On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry those who have been fighting the battle against God’s enemy for years, and He will be the fighting General coming with His bride as His army to fight the enemy by His speaking and defeat him.
The church, the Body of Christ, needs to be the bride of Christ for His satisfaction in love, and she needs to also be the warrior to fight together with God against God’s enemy.
This means that, on one hand, we need to enjoy the Lord and be daily in the washing of the water in the Word to be beautified and become His glorious bride, and on the other hand, we need to be qualified, trained, and equipped to fight the spiritual warfare.
How can we fight against the enemy on that day at Armageddon if today we don’t practice fighting with the Lord against the enemy?
Toward the end of the great tribulation, when a battle is raging at Armageddon and the enemy is rebelling against God Himself, the Lord will descend, but He will not be alone.
He will descend with His bridal army, with His wife – His new bride – as an experienced warrior.
The best fighters are the lovers; the more we love the Lord, the more we will fight for His interest and move on earth.
Our wedding garment – the second garment, which we need to cooperate with the Lord to prepare it day by day as we live out Christ as our subjective righteousness – becomes our fighting uniform.
On one hand, as we live out Christ, we fulfill Gen. 1:26 to express God with His image.
On the other hand, as the corporate warrior, the wedding garment becomes our uniform, and we carry out the matter of dominion in representing the Lord’s authority and victory.
May we realize that the church needs to be both the bride of Christ to be presented to Him in love for their wedding day, and the warrior fighting the battle against God’s enemy by standing one with the Lord.
Christ will Come as a Fighting General with the Bride as His Army to Defeat Antichrist by His Word
According to Rev. 19:11-21, Christ will come as a fighting General with His bride as His army to fight Antichrist at Armageddon.
On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry those who have been fighting the battle against God’s enemy for years; He will marry the overcomers, those who have already overcome the evil one. Eph. 6:7-9; 1 John 2:14).
We need to grow in life unto maturity and be prepared and trained until we become part of the army of God, an army experienced and trained in fighting.
As we fight the enemy now, today, we are being prepared to be part of the church as the bride and army of Christ. When Christ comes with His army, He will come as the Son of Man (Matt. 26:64; Rev. 14:14).
As the Son of Man, He will need a counterpart to match and complete Him; the church needs to be His bide as His army joining Him as the General to defeat Antichrist with his armies.
In particular, the Lord Jesus is the Word of God, and His fighting will be the speaking of the word of God (Rev. 19:13).
We are not told that Christ as the General and the overcomers as His army will use the latest weapons, technology, and strategy in warfare, but that Christ will defeat Antichrist by the word of His mouth. Wow!
As the Lord fights, He speaks for God and expresses God.
In 2 Thes. 2 we see that the man of lawlessness, the Antichrist, places himself in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and demands to be worshipped; however, Christ comes and defeats him and his army, and He does it by the word of His mouth.
By the breath of His mouth, just with His word, Christ will destroy the enemy. And the bride will simply echo and Amen the word of God; as the Lord speaks, as He fights, He speaks for God and expresses God.
The Lord’s fighting at Armageddon will be a powerful speaking.
As the bride of Christ, we need to be filled with the word of God and even saturated with the Word, so that He would be able to express whatever He wants to speak through us.
Many times our very disposition limits the Lord; we limit Him from expressing this kind or that kind of feeling, but when we become the bride as His army, we will declare what He declares, we express what He expresses, and we will match Him fully.
The wedding garment – which is Christ lived out of us as our daily righteousness in a subjective way – qualifies us not only to attend the wedding but also to join the army to fight with Christ against
Antichrist in the war at Armageddon (Matt. 22:11-12; Rev. 19:7-8, 14).
There is a twofold importance of our wedding garment; first, we are growing in life and mature, then we are being built up corporately to be His expression, we have Christ as our subjective righteousness, and we experience Christ by letting Him live in us.
We need to daily grow in life unto maturity, be built up to express Him corporately, experience Christ as our subjective righteousness, and in our daily life and situations as believers, we learn how to experience Christ and let Him live in us.
May we learn to live Christ according to Gal. 2:20, having a new “me” in whom Christ lives, and the life we now live, we live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself up for us.
Our living is His living, and His living becomes our living. In this way we daily prepare our wedding garment – which becomes our fighting uniform – until the wedding day!
The wedding garment is not stitched in a day, in a month or in a year; we all have the time, but we do not have time to waste, but we have time to redeem.
Thank You Father for being rich in mercy and compassion; Your mercy and compassions are new and fresh every morning! We want to have a fresh new start with You every morning. Grow in us, Lord, build Yourself into us, build us up together with the saints, become our righteousness, beautify us, and train us to be a warrior in Your army! We allow You as the word of God to speak to us, infuse us, saturate us, and become everything to us until we become the bride as the army returning with You as our General to fight and defeat Antichrist and his armies at Armageddon!
Cooperating with Christ to become the Bride as the Army to Deal with God’s Enemy and bring Him back
In Daniel 2:34-35 we see that Christ is coming as a stone cut out without hands, and in Rev. 19:11-21 Christ comes as the One who has His bride as His army to deal with God’s enemy.
The corporate Christ – Christ with His overcoming bride – will come as a stone to crush the aggregate of human government to bring in God’s kingdom.
Before Christ descends to earth to deal with Antichrist and the totality of human government, He will have a wedding, uniting His overcomers to Himself as one entity.
And after His wedding, the Lord will come with His newly married bride to destroy Antichrist, who will come together with his army to fight against God directly (Rev. 19:11, 13-15; 2 Thes. 2:2-8).
The Lord Jesus – the Word of God – will slay Antichrist, the man of lawlessness, by the breath of His mouth; He will speak one word, and the enemy will be destroyed.
Out of Christ’s mouth proceeds a sharp sword, that with it He might smite the nations (Rev. 19:15; cf. 1:16; 2:12, 16).
After Christ crushes the human government, God will have cleared up the entire universe; then the corporate Christ – Christ with His overcomers – will become a great mountain to fill the whole earth, making the whole earth God’s kingdom (Dan. 2:35, 44; 7:22, 27; Rev. 11:15).
There are five words that describe our corporate relationship with Christ: Body, bride, army, stone, and kingdom.
For us to become the bride of Christ, we first need to be built up as the Body of Christ; it is by being built up in Christ as life in every way and growing unto maturity that we are built as the Body and prepared as the bride.
The growth and building up of the Body of Christ are the process of the bride preparing herself, because when the Body is built up and is grown to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, when the reality of the Body of Christ is expressed in the local churches, this is an indicator that the bride has made herself ready.
Then, just before the three and a half years, the Lord will come and rapture His bride; the Body has become the bride.
Three-and-a-half years later, the Lord returns; He comes to the earth at Armageddon, and the bride as His army is one with Him to deal with the enemy.
Then Christ with His bridal army becomes the corporate stone to strike the toes of the human image and abolish human government. Then the stone becomes the mountain filling the whole earth.
Within a period of about three and half years, the Lord will move in turning the age from Body to bride; once He has the bride, He knows He also has the army, the stone, and the reality of the kingdom to fill the whole earth.
It is very important for us to know that the bride, the counterpart of Christ, is the issue of the completion of God’s New Testament economy; the Lord’s recovery today is for the preparation of the bride.
Even as we are in this particular earth-wide or worldwide situation, the COVID19 pandemic, humanly speaking we are suffering with everyone else, some even in a very heart-breaking way; spiritual speaking, however, we want to be produced as the bride as His army to return and defeat God’s enemy.
The world situation is closely connected to the Lord’s present move in His recovery; what He wants to gain is His bride, His counterpart.
May this become part of our personal prayer daily, that He would produce us as His bride. May this become a vision to us, something that governs us and brings us into this experience.
As we are nearing the consummation of the age, taking even this present world situation as a kind of warning from the sovereign God to the whole earth to wake up and repent, may we cooperate with the Lord to be His bridal army who will bring Him back and will fight with Him against God’s enemy!
By the Lord’s grace, by His heavenly intercession, by His heavenly ministry, by the power of His resurrection life, by His shepherding, by the bountiful supply of grace, and through the life flowing in the Body of Christ, may we be those who are preparing the bride to come.
May this become increasingly our experience until we will become those who attend the wedding dinner of the Lamb and we will hear the proclamation that the marriage of the Lamb has come!
Lord Jesus, grow in us. Develop our faith and love; mature us in every way. Do this for the preparation of Your bride! Lord, build us up with all the other saints that are seeking You in this way to be Your corporate expression, the bride! Guide us, Lord, to develop and produce a wedding garment to satisfy You. Beautify us and train us to be Your bride as the army! Amen, Lord, we give ourselves to You to be among those who are preparing the bride to come, so that we may be the army, the stone, and the kingdom filling the whole earth!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 4337-4338 and 4345-4346, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, A Timely Word Concerning the World Situation and the Lord’s Recovery (2020 Memorial Day Conference), week 6, The Preparation of the Bride.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Body, house, new man the Church is, / Bride, and temple, and yet more: / She’s the army too which fighteth / All God’s foe to triumph o’er. / She is clothed with all God’s armor, / In His mighty strength is strong, / Standing in the Lord, resisting, / With all prayers she fighteth on. (Hymns #823)
– Lord, make us glorious, by all Your inner work, / Not glory for ourselves, but glory for the church; / That You may have Your Bride, thus ending all Your search. / O Lord, do work on us, we pray. / O Lord, do work on us today! / To form the church Your glorious way. / Oh, spread Yourself in us / Till we are glorious; / Oh, make us glorious, Lord, today. (Hymns #1135)
– The church is the Bride, the new man, and the warrior / Fulfilling God’s heart’s desire, stage after stage. / We love Christ supremely and stand in His victory / To bring in His Kingdom by turning the age. (Song on, The church is the Bride, the new man, and the warrior)
