Revelation 19:6-10--The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

Revelation 19:6-10
English Standard Version

The Marriage Supper of the Lamb
6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure”--

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” 10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

---

It would seem from the description that all of heaven  joins together in the worship of the one who is to be the Conquering King.  

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure”--

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

What is this "Marriage of the Lamb" they speak of?  We are about to find out.  We know the Lamb is Christ, and He is also called the Bridegroom.  We know He went away to prepare a place for His people we call the Church who is also called the Bride of Christ.  We know He promised that one day He would return for them so that where He is, there they may be also, and we know that He left the Holy Spirit as a down payment (sort of like an engagement right) as a promise of this very event that was coming and all the good things that He has in store for us.  This is also the conclusion of the Last Supper, which He left unfinished.  Remember how He said to his disciples that evening, 

26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” (Matthew 26:26-29)

See the promise for Him to share this meal with them again when He promises He will again drink the cup [the fourth cup of the meal, the Cup of Praise] when they drink it together in His Father's Kingdom (that would be heaven, where we see this taking place, and would put this event He is promising before His coronation and He receives the Kingdom--that happens right after this event).

Intermixed with The Last Supper, we not only have soundings of the beginning of the story of Redemption with remembering the Passover of Egypt, and we clearly see the bread and wine pointing to what was currently going on with Jesus as He was about to become their Passover Lamb and the bread and wine represented the New Covenant that was made with His sinless body and blood, but it also had overtones of a Jewish marriage proposal and how the potential groom offered a cup of wine to the one He wanted to be his bride and if she took it and drank of it, they entered into a covenant of betrothal.  He would go and prepare a place for her and return for her, and when he did, there would be a magnificent party limited only by the amount of money the groom's family had to spend on it.  Sometimes these marriage feasts would go on for weeks or longer with extremely wealthy families.  The party was over as soon as the wine ran out (refer back to Jesus' first miracle) and it was quite an embarrassing thing for the groom to be unprepared in his preparations and to run out of food or wine.

Now imagine how great this Marriage Supper of the Lamb will be with God the Father throwing this party for His beloved Son and the Bride that His Son died for, whom He he has already adopted as His own.  The Father who has unlimited time and resources and has literally been preparing for this day before the foundations of the world.  This is going to be a great party that will only be cut short because there will be business to attend to--Jesus will need to be crowed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords and will need to conquer the remaining rebellious peoples of the world and bring judgment to them.  He will then establish a Messianic Kingdom on earth (we'll talk about that over the next couple of passages), but it will only last for 1,000 years before Satan is released from his imprisonment and he will stir up the hearts of those born and raised during this Millennial Kingdom to once again rebel against Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  There will be a final judgment and all of the first creation will pass away as Jesus promised when He said "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my Word will never pass away."  (That is not to say that the place He has made for us will be destroyed.)  Then there will be a New Heavens and a New Earth and a New Jerusalem that will be both a place and people that come down from heaven and Father, and Son, and His People will live forever in perfect peace.  There will be no more sin, no more curse, and no more temptation to sin.  Satan and his demons will no longer bother us, nor will the wicked people who belonged to his kingdom of darkness.  Darkness will be no more, there will no longer be any separation between God and Man.  It will be as it was intended to be in the Garden of Eden.

This passage today kicks off all of that.  Perhaps now you see why everyone was celebrating.  They knew what was coming. The angel told John to write, "Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Then the angel added, “These are the true words of God.”

John once again finds himself in the position of being overcome by the angel's message and falling down in worship at the feet of the angel, and we again see the angel stop him and say "You must not do that."  True angels do not steal worship from God.  That is one way we are sure that The Angel of the LORD in the Old Testament is God Himself (Jesus in the Old Testament) because He accepts the worship that only God deserves and speaks for God in the first person.  The angel reminds John that angels are only servants of God, much like the Church is, but the Church is better in that it has the testimony of how Christ has redeemed the Church.  We have even more reason to worship Him.  We are told to worship God who did all this for our good and His glory.  Then we are told we know all these things are true because they have been given to us by the spirit of prophecy and God's prophetic word never fails.  If someone claims to speak a prophetic word and that word fails to be true, that word was not spoken from God (see Deuteronomy 18:20-22).  Now the angel's words of “These are the true words of God" make more sense in the context of these being prophetic words that we can be certain of.