A Video Message From the Publisher:
This is Hank Scott, for The Pure Truth Restored...
Perhaps you've read some of the parables in the New Testament and failed to fully understand their meaning.
That's understandable, because many of them are of a rustic, rural sort of life with which many people today are entirely unfamiliar.
It is like a strange, alien world to a typical urban born and raised person unfamiliar with animals, husbandry and the lifestyle associated with these.
Let me tell you a modern parable about the two goats and the fence, that helps explain one of these ancient parables, in a way that may help you realize the intended meaning of the scriptural parable of the goats and the sheep.
In the Savior's parable the Kingdom is likened to two flocks, one of goats and the other of sheep.
When the flocks are separated, the goats are placed to the Shepherd's left and the sheep are put on his right ("Matthew" 25:33).
Actually the two flocks stand for the nations and their peoples, who will be divided into two very different groups (verses 31-32), one of which, represented by the sheep, will inherit the Savior's Kingdom (verse 34).
The others, represented by the goats, will be cast out and be condemned to death in the judgment known as the Lake of Fire, where they will be destroyed and denied entry into His Kingdom (verse 41).
This parable makes it plain that the sheep stand for those who are helpful, kind, considerate, and reach out to share what (often little) they have with other sheep in need -- including visiting those who are wrongly held in jail or prison -- even at risk to their own property or lives (verses 35-40).
While the goats stand for everyone who selfishly or fearfully withholds comfort, help and assistance to the sheep, perhaps even joining in with those who accuse, rob, imprison and otherwise hurt and abuse the sheep (verses 42-46).
Perhaps the goats do help some; those who are like themselves, other goats such as fellow attendees of their particular religion, while ignoring anyone who seems different or of another faith.
They fail, however, to be kind, compassionate toward, and to assist those who truly matter to the Creator and Savior, who are the true sheep of the Great Shepherd's flock; those who listen to and follow Him wherever He leads.
Goat Or Sheep?
Unless you are familiar with goats and sheep, you might not understand the reason why these two sorts of animals were chosen for this parable, and what the differences between the two mean.
I understand why this might be confusing, as I was raised in a city all my life, and have only lived in a rural setting the last few decades of my life.
With a large field directly behind our present rural home, where various types of animals have been grazed over the years -- by different owners, the most recent of which keep a large herd of goats -- along with past experiences living in rural areas, I can tell you about the differences, and help you understand a little better why sheep and goats were used to explain the scriptural parable.
They are similar to the parable of the wheat and the tares (King James bible), or weeds (NIV), found only in the first book of the New Testament ("Matthew" 13:24-30; a parable that is explained in verses 36-43).
The wheat represents a good crop of grain sown by the farmer, while the tares or weeds are sown by his enemy or adversary, which may appear to be wheat but are actually just empty husks with no value, or produce nothing but stickers and trouble tending the crop intended for harvest.
In the end, at harvest time (when the Kingdom is established here on earth), the crop of good seed stands for all those who are truly righteous, while the tares or weeds stands for all those who are hurtful and act belligerently, accusatively, or otherwise harmfully toward each other, and particularly to their righteous neighbors (verse 38).
Goats are like the weeds or tares, in that they tend to butt with their horns, pushing and shoving, and often will aim at and rush to hurt or butt someone, if they turn their backs to the goat (particularly a he-goat), and present them with a tempting target.
Goats often act ungrateful, independent and tend to get themselves into needless troubles, compared to more docile, easily led and guided sheep.
A large male ram (sheep) may be a handful, but they are generally not harmful to people, compared to even a small belligerent goat.
Example of The Ram
Once upon a time I lived with my family in a rural desert area of the southwest, in a mobile home -- one of several in a small settlement more than ten miles from the nearest small city.
One day as I was walking the dirt road to our mailbox, which at one time was more than a mile from our home but had recently been moved less than a "block" away (adjoining an empty lot or field), I saw a large ram running loose between the trailer homes across the street from our mailbox.
Quickly improvising with some heavy rope I had at home, I returned and managed to single-handedly corner and lasso the creature, taking it home with me until the owners could be located.
At our home we built a temporary shelter for the animal, bought some grain to feed it, gave it water and kept it tied to the rope to prevent it from getting loose and wandering off again.
We had three small children at the time, the youngest of which was our oldest son.
The ram managed to get loose from the rope several times, since I was unfamiliar with how to tie it up properly, but could not easily escape our fenced property.
Although much larger than our young son, the ram never hurt any of our children, even when our boy ran after it, or in front of it, laughing with joy as we tried to corral the loose animal and return him to his makeshift shelter.
A small boy, looking for their lost ram, finally happened by and spied the animal on our property, and his parents later came to claim and retrieve it a few weeks after I found the stray.
In all that time we never once experienced any problem with anyone being hurt or injured by the animal, despite its rather large size and good-sized horns of more than a foot in length.
The Two Goats
Contrast this with an incident I recently experienced with two goats from the flock kept in the field behind our current home.
One sabbath day as my wife and I were resting, we heard repeated cries from one of the goats that graze in the field behind our home.
We were tired and just laying down for a daytime nap, after being up late the night before, cleaning and otherwise getting prepared for the sabbath the next day.
My wife and I thought nothing about the rather loud bleats, which we often hear from the goats so nearby our home, and ignored it for the better part of an hour or two.
Finally, after a brief rest, my wife was walking in our back yard and, hearing the continued bleats from behind our shed, decided to investigate.
There, she discovered a female goat whose head was trapped in the wire fence the owners of the field had put up a few feet from our property line, to allow their herd to graze without trespassing through our older, less secure fence surrounding our property.
Our young granddaughter, seeing the goat's predicament, was ready to use some wire cutters to free it, because its horns were preventing the goat from pulling its head free from the wire of the fence, the open squares of which were just large enough for the animal to stick its head through.
Rather than forage in the vast field available to it, this goat had decided that a bush growing between the two fences presented it with a more desirable and tempting repast, and had forced its head and horns all the way through the tight five inch square space of the fence to feast on its find, until it discovered that getting its head free again was all but impossible.
The fence on our property line is a mess of old chicken wire topped with barbed wire barely held up by rotting wood posts, constructed by some prior owner of our home or the field behind it.
In climbing over this rather formidable obstacle to reach the goat in distress, the seat end of the good pair of pants I happened to be wearing at the time, snagged on a barb and tore the rear of my pants, as I clambered over the top.
(Doesn't it seem that you are always wearing your good clothes when some dirty or destructive task arises, and you forget about changing until it's too late? Well, this seems to happen to me more often than I'd like.)
Freed At Last
Our granddaughter had run down the nearby country road to the home of the owners of the goat herd, but found nobody was there.
The predicament of the goat, which by now was pretty scared and tired from attempting to pull its head free for a few hours already, was like trying to solve a puzzle that has only one correct solution.
After petting the nanny's head to calm it down some, I tried to find how it's head could fit back through the opening it had obviously inserted itself through, but this proved a bit more difficult due to the small size of the opening and curved horns over half a foot in length.
This task was further complicated by the goat, which was anxious and a bit too willing to help pull its head free.
While I managed to get one horn through the opening, feeling it might soon be loose, the goat's attempts to pull back only entangled the other horn in the wire, so that its head remained frustratingly stuck.
So I took a different tack and tried to get both horns through the opening at the same time, where the opening seemed wide enough to accommodate them.
This was more difficult than it first seemed, because the horns had apparently been shoved through the opening quite forcibly by the goat, in its desire to reach the tasty bush.
In fact, the wire under the goat's throat started to choke it, as I tried to get its horns into a position that would allow them to both pass through the wire opening, without the need to cut and thereby ruin our neighbor's new fencing.
Finally, with some difficulty I managed to get the tips of both horns through the opening, and sensing it could soon be freed, the goat forcibly pulled back, and with a final thrust was free at last.
The Second Goat
The goat's response was to dash about madly through the field, bleating angrily and mad at the whole world for the predicament and humiliation it had suffered.
That is when I noticed the second smaller goat, the only other one of the flock in sight, apparently the young offspring of the nanny I had just set free.
This goat was standing in the adjoining field, running in circles, bleating loudly as if sounding an alarm for all to hear.
It ran through the gate separating the two fields, where its mother had been just moments before running out of sight and hearing, into the field and over the rise beyond, where the young goat now raced about and bleated wildly, as if to accuse me of doing away with its elder.
From this I concluded that goats are a very ungrateful lot who little appreciate the kindnesses done them, even blaming those attempting to help them, and otherwise being quite troublesome.
The Moral Of The Parable
The fact that this same situation has been repeated (either with the same goat, or another that looked like it), at least three times so far, twice on our sabbath, requiring climbing through treacherous barbed wire and my help to extricate its head from the fence each time, shows how goats can repeatedly create or get themselves into trouble.
Like people stuck in destructive habits or addictions, they just never seem to learn any better.
The moral of this little modern parable is this:
Humility, docility, gentility and thankfulness are more to be desired than brazen, careless, foolish and ungrateful behavior, especially among people who more often than they realize, or might care to admit, mimic the behavior of common animals of husbandry, such as sheep and goats.