Revelation 19:1-10: The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

Outline

• The Bride
• The guests

Introduction

What is the typical happy ending for a boy meets girl story? A wedding! The finale to your average TV series/fairy-tale/movie/book, etc. usually has that long torturous frustrated love relationship which seemed doomed to fail climax in a wedding. God who created the institution and was the first Father of the bride when He gave Eve to Adam will consummate the long seemingly doomed to failure love relationship between Christ and His people with a wedding to start them off on their ‘happily ever after.’ Satan’s bride the wicked prostitute oppressive witch god-mother Babylon has been slain with covenant curses and now Christ’s Cinderella-bride is free to marry her Prince. Chapters 17-18 marked the fall and judgement of the anti-church and this section has two parts, firstly an anthem of praise v1-5 and then an announcement of the marriage, v6-10.

This section is distinctive because it has the only 4 references to the OT name for God in abbreviated form in the word Hallelujah, which means Praise Yah! The anthem of praise extols God for His perfect justice and wrath, and rejoices in the perfect punishment she receives. Some have tried to tone down these exclamations saying that this is just a vision and that the rejoicing is over a city which is a symbol and that this is not the church literally rejoicing over judgement. We will be praising the God that whose holiness we will be seeing clearly for the first time because of the punishment of sin which we will be seeing for its true nature for the first time. 14:9-11 echoes this language and applies it to people not merely a city, and 18:4 implies there will be people who participate in her plagues of judgement. Some have tried to clip the eternal nature of the punishment by saying that smoke not fire goes up forever, but this is borrowed from Is. 34:10 where both fire and smoke endure forever.