E. W. Bullinger

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September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index

Things to Come

It is proposed in the following paper to answer the question which has recently become one of general interest, viz., To what company does Revelation 21 refer, where we read, "Come hither and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife"?

There are just seven signs that this is not the Church, but that here the seer is shown the restored, regenerated people of Israel under a figure familiar to all students of the Old Testament.

Let us briefly enumerate them:

(1) Christ is described as "The Lamb."

The origin of the title is essentially Jewish, and, therefore, though precious to every soul redeemed by blood, foreign to the Lord's relations to the Church, in a dispensational sense. For it refers to the passover and to the daily sacrifice. Therefore, John the Baptist, whose mission was wholly Jewish (Luke 1:16,17,77,80), addressing those to whom the rites of the law were familiar, cries, "Behold the Lamb of God." The title as such disappears from the time of the Holy Spirit's descent, until in the Book of the Revelation, Israel is once more in view, prophetically. (The allusion in 1 Peter 1:19 is addressed to Jewish converts, and is used illustratively, "as of a lamb.") In the Revelation our Lord is called "The Lamb" about twenty-six times, not merely as accomplishing redemption, but also as receiving honour, glory, power, and even executing wrath, and waging war.

(2). The company is described as the Bride, the Lamb's wife.

These are, both of them, Old Testament figures of Israel, and seem to be taken from Isaiah 62:5: "For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons [or thy Restorer] marry thee, and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee."

Again, in 61:10, we read: "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation...as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels."

In the beautiful story of the bride Rebekah we have this relation foreshadowed, for, unlike the wives of Joseph, Moses, and Boaz, who all were of Gentile blood, in Isaac's case the servant was solemnly sworn, "Thou shalt not take a wife to my son of the daughters of the Canaanites." Rebekah was thus a type of the nation of which she was also to become progenitress.

Israel is therefore the bride of Jehovah, and John the Baptist, who, as we have seen, had no mission to Gentiles, beholds with great joy in the pure souls of the elect remnant who had even then grouped themselves around the Lord, the nucleus of the regenerate nation, and says: "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom which standeth and heareth him rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Thus my joy therefore is fulfilled."

It is said that the term bride cannot be applied to a people like Israel, who had been "married" ages before to Jehovah, and had fallen away. But would not the same argument apply to the Church whose history is not less but more disgraceful than that of Israel? But in truth the figure is used to show that the Israel of the future will be regenerate, born again, partakers of the divine nature, created in righteousness and true holiness, endowed with a truly bridal nature as undefiled and impeccable as if enclosed in angelic and not human forms. For "all Israel shall be saved." Thus Israel will combine the two characters—"the wife," because ages before chosen, loved and nationally married to Jehovah; "The bride"—because in her future relation she shall be a new creation, old things all passed away: "wife" in God's unfailing faithfulness, "bride" in Israel's new life, and love, and spotless purity in Christ.

(3) It is a city, a holy city, which John is shown. Now the Church is specially revealed as a body, a human body, and when the bride's appearance was announced, what would have been more simple, appropriate, and natural than, if the Church was meant, to present her in human form, as Eve was brought to Adam, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. But no; it is a city, and that city the New Jerusalem. This fact excludes the Church—not, be it observed, that the Church is excluded from the city. We know from Hebrews 12:22 that "we are come to Mount Zion, the city of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem," in the sense of access, enjoyment, and communion. But to have access to the city is one thing; to be the city is quite another thing. We are also said to come "to the innumerable company of angels," and yet we are not angels. No. The city proves that the bride is Israel. It was Abraham's hope (Heb 11), revealed, no doubt, in vision of him long ages before John beheld its glory. It was foretold in Isaiah 60:14, 19, 20 and 54:11, 12, for Israel's earthly millennial city will in many respects be its type.

Its very name ought to settle the question.

Our first lesson, as young Christians, was to understand, in prophetic study, by Israel, Israel; by Jerusalem, Jerusalem; and to beware of appropriating to the Church or to ourselves the good things foretold for the beloved nation. The Church is never called a city, and is never called Jerusalem. No doubt she is called a Temple, but then John says, "I saw no temple therein." And Jerusalem, which is above, is called the "mother of us all," because we have received through her the Word of God, by which we were born of God. But this is a future city, not our mother, which must be something in the past, viz., the spiritual Israel of past ages, her prophets, and singers, the writers of Old Testament Scripture.

If we were of the number of those who altogether deny the literal fulfillment of the prophecies of Israel's national salvation, the diversion of Revelation 21 into church channels might be intelligible and excusable, but how anyone who admits the absolute certainty of their fulfillment can fail to see in the new, the great, and the holy Jerusalem city, the regenerate nation's glorious home, passes comprehension.

(4) The city comes down out of heaven from God, and lights upon the new earth, for the nations of the saved to bring their glory and honour into it (Rev 21:24).

But the Church is destined to a heavenly, not an earthly abode. If Ephesians 1:18-23 is examined it will be seen that the hope of God's calling of the Church is that the Head and Body united in heavenly places, should rule over all things created in the age to come. When it is said, as it is said, that "the one figure of speech [the Body] relates entirely to present condition, the other [the Bride] describes things that are to come," surely Ephesians 1 must have been forgotten where the Body is connected with Christ's future glory, and 2 Corinthians 11:2, 3, where the Bride is connected with present Church purity and loyalty to the Lord.

(5) "The city had a wall, great and high." This at once recalls the wall of Ephesians 2:14, which is a figure used by Paul to convey the separateness of Israel, her distinctiveness, even exclusiveness, as regards Gentile approach or encroachment upon her national privileges.

"Broken down" during all this present time of the one Body, in which both Jew and Gentile have been made one, when the new earth shall have been prepared, the wall of partition re-appears, not indeed repulsively as regards the saved nations, for on every side it is pierced by gates of access; but yet there it is, "great and high," and every gate bears the name of one of the tribes, to show that the purposes of God's election stand unchanged, that Israel "shall not be reckoned among the nations."

(6) This appropriation of all the gates of the New Jerusalem to the tribes of Israel ought to settle our question, one would think, beyond yea or nay. For who ever heard of tribes in the Church? And mark, it is not that Israel's tribes have access to the Church's glory, as some seek to show. The gates are Israel's gates to Israel's Jerusalem. If the Church is here at all it might, with more show of reason, be contended that she is included in the nations of the saved (though that too could easily be refuted), but signs of the Church in the city there are none.

(7) The names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb are inscribed in the foundations of the wall.

We have already seen that the title, "The Lamb," is one which obviously originated in our Lord's connection with Israel. In none of the Epistles are the Apostles described as the Apostles of the Lamb. That title would not correctly describe the Apostle Paul. He was the Apostle of the Mystery. The Apostle of Christ. The Apostle of the Gentiles. A Minister of the Church (Col 1:25). But the "Apostles of the Lamb" are the twelve (including Matthias in Judas' stead), whose qualifications were that they "companied" together "all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, unto that day that He was taken up from us" (Acts 1:21,22). The Apostle Paul was not qualified, therefore, to take Judas' place. He was called from heaven, by Christ in ascension, to receive and preach the revelation of the Mystery of the One Body, and "that he should be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles" (Rom 15:16). And yet Paul's name, the Apostle of the Church, is not found in the city which is said to be the Church!

But in the great, New Jerusalem, we see the fulfillment of Christ's promise to the twelve, in Matthew 19:28, "Ye that have followed Me, in the regeneration [the new heavens and new earth and new nation], when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye shall also sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." The city's wall with its tribal gates and apostolic foundations is a plain, unmistakable fulfillment of the promise.

In conclusion, I might ask, if the city be the Church, where is the Israel of the regeneration? The city cannot do duty for both, as is evident. The saved nations cannot include Israel. And so by that theory Israel is obliterated, extinguished, lost sight of, forgotten—no place found for her.

On the other hand, if it be asked where is the Church if this be Israel, I point to Ephesians 1:22, 23, and answer, the Christ of the dispensation of the fulness of times is multiple, the Head is Head over all things to the Church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. "Ubi Christus ibi ecclesia"—Where Christ is, there is the Church.

September, 1897 | Vol. IV July 1897 - June 1898 | Main Index  

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