It is only when the kingdom comes that the outpouring of the Spirit will be for them. They will go through a very serious process first. When they see the Lord Jesus they will mourn as for an only child. They will have a fountain opened in Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness; but the power of the Holy Ghost will be given only when they have seen the Lord. So far, it is quite different with the Christian, who, as you know, receives the oil or unction from the Holy One while the Lord is away. The Jewish remnant will only receive it when the Lord comes back. Again, they will not go forth from Jerusalem until the tribulation is at hand. It is a fleeing from the enemy's power and its consequences. It is a flight from the sore scourge in retribution and judgment for their iniquity; it is no going forth to meet in joy.
For the Christian has another course and hope altogether. Whether it be light or dark, the Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. What is the original hope of the Christian? It is our object and calling revealed in and from heaven. That object is Christ, the blessed One, whose coming he awaits: hence he goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. Not so the Jewish remnant; they expect to see the Lord coming to deliver them by the putting down of their enemies. The Christian waits to be called up out of the world; the Jew waits for the Lord to come into the world. It is a totally different expectation. The parable speaks solely of the Christian. It does not refer to the Jewish remnant.
We shall see more proof of this. It is said that the wise took oil in their vessels: the foolish took no oil. This meets another error. It has been supposed that the foolish virgins mean Christians who are not pre-millenarians, which gives a very undue value to correct notions of prophecy. I grant you entirely that those who look for the Lord to come before that reign are in my judgment right; and I am quite sure that those who put the millennium before the Lord's coming are mistaken. But I can never sympathize with those who put a slight upon such Christians as have not been taught as you and I. These are self-flattering delusions, and are mere manifestations that bear the brand of sect or school written on them. I am persuaded that the best blessings we have are those which God confers on the body of Christ. That is to say, all those in whom the Holy Ghost dwells—those who rest on Christ and redemption. These are the men spoken of here. The Holy Ghost is a divine spring for sustaining testimony, as well as a divine power of understanding the word of God.
The foolish virgins never had oil. Some ask how can they have had their lamps burning. The answer is easy. They could burn the wick: there is no mystery about that. The foolish virgins were no Christians at all. The weakest Christian has the oil, as well as the strongest. The apostle John so tells not the fathers, nor the young men, but the babes, the little children. He tells the feeblest they have the unction from the Holy One. For those who had no oil could not be Christians. Hence a deeper evil is in question than denying the millennium to be after Christ's second coming or before it. The heart was wrong as to the Lord—a thing more momentous than right notions about prophecy.
If you have Christ, if you know the blood of sprinkling, if you rest on a crucified and risen Savior, you surely have the oil in your vessels. You are not one of the foolish virgins. Their folly consisted in something much more than in a right or wrong prophetic scheme. The foolish lived despising God and His grace; and, consequently, not having the Spirit of Christ, they were none of His. The foolish virgins have not the Holy Spirit; so the Lord says and deals with them.
We often think of the early Christians with their great advantages, we see that many of the Scriptures apply to them fully—we can only get the principle of them. I will call your attention to the fact here that there are other Scriptures which apply more emphatically to us now. There is thus what I may call a divine compensation. We can only take the general spirit of what was said to the Corinthians. For instance, they had tongues; they had miraculous powers among them. You know that we have them not, we have a few persons who pretend to have them: wherever there are pretensions to such gifts, their falsity is soon found out.
The fact is that God, for the wisest reasons, has not been pleased to continue these miraculous powers. The present condition of the church would make it to be a moral impossibility the God should bestow any of these miraculous virtues. For if the Lord were to restore them now, I should like to ask where? Most people would begin with themselves. If the Lord were to bestow these powers upon the various sects of Christendom, it would be putting His seal upon all the sects, and so call the attention of the world to the divisions of Christendom as if all right.
The Lord could not thus sanction the broken fragments of His house, or put this honor upon its actual condition. We are ready to be high enough, we are prone enough to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and the Lord will not help us to be more so.
But He has left what is infinitely better-He continues everything for the soul which walks with God. He has taken away nothing needful for edification. He still gives peace and joy in believing. As He put, besides, this outward sign on the church, so He marked it of old with a brilliant signature, as it were, before the world. Those who look for the restoration of these powers are not alive to the fallen condition of the church. I hold it to be most important to the Christian to know what the church was and what it is, and to grieve before God for the difference. I have no sympathy with the Christian now who is not a mourner because of the state of the church. It is well to have joy in the Lord, but we should be humbled about ourselves and the church. You ought to feel deeply this condition for the Lord's sake. In this parable, you will observe, the Lord marks the failure from the original calling. “While the Bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.” There is a state of forgetfulness of the Lord's return.
But now mark another thing: it is midnight, and there was a cry, made, “Behold, the Bridegroom [cometh]; go forth to meet him.” Has that been fulfilled? I believe it has, or rather that it is being fulfilled now. The Lord has interposed to break the present slumbering condition of Christendom, doing so not only for the wise, but for the foolish.
Have there not been times when men were filled with the thought that the Lord was coming, when they have yielded to sore panic at the cry that the end of the world was coming? In the year boo they were sure it was just come. But time passed on, and the end of the world did not come. They slumbered again. Then, in the year 1000 (surely 1000 was the fatal number!), there was a yet greater alarm all over western Christendom, and the clergy took advantage of this, and got the barons and people to give their gold and their silver, lands and houses, to build grand cathedrals and religious houses, some of which, if I mistake not, exist to the present day. This fear passed away, and the end of the world did not come. Then there was a very long slumber indeed.
I do not deny there have been partial awakenings at various times since, but they were of the same character. At the period of the great rebellion, when the Puritans got into power in England, there was a momentary shaking in this country; and bold men rose up, who tried to establish the Fifth Monarchy, or present power in the world in the name of the Lord Jesus. Movements such as these took place at various epochs; but where was the going out to meet the Bridegroom? There was not even a resemblance to it.
In past ages then there was alarm, sometimes to the utmost degree; and this state is represented in the well-known mediaeval hymn and music, “Dies Irae,” the extreme expression of Catholic terror. Such was the feeling of the middle ages. Since then, in later times, Protestant fanatics tried to get power into their hands. But this is like seizing the earth, not quitting all to meet Christ.
The momentous fact is that two spiritual characteristics, very distinct from ancient or mediaeval or modern views, mark off truth from error as to this. Are we not to be humbled because of the evil that has been done in Christendom? And are we not practically to take our stand on what was the Lord's will from the first? If the Lord at the outset called the virgins to go out to meet Him, they should ever cherish this as their calling and joy of heart. The consequence of a revival of the Christian hope of meeting the Lord is a resumption of the original position, that of going out to meet the Bridegroom. How could believers honestly continue in what they know to be false and unscriptural if they look for the Lord to come back any day? Thus the practical effect is immediate and immense where heart and conscience are true to Him.
Once more come the foolish virgins to the wise, saying, “Give us of your oil"; but this is beyond the Christian, and the wise bid them “Go buy oil for yourselves.” There is One who sells, but freely, without money and without price: to buy even from an apostle is fatal.
What is the meaning of all the recent agitation? People zealous for religious forms, who know nothing of Christianity. It is the foolish virgins in quest of the oil, leaving no stone unturned to get what they have not, the one thing needful—taking every way except the right way. There is only one means of procuring the oil. It is solely through Christ Himself, without money and without price. I remember the time when men who would bear the name of the Lord's ministers spent their time in fishing, hunting, shooting, and dancing. Clergymen joined in worldly pleasures without shame. You rarely hear of such things now. The same sort of men now-a-days look very demure: they are in general busy everywhere about religion. Do you believe they are any better than the men who used to hunt and dance? All the fashionable ecclesiastical millinery or machinery, does it alter people's state or suppose it altered? The decking of ecclesiastical buildings, the fantastical costumes of clergymen, the modern taste for church music, simply show that the foolish virgins are at work. They are not in a fit state to meet the Lord, and know it themselves. They are troubled with the rumor of they know not what. The consequence, then, of this midnight cry is that a double activity is going on. For the Lord is awakening those who know Himself, who are wise by His grace, to go forth and meet the Bridegroom. The others, if indirectly, are none the less powerfully affected by the cry and its effects. Utterly ignorant of the grace of God, they are trying to make up by what is called “earnestness.” But they know not that they are far from God, yea, dead in trespasses and sin. So they think, or hope, that being earnest hey may somehow or other get right at last. What delusion can be more dreadful? If you ask them whether their sins are blotted out, and they are saved, they count it presumption. They are as ignorant of the true power and privilege of redemption as the heathen or the Jew. They have no idea that the Son of man came down to save the lost. Indeed if there be such a thing as salvation, their occupation is evidently gone. Neither grace nor truth admits of all this religious self-importance and bustle. As sinners we need a Savior, and a divine salvation; as saints we want a calm but complete devotedness to the will of the Lord Jesus. But man prefers his own works; and to win the world he finds that scenic representations of Christian facts or forms act most on the masses, and attract the light, sentimental, or even profane. Individuals in the midst of such seek to win souls, yet they subject Christ Himself to the church. It is just the bustle of the foolish virgins, who have not the oil and want to get it as soon as they can.
At length the Bridegroom comes, and “they that were ready went in to the marriage, and the door was shut!”
Afterward come the foolish virgins. Now they cry, but it is with horror and despair. Religious activity is at length seen to be of the old man. In an agony they cry, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” But the Lord of peace, the Giver of life and glory, has only to tell them “I know you not.” Do not tell me this is said about real believers. It is said of the foolish virgins who had no oil; of those who bore the name of the Lord, but had not the Holy Ghost. Of and to them it was said that the Lord knew them not. “Watch, therefore,” says He, “for ye know neither the day nor the hour.”
There is no authority for what follows ("wherein the Son of man cometh"). You have heard the names of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf; of Dean Alford, Bishop Wordsworth, and Dr. Tregelles in this country. I am not giving you a peculiar thought in the least, for all Biblical critics worthy of the name agree in this omission as required by the best authorities. Copyists added the clause from ch. 24, bringing in the sense of the coming Judge. But this is quite different from what the Lord here urges, which is the delight of meeting, yea, the going forth to meet Him, the Bridegroom. Man, as such, must be judged; all tribes of the earth mourn before the Son of man. But the calling and hope of the Christian is fraught with other and joyous expectations; and this spite of their unfaithfulness during the night whilst He tarried.
If the faithful and wise servant, contrasted with “that evil servant,” set forth the general place of the servant of the Lord, faithful or the contrary, the parable of the talents shows us those who trade with the goods of Christ, and that goodness in this work turns on confidence in Him and His grace (verses 14-36).
Then, from verse 31 to the end, we have the judgment of the Gentiles, or all the nations, by the Son of man when He returns and reigns. Those who treated well or ill His messengers, “His brethren,” who proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom before the end, are severed to His right hand or left respectively, as the sheep or the goats. It is the judgment of the quick at the beginning of the millennial reign, as far as the nations are concerned. But that judgment is final. It is not the judgment of the dead, or of the secrets of the heart. The one question for decision is their conduct towards His brethren, or the Jewish preachers of the kingdom after the Christians are gone from the scene. Faith only will enable any Gentile to deal with them kindly in that day; and those who do so inherit the kingdom. It is no question of heaven or resurrection here.
This last scene is clearly the third part of our Lord's prophecy, the principle and nature of His. procedure toward all the nations (as distinct from Israel, and of course from Christians) after He enters on “the kingdom.” At the beginning when the Lord was here of old, and just before the end of this age, there will be an active testimony to the kingdom: only the final preaching will be in all the habitable world to all the nations, not as at first restricted to the land of Israel. Now the King is come, and judgment of the quick proceeds accordingly. Mix this up with the judgment of the dead (the wicked dead of course; for the righteous dead are supposed in Rev. 20:44And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4) to be raised long before, and the righteous living of the millennium do not die), and all is chaos. You lose the specific teaching both of Matt. 25:31-4631When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:31‑46), and of Rev. 20:12-1312And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. 13And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. (Revelation 20:12‑13), the one being the Lord's judgment of the Gentiles living on the earth (good and bad), when He comes to reign over the world, the other His judgment of the wicked dead raised after the millennial reign is concluded before the eternal state.
The true view, of the King, judging all the nations in Matt. 25, it will be observed, alone explains, first, why the King's brethren should be regarded as a company distinct from the sheep; secondly, why there should be no scrutiny into all work, or ways of those who stand before the throne, but only the question how they behave to His brethren who are to carry the gospel of the kingdom among all the nations before the end comes.
These envoys being either slighted in hate or honored in love; the King now repays with interest the astonished Gentiles. Who does not see the contrast with the righteous and the unrighteous in the resurrection state? As the wicked will then feel in all its horrors their just and everlasting condemnation, so for the saints the perfect state will have come, and they shall know even as they are known.
W. K.
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