THE WHEAT AND THE TARES

Children of the Kingdom are sown in the earth, and then by night the enemy comes and sows his own children, children of his kingdom. They are the children of the Devil.

His method is suitable to his object. His object being completely to nullify what is of God, his method is to imitate it. 

That is a wile of that evil wisdom of Satan - imitation children of God mixed in with the true children of God in order to nullify. 

The workers are represented as coming to the owner of the field and telling him what they have found there, and he says, 'Ah, an enemy has done this.'

And they say, 'What would you have us do? Shall we pluck up this other thing?'

He replies: 'No - let the sovereignty have its way!

Let them both grow together, and the sovereignty, the rule of Heaven, will progressively make very clear which is which.

The sovereign rule will make manifest what is of itself, and what is otherwise.

Only the sovereign rule of God can bring out into clearness what is of God. But that will happen as we go on. We can trust the sovereign rule. That is very practical: it works like this. 

There are those who are truly of God, of Heaven; and then there are those who come in - who perhaps sing the hymns, use the phraseology, carry on the same way, associate with those of the Kingdom; but there is a difference. 

Deep down, they are really "not of us". 

They are just imitations; they are not real, not the genuine thing. 

We may discern, as these men discerned, that there is something here that is not the same thing, something that is foreign, that is alien and strange.

What are we going to do? Had we better turn them out, tell them to go?

No, no! Go on long enough, and they will go of themselves.

The two things will be self-manifested, and it will be quite easy in the long run. "They went out from us", said John, "that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us" (1 John 2:19). 

This is a heavenly principle, you see - there is a manifestation. 

It is difficult to endure patiently those people who you sense have not, as we say, the root of the matter in them - who are just camp-followers. 

But, as with the mixed multitude that left Egypt with Israel, time and testing will find them out. 

~T. Austin Sparks~