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Let’s pray together:
Father,
Your prophetic Word describes a glorious wedding which will take place at the end of time.
Please continue to enlighten us through Your Spirit, while we study the subject of the bride, the Lamb’s wife.
In Jesus Christ we pray.
Amen.
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Revelation 21:9
And there came to me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying,
«Come here, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.»
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In our last lesson, we have seen that, in the heavenly great wedding, the bridegroom will be Jesus Christ Himself, the Lamb of God.
Today, we will try to discover the identity of the bride.
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Revelation 21:2,9,10
And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (...)
«Come here, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.»
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.
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According to Bible prophecy, the Lamb’s wife is the New Jerusalem.
The architecture of this city will be the subject of a future lesson.
For the moment, let’s see how a city can be called «the Lamb’s wife».
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Zechariah 8:2,3
Thus said the Lord of hosts;
«I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I was jealous for her with great fury.»
Thus said the Lord;
«I am returned to Zion, and will dwell in the middle of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a “City of Truth”; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, “the Holy Mountain”.»
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By designating the New Jerusalem as the bride, prophecy does not speak of the city walls, but rather of its inhabitants, God’s redeemed people.
In fact, the city is given the qualifiers which fall to its inhabitants: if the inhabitants are true and holy, the city is then called true and holy.
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Isaiah 1:21
How is the faithful city become a harlot!
It was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
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Revelation 17:1,18
Come here; I will show to you the judgment of the great whore that sits on many waters. (...)
The woman which you saw is that great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth.
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Conversely, if the inhabitants are unfaithful to God, the city is then called a «harlot», a «whore».
It is the case with Babylon, the great apostate city.
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Ephesians 5:25
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.
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Isaiah 62:4,5
The Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you: and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
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So the bride, the Lamb’s wife, is really God’s faithful Church, grouping together all the faithful believers redeemed by Jesus’ blood.
Soon, this Church will dwell in the holy city of God, the New Jerusalem.
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Hosea 2:19,20
I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy.
I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
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Among the people of Israel, breaking the engagement commitment was as serious as breaking the wedding commitment.
So God, being engaged or betrothed to His Church, has concluded an eternal covenant with her, and thus promises her love and faithfulness.
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Deuteronomy 4:23,24
Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which He made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the Lord your God has forbidden you.
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.
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Of course, God expects His wife to show the same faithfulness towards Him, and this is why He is «a jealous God».
This jealousy has nothing in common with the human feeling clothed in distrust and desire of possession.
This jealousy is rather the expression of exclusiveness, for God knows that He is the only Source of life, and that being unfaithful to Him leads only to tears, death and loss.
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Joel 2:16,18 [RSV]
Let the Bridegroom leave His room, and the bride her chamber. (...)
Then the Lord became jealous for His land, and had pity on His people.
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Isaiah 26:20
Come, My people, enter you into your chambers, and shut your doors about you.
Hide yourself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be over.
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This same divine jealousy, the burning love of God for His people, will allow the faithful believers to be protected when the seven last plagues of God’s wrath strike the world.
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2 Corinthians 11:2,3
For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
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However, even if God’s jealousy reminds us that only He can grant eternal life, the Church is often tempted to succumb to the enemy’s deceptions, and to forsake her faithful Husband.
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Deuteronomy 32:15,16
He forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods.
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Hosea 3:1
Then said the Lord to me,
«Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods.»
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When the Church, God’s wife, chooses to devote herself to foreign doctrines and gods, she breaks the precious covenant she had concluded with her Husband, and then becomes unfaithful, adulterous.
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By forsaking God and His will, the Church becomes guilty of adultery:
«Rejoice not, O Israel! Exult not like the peoples; for you have played the harlot, forsaking your God.» (Hosea 9:1 [RSV])
«Yet they would not listen to their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves to them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so.» (Judges 2:17)
«So Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the Lord, because he did not keep the word of the Lord, and also because he consulted a medium for guidance.» (1 Chronicles 10:13 [NKJV])
«(...) lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice to their gods, and one call you, and you eat of his sacrifice.» (Exodus 34:15)
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1 Corinthians 10:20-22
I would not that you should have fellowship with devils.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: you cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.
Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy?
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Yet, the Holy Scriptures often remind us that, in order to remain faithful to God, we must give Him the absolute exclusiveness of our worship, and follow Him in everything.
Here again, God’s jealousy is still present, helping us to remember these important things.
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Being the bridegroom, God requires the Church’s exclusiveness:
«Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?» (James 4:4,5 [NKJV])
«Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he that believes with an infidel? (...) Why “Come out from among them, and be you separate,” said the Lord, “and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”» (2 Corinthians 6:14,15,17)
«No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.» (Matthew 6:24)
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Jeremiah 3:6
The Lord said also to me in the days of Josiah the king,
«Have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done? She is gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree, and there has played the harlot.»
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Jeremiah 3:20
«Surely as a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,» said the Lord.
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Israel, under the Old Covenant, and the Church, under the New Covenant, unfortunately often made themselves guilty of adultery against God.
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Jeremiah 3:1,2
«If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return to her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to Me,» said the Lord.
«Lift up your eyes to the high places, and see where you have not been lain with. In the ways have you sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and you have polluted the land with your prostitutions and with your wickedness.»
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And, too often, the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel and of the Church has been almost beyond remedy.
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Jeremiah 3:12,13
«Return, you backsliding Israel,» said the Lord; «and I will not cause My anger to fall on you: for I am merciful,» said the Lord, «and I will not keep anger for ever.
Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the Lord your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed My voice,» said the Lord.
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But God, with infinite patience and love, never stopped calling His unfaithful wife, repeatedly inviting her to repent and return to Him.
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Jeremiah 2:2,3
I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, when you went after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.
Israel was holiness to the Lord.
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Revelation 2:4,5
Nevertheless I have somewhat against you, because you have left your first love.
Remember therefore from where you are fallen, and repent, and do the first works.
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God thus calls Israel to rediscover its first love for the Bridegroom.
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Jeremiah 3:22,23
«Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.
- Behold, we come to You; for You are the Lord our God. Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains: truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.»
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Hosea 2:14,16 [NKJV]
«Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. (...) And it shall be, in that day,» says the Lord, «that you will call Me “My Husband”.»
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Sometimes, unfaithful Israel responded to God’s loving call.
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Jeremiah 2:25
Withhold your foot from being unshod, and your throat from thirst.
But you said, «There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go.»
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Hosea 11:7,8
My people are bent to backsliding from Me: though they called them to the Most High, none at all would exalt Him.
How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, Israel? (...) My heart is turned within Me, My repentings are kindled together.
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But sometimes, Israel’s stubbornness led God to make painful decisions...
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Ezekiel 23:4,5,7,9
The names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister: and they were Mine, and they bore sons and daughters. Thus were their names; Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah.
And Aholah played the harlot when she was Mine; and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians her neighbors. (...)
Thus she committed her prostitutions with them, with all them that were the chosen men of Assyria, and with all on whom she doted: with all their idols she defiled herself. (...)
Why I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, on whom she doted.
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Sometimes, God had no choice but to abandon stubborn, unfaithful Israel to its fate.
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Ezekiel 23:29,30,35
«And they shall deal with you hatefully, and shall take away all your labor, and shall leave you naked and bore: and the nakedness of your prostitutions shall be discovered, both your lewdness and your prostitutions.
I will do these things to you, because you have gone a whoring after the heathen, and because you are polluted with their idols.» (...)
Therefore thus said the Lord God;
«Because you have forgotten Me, and cast Me behind your back, therefore bear you also your lewdness and your prostitutions.»
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In fact, God simply allowed Israel to reap the consequences of its choice.
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Abandoned by God, unfaithful Israel quickly realized her serious error:
«This people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake Me, and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, “Are not these evils come on us, because our God is not among us?”» (Deuteronomy 31:16,17)
«And they that escape of you shall remember Me among the nations where they shall be carried captives, because I am broken with their whorish heart, which has departed from Me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols: and they shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.» (Ezekiel 6:9)
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Isaiah 54:5-7
«For your Maker is your Husband; the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; “The God of the whole earth” shall He be called.
For the Lord has called you as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when you were refused,» said your God.
«For a small moment have I forsaken you; but with great mercies will I gather you.»
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God’s greatest wish is that His unfaithful wife may repent of her sin, and return to Him, in order to be forgiven.
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Ezekiel 16:8-10
«I spread My skirt over you, and covered your nakedness: yes, I swore to you, and entered into a covenant with you,» said the Lord God, «and you became Mine.»
«Then washed I you with water; yes, I thoroughly washed away your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil.
I clothed you also with broidered work, and shod you with badgers’ skin, and I girded you about with fine linen.»
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God does not wish the death and loss of His unfaithful wife. He tells her that He did all the following things for her:
- «I spread My skirt over you,» symbolizing Jesus’ robe of righteousness.
- «I washed you with water,» symbolizing the cleansing of our sins through Jesus’ blood.
- «I anointed you with oil,» symbolizing the gift of the Holy Spirit.
- «I girded you about with fine linen,» symbolizing the bride’s good works that God helps her to perform (see Revelation 19:8).
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Isaiah 61:10
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God.
For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
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Isaiah 63:8
[The Lord] said, «Surely they are My people, children that will not lie.»
So He was their Savior.
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God’s bride is offered the garment of salvation, symbolizing the perfect justice of Jesus Christ which gives access to eternal life.
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Revelation 12:1,13,17
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (...)
And when the dragon saw that he was cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman. (...)
And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
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In our lesson «The Pure Woman», we studied such a faithful wife, clothed with Jesus’ righteousness, and having suffered Satan’s severe attacks.
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Revelation 17:1,2,5
«Come here; I will show to you the judgment of the great whore that sits on many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.» (...)
And on her forehead was a name written, «Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.»
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Conversely, in our lesson «The Great Whore», we studied a Church which sank into apostasy and chose to remain apostate, in spite of all God’s calls to repentance.
Because of its stubborn rebellion, this Church became a religio-political apostate system: Babylon the great whore.
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Numbers 15:39,40
And it shall be to you for a fringe, that you may look on it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that you seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you use to go a whoring: that you may remember, and do all My commandments, and be holy to your God.
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God invites us not to follow the example of Babylon, the great whore.
He calls us, rather, to join His Church, His faithful wife, clothed with Jesus Christ’s perfect robe of righteousness, and to keep all His commandments.
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1 Corinthians 4:1,2
Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.
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In addition to joining God’s faithful Church, each one of us, individually, must make sure to always remain faithful to God in everything, and to reserve for Him his exclusive adoration.
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Revelation 14:1,4
And I looked, and, see, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with Him a hundred forty and four thousand, having His Father’s name written in their foreheads. (...)
These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins.
These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
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By remaining faithful to God, we will join the group of the 144,000, that is, the servants of God in the last days.
These people keep themselves «virgin»: they do not defile themselves with other Churches which do not teach the truth, in order to be entirely pure at the coming great wedding.
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Ephesians 5:25-27
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
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As we look forward to this wedding, let’s allow God to prepare our hearts.
Through the sacrifice of His Son, He will purify us.
Through the work of His Spirit within us, He will sanctify us.
And soon, He will glorify us.
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Revelation 19:6,7
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunder, saying,
«Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!
Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready.»
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The great wedding of God (the Bridegroom) and His Church (the bride) is drawing near.
So let’s invest all our time and efforts in God’s mission, so that we may all be ready for this glorious event!
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Let’s thank God:
Lord,
We really want to join Your people, Your bride.
Please help us to seriously prepare ourselves for the great Day of the coming of the Bridegroom.
Please purify us by the blood of Your Son, and sanctify us through the work of Your Spirit within us. Do not let us be unfaithful to You, but keep us always close to You.
In the precious name of Jesus Christ we pray.
Amen.
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