In an illustration about wheat and weeds, Jesus foretold that true religion would be virtually obscured for a time. Read the account for yourself at Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Jesus sowed a field with wheat, “the fine seed,” which pictured his faithful disciples who would make up the original Christian congregation. He warned that “an enemy,” Satan the Devil, would in time oversow the wheat field with “weeds”—people who professed to follow Jesus Christ but who in fact rejected his teachings.
Very soon after the death of Jesus’ apostles, individuals appeared who proved to be “weeds,” favoring twisted human teachings over “the very word of Jehovah.” (Jeremiah 8:8, 9; Acts 20:29, 30) As a consequence, a perverted, counterfeit Christianity appeared on the world stage. It was dominated by what the Bible calls “the lawless one”—a corrupt clergy class that was itself steeped in “every unrighteous deception.” (2 Thessalonians 2:6-10) Jesus foretold that this situation would change “in the conclusion of the system of things.” The wheatlike Christians would be collected together in unity and “the weeds” would eventually be destroyed.
It is this counterfeit Christianity that bears responsibility for the “centuries of unredeemed barbarism” and spiritual darkness that enveloped Christendom in the centuries that followed. Foreseeing this and all the other depraved and violent acts done since then in the name of religion, the apostle Peter rightly predicted that “on account of these [professed Christians] the way of the truth [would] be spoken of abusively.”—2 Peter 2:1, 2.
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