Have you ever read The Acts of the Apostles and been sorely aware of the obvious disparity between the fruit of the early Apostolic Church and what calls itself the "church" in the United States of America in our day and age? I would be burying my head in the sands of self-deception if I were to try to convince myself that what I have seen in my lifetime was anything like a mirror image of the fruit produced by the Church in the Book of Acts.

Where is the hunger and thirst for righteousness? Why has HOLY been added to the list of other four letter words? Where is true devotion to the Lord Jesus, and sincere commitment to his Church? Why are so many rejecting the manna of God's Word in favor of the starvation diet of experiential religion? Why is there so little separation from the world? I could go on and on, but I think I have said enough to make my point. This paradigm shift as it is commonly called did not happen over night, but has been passed along from one generation of "Christians" to the next.

Plants and animals receive their unique characteristics by way of the DNA passed along to them throughout their parental seed. When that DNA is changed the characteristics of the offspring will be altered. I am going to use this physical principal to illustrate how and why I believe the "church" of this Nation came to be so unlike her parent Church in the Book of Acts.

I was born, raised and have lived my entire life of fifty-two years in the state of Illinois within the heart of what has been dubbed the Corn Belt. Every spring, farmers plant field after field of seed corn. For the most part, all of the field corn grown today is grown from hybrid seed. Hybrid seed is produced by cross pollinating two or more standard varieties of corn in order to produce a new variety of seed which when planted will produce plants and fruit bearing the best characteristics of its parent plants. Hybrid varieties of many types of plants have been produced over the years.

Most home gardeners are familiar with such beautiful tomatoes as the "Big Boy", or the "Super Fantastic". Both of these are hybrids, whose seeds have been produced by the crossing of several of the old standard, or "heirloom" varieties of tomatoes such as the "Rutgers" or the "Beefsteak".

While there are obvious advantages in growing hybrid plants, there is one notable disadvantage. Seeds saved and planted from standard varieties, will produce plants and fruit after their own kind. On the other hand, seeds saved from a hybrid and planted the following year will NOT produce fruit exactly like the hybrid fruit they were taken from. Instead they will produce a harvest of "throwbacks" bearing any of the various characteristics derived from the standard varieties which were initially crossed in order to produce the hybrid. In other words, instead of a harvest of generally uniform fruit, one will end up with a mixture of fruit that in reality does not exactly resemble its original parent plants or the hybrid they were taken from. Simply put, such fruit might be considered the mutt of the botanical world.

With all this in mind, let us consider the following verses of Scripture:

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Psalm 126:5,6 (KJV)

Our primary focus here is the precious seed which the sower sowed. In Luke 8:5-15, Jesus told "The parable of the sower", as it is commonly called. I would like to suggest that a better title for this parable might be "The parable of the seed", for it is the seed that is the main focus, not the sower. Jesus tells us in (Luke 8:11 ) what the seed represents in his parable: "Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God." I believe that the "precious seed" which the sower of Psalm 126 was sowing in tears was also the Word of God.

As we noted earlier, man has developed hybrid seeds in an attempt to improve on standard seeds, and hopefully produce a bigger and better harvest. In light of that, let's consider what the Bible says about the seed of God's Word:

Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it. Psalm 119:140 (KJV)

Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Proverbs 30:5 (KJV)

The seed of God's Word is precious and pure. It cannot be improved on, it is already perfect.

The Lord Jesus Christ has made his Church custodian of the "Seed of the Gospel". As in the "Parable of the sower", we are responsible for sowing the pure seed of the Gospel wherever we go. As we consider Jesus' parable, we notice that the sower was not very discriminating about where he sowed the seed. As he scattered the seed, some fell by the wayside and was either trodden under foot or eaten by birds. Some fell among rocks, and didn't survive due to insufficient moisture. Some landed amongst thorns and weeds, and was choked out before it got much of a start in life. And last of all some managed to land on good soil, grow to maturity and produce a good harvest of fruit.

We must remember that there is nothing wrong with the "Gospel seed" we have been given to sow. It is precious and pure. The failure of people to find new life in Christ and to mature in him is not the fault of the Gospel seed. Much of the time as we sow the seed of the Gospel it seems to be unproductive in the soil on which we have sown it. Nonetheless, Jesus called his disciples to be seed sowers not soil testers.

We live in a culture that is "results motivated". If we put our hand to a particular task and fail to see the results we expected to see then we seek to find out what is wrong with our method and improve on it in order to produce a greater visible result. In the parable of the sower, all the sower was accountable for was the sowing of the good seed. The results were in the hands of the Lord. Sadly enough, over the years there have been some within the church who decided that the pure seed of the Gospel was not good enough to produce the numerical results desired to make a local church, or an entire denomination look good enough in the eyes of man.

Such people, perhaps unwittingly, have hybridized the pure seed of God's Holy Word so as to produce what they think will be a bigger and better harvest once they have sown it. Over the years man has attempted to cross-pollinate the pure truth of God's Holy Word with anything and everything he could think of in hopes of drawing a bigger crowd and producing faster results. And sure enough he has produced a new hybrid gospel seed that does indeed produce a bigger crowd. All he had to do was cross-pollinate the pure Gospel with the sensual music of the world for those who would refuse to reject it, or the ungodly fashions of the world for those who would refuse to leave it; or the greed of the world for those who still lusted for it. For those who are easily bored with the preaching of the cross, the DNA of drama, comedy and other forms of entertainment can be introduced into the pure Gospel seed. For those who are personally offended by the concepts of the depravity of man, his sinful nature and his need to repent, the 11 self-esteem" teachings of "psychoheresy" can be added in so as to make these folks feel good about who they are in and of themselves. And now for those who want instant "supernatural power" without truly pressing into the Lord, paranormal manifestations from the world of the occult have been added to the pure seed to titillate the flesh of the spiritually hungry and produce a greater "harvest".

Has this hybridized gospel drawn a bigger crowd? So it seems. Has it produced a bigger harvest of souls? So they claim. But I ask you this... is the quality of the fruit of this big harvest as good as the fruit produced when the Gospel seed of Jesus Christ is sown in its precious and pure form? I am satisfied that IT 1S NOT! How can one improve on seed that is already perfect? Hybridizing such seed can only corrupt it and in the end produce fruit that does not exactly resemble the original. While the quantity of the fruit may appear to increase, the quality has definitely diminished.

If we refuse to corrupt the truth of the Gospel God has given us, we can be sure that the fruit that does come from sowing it will resemble the original. We can also be certain that the seed that is sown from that second generation of fruit will resemble the original as well. Friends, that is how the true Gospel continues on, by keeping the pure seed free from any hybridization regardless of anyone's guarantee of a higher yield.

My experience over the years has been that people fail to respond to the pure Gospel not because it is insufficient and weak in and of itself, but because of a hardened, unbelieving heart. Likewise many people fail to realize the power of the Gospel to break the shackles of sin and set them free because they refuse to obey Christ's commands.

Finally, I ask you this: What sort of fruit did we say we could expect to grow from the seeds of hybrid plants? We called them "throwbacks". I ask you then, what variety of "Christian" can we expect to come forth from the seed sown by folks who themselves "got saved" through the ministry of someone who was sowing a hybrid gospel seed? The fruit of such a planting will be diverse and strange, bearing precious little resemblance to the fruit produced by the precious, pure seed of God's Holy Word.

As sowers of the precious seed, we must never be tempted to hybridize the Gospel in order to improve on its effect. All we can possibly do is corrupt the pure seed and mutate the good fruit it alone can produce. We are not accountable for success as man judges success, but only for faithfulness as the Lord of the harvest judges stewardship. If we sow the same seed that Peter and Paul sowed, we will see the same fruit being produced today as we see recorded in The Acts of the Apostles. If we faithfully and prayerfully sow the precious and pure seed of the Gospel in tears of sorrow over the lost, we shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us.

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