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A Revelation of the Church - Unveiling Christ's Bride • Sep 01st 1994
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World Part 1 – Christa, Ecclesia, and the Bride of Christ
In this deeply moving and imaginative message, Gene Edwards introduces listeners to what he calls “the most beautiful girl in the world”—a poetic and theological portrait of Christa, the Ecclesia, the bride of Christ.
Rather than presenting the Church as an institution or organization, Edwards invites us to encounter her as a living person—beloved, chosen, pursued, and united with Christ beyond space and time. Through narrative, scripture imagery, and reflective storytelling, he unfolds a sweeping vision of the Church that stretches from eternity past to resurrection life and beyond.
Drawing on themes from John 17, the Song of Songs, the Gospels, and Revelation, this teaching explores the profound mystery of union with Christ. Edwards speaks of Christa as one with Him in eternity, one with Him in death, and one with Him in resurrection—a bride formed in Him before creation and revealed throughout Scripture.
The message unfolds in two movements. First, Edwards introduces the concept of Christa and challenges common assumptions about the Church. Then, speaking in Christa’s voice, he tells her story across time: as a Jewish maiden meeting Christ, as believers gathered across the ancient world, and as the radiant city descending in Revelation.
At its heart, this sermon calls listeners away from individual-centered spirituality toward a larger vision: to see themselves not as the center of the story, but as participants in something far greater—the beloved corporate bride of Christ.
Whether you are familiar with Gene Edwards or encountering his work for the first time, this message offers a profound meditation on love, identity, unity, and the mystery of the Church as the dwelling place of God.
But that’s not the way you’re going to get it tonight. Tonight, you’re going to hear it this way.
Jesus Christ and I are one. My Father really loves the Son, and the Son really loves the Father, but NO MORE than Jesus loves me. Jesus said to me that he is taking the Father’s love, and I am loving you. And he loves me with the most powerful, overwhelming love. He loves me with his Father’s love.
And he loves the Father back with the love that the Father gives him, and that love is the love that he loves me with, and when I receive that love, I love him back. And I love him very passionately. And he loves me very passionately.
And I am as one with him as he is with the Father. And whatever closeness there is between the Father and my husband, however much one they are, there is exactly that much oneness between my Lord, my savior, my god, my king, my fiancé, my husband. I am as perfectly one with Him as he is with me.
Those words come from the lips of the most beautiful girl in the whole world. She is known as Christa. She also is known as Ecclesia.
Now, folks, this is going to get a whole lot like a Song of Songs. Have you ever read the Song of Solomon. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? I mean, it’s over here and it’s over there and it’s over here and it’s over there. It’s hard to follow, too, is it not? But you get a few impressions. What are some of the impressions you get? Boy, there’s an awful lot of passion going on here. It’s downright embarrassing. All right, yes, brother. Oh, terribly, but there’s no chronology to it. No chronology to it. And there’s no, you still don’t know where these things are happening. That prefigures this girl. And I’m going to say things to you and you’re not going to follow them, but that’s because of the very nature of who he is and who she is.
I want to introduce you to this girl and I’m going to let her talk for a while. Now, as I said, I’m going to fall on my face doing this but you can always say I was there the day – that I don’t know how that sentence is going to end.
I’m going to say one more thing about her. I want to tell the first time she ever appeared.
Do you know the first time she ever made an appearance?
She appeared in eternity past, before Creation.
The first time she ever appeared was at creation.
The first time she ever appeared was when John the Baptist presented Jesus Christ.
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