These are the ones who . . . bear fruit with endurance. —Luke 8:15.
In the illustration of the sower found at Luke 8:5-8, 11-15, the seed is “the word of God,” or the Kingdom message. The soil represents man’s figurative heart. The seed that fell on the fine soil took root, sprouted, and “produced 100 times more fruit.” Just as the fine soil in Jesus’ illustration retained the seed, we accepted the message and held on to it. As a result, the seedlike Kingdom message took root and grew, as it were, into a wheat stalk that, in time, was ready to bear fruit. And just as a wheat stalk produces as fruit, not new stalks, but new seed, we are producing as fruit, not new disciples, but new Kingdom seed. How do we produce new Kingdom seed? Each time we in one way or another proclaim the Kingdom message, we duplicate and scatter, so to speak, the seed that was planted in our heart. (Luke 6:45; 8:1) Hence, this illustration teaches us that as long as we keep on proclaiming the Kingdom message, we “bear fruit with endurance.”