II Rev, tape 3 Malcolm Smith The Marriage of the Lamb

The book of the Revelation, Chapter 19

We have noted that as far as we can see there are 7 Visions in the Book, and I hope by now you have seen that each one begins, more or less, at the first coming of Christ and it moves through Church History, not as a point of temporal history or geographical history. It moves through this period of time which is between the Redemption in Christ and the end - it moves through that period where we now live, and gives us principles with which to interpret and understand what is going on. I trust you have seen that. Remember the first one began with the Lamb going to the Throne and then the seals being unfolded. We can stand back and look at our history wherever we find ourselves and say, now we understand, this is what is going on. Because the Lamb reigns this and this and this takes place, and in the middle of all the devastation that the unfolding of the seals caused we saw that the Church, which is the True Israel, which under symbolic number was called the 144000 stood there unharmed, untouched, sealed in their foreheads with the seal of the Living God, and then another vision began and that stopped, and another one began and so over and over again we saw an interpretation of Church history and physical history. We saw an interpretation with principles – what is going on today?

And last time we were together we saw that there is a system a world system that is called in the Book of Revelation Babylon, that is the world system, and Babylon the world system was presented under the picture, the word picture of a harlot, a prostitute who was drunk with the blood of the saints. This is what I want you to understand.

We are in the middle of that Vision, we only got half way through it. The first part of that Vision, here is the great prostitute and she seems to rule the world. She sits upon the back of world power and she is drunk with the blood of saints. If ever the world seems to conquer, take a good look – smell her perfume, look at the blush on her face, she seems to be the mistress of the world. Said the first half of our Vision, things are not what they seem to be. The great Prostitute was judged. It collapsed, it fell.

The second half of that same Vision that we are dealing with says, ‘Now I will show you something else – I will show you the opposite side, the real as opposed to the counterfeit. The world system is a prostitute. The Devil has his bride, she is a whore, but Christ has a bride, and immediately upon the destruction of Babylon we are introduced to the Bride of Christ. The great Prostitute is judged.

Revelation 19.1 – ‘after these things. I heard as it were a loud voice of a great multitude in Heaven saying ‘Hallelujah, and Salvation and Glory and Power belong to our God because His judgments are true and righteous because He has judged the Great Harlot, that is Babylon who was corrupting the earth with her immorality. He has avenged the blood of his bondservants on her. For the second time they said, Hallelujah, her smoke rises up for ever and ever, and the 24 Elders and the Four Living Creatures fell down and worshipped God who sits on the throne saying, ‘Amen Hallelujah and a great voice came from the Throne saying, ‘Give praise to our God all you His bondservants you who fear Him, the small and the great, and I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude the sound of many waters, and the sound of mighty peels of thunder saying Hallelujah, for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

That has many problems. If you don’t have any problems maybe you have never thought. That is the trouble with thinking – it gives you problems. My problem is that they are beholding the whole world system going up in flames. They are seeing the smoke of torment, the judgments of God and they are in an ecstasy of worship, they are saying ‘Hallelujah, The Lord God the Almighty reigns, and they actually state it, v. 3. The second time they said Hallelujah, why? The smoke rises up for ever and ever. And these are heavy words. They stand before the judgements of God they see the wrath of God continually being fulfilled the smoke of her torment ascending and they shout with ecstasy, Hallelujah, hallelujah.

I find among Christians today that they are embarrassed at this God, they are embarrassed. Christians today tell you that God loves you – that is true, I have no problems there, I have no embarrassment about a God that loves you. But when it come to hell and judgment and verses like this the Church almost coughs with embarrassment, and wishes it wasn’t there. Whereas here in Scripture they are not stating it, they are certainly not stating it with a cough, they are stating it with an ecstasy of worship. God has judged the world system, Hallelujah, hallelujah, God has judged the world system, Hallelujah.

We have to face up to this, that God is not God if He is not the God of justice and righteousness and judgment. In fact the bible tells me that His justice, His readiness to punish sin His wrath and His anger is part of His goodness. Exodus 33.19, Moses cried to God that the Glory of God would pass before Him. God said, I will cause my goodness to pass before you. And then Moses in a cleft of a rock – the Glory of the Lord passed before him, and then it delineates all that that glory was, all that goodness was, and part of that goodness was that God would punish every sin, and God would deal with Sin very thoroughly. When my goodness passes before you, part of that goodness is my justice.

God is not good unless He judges sin. Sin has defied the attributes of God. God is sovereign. Sin has mocked His sovereignty and said, I too am sovereign. God is omnipresent. Sin says – I will act as if God is not here. That is what the Bible means when it says ‘I have done this evil in thy sight’. The fact that sin was not merely committed, but committed in the very presence of God Himself. On and on we could go. Sin has mocked and defied every attribute of God. If God in His attribute, His absolute perfection, which He knows He is, then God delights in His own attributes. I have to delight in God. God delights in Himself. There is nothing more glorious, there is nothing more perfect or beautiful than the attributes of God. Therefore all creation are to delight in them, and God delights in them Himself. God’s joy is the joy that He has in Himself. If man defies those attributes, if man mocks them, does God really delight in Himself – is He really God, is He really the objection of absolute perfection, unless ultimately He will move out to punish all those who set themselves up as another centre. If God is not a God of justice there is every reason to question whether He is God at all. If God behold evil with pleasure, could He be a good God? A God that could look at evil done in His presence and against Him, could that God be good? Would you ever trust the justice of God if He beheld evil with pleasure? Think about that. I couldn’t worship a God who beheld evil with pleasure. If I did worship such a God it would be a god of darkness. God has to punish sin or He would not be God. Or put it this way, let us be positive about it – not only a God who takes pleasure in evil could not be worshipped – a god who is to be worshipped for His absolute goodness has to be the aggressive enemy of evil. The God of the Bible is not some neutral God who could not care less,

He is just sort of out there, there is goodness going on and evil, and He could not care less about it all. The God of the Bible is one Who must be aggressively against evil and aggressively for good, therefore He must punish sin. The doctrine of hell in the Bible is a necessity. It is not something we are embarrassed about. If I am really going to understand God in His goodness, in His righteousness, I stand with this crowd, this multitude in the Heavens, and when they see the whole world system collapsing and they see the torment of sin and the wrath of God – then they stand and begin with an ecstasy of worship which is one of the greatest in the book of Revelation. We have touched on a whole lot of worships in the book of Revelation, but this is the highest. It was from this chapter 19 that Handl’s Messiah was inspired, the great Hallelujah Chorus was taken from Revelation 19, and it is in adoration of a God who must and does judge sin.

The Bride of Christ, all those that have refused to bow to the Beast, they are gathered now and are adoring God. He did it. Remember the 5^th Seal? In Chapter 6 – this company is seen as saying ‘How long, how long oh Lord?’ There is nothing right, salvation has not been accomplished, actualised on earth until all who oppose God have been put down. Now it is done. This is the Grand Finale. And so the great cry goes up – Hallelujah, the Lord God Almighty reigns.

I don’t know how you feel about that – it is one thing to study it here, but when you look out on the world, and know that God just does not wink at sin. The longsuffering of God waits, but unquestionably, all that is associated with the world system shall be judged, and eternally judged, and there is no question about it.

But that is almost the wedding march if you please, for the whole chapter moves on, v.7 ‘Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb is come and his Bride has made herself ready. On the one hand all that oppose Him have been put down, on the other hand those that have the seal of the Lamb in their foreheads, they have made themselves ready. On the one hand the Prostitute has been stripped of glamour, on the other hand the Bride has been seen for who she is.

We have been seeing all through the book of Revelation ‘Echoes’ – every word, every concept every picture of Revelation is an echo from somewhere else. When it comes to the word ‘Bride’ that is an echo all through the Bible – in fact in one sense it is the oldest echo to be consistently picked up to tell us something about the nature of the True Church. Remember Paul gives us that – Ephesians 5.22-32, there he goes all the way back to the very first marriage of Adam and Eve and there in verse 32 of Eph 5 Paul states that it is a great mystery, but it is speaking of Christ and the Church, and so we have the Pauline authority to state that the Old Testament is teaching us concerning Christ and the Church under the symbol of Adam and Eve, the Bride and his Groom. There are many pictures of the Church in the Bible, many in the New Testament, the one that is of the Bride and the Groom, that is the one that spans the whole of the Bible. So in that sense I can’t just say there is a marriage here. It is an echo, and we have to go back and see what is being stated here.

Adam and Eve – the first Groom and the first Bride teaches us everything we need to know when God says the word ‘Bride’. Do you remember when God took Eve out of the side of Adam, and He presented Eve to Adam after the surgery, He said,’ here is your wife’ and Adam said, ‘This woman is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh’. Have you ever really thought about that? Some of these expressions we know so well, we don’t even think about them any more. Bone of my bone – the bones that she has are really my bones. Flesh of my flesh. So the flesh she has is really my flesh. That is a tremendous statement. He is saying, this one who is coming towards me now is none other than me! She is me in another form. Right?

Adam had a tremendous command of language, the idea that our ancestors were grunting apes is ridiculous. He was born with a tremendous command of language and he had already called himself in the Hebrew ‘Ish’. Ish means, Self, a person. It is when you look in the mirror and say, I, me, self. That doesn’t mean much today, but when you are the only person on earth, that means quite a bit. You can’t turn to the animals and say ‘Ish’ They are not a person. He had named all of the animals, every animal had its name, but when it came to himself he said ‘Ish’ – I’m difference from all the others. They are great animals, great pets, they imitate me, but they are not ME. I’m Ish – and we translate that ‘man’ – me, I and when Eve came towards him, he called her woman, but in the Hebrew he called her ‘Isha’. She’s me but not me, me in another form, bone of my bone, self of my self. She’s me, yet she is distinct from me.

That was the very first marriage. That is the understanding when the Bible says Bride. How did she come to be? How was Eve there? You may recollect Adam was put to sleep and where was she taken from? His side, his rib and God built, sculptured another self out of that rib. You could say then that Adam slept in order that Eve may live. When I come to the Cross of Jesus, there are two sides to that cross – the side we emphasise a great deal is that the blood of Jesus was shed in order to redeem us from our sins, that is true, obviously, but there is another side, Jesus also died in order that the Church, the Bride may have life.

Do you remember and so significantly, John records it that as he stood at the cross, a Roman soldier came and pierced His side, and out of His side flowed blood and water. Blood speaks of the wiping out of sin, but water, throughout the Bible speaks of Life. Jesus died on the one hand to redeem from sin, but on the other hand to give life. The Church of Jesus came out of the side of Jesus. He died that she might have life. And when I look at the Church I am looking at Jesus in another form. The Church – explain the Church apart from Jesus, you can’t. The Church is not a human organisation – most of what we call the Church today is Babylon. That is not the Church – the Church is that company of people in whom the very life of Jesus Christ is. Therefore, when I look at the Church I am looking at Jesus in another form. That is why in John 3 when it speaks of the very way every individual enters that Church through the new birth – it says you have to be born from above, born again. In our next hours we are going to be looking at the New Jerusalem. That is another picture of the Church and it says there that the New Jerusalem came down out of Heaven. There is no natural explanation of the Church. It was born out of the death of Jesus. At this point we are not talking about our sins being wiped out – that is a glorious fact, we are talking about the life being given, so that we become the Church. He is the Eternal Ish and he looks at us the Church and He says Isha – we are Christ in another form, His life is within us.

Only that which is of God can be presented to God. It would have been useless for God to have brought a monkey to Adam, because the monkey was not of Adam. Only that which is of Adam could be presented to Adam for a wife. Only that which came out of his side – his other self – now that other self can be presented to him for fellowship, they can know each other. If I am going to present to God my own good works. If I come to God and say – I am working hard, doing my best – that is an abomination to God. Only that which is of God can be presented to God. It is no good saying you are going to do your best – your best reeks, honest! You say you are trying your best to be like Jesus. There were plenty of apes in the Garden of Eden trying to be like Adam. Apes have been very good mimics from the Garden of Eden on. To try and be like Jesus, to mimic Him is not a qualification for being part of the company we are talking of. Only that which is of God can be presented to God. Only through the death of Jesus when the Spirit of Jesus comes to us, and we begin to exhibit the fruit of Jesus and our lives are of God, now that is a Bride fit to be presented to Him. Do you follow what I am saying now?

Not that I am saying that the Church is Jesus, anymore than Jesus is the Church, or anymore than Eve is Adam – as God said, they two shall become one. He didn’t say they one shall become one. He said they two. You are not Jesus Christ - Christ is in you, you have life because of Him, but you are not Him anymore than Eve was Adam – two, two distinct ones, yet they are one. So the Church is alive with the life of Jesus, and in that sense Jesus in another form, and yet the Church is not Jesus – they are two, and those two are one. That is the idea behind the idea of Bride.

You will find another beautiful picture of the Bride that is one of the most unquestionable echoes of the Old Testament to this New Testament idea, in Genesis chapter 22. I am sure you are familiar with that story, of how Abraham took Isaac and offered him on Mount Moriah and as the knife was poised to plunge into the heart of his son as an offering to God, God staid His hand. It is significant, that at that point when Isaac was in effect dead and raised again – Hebrews 11 puts it that way –in effect Isaac died – the parallel is unbelievable. It was 3 days since Abraham obeyed God and for 3 days Isaac lay dead in the heart of Abraham. He was going from his tent – for 3 days he was going to offer Isaac, for 3 days he lay dead, and in Hebrews 11 it says that Abraham was positive that even if that knife went into his Heart, God would raise him from the dead to prove His promises, therefore the knife did not go in, but on that 3^rd day Isaac in the heart of Abraham rose again from the dead. And do you know where Mount Moriah is? Some people call it Mount Calvary, it is the very same mountain. In that very same place 2000 years later Jesus would die in that very same place, and in a tomb close by 3 days later Jesus would rise from the dead.

And having told that story in Genesis 22 which is such a parallel to the cross, the last words in that chapter seem to go off at an angle and they say that at that time Abraham heard that his brother who lived in Padan-Aram had some children. And I remember the first time I read this, I though good grief whoever wrote this has got bad time. You are trembling with anticipation – returning after Isaac nearly died, and you get back and get a letter which tells you that Uncle Nahor had some children – terrific! Until you notice one of those children’s names was Rebekah. And Rebekah was to become the Bride of Isaac. You talk about the Holy Spirit putting something together, but in the chapter in which Isaac was offered up and in type was raised again immediately the Holy Spirit says, and that is when Rebekah was born. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, that is when the Bride was born. Tremendous parallel.

You could follow it through to the book of Ruth. For Ruth is another tremendous book of the Bible - just to teach you more about this concept of the Bride. Ruth was the outcast, she was the Moabite, Moabite, the dirty gentile. She couldn’t speak Hebrew – she was black on top of that, she was a different colour to the people she went to, spoke a different language, she was a gentile, and she came into the congregation of Israel, and she came into a poverty-stricken situation, and then Boaz turns up. But you see Boaz was a special person. Have you ever heard of the expression Kinsman-Redeemer? Do you know why they call it Kinsman-Redeemer? Because there is one word in Israel, ‘goel’ and the word ‘goel' means my relative, my kinsman, but it also means my redeemer. If I am your relative under the ancient Hebrew idea, and you are in trouble, I have to redeem you. I may not like you, that is beside the point. If you are my relative, I have to redeem you. So the word relative and redeemer is one word in Hebrew. And because Ruth had married into the family, and the husband had died, but still she was in the family, an outcast, unwanted, but Boaz is a redeemer, a relative. And so the whole story of the book is that he came and he became her redeemer. He married her, he brought her under the umbrella of all the riches and dignity of his name. He became her 'Goel', her kinsman redeemer. Jesus Christ is our Goel. We are the outcasts, unwanted, we don’t have right to the promises of God and God over and over again said I am your redeemer.

I often wonder what the ancient Hebrews thought about that, because God is saying ‘I am your relative’. How can God who is eternal infinite spirit be a relative of mane of flesh and blood. And that is the whole argument of Hebrews chapter 2 – God did not take on him the form of angels, but of man, flesh and blood and God then in my flesh and blood can say I am your relative, your Goel. I am a man like you, and in the cross he redeemed us and married this Ruth. And we become the Bride of the goel, the redeemer.

Are you stacking all these together, these echoes. – it is all here. The book of Revelation goes all that way back. In the Old Testament Israel was called the Bride of Jehovah, but the bride in waiting, always waiting, and now in Christ the Bride has become a reality, and all the jewels of all the promises of God they are now yes, Amen in Jesus Christ, so when it says the marriage of the Lamb is come, that is a loaded statement. The marriage, that goes all the way back as we have seen – the Lamb, we have already met in chapter 5.

But more than that, marriages in the East are to marriages in the West. There is a difference. We shall take at least a very brief look at that difference in order to understand what it is saying here. The Marriage of the Lamb is come – what does that mean? It can only be understood in Eastern terms. The first step of a marriage in the East was an engagement. Forget everything you know about Western protocol. Forget the idea of looking at the girl of your choice, the bluebirds in your eyes and bells in your ears, looking at her and saying, ‘Will you marry me? Forget it. They had a much more sensible idea in the East. You send an old servant, and if he knows a woman, he knows a woman. And if you are just a young fellow, what do you know about women. Now this fellow, he has been around a bit and he knows a woman so we are not going to trust you, we are not even going to let you loose. You stay home, we will send the person who knows – the matchmaker, the Fiddler on the Roof gives you a pretty good idea of the Eastern way of handling this. You are too young, too foolish. To think of marriage, we send the Matchmaker , and he’s the one who goes.

If you were to follow this through Genesis chapter 24 is the perfect picture. Isaac is home. Matchmaker Eleazar, the servant, trusted – he goes to Paddan-Aram to find a bride for Isaac. The fact that Isaac had never set eyes on Rebekah, the fact that there were no photographs or anything like that, is quite beside the point. Eleazar comes to Rebekah, and again, the fact that Rebekah had never set eyes on Isaac is quite beside the point. Eleazar knows what he is at, and of course in that story there is more at work than Eleazar. And that is what we are dealing with right now, but that is the picture of the Bride and who is the Matchmaker? The Holy Spirit comes to us, we are in Paddan-Aram – the place which was very very materialistic and worldly and into Paddan-Aram comes the Holy Spirit, Eleazar and he came to Rebekah and he invited her to become the Bride of Isaac. Which meant of course from our perspective that she was called to inherit all the blessings of Abraham, although she was born in Paddan-Aram. And she came to be married to the unknown Isaac and to receive every blessing God had ever promised to Isaac. She was going to be born into it – it was an engagement.

Now an engagement was as binding as a marriage. You remember that when Joseph wanted to put away Mary they were not yet married, but he had to get a bill of divorce to put her away. So that an engagement was not a period before the final commitment. An engagement was not a period of commitment before the marriage. But the engagement was the commitment. And so the Holy Spirit is come to us, and what this book is looking at is us as a unit, as a block. All of us together, this is what has happened to us. The Holy Spirit has come to us – you have never seen Jesus – but whom having not seen you love, and we are now rejoicing with a joy unspeakable, the engagement has taken place Paul says that in II Cor. 10, where it says, he has engaged us as a virgin to Christ. We have come – the engagement of which there is no breaking has taken place.

The engagement was followed by a period of time in which they did not see each other. This period of time is the period of time discussed all the way through the book of Revelation – the time of His death and Resurrection, and then the white horse goes forth and the Holy Spirit puts an arrow in your heart, and you are claimed for ever for Jesus. And you become part of the Bride engaged to the unseen Christ, part of the 144000, the symbolic number. How long oh Lord, how long? It is a period of time now before the marriage takes place. This is the time when the seals takes place and the bowls and the trumpets, and when the beast walked the earth and the Prostitute seems to have it all.

And then one tremendous echo – this chapter is full of echoes, one great echo is the Song of Solomon. The Song of Solomon is a great book, basically it is a book that Solomon told of himself. He is the great King in Jerusalem, and Solomon goes out to look for more women to put in his house – it was in the days when he was a backslidden almost apostate king, and the great king Solomon goes out into the villages to find women to take back to his palace, and he picks upon this one shepherdess, and drags her back to the Palace, and she doesn’t want to come, and once there he loads her with all the perfume and fine clothing, and all she says is, ‘Have you ever seen the man I love?’ Oh, you should see him, and she gets all the other girls together and tells them about the one she has left back in the country. And Solomon lavishes her with all the riches and every perfume he can give to her. But that is not enough – she says, now you should see my Beloved. Man, you have nothing on him, - you should see him. And then there are visits to the Palace by the beloved – and she runs through the streets of Jerusalem to find him. He’s the one, Jerusalem, everybody – you couldn’t have missed him. And finally Solomon gives up. What is the use – let her go back, and he sees her in the last chapter, leaning on her beloved, and he says – who is this who comes out of the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Ah, he said, that is love – waters cannot quench it, fire cannot burn it.

What is it saying? The Church of Jesus Christ, betrothed – she was not married to that shepherd, betrothed, engaged. And who comes along to the Church but Solomon, who at that time of his life related more to the Beast –oh come on, I will load you all with riches, I will give you all you want, all you need – drag you away. The Church is being attacked on every hand, inside and outside – Forsake the Christ, deny Him. And all the Church does is says, If ever you had seen my Jesus, if ever you understand my Jesus. Until ‘Oh go back to your beloved, what is the use!. Waters cannot quench it?

Do you get the picture? It is a tremendous book. It is talking about that time when you don’t see each other. That is what this whole book of Revelation is about –don’t give in, have patience, if necessary have wisdom, understand what is going on. But then there the time when the Groom leaves His home and comes to the house of the Bride to pick her up. Remember the story in Genesis 24 when Isaac leaves his home and went out to meet the Bride as she came, that was the way it was done, and so in this chapter we have the picture of the Groom coming to meet the Bride.

Notice it says in v. 11 – I saw Heaven open and a white horse, and He Who sat upon it was Faithful and True. I don’t need an interpretation of who this is – we have met faithful and true in chapter 1 and verse 5. That is where Jesus is described to us as a Faithful and True One. We have also met Him in chapter 6 riding out on the white horse, he rode out on the white horse in order to gather together His Bride. Now He comes to collect His Bride, and that is the idea here. And it says, also at such a time, and we must not forget this, he judges righteousness and wages war. He has come to collect His Bride, but in so doing he must judge the Beast and the False Prophet and the Woman who sat on them all, the Great Whore, and the Dragon himself. It is not enough to say that God loves us – for if God loves us He must punish all who hate us. Does that make sense? The two go together.

It says that in His eyes was a flame of fire – we have met Him whose eyes are a flame of fire before, in chapter 1 v 14 – and it says upon His head are many diadems, or many crowns. That is interesting. That goes right back to the Ascension which Paul speaks of in Philippians 2, where Paul says God has given Him a Name, and that at that Name every knee shall bow, every tongue confess - all the crowns. Or again it says in Chapter 12, speaking of when Jesus rose again – the Kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of the Lord and His Christ.

Remember in the Temptation the Devil presented himself to Jesus, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, he said, all these will I give you for it is delivered into my hands to do it. Do you remember the picture of the Devil we have already met, with the many crowns on the many heads? The power behind every empire of the world was the Devil, and he says, I can give you any one that you want, or all of them if you like, only bow down and worship me. Jesus had come to this world in order to take all of the kingdoms of the earth – the Devil said to Jesus – why go through all that –just bow down, and they will all be yours anyway. But you see Jesus had come to take the diadems and slay the Devil – and he refused it, and He goes through the way of the Cross and the Resurrection, and when He rose from the dead He said He had got what the Devil had offered Him, He said, ‘All authority is given unto me in Heaven and upon earth. The kingdoms of this world had become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ'. And in this period in between He is bringing evil to its fullest in order that He might defeat it totally that the Cross might be actualised on earth. And as He comes now to take His Bride He has many diadems. They have all been taken from the head of the Dragon and they are now on the head of the Lord Jesus. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords it says in v. 16.

And it says He has a name written upon Him that no-one knows except Himself. Remember the names that were written on the other beasts – it says their heads were covered with names of blasphemy. This one has a name written which no man knows. That speaks of the fact, Who is Jesus Christ? Quite frankly, when all is said and done, do you know who He is? Remember one of the titles of Jesus in Isaiah 6.9, it says, His name shall be called Wonderful. And you open a package – it is your birthday, and you sort of half know what you are going to get -what you expect – then you get a surprise, it is ‘wonderful’. You say, ‘That is a little bit more than I expected’. And once you have taken in what you have got, you open the top thinking you know all about that thing, and it is even more than you thought – it is wonderful. The word wonderful assumes you are getting more than you expected. It assumes you are discovering more than you thought possible to discover. His name is wonderful. Every time you think you understand Jesus, the Holy Spirit says, Hey, wait a minute. You say, wonderful, it is a little more than you thought. Upon Him is written a name which no man knows – the mystery of God incarnate in Christ is an eternal study – the infinite nature of the God-man.

It goes on and says He is clothed with a robe that is dipped in blood, He will never forget the Cross, even in the glory of the marriage of the Lamb is come, you will ever be reminded of the cross. And His name is called the Word of God just in case you didn’t know who it was – John says, just refer back to my Gospel ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’.

Now it says, out of His mouth came a sharp sword, and again that takes us back to that first chapter when we met Jesus with a sharp sword – and it says so that with it he might smite the nations, He will rule them with a rod of iron, treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the Almighty. This is what we have been meeting all the way through this book under the term Armageddon. I know last time when we got that far, I said we would deal with it next time. Well we have got far this time, and I say we will deal with that next time – we do not have many minutes, and I am certainly not going to give just a few minutes to what has become one of the key words in some people’s interpretation of this book.

And so let it be said, that at this point, I want you to get the whole picture here – here is the Church surrounded by the Beast, surrounded by the False Prophet, all these symbolic terms which describe the peoples and the ideas and the philosophies of this world, and over all the Great Whore, and already we have seen that He has defeated the Great Whore – and now He comes into all this, and there is described the great judgment – v.20 the Beast was seized and the False Prophet – it says they were seized and they were judged. And so here is Christ coming into the midst of all those opposing forces that have come against the Church and it is not a battle, this idea of a battle – it is not a battle – I challenge you to find a battle. He came and that was it. The idea of a battle? – you will have to wait for that for our next hour to see what that idea has within it. But enough to say that at this Coming of Christ, all the forces that oppose the Church were defeated .

The marriage of the Lamb is come, which of course is at the very end of this protocol of Eastern wedding. The Groom came to where the Bride was, she didn’t go to him, he came to her and took her from there, and they lived happily ever after. Or as I Thess 4 says, ‘And so we shall ever be with the Lord’ And at that point the Bride and the Groom were seen as belonging to each other. It is one thing to live in a little backside of a village in Israel and say I happen to be married to the King of Kings, ha, ha, ha, - you could fool me. But when the day of the Marriage comes and the King of Kings comes for His Bride that nobody believed, well you have to admit it, she was right. That is the idea of Colossians 3. It says that ‘When Christ Who is your light shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in Glory’. And when we see Him says John in his 3^rd chapter of his epistle, when we see Him we shall be like Him. Or as Roman 8 puts it, ‘the manifestation of the Sons of God’. It is one thing to say you are a son of God and the world says, Ha, ha – but when the Marriage of the Lamb is come, and the Bridge and the Groom appear together we shall be seen as we are, and He shall be known as He really is, and all those that defied the fact that He was King of King and Lord of Lords will see that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and the whole universe will know that things are not what they seem to be. And every knee shall bow – some with joy and some with anger, but every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. Amen.

The original set of 12 tapes can be obtained from Malcolm Smith's web site.
They are suitable for group study.

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