[Elden1971]

THE WISE AND FOOLISH VIRGINS
HAS it ever occurred to you that as we are waiting for the appearing of the Bridegroom, the ministry should be in keeping with preparation for the meeting? The preparation is to be ready for Him, to be in fact the bride. It is not merely that you are saved, or that you are useful, but that you are in heart prepared to meet the Bridegroom! Personal love alone keeps us in this expectancy; love not only for His service to us, but for His love; then we feel we Cannot be apart from Him.
He draws our hearts to Himself by the way He assures us of His love for us, and that is by the way He seeks our perfection. No one can resist the love that desires to see “no spot in thee”. It is a wonderful thing to be in the sense of that before Him. What is the difference between the wise virgins and the foolish? Apparently they were all alike, they all had lamps, and when the cry came they all trimmed them; the wise took oil in their vessels, the foolish had lamps but no oil. It is remarkable that there should be a profession to go forth to meet the Bridegroom when there was no power of the Spirit of God to sustain them! How did this great lack occur? If they had believed in Christ risen they would have received the Holy Spirit; there cannot be any personal acquaintance with Christ without the Holy Spirit. “This spoke he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive”. We see by this parable that there may be a profession of going forth to meet Him by those who have no conscious link with Christ risen from the dead. Hence when the test came the lamps were going out. If we had a deeper sense of the absence of Christ here, we should rejoice more in the great truth that the other “Comforter” is come; the disciples in Acts had the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit! J B Stoney