Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Ten Virgins

Matthew 25:2 KJV
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

Scofield calls this "Our Lord's Return....As Testing Profession."

We see ten virgins with both similarities and differences. The differences destroyed five of them!

Their similarities
They are all moral.

No attempt is made to discredit any of them for lack of morality. They are each virgin.
They all have lamps.If we associate the lamp with the Word of God we may suggest that they all had Bibles and they all had some understanding of that Bible. They all were "religious" in that sense
They all expected the bridegroom
Our world is filled with people who know and even in some respects believe the promises of the Bible that Jesus will return one day. They have read the popular prophetical series. They have attended some church services. They have heard people speak about it. They know He is supposed to come again.

Their differences
In general the text says that five of them were wise and five were foolish.
Specifically there are two major differences.
Five had no oil.Oil is the type of the Holy Spirit of God. They were religious. They had Bibles. They expected Christ to come again. But they did not have the Holy Spirit. "If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his" (Rom 8:9).
Christ did not know them.
Regardless of how much Bible they had read.
Regardless of how good they had behaved.
Regardless of how earnestly they professed to believe in Christ's coming.

They did not have the Holy Spirit and thus, Jesus did not know them.

A person who is born again has been convicted of the Holy Spirit of his sins, Convinced of the Holy Spirit that Christ died to wash away their sin and Come to Jesus Christ and has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit at that moment.

Anything less will not do.

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