Sickles

And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. Revelation 14:14

“Thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the time is come, for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. “

JFB commentary remarks, “By the harvest-reaping the elect righteous are gathered out; by the vintage the Antichristian offenders are removed out of the earth, the scene of Christ’s coming kingdom. The Son of man Himself, with a golden crown, is introduced in the harvest-gathering of the elect, a mere angel in the vintage.”

Two separate “gatherings” begin at the time of Revelation 14. Earth-harvest is ripe.

“The allegory of God as farmer/husbandman goes this way: “As his fields are to the farmer, so, we are permitted to think, the whole earth is to God. The farmer works for a harvest of his fields and trees, and God may be thought of as working for the harvest of the whole earth. God’s work in the world is like ploughing, sowing, weeding the fields.”

“The farmer cleans, and ploughs, and manures, and harrows, and ridges, his fields, in precise adaptation to the crop that he intends to grow upon it; and earth is the prepared field of God, made ready for His sowing.”

“God seeds His prepared earth with men. and God keeps on seeding the earth with men; every seed with a great possibility in it; every seed set where its possibility may freely unfold, and where the God provided influences all tend to the nourishment of all its best possibilities. Men, men everywhere, are the seed of God. They are quick with Divine life, and sown in the earth to grow into a harvest for God.” All from “Preacher’s Homiletical.”

So the farming — but what of the end product in real terms?

“God had prepared the earth to be the scene of a moral trial for a new race of beings. the earth was adjusted and adapted to the beings who were to be placed upon it. The relativity of creation to a being with five senses, and these particular five senses, has never yet been shown with the precision and fulness that it demands. “

“God sows His earth with moral beings, in the hope of reaping moral character. But what is moral character? It is the proper fruitage of the earth-experience of moral beings. Scattering the seed all over the earth, that man’s probation may be carried on under every varying condition of soil, and landscape, and climate, and relationship.

“A moral being must be put into such circumstances as will offer it the choice between good and evil. And substantially the test amounts to this: good is doing what is known to be the will of the Creator; evil is doing the will of the moral being himself, when that is known to be not the will of the Creator.”

“But what we need to see with clearness, is that when, under enticement of the senses, the moral being has chosen the evil, he is said to have fallen, but he has really started the possibility of moral character, which is the issue of the conflict in which the will, biased by the indulgence of the senses,

is brought back to the choice and obedience of God’s will, and recovered from all the sad experiences and conditions resulting from the choice of evil.

“The story of a life is the story of that conflict.”

So, “Every blade that breaks the earth in the farmer’s field has to fight for its life with varied foes: insects, worms, mildew, rust, living creatures, varying temperatures, crowding weeds; the growth of every blade to stalk and ear is a hard-won victory. The stalk can do its best, and be its best, only at the cost of unceasing struggle and watchfulness. And the field of earth is but a type of the world of men. Every character is the product of a stern experience, the issue of a hundred fights; a triumph from an unceasing struggle.

all above from, “Preacher’s Homiletical.”

Beloved, Redemption summarizes the story of men and earth. The “silver lining” of life, the ultimate end, —

“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” Revelation 14:13

So, the reaping will come. Sickles drawn.

A Secret, “enter into the Death, burial, and resurrection of Christ our Savior. He shed His blood for us! Ascension and Seating in heaven await. love ya