“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.”
Revelation 19:7
A Bride, not an organisation
Christ is coming for a Bride: a church “not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27). She is not a denomination or a building. She is a people from every nation who have received the Word of God for their day and have been made ready by it.
Restored to the original
God promised: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, and the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm” (Joel 2:25). Through the church ages, the faith of the apostles was stripped away piece by piece. Then, beginning with Luther, God started giving it back. Malachi 4:6 promised that in the last days the hearts of the children would be turned back to the fathers, to the same faith, the same Spirit and the same Word as at Pentecost.
The Bride is the seed of the original church, coming back to its first form, the way a grain of wheat goes into the ground and comes up again as wheat.
Making herself ready
The Bride is clothed “in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (Revelation 19:8). That readiness is the work of the Holy Spirit, through the Word, in a believer who has been born again and baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. It shows in a life of holiness, love for the Word, faithfulness in fellowship and a heart that is looking for the Lord.
The Rapture
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17
Brother Branham taught that the shout is the Message that gathers the Bride, the voice is the resurrection of the sleeping saints, and the trump is the call to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. We believe the Rapture will come before the great tribulation, and that it will be a secret, sudden catching away of those who are ready (Matthew 25:10; Luke 17:34–36).
Scriptures to study
Joel 2:23–25; Malachi 4:5–6; Matthew 25:1–13; John 14:1–3; 1 Corinthians 15:51–53; Ephesians 5:25–27; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18; Revelation 19:7–9.