In Revelation 21, an angel shows John the “bride” and what he sees is the New Jerusalem coming down. Is that Jesus' bride? I thought it was the church or the saints?
In Rev 21 we read:
Rev. 21:2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
Rev. 21:9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
Rev. 21:10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
Rev. 21:24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
Rev. 21:25 In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed;
Rev. 21:26 and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it;
Rev. 21:27 and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Rev. 22:3 There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him;
Notice that the description of the New Jerusalem as the Bride of the Lamb is followed by descriptions of the saints dwelling in the city, which tells us that this is the future home for the saints to dwell with the Father and Christ.
Therefore, the wife of Jehovah (i.e., Israel in the Old Testament) and the bride of Christ (i.e., the Church in the New Testament) will both reside in this place together as one, thus becoming the Bride of the Lamb. So Revelation 21-22 refers to the New Jerusalem city as the Bride of the Lamb because it is the place that both Israel and the Church dwell with God in perfect harmony. In that sense, the city personifies the people in the same way that the Old Testament uses Jerusalem to personify Israel or Sodom to personify the ungodly.
See also: Bride of Christ vs. Wife of Jehovah?
