COMING TO THE WEDDING

Christianity is like a wedding with the Church as the Bride and Jesus as the Bridegroom. Although that is written in many places one of the best said was by Isaiah the prophet: 

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks Himself with ornaments, and as a Bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Isa 61:10)

 That metaphor is repeated several times in the New Testament as well; no wonder marriage is a sacrament because it represents the Christian and Jesus.

Jesus spoke in parables. That is using one non-related but similar event to make a point. In this case it was a king whose son was about to have a wedding. Rather than analyze every word consider this passage: 

When the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: and he saith unto him, “Friend, how come you are in here not having a wedding garment?” And he was speechless. (Mat 22:11-12)

 All had been invited but few came. This one man came but failed to wear wedding apparel. Because of that, he was bound hand and foot and cast out into a place of weeping and gnashing of the teeth. As it turns out Jesus said, “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Mat 22:14).

Chosen — the Calvinistic doctrine of ‘election’ — is explained in this parable. The man could have worn a wedding garment. At the door, if he did not have one, he should have asked the king for a proper suit for the occasion.

We think of wedding garments as the formal attire — the best of the best. People dress up for weddings, but in the case of one peculiar Jewish wedding, the people dress down — Yom Kippur — ‘the day of covering’ from Leviticus 23 wherein the people are to ‘afflict their souls.’ It is the day of the year of the covering of the mercy seat.

Kippur comes from the same noun meaning ‘pitch’ like when Noah covered the Ark with pitch to keep it afloat unto salvation.

So, don’t think of the wedding garment as we would today, or even a royal wedding. The King has a different type of wedding than ordinary kings.

John the Baptist came to the ‘wedding’ so to speak, the wedding being the revealing of Jesus as God. John wore appropriate apparel for that occasion — a suit made of camel’s hair and girded about with leather (Mat 3:4). John came dressed for a wedding; it was not in fancy apparel but the basics.

Camel hair coats are for warmth and comfort. John was born with the Holy Spirit and his coat was his outer Comforter that symbolized the Holy Spirit covering him.

If this parable reveals the wedding of Jesus to the body of Christians, which it does, then the appropriate wedding garment would be the ‘Comforter’ — the Holy Ghost (John 14:16).

The man that came to the wedding. maybe dressed formally, or maybe even plainly, still did not have the proper attire for the wedding of Jesus. In that the Church is made up of the good and bad, as the seven churches of Asia reveal, they are still the ‘Church.’

However, consider the Church much like a threshing stone wherein all can come but few are chosen. There are criteria for who are threshed aside and who is kept. The man of the wedding was welcome there because he was allowed in, but before he was allowed to be part of the wedding party, the king checked him out; Was he properly dressed for the occasion?

Of course, he could have come ‘naked’ in the sense of Adam and Eve who should have come to the proper party beneath the Tree of Life.

Perhaps Adam and Eve were not even naked like we think of nakedness, but like angels. (More on that shortly.) The nakedness of which they were ashamed was their flesh which after sin was of a different substance and like the inglorious flesh that humans wear today.

In that instance, after Eve and her frolic with the angel, Lucifer, God covered both Adam and Eve with coats of skin (Gen 3:21) for them to be ‘married’ to Him after they had abandoned Him for the Luciferin ‘Serpent.’

God covered their newly acquired flesh with coats of skin, perhaps the wooly hide from a lamb. On the other hand, perhaps the ‘coats of skin’ was the ‘whole armor of God’ for them to be able to “stand against the wiles of the Devil” (Ephes 6:11).

Not knowing for sure about the fabric of those coats, God put onto Adam and Eve appropriate garments for their wedding.

‘Marriage’ after sin was merely coupling, as Genesis 4 reveals. They did not go to their wedding with God, becoming one flesh with Him, but put on wedding apparel that God provided — the Garment of Adam, as it was called. But more appropriately, the ‘Garment of God’ for both the man and woman of Adam’s kind.

Eve had gone to her ‘marriage’ with the Wicked One naked and Adam watched naked (Gen 4:1). Neither were dressed gloriously. We think of glory as splendorous, but it is in plain apparel.

Yes, I am implying that she gained carnal knowledge from the forbidden tree. Carnal knowledge is the knowledge of the flesh. Because they were ashamed of their pudenda (Gen 3), it is implied that their appendages were discovered to have multiple uses. The Books of Adam and Eve reveals that they had no digestive systems when in Glory but acquired them after sin. Perhaps they acquired genitalia as well to multiply Satan’s way.

Now read an afterthought later in the day when Jesus was asked about marriage in heaven after the general resurrection. “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven” (Mat 22:30).

Adam and the woman were made both in the Image of God and elohim — the angels who were made in the Image of God. Unlike the angels, God took living souls and surrounded them with a material image of the elements. Angels were invisible substances and men as much ‘angels’ with ‘coats’ made of some glorious material manufactured by God to become His Glorious Likeness. Imagine that Adam and Eve were like Jesus after He died and was resurrected. His Spirit, or Ghost, was the same, but His flesh was made glorious (John 7:39).

I submit that the glorified Jesus — the ‘last Adam’ (1 Cor 15:45) was of the same substance as the first Adam.

Jesus revealed to the inquisitive crowd that after the resurrection, there would be no marriages. ‘Marriage’ is two becoming one. Their will be no coupling in the realm of heaven. That implies that there should have been no coupling in the paradisical Garden in heaven. Adam and Eve were cast out into the world where coupling was the normative and their coats of skin would be removed only to couple. Eve had no ‘armor of God’ to couple with the Wicked One with one meaning of her name is ‘Adulteress.’

Adam and the woman were ashamed of their flesh after sin. Before sin, they had not been ashamed. They were in the Image of the resurrected Jesus before encountering the Devil, but afterward were brutish like the beasts. They had acquired animal skins with sin and lost their once dominant genes (Gen 1:26). The Wicked One had become the dominant one rather than Adam.

Now back to the parable. The man was thrown out because his clothes were not appropriate for a wedding with Jesus — the Son of the King. He had been called but had not found grace.

Noah found grace (Gen 6:8). The Book of Jasher reveals that the grace that Noah found was the Garment of Adam. Noah was elected from all those around him to find grace, not because he was a good shipbuilder, but because he ‘wore’ God in a sense. He was called and then followed. While covered with the Garment that God had provided, Noah avoided the fiery darts of the wicked ones and went to the ‘wedding.’

The Ark of Noah was God’s ship and since Noah was married with God, wearing His apparel — at one with Him — the Ark was nothing more than a ‘wedding cruise’ after which the ancient invisible Church was laid on new ground (a new Adam).

So, Noah came to the wedding dressed appropriately. Whatever clothing that he wore, beneath it was the Garment of God. Noah wore that coat for over 120 years, then Ham stole it and made him naked. Then Noah sinned. Soon Noah was like Adam as well; he found grace in the new world even without that Coat. However, Ham stole the Garment, and his son was cursed.

Ham came to the wedding without proper wedding attire, and his son was cast out into the world without proper attire, because he stole grace.

Today stealing the glory of the other is called ‘stolen valor.’ Ham kept the valor for some time, and it was passed on to his son Canaan, then through several others to Nimrod who used the Garment of Adam wrongly, to prove there was no God in heaven.

The point that Jesus was making in the parable is that many are invited to the wedding, few come, but those who come fraudulently, are due Hell.

I believe that today most Christians are frauds. They, and sometimes me, take off the Comforter for a few minutes to do as we please. If we wear the Comforter to the wedding of us to Jesus on the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord, we will be well received at the wedding of the King’s Son to the Invisible Heavenly Church.

Even after professing to be the bride of Christ, many come to the ‘wedding’ without the Garment of God. How would we know? “If you love Me; keep My commandments,” said Jesus (John 14:15). Before the wedding it is essential to dress appropriately, wearing the whole armor of God to even pass the angels guarding the Way to the wedding (Gen 3:24).