263 The Wheat and the Tares

On Discernment, Deception, and the Day Every Eye Will See

Jun 10, 2026

Good morning and hello friends,

For those of you who have walked this path with me for a while, you know the truth: I am a babe on this walk of The Way. I have no theological degrees on my wall. I don’t speak the language of academia. I speak only to what sounds true to my spirit and what sounds true is only what I can corroborate, line by line, in my reading of the whole Bible.

With that foundation laid, let’s talk about what’s been pressing on my spirit these past weeks.

Yahuah has promised, prophesied with the certainty of a coming dawn, that He will bring His judgment to this world. It will be His day. The Day of the Lord. A day of terror for the wicked and the proud, a day where every hidden thing is uncovered. Yet, woven into that same promise is a thread of fierce protection for His elect, for those who have believed, trusted, and obeyed Him. Not a generalized, sentimental love, but a specific, covenant-keeping shelter for the faithful.

This is the central tension of our age: the wheat and the tares grow together.

“He put another parable before them, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away… Let both grow together until the harvest…’” (Matthew 13:24-30, ESV).

We are deep into the growing together phase. The tares look like wheat when they’re young. It takes maturity, time, and the bearing of fruit, or the lack thereof, to tell them apart.

The enemy’s strategy is not frontal assault; it’s infiltration. He has sown his counterfeit seed into the very institutions meant to nurture the wheat: our churches, our seminaries, our media, our governments. He operates as the father of lies (John 8:44), and his work is a “strong delusion” for those who “did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12, ESV). This is why I lean on nothing of my own understanding. My own mind is fertile ground for the same deception. My only refuge is to lean wholly on the Father’s understanding, to stay on the path lit by His Spirit, even when that path feels desperately lonely. The loneliness is a refining fire. It burns away the need for the crowd’s approval and leaves only the need for His.

And let’s be clear: many who profess the name of Yahusha today are tares. They sit in pulpits, they write best-selling books, they lead ministries, they hold titles of pastor, teacher, elder. Some are witting agents of the enemy, knowing falsehoods and peddling them. Others are unwitting…sincere, perhaps, but sincerely deceived. In both cases, pride has been the gateway. They have become separated from the Father Most High and have aligned, knowingly or not, with the enemy’s agenda. Scripture gives no excuse for this. We are repeatedly warned: Do not be deceived. Our shield is a personal, obedient relationship with Yahuah. If we are leaning on His understanding, He will not let us be led astray.

This deception is not new. It is the oldest story, repeating. Look back with me to 1 Samuel 8. The elders of Israel came to Samuel. They had a legitimate grievance: his sons were corrupt. But their proposed solution was a catastrophe. They did not cry out for God’s justice or renewal under His direct rule. They said, “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5, ESV).

Do you feel the weight of that? Like all the nations.

God’s response to Samuel cuts to the bone of all history: “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7, ESV).

He warned them what this king would do: take their sons, take their daughters, take the best of their fields, take a tenth of their flocks. “You shall be his slaves,” He said (1 Samuel 8:17, ESV). And the people, in a masterpiece of self-deception, doubled down: “No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations…” (1 Samuel 8:19-20, ESV).

And God said, “Obey their voice. Make them a king” (1 Samuel 8:22, ESV).

He gave them what they asked for.

We read this and think, How foolish. How could they trade the direct rule of the Living God for a fallible man? We sit in our 2026 chairs and judge them.

But look around.

He will take your sons and your daughters. Not for chariots, but for ideologies. For systems that teach them they are cosmic accidents, that identity is self-created, that purpose is consumption and sensation.

He will take the best of your fields. Not for vineyards, but for data. Your attention, your allegiance, your private thoughts are the new harvest, reaped by digital empires.

He will take the tenth of your flocks. We call it taxes, inflation, perpetual debt, a sophisticated servitude that leaves you owned by the machinery.

You shall be his slaves. The chains are digital, psychological, and spiritual. We call it convenience. We call it progress. We call it being “like all the nations.”

We have done it again. We saw the corruption in the house of God, the hypocrisy, the scandal, the failings of human leaders, and instead of crying out for the pure, terrifying, liberating reign of Christ, we demanded a king. A political savior. A cultural identity. A system. Anything but the direct rule of God.

And He is giving us what we asked for.

This is the fruit of the tare. It is the rejection of the King for a kingdom of this world. It is the “American Lens” I’ve come to see so clearly, a lens that filters Scripture through Hollywood archetypes, celebrity pastors, nationalist fervor, and consumerist values until the Bible tells a story foreign to its Hebrew roots. It’s a lens that turns the hope of Revelation…the return of the King and the renewal of all things on a new earth (Revelation 21:1-5), into a escapist fantasy of a “rapture” away from problems. But Scripture says He is coming back here. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus… will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11, ESV). He left from the Mount of Olives. He will return to the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4). Our hope is not evacuation; it is restoration.

This is why the tares are so hard to spot. They use the same words, “Jesus,” “grace,” “kingdom”, but they mean a different story. A different gospel. A different king.

And so we scan our media feeds. We see the wealthy building bunkers. Governments fortifying complexes. Preppers (and I was one for over a decade) digging deep. We see a world sensing a storm and scrambling for cover in the wrong places. We build these shelters thinking they will save us on the day of harvest.

Yahuah is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Which basically means He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere-present being. We can’t “gotcha” Him, surprise or catch Him off guard. Let that sink in for a bit and think about what that means for you in your walk.

Scripture calls this out, specifically: “Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’” (Revelation 6:15-17, ESV).

The mountains will not hide them. The bunkers will not save them. The tares will be gathered first and bound for burning. The wheat will be gathered into the master’s barn. This is the great harvest. The second coming. The Day of Yahuah. It will come “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2).

How can we tell it’s near? Yahusha told us: “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity… people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world… Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:25-28, ESV). The same generation that sees these things beginning will see their culmination.

And when He comes, it will be unmistakable, universal: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him” (Revelation 1:7, ESV). Not just America. Not just one denomination. Every eye.

So why, as walkers of The Way, should we not be weighed down with fear? “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap… But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36, ESV).

Our hope is not in missing the tribulation. Our hope is in standing before the Son of Man.

Our posture is to be like the faithful servant: “Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes” (Matthew 24:46, ESV). Doing what? The Master’s will. Faithful in the small things. Obedient in the unseen moments.

This brings me to the only question that has come to matter in my walk: Am I bent toward Him, or away?

It cuts through every theological debate. “Are we under the law?” “Is the Torah a shadow?” These are questions for scholars mapping a distant star. My question is the posture of my soul right now. Am I being obedient to God, or am I rebelling against His will? Am I doing the thing He has whispered for me to do, or am I choosing my personal, fleshly desire?

It is a binary state. A heart cannot harbor both captains. It is either yielded, open-palmed, saying “Your will,” or it is clenched, turned inward, saying “My will.” If my heart is bent toward Him in obedience, I trust the theological coordinates will align around that fixed point. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5, ESV).

The Law, then, is not a fence to argue over. It is the shape of the “yes.” My obedience is the living Torah, written “not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3, ESV). This was the promise: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV).

The tares are bent away. Their fruit is the fruit of rebellion: pride, unforgiveness, lawlessness. They may perform the motions, but their heart-posture is away. They have, like Israel of old, rejected Yahuah as King and chosen to be “like all the nations.”

The wheat is bent toward. Its fruit is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). Its posture is one of surrendered obedience.

On that day, there will be two groups. The wicked and the holy. One is taken, the other is left. Which group is which depends on your understanding of the parables. But the point of all the prophecies is not to parse the timeline; it is to be found faithful and obedient when the day comes.

My task is not to root out the tares. That is the Master Harvester’s job, and He has warned that in trying to do it ourselves, we may uproot the wheat (Matthew 13:29). My task is to ensure I am wheat. To cultivate a heart so bent toward Him that I know His voice intimately amidst the roar of ten thousand deceivers. To have my eyes so fixed on His face that I am immune to the glittering illusions of the age.

The Father of Lies is counting on your distraction, your dullness, your desire to be “like all the nations.” He sends the strong delusion to those who refuse to love the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11).

Our only defense is not a better bunker, but a closer walk. Not a purer ideology, but a purer intimacy. It is to be so familiar with the voice of the True Shepherd that the hireling’s call holds no allure.

So I walk this narrow path, lit only by the lamp of His Word and His Spirit. It feels lonely because the wheat is scattered in a field overgrown with tares. But I am not alone. He is with me. And He is connecting the scattered stalks of wheat, one by one, into a sheaf that will be gathered into His barn.

Let both grow together until the harvest. Let us be found growing, bent toward the Son, ready.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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