Matthew 25:1-13
"What does it mean? I have my own ideas. Do you? Leave a comment if you've got any put-in."
Also, my new website - basically a showcase for my messages and major spiritual writings - is up and running. Check it out at http://pureandsimplefaith.blogspot.com. The sub-page with my collected writings is on Flame, also titled, your eyes search for me, inspired by a ZAO song. Any questions, comments, concerns on the website, please e-mail me (or post a comment) at ajbarnhart@yahoo.com.
Any ideas of the parable?
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2 comments:
I think the ten virgins are Christians. Each has a lamp, which is their life. Each also have oil, which is the Holy Spirit. The wise ones used the Holy Spirit to fill their lives (putting oil in lamp); the foolish, though they HAD the Holy Spirit, DIDN'T allow the Holy Spirit to fill their lives. In other words, only those who really let the Holy Spirit transform their lives were the ones who entered the Kingdom of God; even those who HAD the Holy Spirit (oil) but didn't use it were not allowed in. So we must be changed by the Holy Spirit. As Paul says, "It's not circumcision or uncircumcision that matters, but whether or not we are a new creation." People harp on being cleansed by Jesus, but where is the shouting of the news that we must also let the Holy Spirit transform us?
Here is my 'other' idea. The foolish virgins were the ones who once let the Holy Spirit mold them, but "fell asleep" in the sense that they betrayed the faith and fell back into their old ways of doing things, old ways of living. They ran out of oil. And in the End, since they were not still filled with the Holy Spirit, they were refused entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven. If this is right, it hacks at the idea of "once-saved, always-saved"
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