Sister Mu Zhen,
Peace to you in the Lord! I’m so happy you’ve written. You’ve mentioned in your letter that the day of the Lord’s coming is near, and that you are intentionally reading Scripture and praying more, and doing more work for the Lord so that you can be one of the wise virgins who is vigilantly awaiting the Lord’s coming. However, these things have not sharpened your spiritual acuity or increased your faith or love for the Lord. You’re confused about whether you can be counted as a wise virgin by seeking this way and would like to know what sort of practice you should have to be able to welcome the Lord. Sister Mu Zhen, this question you’ve raised is critical for whether or not we can welcome the Lord. All of us want to be wise virgins who can welcome His return and attend the banquet of the kingdom of heaven with Him—no one wants to be a foolish virgin and be cast aside by the Lord, but what kind of practice is actually being a wise virgin? I’d like to share my personal understanding of this issue—I hope it’ll be helpful for you.
Contents
1. Everything uttered by God is the truth. It can give people the sustenance they require, and provide them with a path of practice
2. God’s words all possess power and authority, and are an expression of God’s disposition
3. The words expressed by God can open up the mysteries behind God’s work of management
4. God’s words bring mankind’s corruption and inner thoughts into the light
The Lord Jesus said, “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened to ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps” (Matthew 25:1–4). From the Scripture we can see that the wise virgins are those who vigilantly await the Lord’s coming, proactively preparing oil for their lamps; they ultimately welcome the Lord’s return and attend the banquet of the kingdom of heaven. A lot of brothers and sisters read this passage and understand it as: As long as we frequently read the Scripture, pray watchfully, keep to the Lord’s way, apply ourselves to the Lord’s work and spread the gospel, that is preparing oil. Those who do all of these things are the wise virgins and when the Lord returns they will certainly attend the banquet with the Lord. But are what the Lord refers to as wise virgins really like this? Let’s look back on the Pharisees—they were constantly hoping for the coming of the Messiah, and for the sake of welcoming Him, they not only were very familiar with the Scripture and upheld the law and commandments, but they also often interpreted the Scripture for believers and prayed for them, and even spread the gospel of Jehovah God to the ends of the earth. So based on that kind of understanding, the Pharisees’ actions should have counted as wise virgins preparing oil, and they certainly should have been able to welcome the Messiah and gain God’s salvation. But was that really the case? When the Lord Jesus became flesh to work and speak, the Pharisees entirely lacked hearts of reverence for God, and even though they saw that His words and work possessed power and authority and had come from God, not only did they not seek and investigate them with an open mind, but instead stubbornly clung to their own notions and imaginings, thinking that anyone who wasn’t called Messiah wasn’t the Lord. They also delimited God’s work and words within the confines of the Scripture at that time, condemned the Lord’s work and words as outside the bounds of the Old Testament and thus rejected them. They also madly fabricated rumors, slandered, and blasphemed the Lord Jesus, ultimately nailing Him to the cross. Thus, they earned God’s damnation and punishment. We can see from the facts of the Pharisees’ resistance to God that just reading the Scripture, being vigilant in prayer, keeping to the Lord’s way, and working for the Lord does not count as being a wise virgin.
Then what really is a wise virgin? Let’s take a look at a verse from the Bible: The Lord Jesus said, “And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom comes; go you out to meet him” (Matthew 25:6). The Lord’s words show us that the wise virgins have hearts of reverence for God and that in the matter of welcoming the Lord’s coming, they focus on listening to the voice of the Lord. If they hear that someone has borne witness that the Lord has returned, and is working and uttering words, wise virgins won’t blindly pass judgment. Instead, they will actively seek and investigate this, seriously ponder it, and from this they are able to recognize the voice of the Lord, welcome His return, be raptured up before God’s throne, and attend the banquet of the kingdom of heaven. It’s just like the story of the Samaritan woman in the Bible. When she heard the Lord Jesus say to her, “For you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband: in that said you truly” (John 4:18) she recognized from His words that the Lord Jesus was Christ. This is because she knew that only God can see into all things and can give voice to the secrets people hide—He spoke out on all that she had done, and outside of God, no one possesses that kind of authority and power. This is how she recognized the Lord Jesus as Christ and that He was the Messiah who was to come. Just as the Samaritan woman said to the crowd, as recorded in the Bible: “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (John 4:29) We can see from this that the Samaritan woman’s wisdom lay in her ability to discern God’s voice. When she heard that this was God’s voice, she was able to accept it, and thus received the salvation of the Lord Jesus. The Bible shows us that Peter, Nathanael, and others were also able to recognize God’s voice through what the Lord Jesus said, and they determined that He was God Himself. This is why they gave up everything they had to follow the Lord—this kind of person is a wise virgin. However, those who are just as arrogant as the Pharisees were, who cannot hear God’s voice, who hear God’s voice but do not seek or accept it, or who even hate and reject the truth, are all foolish virgins and are destined to be cast out and eliminated by the Lord.
Now we understand from these facts that the most crucial point for being wise virgins is being able to hear God’s voice—this is what makes them intelligent. In Revelation Chapters 2 and 3, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” is mentioned a number of times, and in Revelation 3:20 it says: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” We can see from these prophecies that in the Lord’s return in the last days He will utter more words, making being attentive to listening to the Lord’s words and being able to recognize His voice extremely important. This also relates to the very important question of whether we’ll be able to welcome the Lord and be raptured up before His throne. So how can we recognize the voice of God, then? Next, let’s fellowship on several principles of how to discern the voice of God.
1. Everything uttered by God is the truth. It can give people the sustenance they require, and provide them with a path of practice
The Lord Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). And in the Gospel of John 1:1–2, it is written: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” In addition, there’s John 1:4: “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” God Himself is the truth, the way, and the life, and all of the words expressed by Him are the truth. They can provide sustenance for mankind in accordance with what they need and give them a path of practice. Looking back on the Age of Law, human beings didn’t understand what life is, nor did they know how to worship God. That’s why God issued the commandments through Moses, so that people could keep to the commandments and that would guide them in their lives, allowing them to learn how to worship God. Just as it says in the Ten Commandments: “I am Jehovah your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. You shall have none other gods before Me. … You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I Jehovah your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, And showing mercy to thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments” (Deuteronomy 5:6–7, 9–10). “You shall not kill. Neither shall you commit adultery. … Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s wife, neither shall you covet your neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is your neighbor’s” (Deuteronomy 5:17–18, 20–21). The laws and commandments showed people that they were created by God and that they ought to worship Him; they also learned that violating the laws and commandments is sinning. God also told people how to offer up sacrifices if they had sinned, and otherwise what sort of punishment they should receive. The people of the time received the sustenance of the truth and then had a specific path of practice. People’s lives and behaviors became more and more regulated and they began to have lives of proper humanity. In the Age of Grace when the Lord Jesus came to work, He spoke quite a lot targeting the needs of the people of the time, teaching them to confess and repent, that they should be forgiving and tolerant with others, to love others as themselves, and to be the light and the salt. Once people understood the truth they had new paths of practice when they encountered issues and this gave them sustenance for their lives—they were no longer constrained by the law. As an example, Peter asked the Lord Jesus, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” (Matthew 18:21). Jesus responded to Peter, “I say not to you, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22). We can see here that the words expressed by the Lord Jesus were all the truth, the way, and the life; they provided the sustenance of what people needed and gave them a path of practice. This is one characteristic of the words of God.
To be continue…
Knowing Almighty God 