Published:  December 13, 2024

Download PDF version:  The Church is Producing Foolish Virgins

It has happened before and it happened again this past Sunday during our service.  The text we were focusing on was Ps 34:7 (NASB95) – “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.”  In a moment, the Holy Spirit opened my mind to view mountain tops of Scriptural truth that were instantly connected.  The truth revealed was penetrating and deeply troubling because of its implications for today’s Church.

What is interesting about the above scripture is that it does not say, “…those who are saved,” although many Christians would immediately apply the passage to themselves.  During COVID-19, I heard people claiming Psalm 91, which repeats the same idea in verse 11 – “For He will give His angels charge concerning you to guard you in all your ways.” But again, the core of the promise is found in verse 1 – “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, will abide in the shadow of the Almighty”.  The condition of protection is abiding in Christ together with walking in the fear of the Lord.  Walking in lawlessness while claiming to be “saved” is nonsense; such a person should have no expectation of the protection of the Lord.

For one to claim to be a follower of Christ yet live without the of fear of the Lord’s discipline or judgment, living outside the tenants of the Christian faith, such a person would be deceiving themselves, hearing the word without keeping it (James 1:22; cf. Jer 17:9; Is 44:20; Obad 3).  The concept of abiding in Christ is essential in the Christian faith.  Jesus spoke of the fact that He is The Vine, and we are the branches (Jn 15:1-6) and that apart from Him we can do nothing (vs. 5b).  So, why would those who claim to be Christians who do not follow the Holy Spirit, do not obey His word, take no pains to live according to the standard of Biblical Christianity, have never witnessed first hand the power of the Holy Spirit nor do they have any thirst for it, therefore, have a form of godliness but deny its power, think for one moment that they qualify for protection from angels and will be guarded by them on a continual basis?  In fact, they do not qualify for protection, nor for being saved.  The qualification for being saved requires abiding, obeying and fearing the Lord.

If this is the first time you have encountered this truth, it should jolt you to the core of your very being.

The Parable of the Ten Virgins

In the New American Standard Bible (1995) the title for the portion of scripture that contains this parable is as above.  But I would suggest that the main focus of the story is the five foolish virgins.  There were ten virgins who took their lamps and we should notice that each of them had a lamp (Mt 25:1).  The only reason that the virgins are mentioned in this parable is that they each had lamps.  The prophet Zechariah received a detailed vision of a gold oil lampstand with a bowl on the top with seven lamps with seven spouts (Zech 4:2).  What is critical to note is that there were two olive trees by the bowl, one on the right and one on the left.  The two olive trees are a message to us that we must continually be supplied by, connected to and in relationship with the Holy Spirit.  He is symbolized by the entirety of what Zechariah saw in his vision:  the lampstand, the bowl, the seven lamps, the seven spouts and the two olive trees from which the oil flows.  How do we know this?

We have the interpretation given to Zechariah who has no idea what the vision was.  The angel seems amazed saying in vs. 5, “Do you not know what these are?”  Zechariah admits that he doesn’t.  The angel relays the meaning of the vision, which is straightforward, clear and concise:  “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zec 4:6).   Therefore, we have a strong exegetical basis to conclude that ten virgins are carrying lamps symbolic of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus is in fact hearkening back to Zechariah’s vision.  However, the oil that is in their respective lamps also speaks of the Holy Spirit, and that what was revealed to Zechariah is that we must be continually supplied with oil.  If lamps (Christians) don’t have oil, they cannot shine their light, nor are they prepared for the return of our Lord and Savior, for it is the Holy Spirit who reveals to the Church what is to come (Jn 16:13b).  But this is an evil and wicked generation where many who call themselves Christians do not know the Holy Spirit, neither do they care to know Him, yet they claim to be followers of Christ.  For this reason, the days in which we live have become the days of God’s wrath, which has been revealed to me by the Holy Spirit.

Zechariah didn’t know who or what he was looking at in the vision, but the Holy Spirit revealed Himself through the angel.  Many in the Church today, including heads of denominations, pastors and leaders, have no idea Who has come into their services or when He wants to move.  Why?  Because they don’t know Him, and sadly enough, they don’t want to know Him because they hate Him without a cause (Jn 15:25, cf. Ps 35:19, 69:4).  Therefore, on that day when Jesus returns, by His Spirit He will say to them, “Depart from Me I never knew you.”  They refused to know Him and would not let Him in; therefore, He will not let them in and they will be locked out of what they wrongfully believed they were qualified for.

I would submit, that each person who comes to Christ is given a lamp with oil, where we would say they are “saved” and “born again.”  However, what is clear from Matthew 25:3-4 is that we are called to take great care by embracing our responsibility to stay connected to the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus.  Jesus spoke about abiding, i.e., staying connected to Him, saying that you and I cannot bear fruit in ourselves unless we abide in Him (Jn 15:4-5).  Jesus continued to explain that, “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (Jn 15:16).  The dry branches are people, corresponding to the foolish virgins carrying lamps but are disconnected from The Source of Oil, the Spirit of Christ, the Person of the Holy Spirit.

The passages in Matthew 25 and John 15 stand as harsh warnings to anyone thinking they are saved, but have chosen to be disconnected from The Vine, the source of their oil to say nothing of their very lives!  Jesus makes it clear – those who do not abide in His Spirit, which is the Spirit of Christ, will be locked out of heaven and will face their eternity of being burned as dry branches in the lake of fire (Rev 20:11-15).  Why?  Because Jesus does not know them, a word that hearkens to the Hebrew word in the Old Testament, which is yada, meaning intimate knowledge.  The foolish virgins did not commune with Christ on an ongoing basis, i.e., they were satisfied with being disconnected from Him on an ongoing basis, yet they knew He was coming back.  Tragically what they had waited for was lost to them because of their lack of diligence to the Holy Spirit.  This is the very sad and hard truth that must be reckoned regarding the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What Does Being Saved Mean?

Paul states that “if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation” (Rom 10:9-10).  This is the truth without question, but we must embrace the full counsel of the Bible and what Jesus Himself taught, as outlined above during His earthly ministry.  Paul admonished the Corinthians telling them to, “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” (II Cor 13:5), literally meaning being unapproved.  The same concept repeated by Jesus in John15 and Matthew 25.  Dry branches and foolish virgins without oil in their lamps are unapproved, rejected and damned for eternity.

Paul is cautioning the Corinthian church to determine if they were connected, tapped into The Vine who is Christ Jesus, abiding in Him, because he knew what was at stake, which is why the Holy Spirit had him pen the warning for all of us.  Each believer, issued a lamp, must stay filled with oil that only the Holy Spirit can supply.  We may have given our lives to Christ, surrendered all to Him and yet miss Heaven because we drifted from Him not realizing our utter dependence upon Him.  Jesus spoke to the church in Laodicea that their true condition was they were blind, naked, wretched, miserable and poor (Rev 3:17).  Unless they realized their condition, and repented of being lukewarm, He would spit them out of His mouth (vs 16), a grave warning of eternal judgment.  This church was so disconnected from Him, that He had to instruct them to open the door and let Him in (vs 20)!  The church had allowed the oil in their lamp to go out, deceiving themselves that they were headed to heaven, when in fact they had become dry, i.e., blind, naked, wretched, miserable and poor branches ready for burning.

Being saved can be likened to the Hebrews being delivered from Egypt.  Both are supernatural experiences of deliverance from the Lord.  What the Hebrews were unable to do on their own, the Lord did through mighty acts of power that He demonstrated through Moses as he led them out of Egypt, through the desert, to the promise land.  For each of us, we are saved and delivered from spiritual death to life, by the sacrifice of the Lord’s body and His shed blood on the Cross.  We could not save ourselves from an eternal torment of fire, forever separated from the Father.  But what we could not do, Jesus the Christ did for us, becoming our righteousness.  He made the way for us to be reconnected from the Father, but if we drift away and stop following Him, refusing to take ongoing responsibility to keep our lamps full of oil, there is nothing more the Lord can do unless we repent.

Similar to the Hebrews that continually disbelieved the Lord, refused to obey His commands and would not listen to His voice, His warning remains for those who claim to be “followers of Christ,” but do not follow:

So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. “Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it… “Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. ‘Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. ‘Your children, however, whom you said would become a prey—I will bring them in, and they will know the land which you have rejected. ‘But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. ‘Your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses lie in the wilderness. ‘According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition. ‘I, the Lord, have spoken, surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be destroyed, and there they will die.’” (Numbers 14:20-23, 28-35; emphasis mine) 

The Importance of Abiding In Christ Cannot Be Overstated

From cover to cover the Bible declares that those who refuse to hear the voice of the Lord, who spurn His counsel, who disobey His word, refusing to take full responsibility to stay close to the Spirit of Jesus Christ, allowing themselves to be disconnected from The Vine, will be cut off and will not, I repeat, will not be saved; they will “know” (Gr#3045 – yada, lit. to know intimately) the Lord’s opposition.

You and I have been given the opportunity to come in and abide in the kingdom of God.  But if we choose to leave and spurn His salvation, treating His Spirit with reckless disregard, and walk in lawlessness by not following His voice, then we will be lost for eternity.  The choice is ours and it must be made on a daily basis.  Jesus taught that “if anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me” (Mt 16:24).  We must abide in Him because our lives depend on it.

Yet this is not the truth that the Church preaches.  It calls people to come down to the altar and receive Jesus as Lord, without teaching them the entire truth of the cost of their decision – and the decisions they will be called upon to make every day of their lives.  Salvation is a free gift but following Christ as His disciple costs us everything.  Our lives are no longer ours because we have surrendered our life to Him, His will, His purpose and His calling.

To take this further, Jesus taught that He would send the Holy Spirit who would guide them, and us, into all truth (Jn 16:7, 13).  In other words, the work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Jesus to us, who is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14:6).  To be cut off from the Person that Jesus said He would send, is to be cut off from the source of life and truth, who is Jesus.  But the Church does little if anything to help a new follower to connect with the Holy Spirit, primarily because it has disconnected itself from Him.  By in large, pastors and churches across America preach and teach an academic form of Christianity that isn’t Christian at all.  By academic, I mean the Church has replaced the Biblical concept of a Christian experiencing the Person of the Holy Spirit on an ongoing basis with mere symbolism and “getting one’s thinking right.”  In short, in many circles Christianity has become a religion of the mind with a list of dos and don’ts, along with how-to’s, loosely constructed from both the Old and New Testament forming dead religion.

The Church has become dry branches disconnected from The Vine, where the few believers coming to Christ are called to conform to the surrounding dryness found in the “Christians” around them.  For this, and many other reasons, the Holy Spirit says that none are more guilty than the Church at this time in history.  We have arrived at a period of time where great judgments are falling and will fall upon the Church and the nations.  It is a season that was defined by John the Baptist where he preached that wrath was coming (Lk 3:7), and that the Lord’s axe was already laid at the root of the trees that do not bear good fruit – they are to be cut down and thrown into the fire (Jn 3:9), an unveiled reference to eternal judgment and separation from God, reiterated by Jesus in Matthew 7:19.  I submit that the Lord is always prepared to use His axe, in fact His axe is in His hand along with His winnowing fork to clean His threshing floor to separate the wheat from the chaff, the latter set aside for unquenchable fire (Lk 3:17).

The blind are being led by the blind, and both have fallen into the ditch.  Why?  Because one cannot see or understand the truths of Scripture when disconnected from the Holy Spirit.  One will never experience the abundant life that Jesus proclaimed, without the Holy Spirit’s intervention, and the believer listening, yielding and obeying His voice which always brings revelation.  The Church believes that wherever they gather together, the Lord is obligated to meet with them because of Mt 18:20 which reads, “wherever two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst,” forgetting that this verse is found in the context of judgment and discipline.  But the Lord is not obligated to meet with, or speak to, rebels (Lev 26:14-39; Nu 14:20-35; I Sa 28:6; Eze 14:1-11; Mt 7:21-23) .  The Bible defines rebels as those who are lawless – those who do their own thing and refuse to hear His voice (Ex 20:20-23; Deut 9:23-24, 11:26-28; I Sa 15:23; Isa 3:8; Heb 12:25; Jude 11).

The Holy Spirit was sent to convict the world and the Church of sin, righteousness and judgment (Jn 16:8-11).  Many in the Church, including pastors and leaders, have consciously refused to allow the Holy Spirit to enter, speak or move in their assemblies, which cannot be called churches because the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, is not welcome.  They have moved in rebellion against the Spirit for far too long and have walked in the error of the five foolish virgins which is spiritual darkness.  Without the oil of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing but darkness.

All Christians, most certainly those who claim to be leaders, are called to walk in the light as He is in the light (I Jn 1:7).  A “church” without the Holy Spirit being allowed to be who He is (for He is GOD) and to do what the Bible teaches and illustrates that He does, is not a church but rather a gathering of people that worship false light – the quintessential expression and example of deception and darkness.

Church, the time to repent is now; today is the day of salvation (2 Cor 6:2).  Judgment for those who continue to lead souls into bondage and deception by keeping them from (cutting them off) the Holy Spirit are in grave danger of being cast into eternal hell fire.  Those who follow leaders/teachers of false light will follow them in.

For those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Mark C. Biteler