02.09. The Seventh Paper
(Seventh Paper (Concluding Chapter), Things to Come, March 1896, 2(9):154-156) VII. THE BODY AND THE BRIDE.
There is another error which the doctrine of the Mystery corrects, though there is certainly some little excuse for its having been so generally entertained, and that is, the identification of “the Body” with “the Bride.” We have already seen that had Israel repented and turned to the Lord (Acts 3:18-19), there is not an Old Testament prophecy which would not have been fulfilled (at that time). But the “Bride” is the subject of Old Testament prophecy. Therefore, had Israel repented, and there had been no Church of God, there would still have been the Bride according to the prophetic word. Many are the prophecies of the Bride in the Old Testament, and hence some who cannot ignore this fact and yet cling to the modern idea of the Body being the Bride, believe they are, or will be, Two Brides: the Bride of Jehovah and the Bride of the Lamb… The Bride in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, is Israel, or at any rate the elect of Israel; those who were “partakers of the heavenly calling” in Israel. We read in -
“For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called. For the LORD hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God.”
See also Isa 54:7-8.
“Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzi-bah (i.e., My delight is in her), and thy land Beulah (i.e., married): for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.”
“Shall thy sons marry thee”. A slight change in the vowel points, gives the reading thy great or royal Restorer or Builder (by the figure of Enallage, plural for singular) instead of “thy sons.” Sons, moreover, were the builders of families (Gen 16:2; Gen 30:3; Deu 25:9; Ruth 4:11, etc.)
“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.”
“And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me Ishi (i.e., my husband); and shalt call me no more Baali (i.e, my lord)… And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.”
These and other passages clearly prophesy that an election of Israel shall be the Bride. Had, then, the call in Acts 3:18-19 been obeyed, these prophecies must have had their fulfillment, quite irrespective of any Church.
Here again we come upon the solution of another great difficulty: THE OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS
They are a great burden to Expositors of New Testament Truth. And what to do with them is one of the commonest questions and difficulties which arises in the mind of the Bible-student. That there has been an elect body all through the Old Testament history we have abundant evidence.
While all the promises to Israel as a nation, were earthly, there were always those who lived “by believing (he wrote “faith”)” and “died in believing (he wrote “faith”),” and were “partakers of the heavenly calling” (Heb 6:1). These looked for no earthly portion, but they looked forward with a heavenly hope to a heavenly blessing. “These all died in believing (he wrote “faith”), not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country… a better country, that is an HEAVENLY: Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them A CITY.” (Heb 11:13-16) - And of Abraham it is said “he looked for a CITY, which hath FOUNDATIONS, whose builder and maker is God.” (Heb 11:10).
Now when we turn to Rev 21:9, we read that one of the seven angels said to John: “Come hither, I will shew thee the BRIDE, the Lamb’s wife.” “And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great CITY, the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God; and her light was like unto a stone most precious,” etc. (Rev 21:9-27).
What are we to understand but that this “CITY,” - which is declared to be the “BRIDE, the Lamb’s wife,” is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked; and that these elect saints of the Old Testament will form the BRIDE. This “Holy Jerusalem” may contain the Church or Body of Christ, as well as the Bride, inasmuch as “the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb, are the Temple of it” (Rev 21:22), and “the Lamb is the light thereof.” But it is not necessary on this account that we should identify them. The “Lamb” is the special title of the Lord Jesus in relation to Israel, and the elect of Israel, and especially to the Bride (see Rev 19:7-9 and the Parables of Marriage, and the Marriage-Supper in the Gospels).
It will also be noted that the names “ON the GATES of the city (i.e., the visible parts of the city)”, are “the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.” (Rev 21:12), while the names “IN the FOUNDATONS (the invisible parts of the city) are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (Rev 21:14).” This again carries us back to the Gospels (Mat 19:28), to the solemn words of the Lord Jesus in answer to a specific enquiry as to the portion of the Twelve Apostles: “Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Here in Rev 21:1-27 we have the Regeneration (the new heaven and the new earth), we have the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb. We ask, what has this to do with the Church - the Body of Christ? And has it not to do only and solely with the Holy City and with the BRIDE of the Lamb? The promise of Christ to the Twelve Apostles has never been abrogated; and, we ask, what are we to do with it, if the Apostles form part of the Body of Christ? The Church is part of Christ, the Bridegroom; but the Apostles, by a comparison of Mat 19:28, with Rev 21:14, form part of the BRIDE. This effectually disposes of the figment of “Apostolic Succession,” which would never have been seriously entertained had not the truth connected with the Mystery been lost. And we ought to note that while the Twelve Apostles are thus separated off from the Church, the Apostle Paul was specially raised up to a special and different position altogether, and is identified with the Mystery. In harmony also with this is the teaching of
Christians in their selfishness, attempt to rob others of their place as the Bride, and thus lose their own still “better” place as part of the Bridegroom. “Verily they have their reward”! The Bride and the Bridegroom, though in a sense one, are yet surely distinct. Ant it is clear from all the scriptures relating to the Mystery, that the members of Christ’s Body are not the Bride, but part of the Bridegroom Himself. Whereas the elect Old Testament saints will form the Bride. See Isa 12:6 “Cry out and shout, thow Inhabitress (marg.) of Zion: For great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.” In Rev 22:3, we read “The Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.” Of the glory of this Holy City other scriptures speak. See Isa 60:3, Isa 60:14, Isa 60:19, Isa 60:20; Rev 21:23-24, Rev 21:27; Isa 54:11-12. This is referred to again in Isa 4:5, when Jehovah shall have purged away the filth of the daughters of Zion, it is added “beyond all this glory there shall be the Chuppah, or the marriage canopy,” mentioned elsewhere only in Psa 19:5 and Joe 2:16; and referring to Isa 62:1-12. The Chuppah is the bridal canopy beneath which the nuptial ceremonies are performed to this day.
True, the Apostle might address the saints concerning his desire to present them “As a chaste virgin to Christ” (2Co 11:2). But this no more declares that the Church is the Bride of Christ than that the Apostle himself was their father (1Co 4:15); or that he was their mother (Gal 4:19). In one case he spoke of the painful anxiety of a mother; in another of the loving care of a father; while, in 2Co 11:2, he spoke of the jealousy of the friend of a bridegroom. The “Mystery” was a totally different thing.
So, in Eph 5:28-29, the argument is that husbands “ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church, for we are members of His Body,” i.e., AS Christ loves His own Body, the Church; so ought husbands to love their own selves, because they and their wives are “one flesh.” Thus “the great secret” is employed as an argument as to the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives. In neither case is it said that the Church IS the wife, or that Christ IS the husband. But that AS Christ loves His Body (the Church), SO husbands ought to love their bodies (their wives).
What is clear and certain is that the Church is the Body of Christ Himself, and that the members of that Body being “in Christ” (as members of His Body), are PART OF THE BRIDEGROOM, and cannot possibly, therefore, be the Bride herself.
It is a remarkable example of the perversity of Expositors, who while they hold that the Bride is the Church, persist in interpreting the parable of the ten virgins, as though the Bride’s attendant “Virgins” are also the Church. Though who ever heard of an Eastern Bride going out “to meet” the Bridegroom! The Virgins, “her companions,” went, but not the Bride. So our (wrong) expositors can hold whichever of these two positions they please, but, clearly, they are not entitled to hold them both. The “Bride” must be distinct from “the virgins her companions that follow her.” If we rightly divide the Word of Truth we see that the Church is neither the one nor the other, and that the subsequent revelation of the “Mystery” cannot be read into either Psa 45:1-17 or Mat 25:1-46, which are perfectly clear as they stand, and must have been capable of a plain interpretation to the first hearers or readers of those words, quite apart from the truth subsequently revealed. The Mystery was “hid in God.” It does not say it was hidden in the Scriptures, but “hid in God” Himself. There can be therefore no types of it in the Old Testament, inasmuch as types teach, and were meant to teach doctrines. But if truths and doctrines, which are elsewhere clearly revealed in the New Testament, can be illustrated from the Old Testament, that is quite another matter. The illustration and application of Old Testament Scripture to the Church is quite lawful and profitable, so long as it is kept distinct from interpretation. It is one thing to see an illustration of the Church in the Old Testament; but it is quite another thing to say that that is there revealed, which God distinctly declares was not revealed!
Gen 24:1-67 Has been, for example, widely taken as typical of the Christ and the Church. Isaac is taken as the bridegroom, and Rebekah as the Church or the bride. True, the chapter is illustrative, but not of the Church. The bridegroom and the bride were both “ready” before either was called to the marriage. The bride was found in the house of Abraham’s brother. Very special injunctions were given that she was not to be of “the Canaanites.” “But,” said Abraham to Eliezer, “thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac… thou shalt take a wife for my son from thence.” Great emphasis is placed on this important conditions in verses Gen 24:3-4, Gen 24:7, Gen 24:37-38. Abraham and Nahor were brothers, and by Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah, and Jacob’s marriage with her brother Laban’s daughters, Leah and Rachel, the whole house of Nahor was absorbed into the family of Abraham! Gentiles were expressly shut out when this typical wife was chosen, and Isaac on receiving his bride took her at once “into his mother Sarah’s tent,” thus forming the ground of the type as expounded in Gal 4:21-31.
Rebekah therefore represents, not the Church or Body of Christ, but that great cloud of witnesses (the Old Testament saints), who in the old dispensation sacrificed, as she did, all worldly advantages for the Lord’s sake. It is for these He is preparing that “city which hath foundations,” and of which He Himself is the divine architect. And truly, it is said of these, “if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out (as Rebekah came) they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:15-16).
“These all having obtained a good report through faith (believing), received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (Heb 11:39-40).
Now, we maintain, that this “better thing” cannot be the same as the good thing. The comparative term distinguishes between two things, and necessitates the existence of two. The one, as the Bride, will have a good place, a grand place, a place of honour and glory as the Lamb’s wife in the holy Jerusalem, but the Church, the Body of Christ, will have “some better thing,” a position of greater glory and honour, as part of the Bridegroom Himself.
It is for this consummation that the members of His Body now wait. We are, by the wondrous position which grace has given us, necessarily cut off from all “bodies” which are of human origination, and from all Ecclesiastical organizations. We do not seek to restore corporate testimony, for no such restoration of what man had ruined, was ever promised. The corporate failure is complete. There is no authority in the Word for re-establishing it, and all attempts to do so have ended in disaster, and in a widening of the breach between brethren. The “unity of the spirit” is now only subjective. There is no such thing as an objective unity of the spirit which we can “join.” The real truth of the “Mystery” received into the heart raises the members of the Body far above all human plans and hopes of union or Re-union. It takes us up at once into the heavenlies, seats us there with Christ, so that like Him we are “henceforth expecting.”
Hence, we are not concerned with prophecy as such, as a mere subject of study. To look for Christ’s appearing is the very essence of our Christian standing. It is the very breath of the Christian’s life. We “wait for God’s Son from heaven,” and long for Him to appear so that we may be “RECEIVED UP IN GLORY.” May we now conclude in the words of an ancient prayer, and say and confess that:
“We are very members incorporate in the Mystical Body of Thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people, and are also heirs together through hope of Thy everlasting Kingdom by the merits of the most precious death and passion of Thy dear Son, Amen.”