The highways of sin and worldliness lead always and only to destruction. But now life has been revealed and offered, exclusively through the Savior who died on the cross and rose the third day in order that His children might live. It is a message that demands a whole new life, a new birth, new allegiance, everything becomes new! It is the message of God unto salvation for such as are being saved! The foolish virgins liked the sound of it, they may have even known it was true, but they loved the world more and thought they would have time later to get right with the Lord.

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

Country music singer Kenny Chesney begins his song “Everybody Wants to go to Heaven” with these lyrics:
Preacher told me last Sunday morningSon, you better start living rightYou need to quit the women and whiskeyAnd carrying on all night
Don’t you wanna hear him call your nameWhen you’re standing at the pearly gatesI told the preacher, “Yes I do”But I hope they don’t call todayI ain’t ready
Everybody wants to go to heavenHave a mansion high above the cloudsEverybody want to go to heavenBut nobody want to go now
Kenny Chesney, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven
Chesney highlights the attitude of the foolish virgins rather well in his song. The foolish virgins were in the kingdom. They were in church. They heard the word proclaimed. They heard of the glory that awaits God’s people in Heaven with Christ. And their response was, “Not Yet!” “I am having too much fun following my own pleasures on Earth. Perhaps later I will get right with the Lord. After all I want to go to Heaven… just not yet.” The foolish virgins thought they would have time later. Instead, the day and hour of salvation came and they passed it by. At midnight a cry was heard: Behold the Bridegroom is coming!
Looking at the modern church, it is easy to wonder if there are many foolish virgins today partly because of a lack of power, presentation, and persistence to the Gospel call. Is the call of the gospel an urgent matter in our churches? Perhaps we see so few new conversions in our churches because we are not pressing the matter home. Do the foolish virgins consider temporary pleasures to be of value because the Gospel trumpet is barely sounding?
All around us the world is dying. For those with no interest in Christ, the fires of hell are drawing nearer. The eternal punishment of sinners in that place of dreadful and endless torment is closer than it was yesterday. Diseases seem to be multiplying.
Read More
Related Posts:

Unfortunately, there are some who have succumbed to the lure of secular culture and promote those values as if biblical. And gladly in the midst of this, many lay elders, deacons, and congregational members remain faithful and speak to the current issues. They need to be heard, heeded, and respected.  Their “prophesying,” like Amos, on behalf of God’s Word and Christ’s commands deserves careful attention.

Amos is considered a minor prophet in the canon of Scripture. However, Amos asserted he is not a prophet: “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs.  But the Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord said to me, ‘Go prophesy to the people of Israel” (Amos 7: 14-15).
Amos had been accused by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel to King Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel . . . Then Amaziah said to Amos, ‘Go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah and there eat bread and there do your prophesying!  But no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence.” 
Then Amos replied to Amaziah, “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of a sycamore figs.  But the Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord said to me, ‘Go prophesy to My people Israel.”
In today’s language here is a layman addressing a warning to the people of God, and he is then rebuked by a cleric.  Does that not speak to some similar situations in the church today?  Many clerics are coming out of what are considered conservative, orthodox seminaries, yet with cultural ideologies that are counter to biblical principles and truth.  And so it is left to lay leaders to stand up for maintaining  biblical principles and truths.
The book of Amos is applicable to today and a reminder that God is sovereign and will choose whom he wills to address serious issues confronting his covenant people both in the Old Testament and in the universal Church today.
The Church in every generation is confronted with false teachings of every type. The present time is no exception where specific issues like race and sexual identity are front and center. By whom are these issues usually framed? Sadly, mostly by those who are clergy and the seminaries that influenced them. As a result, it falls to lay leaders lay church members to resist these incursions into the church. They desire to remain steadfast to the divine revelation of God regarding human depravity, that all, regardless of race or sexual identities, “…have fallen short of the glory of God.” And further, that God created male and female and instituted marriage by which they would express sexual relationships. 
There is no intent here to discount the importance of clergy in the life of the church; many are faithful to God’s divine revelation and historic, orthodox Christianity. Unfortunately, there are some who have succumbed to the lure of secular culture and promote those values as if biblical. And gladly in the midst of this, many lay elders, deacons, and congregational members remain faithful and speak to the current issues. They need to be heard, heeded, and respected.  Their “prophesying,” like Amos, on behalf of God’s Word and Christ’s commands deserves careful attention.
Here is my plea to church leaders: recognize the voices of the laity, don’t silence them; listen to them.  They too are God’s instruments and servants to keep Christ’s Bride faithful to her Groom.
The message for us today is listen to Amos, a simple herdsman and grower of sycamore figs, not to Amaziah, the priest and the cleric; Amos is a forerunner and model for today’s Church. And to lay leaders: be faithful as Amos to your churches today.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
Related Posts:

According to Paul, we should not take matters into our own hands. It’s not that there’s not justice to be served; there very well might be. But it’s not for you or I to administer it because we aren’t capable of doing so in a true and good and noble way. This belongs to the Lord. When we execute our own sense of vengeance, whether big or small, we are expressing our lack of faith that God can and will do it on His own. We are communicating instead that our way is better. But God is just. Justice will be served, and it will be served in a far better and more appropriate way that we could ever deliver it.

Jesus isn’t interested in the minimum. When we have enemies, we might reasonably just try and stay away from them, but Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to love them. When we are wondering how many people we reasonably have to love and care for, Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to recognize every person in our pathway as a neighbor. When we are wondering just how many of the commands in Scripture reasonably apply to us, Jesus won’t settle for that. He calls us to take up our cross daily and follow Him.
No, Jesus isn’t interested in the minimum of anything. In so many ways, Jesus calls us to the unexpected. Unexpected love, unexpected sacrifice, unexpected loyalty. So it is when we come to the subject of revenge. Here’s how He put it:
You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you (Matt. 5:38-42).
We might reasonably assume that we can give a little payback here and there to those who have wronged us, but here again Jesus pushes us well beyond the minimum. According to Him, not only should we not pay others back for what they’ve done, but we should so forego our need for revenge that we move into generosity. And boy, that’s a hard thing, because we feel that desire down deep in our souls.
We have been treated unfairly, maligned unjustly, and pushed down unkindly, and someone ought to pay for it. How do we deal with that deep down desire for revenge? We fight it with truth – specifically, with truth about who God is. Here are four such truths to snuff out that flickering flame of vengeance in our hearts:
1. God is active.
Saul had been wreaking havoc on the early church. There was a literal trail of bodies in his wake, and he was just getting wound up. But that all changed with a dramatic encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road and the great enemy of the church became her most ardent advocate.
I’m reminded of how, in those first days after his conversion, the early Christians did not know whether to trust him or not. Who could blame them?
Read More