According to the gospel legend and apostle of faith, bishop David Oyedepo, he was quoted saying that it was his understanding and revelation of Gen 8:22 that made him scream, I can never be poor.
That verse 22 of Genesis 8 says, “As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold, and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
What that verse entails is that seed time precedes harvest time, and one can never have any harvest without first planting seeds. This is a spiritual law established by God Himself, which can never be altered as long as the earth endures.
However, It is unfortunate that some people, especially African religious activities, think that they can use prayer and fasting to enforce harvest even when they had not planted any seed.
Some men/women of God are equally using that verse to dupe and milk people dry in the name of sowing seed, assuring them of harvest. Please, seed time and harvest time are a mystery and spiritual laws of the bible that can never be altered, no matter the number of abuses.
For that reason, it is necessary for us to understand the mystery if we are to benefit maximally from the mystery. The first understanding that needs to sink into our subconscious is that this mystery is the eternal and irrevocable word of God.
Secondly, another major understanding is that it is not every seed sown that guarantees harvest. Please, this understanding is very important because some men/women of God are duping people by giving them the impression that once they sow seeds they are assured of harvest.
The reason is that first, it is God that determines or gives the increase or harvests, not any man/woman. In other words, we can never force or influence God to release a harvest for us.
Secondly, and for a better understanding, we need to use natural seeds for our illustrations. As it is with natural seeds so it is with spiritual seeds. It is the condition of the seeds that determines if that seed will germinate before thinking of bearing fruits.
In other words, every seed must be alive and healthy before it can germinate and before thinking of bearing fruits. Seeds that are rotten that are planted will die off and will not germinate. It is utter foolishness to expect harvests from dead seeds.
This is exactly with a very poor understanding of seed time and harvest time. In other words, some don’t understand the conditions of the seeds they are sowing, yet they are expecting harvests while their seeds are dead.
In other words, if you take some bags of rotten or roasted seeds of corn and went and plant them in very fertile ground and expect a harvest, you are joking. That is, seeds must be alive and healthy before you expect them to grow up to bear fruits.
Another crucial understanding is that harvests we receive from seeds sown are determined by the conditions or quality of the soil. For instance, it is equally utter foolishness to take bags of quality and healthy seeds and plant them in a barren or desert land and expect harvests.
As said earlier, it is God alone who determines the harvest we receive, not any man/woman of God. That means that it is a total falsehood for any man/woman of God to assure you of an instant harvest for seeds sown.
It is unfortunate that some men/women of God are duping and milking people by assuring them of instant harvest from seeds sown. This caused the faith of some genuine Christians to fail.
For instance, I know of one brother who was a trader. The brother was so zealous that he preached the gospel all around the market.
One day the brother attended one ministry where their GO was their guest speaker. The said GO assured them of a hundred percent return of harvest of every seed sown as if God is a money doubler.
The said brother ignorantly sowed over two third of his business capital as seed in that church as he expected to receive one hundred percent harvest. As a result, his business collapsed when after six months he did not get any harvest.
Do you know that the brother lost his faith as a result? So any man/woman of God that is assuring you of one hundred harvests in return for every seed sown is a false teacher.
What I am trying to point out is that some so-called seeds some plated which they were expecting to harvest are rotten seeds that are dead, not even alive.
As said earlier, it is God that gives the increase or harvest, so the seeds must be acceptable before him before he can release the harvest. To help us to understand what I am saying is to look at verse 8 of Mathew 13 where Jesus gave the parable of the sower.
That Mathew 13:8 says, But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. That is to say that even if we sowed a very quality seed in good soil, it is God that determines whether we will receive a hundredfold, or sixty, or thirty.
The end of part one, please watch out for part two. Shalom!