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I. TEACHING OF THE PARABLE.

1. Shows course and sequence of events as certain and necessary as the processes of nature. All is in progress. Be sure of the issue. Be alive to the tokens of its approach.

2. The incongruity of the comparison is its instruction. Its purpose to fix attention not on an end, but on a beginning; not on what going, but on what coming; not on tokens of dissolution, but on hidden life stirring beneath, after last storm to break out into the "kingdom of God."

II. USE OF ITS TEACHING.

1. See that it belongs to you.

2. Live under the sense of what is coming. You need it —

(1)  To prevent this present world from absorbing you.

(2)  To prevent it from depressing you.

(Canon T. D. Bernard.)

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KJV: And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees;

WEB: He told them a parable. "See the fig tree, and all the trees.