“if you can’t find “wheat” for the first 1,500 years after Christ, you just may be following a false gospel.”
Were the Cathars, Waldensians and assorted groups “Wheat or weeds”?
“.....you just may be following a false gospel.”
Matthew is a false gospel??? Really?
What I do or do not do will not make Matthew false.
well, you threw me in that briar patch, so here we go.
let’s examine the parable:
who sowed first, the man or the enemy?
what was planted first, the wheat or the tares?
does error spring from truth or truth from error.
Jesus established His Church ( the wheat, the children of the kingdom ) and the devil sowed the weeds AMONG THE WHEAT, THE WHEAT WAS THERE ALREADY! the weeds never overcome or extinguish the wheat, the wheat is there until the end.
so let’s take the parable and look at through the lens of history. was the Church planted among the Arians or did the Arians spring out out of the Church? what about Pelagianism?
Donatism? Cathars? Waldensians? Baptists? Mormons? Jehovah Witnesses?
the wheat Jesus planted is still here, just as He promised and the parable indicates. the devil can not make such a guarantee so some of his weeds have died and some are still here until the end.
the wheat existed at some point without the weeds, just as the Church has existed for 2,000 years and for many centuries without many of the above named “weeds”.
so the man who sowed the wheat has protected his crop until the harvest, just as he promised he would!