SUBSIDIZING IMPROVIDENT FOOLS

by Gary North

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto 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. While the bride- groom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bride- groom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut (Matthew 25:1 10).

Some people are foolish. They know that their lives must end, but they do not prepare for judgment. They have lamps common grace - but they do not seek to buy oil for them. (Oil in the New Testament is associated with the Holy Spirit.) Their lamps can give no light without oil. Fools can sit around trimming lamp wicks all they want; they will not be suppliers of light in the night.

The context of this passage is the marriage supper of the lamb: the final judgment. It should be obvious that this final condition of the foolish virgins - locked out - is representative of earthly judgments, most obviously God's judgment on Old Covenant Israel, which is the context of the previous passages. What takes place in eternity is analogous to what takes place in history, except that in eternity, common grace is withdrawn. The foolish virgins do not get a second chance.

SECOND CHANCES

Jews of the post-crucifixion era were offered a second

chance, but only on the basis of their incorporation into the church (Rom. 11). Old Covenant Israel ceased to exist in A.D. 70. God is not a bigamist. He has only one Bride. When Jesus comes for His bride in the final judgment, He does not bring a second bride into His chambers.

The issue here is the extension of grace to individuals who have acted foolishly. The parable deals with the final judgment. The wise virgins do not share their oil with the foolish ones. The indication is that the Holy Spirit closes access to salvation in the final hours of history. This refers to the final rebellion of Satan (Rev. 20:7 10). The sheep and the goats will separated in the final moments of history in preparation for their separation in eternity (Matt. 25:32). The foolish virgins are goats in sheep's clothing. They live among the sheep, but they are not sheep. The mark of their judicial status as goats is the locked door of the marriage supper.

The response of the wise virgins is to refuse to share their oil. Why? Does the Bridegroom need the light? No; but He deserves it. The lamps have a dual purpose: shedding light for the path and honoring the returning Bridegroom. The lamps are to lighten the pathway for the virgins, as they march toward the marriage supper. It is like a processional. The wise virgins have no oil to spare because they have no time to spare.

This is a matter of honoring God. The supplies of oil are limited in the final day. Time has nearly run out. By sending the foolish virgins to the market, the wise virgins condemned them. They acted as judges against foolishness. They knew that the Bridegroom was at hand, yet they gave really bad advice from the point of view of the foolish virgins. The foolish virgins, being fools, took it. They imagined that they could buy their way into the kingdom at this late date. They paid no attention to the clock. They assumed that there was more time available, since there always had been in the past. They did not perceive that time had just about run out. The day of grace was ending.

What about the covenantal transition from Old to New? There was a time of common grace for Old Covenant Israel. It lasted until A.D. 70. Then it ended. Jesus' previous warning in Matthew 24 dealt with that coming in judgment. It was the final judgment for Old Covenant Israel.

What about great eras of transition? Do the same rules apply? Not completely, for common grace extends until the end. Those who are the recipients of common grace before the crisis may continue to be recipients during and after. This grace either condemns them in eternity - making things worse for them - or leads to their conversion. Paul was clear on the matter of the condemning power of grace:

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head (Rom. 12:19 20).

But should we feed our enemies when our own lives are on the line? Are we to risk our own survival for the sake of covenant-breakers, whether visibly consistent or wrapped in sheep's clothing? The two passages seem to be in conflict. The parable of the ten virgins indicates that we should not subsidize foolishness. Paul's words indicate that we should.

It depends on our goal and the amount of our resources. The wise virgins had limited quantities of oil. The Bridegroom's return had been announced, but they feared that they did not have enough oil for all the lamps. It was a matter of conservation. Paul's words have to do with vengeance. We are not to execute negative sanctions on our enemies in terms of own personal authority. By refusing to feed our enemies, we are seeking to impose our own negative sanctions. This is wrong, he said. The judgment is God's. Feed them and thereby condemn them.

The two situations are different. The first involves a legitimate concern over insufficient supplies. The second involves no such concern. The closed hand is here the equivalent of a fist: a means of punishment.

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

The wise virgins were unwilling to share. They perceived that time was in short supply, but oil was perhaps even shorter. They refused to risk their oil for the sake of those who had failed to plan ahead. The temporal short-sightedness of the foolish virgins could be overcome only by a source of light at the midnight hour: oil. Without oil, the righteous might stumble on the way to the festivities. They might not be light-bearers at the great procession. All ten might stumble in the dark, rather than only five. Better to conserve the source of light by five and insure their safe path and also the glorification of the Bridegroom.

This setting is the consummate midnight hour, in both senses. It is the end of history. But what about the end of each man's history? This, too, is a time of consummation. It marks the end of a man's work in history to extend either God's kingdom or Satan's.

To share the source of life with foolish virgins in a time of famine is itself foolish. If the wise man has food or water or whatever sustains life, and the foolish man asks the wise man to surrender his claim to a portion of the wealth, the proper response is to send the fool away in search of the scarce items. What is the mark of the fool in this case? A refusal to heed the prior warning of the limits on time and oil. The fool has had both time and money, but he has refused to invest wisely. He has squandered both money and time. He has squandered his common grace. Now, he wants more. He wants it as a gift from those who had planned ahead and who had laid up sufficient oil for themselves.

Why should the wise man share with a fool who heard the warning, but paid no attention? There is no legitimate legal compulsion here in the parable. There is also no implied moral compulsion. Whatever the prepared man shares with the unprepared man is exclusively a matter of grace. The unprepared person has no claim on the wealth of the prepared man.

But what about the uninformed person who had been given no warning? He also has no claim, but he has an excuse: he had not heard of the time limit. He did not know that he would be called upon to light his own path with his own oil.

THE YEAR 2000

Those who heard about the imminent crisis and who scoffed are, by implication, the goats of Matthew 25. They may be sheep or goats, but they have acted as goats. They may even have scorned those who built up a supply of food or other assets in preparation for a crisis. "God will take care of me!" they may have announced. But what they really meant was this: "You will take care of me, so add some more supplies at your expense; I'll be on your doorstep in late 1999 if there is trouble. Meanwhile, it's eat, drink, and be merry with my money."

I have heard from numerous people that when they told Christian friends about Y2K, the friends smirked, shook their heads, dismissed the whole idea as absurd, and then added, "But if there's trouble, I'll be at your place." They think they are being clever. They are too clever by half. In their cleverness, they have the right to starve in 2000.

Those who have prepared do not know how long the crisis will last. We are heading toward a turning point in history. It will be a time of great shortages. We must learn to survive in a world for which we have not been trained, where the division of labor is low. Overnight, we must learn new skills. Our capital will be stretched thin. Like the wise virgins, we will have nothing to spare with fools who ignored the warnings.

Every resource that we give to a fool cannot be used to provide help to a person who did not see the crisis coming because no one warned him. Every piece of bread handed to the formerly smirking fool is food taken out of the mouth of someone who might have prepared, had he only known. When it comes time for showing mercy, show it first to those who are morally blameless for their helpless condition.

What if the formerly smirking fool is a Christian brother? Now, he is crying for mercy. Count the cost. Do you estimate that you have enough for yourself and your family? "But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel" (I Tim. 5:8). If you are not sure of your ability to fulfill this legal demand, send the beggar away. It is not your responsibility to feed those whom you had warned.

The beggar is coming to you because he knew that you were preparing. As Candace Turner says, They will not prepare, but they will remember. The beggar is getting to you twice: by ridiculing you in the good times, when sound advice appears to be foolish because it hampers a life style of profligacy, and then by taking food from you in the bad times because you were not misled by the dream of unlimited time and unlimited oil. The true fool wants it both ways: the right to sneer at good judgment in the days of wine and roses, and to be fed by the provident in the day of the locust.

CONCLUSION

You must be ready to say no to foolish people, no matter what the content of their confession is. The five foolish virgins had a good confession, too; they just did not match their confession with good actions. They were hearers of the word, but not doers.

The gracious man with assets must decide who should receive common grace from God by means of his wealth. He should ask himself this: "Who is most likely to extend God's kingdom in history?" That person should be the recipient of aid. A scoffing, smirking, chortling, head shaking, improvident, consumption- addicted Christian is not my first choice. If he also added, "if things get that bad, I'll be on your doorstep," he will find that he has come to the wrong bread line. My goal is not to seek revenge; it is to conserve assets for the provident poor who are caught through no fault of their own. I shall withhold aid from the smirk-masters, not as a negative sanction, but as a means of extending positive sanctions to those who are wiser about the nature of God's corporate covenant sanctions in history. I shall not knowingly subsidize fools with the wealth that God has entrusted to me.

But I might sell them some food if the price is right.

END

THAT YOU MAY PROSPER: DOMINION BY COVENANT

by Rev. Ray R. Sutton

In the history of Christianity there has never been a theologian who has explained to anyone's satisfaction just what the Biblical covenant is. We have heard about "covenant theology" since Calvin's day, but can anyone tell us just what Calvin said the covenant is, how it works, and what common features are found in every Biblical covenant? Can anyone describe just exactly what the seventeenth-century Puritans had in mind when they used the word? They couldn't.

Have you read anywhere that the covenant is an inescapable concept, that it is never a question of "covenant vs. no covenant," that it is always a question of whose covenant? Has anyone explained how all societies have imitated the Bible's covenant model, or how Satan has adapted a crude imitation of the Biblical covenant?

Until Ray Sutton cracked the code of the Bible's covenant structure in late 1985, no one had gone into print with a clear, Biblically verifiable model of the covenant - or if anyone did, no trace of his work has survived. Covenant theologians have never adopted it.

You can check this for yourself. Read any book dealing with the Biblical covenant. See if it explains: (1) the structure of the covenant; (2) the uses of the covenant model in Bible history; (3) the application of the same covenant model in Bible texts, Old and New Testaments; (4) the history of the covenant's impact in the West; and (5) the continuing authority and importance of the Biblical covenant in modern life: church, state, family, business, etc.

Utilizing careful and detailed Biblical exposition, and practical and lucid Biblical application, Sutton shows just how God desires for us to obtain our promised victory. But he not only shows us all the hows of the covenant, he shows us all the whats, whens, wheres, and whys as well.

Whether your interest is theological or practical, philosophical of personal, sociological or devotional, That You May Prosper is certain to be an eye-opening contribution to your Christian walk.

347 pp., indexed, bibliography, hardback, regular price: $15.95
 

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