Those who are teaching that the churches of today will be caught up to Heaven before the great tribulation, and married to the Lord Jesus Christ during a brief period of time occurring between a conjectured second and third advent of Christ, surely must realize God's people are by no means ready for such an event.

The explanation that we are complete in Christ and that God sees us in Christ is to make the Kingdom of God an intangible illusion, a collection of unformed creatures who have no real righteousness, holiness, or obedience in their personalities. In that case there would be no new creatures except in a legal, imputed (ascribed) sense.

The teaching that God sees us as holy, while the world views us as unrighteous, unclean, filled with jealousy, gossip, hatred, moral filth, and self-seeking, is a misunderstanding of the role of imputed righteousness in the plan of redemption.

Is the glorious Kingdom that is coming a kingdom of imputed righteousness and not actual righteousness and holiness? No, it is not. The teachers of today are carrying the role of imputation (assigned righteousness) far beyond the Divine intention. The Kingdom of God is not imputed righteousness, it is a new creation.

Current Christian teaching concerning the role of grace is a misinterpretation of Paul's doctrine, as he brought forth the transition from the Law of Moses to the grace of God that is in Christ.

The Church today is not a bride without spot, wrinkle, or blemish. It is a valley of dry bones. Only the Lord God of Heaven will be able to bring the bones together, give them sinew and flesh, cover them with skin, and breathe life into them.

It is true that in the churches there is a handful of victorious Christians, a firstfruits of the Bride, who no doubt are the saints referred to in the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation:

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness [righteous deeds] of saints. (Revelation 19:7,8)

It seems it is this handful of victorious saints who compose the "firstfruits to God and to the Lamb" mentioned in Revelation, Chapter 14. The victorious saints indeed are making themselves ready today, and they will be clothed with their own righteous conduct—a righteous conduct derived from the working of the Holy Spirit as He gives them the things of Christ.

These are God's kings and priests, the judges of men and angels, the pillars of the eternal Temple of God.

To be continued.