As I read it, the Bride is the city, but that bride is also the Lamb's wife; and although reigning with Christ, may be common to all saints of all ages; yet being made "kings and priests unto God and His. Father" may be peculiar to the saints of the church period; and when we have this sort of kingship and priesthood introduced, as in chap. xxi., we have the Bride represented as the city, therefore the city must be the Christian bride, not the Jewish wife.
When we read, " Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His blood (how like to Eph. 5), and bath made us kings and' priests unto God and His Father," is not His Father said because the kingdom on earth (Matt. 13 xxv.) is about to be introduced, and to be subdued and administered by His Son the Man of Glory, who had got there because He had been the Lamb of Calvary? (Heb. 2) And He is seenin view of having all things put under Him, crowned with glory and honor as the Melchisedec-King and Priest-ruler; and when He is displayed in glory and honor, it is in the city of Rev. 21, where He has His kings and priests with Him. It is the throne of God and the Lamb that is there displayed, but as associated with the Bride, the Lamb's wife-the glorified church, as I take it. None other class of saved ones could, with any appropriateness, be termed the Bride, the Lamb's wife, because of the following considerations:-
1st, Israel is always represented as the married wife; the church as the espoused one-the Bride only the Lamb's wife, after she is no longer on earth. Israel is the wife under divorce, and put away in the meantime, and to be received back on her repentance; and-
2d, The word Lamb is representative of rejection, and only the church could suffer with Christ and, as His affianced bride, occupy His place as rejected in this world. No other could be Arnion's (the rejected Lamb's) wife; for in no other age was there a rejected Lamb to be rejected with.
3d, Also, as a third thing, the false bride-the harlot-is surely the harlot of this Christian period, not a Jewish adulteress; and if she be the Christendom harlot, then the true bride must be the chaste Christian woman, or there would be no contrast; for what is the false fornicating Christendom a travesty of save of the pure church of God that shall come out of the awful defection, as " the Bride, the Lamb's wife?"
Do you see anything in these considerations?