To illustrate the truths he taught, Christ Jesus in his parables used many homely figures of speech which made his mission more understandable to those who hungered for his message. His references to wheat are varied, and no doubt from the hills around Galilee he could easily point to fields of grain in various stages of development. As wheat is the main crop here in Montana, I have often pondered these references, but I was once puzzled by the one in John's Gospel where Jesus speaks of his coming trial and subsequent victory. Here he says (12:24), "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." As a student of Christian Science, I knew that Jesus came to prove not the ending, but the eternality, of Life; therefore there could be no negative meaning to this statement.
Since the common belief is that life has both beginning and ending, one can see how easily this statement of the Master's can be misconstrued to mean that death is a portal to a desirable experience. Human beings profess to believe to a great extent that death is a portal to heaven, yet mankind dreads it and fights it. Illogical as this is, it is one of the great contradictions of mortal mind. But Christ Jesus did not accept the belief that life can cease or be interrupted by death.
Then why did Jesus say that it was necessary for a kernel of wheat to die before it could bring forth fruit? One has only to observe what happens to a corn, or kernel, of wheat when it is planted to see his meaning, for it neither stops living nor deteriorates. The corn of wheat is a seed which, when sown, begins at once to germinate, to slough off its outer husk and to unfold. First the shoot pushes through the ground, rising in a green blade, which in turn becomes several blades, finally to reach fruition in several clusters of wheat.
