Luke 11 - 5-13 - The parable of the friend who asks a friend for bread for a friend at midnight

Luke 11:5-13
The parable of the friend who asks his friend for some bread for a friend at midnight !
By Brother Mike (Email8-16-26; 30 minutes)

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INTRODUCTION

Grace and peace to you in our Lord, Jesus Christ! As you likely know, your typical Christians will almost always say that eternal salvation will continue until the very end. And some have used this "parable of the friend who asks his friend for some bread for a friend at midnight" in Luke 11:5-13 to support their view. Afterall, this parable concludes by saying,

9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you .
10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened .
11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent ?
12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion ?
13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?

By the Father, in this parable, giving the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him, it sounds like they who are asking for the Holy Spirit are asking for eternal salvation from Jesus Christ for a friend, and then the Father grants them their request because if one has not the Holy Spirit, he could not possibly be eternally saved as we read in Romans 8:9:

" But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his ."

But let's take a closer look into this "parable of the friend who asks his friend for some bread for a friend" to see more precisely what it is teaching. Is it really teaching that, even today, people can still be eternally saved ever since May 21,2011 simply by asking for it? The whole parable reads,

5 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves ;
6 For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him ?
7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee .
8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity [persistence] he will rise and give him as many as he needeth .
9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you .
10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened .
11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent ?
12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion ?
13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?

Let me first of all say, there appears to be good reason to think that this passage relates to the time period ever since May 21,2011. This can be realized in that we are told that it is a time after which the door of salvation has been shut. We read of this in verse 7 when a friend goes to a friend, who, in this parable, we can easily deduce represents Jesus Christ Himself, and he goes to this friend who is the Lord, Jesus Christ " at midnight" to request 3 loaves of bread in order that he has bread to put before another friend who apparently came from a journey. But when he goes to the Lord in order to request some bread for this purpose, the Lord says,

" Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee ."

That " the door is now shut " immediately points to May 21,2011 when the door of salvation was actually shut to the whole world, forever, according to the very accurate , biblical calendar (see also Gods 7-day warning to Noah was a 7,000-year warning for us and The Son was made dark immediately after the Great Tribulation ). "The door" refers to Christ Himself as we read in John 10:9,

" I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture ."

So, when the Lord in this parable says, " the door is now shut ," it is the same as saying, there is no longer any possibility for salvation. And, coupled with the fact that the door has been shut, the Lord is said to be " in bed " with his children as well. To be in bed with his children is a metaphor which expresses the very close spiritual union or relationship that the Lord's children (all God's true people) have with one another and their Lord. It also teaches that God's people, with their Lord, are all now metaphorically resting in bed together because salvation was ended on May 21,2011 (" the door is now shut "), and the Lord's and His people's work of sending the saving gospel into the world has ended. That they are resting in bed is because their spiritual work of bringing salvation to the world has ended, and it is time to rest in the salvation that the Lord provided for all His children in leading up to May 21,2011. Of course, we are also told that it is " midnight ," which is obviously and normally a time for rest in a literal sense, but, in a spiritual sense, that it was midnight means it is a time of darkness or judgment. We see this, for instance, in that the final judgment just prior to being delivered from Egypt took place at " midnight " as recorded in Exodus 12:9:

" And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle ."

There are other accounts in scripture as well which teach " midnight " being a time of judgment or darkness; I will mention just a couple. For instance, in Job 34:20, we read,

" In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away: and the mighty shall be taken away without hand ."

And again, in Psalms 119:62,

" At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments ."

The point I want to make is simply that the term " midnight " carries with it the meaning of a time of judgment and darkness. So, when we are told in this parable that it was " midnight ," we are being told that it is a time of judgment and darkness; and this certainly fits perfectly to the time period ever since May 21,2011 that we are now in, for this period is just that: a period of spiritual judgment and wrath upon the entire world. So, it seems obvious to me that this parable is teaching about the time period we are now in ever since May 21,2011 because this is both a time in which " the door [has] now [been] shut ," and it is also a time " at midnight ," being the period of darkness and judgment in which we now find ourselves.

But does this mean that salvation is still possible today? I mean we have here an example of a person who during the time we are now in persistently seeks the Lord for some bread in order to set before his friend who came from " his journey ," and the Lord grants Him as much as he needs even though the door of salvation had already been shut. So, doesn't this mean that salvation is still possible ever since the door to salvation was shut on May 21,2011? After all, if he asked for bread which he could place before his friend, and with much persistence, he was granted this bread, doesn't that mean he became eternally saved by that bread? Absolutely not! For he was not asking for bread for himself, but for another. This means he must have already been saved; otherwise, why would he have wanted the bread of the Lord in order to place before someone else; this is something only one of God's people would want to do. Thus, we must conclude that in asking for bread, this person was not asking for his own salvation.

But, if he was not asking for salvation for himself, what was he asking for? Well, as the parable declares, he was asking for bread in order to place before his friend who came from his journey. In other words, he wanted to be able to feed his friend with spiritual bread from the Lord. Whether this is the bread that brings rebirth in Jesus Christ, or whether it is bread for the simple feeding of one who had already been born from above, we are not directly told. We know that both are viable possibilities in the Bible! But because this entire parable is clearly set in the time after May 21,2011 when the door to salvation has already been shut during the time " at midnight " and when God's people are no longer called to bring the gospel to the world but to feed God's sheep with the good and right teachings of God's Word, namely the Bible's true teachings (spiritual bread), I think we can most reasonably conclude that the bread is for to feed all those who were either eternally saved on or before May 21, 2011 with the good and right teachings of the Bible. The bread, then, is not for eternally saving someone, but for the building up and maturing of God's true people, or as it is written in Ephesians 4:13-15,

13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ :
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive ;
15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ .

We can further see how this parable does not give any warrant to teaching that salvation is still possible after May 21,2011 in that the person in front of whom the bread is to be placed is said to have come from " his journey ," and as we shall see, this " journey " of which he came from helps us to understand just who this person really is. We read in verse 6,

" For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him ?"

Actually, in the Greek this verse could be translated more literally as " since in fact a friend of mine from of way [or out of way ] is come to me ." The word here translated as " way " (transliterated, " hodou " ) is the same word used when Jesus said, " I am the way, the truth, and the life " and when God's people in Acts are said to be of " the way " such as in Acts 9,

1 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest ,
2 And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way [that is, the way of Christ] , whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem .

And again, it is said in Acts 19:9,　

" But when divers [that is, when various ones] were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way [that is, of that way of Christ] before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus ."

I could reveal many other passages as well in the Bible that use this same word " way " in the metaphorical sense of meaning the way of Christ and His teachings, and not a literal " journey ," but leave it to say that what we see in this parable is that the friend who is to have the bread set before him is said to have come " from of way ," or " out of way ," which we could translate even further to say " from the way ," or " out of the way ." This means that this person is actually already of " the way " of Christ, and so, he must already be saved because he actually came from, or out from already being of the way of Jesus Christ . Do you see how this can all fit together quite nicely?

So, what we see in this parable is not an example showing that salvation is still possible after the door was shut on May 21,2011, but rather a promise from God that if we persistently seek for that bread by which to feed our friends (the Lord's sheep) during this terrible time of spiritual judgment upon the world, He will open the door for us to receive and give through us that bread which is needed to nourish the people of God; not to save new people of God, but to nourish those who have already come from the way of Christ, who are already saved, that they each might be strengthened to endure till the end, and come into glory through the sustenance given by the bread of the Word of God that comes through the teachings of the Holy Bible. This is why we read in this parable that exactly " three cakes " of bread are requested. The number 3 symbolizes the purpose of God (see the number 3 ), so what the Lord is saying is that it is His purpose to hear our persistent prayers and give that bread which is needed to feed God's people during the time period from May 21,2011 and to the very end, which is why this parable says in verses 9-10,

9 ... Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you .
10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened .

Yes, we can be assured that as we diligently seek for wisdom in the Word of God during this time period from May 21,2011 to the very end in which we now find ourselves, He will open the door; no, not to salvation, for that door has been shut forever ever since May 21,2011; but he will open up the door, Jesus Christ, the Word of God to our better understanding so that we can place this bread before our friends, the children of God, in order to encourage, strengthen, build up and edify them to the glory of God.

The parable then ends like we had mentioned in the beginning of this study. It says in verses 11-13,

11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent ?
12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion ?
13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?

Notice that the analogy states, " if a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father ." This further assures us of being on the right tract because it is " a son " of a father who is asking for the bread; it is not just any person, but it is " a son ," and a son of God is one who is already saved. Once again, then, we can see that it is not salvation being asked for in this parable, but it is spiritual bread for the feeding of someone who is already a saved child of God, a son.

The idea is that if an earthy father is asked by his son for good nourishing bread, will he give him something that can harm him instead such as a serpent or a scorpion? Of course not, and the earthly father does this although he himself is a sinner! So how much more will our heavenly Father who is perfectly pure and good, unlike an earthly father, give to His children upon persistent request that spiritual food which is good and right even after the many days of God's judgment have come. He will not feed them with a serpent or a scorpion, which is symbolic of the teachings of Satan and demons, but He promises to feed His sons with the bread which is nourishing and good for life in these difficult times right before the end.

Yes! " How much more shall [our] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to [His true people] that ask him ? "

For your information, some other scriptures which teach the end of eternal salvation are as follows: Gods 7 day warning to Noah was a 7,000 year warning for us ; " Is God Still Saving? " and Luke 11:5-13 , Isaiah 13:10, scroll down to verse 10 and Isaiah 13:14 and Revelation 18 study - Part 3, scroll to verses 21-23 and Revelation 9:1-5 and verse 6 of Revelation 9:6-12 and Revelation 6:12-13 and Jeremiah 50, scroll down to verse 12 and Jeremiah 50:16-17 , Jeremiah 50:40 , Jeremiah 51:26 , Jeremiah 51:30 and 32 , Jeremiah 51:36 , Jeremiah 51:43-44 , Jeremiah 51:55 , Jeremiah 51:58 , Isaiah 26:20 , Daniel 8:11 , Email7-14-24 , Email3-10-25 , Email2-9-25 , Email9-28-26 ).

Now, until the next time, may " Yahweh bless thee, and keep thee: Yahweh make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: Yahweh lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace " (Numbers 6:24-26).