“The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon;… How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!... How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” – David’s dirge for Jonathan and Saul in II Samuel 1:19 – 27.
Hello, you are welcome to see with us HOW exactly are the mighty fallen and the hero making of the feeble.
It’s commonplace to revere virgins as wise, at least in chastity in sharp a contrast to whores. How then do we compare the wit of a few harlots with the folly of some virgins? Here’s the dumping of the those we think are exceptional and the rise to reigns of the ragtags. The fade of the fittest and the survival of the unfit. In this next few lines, you are about to see the travesty of foolish virgins and the ennobling of wise Harlots!
If you have noticed, that there’s something always about Jesus’ coming and virgins. Take His first coming, it was magneted to virgin Mary. And what about His second, Paul couldn’t hold this back, “I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” That is II Cor 11:2 which resonates with the parable Jesus Himself told of the ten virgins awaiting His arrival as the bridegroom.
His second coming and we as virgins! Apostle Paul please don’t shake the table. How come we with such a past so dirty that even our righteousness isn’t only a rag before God but filthy ones are mocked as virgins! How in heaven are we ever virgins in the first place, more less chastes? But Alas! He was right. Regardless of where you are coming from, by believing in your heart that Christ Jesus is Lord and confessing Him as your saviour who died in your sinful place, which is the best decision you would ever make – to keep growing spotless, without wrinkle but holy and without blemish by the washing of His word – you are a part and parcel of the virgin bride church being made ready to meet Christ at His second coming – I Corinthians 12:13. In case someone is still in doubt, Paul the ex-murderer and a sworn church persecutor would further clarify, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”-II Cor 5:21. Space will fail us to go into thousands of scriptural verses and living testimonies of humans confirming that, though your pasts still flashes by, God, the one with omniscient memory has decided not to remember your sins anymore. You are so new a creation as if you are a new Adam or Eve with an unexplored gift of virginity.
So, where does this foolishness come from? Perhaps we should ask the harlots where their wisdom came from. This is all about seizing decisive moments. Foolish virgins would always look safe and sound in God until the moment of their destiny changing visitation. Wise Harlots on the other side, ever hell bound until they steal the show.
What’s happening here? Remember Lots wife. By deciding to escape from the impeding doom of Sodom through the hand of the angel, Lot and family were wise harlots. But Lot’s wife looking back and becoming a pillar of salt made her a foolish virgin – long before her virgin daughters became foolish again by incest.
In those whoopsie and ungodly hours that King Abimelech took Sarah, the breathtaking beauty of Abraham with an unguessable age, of course with the lieing permission of her husband that she remained his sister. But the lustful king quickly repented when God came to their rescue, the pagan King was a wise harlot. Whereas, Serah in that nearly bedded state was almost a foolish virgin. How hard to say that the husband wasn’t when he finally laid with Haggai!
Jabob, though a fraudster and a supplanter was a wise harlot at seizing his turnaround moment at Bethel. Esau, trading off his birthright at the sumptuous porridge dinning was the foolish virgin.
Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law who was widowed twice would become a wise harlot which made the patronizing Judah a foolish virgin.
Rehab - the illfamed landlady of the surviving tavern in the fallen city of Jericho is key here, as told in Joshua chapter 2. She didn’t have to visit any house of immortality, her home was the downtown rooftop of prostitution. Unlike Delilah who would dare to swallow Israel up between her laps, Rehab was ready to deliver Israel through it. Though ostracized from God, she had gleaned the arts and heart of God from the bawdly gists ran by her customers far and near.
She must have judged right that God would sink Jericho with or without her help. Either by her enchanting eyelashes and disarming beauty or sheer luck of suspicion, there was a successful counter-spy on her spying guests. She knew they were spies. And in no time, rumors have courted the Kings Palace from her trending brothel.
In a city fortified by the impregnable wall of immorality, she would now have to take a split moment of a lifetime decision. You shouldn’t have to guess hard. But she was about to topple her track loss of inhibition for sex. How in such a dire moment did Rehab still feared God in the timid eyes of her two guests, who were on course to destroy her homeland but now desperate strangers running for dear life? That shrewdness of hers to fear God, the use of intuition which everyone has, tagged harlots or virgins is the very beginning of wisdom.
Instead of dosing up them with wine, have their dreadlocks shoven if they had some like Samson, she would hide the two panting spies away without collecting a shekel. When her native Amorites came searching with red eyes, baying for the blood of the strangers they have tracked up her traphouse, Rehab wouldn’t lie that they came. Her lies that they have left became the saving untruth. Say she was lost in the grey area between the subtity of Delilah and the wisdom of Ruth. But her rocking bed had just become a bedrock of truth, errily believable to enemies and friends alike.
Buried deep in the stalks of flax on her rafters, the Israeli spies could hear her selling own country for a freedom price worth than any man could ever place on her. Her homeland traded for the promise land as she sent the Kings intelligence on a ghost trail. She would then climb up to the spies to bare the faint-hearted city to them. Exchange vows with strangers to seal her arguably cheap trade of loyalty between nations, just as she had always between men.
Ages before virgin Mary would say be it unto me according to your Word, Rehab the harlot said it in verse 21 of Joshua Chapter 2. Kindly read it, and see how she appeared instead as the angel to the spies. Little wonder she would be naturalized. With the same scarlet robe sneaky men might have climbed up to meet her derobed, she would let down these men of God through her casemate for her eternal cover.
Her crafty prowess didn’t end there. With city gates jammed and a second search warrant on her house thought as highly possible, Rehab suggesting on the fly that they hid in the mountains over three days was wisdom lighting their path. Rehab guided them out safely against the empty trail, kept the secret and dared treason. How are the punnies crowned! How did she summon such a faith that her scarlet cord would mark her a Goshen when the sound of pestilence crumble the fortified city! Her brothel had become a sanctuary to the spies in the heat of a cold war,
No, her ancestors would not forgive her, but her descendants will because God did. It’s left to be decided if this unbridled bride stopped harlotary immediately but it stopped in her heart. She knew her wanton business, as was her city had their days numbered. This was loyalty turned into royalty. Her intuition ennobled her and her scarlet line ran deep down into the royal lineage of Christ where many native isrealites could only fantasize. What an harlot of faith!
What more? Namman was another wise harlot and Gehaz a foolish virgin.
By foolish judgment of sparing the spoils of war, sheer sacrificial disobedience and unrepentant hunting of David’s life, Saul the anointed became a foolish virgin. How are the mighty fallen! He fell with his crown and his crown prince, never to be arise again. And just by honoring David’s invite to honor Jonathan same Saul’s son, Mephiboseth, Saul’s lame grandson became a wise harlot.
Prophet Hosea’s wife was a wise harlot for honouring his proposal as was the woman caught in the act of adultery but resqued by Jesus.
In the Matthew 25 parable of Jesus, all were Virgins but what really separated those five wise virgins form the other ones was wisdom. Everyone always has a bit of intuition, it took Solomon his little intuition to ask for wisdom to rule Israel. Wisdom doesn’t just fall like rain, there are always dews on everyone, foolish or wise if only it’s let up to call for the rain.
Like faith the wisdom comes by hearing, everyone has a bit of the lamp of the word of God that sanctified us into Virginity in the first place by taking up the righteousness of God at being born again. So then is the word, like Rehab heard it, even before the spies came, the word was only a lamp unto our feet, this word cleansed our feet like Jesus washed the disciples feet, as the husband sanctified his wife by the washing of the water of the word – Virgin made!
Now it doesn’t stop there. Here’s the wisdom, the lamp word must also grow mightily into burning with oil reserve that lasts long enough to be a light unto our paths, not only the feet. The five wise virgins had wisdom to get enough oil in their word lanterns to last longer, to light their path into the journey, not just lamp their feet and stay rooted at salvation.
Everyone has a lantern but not all have the oil in continuous measure to light their path. Why do we think the candle in the holy temple burns continually? That oil is the annoiting of the Holy Spirit of wisdom. “Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit” Paul in Ephesians 5:17-18.
At Christ coming, it wouldn’t be about our regards and regalia, wisdom is what would separate many, not only sanctity. Yet those five wise virgins looked rash and hash, selfish and blunt when they won’t share their oil with sisters saved by the lamp of the words – they looked Harlots but wise, but the other oiless Virgins were empty and foolish. It wasn’t hard to tell if the oil left to lamp their rooted feet could lamp their feet even backward to the seller.
The prodigal son was a wise harlot, his elder brother almost a foolish virgin.
After living face to face with Jesus, went out on evangelism, performed signs and wonders and hailed as mighty among the twelve disciples, Judas was twice as much as a foolish Virgin. First, when he said the oil of the alabaster woman should be sold for the poor but had his own pickpocketing gains as the motive . The alabaster oil sinner wiping the feet of Jesus was actually a wise harlot. Yet again, Judas with so much exploits for the kingdom, when he hung himself, was a foolish virgin whereas the condemned and crucified dieing thief on the right hand of Jesus who stole his way to the cross was a wise manwhore!
Little wonder Jesus said in His Luke 16:8 parable, “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely; for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”
While we thank God for the Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah. But Jews who rejected Jesus were foolish Virgins, the Gentiles who accepted him were wise Harlots.
Annanias and Sapphire were foolish Virgins in their gift to God, Saul the church persecutor turned Paul was a wise harlot.
With all your gettings, please get this. The wise King Solomon would call this surreal trend an error from the ruler in Ecclestiastic 10, “There is an evil I have seen under the sun, as an error proceeding from the ruler: Folly is set in great dignity, while the rich sit in a lowly place. I have seen servants on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants.” Verse 5-7. Now before we begin to bind and lose the ruler, how exactly did it all start? How exactly are the mighty fallen, how are the puns crowned?
“Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment. And cause it to give off a foul odor; So does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honor.” This first verse of Ecc 10 is about how foolishness starts out as a little folly to one previously respected for wisdom and honor – remember those little foxes which spoils the vine? In turn, as seen in verse four, the Spirit of the ruler had risen against the respected honourable fools. “If the spirit of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your post; for conciliation pacifies great offenses.”
Conciliation pacifies what! Hold that in one hand before we finish of this rulers story. We are going to be shocked how some regarded as wise would turn out foolish Virgins. Just as in Jesus’ parable of Luke 14:21, where costly invitation to a large supper was met with strings of foolish excuses. The Spirit of the ruler rose against the lofty and expected guest in this Jesus parallel story. And what did this invitation snubbers do? They reacted by leaving their posts, they left their slots in revolt without even any wisdom of apologies to stage manage their snub and pacify a conciliation.
As the righteous fall many times but rise, it’s not the fall from grace to rag that sink the mighty much as familiarity, the lack of the final intuition to rise on time. It’s the disuse of the remaining dew of wisdom on them and allow it to dry up instead if evaporating to bring rains of wisdom. For the five foolish virgins, who too left their post, it was too late. Back to the ruler’s story: what happened next when they left their post? The uninvited were wise enough to honor it.
“Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind. And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the HIGHWAYS and HEDGES, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’ ”
This is exactly what the coming of Christ would be. Like you remember Lots wife, remember the foot-lamped scant-oil five foolish Virgins. It’s in the highway and the hedges that you find Harlots, perhaps wisdom too.
- Olusanya Olusola, Topic Writer Bicqmag ,
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