how will you explain hwat Jesus meant as 'no one knows the hour except the Father' ?
you think i consider Godhead as 3 separate people or something?
May I answer that for you. You will not be able to understand it at all without studying the Traditional Jewish Marriage Customs of two thousand years ago:
The Jewish Wedding Traditions that apply to Christ coming for His Bride the Church are as follows:
1. The man seeking a bride had to make a contract with the father, agreeing on the purchase price of the Bride, which was due the day after she accepted the Proposal. The price the Father demanded to Redeem us was a Holy Blood Sacrifice, and Christ paid the price purchasing the Church as His Bride.
1 Corinthians 6:20 (NKJV)
[SUP]20 [/SUP]For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
2. The wedding proposal was never verbal. The man seeking a Bride is invited to a family sit down supper, after making contract with the father. During the course of the meal the man would pour a cup of wine and passed it to his prospective Bride. If she drank from the cup she was accepting the proposal, and if she set it down without drinking, she was refusing the proposal. Jesus poured the cup and passed it to the Disciples the foundation of the Church. The Disciples drank from the betrothal cup accepting Jesus Christ as our Bridegroom. Just as in any Jewish Wedding Proposal, the Couple is known as Bride and Bridegroom throughout the Betrothal Period. ( Mat.
9:15 )
1 Corinthians 11:25 (NCV)
[SUP]25 [/SUP]In the same way, after they ate, Jesus took the cup. He said, “This cup is the new agreement that is sealed with the blood of my death. When you drink this, do it to remember me.“
3. The first thing that would take place after the Bride drank from the Cup, accepting the Marriage Proposal, is the Bridegroom would stand, look at his Bride, and say, “I go to prepare a place for you.” He would then leave the old dwelling place of the Bride, never to set foot in it again until after the Wedding Ceremony. According to the Jewish Wedding Traditions, he would go back home and begin to build a New Dwelling Place for his Bride either in or near his father’s home. Jesus said in:
John 12:2-3 (NASB)
2 In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.
3 If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am,
there you may be also.
That comes straight out of a Jewish Wedding Proposal.
4. So did they set the Date for the Wedding like we do? NO, because only the father of the Bridegroom had the right to periodically inspect the New Dwelling Place and giving additional instructions to his son to add this and that, make this better, etc. Finally without any advanced warning, the father would say to his son, frequently near midnight, “It is finished, go get your Bride.”
Hence, it is a reality in any Jewish Wedding that ONLY the Father knows when the Wedding will start; because it is ONLY the Father that can decide when the New Dwelling Place is FINISHED, including the Wedding Decorations, because the Wedding ALWAYS took place in the New Dwelling Place.
While the Son would go off to steal His Bride away like a Thief in the Night, the father would give orders to the servants to get ready to welcome the Wedding Guests. Where is our New Dwelling Place? The New City Jerusalem in Heaven and it is Decorated, adorned as you would a Bride, which eventually be lowered to the earth.
Revelation 21:2 (KJV)
[SUP]2 [/SUP]And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
5. While it is true that NO ONE knew the day or hour that Wedding would begin, because only the father of the Bridegroom made that decision at the last minute; is was possible to see signs that the Time for the Wedding was NEAR. If the new dwelling place was outside the father’s house, the building itself was a visible sign of times, and/or by the products the servants were buying for their Master. When you saw them buying decorations for a Wedding you knew the time was near. At that time the Bride would gather her wedding party in her old dwelling place. They each would have to have a lantern with oil in because they new that the Jewish Wedding Traditions of 2000 years ago, dictated that the Bridegroom could come to call out his Bride late at night. We in a real sense are gathering the Wedding Party in our old dwelling place, “earth”, as we lead each new believer to receive Jesus as LORD. Sure we do not know the day or hour, but the signs of the times indicate that it is soon. Therefore we keep watch, expecting our Bridegroom to APPEAR in the clouds to call us out. And JUST LIKE the parable of ten virgins, ONLY those with oil in their lamps ( the Holy Spirit is the living oil in us ), get to go with the Bridegroom to the Wedding.
Mark 13:35 (NIV)
[SUP]35 [/SUP]"Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back--whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.
6. When the father tells the son to go get his Bride, he still does NOT set foot in the old dwelling place of the Bride. He actually travels to the old dwelling place of the Bribe, but stops just outside of it and calls her out. The Bridegroom is not the one that calls out the Bride, but rather he chooses a member of his wedding party to SHOUT to wake her and her wedding guests, calling her out of the old dwelling place. And they join with the Bridegroom’s wedding party and together they travel to the new dwelling that the Bridegroom has personally built, for the Wedding Ceremony. Jesus has actually chosen the archangel already to SHOUT and call us out of our old dwelling place “earth”.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 (NKJV)
[SUP]16 [/SUP]For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a
shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
[SUP]17 [/SUP]Then we who are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
[SUP]18 [/SUP]Therefore comfort one another with these words.
7. The wedding ceremony in the new dwelling place was not like our weddings of today. They actually lasted seven days. If the guests lived close by they would go home, but if the bridegroom lived far away from the old dwelling place of the Bride, then accommodations would be made in the father’s house for the wedding guests. Each morning the Wedding celebrations would continue, with the official Marriage Supper being saved for last. Then they would travel back to the old dwelling place of the Bride and the Bridegroom we set foot again in the old dwelling place of the Bride for the first time since the Bride had accepted his proposal.
Revelation 19:9 (NKJV)
[SUP]9 [/SUP]Then he said to me, "Write: 'Blessed
are those who are called to the
marriage supper of the Lamb!' " And he said to me, "These are the true sayings of God."