How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word.

Welcome to Through the Bible, there's a great study ahead about the rapture

when Jesus calls his bride the church to join him.

But first a quick introduction by Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

I'd like today to preface our study and give all our time to it, but we do need to understand what the

Lord meant in John 14.

When he says I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you I

will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there ye may be also.

Now a very fine young scholar, Dr. Rinale Showers, has made a study of this and puts it on the background of a first century wedding and we need to understand that because all the gospel

writers and all of the New Testament writers went back to that statement of our

Lord they understood it but apparently we have missed it and in the first

century when a young man had fallen in love with a girl, why he went over to the

girl's house, he left his father's house, and he bargained with the father of the girl and then a

purchase price was determined upon and when it was agreed upon a marriage

covenant was made. The bride was declared to be set aside and

apart for the bridegroom. In other words, we would say engaged. It was the espousal or betrothal ceremony that was performed at that time, not the marriage.

Each one of them took a glass of wine and I should say they both drank out of the same glass.

And then the ceremony was performed.

They made their pledge and the betrotal

of benediction was pronounced, and then the young man returned

to his father's house to prepare a place for his bride in his father's house.

And the bride to be she prepared herself

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