Original Contributions
Bible Treasury, 2nd Edition, Volume 1, September 1856.
(1st Edition, September 1856 [01 1856 061])
"Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. etc." Matt. 25:1-13.
[01 1856 058]
Such is the one predicted re-awakening, and such are the foretold results. The cry, ("Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him") shall effect it; and the result shall be the going in of all the wise unto the marriage supper, and the closing of the door of entrance thereunto.
The slumbering church, so called, shall itself be roused from the long slumber of its apostasy, as a whole, only by the cry announcing the bridegroom's immediate approach. There was time only for the trimming of the lamps. There was no oil obtained by the foolish, who had taken none with them at the first. They were all excluded from the marriage supper. The bridegroom "knew them not," and could not admit them into his joyous presence.
Whence, then, the notion of the world's previous conversion? The church itself sleeps until the bridegroom is coming. When once the tarrying of the bridegroom has furnished the "occasion to the flesh," for worldly sloth and self-indulgence, the church, so called, awakes no more until the cry, "The bridegroom cometh," effectually arouses it. Where can there be found the remotest possibility of any intervening thousand years of universal holiness and peace? Do we need further witnesses?
But let us contemplate this great awakening. Did not our hearts burn within us, when we heard, in days gone by, of great revivals, and effusions of the Holy Ghost? Do they not now burn within us, when true tidings of such sort salute our ears? Here is represented to us then, a grand and veritable revival, or re-awakening — the grand one of the age — the final and decisive one of the dispensation. How is this wonderful prediction overlooked! How is this plain account of the consummation and conclusion of Christendom's apostasy passed over and neglected!
"THEN shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins." What may these words, "Kingdom of heaven," be intended to denote? and WHEN shall this kingdom be likened to ten virgins?
The term "Christendom" seems a contraction of the words, "Christ's kingdom" — the precise equivalent to the expression made use of in the parable. The nominally Christian portion of the population of the earth, seems clearly that which the parable describes. The world's population, as a whole, enters not into the question here. Those only who "had taken the lamp" are spoken of. None but "virgins" — professed attendants on the Lord's return — are included. The condition and destiny of the earth's inhabitants form the subject of a hundred other scriptures. This scripture treats only of "the kingdom of heaven"; and that not of the kingdom formally established, but merely of its state whilst its sovereign is in banishment therefrom — rejected out of the earth. There are those who own their rejected and absent sovereign — some in reality, others in profession only. These constitute his kingdom now. But the kingdom formally set up — the kingdom of the thousand years — when, leaving the Father's throne, the Son of man shall ascend his own peculiar one, and glorify his saints together with himself, subduing to himself the nations of the universal earth, this kingdom is a distinct, and certainly a yet future one. This kingdom — the one only entirely real one — must assuredly come after the mixed and slumbering condition of affairs set forth in the parable before us. Before the state that the parable describes, it did not come. During the period therein depicted it cannot come. In an age beyond the period of this parable, therefore, it will surely yet transpire.
The christianised portions of the earth, during the present era, are the subject also of the parables of the thirteenth chapter of this gospel. It is not all the population of the earth, which therein is treated of. The whole world's population cannot be included. No millennium will ever arrive, in such case. A mixed population is finally disposed of in these parables. The wheat is gathered home to the garner, and the tares are burned in the fire. The net cast into the sea is drawn ashore, only to be found filled with fish, both bad and good. The good only are gathered into vessels. The bad are cast away — "into a furnace of fire, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." Not one word here of all the remainder of the fish, which the world's sea contains. Other scriptures treat of those.
These parables, we repeat it, speak of the "kingdom of heaven" — of Christendom only, or the (at the least nominally) christianised portions of the earth's population. "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed," etc. "The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed," etc. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven," etc. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field," etc. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman," etc. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net," etc. The first of these seven parables of Matthew 13 — that of the Sower, also describes the same sphere. The chapter is a course of instruction, of seven-fold perfectness, not regarding the whole world, but such portion thereof only as shall be sown with wheat and tares previously to the end of the present age.
Such is the sphere which is treated of in the parable, specially before us. "The kingdom of heaven shall be likened unto ten virgins." It is the virgin, or lamp-bearing portion of the people of the earth, whose course is here described. Were it otherwise, and were the whole world included, there could be no millennium of universal knowledge of the Lord. For the foolish virgins doubtless are those who elsewhere as tares, or, bad fish, or wicked and slothful servants, are cast into the fire. If then these are so removed from the earth, and the wise virgins, like the wheat, or good fish, or good and faithful servants, are taken up into the presence of their Lord in glory; and if these parties constitute the whole population of the globe, where shall there be found any nucleus or basis for a millennial race? Clearly, in such case, there could be no such nucleus or basis found.
But when shall the great event of this parable transpire? "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps," etc. The division into two chapters of the grand prophetic discourse which comprises this parable is unfortunate. Very much that is connected with a right apprehension of the parable depends upon an enlightened perception of the teaching of the discourse as a whole.
The period alluded to, in the use of the word, "Then" — "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins" — seems that which is immediately connected with the unequalled time of tribulation, rather than with the time of the execution of the foregoing judgement. The earlier portions of the discourse, and specially when the narration of St. Luke is collated with this of St. Matthew, are sufficient to place this beyond dispute.
There should come a day when the nation of Israel, brought to a state of preparation for the reception of their true Messiah, should in sincerity exclaim, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." But until that day, they should be favoured with no further presentation of himself. "Your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth." He then "went out, and departed from the temple." He went therein no more. After two days was the passover, and he was betrayed to be crucified, Matt. 26:1-2. But to the disciples, as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, whither he had gone from the temple, he proceeded to deliver this, his grand prophetic utterance.
There should transpire a period of wars, delusions, disasters, and apostasy. This period should close with a crisis of yet far deeper sorrows. Only an elect remnant of disciples, whom it should not be possible to deceive, and for whose sake those days should be shortened, would be saved. Otherwise no flesh should have been saved; in which case no millennium could have taken place. But those days should be shortened, and a chosen remnant spared. God's purpose should be certainly secured.
Then shall the true Messiah once more present himself to his own nation. Immediately after this unequalled tribulation, he shall return in glory. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other," Matt. 24:29-31. This is the period when the judgement of the quick is executed. This is the time referred to, proximately, at the least, in the word with which the parable commences. "THEN shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins." But the precise order of events we seek not to determine now.
1. These "virgins" had previously gone forth. They had taken their lamps. They had assumed the position of expectants and attendants. They had given assent unto the truth that there should be a wedding — that a bridegroom would appear. They had faith; all of them possessed belief, such as it was. They openly professed that, by going forth all of them. Yet with very many this was but the excess of folly. "The foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps."
2. The oil denotes the Holy Ghost. "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power." "Ye have an unction from the Holy One." Anointing ever signified the communication of divine power, whether for official, or for private relationships or purposes — the power of the Holy Ghost. In this case, as in others, the oil was needed specially as the power and source of joy — well-founded joy. "The oil of joy, for mourning." "God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." The virgins needed the joy of hope whilst waiting, and the power of joyful recognition and reception of the bridegroom, when he actually appeared.
3. Thus the flame would seem to denote this joy — this suited tribute of homage to the bridegroom. "Go forth with joy to meet him," is the well-known stanza of a well-known composition. To this day, illuminations are the notorious commemoratives of joyous events. And the thought is scriptural. "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart." "The light of the righteous rejoiceth, but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out." So it was, alas! with that of the foolish virgins. Their hope began to vanish just at the period when it should have ripened into realisation. It was ill-founded; there was no oil in the vessel — no Holy Ghost — no power of divine grace in the heart. Whilst the bridegroom tarried, and all things continued as they had been — whilst the sun shone, and the stars yet gave forth light, and the moon walked in her brightness — their hearts were the deluded subjects of a certain vain and shadowy hope; that somehow, at the last, all would prove well with them. But the fear of the righteous revelation of the Judge of quick and dead — the over-hanging hastening storm close behind the wedding supper — at once produced the piteous exclamation, "Our lamps are gone out!" Their false hope died away. Their hearts became darkened by despair. They cried out, "Give us of your oil; for our lamps are going out." (See margin.)
But let us now view the general instruction of this parable. There was a time when all those virgins "slumbered and slept"; this was "whilst the bridegroom tarried." The church fell into this slumber at a very early period of its history. Three centuries had not rolled away before the disastrous change had set in almost universally. The servants had begun to say, "My Lord delayeth his coming," and they had commenced "to beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken." Cyprian, (so early as A.D. 250), declared of the church generally, "All were set upon an immeasurable increase of gain, and forgetting how the first converts to our holy religion had behaved under the personal direction and care of the Lord's apostles, or how all ought in after times to carry themselves, the love of money was their darling passion." Eusebius, who assuredly was no cynic or austere criticiser of the prevailing character of his day, did yet on one occasion pen the following passage:— "We were almost upon the point of taking up arms against each other; prelates inveighing against prelates, and people rising against people; and hypocrisy and dissimulation had risen to the greatest height and malignity." This was about A.D. 310. Cyril (the so-called bishop of Jerusalem, only about fifty years later) wrote as follows: "Formerly the heretics were manifest, but now the church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and have itching ears. Is it a plausible theory? All listen to it gladly. Is it a word of correction? All turn away from it. Most have departed from right words, and rather choose the evil than desire the good. This therefore is the falling away; and the enemy (Antichrist) is soon to be looked for." But why should we refer to the Fathers? The sacred canon was not closed too soon to record, for our instruction, the commencement of the predicted slumbering and sleeping. Read 2 Thess. 2:7; 2 Tim 3; specially the addresses to the churches, in the concluding book of the inspired volume. Yes, the apostasy and the slumber set in exceeding early! The papacy is indeed an old religion. The spirit of godly protestantism, was evoked before the apostles died. The seeds of most of Rome's fundamental errors were sown and germinating eighteen hundred years ago. Why should this be controverted? Alas! how can it be denied?
Christendom, so called, is still "slumbering and sleeping." Some of the nations thereof have changed their creed, indeed, and their communion and name. The real work of God in the period of the Reformation resulted in this:— many, very many — a noble army of martyrs and of confessors, with a yet greater multitude of believers, "little and unknown," were savingly converted. The alteration of several national professions followed. But the mass of each and every single population remained fast asleep. Returning torpor ere long befell most even of those who had been savingly awakened. Christendom still slumbers. The millions eat and drink, and are drunken with the cares of this life. "Where is the promise of his coming?" is the grand echo of all their doings. Alas, who shall arouse them! When shall they awake? What shall break in effectually upon this slumber of eighteen, or nearly eighteen, centuries? The church, it is affirmed, must convert the world; but, alas, who shall arouse, if not convert the church? Who shall awaken it?
"And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. THEN all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps." This solemn outcry, then, is that which effects the great awakening. The cry, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh!" — that only — will arouse the slumbering church. Clearly, then, the labours of those who seek to persuade the church that the millennium must first ensue will not accomplish this. Those who boast the world's conversion by the institutions now existing will never succeed even in awakening the church. Will they bear plain dealing? They stand directly in the way of this desirable event. They impede it — nay virtually labour to prevent it. They lend their energies to thwart it. They use their influence on the other side. They say, "The bridegroom cometh not till there transpire an intervening thousand years." A faint rumour has sped its way recently across our land, to the same purport as the formal midnight cry, and some of the sleepers have been already startled. Our friends who are of the notion that the grand institutions in existence must do this work sound forth immediately a counteracting cry: Hush! hush! he comes not yet! Shall these persons bring about the predicted universal "trimming of the lamps"? Assuredly they cannot. The cry which they ("in ignorance we wot,") oppose, the cry they would cry down, the cry —"Behold, the bridegroom cometh," — this only shall effect it. Mistaken brethren! when will ye cease to set yourselves in array against the very object of your prayers and aspirations? You pray, you long for, you groan after general awakening and concern. You are hastening on by these, the very cry which you seek to cry down. Your prayers war with your teaching. Your teachings war with your prayers. Ye fight against your own holiest aspirations. Pray on! The midnight cry shall drown all other cries. Every opposing voice shall shortly pass away, even as the idle murmurings of the wind. For so this solemn revelation reads: "at midnight there was a cry made, behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps."
The verse which next ensues appears to suggest very singular application. Its import seems remarkable indeed. "And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out." Did they entertain the notion of their being in the possession of the wise some treasury of supererogatory grace. They were Papists, on this point at least. Not so the wise ones. They said, "Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you." These were Protestants to a man, at least on this greatly controverted point. Whatever any of them, wise or foolish, had been called — whatever had had been the place of their communion, only the foolish held the false notion of supererogation grace; the wise unanimously denied it. Such, too, was the result of praying to the saints for grace. "Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves." They could point their foolish companions to the true treasury of grace. So indeed can any saint minister grace to his fellow, even by the ministration of the truth — the truth which He who only can directly impart grace ever uses as the vehicle of his behests. But this was not what was requested by the foolish. Strange indeed, that this notion of supererogation — of a church treasury of superfluous grace — applicable to the case of those who need such help; strange, indeed, that this notion should in fact be held, avowedly, by the immense majority of the so-called Christians of the age.
"While they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him unto the marriage, and the door was shut." Even Christendom itself, so called, was not converted, as a whole, when the personal return of the bridegroom took place. How much less then, the world at large! This is the end of Christendom. It must be removed out of the way, before there will be a converted world. The complete ingathering comprises only the wise virgins and the previously dead in Christ. The door is shut — the door — not of conversion — but into the marriage supper. Only those previously converted — those only who had taken oil in their vessels — were ready for admission through this door. The world's conversion is a subsequent event. This is the fate of Christendom.
Whence then the notion of the gradual growth of the church unto universality? Whence the notion that the church ever will include the whole world's population? Surely not hence — not from this wondrous scripture. No; there is no such teaching in any scripture. The church will be but as a little flock when the chief shepherd re-appears. Those alive and remaining, with the dead in Christ, complete it. The spirits of the just men made perfect, of the previous age, these friends of the bridegroom, (see John 3:29), shall stand in the bridegroom's presence, and hear him, and rejoice in seeing that he who only is worthy of the bride now has her by his side. The saints of the past dispensation, then, will be, apparently, the bridegroom's friends; those of the present dispensation will constitute his bride; whilst those of the yet future and millennial dispensation will constitute his subjects. "O the depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God." "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."
Such, then, is the one grand predicted re-awakening, and such its result. "They that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterwards came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not." Would that the universal church, so called, could hear even now the solemn conclusion of this parable: "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour." — S.