Robert J. Wieland
It sounds outlandish, but it’s true: the marriage of Jesus is a cardinal Bible doctrine!
The Book of Revelation devotes an entire chapter to it, a chapter which has often been neglected, not because Bible students are resistant and unbelieving but simply because they don’t understand.
The Lord, the Father, who gave us the Book of Revelation (note, Rev. 1:1-3; the Father is the first link), would not waste the precious space that a whole chapter in Revelation occupies—chapter 19. The chapter is there because the “marriage of the Lamb” is vitally necessary to the understanding of God’s people in these last days.
It’s not right that all heaven is abuzz with the partying excitement that prevails there now, in anticipation, according to Revelation 19, and we who are God’s people here on earth plod along in darkness and ignorance.
Is it possible that the Lord Jesus Christ is in love with a “woman”? The answer is a resounding yes, but “she” is not an ordinary woman; she is “the church.” God’s people are guests at the wedding, says a profoundly serious writer in The Great Controversy; therefore they cannot also be the bride, the author says.
But elsewhere the same author over and over declares that “the church” is the Bride of Christ.
Indeed, God’s people as individuals will be “guests” at the wedding; but as a corporate body they are the Bride. The Son of God has become one of us; He is the divine Son of God, but He is also the Son of man; and as a human “man” He naturally wants to be married to the object of His conjugal love.
Heaven is abuzz with the excitement, says Revelation 19, over and over. People around the world are beginning to think of Revelation 19; and they are beginning to think also of the message of the long neglected Song of Solomon, especially chapter 5 (Jesus declared that that book is a part of the divinely inspired “Scripture,” in John 7:37, 38 [SS 4:15]). Maybe, the Lord willing, more tomorrow.
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