1917_The_Finished_Mystery_Text

and disease. Lentiles are usually cultivated forfodder. Millet is still inferior. Symbolically itrepresents Christians who "have no depth ofearth." (Matt. 13:5.) Vetches, sometimes called"tares" or "prickly spelt," are a very poor food.Their prickly nature suggests a type of hard-toget-along-withChristians, and the kind ofmental, moral and spiritual food that producesthem. In with some of the true wheat, inestablished churchianity, as shown by verse 16,were to be gathered Christians of various degreesof development, each eating the kind of foodcorresponding to his Christian development, thewheat class assimilating the best of the DivineWord, and so on down to those who absorbed thepoorest grade of spiritual provender, some of itfood usually regarded as fit only for animals.This was the food the various classes shouldsubsist on, each according to his capacity, from1528 to 1918, and from 1878 to 1918.Ezekiel 4:10, 11.And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be byweight, twenty shekels a day: from time totime shalt thou eat it. Thou shalt drink alsowater by measure, the sixth part of a hin:from time to time shalt thou drink.— A shekelwas half an ounce; twenty shekels were tenounces. A hin was a gallon and a half. The sixthpart of a hin was one quart. This was the dailyration, a starvation allowance. They were not tofeed on it continuously, but on Sundays, or twoor three times a week— "from time to time."The people would, as a class, have a scantyspiritual subsistence during the siege period.FM397Ezekiel 4:12.And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thoushalt bake it with dung that cometh out ofman, in their sight.— Cakes, made of thismixture, were used by the very poor in times ofscarcity, depicting the scarcity of spiritual foodamong the followers of ecclesiasticism. Thepoor, not having stones or ovens, baked theirbread or cakes on heated stones or in the fire, or