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The Meeting of the ‘Bridegroom and the Bride
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G. Broughton
Text:—“But we would not have you ignorant,
brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye
sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose
again, even so them that are fallen asleep in Jesus
will God bring with Him. For this we say unto
you by the word of the Lord, that we that are alive,
that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in
no wise precede them that are fallen asleep. For the
Lcrd Himself shall descend from Heaven with a
shout, with a voice of the archangel, and with the
trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise
first; then we that are alive that are left, shall to
gether with them be caught up in the clouds to meet
the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the
Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these
words.” —1 Thess. 4:13-18.
N connection with my text I want us
to consider the parable of the wise and
foolish virgins. Most people misinter
pret that parable. I did for a long
time after I was a preacher. I in
terpreted it as if it referred to death,
and one of the first sermons that I
ever preached in a series of evangelis
tic meetings was on this text, ‘ ‘And the
I
door was shut.”
I can tell you that was a stirring sermon —how
well I remember it! I described —for I was very
much more careful then about my descriptions than
the truth I was describing—l described death
crawling along in the track of the race of mankind
—and, oh, how I did act that part out! —and,
finally, reaching out with his long bony fingers
and gripping the heart-strings of men! My, they
used to almost scream when I reached the point
about the door being shut.
A CHANGED VIEW-POINT.
One night after preaching that sermon, which
was my brag sermon to stir the hearts of sinners,
I was going on home from church, and there was
an old crank, and he was a crank, too, double
dyed and twisted, and you know God uses even
these cranks to teach great truths sometimes; there
is no doubt about that. That crank met me just
before I got to the hotel, and he said, “I heard
your sermon tonight, young man. It was a stirring
one, too, if you had had the right text, but you
had the wrong text. I want you to take this little
tract and read it carefully before you go to bed,
and if you do not say with me that you have preach
ed a splendid sermon to the wrong text, I will ask
your pardon tomorrow morning.”
I took the tract, promising to read it, more
to get rid of him than anything else, and went to
my room. When I looked at it, I was horrified to
see that it was a tract gotten out by the Seventh
Day Adventists. It like to have scared me to death!
To think that I had been that close to a big heretic
like that, and that I had actually let him put a
tract into my hand, and, moreover, 1 had promised
to read it!
Well, I had promised, and so I read it, and then
re-read it; then I got my Bible and looked up the
subject there; then I re-read the tract. Finally
I got my commentary out and began to look after
the various passages of Scripture. I got so inter
ested in the subject that I studied until late in the
night, and before I retired for the night, I was as
straight as a shingle on the subject, and have never
got crooked again. I have just as great a hostil
ity to the vagaries of the Seventh Day Adven
tists, indeed, more than I had then, but I came to
see the one truth that they have, and, thank God,
many others have got!
This tract was a truthful presentation of the
question of the first resurrection, and there was
not in it one single error. They were careful not
to bring into that tract any of their hurtful and
dangerous teachings.
I mention this to show that God oftentimes uses
the most unthought of, inexplicable ways to bring
His own children into the light of the truth that
The Solden Age for April 1907.
He wants proclaimed. I feel like I might tell
you one other experience which will help to fix this
fact upon your mind.
I was convinced of the truth of the teaching
about the baptism of the Holy Spirit in a similar
way. God taught me these two great central
truths, the truth concerning the second coming of
Christ, and the resurrection which is related to it.
and the truth concerning the filling, or the bap
tism, of the Spirit as a separate and distinct work
of faith, in very strange ways. I told you about the
first. The second came about by a process equally
strange, and by one who was equally as great a
fanatic and a crank, a man whose general judgment
I would not follow under any consideration; a man
in whose teaching I have absolutely no confidence,
but who got hold of the truth with reference to
the separate work of the Holy Spirit.
That is the way God has brought me into the
light of these two things, and He did it just as He
may do it for you; just as He may have done it
for you. He did it because He knew that I had
reached the place where I was "a piece of clay in
the potter’s hand”; where I was willing to preach
anything under the sun that the Bible taught. I
did not care if my church turned me out of the
pulpit. I w’as willing to go on the streets and
preach, or not to preach at all. I never would
have gotten these two truths if I had not got to
that point.
THE REAL TEACHING OF THE PARABLE.
Now, so much for my experience with the para
ble in question. What does it teach if it does not
teach that we are to be ready to die? Why, it
teaches that we are to be ready for the Lord’s sec
ond coming. The Lord is not admonishing us to
be ready to die. What He is admonishing us to do
is to so live as that when He comes we shall be
ready to live with Him on earth again. He does
not spend any time talking about death, but He
spends a great deal of time talking about being
ready to re-live on this earth.
Now, when does this marriage supper take place?
It is not after the Lord comes to the earth. When
He comes to the earth He will come clothed with
regal authority, with the reigns of government in
His hands, to control this planet. The marriage
supper is preliminary to this. It is to occur at
that time described in my text; at that time when
Jesus comes in the clouds, and the trump of God
sounds, and the dead in Christ arise first, and then
they which are alive, according to the teaching in
the Corinthian epistle, shall be changed; changed
in a moment. Just what that change is we do not
know, but they will be changed in their physical
being somehow, for some purpose.
Then, together, the changed living —the righteous
ones —and the risen dead go up to meet the Lord
in the air; they will go to where He is poised in
the clouds. After that He will come with His bride
for His millennial reign.
THE MEETING IN THE AIR.
Now, when they meet the Lord up \there in the
air, the Bridegroom, who is the Lord, and the
bride, who is the Church, for you know that the
Church has ever been the bride of the Lord, there
will be a glad meeting time.
When the Bridegroom makes His appearance in
the clouds, the proclamation is sounded out: “The
Bridegroom comes! Go ye to meet Him!”
It was the custom in Oriental countries for the,,
bride to go to meet the bridegroom. He would
come in great splendor, and she must hasten to meet
him. This homage was expected of a bride to her
bridegroom.
When the proclamation is sounded, the bride,
who is the church, whether living or dead, for the
dead are as much a part of the bride as the liv
ing, will be caught up to meet Him in the air. The
spirits of the dead are with Him now, and He will
bring them back with Him. While He waits in
the air for the bride, the spirits will be sent back
to the earth to inhabit their bodies as they are
brought from the graves.
The first thing that will happen, then, will be
the resurrection of the righteous dead; it makes no
difference when they lived and died, whether in
the days of Adam or now, every righteous soul
that has died, or will die, will re-inhabit its body
at the time of which we speak, and it will inhabit
the body that it had before.
“But,” somebody says, “suppose that body was
cremated, and its ashes turned loose before a
whirlwind and scattered to the four quarters of
the earth?” My friend, it does not matter if the
ashes of that body were scattered all over this
earth, and the other planets to boot, when the Lord
comes and poises in the air, the dead in Christ
shall rise first; every particle of that charred body
will be gathered up and put together and form
the body.
Do you believe that? If not, do not never touch
the Bible nor undertake to do any Christian ser
vice at all until you do believe it, because you do
not believe the Bible.
DOUBTS DISPELLED.
You say, “I do not understand it.” No, I know
you do not. You do not understand how your
heart keeps pumping away, either, but you know
that it does. You cannot tell me to save your life
how it is that you see me now; what it is that en
ables you to see me, and yet you know you do see
me. Well, is it more difficult to gather up dust
and dirt and put it together than to make an
eye?
There is one thing in the Bible that when you
accept it, everything else is settled, and that is the
first verse in the first chapter of the first book
of the Bible: “In the beginning God.” Do you
believe that ? If God was in the beginning how did
He get there? If you accept that and believe it,
and you have got. to, because something had to be
in the beginning—if you accept that, then the resur
rection of the body—the gathering up of the ashes;
the putting together of old bones, etc. —is all set
tled. That is a great deal easier than the first
to accept.
When I am telling this truth I always think of
one thing that Mr. Talmage said when he and*Mr.
Ingersoll had their great debate. I was a medical
student at that time, just beginning to study the
theory of reproduction; how it is that a cell taken
out from a body and put under a glass at a cer
tain temperature and with a certain degree of light
will keep on growing.
When I found that out, I said, “Well, that set
tles the creation story. The world did not need
any creator at all. Something just began to grow
and just kept on growing, and when it got big
enough it began to split up and whirl around, and
broke off and made Jupiter, and after a while some
thing else broke off and grew and grew until it made
man. ’ ’
I plunged in, then, and read all the sceptical
stuff that I could get hold of, and just at that time
the debate between Mr. Talmage and Mr. Ingersoll
took place. I just knew that Mr. Ingersoll would
wipe the earth up with Mr. Talmage.
At a certain point in the debate Mr. Ingersoll was
describing just exactly what we have been talking
about. “Why,” he said, “you can just take a
cell and put it under certain atmospheric condi
tions and let it have a certain degree of light, and
it will grow, and never stop growing. And that is
the way this world was formed. In the beginning
there was some sort of protoplasm that got to
floating around, and it began to develop until it
finally developed into the present solar system.”
“My,” I said, when I read that, “he’s got him
there, sure.”
About that time Mr. Talmage arose and said:
“Mr. Ingersoll, you said that I might interrupt you
at any time.”
“Yes, sir, I did,” replied Mr. Ingersoll, while the
audience applauded vigorously.
