Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The Bible tells us that the time will come (let's hope soon!) when the Lord's church on earth will make "herself ready" "for the marriage of the Lamb" (see Rev. 19:7, 8). The "marriage" is something that hasn't yet been consummated, after all these 6000 years. The hold-up in the "marriage" taking place is that "His wife" (the church) obviously has NOT yet "made herself ready."
How will "she" do so? Will it be a super-efficient works program, a mighty "revival and reformation" motivated by the most intense spiritual fear ever known--the "seven last plagues" (see Rev. 16)?
No bride ever "makes herself ready" for the marriage if she is afraid of her bridegroom, and moves under coercion from him. In fact, "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18), and the word used there for "love" includes conjugal love between husband and wife (see Eph. 5:25, Greek, agape). Nothing can motivate a woman to "make herself ready" for a wedding except a heart-response on her part to what she perceives in her fiancée is genuine love.
Any bride in such a wedding is herself a little illustration of the church at last responding to the Lamb of God, her true Lover. Any respect a woman has for a bridegroom because he's wealthy (a good banker), or powerful (a general), or handsome (a movie star), or even good (a prophet), soon withers unless the man makes it abundantly clear to her that he loves her more than he loves any other woman in the world. That's what any woman is like (at least if she's in her right mind).
"The marriage of the Lamb" is based on the same principle. No church will ever "make herself ready" to marry Christ unless she has discovered the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, of the love He has for her. And being a "woman" of mature and marriageable age (in spiritual maturity), the church will come to the place where "she" will grow out of the egocentric mind-set that has characterized her supposed devotion to Him.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 21, 2004.
Copyright © 2012 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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