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THE PURPOSE OF PARABLES:
Parables are a Judgment on unbelieving Israel. Withholding mysteries. The same with tongues which are also a judgment but only on unbelievers, words they cannot understand.

Matthew 25:1 “Then the kingdom of heaven

Identification: The Kingdom of Heaven (ouranos g3772 root meaning “a mountain”)

• It’s the rock that grew into a mountain (kingdom) and covered the world when it hit Nebuchadnezzar’s statue on its feet.
  • Daniel 2:35 And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain (kingdom) and filled the whole earth.
• The Kingdom of Heaven is the one that comes to earth. It is the one John the Baptist proclaimed “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”
• The Kingdom of Heaven is the kingdom Jesus taught His disciples to pray for: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

• The kingdom of Heaven is the Millennium

The kingdom of heaven is God’s kingdom on earth when Jesus reigns in Jerusalem for 1,000 years. The kingdom of God is God’s kingdom in the heavenlies which also envelopes the kingdom of heaven.

• Revelation 20:4 The Saints Reign with Christ 1,000 Years
  And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

This kingdom is for those who missed the rapture, then believed in the identity of Jesus, endured the tribulation, and are living in the millennium. This kingdom refers to and focuses on the five foolish virgins who did not go in the rapture.

shall be likened to ten virgins

• Identification: Ten
  • Ten is the number of a whole. Ten is the number for accountability and judgment:
    • It is a tithe, a tenth of one’s income set aside for God.
    • The ten kings in Revelation who give their power to the beast and are of “ONE” mind.
    • The Ten Commandments (Bridges the Gap between God and Man, the spiritual and the worldly, and the “Thou Shalls” with the “Thou Shalt Nots”)
    • The Ten Virgins
    • During the millennium, ten men from every nation will revere the Jews as priests of God on the earth. (Zech 8:23)
    • There were ten plagues on the pharaoh of Egypt.
    • Ten Times God reproached Job (Job 19:3)
    • The ten Arab nations in the war of Gog and Magog (Ps 83 and Ezek 32)
    • Nebuchadnezzar’s statue with ten toes
    • Esther has Haman’s ten sons, which were enemies of the Jews and hung. (Esther 9:13)
      Foundation, Cornerstone
  • Ten is the Foundation stone, the Cornerstone.Foundation of creation: the Cornerstone
    • Genesis contains the phrase “God said” ten times concerning His creation.
  • Ten is the number for God’s Work
    • God created man with ten fingers and ten toes.

• Virgins are those who have never committed idolatry as opposed to “a harlot” whom God likens to an “idolater”.
  • Identification: Virgin
    virgin ^G3933 parthenos (Greek)
    Isaiah 7:14 ^h5959 almâ (Hebrew)
    Symbolically, a virgin is one who is not an idolater.
    
    The Ten Virgins are a whole of something which is divided into five and five; five wise and five foolish.

who took their lamps

The Lamps are the Word of God.

• Psalm 119:105 Your Word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
• John 1:14 The Word Becomes Flesh – And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,

and went out

These are those who will “go out” to meet the bridegroom, instead of the bridegroom coming to them. Therefore; it represents the Rapture.

to meet the bridegroom.

The bridegroom is Jesus, the bride is the city Jerusalem. The place God chose as His dwelling from the beginning and where Jesus will reign during the Millennium. The bridesmaids are friends of Jerusalem.

Matthew 25:² Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

• The number “ten” is to be “whole”; healthy. To be deficient, not “whole” is compared to being withered “unwhole”.
  • Jesus healed a Jewish man (symbolic of the nation Israel) who had a withered hand in Mark 3:5. Five fingers were healthy and five fingers were withered. When Jesus healed his withered hand, all ten fingers were whole. Jesus literally and metaphorically made him “whole”.

• One of the meanings of the number five means to make a choice.
• Five of the virgins were wise (healthy-whole-making a good decision) and five of the virgins were foolish (making a bad decision – deficient of wisdom-deficient of the Holy Spirit).

All “ten” have the Word of God, have never committed idolatry, and are awaiting the bridegroom. However; five of them have a problem.

The “Light” is the testimony of Jesus, the Gospel. Light is produced by oil which is the Holy Spirit.

Five that have the Word of God, that have never committed adultery run out of their oil.

Matthew 25:³ Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them.

• Those who were foolish had the scripture, but were lacking the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 25:⁴ but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

• Those who were wise had the scripture and were filled with the Holy Spirit.

• The anointing oil of the Holy Spirit.
  The wise are those who live by faith; those who are sealed with the Holy Spirit of grace. They are the children of the father of faith, Abraham. Living by faith is believing God to the extent that one follows God’s instructions.

• Romans 4:2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

The story of the Ten Virgins is the description of the Rapture. Five will go out to meet the bridegroom and five will be left behind. The wedding Feast lasts seven days/years to coincide with the seven year tribulation. (As in Daniel’s 70 weeks where days equal years)

To fully understand this parable one must understand how God interacts with Jews under the old covenant and Gentiles under the new covenant. Under the old covenant it was for Jews only with Gentile exceptions such as Rahab and Ruth. Under the new covenant, because the Jews are blinded in part, it ends up being Gentiles with Jewish exceptions.

Under the old covenant God called the Jews His wife. Under the new covenant the Gentiles are called the Bride of Christ. Like Jacob, God has two wives. A must read is Topic: Jacob’s two wives. Without this understanding nothing else makes sense.

Rachel is symbolic of the Jewish wife while Leah is symbolic of the Gentile wife. Rachel is Jacob’s 1st love but his 2nd wife. Leah is Jacob’s 2nd love but his 1st wife. Likewise, when the Gentile Bride of Christ is taken in the rapture, the one who was given the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, there will be a seven year wedding feast…As Laban told Jacob – Finish Leah’s wedding “week” and then I will give you this one “Rachel” also.

If the Jews are called God’s wife in the Old Testament, then why do they have a wedding feast after the Gentiles represented by Leah, like Rachel?

When God met Moses on Mount Sinai, the wedding document was made by God’s laws, but it is an “espoused” marriage, like Mary and Joseph. The wedding does not take place until the bridegroom appears.

The Jewish wedding will take place on earth after the tribulation when every last Jew is saved, after the Gentile wedding in heaven of seven years.

The Parable begins on earth with the friends of the bride (Jerusalem) but two types of virgins (pure from idolatry),

• The bride is unmentioned but she is the holy city Jerusalem: Jerusalem is the mother of faith for Jews and Gentiles.
  • Note: Abraham was the anointed father of faith, Isaac was offered as a sacrifice to God on the mount where Jerusalem was built and where the temple will be once again. Isaac was offered on the same day as when the Jews left Egypt, although many years earlier. The day the Jews left Egypt was Passover. Abraham offered Isaac on “Passover” but a RAM (male sheep) was his substitute. This male sheep had a crown of thorns because his head was caught in the thorns. Isaac was offered on Mount Mariah, the same mountain as the place where the temple would be built.
  • The Passover lamb was inspected for spot or blemish between the first Jewish month Nisan 10 and Nisan 14, or three days. It took three days for Abraham and Isaac to travel to Mount Mariah; Isaac had been chosen as the sacrifice on Nisan 10, the two traveled for three days, and Isaac was offered on Nisan 14 in the same place that would offer sacrifices when Solomon builds the temple.
  • Furthermore; it took three days for Abraham and Isaac to return to their home. It took three days for Jesus to rise from the dead, to return to His “home”.
    
• Five bridesmaids are Jewish and five are Gentiles. Both waiting for the bridegroom. Both have lamps – the Word of God. Neither are idolaters.

• The five virgin bridesmaids with the Light “went out” to meet the bridegroom (Jesus), a type of Rapture, as opposed to the five virgin bridesmaids who “went out” to get oil.
  
• Five have oil (the Holy Spirit) and Five brought no oil (the Holy Spirit).
  • On Pentecost the law was given to Moses.
  • On Pentecost the spirit (Holy Spirit) was given to believers.

⁵ But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.

⁶ “And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!’

• When the bridegroom comes, it is a time of darkness. Only those who have oil are able to enter into the wedding hall. Five are left behind.
• Notice the virgins “GO OUT” to meet Him which is the Rapture. But: when Jesus returns at His 2^nd advent, He will “COME” to earth. The foolish virgins are left behind and go through the tribulation until Jesus “returns”. At that point, they enter the thousand year reign of Jesus on earth.
• The thousand year reign is called “THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN” in which Jesus reigns on earth in Jerusalem. Jesus began the parable with “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

⁷ Then all those (wise) virgins arose and trimmed their lamps.

• There is care involved in trimming the wick (our hearts), which draws the oil up from the storage reservoir, so that the flame will be clean and bright. … A properly trimmed wick when lit, the wick should burn cleanly all the way up to the highest flame it can make.

⁸ And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’

• Each person is responsible for their own relationship with God.

⁹ But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’

• Each person must be prepared. “I can’t give it to you because you are responsible for your own preparedness.”

¹⁰ And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut.

• There is always a “cost”. Jesus said to take up the cross and do as He does. The baptism of believers is to be baptized as a death to self so that one may be resurrected, like Jesus.
• The door to the age of grace is shut at the rapture. It is as slammed shut and sealed as Noah’s ark. Once shut, the Age of Grace is over. Now the flood of the tribulation is inevitable. Now the cost for salvation is not taking the mark of the beast and either being a “remnant” who survives or being beheaded as a martyr.
  • Hebrews 2:3 how shall we escape (the tribulation) if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him,

¹¹ “Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’

• At the time of Noah, when the rains came, everyone nearby would have beat on the door of Noah’s ark begging “Let us in!” But the ark was “lifted up” by the rain. (One of the Jewish meanings of the word rain is “teacher”, or faithful teacher, meaning the Messiah. Hosea 6:3 Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, Like the latter and former rain to the earth.)

¹² But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’

• The biblical sense of the words “to know” is a sexual experience of knowing intimately, like the honeymoon. The Holy Spirit is an inward experience.
• Jesus does not “know” them (yet). Notice in verse 13 Jesus is not called the bridegroom, He is called the Son of Man. This is Jesus’ coming at the end of the tribulation when He comes to redeem His second “wife” the Jews, at Armageddon. There will be a second marriage feast (like Jacob when he also got Rachel)

¹³ “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.

	SUBJECTS:	THE SYMBOLISM:	VERSES:
1	The Bridegroom	Jesus	Luke 5:35 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”
2	The Number 10	A Whole	ALL Ten
3	The Number 5	Half of a whole	A Decision, a Choice
4	Sleep and Slumber	Not being on alert	Genesis 28:16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
5	Virgins	Not idolaters: those who are expecting the Bridegroom, the Messiah	Ten who have the Word of God.
6	Lamps	The Word of God. What good is the Word of God without the Holy Spirit to understand it? See Oil.	Psalm 119:105 Your Word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
7	Oil	Holy Spirit: The flame of the Lord. The Light of the lampstand.	Exodus 27:20 The Care of the Lampstand – “And you shall command the children of Israel that they bring you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to cause the lamp to burn continually. Zechariah 4:12 And I further answered and said to him, “What are these two olive branches that drip into the receptacles of the two gold pipes from which the golden oil drains?”
8	Virgin With Oil	New Covenant	Matthew 9:15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast. virgin Matt 1:23 G3933 parthenos (Greek)
9	Virgin Without Oil	Old Covenant	After the tribulation: Isaiah 62:5 For as a young man marries a virgin, So shall your sons marry you; And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, So shall your God rejoice over you. virgin h5959 almâ (Hebrew)