By reading the context of Matthew 25:1-13, we can see that to be watchful is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If we are not being filled all day long, we are not being watchful. This is serious. I feel that now the Lord is working among us and taking a new step to move among us. We call this the present-day move of the Lord, but we have to realize that this is the recovery. As saved believers, we should be people who are watching all the time by being filled with the Spirit. Every day our lamp is burning and every day our soul, our being, is filled with the extra portion of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit is the saturating Spirit, which we need to allow to saturate our entire being from within our spirit to reach and even to penetrate our soul. Then we are surely watchful persons, getting ourselves ready for His coming back. We Christians have two kinds of statuses before the Lord—we are virgins in life and we are slaves for our service to the Lord. We must be watchful in life and faithful in service to be ready at our Lord’s return.
If we do mean business with the Lord’s present-day move, we must be filled with the Spirit every morning of every day. We need to confess our sins, but we also need to pay the price. The Spirit who came into our spirit was given freely, but the saturating Spirit to fill our entire being, especially our soul, is not free. It is something that you have to pay the price for, that you have to buy. When we as sinners repented and confessed our sins and believed in the Lord Jesus, we immediately got regenerated and the Spirit was given to us freely. But daily we need His filling, His saturating, from our spirit to penetrate our soul. We need to pay the price. We love ourselves so much, and we love to sleep so much in the morning. Many of us love our beds more than the Lord. In our daily life we may love a lot of things. Even though these things may not be sinful, yet they are replacements of the Lord. We may not give our first love to Him but to many other things. Now we have to drop all these other things, which means we have to pay the price to get ourselves ready.
We have seen that the two men and two women in Matthew 24 signify the saints who are living at the Lord’s coming back, while the ten virgins signify the majority who are dead. None of us can be sure when the Lord will come back. Neither can any of us be sure when we will die. There is a possibility for anyone of us to have a car accident. I pray frequently, especially during conference and training times, for the Lord to protect the saints from any accidents, but who can say when we will go to be with the Lord. We are not sure when He will come back. Neither can we be sure when we will go. Suppose that you go without being ready. Do you think everything will be okay? It will be okay temporarily because you will go to Paradise in Hades to rest. But when He comes back, you will be troubled. You will rise up and look at yourself and realize that the light of your lamp is not so bright. Your lamp will be going out due to the lack of oil in your vessel. If you do not get yourself ready before you die, you will be troubled at His coming back.
This is not my teaching, but this is the word out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus Himself. Surely we believe all the words He says to us. These two portions of the Word we are considering are very serious. This is why the entire situation today of Christianity is in degradation, and this degradation could include us. We may be in the degradation. We may be stupefied. We may have been drugged. We may not be so sober in our understanding. We may be living in such a way every day. If we love anything, we get it. We may do what we want to do and spend an entire day without prayer. We may always say we will pray tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes, we still do not pray. This is degradation. If the truths delivered in the Lord’s recovery are always bothering you, this is a strong indication that you are in the degradation of today’s Christianity. If you were not in the degradation of today’s Christianity, no truth would bother you. The truth would make you happy. Your response to the truths would be “Hallelujah, I’m for that and I’m in that.”
I have been praying for the churches and I am very much concerned for your spiritual situation. My main burden presently is to release all the truth into writing, so most of my time is occupied; otherwise, I would visit many of the churches. Your condition is a bothering to me because many of you are under a kind of befuddled situation, which means you are in the degradation of today’s Christianity. Do not take any excuse. Do not say that because the church life is not so strong, you cannot be strong. You will not be able to use this as an excuse when He comes back. He only cares for whether you are ready or not. No doubt, your lamp is burning because you have been saved, but is there an extra portion of oil in your vessel, your soul, your being? Has your being been saturated with the Spirit? The age is dark, Christianity is befuddled, and even the church life may be somewhat down. All this, however, cannot be an excuse. The Lord will still check with you concerning yourself. Are you living? Are you being filled? Are you watching all day? Are you praying? Are you getting into His Word every day and remaining in fellowship with Him? You may say you are tired and that you do not have the time, but you may have a lot of time to make phone calls and to gossip. Why would you not spend ten minutes for prayer? You may talk on the telephone for over an hour and yet not have five minutes for prayer.