There is another error, which the doctrine of the Sacred Secret corrects, though there is certainly some little excuse for its having been so generally entertained, and that is, the identification of "the Body" with "the Bride." We have already seen that had Israel repented and turned to God (Acts 3:18, 19), there is not an Old Testament prophecy which would not have been fulfilled (at that time). But the "Bride" is the subject of Old Testament prophecy. Therefore, had Israel repented, and there had been no Assembly of God, there would still have been the Bride according to the prophetic word. Many are the prophecies of the Bride in the Old Testament, and hence some who cannot ignore this fact and yet cling to the modern idea of the Body being the Bride, believe they are, or will be, Two Brides: the Bride of God and the Bride of the Lamb... The Bride in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea, is Israel, or at any rate the elect of Israel; those who were "partakers of the heavenly calling" in Israel. We read in -
Isaiah 54:5, 6
"For, thy husband, is, thy Maker, God of hosts, is his Name,--And, thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, The Lord of all the earth, shall he be called. For, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, hath God, called thee,--Even the wife of youthful days, in that thou wast rejected, saith thy the Lord."
See also verses 7, 8.
Isaiah 62:4, 5 "Thou shalt he termed no longer-Forsaken, Nor shall, thy land, be termed any longer, A desolation, But, thou, shalt be called, Hephzibah, And, thy land, Beulah, --For God hath found delight, in thee, And, thy land, shall be married. For, a young man, marrieth, a virgin, Thy sons, marry thee! And, the bridegroom, rejoiceth, over, the bride--Thy the Lord, rejoiceth over thee."
"Thy sons marry thee!" A slight change in the vowel points, gives the reading thy great or royal Restorer or Builder (by the figure of Enallage, plural for singular) instead of "thy sons." Sons, moreover, were the builders of families (Gen. 16:2; 30:3; Deut. 25:9; Ruth 4:11, etc.)
Jeremiah 3:14
"Return, ye apostate sons, Urgeth God, for, I, am become your husband,--therefore will I take you, one of a city, and two of a family, and will bring you to Zion;"
Hosea 2:16, 19-20
"And it shall come to pass, in that day, Declareth God, that she will call me Ishi, and will not call me any more,. Baali ...And I will take thee unto myself, unto times age-abiding,--yea I will take thee unto myself, in righteousness and in justice, and in lovingkindness, and in abounding compassion: Yea I will take thee unto myself, in faithfulness,--So shalt thou know God."
These and other passages clearly prophesy that an election of Israel shall be the Bride. Had, then, the call in Acts 3:18, 19 been obeyed, these prophecies must have had their fulfillment, quite irrespective of any Assembly of God. Here again we come upon the solution of another great difficulty:
THE OLD TESTAMENT SAINTS
They are a great burden to Expositors of New Testament Truth. And what to do with them is one of the commonest questions and difficulties, which arises in the mind of the Bible-student. That there has been an elect body all through the Old Testament history we have abundant evidence. While all the promises to Israel as a nation, were earthly, there were always those who lived "by believing (he wrote "faith")" and "died in believing (he wrote "faith")," and were "partakers of the heavenly calling" (Heb. 6:1). These looked for no earthly portion, but they looked forward with a heavenly hope to a heavenly blessing. "These all died in believing (he wrote "faith"), not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country... a better country, that is an HEAVENLY: Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their the Lord; for He hath prepared for them A CITY." (Heb. 11:13-16) - And of Abraham it is said "he looked for a CITY, which hath FOUNDATIONS, whose builder and maker is God." (v. 10).
Now when we turn to Rev. 21:9, we read that one of the seven angels said to John: "Hither! I will point out to thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb." "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great CITY, the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God; and her light was like unto a stone most precious," etc. (Rev. 21:9-27). What are we to understand but that this "CITY," - which is declared to be the "BRIDE, the Lamb's wife," is the city for which all those who were partakers of the Heavenly Calling looked; and that these elect saints of the Old Testament will form the BRIDE. This "Holy Jerusalem" may contain the Assembly of God or Body of the Christ, as well as the Bride, inasmuch as "the God the Lord of Host, and the Lamb, are the Sanctuary of it" (Rev. 21:22), and "the Lamb is the light thereof." But it is not necessary on this account that we should identify them. The "Lamb" is the special title of the Lord Jesus in relation to Israel, and the elect of Israel, and especially to the Bride (see Rev. 19:7-9 and the Parables of Marriage, and the Marriage-Supper in the Gospels).
It will also be noted that the names "ON the GATES of the city (i.e., the visible parts of the city)", are "the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel." (Rev. 21:12), while the names "IN the FOUNDATONS (the invisible parts of the city) are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (ver. 14)." This again carries us back to the Gospels (Matt. 19:28), to the solemn words of the Lord Jesus in answer to a specific enquiry as to the portion of the Twelve Apostles: "Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Here in Rev. 21 we have the Regeneration (the new heaven and the new earth), we have the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb. We ask, what has this to do with the Assembly of God - the Body of the Christ? And has it not to do only and solely with the Holy City and with the BRIDE of the Lamb? The promise of Christ to the Twelve Apostles has never been abrogated; and, we ask, what are we to do with it, if the Apostles form part of the Body of the Christ? The Assembly of God is part or the Body of the Christ, the Bridegroom; but the Apostles, by a comparison of Matt. 19:28, with Rev. 21:14, form part of the BRIDE.
This effectually disposes of the figment of "Apostolic Succession," which would never have been seriously entertained had not the truth connected with the Sacred Secret been lost. And we ought to note that while the Twelve Apostles are thus separated off from the Assembly of God, the Apostle Paul was specially raised up to a special and different position altogether, and is identified with the Sacred Secret. In harmony also with this is the teaching of
EPHESIANS 5:25-33.
Christians in their selfishness, attempt to rob others of their place as the Bride, and thus lose their own still "better" place as part of the Bridegroom. "Verily they have their reward"! The Bride and the Bridegroom, though in a sense one, are yet surely distinct. And it is clear from all the scriptures relating to the Sacred Secret, that the members of the Christ's Body are not the Bride, but part of the Bridegroom Himself; whereas the elect Old Testament saints will form the Bride. See Isaiah 12:6 "Make shrill thy voice and sing out, thou inhabitress of Zion,--That, great in the midst of thee, is, the Holy One of Israel." In Rev. 22:3, we read "The Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it." Of the glory of this Holy City other scriptures speak. See Is. 60:3, 14, 19, 20; Rev. 21:23, 24, 27; Is. 54:11-12. This is referred to again in Is. 4:5, when God shall have purged away the filth of the daughters of Zion, it is added "beyond all this glory there shall be the Chuppah, or the marriage canopy," mentioned elsewhere only in Ps. 19:5 and Joel 2:16; and referring to Isa. 62. The Chuppah is the bridal canopy beneath which the nuptial ceremonies are performed to this day. True, the Apostle might address the saints concerning his desire to present them "As a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. 11:2). But this no more declares that the Body of the Christ is the Bride of Christ than that the Apostle himself was their father (1 Cor. 4:15); or that he was their mother (Gal. 4:19). In one case he spoke of the painful anxiety of a mother; in another of the loving care of a father; while, in 2 Cor. 11:2, he spoke of the jealousy of the friend of a bridegroom. The "Sacred Secret" was a totally different thing.
So, in Eph. 5:28, 29, the argument is that husbands "So, ought the husbands also to be loving their own wives, as their own bodies,--he that loveth his own wife, loveth himself, No one, in fact, ever yet hated, his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it,--even as, the Christ, the assembly, Because, members, are we of his body;" i.e., AS Christ loves His own Body, the Assembly; so ought husbands to love their own selves, because they and their wives are "one flesh." Thus "the great sacred secret" is employed as an argument as to the reciprocal duties of husbands and wives. In neither case is it said that the Assembly IS the wife, or that Christ IS the husband. But that AS Christ loves His Body (the Assembly), SO husbands ought to love their bodies (their wives). What is clear and certain is that the Assembly is the Body of the Christ Himself, and that the members of that Body being "in Christ" (as members of His Body), are PART OF THE BRIDEGROOM, and cannot possibly, therefore, be the Bride herself.
It is a remarkable example of the perversity of Expositors, who while they hold that the Bride is the Assembly of God, persist in interpreting the parable of the ten virgins, as though the Bride's attendant "Virgins" are also the Assembly. Though who ever heard of an Eastern Bride going out "to meet" the Bridegroom! The Virgins, "her companions," went, but not the Bride. So our (wrong) expositors can hold whichever of these two positions they please, but, clearly, they are not entitled to hold them both. The "Bride" must be distinct from "the virgins her companions that follow her." If we rightly divide the Word of Truth we see that the Body of the Christ is neither the one nor the other, and that the subsequent revelation of the "Sacred Secret" cannot be read into either Psalm 45 or Matt. 25, which are perfectly clear as they stand, and must have been capable of a plain interpretation to the first hearers or readers of those words, quite apart from the truth subsequently revealed.
The Great Sacred Secret was "hid in God." It does not say it was hidden in the Scriptures, but "hid in God" Himself. There can be therefore no types of it in the Old Testament, inasmuch as types teach, and were meant to teach doctrines. But if truths and doctrines, which are elsewhere clearly revealed in the New Testament, can be illustrated from the Old Testament, that is quite another matter. The illustration and application of Old Testament Scripture to the Assembly of God is quite lawful and profitable, so long as it is kept distinct from interpretation. It is one thing to see an illustration of the Body of the Christ in the Old Testament; but it is quite another thing to say that that is there revealed, which Father distinctly declares was not revealed!
GENESIS 24
Has been, for example, widely taken as typical of the Christ and the Church. Isaac is taken as the bridegroom, and Rebekah as the Church or the bride. True, the chapter is illustrative, but not of the Body of the Christ. The bridegroom and the bride were both "ready" before either was called to the marriage. The bride was found in the house of Abraham's brother. Very special injunctions were given that she was not to be of "the Canaanites." "But," said Abraham to Eliezer, "thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac... thou shalt take a wife for my son from thence." Great emphasis is placed on these important conditions in verses 3, 4, 7, 37, 38. Abraham and Nahor were brothers, and by Isaac's marriage with Rebekah, and Jacob's marriage with her brother Laban's daughters, Leah and Rachel, the whole house of Nahor was absorbed into the family of Abraham! Gentiles were expressly shut out when this typical wife was chosen, and Isaac on receiving his bride took her at once "into his mother Sarah's tent," thus forming the ground of the type as expounded in Gal. 4:21
31. Rebekah therefore represents, not the Assembly or the Body of the Christ, but that great cloud of witnesses (the Old Testament saints), who in the old dispensation sacrificed, as she did, all worldly advantages for the Lord's sake. It is for these He is preparing that "city which hath foundations," and of which He Himself is the divine architect. And truly, it is said of these, "if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out (as Rebekah came) they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their the Lord; for He hath prepared for them a city" (Heb. 11:15, 16). "These all having obtained a good report through faith (believing), received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect" (verses 39, 40). Now, we maintain, that this "better thing" cannot be the same as the good thing. The comparative term distinguishes between two things, and necessitates the existence of two. The one, as the Bride, will have a good place, a grand place, a place of honor and glory as the Lamb's wife in the holy Jerusalem, but the Body of the Christ, will have "some better thing," a position of greater glory and honor, as part of the Bridegroom Himself.
It is for this consummation that the members of His Body now wait. We are, by the wondrous position which grace has given us, necessarily cut off from all "bodies" which are of human origination, and from all Ecclesiastical organizations. We do not seek to restore corporate testimony, for no such restoration of what man had ruined, was ever promised. The corporate failure is complete. There is no authority in the Word for re-establishing it, and all attempts to do so have ended in disaster, and in a widening of the breach between brethren. The "unity of the spirit" is now only subjective. There is no such thing as an objective unity of the spirit, which we can "join." The real truth of the "Sacred Secret" received into the heart raises the members of the Body far above all human plans and hopes of union or Re-union. It takes us up at once into the heavenlies, seats us there with Christ, so that like Him we are "henceforth expecting."
Hence, we are not concerned with prophecy as such, as a mere subject of study. To look for Christ's appearing is the very essence of our Christian standing. It is the very breath of the Christian's life. We "wait for God's Son from heaven," and long for Him to appear so that we may be
