Types of the Bride of Christ: Rachel

Rachel was the younger daughter of Laban and the wife of Jacob.  Jacob — a type for Christ — first meets her at the Haran well.  This is another type of the bride being taken from those who draw from the well, which is the Word of God.

One of two brides

Jacob served seven years to be able to marry Rachel, just as Christ has come first as a servant, prior to marrying His bride.  Laban deceived Jacob and gave him his other daughter, Leah, because it was the right of the firstborn.  Leah represents Israel (the firstborn, which will be dealt with first) and the bride of God the Father.  Rachel typifies the bride of Christ. (Arlen Chitwood)

Jacob had to serve two periods of seven years to claim his bride.  Jesus will also complete two periods of time before he claims His bride: first as prophet and second as our High Priest in Heaven. (Arlen Chitwood)

Jacob had to work another seven years to marry Rachel.  He preferred Rachel and God favored Leah by giving her children.  When Rachel could not conceive, she gave her handmade Bilhah to Jacob and she bore Dan and Naphtali.  Then Rachel became pregnant with Jacob. 

 A perplexing mystery

When Jacob and his family ran away from Laban, Rachel stole her father's household gods (teraphim) and concealed them when he searched her tent.  

Scripture does not explain why she stole them. Did she want to prevent her father from practicing idolatry?  Or is Scripture telling us that even a bride of Christ can be tempted by idols of this world?   

Types of the Bride of Christ: Rebekah

Scripture tells us that Rebekah was the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nabor, Abraham’s brother.

Abraham — a type of God the Father — instructed his servant (a type of the Holy Spirit) to find a bride for his son Isaac, who is a type for Christ.  Abraham insisted that the bride was not to come from the Canaanites, but from his country and his people. 

Her deeds qualified her 

Rebekah, a virgin, kindly provides Abraham’s servant with water from the well, which was the sign the servant was looking for.  It is also a type for the bride filling herself up with the living water that the Lord lovingly provides every time we go to His Word.  Rebekah fills her pitcher, not once, but twice, which tells us that she had a double portion.

The servant gives her a golden earring of half a shekel weight and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold, which was the bride price.  The golden earring represents that she was hearing and obeying God’s Word (Royce Powell).  He also gives her jewels of silver and gold and her raiment, which points to the bride being qualified at judgment seat of Christ.

When the servant asks if there is room in her father’s house, she says there is both enough straw and provender.  Isaiah 11:7 tells us that when Christ reigns, the lion will eat straw. 

She came out of her world

The servant asks: “Wilt though go with this man?” Rebekah says yes, which requires leaving her home and family behind, a type of what the Holy Spirit will do after He removes the bride from this fallen world.  It is also instruct us that we should not follow the ways and the sways of the world and steadfastly follow Christ Jesus, our Bridegroom.   

She had faith in that which was unseen

Scripture tells us that Rebekah arose to go and meet Isaac — who was coming to claim her — just as the bride (among other believers) will arise at the rapture to meet her Bridegroom for the first time in the clouds.  Rebekah had never met Isaac before, but she goes to him having faith in that which is unseen.  She is a beautiful type of a bride who willingly gave up everything to be with her bridegroom.  

References: Complete Word Study Bible, Jewish Encyclopedia

Remaining Awake

²That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour:³ Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,⁴ And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. (2 Peter 3:2-4)

Our Redeemer’s return to establish His Millennial Kingdom is such a glorious and hope-filled truth that it should be proclaimed from every church pulpit.  But instead of exhorting us to die to self, and prepare for the day when we will stand before the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ, we are being bombarded with messages encouraging us to walk after our own lusts.  Just visit The Museum of Idolatry on any given day to see the leavening that is taking place. 


Why is it that so few see the Kingdom truths so clearly while so many do not?  

We know from Scripture that God can cause people to go into a deep sleep:

For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes: the prophets and your rulers, the seers hath he covered. (Isaiah 29:10)   Royce Powell delivers a powerful sermon about this at Disciples Call.

Scripture warns that believers can fall asleep, too.  In the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-10), Jesus tells us that while the Bridegroom tarried, all of the virgins slumbered and slept. The Latin word used here is katheudo.  It can mean to sleep literally and it can also mean to yield to sloth and sin or to be indifferent to one's salvation (Strong 2518).  It is interesting that it is in the imperfect tense, which refers to a continuing or repeated event or state (but I am not a biblical language scholar, so forgive me if I err).

Even the bride, who loves and longs for her Bridegroom in the Song of Solomon, is not immune to falling asleep:

I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.  (Song of Solomon 5:1)

The race is long and I admit there are times when I am pulled away from His coming world into this earthly world.  One message that I find very encouraging comes from Cindy Ziegler, who speaks about when the bride’s spirit is willing (“my heart was awake”), but her flesh is weak (“I was asleep”).

We can also find strength in knowing that no matter what the masses may say, Scripture implores us to remain awake, alert, watching, and working for the Lord as we await the Bridegroom’s return:

³⁵Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:³⁶  Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.³⁷And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.  (Mark 13:35-37)

⁵Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.⁶Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. (1 Thessalonians 5:5-7)  

¹⁰Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.¹¹And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. ¹²The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. (Romans 13:10-12)

Quoteworthy: Christ’s Return in Leviticus

“…Leviticus is of use to us now as a revelation of Christ… The book is thus a treasury of divinely-chosen illustrations as to the way of a sinner’s salvation through the priestly work of the Son of God, and as to his present and future position and dignity as a redeemed man.

…Leviticus is still of use to us as embodying in type and figure prophecies of things yet to come, pertaining to the Messiah’s kingdom.  We must not imagine with some that because many of its types are long ago fulfilled, therefore all have been fulfilled.  Many, according to the hints of the New Testament, await their fulfillment in a bright day that is coming. 

Some, for instance, of the feasts of the Lord have been fulfilled; as Passover, and the feast of Pentecost.  But how about the day of atonement for the sin of corporate Israel?  We have seen the type of the day of atonement fulfilled in the entering into heaven of our great High Priest; but in the type He came out again to bless the people: has that been fulfilled?  Has He yet proclaimed absolution of sin to guilty Israel? 

How again, about the feast of trumpets, and that of the ingathering at full harvest?  How about the Sabbatic year, and that most consummate type of all, the year of jubilee?  History records nothing which could be held a fulfillment of any of these; and thus Leviticus bids us look forward to a glorious future yet to come, when the great redemption shall at last be accomplished, and “Holiness to Jehovah” shall, as Zecharian puts it, be written even “on the bells of the horses.”’

From The Book of Leviticus, by Samuel Henry Kellog

Is Celebrating Christ's Birth More Important Than Anticipating His Return?

This December 25th, people in church pews all across the world will celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ (a date, by the way, that some historians say is not accurate). 

I wonder how many of the people in those churches will be stirred with excitement because they will also hear about the promise of our blessed hope, which is the return of Christ Jesus?

There is nothing wrong with looking back, as long as we also look forward.  His story starts in a manger, but it does not end on the cross.  Scripture tells us over and over again that there is so much more to come! 

In the words of Isaac Massey Haldeman:

"If the value of a statement or is to be measured by the number of times repeated, then, since from Genesis to Revelation, in every form of human language, the Second Coming is proclaimed upon almost every page of the Bible, is inwrought with every fibre of truth it finally presents; since in the New Testament alone it is mentioned directly and indirectly more than three hundred times, as there is no other theme in the Bible that approaches it in frequency of repetition, it should seem that this event and doctrine of the Second Coming with all its promises and certified consequences should easily be of supreme and all-compelling importance; and because the Holy Spirit has made it of such importance I am under bonds to preach it.  Those who persist in saying it is incidental, secondary and sporadic might well be said to be of that class of theological disputants who never study the Bible; for the fact is should you cut out every reference to the Second Coming, its cognate truths and all the events to which it gives emphasis, you would have but a fragment of the Bible; and the Book upon which faith is founded, from which hope casts its glances heavenward, see light in the grave and immortality assured, would be as a broken reed, a garment of beauty torn and shredded, or as a harp whose main chord has been snapped asunder." 

From Why I preach the second coming.  Published in 1919.

Quoteworthy: The Second Coming of Christ

The Second Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ is One Event Most Often Recorded in Holy Scripture.

IT is recorded in type, in figure, in symbol, in analogue, in parable, in hyperbole and metaphor, in exalted song, in noblest poetry and in rarest rhetoric.  It is set before us in dramatic and dynamic statement, in high prophetic forecast, in simple narrative, close linked logic, expanded doctrine, divine exhortation and farreaching appeal.

The first promise of the Second Coming was made in Eden.  It was made in the promise given to the woman that her seed should bruise the serpent's head.  On the cross the serpent bruised the heel of the woman's seed, but her seed did not bruise the serpent's head.  Never was his head more uplifted and unbruised than now.  The promise of the bruising is of God and must be fulfilled.  The record of that fulfillment is to be be found in the twentieth chapter of the book of the Revelation where our Lord descends and in the plenitude of His power by the hand of an angel binds Satan for a thousand years beneath His feet and the feet of His saints.  As the bruising of the serpent's head takes place at the Second Coming, and the promise of the bruising is made in Eden, then the first promise of the Coming is made in Eden; and as you see rising above the figure of the fallen first man the figure of the Second man, you hear for the first time the story of the Second Coming of the Second man; and thus the story and the doctrine of the Second Coming begin with the very beginning of the Book.

Isaac Massey Haldeman in Why I preach the second coming.  Published in 1919.

Quoteworthy: Are You Ready?

Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, "They that were ready went in with the bridegroom to the marriage:" they that were ready, and none else. Now here, in the sight of God, I ask each and every reader, Is this your case? Are you ready?

I do not ask whether you are a Churchman, and make a profession of religion.— I do not ask whether you attend an evangelical ministry, and like evangelical people, and can talk of evangelical subjects, and read evangelical tracts and books. All this is the surface of Christianity. All this costs little, and may be easily attained. I want to search your heart more thoroughly, and probe your conscience more deeply.  I want to know whether you have been born again, and whether you have got the Holy Ghost dwelling in your soul. I want to know whether you have any oil in your vessel while you carry the lamp of profession, and whether you are ready to meet the bridegroom,— ready for Christ's return to the earth. I want to know, if the Lord should come this week, whether you could lift up your head with joy, and say, "This is our God; we have waited for Him; let us be glad, and rejoice in His salvation." These things I want to know, and this is what I mean when I say, "Are you ready?"

 From Coming Events and Present Duties by John Charles Ryle.  Published in 1867.