Perhaps you remember my saying that "Jerusalem ... above ... the mother of us all" cannot also be "the Lamb's wife". The Lamb is not going to marry his mother but rather "a chaste virgin" (2Cor 11:2).

Just as we all have the same spiritual Father (Ep 4:6; "one God and Father of all"), so also we all have the same spiritual Mother (Gal 4:26; "the mother of us all"). Messiah ben Joseph who was the "firstborn from the dead" was not illegitimate. God was legally married (Jer 3:14; "for I am married unto you") at Sinai before he became a Father.

Well, if you folks werent so kind you might have shoved my nose into Revelation 21 where the angel says to John (Rv 21:9-10), "Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God". Surely this must be the same as "Jerusalem ... above ... the mother of us all" (Gal 4:26).

But how can the Lamb marry his mother?

How can the woman in Revelation 12 -- who gives birth to the Messiah -- also be the Lamb's wife? The woman in (Rv 12:1-3) has to be the Father's wife, whereas the woman who makes herself ready for the marriage of the Lamb in (Rv 19:7) must be a different woman.

Would God use imagery where the Lamb marries his mother?

There is already, of course, this asymmetry: the Father and the Son are distinct individuals. At no point does a woman typify an individual. She is rather always a city (worth a whole discussion on its own!).

God's wife Israel is the collective that, as far as eternal life is concerned, will ultimately incorporate the entire human race. God's marriage is a covenant of life because it is the law in our hearts that will quicken us (Jer 31:33; Jn 6:63). The intent of Sinai is made plain in (Jer 7:22-23):

"For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you."

This is exactly what will be accomplished in the world to come (Rv 21:3): "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God."

People will be shocked to realize that there is no salvation outside the Sinai Covenant, and that the New Covenant is simply the fulfillment or restitution of the "old" in the world to come.

New Jerusalem
Well, the answer to our puzzle, I think, comes in noting that it does not say (Rv 21:2) "Jerusalem ... above ... which is the mother of us all", but rather "new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband". NEW Jerusalem is the bride of Messiah!

Thus when John writes (Rv 21:2), "I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven", one is reminded of (1Thess 4:17) where the time is the last trump, and therefore at the beginning of the millennium, at which time we "shall be caught up together in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air". Because (Zech 14:4) "his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives", then no wonder John sees the Lord's bride also "coming down from God out of heaven".

At this time we cannot yet say that (Rv 19:7) "the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready." Right now we have only (Rv 12:17) "the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." She is not "the mother of us all", but rather "the virgin daughter of Zion" who is and shall yet experience sore trial (Lam 1:13), "What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?"

The Congregation of the Elect is not yet married. She is affianced as Eve to the second Adam (2Cor 11:2-3), "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

But mostly the Church is still the body of Messiah from whose wounded side -- from a rib -- the Bride will soon be fashioned (Ep 5:30-32). "For we are members of his body [(Gn 2:23-24)], of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

Right now there is disarray, the structure of a woman is not yet in place, there is lamentation (Lam 2:1), "How hath the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!"

But there will be deliverance (Is 62:11-12):

"Behold, the LORD hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. And they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the LORD: and thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken."

The concept of the "daughter of Zion" is messianic (Zech 9:9), "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."

The King, of course, is Messiah (Mt 21:5), and the daughter of Zion is his bride to be. When the angel told John (Rv 21:9), "Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife," we also read (Rv 21:10), "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain". This is reminiscent of Nebuchadnezzar's dream where (Dan 2:35) "the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."

We're talking about the future world capital, Jerusalem, and not just the man Jesus. We're talking about when (Dan 7:22) "the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom."

Two Thrones
The imagery in Revelation 21 is of two thrones -- "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth" (Rv 21:1). When God says in (Is 66:1), "The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool", he is talking about the respective thrones of God the Father in heaven and of his Son the Jewish Messiah in Jerusalem.

Revelation 22 (Rv 22:1; Rv 22:3) speaks of "the throne of God and of the Lamb", and a reference in my Oxford annotated Bible declares, "The throne of God and of the lamb is one throne (Jn 10:30)." Yet (Rv 3:21) shows that there are two thrones, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." This is the promise to the congregation of the seventh millennium when the Son will actually be sitting on his own throne in Jerusalem. These Laodiceans, one suspects, are not being (Rv 19:9) "called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb" but rather to fulfill the prophecy in (Gn 1:28) and in (Is 9:7).

To the faithful of the sixth millennium, however, it says (Rv 3:12), "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem [(Rv 21:9)!], which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name."

If the Sinai covenant was a marriage (Jer 3:14), then the marriage of the Lamb (Rv 19:7) must also be a covenant. Sinai in the form of "a new covenant" will be expanded to give the whole human race salvation, whereas the Lamb's wife presumably will house only those born of God in the first resurrection. She will enter into a special covenant with the King which was typified by Adam and Eve at the beginning.

Folks, one would think (though who does?) that the imagery of Scripture is not haphazard and conflicting but rather coherent and beautiful. You think we're on the right track?

29 May 2000
Email the author