound, and thrown into fire. Then the true harvest will be gathered into the barn.
          In case you’re wondering, the barn is the new heavens and new earth. The harvest is the righteous crop of believers who trusted in Jesus after the rapture, whose names are written in the Book of Life. As for the tares, they are bound by their decision to reject Jesus and pursue their own ways apart from God. Bound by their own choices, the just God cannot keep them from the destination of the one they served. For the Lake of Fire—eternal damnation—was not prepared for mankind, but for Satan and his rebellious evil forces. Having rejected the Kingdom of Heaven, the unbelieving “tares” are sent to what they have chosen—the dwelling place of the kingdom of darkness.
         This gleaning process is what is the final judgment. We call it the Great White Throne Judgment because it takes place before God’s throne in the 3rd Heaven. It happens immediately after the final rebellion of Satan at the end of the Day of the Lord. The rebellion comes to a fiery end with a fireball sent from God—foreshadowing what is to come for the tares. Jesus turns over the Kingdom to the Father and the final judgment begins as God separates the tares from the wheat.