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WHEAT AND WEEDS
Successive Apostasies from the Gospel
"THE kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field; But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat." (Matt. 13:24-25.)
So hath it been from the beginning; so will it be until the end.
The Lord God gave commandment unto Adam, and straightway Satan countered with sophistry and falsehood disguised as half the truth. Adam preached the Gospel and administered its essential ordinances amongst his posterity; "And Satan came among them, saying: I am also a son of God; and he commanded them, saying: Believe it not; and they believed it not, and they loved Satan more than God. And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish." (Pearl of Great Price, p. 21.)
Thus, even during the lifetime of the first patriarch, many of his descendants fell into apostasy and denied the God with whom their great progenitor had talked face to face.
From Adam to Noah righteous men taught and testified of the truth, denounced sin and warned sinners; yet all the while Satan sowed assiduously the tares of wickedness in the hearts of men, and with such evil success that, excepting Noah and his household, the whole human family became corrupt. So awful was the condition that the floods came and swept the ungodly race from the earth; and their rebellious spirits passed into the state of duress, in which they remained until the way of repentance was opened to them anew by the ministry of the disembodied Christ over twenty-three centuries later. See 1 Peter 3:18-20.
As the children of men multiplied and nations developed after the Deluge, the wholesome plants of Divine truth struggled against the rank growth of error; therefore the Lord commanded Abraham to leave his idolatrous country and kindred, that through him and his posterity the saving powers of the Priesthood might be preserved among men. The tares of idolatry and its inseparable abominations grew apace. Even the harrowing experiences of Egyptian bondage failed to extirpate the weeds from Israel, though the fertilizing effect of humility under suffering did much to nurture and sustain the precious grain of the covenant.
At the time of the Exodus the Israelites constituted the few whom the Lord could call His own; and they had to undergo a disciplinary probation—a course of intensive and purifying cultivation, covering four decades in the wilderness—before they were deemed fit to enter the land of their inheritance. They were distinguished as Jehovah-worshipers, and as such stood apart from the more thoroughly apostate and degenerate world.