Except that the bride is the church and the groom is Christ.
It’s our wedding feast the virgins are waiting for to begin.
We are the guest of honor, not those waiting for the bridegroom to come to the bride.
Again, you assume that all that are saved are the Bride of Christ. What if it is a fraction of believers as in a fraction of the 10 Virgins?
So, Joanie, who doesn’t want the Rapture because she’s excited to be going off to College; Michael, who doesn’t want it because he’s just married the woman of his dreams — are compelled by Christ?
So there’s no need to follow the Lord’s injunction here:
Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen (Luke 21:36)
Afterall, indifferent and Christians with worldly affections WILL escape! ???
These admonitions of Christ relate to watching, praying, and expecting the soon return — all things which the sleeping faction of believers (5 Kept Outside) is guilty of.
All believers have beeen lulled asleep by either those advocating imminency or the preterists. Now, with the attention on Feast Days, Hebrew idioms, Stellar software, and the Internet., some are awake and waiting with lamps filled on these breakthroughs. Gabriel told Daniel that towards the end there would be increased knowledge and the vision would be unsealed.
quote-Except that the bride is the church and the groom is Christ.
metmom, it could be argued the ‘church’ is the spiritual ‘Body of Christ’.
And the bride is hidden within the Body of Christ.. Just like Eve, as the rib, was hidden, in Adam.
Or hidden in Christ, when blood and water came out of His body when He fell asleep.
Maybe the church is having a gender identity problem itself- not knowing if its the female bride or the male body of Christ.
Pretty interesting the world seems to be having those sort of current events, too.
If He tells the end from the beginning, the church may think it’s the female bride of Christ -when it’s really the male Body of Christ- that is due to fall asleep.
a gender identity crisis.
Or the church may think it’s the male Body of Christ and Christ is going to marry a male.
a gay marriage crisis.
Since He is Sovereign, it can’t be an accident the world is seeing gay marriage become normal and gender identity crisis and transgenderism come on the scene today.
And lines are being drawn..
Like He’s telling us something.
Again, that’s only if the pattern in the beginning with Adam and his bride, and the pattern at the cross, are the pattern for His Spiritual Bride.
And that would mean the spiritual Body of Christ, the church, is not the bride.
But it has the bride hidden within it- to be revealed when the spiritual Body follows Christ to the cross and falls asleep.
Not sure that would be preached in too many places, but that pattern follows His Word.