In the beginning Jesus is external to us. When we are unsaved we come to the external Jesus. After we believe, repent, are baptized in water, and then are filled with the Holy Spirit, the Lord begins the works of formation, reconciliation, and union. These are Divine operations that bring to perfection and union our inner, spiritual personality. The Lord is in us and we in Him.

Our body, the external part of our personality, remains dead because of the sin that abides in our flesh.

After the Lord completes His work in our spiritual personality He is ready to enter our external personality—our body. This He will do at the time of His appearing. He and we will appear at the same time. When Christ appears we also shall appear with Him in glory.

The redemption of our body and our appearing in glory with Him is the outward manifestation of the marriage of the Lamb. Now the Lord Jesus will take the greatest pleasure in presenting His Wife, His completion, His counterpart, to the host of Heaven and to the nations of the earth. It is clear that she bears His name and has received of the fullness of His Glory. Now Jesus has found pleasure and purpose in the creation and is ready to bring all Heaven and earth into line with His Person and His will.

There is no temple, no church in the new Jerusalem, in the Bride of the Lamb. All the ecclesiastical trappings we associate with "church" are gone. They have been scaffolding that has served its purpose. The organs, pews, stained glass windows, steeples, altars, so dear to the heart of the devout, are needed no longer. Now we have Him. The churches have performed their role by making possible our marriage to Him.

Christ will not permit any kind of barrier, any type of institution or priesthood, to come between Him and His Bride.

The Wife of the Lamb is the new Jerusalem. The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of the new Jerusalem. The saints will see God's Face and serve Him as sons. We are God's eternal Tabernacle, the Body of Christ. His name, and the name of His city, have been written on us for eternity.

We have no concept of the intensity with which the Lord Jesus longs for the manifestation to take place. He yearns for the moment when we are with Him. He is upholding the creation with the operations the Father always performs through Him but His heart is thinking of something else. He thirsts. He thirsts for the hour when she is with Him. Everything lacks luster, significance, joy except as it pertains to her.

His wife is being prepared, and He is waiting at the right hand of the Father until every enemy has been made His footstool.

Let each of us do everything in his or her power to bring about the perfecting of the Bride of the Lamb so Jesus' heart may be made glad.

How wonderful will be the day when we are joined together with the Lord. Jesus!

To be continued.