At that time the Kingdom of heaven will be like this. Once there were ten young women who took their oil lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and the other five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any extra oil with them, while the wise ones took containers full of oil for their lamps. The bridegroom was late in coming, so they began to nod and fall asleep.
It was already midnight when the cry rang out, "Here is the bridegroom! Come and meet him!" The ten young women woke up and trimmed their lamps.
Then the foolish ones said to the wise ones, "Let us have some of your oil, because our lamps are going out."
"No, indeed," the wise ones answered, "There is not enough for you and for us. Go to the store and buy some for yourselves."
So the foolish ones went off to buy some oil; and while they were gone, the bridegroom arrived. The five who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the door was closed.
Later the others arrived. "Sir, sir! Let us in!" they cried out.
"Certainly not! I don't know you," the bridegroom answered.
And Jesus concluded: Watch out, then, because you do not know the day or the hour.
As we've pointed out before, Jesus spoke more about the Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of heaven) than any other single topic. Here He puts the warnings concerning the end times that we have been looking at into a context of the Kingdom.
Since learning to be Kingdom people and learning to recognize the Kingdom and learning to live in the Kingdom is of primary importance to Jesus (and therefore to us as apprentices of Jesus), He points out something obvious yet profound. A time is coming, we don't know the day or hour, but it is coming, when we will no longer be able to learn about or learn to live in the Kingdom. A time is coming when we are either in or out. Either we will have learned and will be living according to the principles of the Kingdom, or it is never going to happen. Right now is the the learning time. When the learning time is over, it will be too late to learn.
Jesus' warning is "Watch out!" If we spend this time that we are to be learning to love God and others manipulating others to love ourselves, time will run out and the lessons we need to live in the Kingdom will go unlearned and our entire purpose for having been created will have been irretrievably squandered.
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