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the Wedding Supper of the Lamb
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the Who Is Israel? series
the Bride
by haRold Smith
a citizen of the Commonwealth (Ephesians 2:19)
"These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."
And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures." Luke 24:44-45
"Now
YOU are the Body of Messiah, and members in particular." 1Corinthians 12:27
"For the husband is head of the wife, as also Messiah is head of the assembly; and He is the
Savior of the Body... For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.
'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Messiah and His Body." Ephesians 5:23-32
John answered and said, 'A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from the Father.' You yourselves bear me witness that I said, 'I am not the Messiah' but, 'I have been sent before Him.
'He who has the bride is the bridegroom;
but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled." John 3:27-29
Any body, your body, is a single entity. Your head is not detached from the rest of your body, floating around somewhere in space on its own - you are a single unit. In like manner, if we are to become "members of Yeshua's Body, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone" with Him as the Head of that Body as it says in
Ephesians 5:30 (click on highlighted words to view content)
then those who have embraced the example of His Life are also a single entity with the Head. If we comprise the members of His Body and if He is the BrideGroom as John the Immerser proclaimed in
John 3:29,
it can be safely said that, as befits a single entity, we are the bodily members of the BrideGroom - already of His Flesh and of His Bone. The English word communion is translated from the Greek word
koinonia
and means fellowship, association, community, joint participation, and (the definition that is of particular interest) - intercourse. In fact, of the 20 times this word koinonia is used in scripture, it is translated more than half the time (12) as "fellowship" and is actually only translated 4 times as "communion". What scripture is speaking of was a Hebraic practice that each of the disciples were not only aware of, but had been raised in a culture where "table fellowship" meant something unique to the Hebraic way of life. So, if the BrideGroom leaves His mother and Father to BECOME one flesh with His Wife when they
are joined together
and, since nowhere in scripture is there any precedent set for a groom to have intercourse with himself and, thus, at a wedding one cannot be both the BrideGroom and the Bride at the same time; then, the question has to be asked - who is the Bride?
For many years, I have had a problem with which scriptures are to be taken literally and which scriptures are to be "spiritualized" as allegory or metaphor - and who decides which ones are handled in which manner? What I have come to observe is that those scriptures we think we understand we take literally - as in "do not murder". Those scriptures we can not or do not understand are "spiritualized" and placed in an allegorical "nether land". To those we point to as an answer but, in reality, are made up only of speculation, conjecture and opinion that after a period of time, assume validation simply by existing. Like most, I have believed what I have been taught - what has been handed down to me by those I respected as learned in the Way of Yeshua. Over the past few years, however and particularly since residing in Israel, I have come to question many of those beliefs - not out of disrespect for my mentors for they were only handing me what they, too, had been taught and had sincerely come to believe as being true. What I have uncovered in that questioning is the insidiousness by which
perversity
has infiltrated what we have come to embrace as Truth - perversity being defined as "a slight turning from Truth." Ever since
"resurfacing"
in YaHoVeH some time ago, I have seen that much of what we have come to believe and hold as Truth in the religion of Christianity is nothing more than tradition handed down to us by other men. That is precisely the meaning of tradition as defined by Yeshua in
Mark 7:13
and the only thing He ever pointed to that would nullify
the Word of His Father.
As an example of just how much tradition has become intertwined into what we believe, many consider the Hebrew phrase
ruach ha kodesh
(reading right to left is Hebrew for "the holiness of spirit") to simply be a substitute for the English "Holy Spirit" appearing in their bibles. This is incorrect as there is no capitalization in Hebrew; thus, there is no personification, no third person
"Holy Spirit"
- that is nothing more than the tradition of men not found in the original words of scripture. What is the holiness of spirit? Holiness is the Nature abiding in Spirit, Who is YaHoVeH - something that is
cultivated
within an individual by that individual. When Yeshua said to "be perfect even as your Father is perfect" in
Matthew 5:48,
He was not giving us something to do that was beyond our reach - nor was He telling us anything new. He was not giving us a "new" command. He was actually quoting
Leviticus 19:2
(the Torah) which says, "You shall become holy, as I, YaHoVeH, your Elohim am holy". The Way to become holy is to keep
YaHoVeH's Words
- the only Words given by Spirit directly to men. There are many "saints" recorded in the Tanakh (OT). The Hebrew word
kadosh
translated "saints" in the Tanakh and a variation of kodesh, is describing those who comprise
the family of YaHoVeH
- those who abide within
YaHoVeH's Kingdom
by becoming "set apart" from the world. Becoming holy is very different from what happened on
Yom Shavu'ot
when those who were waiting received the Breath of Life from
YaHoVeH.
Every jot and tittle of scripture is inspired by
Spirit
Who is YaHoVeH and will all come to pass exactly as it is written. But, you know what? - when Yeshua appeared in the flesh, every jot and tittle of inspired scripture was fulfilled exactly as it was written and nobody understood it until after it had taken place. Not even the disciples knew - which is why their understanding was opened AFTER His Resurrection
(Luke 24:44-45,
John 20:6-9).
Since words mean things, it is only in receiving those words given to us in scripture for what they actually say and mean that we will begin to understand what they are trying to convey. While most Christians have just accepted the analogy of being both the Body and the Bride without much study on their own, the thought expressed in the opening paragraph of this article cuts across the grain of all that has been taught concerning the Christian
"church"
being both members of His Body and also being the Bride at the same time. But, again, words mean things and if we look at scripture simply for what the words say - it becomes apparent there is a distinction between the two. Before we answer the question of "Who is the Bride?" however (bear with me for a moment, if you will), let us see what it means to be a "member of the Body of Messiah" (not "the Christ" which is a
Greek alteration
of the Hebrew word "Messiah"), let us put aside all of our preconceptions and look at some scriptures which lay a foundation that, at the very least, I believe you will find compelling.
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"Vanished"
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Sha'ul (the Hebrew apostle Paul) says in
Ephesians 5:23-32
that when he speaks of the marriage relationship, he is speaking a "mystery" because He is actually speaking of the relationship between Messiah and His Body. A mystery is not something that discounts what we see in reality but is something above what our human intellect comprehends about what we see. Often, we look at things as being either one way or another and have a tendency to try to conceptualize in finite, human terms something that is Spirit - infinite and unconceptual. This mystery the scripture refers to over and over is that we can have both at the same time - flesh and Spirit. When Yeshua "appeared" to the boys in
Luke 24:36-42,
it does not say He walked through the walls as most of us have come to reason - He simply "stood in their midst". He appeared much in the same way He
"appeared"
before the two on the road to Emmaus in the verses preceding and, yet, He had a Body of flesh - He was both Spirit and flesh. This mystery continues in the description of the marriage relationship between a man and a woman. The mystery is that even though you can clearly see two distinct individuals before your eyes, scripture says they are - not one spirit, but one flesh. Reach over and pinch yourself. This is the type of relationship Sha'ul says he is speaking of between Yeshua and His Body where, when two or three are gathered together in His Name, even though only two or three individuals can be "seen"; what is actually being beheld is one entity, one Body with Yeshua as the Head of that Body - the Head is not floating around somewhere else gazing in on the picture
(Mark 10:8,
1Corinthians 6:16).
So, to comprehend this description properly, we need to elevate our level of understanding above that which we have come to define as a single entity. The two individuals are really one entity, one flesh and it is
this description
that constitutes the Body's relationship to the Messiah of Israel.
As seen in the previous article, the English word "church" comes from the Greek ekklesia which actually means "a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly of Israelites." The first time this word
ekklesia
is used in scripture is not in the Book of Acts, as most would presume, but in the Gospels - spoken of by Yeshua before what is now popularly considered conceptually to be the "Christian church" comprised of
Gentiles.
In Matthew 16:18
Yeshua replied to Peter that it would be on this same rock of revelation that had revealed Who He was to Peter that He would build His ekklesia - meaning
assembly of Israelites.
The Greek word for 'build' used here is
oikodomeo
and means to build (up from the foundation), to restore by building, to rebuild, to repair. As explored in the article What's New About It?,
we saw that the verses from Hebrews 8:6-13 are quoted directly from
Jeremiah 31:31-33
in the Tanakh (renamed OT). The Hebrew word that is translated "new" in that passage comes from the root word
chadash
meaning to make fresh, to re-new, to re-pair - the very same usage found in the Greek definition of oikodomeo. Yeshua is not saying He has come to build something "new from scratch", but to restore what has fallen into disrepair. To underscore this usage of ekklesia, Yeshua uses it again in
Matthew 18:17,
referring to Israelites because if the Hebrew brother did not hear the ekklesia, he is to be treated as a Gentile - someone other than an Israelite. So then, how is it that Gentiles can be part of the "ekklesia" if it is comprised only of Israelites? It is because those who have embraced the Life of Yeshua have been grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel and
made Hebrew
by virtue of His Hebrew Blood that literally flows in their veins
because of that embrace. It is a mystery, but that mystery does not exclude the covenant the Father made with His People - it includes all who embrace the covenant by keeping the
Words of YaHoVeH.
It is inclusive of every branch of the assembly who embrace the Hebrew Messiah of Israel as being Yeshua who have been
grafted INTO
the Hebrew root of the family of Israel - not the other way around. This is what Yeshua meant when He said,
"...salvation is of the Hebrews."
All of this brings us back to the initial question: if the BrideGroom are those who have embraced the example of Life embodied by Yeshua, the head of that Body - then Who is the Bride of Yeshua? Even though Christianity proclaims itself to be the bride, there is only one place in all of scripture that actually states, "...here is the Bride of the Lamb" describing the New Jerusalem descending from a higher place "out of" (not "down from") the heaven we have already established in a
previous article
as being within, a state of being
(Isaiah 57:15,
Luke 17:20-21).
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"Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying,
'Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife.'
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from YaHoVeH, having the glory of YaHoVeH. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." Revelation 21:9-11
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the New Jerusalem = Restored Kingdom
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First, we must notice that whatever kind of elements John was trying to describe - it's like nothing we have ever seen. I know of no pure gold that is transparent like glass
(Revelation 21:18).
What was shown to John was the Wife of Messiah - the Restored Kingdom of YaHoVeH represented by Jerusalem. Although widely depicted in many artistic renderings as something similar to a brick and mortar structure, by just reading the words on the page we see that the description of this city is made up of PEOPLE. Those people accepting a circumcision of heart are those who are the family of ISRAEL, as it always has been
(Deuteronomy 10:16,
Deuteronomy 30:6.
Jeremiah 4:4.
Romans 2:29.
Colossians 2:11).
It is upon each of the twelve gates made of pearl (described in
Matthew 13:45-46
as being of immense value) that is inscribed the names of one of the twelve Hebrew tribes of Israel - through which is granted the only entry to the city
(Revelation 22:14).
If you are not in some way attached to one of those Hebrew tribes, you don't get in - regardless of how "Christian" you may think you are. The walls, however, are made up of many different stones. It is each wall (not gate) that is built upon a foundation having the name of one of the twelve Hebrew apostles - thus facilitating the attachment to the gates
(Ephesians 2:19-21).
The stones of the walls represent the eclectic mix of humanity they comprise - but the walls connect to the single stone of the gates which represent the Hebrew tribes of Israel. It is from within this city OF PEOPLE that emanates the Light of Spirit
(Revelation 21:23,
1Kings 11:36,
Matthew 5:14).
It is in keeping with this illustration of the New Jerusalem that has become the consummation of the marriage. The co-mingling of what are now two entities into One to become a single entity is in complete compliance with the scriptural definition of marriage between two separate entities becoming "one flesh" - just as those believers in Yeshua as the Promised Messiah of Israel
have already
become One Flesh with the Bridegroom
(John 17:21,
Genesis 2:24,
Ephesians 5:31,
and Ephesians 2:15).
This marriage will not be some "spiritualized analogy" - it will be in a real marriage, a true
echad
(Hebrew for "one") between the BrideGroom and the remnant of the ethnic branch of Israel, the Bride - as it was in the beginning with
the first Hebrew,
Adam. While many believe it is the whole of the populace of that branch of Israel, scripture makes clear it is and always has been the remnant of Israel who have chosen to be set apart to Him
(Joel 2:32).
In all of scripture, YaHoVeH has never concerned Himself with masses of numbers. As seen in
Romans 9:27
(quoting Isaiah 10:22-23),
there has always been and He always keeps a remnant of those who are set aside and holy given to Him
(1Kings 19:14-18,
Revelation 7,
Luke 13:23-24).
There are currently two parts to this union, the Groom which is comprised of the Head and His Body, and the Bride - ethnic Israel, that small portion who have been faithful to keep YaHoVeH's Words. These are to whom the Groom is to be joined and from that union will come the "one new man" described of in
Ephesians 2:14-18.
Though we who comprise the Body of Yeshua are
"betrothed"
to the Bride and, according to Hebrew custom, that betrothal is considered to be the marriage; at the moment, the consummation of that marriage has not yet arrived. That consummation will result in the intercouse, the communion of table fellowship spoken of earlier - the "marriage supper" of the Lamb to His Bride.
This is the mystery Paul spoke of concerning their disobedience
(read again Romans 11:25-32)
and it is the only place in scripture that speaks of the gifts and calling of YaHoVeH are without repentance - referring to ethnic Hebrews, not "the church", not Gentiles.
Those who embrace the Life exampled by Yeshua have been grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel. It is the sap of that root that flows through the veins of the members of the Body of Yeshua that sustains us that becomes our "salvation" spoken of in Ephesians 5:23-32 at the start of this article - not the other way around. It is to our benefit to cover Israel right now for, as a wife to a husband, how she is affected, affects us all
(Isaiah 49:21-23).
The relevancy of ethnic Israel to Spirit is thoroughly examined further in the article
the Covering.
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"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him:
for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready.
And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white:
for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
And He said unto me, Write, 'Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb'." Revelation 19:7-9
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the Bride - a discussion
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The Who Is Israel? Series
Part One - the Gentile
Part Two - the Church
Part Three - the Bride
Part Four - the Covering
Part Five - Children of the Bridechamber
Part Six - the People of the Land
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???Questions???
Please feel free to email me at harold@hethathasanear.com.
While not claiming to have all
the answers, it would be an honor to partake with you of what Spirit is uncovering.
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