Ephesians 2:8-9 ⁸ For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:⁹ Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Revelation 22:¹⁰ And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.¹¹ He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.¹² And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

Virgins are a symbol of Christians, so all ten of the virgin mentioned in Matthew 25 are symbolic of Christians… and the oil that will light the darkness is spiritual preparedness. 5 virgins expected the darkness and prepared for it with oil…5 didn’t prepare for the darkness.

WHO DOESN’T PREPARE FOR THE DARKNESS THE WORD OF GOD WARNS US IS COMING OVER AND OVER AGAIN?

Someone who never read those warnings because they don’t think they are going to be here for them. Someone who has given the 15 % of the bible that speaks of end times a low priority, possibly without realizing they are ranking the scriptures as “essential” and “non-essential” or even “too confusing” or “God will understand if I don’t read it because he knows I _(fill in the blank)___” or ” I won’t be here anyway so why bother” or ” I’m saved so it doesn’t matter if I read any part of the word, I got heaven in the bag.” or “it’s so scary” or “my pastor said I don’t need to know all of that.” so many reason the wicked one will gladly give you to keep you from developing end time faith and endurance. Just like our human nature, our knee jerk reactions to the idea of global tribulations is to tend to the fleshly needs, so people stockpile food and supplies… but neglect to build the enduring faith needed to endure to the end.

I know Christians who don’t read the word, have no interest in learning the complicated stuff in scriptures and still operate through their feelings which they mistakenly believe is how God directs his children. Left me be clear, operating through feelings includes anything that you use to direct your path outside of the word of God. God doesn’t talk to us through our thoughts… he doesn’t give us good feelings or bad feelings to show us things…he gives us his WORD and the Holy Spirit to show us what the word means…even discernment comes through knowing the Word…if you don’t know what God says, how will you discern when someone is ever so slightly changing the truth because a slight change can start a huge error. A person with discernment will catch the shift and call it out when the Holy Spirit confronts the error by bringing up the verse that exposes it as false. This doesn’t happen when a person has no scriptures sown into their spirits. You can’t be reminded of something you never experienced… The Holy Spirit can’t bring scripture to your rememberence that you never learned.

If a bad situation arrises in the life of a Christian the Holy Spirit will start bringing up scripture to guide our path. In this way we have God our father coming to our rescue with wisdom and knowledge on how to handle the situation. This will not happen if the believer has failed to study the word of God. They may come up with a godly response, but the faith that gives us endurance to support it won’t be there because FAITH COMES BY HEARING (KNOWING) THE WORD OF GOD. Romans 10:17. When you know the word yourself because you studied it and stand on it by faith you’re stronger than when you are standing on a sermon on the topic. Remember, Eve knew God personally and heard what he said about the tree she was never to eat from (Genesis 2:17)…and still the wicked one twisted the word of God so that Eve was deceived (Genesis 3). It’s utterly prideful to even think you can just power your way through a spiritual battle because you resolved to do so from fleshly emotions…you’ll have as much success lifting yourself off the floor to a standing position by grabbing your own belt buckle and pulling it upward. End time endurance will take a strong knowledge of the truth because deception is going to be rampant and more cunning than anything we have ever seen. Matthew 24:24 ²⁴ For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. These deceivers are not THE Antichrist that Jesus comes to destroy…. these are antichrists, plural, that teach false doctrine and give false prophecies to keep the people from the truth that will set them free and empower them with the true word of God and enduring faith through the Holy Spirit. These deceivers are many and teach different things, but all have one goal, to keep you from knowing the truth.

God has taken his time to give us his Word to live by…we don’t have to wonder what Jesus would do, his word tells us… and we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us now… to bring the powerful word of God up to guide us through any situation. We can talk to God and he will light up our paths. Psalms 119:105 ¹⁰⁵ Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. The ten virgins, only 5 of them had oil for their lamps…only 5 were prepared for the coming darkness…only 5 were able to follow the Bridegroom when he called. The other 5 were not ready… they were careless in their preparations. They knew that darkness was coming, but they didn’t think it would come before the Bridegroom called them to the marriage…they took the lamps, but not vessels with oil to light the lamps and illuminate their way. These virgins had not developed a way to endure the darkness.

So here is what I propose… Read the whole word of God… don’t skip the uncomfortable parts. We should read Revelation and Daniel with the same hope we read the other text. Stay in balance, read and grow in all parts of the Word. I know people who don’t read anything regarding the tribulation and I know people who only read about the tribulation… both are in a ditch on opposite sides of the same road.

The last thing I want to mention is what I see often in fellow believers that needs to stop. Sometimes we get a belief that we never actually deep dived personally. We’ve learning the doctrine from other people, but never actually unpacked it in scripture… or if we did, we carried the errors our teachers taught into our studies. There are many doctrines that need to be challenged this way. My short list are:

• manifesting/little gods/word of faith/speaking things into existence (these are often taught by taking verses out of context and creating a whole doctrine from these isolated verses. Any doctrine from God is supported by other verses and does not conflict with other Scripture, either in the Word or in the examples found in the Word. We see no examples of believers manifesting, speaking things into existence, or living opulent lifestyles.)
• salvation by grace alone or salvation by works after accepting Jesus (If we are going to hold on to a belief and call it our own we should be able to defend it, not with a single verse, but with several verses we know well and truly understand, not because it’s just how we always believed and how we were taught, but because we KNOW IT having been convinced by the Word. It’s also ok not to claim you are convinced one way or another until you actually are…there is never any shame in waiting for the Holy Spirit to show you through the Word…sometimes there are other things that need to be understood before it all clicks together…as long as you are always moving forward towards learning the truth. Being able to defend your position isn’t just so you can teach it to others, its to have your own feet solidly planted on the sound doctrine from the word. I’m been on both sides of this one too and it isn’t until the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our understanding that a person learns the truth. This comes through seeking it in the Word and prayer.)
• end times- All of it. (There are great teachers that can help open up things, but we need to do the actual work of studying the text ourselves. Back in the 70’s and 80’s there was a huge interest in the Book of Revelation due largely to Hal Lindsey and his book The Late Great Planet Earth and others like it. The problem with this is the burnout it left behind due to the fear it produced…people had spiritual adrenal exhaustion largely because Lindsey took interpretive liberties where he should never have done so. He taught the fearful part, not the fact that the book of Revelation is literally the Book of Revealing JESUS…it’s a love story…a book of salvation and promise…but because of the way Lindsey presented it and then the Theif in the Night series followed suite…it’s viewed as fearful and horrible by the very people who should be filled with hope and faith by it. The Lamb of Glory… Jesus…is coming to claim his throne…he’s going to redeem his servants… and put an end to darkness and sin. I know the events are going to be hard to endure and terrifying at times, but we are not left without help…and the end is an eternity with Jesus. Ignoring these passages doesn’t make them go away.)
• The pretribulation rapture/ no pretribulation rapture (You must be able to defend and to clearly teach your position ENTIRELY though scripture with no outside teachings the way all other doctrines are taught. You must be able to scripturally address and clearly show your position on all scriptural challenges that oppose your position. Clinging to any belief because you have always been taught that, powerful men of God teach it, the sermons you heard sounded like they were accurate, it feels right, it gives you peace, or whatever reason you have… if you cling to it for any reason other than you have personally studied it out and are ready to give all men an answer (1 Peter 3:15) you are a partaker in your own deception. While this isn’t an essential doctrine of salvation , it can potentially hobble Christians and cause them severe spiritual distress in addition to rendering them ineffective in spreading the Gospel of Jesus in the Tribulation… primarily because of the disallusionment and the falling away that follows. If you have confidence in whatever you believe you should also have the bravery to deconstruct your belief to see if it’s sound. Start with this question: Would I still hold this same belief if I weren’t invested in the outcome? If you need your beliefs to be true for your own comfort and you refuse to even consider you are incorrect in your beliefs FOR WHATEVER REASON- what would you call that?
  This one is tough… I’ve debated this with pastors and they always defer to the superiority of their semenary training…but they won’t actually deconstruct what they believe nor will they teach it using only scipture. After all, I’m just a woman with no formal training. The ones with the semenary training that challenge the pretrib rapture belief get crickets from those teacheres they’ve invited to debate the topic, these semenary scholars won’t even respond most of the time. I’ll end this with the answer to the question, would I change my opinion on this doctrine if I was show proof I wrong? YES…. I’d LOVE to be proven wrong… I don’t want to be here for famines… or war… or out of control sinfulness , natural disasters, lawlessness, being put to death for belief in Jesus…. I’d rather be with Jesus…DUH! But, part of dying to self is refusing a comfortable lie to embrace the hard truth.)