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Some, again, falls among the thorns; and the thorns spring up and stifle it, so that it yields no crop.
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But some of the seed falls into good ground, and gives a return: it comes up and increases, and yields thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold."
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"Listen," He added, "every one who has ears to listen with!"
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When He was alone, the Twelve and the others who were about Him requested Him to explain His figurative language.
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"To you," He replied, "has been entrusted the secret truth concerning the Kingdom of God; but to those others outside your number all this is spoken in figurative language;
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that "`They may look and look but not see, and listen and listen but not understand, lest perchance they should return and be pardoned.'"
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"Do you all miss the meaning of this parable?" He added; "how then will you understand the rest of my parables?"
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"What the sower sows is the Message.
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Those who receive the seed by the way-side are those in whom the Message is sown, but, when they have heard it, Satan comes at once and carries away the Message sown in them.
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In the same way those who receive the seed on the rocky places are those who, when they have heard the Message, at once accept it joyfully,
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but they have no root within them. They last for a time; then, when suffering or persecution comes because of the Message, they are immediately overthrown.