Dear Arlene,

I really enjoy reading your posts and appreciate all of the effort that you put into them.

I was reading your post about the Isaac and Rebekah story and the reference to 10 days. (http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/apr2007/arlene413.htm ) I think that there will be a 10 year time frame between the Rapture and the end of the Tribulation. But I put the marriage of the Lamb a little later than most everybody else who posts here. This is because I believe that a birth pattern has to be fulfilled by the Church before she can marry her Lord – a birth pattern that requires an increment of 10. Please see my December 5, 2006 post to Daniel Matson which referred him back to my previous post of May 9, 2006. Both posts talk about 10 day and 10 year increments in connection with the Church or models of the Church: (http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/dec2006/lisat125.htm)

You noted that Isaac and other men of the Bible married at age 40. If Jesus follows this pattern, I think that He will marry the Church at the end of the Tribulation. My rationale is this: according to Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 Weeks, the Messiah was cut off at the end of the 69th week. See Daniel 9:24-27. It is commonly thought that He was around 33 years old when He was crucified. ("Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry." Luke 3:23.) The prophetic clock for Daniel’s prophecy stopped at the time of the crucifixion and will resume again at the start of the 7 year Tribulation. Therefore, if we add 7 years to the age that Jesus was when the clock stopped, He will be around 40 years old at the end of the Tribulation. Just the right age for marriage!

There really seems to be a connection between the number 10, the Holy Spirit, and the Church. I’ve often wondered if that 10 day increment between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is somehow connected to when the Church will physically return to earth. I’ve heard Pastor Chuck Missler’s teaching that at the Second Coming Jesus will first go to Bozrah (Isa. 63:1-4, then to Meggiddo (Rev. 19:30/Isa. 34:5-6, 8), and finally to Jerusalem (Zech. 14:3-4). (See his notes for "The Next Holocaust and the Refuge in Edom.") Perhaps Jesus will not get to Jerusalem until the 10th day – the Day of Atonement. And perhaps we will join Him there at that time.

Maranatha.

         – Lisa Taylor