Difference between revisions of "The Church Is a Bride"

Latest revision as of 22:14, 22 February 2012

The most important concept of the Scriptures is that of union. No other concept approaches union in significance.

Christ is in total union with the Father. So perfect, so total is that union it is impossible to separate the Father and the Son. Although Jesus and the Father are two distinct Persons, neither One is an individual apart from the Other.

Where the Father is, there is Jesus. Where Jesus is, there is the Father. He who has the Son has the Father also. It is impossible to have One without the Other.

The same union is to be true of us.

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. (John 17:21)

If we were not to be made an integral part of God through Jesus, Jesus would have told us so (John 14:2).

The greatest of the mysteries of the Scriptures is that Christ is in us. The Lord God of Heaven is creating a living temple for Himself of which the Tabernacle of the Congregation is a type. The Lord Jesus is the chief Cornerstone of the eternal Temple of God.

Christ is the House, and the only House, of the Father. But in Christ there are many rooms, many abiding places. Each saint is being formed as a room in the House of God, as a room in Christ.

Christ is being enlarged through us. We are the completeness, the fullness of Christ just as a wife is the completeness, the fullness of her husband.

The purpose of the two thousand years of the Christian Era has been to call the Church, the Body of Christ, out of the world. Some members of the Church are pressing through to the union with Christ that all the members will, to a greater or lesser extent, experience one day. It appears that the greater part of the Church will come into union with Christ during the thousand-year period.

The thousand-year period is, as we understand it, the time of the spiritual fulfillment of the Day of Atonement, the Day of Reconciliation, the Year of Jubilee. It is the day of union, the day of the Marriage of the Lamb.

The union of the firstfruits with Christ is not limited to a feeble attempt on our part to please Jesus. It is to be a total union, an integration developed in the hottest flames of Divine love and cross-carrying obedience, bonded for eternity by every possible combination of difficulties, pain, faithfulness, patience, and Divine Glory.

Since it does not appear likely that such an arena of temptation and testing exists in the realm of spirits, it may be true that the greater part of the Church, which we think will be brought into a more perfect union with Christ during the thousand-year period, will never experience the intensity of union with Jesus, or the strength of rulership, that are capable of being developed during the discipleship of the saint on the earth.

We know from the last chapter of the Song of Solomon that the Bride has immature sisters who are in need of assistance. But the Apostles of the Lamb are not immature sisters who are in need of assistance. The Apostles of the Lamb will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. It is obvious that there are markedly different levels of inheritance in the Kingdom of God depending on one’s diligence in responding to the invitation of Christ.

He who overcomes shall inherit all things. (Revelation 21:7)

God is not satisfied with the intensity of our union with Himself until every atom of our personality and behavior is found in God and God is found in every atom of our personality and behavior. Such total union results in a loss of our individuality and an enhancing of our identity.

We are becoming one in Christ in God just as Christ and God are One. The name of God will be engraved in us. The name of the city of God will be engraved in us. The new name of Christ will be engraved in us.

How will we appear to the nations of saved peoples of the earth? We will appear as the priests of the Lord, as the covenant of the Lord with man, as the revelation of God Himself.

It always has been God’s desire that Israel, His elect, be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. God wants us to be separated to Himself and to be holy and pure.

God is making every member of Body of Christ a servant, a witness, a king, and a deliverer.

The race of Israel, and also the Christian people, have resisted marriage to the Lord. The Lord’s anointed priests desire to be part of the world and to give the Lord’s blessings, the precious gifts that He offers to His beloved, to the world. This is Babylon (man-directed Christianity), the great prostitute.

God’s people refuse to be separated from the world. As soon as they have relief from persecution and tribulation they become involved with the world.

But all through the history of the elect, from the days of physical Israel and continuing with the Christian Era, there have been people who have sought the Lord and who have kept themselves from the world. It is those who are chosen as the Bride of the Lamb.

The Lamb and His Wife will govern the nations of saved peoples of the earth forever. The union of the saints with God will increase throughout the timeless ages of eternity until they are one with God. Thus will God increase His own Being in love. Each of God’s creatures will have access to God through a saint whose personality is well adapted to the needs of that particular creature.

One can understand from this how misleading is the concept of the new Jerusalem as a group of golden mansions sent down from Heaven. The new Jerusalem is the Body of Christ, the Wife of the Lamb. The holy city consists of the saints—those who have become one with God and the Lamb. The light of God shining from the Wife of the Lamb will illumine the nations of saved people forever, revealing the ways of God in which the nations are to walk.

Through the saints the nations will have access to the eternal life that is in Christ, who will be dwelling in His fullness in the saints.

What is true today will be true in glorified form in the better world that is to come. God is in Christ in the saints today, and God’s Presence and ways are revealed to the world through the saints. But the Presence and ways of God are obscured because of the sin and self-seeking of the believers.

God is in the process of removing the sin and self-seeking from the saints. As He does, what will be true in the ages to come is revealed. Many of the essential aspects of the new age already are in existence, although in immature form.

The last two chapters of the Scriptures are describing the descent from Heaven of the perfected Church and of God and the Lamb in the Church. Saved mankind will enjoy the Presence and Glory of God in the Lamb and His Wife throughout the ages of ages.

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