What the Lord Thinks of It?
Read the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah, where he says: “As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” There is a wedding coming which will eclipse all the princely and imperial weddings the world ever saw. It was a great day when Napoleon took Josephine; it was a great day when Henry VIII. led Anne Boleyn over the cloth of gold on the street, the cloth of gold reaching up to the palace; it was a great day when the King of Spain took Mercedes; but there will be a greater time when the Lord shall take His bride, the Church, to Himself.
Long time ago they were affianced, but she has been down in the wilderness. He has written her again and again, and the day of marriage is fixed. She has sent word to Him. He has sent word to her. But, oh! was there ever such a difference in estate? The King on the one side, the bride of the wilderness, poor and persecuted, on the other. The wealth of the universe on the one side, the obscurity of the ages on the other. The pomp of heaven on the one side, the poverty of earth on the other. But He will endow her with all His wealth, and raise her to sit with Him on a throne forever.
Come, thou bridal morn of the ages! Come! and there shall be the rumbling of great wheels, great chariot wheels down the sky, and there shall be riders ahead and mounted cavalry behind, the conquerors of heaven on white horses. Clear the way! A thousand trumpets blare. “Behold! the bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet Him.”
Then the charioteers shall rein in their bounding steeds of fire, and the King shall dismount from the chariot, and He shall take by the hand the bride of the wilderness, all the crowded galleries of the universe, the spectators. Ring all the wedding bells of heaven. The King lifts the bride into the chariot and cries, “Drive on! drive up!” and the clouds shall spread their cloth of gold for the procession, and the twain shall go through the gates triumphant, and up the streets, and then step into the palace at the banquet, where ten thousand potentates and principalities and dominations, cherubic and archangelic, with ten thousand gleaming and uplifted chalices, shall celebrate the day when the King of Heaven and earth brings home His bride from the wilderness. Make haste, my beloved. Be thou like to a roe, or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.