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The simple truth

of

Christianity

2 Corinthians 11:2-3 Each Christian is Christ’s bride

For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you [engaged you to be married] to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ [for the wedding/judgment]. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

The story of the Bible is very simple. Our Father loves us and has given us His Son to be our "Husband" and therefore we are accepted into the family because of Him. We bring nothing with us to the wedding except a love for His Son shown by wearing the "dress" He has given us.

There is an enemy who hates the Son and he would like to stop the wedding. He cannot hinder Christ's plan and he cannot kill us directly, so he tries to eliminate us by tempting us into dangerous areas where we cause our own deaths.

All we have to do is listen to the voice of the Spirit of God and obey Him and we cannot be touched.

What the "dress" means

Because we are all born "in sin", meaning that we are born with a sinful nature, or disobedient spirit, inherited from Adam and Eve, we need to be changed into Christians. This can only be done by the action of a Creator, so Jesus constantly approaches us from birth to death with the offer of the change. If we accept, then He uses His creative power and instantaneously changes our disobedient spirit into an obedient one by giving us a part of Himself. This is done by exchange, which means that He takes our disobedient spirit into Himself and keeps it under control, while giving us Himself. By virtue of the engagement, we now have the delightful task of requesting Him to use His power and overcome any temptation before us. In short, to save us! But we must choose to be saved at each temptation for He will not work against our individuality.

Then He takes on the process of educating us to fit in with His family. We begin to learn the culture and the manners of heaven (this process is called "sanctification" by the theologians), and it of course, requires time. While we are going through this "school" we are used by Him to impress others and lead them into acceptance of His offer of "engagement to marry".

Last of all, just before the final ceremony of the wedding, He plans to change our earthly bodies into ones which will be able to handle the excitement of living eternally in the universe as free agents. This will be done "in the twinkling of an eye" as the Spirit so expressively puts it.

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