These posts on Repentance are intended to be read in order beginning with
At the bottom of each post is a link to the next one.
I must begin this post with a disclaimer. The words “All Manner of Fruit and None of It is Good” are not my words, but the words of the Lord of the Vineyard in Zenos the prophet’s Allegory of the Olive Tree found in Jacob 5 in the Book of Mormon. And they apply to a very specific group of people at a very specific time and place. These are His exact words: “But behold, this time it hath brought forth much fruit, and there is none of it which is good. And behold, there are all kinds of bad fruit; and it profiteth me nothing, notwithstanding all our labor; and now it grieveth me that I should lose this tree" (Jacob 5:30-32 emphasis added).
Who is it that the Lord of the Vineyard is speaking of? Who is it that has brought forth much fruit, and there is none of it which is good? Another way to ask this question is, can we know of whom the Lord is speaking by their fruits? Is it as simple as those who are repenting bring forth fruit meet for repentance, and those who are not repenting, bring forth much fruit, none of it which is good? Can those who are repenting know if others are repenting and coming unto Christ? I know this last question adds a twist and may not seem relevant to the discussion, but it is very relevant because if the fruits, good or bad, are not recognizable, what meaning is the statement by their fruits ye shall know them?
I want to go about this backwards. I want to test the statement by their fruits ye shall know them. Rather than say who it is that brings forth all kinds of bad fruit, let’s describe the fruit and see if we can know whom the Lord is talking about in the Allegory of the Olive Tree. It will also help us identify the time frame prophesied in the Allegory. In the Allegory there were two groups of people who brought forth bad fruit, but the fruits are the same, even though the timeline is different, and it does not matter which group of people He is describing, because even though there is a time gap between them, they have something in common.
With this list of bad aka evil aka wild fruits, I will not show where the description of the fruit is found in the scriptures, but believe me when I tell you they are all the Lord’s words. And some of you are going to say, but they are good fruits! No they are not. They are described as bad, because they are not fruits meet for repentance.
Here goes.
They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great.
They imagine themselves to be righteous by their own standards.
They teach for doctrines the commandments of men.
They do not search the word of God, but suppose they know of themselves.
They do not recognize their Shepherd’s voice, and by this you may know they are under the bondage of sin, because they come not unto Him.
They do not receive His voice, are not acquainted with His voice, and are not of Him.
They worship God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him.
The Lord calls them but they hearken not, nor incline their ear, but walk in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and go backward, and not forward.
They justify themselves because they fast regularly, pay tithes, attend meetings, go to the temple, read their scriptures, and do not commit the more serious sins.
Their conversations and their meetings are an abomination, too low, too mean, too vulgar, and too condescending.
They have allowed Satan to have great dominion over them.
They thrive on tenets, platitudes and truisms. They trust in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these. They trust in lying words that cannot profit.
They teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance. They do not take the word of God as their guide.
They display a form of godliness but deny the power thereof.
They deny the power and gifts of God, and do not receive them, nor do they give thanks for them or for the giver of the gifts.
They judge those who do not live up to their standards.
They believe that God's gifts to them are their gifts to God.
They have all gone out of the way; they have become corrupted. Because of pride, and because of false teachers, and false doctrine, their churches have become corrupted.
Their hands are full of blood.
They are angry at those who speak the word of God.
They consider others, even their humble brethren, a lost and fallen people.
They lack the key of knowledge.
They confuse their priorities with what is real, calling Satan’s world the “Real World.”
They love for others to call them by ecclesiastical titles, to hold them and be held in admiration,
They take the foremost places at meetinghouses and banquets.
They find fault with those who do not conform to their exterior form of worship.
They transfigure the word of God.
They are as the salt of the earth that has lost its savor.
They let their light shine by being ‘good’ examples.
The word of God is not found in them. They seek their own counsels in the dark.
They justify themselves and their lives by their works, which are not the works of righteousness. They do not believe the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.
They do not exercise faith unto repentance. (See Tim Merrill's series on Faith.)
They hear but do not understand. Their hearts are fat. They see but do not see.
They are under condemnation for treating the word of God lightly.
They have no desire for more of the word of God. They have enough and need no more, and treat lightly what they have.
They take strength unto themselves--hard work, industrious, disciplined and self reliant.
They do not see that the inequality that exists among them is contrary to the Lord's law.
They commit themselves to what is of pure human fabrication (the world and everything in it),
They fare in this life according to their genius and strength, and put themselves above others who do not share the same genius and strength.
They put their trust in men and make flesh their arm.
They have a personal lack of thirst for the knowledge of God. They do not feast upon the words of Christ.
They lay stress on outward observances. They confuse righteousness with actively congregating and religiously performing ecclesiastical duties.
Their countenance does witness against them, and declare their sin even as Sodom (pride, fulness of bread, abundance of idleness, and not strengthening the hand of the poor and needy).
They worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.
They approach God with their mouth and pay homage with their lips, while their heart remains far from Him, their piety toward Him consisting of commandments of men learned by rote.
They settle for line upon line, precept upon precept, and regurgitating what others in authority have said, and do not desire more.
They come out of the waters of baptism and swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel, yet they swear not in truth nor in righteousness.
They have all gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men.
They are in the spirit of a deep sleep and have closed their eyes.
Their ears are dull of hearing and they cannot see afar off.
They preach unto themselves their own wisdom and their own learning.
They labor for money and not for Zion.
Behold their costly apparel, and their ringlets, and their bracelets, and their ornaments of gold, and all their precious things--their hearts are set upon them, and their hearts are lifted up unto great boasting in their pride. And yet their hearts are swallowed in pride as they cry unto God.
They have joy in their works, in their families, in their amusements. They put family above all else.
They deny the spirit of revelation and the spirit of prophecy. They have no idea of the events prophesied by Isaiah prior to the Lord’s second coming. Their prophets and seers fail to warn the people of the Lord’s impending judgment, being oblivious to it themselves.
They are drunk with the wine of self deception, and are not ready to receive pure instruction because they live on a diet of vomit and excrement. They are unskillful in the word of righteousness and have need of milk, and not strong meat.
They cannot discern good and evil.
There are none save a few only who do lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts.
They do not hear the warning voice of God.
They do not thrust in their sickle with their might, and reap while the day lasts, that they may treasure up for their souls everlasting salvation in the kingdom of God.
They pervert the right way of the Lord, teaching truths mingled with the teaching of men.
They live on a watered down version of the word of God.
They are at ease in Zion.
They tend to transfer their trust in God to material things. They insist on spending all their time and resources building up for themselves a worldly kingdom.
They do not bring forth fruits meet for repentance.
They are bound by the chains of hell because they do not search and treasure up the words of God.
They prefer their leaders speak unto them of smooth things.
They believe they are the good guys and do not liken all scriptures unto themselves, and therefore get nothing from the scriptures concerning their real condition, or that the fruits they bear are all bad.
While we could add more wild fruit to this list, you might ask why I didn’t list things like adultery, drug use, pornography, divorce, and all the more ‘serious’ sins? Aren’t they wild fruit, you might ask? Yes, as are the millions of other sins we can and do commit. I did not list them because it is too easy to say these are the bad fruits brought by others, while ignoring the bad fruit borne by us.
Jesus did, however, describe the Gentiles as being “filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations…” He also said that if “they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them” (3 Nephi 16:10). But then he said: “But if the Gentiles will repent and return unto me, saith the Father, behold they shall be numbered among my people, O house of Israel” (3 Nephi 16:13 emphasis added).
What is described in this post are the wild fruits, but it helps to see the fruits meet for repentance by comparing the wild fruit. And as the Lord tells us, the answer is always repentance.
This is for those who think they need no repentance, who think they can be justified by their works, who think they are repenting, who do not understand the doctrine of repentance, and who cannot see that all manner of their fruits are actually wild fruit. The wild fruit is the result of not repenting.
Have you guessed which two groups of people the Allegory is describing that bring forth only wild fruit, none of which is good? If you guessed ancient Israel, you would be correct for the first group. But we are told that ancient Israel or the House of Israel (the Jews, 10 Tribes and Lehi’s descendants) will in the end repent and bring forth fruits meet for repentance. But who is the second group of people? Can you tell who and when by their fruits? Does it help to know that the Allegory of the Olive Tree is prophetic? For more on this second group of people read We Are the Wild Branches.
Next: Repentance: Only Those Who Repent are of My Church
Long comment to follow (I apologize for my lack of brevity but I could write a dissertation on all the things I’m learning from this Series). My mind is like a kettle of corn kernels dancing in hot oil as I read these posts. There is so much to consider -- and more importantly, to reconsider.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found interesting is Zenos’ idea that an entire harvest of fruit can be unsalvageable, regardless of how “much” (noun) of it there is, or how “much” labor (adverb) went into the failed harvest, if it is all rotten. Whether a bowl or barrel or boatload of it: scale (and sunk costs) are absolutely irrelevant in the work of the Lord (which, as I think of it, sort of runs counter to how we operate in the Church).
One bad apple or a billion; so is the lesson to not seek for quantity – and if so, why are we obsessed with numbers and statistics? Whether in Ministering or convert baptisms, etc., does our focus on “numbers” actually contribute to an overall DECLINE in the quality of fruit?
I cut-and-pasted your Wild Fruits list to keep with my records. Mentally I checked them off one-by-one as I read them, trying to think of the source for each, until I came to this: “They trust in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these.” I wasn’t familiar with these words, so I did a scripture search and was surprised to see it comes from Jeremiah (7:4); I hadn’t realized Jeremiah was critical of the people’s temple worship. But I have to say, his counsel could not be more timely or relevant today!
My favorite Wild Fruit was one I am all-too-guilty of: “They judge those who do not live up to their standards.” That’s probably the clearest, shortest statement of what’ll spoil the bunch as any; I loved it.
Over the holiday break, as I’ve pondered all these Wild Fruits you've mentioned, I’ve also been pondering on faith and have had several insights I am excited to share (by the way, the link to my blog takes them to my latest post; if you wish them to link to the Faith Series in particular, it is https://www.owlofthedesert.com/blog/lecturing-beyond-faith-a-new-perspective-on-the-gospels-least-understood-principle-part-1). I am grateful for the way the things you write provide inspiration for my own writing.
Let me just say, the most shocking thing about your list of Wild Fruits was that you consciously omitted all of the “serious sins” we generally talk about. That made me recontextualize sin (Wild Fruit) and how I think of it, just as I had to grapple with redefining the “fruits meet for repentance.” Thank you, and happy new year! Tim