The wheat and tares. Is the winnowing is about to begin?

Matthew 3:12:

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

The way the ancients used to process their wheat is to gather it from the field, place it on the hardened threshing floor, and thresh and winnow it. The threshing-floor is a hollowed out spot with a packed earthen floor on the top of a hill where the late afternoon wind kicks up. The first part of the process is threshing. They thresh the wheat stalks by passing a sledge over them on the threshing-floor. Dragging the sledge over the stalk rolls the chaff kernel off the wheat stalk. You can see one woman standing on a sledge in the photo. The sledge is the tied-together planks with turned up front. Sledging separates the wheat from the chaff. You want the wheat. The chaff is the hard kernel husk, and you don't want that. It is inedible. As the threshing process goes on they mound the stalks in the middle of the floor.

Next they take a winnowing fork, poke it into the mound, and toss all the material - wheat, chaff, straw, weevils, etc, - into the air. The wind carries the chaff away. The heavier wheat falls to the ground.

A threshing floor in the hills of Galilee - the women threshing

Library of Congress

Primitive winnowing [picture] : [Palestine, World War II]

National Library of Australia

When they finish the threshing and winnowing, they gather the broken straws and bundle them for fuel to be burned. The wheat is gathered and tied together in bundles also and put into the barn.

The Matthew verse speaks to the judgment of Jesus. The chaff are unbelievers which will be burned with an unquenchable fire. That speaks to the fire of hell which will torment the unbeliever forever.

The wheat that has been gathered into the barn is the raptured and resurrected saints gathered to Jesus to the place He has prepared for us.

Now here is the Parable of the Weeds (Tares)

"He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24-30).

In regards to that parable, I see some things happening in Christendom that are really pretty startling. I'm watching people I know, people who claim to be Christians, falling into activities or sins or speech that are not Christian. This is very prophetic.

Here is Jesus' explanation of the parable.

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. (Matthew 13:36-40)

You see, the world is filled with tares as well as wheat. Satan came in and secretly brought in destructive heresies and false workers to spew them in order to bring reproach onto the name of Jesus and hinder His kingdom on earth. To illustrate this, Jesus told the parable of the weeds, posted above. The weed is darnel, which enemies used to sow into an enemy's field. This was a problem in the ancient days, so much so that Rome passed a law prohibiting it and levied severe penalties to anyone caught doing it. It is a catastrophic way to destroy the economy of your enemy, because the darnel looks exactly like wheat, until the very last moment when the ear appears. Darnel is called "false wheat" in many parts of the world. In the bible it is also known as tares.

In Montana they are combating Persian darnel infestation. Montana State University Extension reports, "At high densities, Persian darnel could cause crop yield loss of up to 83 percent, 70 percent and 57 percent for spring wheat, canola and sunflower, respectively." An 83% loss of your grain certainly is catastrophic.

We know that false Christians populate the world. The Parable of the Tares tells us this. Also, the following verses are a few that tell us that there will be false ones among us. (2 Corinthians 11:13-15; 2 Timothy 3:5; Titus 1:16)

Additionally, the bible's record of the false ones' future pleas to Jesus tell us there will be "many" who were false. They will say, "Lord, Lord, did we not..." and He will say "Depart from me you workers of iniquity, I never knew you." (Matthew 7:21-23). These are people who looked the Christian part, acted the part, even attended church and prophesied in His name. We couldn't tell they were saved or not because that is not our job.

We can, however, often get a sense of whether a person is genuinely saved or not. We can compare their life that is allegedly sanctified to the Word and if they bear no fruit we suspect the worst. We can pray for them in that case. But we can't uproot the wheat because we don't truly know for sure if they are wheat or darnel. That is not our job.

Forerunner Commentary explains, "The bad seeds grow to become poisonous weeds that allow only the healthiest of the wheat to survive. ... Only when the wheat has matured can the tares be detected. Then the tares are gathered together in bundles in the field and destroyed by fire. ... Many who are not in the process of conversion resemble those who are. Just like true Christians, they go to church, pray, and read the Bible, but they are only religious hobbyists. Jesus calls them "sons of the wicked one" (Matthew 13:38), and being tares, they will be destroyed. [Mathew G. Collins, Forerunner Commentary.]

The harvest time has not begun yet, because that is the Rapture and then the Day of the Lord, AKA the Tribulation. The darnel weed is identified from the real wheat at the end when the growth is nearly complete. Though they are not uprooted yet, we are beginning to see who is a wheat and who is a tare. At the very end, when the ear begins to appear, right before the harvest, we see what's what. I think the very fact that so many Christians are apostasizing, veering away from the faith, reveals how very late we are in the age. The world is full of darnel.

If you grind darnel along with wheat into flour it will cause a kind of drunkenness. It makes a person stagger, vomit, and generally act stupid. The tares of today are acting like that.

January 31, 2012, Atlanta pastor "Bishop" Eddie Long
is wrapped in a torah, draped in a prayer shawl,
crowned a king, then paraded around in his throne

A Christian church advocating getting a tattoo for Lent?!
And what's with the caption about 'Jesus falling the first time??

Darnel-driven drunken silliness abounds. I could post photo after photo that illustrates it.

I believe that when we see such overt tare-like behavior that we are seeing the end of the maturing process. If the tares are so easily detected now, it must be close to the end. This is my opinion. We are at such a close time to the harvest that the darnel's head has appeared and we can begin to see their real state. Verse 26 in Matthew 13 says "But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also."

The false Christians are becoming evident. This process has amazed me with its rapidity. In my opinion, since the false Christians are so evident, which indicates that the tares are mature, it means the winnowing is very likely about to begin.