V.    Human Liberty: The Principle of the Tare

Mt. 13:26 But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 The slaves of the landowner came and said to him,

“Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?"

28 [Landowner] “An enemy has done this!”

[Slaves:] “Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?”

29 [Landowner:] “No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.’"

The end time is about harvest. We hear much about the harvest today among prophetic voices. But little of what we hear is put in context of God’s actual rule in the earth, and almost nothing is said about the nature and harvest of tares. Without understanding the relationship of end time tares to wheat and their age-long nature of development in context of God’s earthly authority, we can’t rightly understand the end times.

In reading end time prophecies, we only look at the final clear delineation between what opposes the Lord and what obeys the Lord. When we consider the beast of Revelation for instance, we see it on its surface only as it finally appears—only as something clearly and distinguishably opposed to the Lord and his values. Likewise for the man of sin.

But the success of end time evil is based on deception—deception that is carefully cultivated over a long period of time. Evil comes to power because it does not appear evil. It hides itself to appear good, to appear as God. Evil is able to first appear as good because it is derived from the good that is produced by God. It begins as a copy or “clone” of the divine nature. This is the principle of the tare.

Satan is able to plant only into what the Lord first produces. He does not have the ability to create and originate. He only has the power to corrupt what first exists from God. This is the meaning of “kill, steal, destroy.” A tare is a “stealing” of the nature of wheat, a corrupting of its genetic code to make a false copy.

The deceptive appearance of Satan’s copy of God’s work is in place long before its evil nature becomes finally apparent. The true nature of the tare only becomes fully obvious at the end, following a period of prolonged development—which is why, as the landowner says, it must wait til harvest to be overthrown.

The principle of the tare applies to the age-long influence of the kingdom gospel—the wheat of God—in the earth, and specifically to human society and earthly government. Please follow this carefully:

- The Blessing of Cultural Freedom Through Repentance

Wherever the kingdom Gospel (wheat) works in men to bring them to repentance and surrender, it results in blessing in the midst of their culture. This includes the blessings of prosperity, moral tempering, just government and external human freedom.

The purpose of all earthly blessing is to lead to inward repentance—to lead every generation back to heart surrender to the Holy One through confession and worship. “The goodness of God leads to repentance.” If inward surrender produces outward goodness in life, it should lead to more surrender—so God reasons.

- The Corruption of Cultural Freedom through Self-Worship

But cultural blessing usually does not lead us to repentance! We usually become idolaters of blessing. And it is here that the mystery of iniquity begins…

At whatever point cultural blessing—including the blessing of outward freedom—fails to lead a people back to more surrender—at whatever point human freedom becomes prized in its own right and credited to our ability to produce it—at that moment the blessing of freedom becomes implanted with an alien life. It becomes inhabited by satan. It becomes a tare.

Let’s repeat this again: When the blessing of societal liberty resulting from kingdom repentance becomes credited to human goodness and ability for its establishing and preservation, it is hijacked and inseminated by satan to become a clone of true liberty, harboring the hidden nature of corruption. It becomes a tare alongside the wheat of true kingdom freedom.

Wheat teaching exalts the Lord leading to the blessing of liberty. Tare teaching exalts the blessing of liberty leading to corruption and tyranny. This is the difference between the apostles of truth and all other proponents of human liberty.

In the beginning, discerning between wheat and tare freedom doctrine in a “gospelized” culture is difficult. Their relationship is so intertwined. But as harvest draws near, the tare’s true nature becomes apparent. At first, the wheat of true kingdom preachers and the tare of human liberty prophets grow together in quietness and seeming harmony.

But as they mature, the tare’s innate corruption becomes increasingly unmasked. It becomes increasingly proud and boastful about its own imagined virtues to set men free. Its own secret lawlessness also begins to appear. And as it grows, it begins to oppose and persecute the faithful wheat who still advocate freedom only through repentance, even using the kingdom gospel’s original values against it!

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This is the truth about how all fleshly culture affected by gospel-produced freedom is able to coalesce into a great final tyrannical beast of world democracy opposed to the Lord and His government of freedom through repentance. The kingdom gospel has gone into much of the world. And with it has come the blessing of increased liberty. But so also then has been planted the tare of world democracy behind it.

- A Corruption Spanning Many Generations

As stated earlier, the parable of the wheat and tares is about age long events that come to a final governmental consummation in the earth—not just about a few years at the end of the age. As such, it means that the tare-like corruption of human liberty leading to the final beast of World Democracy happens over generations of time. This counters the notion that the beast of Daniel just “pops up” in the last few years of the age.

If this is so, and if we at all believe we are anywhere near the end of this age, it means that the developmental process of the beast is underway now! The beast is already here, somewhere under our radar—and has been for a long time, long before any of us were born!

[And if the beast has already been planted among us—then we need to examine for contamination all we’ve inherited from our culture about the true nature and source of our “freedoms.” Is it possible we—the Lord’s people—hold beastly beliefs about freedom that are compromising our kingdom loyalty and crippling our true mission—and not even know it? That is the purpose of this teaching.]

To fully appreciate the nature of the beast hidden among us, we need to trace the planting of the tare to its source...

VI.     American Liberty: The Sowing of the Tare

The United Nations and my country share the deepest commitments. Both the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim the equal value and dignity of every human life….
George W. Bush to the United Nations, September 21, 2004

The deceptive nature of tares with their generations-long development tells us all we need for understanding how the beast of world democracy originates in “liberty” only to finally manifest as tyranny. But for relevance on how this is affecting us here and now, we have to expose the source of its planting. For this, there is only one place to turn…

Today’s political doctrine of world democracy is a direct outgrowth of the American concept of liberty. It should not be hard to see that the United States is and has been the forefront power advocating world democracy since the end of World War II. Since the Iraq War of 2003, America has moved from defending world democracy to preemptively enforcing world democracy in another tyrant’s country.

But (—and here is where we American Christians have our greatest blindness) the doctrine of American liberty and free enterprise is itself a corruption of our true age-long kingdom gospel of liberty-through-surrender to the Almighty.

Repeat:

The doctrine of American liberty and free enterprise is a corruption of the church’s kingdom gospel of liberty-through-surrender to the Almighty.

The doctrine of American liberty engrained in the American Christian mind is and has always been from its origins a tare doctrine in competition with the doctrine of Christian liberty-through-repentance. It is a doctrine that, promising human freedom, is slave to sin and human corruption.

This requires careful explanation:

At its beginning 400 years ago, America was deeply impacted by many godly people of sacrifice and surrender devoted to the eternal kingdom of God. The effect of these people was the blessing of God on their land. One of those blessings was external human liberty—liberty as could be found nowhere else on earth. This natural blessing was the direct result of the church’s surrender to the fear of God, and it permeated the culture.

But in time, over several generations, those who did not know the Lord and who were not led to repentance before Him began to elevate the blessing of human liberty as its own cause celebre. Even many of that time who did know the Lord were deceived. “Colonial liberty” became the center of attention and object of devotion—alongside the gospel message of surrender to Christ. Peter’s prediction became true—“false prophets will arise among you, promising freedom.”

Thus, through worshiping the blessing of God, a false-prophetic philosophy took root. And the tare doctrine of American Liberty was born. On this philosophy, what eventually became the United States of America was founded. A war was fought after the manner of all earthly beasts—and won—championing the new political teaching of human liberty through self-government.

In the beginning, it was hard to discern between the wheat of gospel liberty and the beastly tare of American liberty. The two looked so much alike, and seemed so complementary. And throughout most of America’s first 200 years, the relationship in the wheat field was quiet.

Nevertheless, the tare of American liberty has steadily grown and matured—and its influence has been carried to many nations of the world. And with it, its true nature as described by Peter—increasing political boastfulness, and increasingly manifest slavery to depravity.

Now, in the generations since the World Wars began, what has all along been the tare of American liberty has since evolved into the beast of World Democracy. Driven by the false teaching of America’s politicians and blind Christian ministries, its boasts and arrogance continue increasing, as do the manifestations of its corruption.

Today, astounded by uncontestable military might, millions around the globe—at home and abroad—bow down before the statue of human liberty in New York harbor, crying out “Who is like America? Who is like the Coalition? Who can make war with them?”

VII.     American Politics: A Mouth Uttering Great Boasts

Watching the recent political conventions on television illumined me as never before to the true nature of our struggle in the earth as the church. Having known the end is near, many of us have searched earth’s horizons, alert for the appearing of Daniel’s great tyrannical beast.

Yet unknown to us, the beast has been developing under our noses. We have been listening to its voice from childhood. And every four years, we have engaged its prophets in our living rooms for fellowship and debate.

For generations, the prophets of democracy have exhibited a collective mouth speaking arrogant vanities. Today, we refer to these prophets as “politicians,” “pundits,” and “political talk show hosts.” We refer to their collective boastings as “political campaigns.” Each campaign boasts greater promises of freedom than the campaign before it. Yet all the while, in secret, these prophets to a man remain slaves of sin’s corruption.

- A Mouth With Two Sides

These audacious campaigns break down into contests between parties representing differing forms of false liberty. On one side are those who define liberty as freedom from most objective moral standards. Making less attempt to hide their baser nature, these use liberty to justify and defend that nature. In America, they are called “liberals” (mainly Democrats). They answer to the filthy prophets that Peter had in mind.

Oppositely are those who vaunt liberty through moral standard—the “rule of law,” law enforcement, and military might. These profess morality, sometimes even Bible standards of righteousness. They advocate self-enforced liberty as a means to hide their baser nature. In America, they are called “conservatives” (mainly Republicans). They answer to the Pharisees with whom Jesus dealt.

These parties appear opposed. They exploit the hidden corruptions in one another to maintain their support. But they are of one nature, of the same beast, and share in common 1) blindness to sin’s slavery, 2) the shirking of repentance, and 3) the unanimous proclamation of freedom as a self-attainable, self-sustainable virtue.

The final confidence of all the beast’s prophets is in their own innate goodness and in that of all mankind. As Ronald Reagan’s epitaph puts it:

"I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

In the end, these seemingly warring parties of false liberty will degenerate to reap the fruit of their own slavery to sin. As they do, they will converge as democratic anarchy and republican dictatorship into one tyranny under the lawless one. And with one voice, they will join together against the Lord and His Christ to persecute all who advance His true liberty from sin.

VIII.     The Image of the Beast

As I watched the political conventions unfold with the glitziest techno-wizardry ever seen in history, the Lord quietly impressed on me a new perception regarding John’s prophecy about the image of the beast:

Rev. 13:14 And [the false prophet] deceives those who dwell on the earth … telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast …. 15 And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed.

In a flash, the meaning of this became so obvious to me that I was dumbstruck. But I realized that there, in front of that television, at that moment, I was beholding the living image of the beast.

Think about it. The combined technology of motion picture and recorded sound is the ability to both create an image and infuse it with the ability to live and speak. For the first time, I grasped that through the worldwide proliferation of live electronic image, the beast of democracy is gathering to itself the worship of all the earth’s peoples around the competing boasts of its prophets.

John speaks of men “worshipping” the image. I think it becomes fairly plain that in modern times, it is unnecessary to physically bow down to a statue in order to worship an image. The more appropriate fulfilment of this reality is the addiction to the “living image” of telecommunications that has overcome the earth—including the church—the last 100 years.

From campaign advertising to political talk shows, the false prophets of liberty have made image the substance of reality in promoting their doctrine. Our attraction to all things political through film, television and radio easily (if not exclusively) fulfils the meaning of John’s vision. All that lacks is for subjection to interactive television to become mandatory (on pain of death) to verify allegiance to the world system. That will come once the tyranny becomes fully established...

Stay tuned.

[In Part III: Democracy's War on the Saints …]

Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, RI

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

9/04

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