Parable of the Talents: Good and Faithful Servant / Wicked and Slothful Servant
We are given according to our ability. The more we are given, the more that is expected in return, from being a doer of the word of God.
Good and faithful servants do the word of God, such as preach the Gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons, and are rewarded with eternal life.
Wicked and slothful servants do not do according to what they were given, and are sent to eternal fire.
Matthew 25:14-30
Really, the Parable of the Talents and the Minas are related, the first told to the disciples while the former was told to the crowd that was walking up from Jericho to Jerusalem at the same time that Christ was walking along the same road to get to Bethany where He broke His final journey towards Jerusalem before the crucifixion. Both of these parable is about Satan empowering "his Good and Faithful servants" to continue oppressing the people around them through the use of lending them money so that during the time that Satan is in Prison in the Bottomless Pit, the oppressed people will not have the time to hear the Good News Story.
This can be determined from both parables when the "master" agreed that he had no right to the harvest of the increased abundance as he had not prepared the field, sown the seed or tended to it as it grew and matured. In the Luke account, he also had brought before him all of the saints who would not worship him to have them killed in his presences.
I know that in the parable of the Talents that the Servants are given 10, 5 and 1 according to Satan's understanding of the willingness of his servants to oppress the people around them. The servants who were given the 10 and the 5 Talents had had a previous history of oppressing people and so they were given the talents according to Satan's expectation of these servants to be good and faithful. The Servant he labelled as Wicked and Lazy he had no expectations of and was affronted by the servants accusation that he had no right to take what was not his to have.
The difference in the audiences that were told these two parable is found in the parable of the Minas where the servants had to be told to trade with the Mina while he was away, whereas in the case of the Parable of the Talents, it was told to Jesus' disciples, the religious elite by their association with Christ, of the new salvation covenant, and since they were mainly successful business people there was no need to tell them that they had to trade with them.
The interesting thing that we can take from the parable of the Talents is that "religious" good servants of Satan will be successful in oppressing the people around them such that they will have no time to actually hear the "Good News Story" as told by God's Kingdom of trained Priests during the Millennium Age.
Your insistence that the "Servants of God" need to work real hard to bring in the Kingdom of God is, in reality, contrary to what Jesus taught in John 6 when he was asked what the saints had to do to bring in the Kingdom of God: -
John 6:28-29: - 28 Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?"
29 Jesus answered and said to them, "
This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."
etc.
I fear, that you believe that people should be forced into believing in Christ, rather than being drawn to Him and His Love.
I hear you zeal, but I fear that your zeal will not work in drawing people into a right relationship with God.
Shalom
