The Teaching Ministry of
Rev. Marjorie Kummrow
Bible Studies
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His Wife Has
Made Herself
Ready
Part II
How does the Wife of the Messiah make herself ready?
In addition to the previous study, that is Part I of "How does the Wife of the Messiah make Herself ready," We wish to publish the following study on the same subject that was recently presented by Rev. Marjorie Kummrow at a local bible study. Although the subject matter remains the same, the following study introduces more information and insight into how the Bride of Messiah makes Herself ready.
I do not believe that everyone that considers themselves to be a part of the Church will be qualified to be the bride. It is my opinion that it will be the Bride of Yeshua that will be raptured and caught up in the air to meet Him there for a
wedding ceremony. I believe that Yeshua’s bride will be the true believers that are willing to submit to His will and that the make-believers will be left behind. I believe that the place where each one of us will spend the climax of the age is dependent upon what we believe, and whether or not the Holy Spirit has made our hearts His dwelling place.
The Bride of the Messiah is comprised of both genders, male and female, and referred to as She and as Her in this study. The bride’s life-long destiny is to rule and reign with the King of Kings. She will take her place beside Him as His Queen and together they will reign throughout eternity. In order for her to take this royal position, she must first make herself ready. So the question remains, how does she make herself ready?
Let’s look first at the following scriptures:
Rev. 19:7-8
Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready." And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Ephesians 5:22-33
Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of his wife as the Messiah is the head of the church. It is he who is the Savior of the body. 24 Indeed, just as the church is submissive to the Messiah, so wives must be submissive to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives as the Messiah loved the church and gave himself for it, 26 so that he might make it holy by cleansing it, washing it with water and the word, 27 and might present the church to himself in all its glory, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, but holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies. A man who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one has ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, as the Messiah does the church.
30 For we are parts of his body—of his flesh and of his bones. 31“That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a great secret, (mystery) but I am talking about the Messiah and the church. 33 But each individual man among you must love his wife as he loves himself, and may the wife fear her husband.
2 Corinthians 11:2
I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.
Before we go on let's take a deeper look at what is being said here by doing a word study of some of the words used in these scriptures and idiomatic and symbolic use of words from the wedding of the Messiah and from a Greek and Hebraic perspective.
Holy: In an article from Firstfruits of Zion they gave what I thought was a good definition of what Holy or Holiness means, they said, “Holiness does not mean that there is some kind of a mystical goodness attached to the object, person or place described as holy. It simply means that God does not want it used for any other purposes than His own. The opposite of something holy is something normal.”
Glory: The Hebrew word translated "glory" is kivod, a Hebrew word for "heavy." It also means "honor." Its root meaning is closely connected with the Hebrew word for "heavy." To treat something lightly would be the opposite of glorifying it.
Without Spot: The Greek word for spot is the word speeloo (speelow) which means soil or defiled.
The Hebrew cross reference is Numbers 19:2 for the word for without spot in Ephesians 5:27 which says this: “This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke”:
The Hebrew word for without spot is tamiym (taw-meem) which means integrity, truth without blemish, complete, full, perfect, sincerely, sound, without spot, undefiled, uprightly, or whole.
(Please note that the red heifer is representative of the Messiah and is to be without spot as is His Bride.)
Wrinkle: The word wrinkle appears in the text twice; once in the Old Covenant and once in the New Covenant. In the New Covenant, it is the scripture that we are looking at in Ephesians. The Hebrew cross reference is:
Job 16: 8 And you have filled me with wrinkles, which is a witness against me: and my leanness rising up in me bears witness to my face.
The Hebrew word is qamat (kaw-mat) which means to pluck, i.e. destroy, cut down, fill with wrinkles.
We can surmise from these scriptures that the Bride of Yeshua will be presented to Him holy, i.e. set apart for only His purposes because she has been cleansed by having been washed in water and in the Word. From the Jewish Wedding ceremony, we have learned that being washed in water speaks of the fact that the bride has left her old life of sin. She has left her natural family and has begun a new life that is joined to Messiah by His Spirit and she has joined herself to a new spiritual family and identity. She has left her father satan and she has been reconciled to her heavenly Father. Likewise, the rite of Christian baptism in water symbolizes the same thing, i.e. our old life is buried with Yeshua when we are immersed in water, and we are resurrected to new life in Messiah when we come up out of the water. We have been washed in water.
The bride will also be washed in the word. From what we learned about the wedding contract, we know that the groom has promised to always be truthful with his bride. When the bride of Messiah will stand before her bridegroom she will be standing there washed in truth. There will be no falsehood in her what so ever. All the lies of her belief system will have been exchanged for the truth. The word of God will have changed her and conformed her into the image of His Son so that she will be equally yoked to her groom in truth.
Messiah will present to Himself a bride in all her glory, i.e. His bride will be taking a position of great honor. Paul calls it an eternal weight of glory. Our modern vernacular would say, “That’s heavy!” She will be glorious in all her splendor.
Much has been written about “without spot or wrinkle,” I have heard that spots on her garment represent sin and that the blood of Messiah will act as a spot remover and so the garment will be clean. I have also heard that a bride is very particular about her wedding dress and would take care that all of the wrinkles were removed. It is said that the hot iron in the hand of God would iron out all the wrinkles or imperfections in our lives, thus having a garment without wrinkles. I have no problem with this explanation, but what if there is even more to it?
When we look at the cross references in the Greek and the Hebrew for spot or wrinkle we can conclude that perhaps Paul was not talking about the removal of sin, but rather of significant character change. Looking at Job’s statement, it is clear that when mentioning his wrinkles he is talking about them being the consequence of much suffering at the hand of the Lord. He understood that the suffering that he was enduring was coming from the hand of God, but he did not understand its purpose, therefore the pain, the stress, and the bewilderment showed on the countenance of his face, and as he said it was lean and wrinkled.
When he made this statement, he had not yet achieved the desired goal for which this suffering was design to do. God was not dealing with Job’s sin; he was after a much greater weight of glory that could only be achieved through suffering. Job died to his religious concepts and theology, he died to the affections of his friends and family, he died to his limited view of God. He may have died to a great many more things, all of them hindering the intimacy with God that he was born to experience. Job’s words, in the end, tell us that his suffering accomplished intimacy with God that he did not know existed. He said, “I have heard of you with my ears, but now I see you with my eyes”. Looking into the face of God changes who we are and how we look. I believe that Job’s countenance changed and that his face was no longer lean nor was it wrinkled from the stress of the things that are suffered in life. Instead, the radiant light of his redeemer had transformed him from a man that was far off to a beloved son.
Therefore, I believe that the reference to the bride being without spot or wrinkle is referring to the strength of character of the bride of Messiah. She will be without spot because she will be full of integrity. Her strength of character will be because she has had a relationship that has been based on truth. The truth has fashioned her for Him and she has become a bride without blemish and undefiled. She will be without wrinkle because the suffering that the Lord brings to refine her will be accepted and embraced because she will have learned that suffering brings death to self, and death to self , means: “less of she and more of He”. Those that are lean and wrinkled will be the ones that accuse God of not being a loving God because of the pain and suffering that has come their way. They will have become “bitter” and not “better” because of the heavy hand of God upon them and it will show on the countenance of their faces. These wrinkled ones will never understand the statement, “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you better.” As we age it is a natural process to be wrinkled. However, we must be careful not to allow those “wrinkles of suffering” to be a witness against us. In the twinkling of an eye, those wrinkles will disappear as the Bride rises to meet her Groom in the air.
As we learned in the consummation of the marriage between the Jewish couple, proof of her virginity was cause for celebration. Likewise, Yeshua will be presented with a virgin bride. Her desire for intimacy will be saved for just one husband, the Messiah. Therefore when others come pretending to be the Messiah, she will not run after them because she will not recognize their voice. She will wait faithfully for her bridegroom. Her eyes will not delight in the things of this world that are there to seduce and defile her. The Bride of Messiah will faithfully protect her virginity and this will be cause for the greatest celebration ever recorded in all of history, i.e. THE MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMB.
In His Service,
Rev. Marjorie
marjorie@sweetmanna.org
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