Well, according to the Bible, the appointed time has grown very short.

Jesus calls us to watch for his return.

Why?

For you know neither to the day nor the hour.

Christ's return is imminent and his timeline makes us urgent, and given the urgency of

the time, how then shall we live our daily lives?

It's a question every generation of Christians has asked, and one John Piper raised and answered

in his 2004 sermon on Jesus' parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25.

Here's a clip of what John Piper said.

Parables are like that.

Sometimes the people of God are portrayed as the bride, and sometimes they are portrayed

as those preparing for the marriage.

If you press the details of parables, everything goes haywire in the New Testament.

Parables are meant to communicate one main point, and the main point here is a people of

God are being instructed about how to get ready to meet the bridegroom.

The bride doesn't show up in this parable, but we may then collapse it into other teachings

and say, okay, we treat this as the bride, even though they are Ten Virgins leading the

bridegroom into the bridal chamber.

So don't stumble over these details.

So for the main central thing, verse two, five of them were foolish, five were wise.

For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took

flasks of oil with their lamps.

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