Summary These Parables Give Us the Full Range of Events From the Time of the Lord's Ministry Here on Earth to the Time of His Setting up of the Millennial Kingdom and of Its Heavenly Side. None of Them However Takes Us Beyond the Millennium or Into the Eternal State. What Began on Pentecost As a Very Small Thing Has Now Grown Into a Great Edifice, Where Wicked Men Find Accommodations for Themselves and for Their Corrupting Influences Upon the Truth of God. Evil Doctrines and Practices Have Already Leavened the Loaf of Christian Profession, Whose Leavening Will Be Total After the Rapture. at His Appearing Though, When He Comes to Set up His Earthly Kingdom, the Lord Will Both Judge and Destroy the Entire Thing

Nevertheless, in the meantime, God is also working. He acknowledges what He is doing as His own workmanship. There is the treasure, found by Christ in the world, the acquisition of which has also resulted in His obtaining present and future ownership of the whole created universe. Furthermore, there is that one pearl of great price, so costly and ravishing in the beauty of its oneness that He gives all He has to gain it for Himself. Finally, there is the gospel net as the means by which men are brought into blessing; and there are the solemn implications for those who will not have it.
Now, last of all, God has not given us this outline of things merely to satisfy our natural intellects or idle curiosity. He has given these things to us that our hearts might be affected by them. Therefore, may He grant our hearts to understand them in such a way as to have a moral effect upon our walk and ways. (See again vs. 8, 23.) The way in which we receive them will have its eternal consequences. True Christians are not of this world or its moral order. They are a heavenly people and, therefore, have nothing to say to this world, whether political or religious. They are, after all, only "strangers" in this world and "pilgrims" passing through an alien land on their way to their eternal home above. (See John 14:2-3; 17:16-18; Phil. 3:20-21; Col. 3:1-4; 1 Thess. 4:16-17; Heb. 3:1; 11:8-16; 13:14; 1 Peter 2:11-12; and Rev. 3:10.)