Therefore, just as the weeds are collected and burned with fire, so it will be in the conclusion of the system of things.

Matt. 13:39-42.

6. Among whom was the “wheat” left to grow?

⁶ The “reapers,” or angels, would be sent forth by the “Son of man” at “the conclusion of the system of things,” in order to weed out from among the true “sons of the kingdom” “all things that cause stumbling and persons who are doing lawlessness.” As the preceding article has shown, the Devil’s oversowing “weeds” by night has resulted in organized apostasy, false Christianity under a hierarchy of oppressive religious leaders who came to form the composite “man of lawlessness,” foretold by the apostle Paul. (2 Thess. 2:3-12) The true “wheat” was left to grow among such “weeds” until the “time of the end.” Then the “Son of man” would order his “reapers” to separate the “sons of the kingdom” from the “sons of the wicked one.”

7. What parallel prophecy helps us to identify the harvesttime?

⁷ When did this separating work begin? An interesting parallel prophecy leaves us in no doubt as to when it would be. It reads: “And I saw, and, look! a white cloud, and upon the cloud someone seated like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. And another angel emerged from the temple sanctuary, crying with a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud: ‘Put your sickle in and reap, because the hour has come to reap, for the harvest of the earth is thoroughly ripe.’ And the one seated on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.”​—Rev. 14:14-16.

8. How is the “Son of man” pictured in Revelation 14:14, and so after what event must the harvest have begun?

⁸ Here we see the “Son of man,” Jesus Christ, not as a sower sowing “fine seed in his field” but as a crowned king moving into action for the “harvest of the earth.” His being seated on a cloud symbolizes his invisible presence. (Acts 1:9-11; Rev. 1:7) The “harvest” must, therefore, take place during Christ’s presence, after he is crowned and receives “rulership and dignity and kingdom” from Jehovah, the “Ancient of Days.” (Dan. 7:13, 14) So the harvesting began sometime after 1914, the year that marked the beginning of the “time of the end,” or the “conclusion of the system of things.”