Episode 2799 - Tuesday June 23 - The Bride 👰🏻‍♀️

The Bride👰🏻‍♀️While exiled on the island of Patmos, the disciple John was given a vision of what it will be like when we are reunited with God for eternity.Read Revelation 21:9-11. What analogy was given, and why do you think it was used?The bride is beautiful, and on her wedding day, everyone wants to see her. A wedding day is a turning point of a new life together for the bride and groom, and this will also be true of our relationship with God upon His return.Jesus has been preparing a place for us (John 14:1-3), a beautiful place that is too amazing to describe. In fact, “human language is inadequate to describe the reward of the righteous. It will be known only to those who behold it. No finite mind can comprehend the glory of the Paradise of God.”--Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 675.Although we cannot really comprehend what the new heaven and new earth will be like, God shows John a vision of this place so that we look forward to the “wedding” that will soon happen. Indeed, we’re invited to “set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:2, NKJV).God is carefully preparing for this event, and He doesn’t want this “wedding” to catch us by surprise (see Matt. 22:1-14, Matt. 25:1-13).The universe is the congregation that will see this event take place, and we are some of the central figures in this story. We will join with the “bride,” this city that Jesus will take us to at His second coming. Interestingly, God’s people (the saints) are also called the bride (see Rev. 19:7, NASB), perhaps because they are in “the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2, NKJV).This beautiful description of the Holy City shows that there is an intimate connection between God’s people and the city, because both are called “the bride.” The Bible reveals a detailed description of “the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, which is the capital and representative of the kingdom, [and] is called ‘the bride, the Lamb’swife.”--Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 426.Read Revelation 21:9-27. Why is this so hard for us now to imagine? How do we even begin to wrap our minds around what is promised to us here?