Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (51 page)

Christ the King “who sat upon the throne” now speaks: “These words are
trustworthy
and
true
” (21:5)—
alethinos
and
pistos
. Just as we did in Daniel’s vision, we now will get the assessment of the King. In this case, the King is Christ.

St. John takes Daniel one step further, using this phrase to signal the
end
of his thematic summary. When the angel speaks the words
alethinos
and
pistos
, we know that the thematic summary has been completed (22:6). After that, the book ends with concluding remarks, a blessing and a warning (22:7b–21).

In this last segment of The Apocalypse, it is as if St. John were put into an armchair and told to relax for the rest of the book. In the previous sections of The Apocalypse, we were given the perspectives of Heaven, of the Sanhedrin, of the Church, of friends of Jerusalem, and of the martyrs. Now we will be treated to God’s thematic summary. This is actually an overview of the Church itself. It has three parts: the Church’s gospel message, the Church’s nature, and the Church’s mission. This emphasis on the Church should not surprise us. Remember that the battle strategy of God’s People was to build the Temple (the Church) of God.

In summarizing the Church’s message to the world, God states that there are two groups of people. Those who do not respond to Him with upright lives will be subjected eternally to “the lake that burns with fire and brimstone” (21:8). In contrast, “he who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son” (21:7). Have we heard this so often that its novelty has worn off? Remain faithful to God, and you will be God’s
son!
This is the divine filiation, the divination of humanity, of which the early Church Fathers spoke so often. God does not desire slaves, but true “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17; Gal. 4:7; James 2:5).

The grace of God in making this possible is almost beyond comprehension. It is a gift from Him. “To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life” (21:6). This grace that starts us in the Christian pilgrimage is free and undeserved. Jesus promised this same “free water” of the Holy Spirit when He was talking to the Samaritan woman: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14).

What is this free water? Why, it is nothing other than the life of God Himself. God enlivens us with the Holy Spirit through no merit of our own. The sacrament of Baptism is both the symbol and the enabling substance of the Holy Spirit’s work in a new Christian. In love, God makes us His very own children.

Yet God’s free gift requires a loyal response, and that response is undeniably more than just mental assent. “He who conquers shall have this heritage.” Although the initial grace to begin the journey is free and undeserved, God expects much of His children. By enduring under trial, we become true sons and daughters of God. That is “conquering.” The “eternal gospel” proclaimed by the first angel in the strategy of the Lamb has not changed (14:6–7); the Truth coming from the rider’s mouth as a sword is ever the same: the gift is free, but never cheap. It is our responsibility to obey the gospel that never changes: “Fear God … and worship Him” (14:7). Our response will determine our everlasting fate.

The mission of the Bride is to bring the Truth of Christ to the world, and it revolves around the twin images of light and water.

The light of the Church has been a central theme of The Apocalypse under a different symbol: the sword of Truth that Christ wields. As we on earth wait for the second advent, we are to shine the light of Truth into every aspect of reality. It will cut like a sword. “By its
light
shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day—and there shall be no night there; they shall bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (21:24–26).

The unbelieving world finds Christ’s Truth most clearly displayed in the lives of faithful Christians. Elsewhere, St. John wrote that God is light, and we walk in that light when we live without sin: “
God is light
… if we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie … but if
we walk in the light, as He is in the light
, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin …
the truth
is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:5–9).

But the light of Truth is not the only aspect of the Church’s mission. It also involves water. There is a “river of the water of life … flowing from the throne of God” (22:1). God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life. He who conquers shall have this heritage” (21:6–7).

This is the fulfillment of the thousand cubits of water that Ezekiel saw flowing from under the Temple (47:6–12). This abundant source of water brings to mind the words of Jesus: “ ‘Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.… If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink’.… Now this He said about the Spirit, which those who believed in Him were to receive” (John 4:14; 7:37, 39). The water symbolizes the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and, through the Church, to the world: the sacrament of Baptism.

To sum it all up: the Bride’s mission is to proclaim the light of Truth and to make available the water—the powerful, transforming love—of the Holy Spirit. Light symbolizes the sword of the Rider, the Truth of Christ. Love without Truth leads to rottenness, just as water without light does. Conversely, Truth without Love begets harsh dryness, as does light without water. But together, water and light foster life, “the tree of life” (22:2).

When Love and Truth are offered in balance by the Church, the world will be able to taste of the tree of life. The people of God will have lived up to her mission. This is the same tree of God’s presence and fellowship that was available to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:9). When we live as Christ wants His Bride to live, we enjoy God and His gifts. Our eternal life starts here and now. This is why we hope and wait for the second coming of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. His coming will bring all the fruits of the tree of life to abundant fruition.

Now an angel offers us an introduction to “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” She was the mystery whose nature was revealed in the initial vision of the scroll. She was the Woman with offspring. She was the object of the dragon’s everlasting hatred. She was the celebrant of the Eucharist, a sacramental community. She was the New Israel being liberated through the plagues of the great battle. We have just seen her as the New Jerusalem descending from Heaven. She is the Church, “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

We are truly privileged. This is the mystery that Daniel could not fully understand in his final vision. This is what Jesus said the Old Covenant prophets longed to see, but could not (Matt. 13:17). This is the spiritual Kingdom of the Messiah. This is the everlasting Kingdom that accepts Jew and Gentile on an equal footing as long as they are willing to eat together at His Supper as one People. This is the Church, redeemed with His Blood.

Even a cursory reading of this passage immediately reveals one aspect of the Church’s nature. She is somehow intimately tied to the number
twelve:
“[The Bride had] twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes.… The city had twelve foundations and on them the twelve names of the twelve Apostles.… Its length [was] twelve thousand stadia … its wall [was] 144 cubits … adorned with … [twelve] jewels.… The twelve gates were twelve pearls (21:12, 13, 16–17, 19, 21). Once again, we are seeing the importance of symbolic numbers (GR2).

The most important appearance of
twelve
in the Old Covenant had to do with God’s chosen people, His
ekklesia
. There were twelve sons of Israel, and they headed the twelve tribes of the household of God. With his symbolic use of the number
twelve
, St. John makes it crystal clear that this new Bride has superseded the tribes of Israel. She contains the twelve tribes’ names, but is built on the foundation of the twelve Apostles. The new people of God have sprung historically from the old, but the leadership is new.

There is no going back to the Old Covenant. The New Covenant replaced the Old, as Zechariah had predicted when he broke his two staffs (Appendix Two). This is the strong covenant of Daniel, made with the Church, rather than with ethnic Israel. The Church’s message is the gospel we have just examined. Her eternal dignity stems from her choice as the Bride of the Lamb. That is the reason for her creation and existence. The Old Covenant’s time is over, due to unfaithfulness. That is a central message of the Great Battle vision we just examined.

We must not make the all-too-common mistake of spiritualizing this Bride altogether, so that we have only “an invisible Church.” She has a founder (Christ), as did the Old Covenant (Moses). The New is built upon a foundation of Her Apostles, just as the Old had its prophets. She has a priesthood, just as the Old Covenant did. She has initiation rites (Baptism), as did the Old (circumcision). She has essential ceremonies (the Eucharist), as did the Old (animal sacrifices). Perhaps most essential to remember, she has human leadership (bishops), just as it did the Old (kings and high priests). In a word, she is a visible institution, just like the Old. Because Old Covenant Israel was composed of humans, it looked imperfect from the outside; but it was still the Chosen People of God. Just so, the Church may appear fraught with human frailties on the surface. Yet the new people of God on earth
is
this visible institution—not merely an invisible network of spiritually attuned converts who are “born again.” The world must be able to see this institution as an organization here on earth, for “a city set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt. 5:14).

In addition to this, what else have we learned of the nature of this Bride during The Apocalypse? After all, that is the meaning of Apocalypse in Greek:
apokalupsis
means “revelation.” The nature of the Church has been a mystery since time immemorial, but with the opening of the scroll, she is now revealed. What do we find?

In The Apocalypse, there are four clear characteristics of the Bride revealed for us.

♦
One
. First, Christ’s Bride is
one
Church. This was the crucial message of the initial scroll vision. Jew and Gentile can join together as equals in the Bride’s marriage supper. Identification as a Christian supersedes the old ethnic categories of Jew and Gentile. Spiritually, the distinction of Jew and Gentile no longer exists! This is obvious from the way the seven churches were all addressed by St. John. They were geographically diverse, yet institutionally and spiritually one Body of Christ. They were in communion with one another and obedient to the same Christ. When their martyrs died, they all joined together under one altar, with no distinction among nationalities. We expect nothing less when we understand the mystery of this Church, where Jew and Gentile eat at one Table.

♦
Apostolic
. Second, it is obvious that these geographically scattered churches were also faithful to the same teaching—that of St. John. There is one and only one gospel preached in The Apocalypse. The beliefs they held and the Eucharist they celebrated were those of the one Christ, as they were passed down through
the Apostles
. Their battle strategy of remaining faithful to the Truth of the Eucharist was the same, because they got it from the same source: the Apostles. Their destiny was that which was promised to them by Christ through St. John, because they were part of the apostolic tradition. This is all integral to the manner in which they were addressed by St. John.

♦
Holy
. Third, this Bride is undeniably
holy
. We read that she exudes “the glory of God” Himself (21:11). We have seen evidence of this holiness from the very beginning of the visions. The martyrs under the altar in the fifth seal of the scroll vision were holy. The 144,000 chaste were “spotless.” One of the major admonitions of The Apocalypse is the call to holiness. We could summarize much of the book thus: “Do not take the mark of the beast by worshiping idols. That unholy compromise will exclude you from the New Jerusalem.” Speaking of the New Jerusalem, St. John states, “Nothing unclean shall enter it … but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (21:27). Make no mistake, this Bride is holy.

♦
Catholic
. Fourth, this Bride of the Lamb is
catholic
, meaning “universal.” This universality exhibits itself in two forms. First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. As St. Ignatius of Antioch said, “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church” (
EPS
, VII:2). That is her gift and treasure. Second, the Church is catholic because of her mission to the whole world (
CCC
, pars. 830–831). The City of God contains the “144,000” ethnic Jews, but it also encompasses “every nation and tribe and tongue and people” (14:6). All are welcome, and all meet Christ when they come.

So what do we have when we add it all together? St. John’s Bride is none other than the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church that celebrates the Eucharist and waits in hope for the second advent. She is both institutionally visible and innately supernatural. Is there a name for this Church of St. John? One thing is certain: this is not a snapshot of the independent rapturist church that has sprouted up in your neighborhood within the last couple of generations. Today, the only Church that even approaches these qualifications is known worldwide as the Roman Catholic Church. She is the Bride of Christ by nature.