An Epilogue:
The Song of Solomon and the Laodicean Message
There is a hidden love story in the
Laodicean message that few of this generation seem ever to have discerned.
But thoughtful and reverent students of Scripture have seen it for
centuries. Somehow it eluded our pioneers, and our eyes have been too
"holden" ever since to see it.
The Greek of Revelation 3:20 reads
something like this:
Behold, I have taken My stand at the door
and am knocking. knocking. If a certain one hears My voice and opens the
door, I will come in to him and will have intimate relationship with him.
This is a clear allusion to a story in
the "Song of Songs" by Solomon, a book that has aroused more
embarrassment than thoughtful understanding. The phraseology Christ uses
is a direct, exact quotation from the Septuagint, epi ten thuran, "at
the door", as found in Song of Songs 5:2: "I sleep, but my heart
is awake: the voice of my Beloved knocks at the door … " The
expression "at the door" is not found in the Hebrew Old
Testament for this passage. The editors of the Seventh-day Adventist
Bible Commentary apparently failed to check the Septuagint which the
early church freely used, for they say: "The Song of Solomon is
nowhere quoted in the New Testament" (Vol. 3, p. 1111) But it is,
here in our Laodicean message by our Lord Himself! Our Lord also referred
to it in John 7:38, saying, "He that believeth on Me, as the
scripture hath said, … "
referring to Song of Songs 4: 12- 16, the only Old Testament scripture
that He could have referred to. Thus Christ places His stamp of approval
on the book and states that its Hero is Himself.
The heroine must therefore be Laodicea
herself. And so she is. Her history is clearly delineated therein. It was
in the history of 1888 that our Lord "knocked" as a Divine Lover
seeking entrance at the door of His Bride-to-be. Jesus’ direct quotation
from the Septuagint is an inspired commentary that says. "The
Laodicean message must be understood in the light of the Song of
Solomon". If Christ is not omniscient (He says He does not know the
time of His second coming — Mark 13:32), perhaps He did not foreknow the
outcome of the 1888 appeal. Can we not appreciate His divine eagerness to
take to Himself His Bride-to-be? Can we not sense how Christ "the
Lover" hoped against hope that she would respond?
But Ellen White said afterwards,
"The disappointment of Christ is beyond description" (Review
and Herald, Dec. 15, 1904). The Song of Solomon tells what happened
better than our own historians have told it. The Bride-to-be is speaking:
A Fruitless Search
I was sleeping, but my heart kept vigil;
I heard my Lover knocking [at the door.
LXX]:
"Open to Me, my sister, My beloved,
My dove, my perfect one!
For my head is wet with dew,
My lock with the moisture of the
night"
"I have taken off my robe,
am I then to put it on?
I have bathed my feet,
am I then to soil them?
"My lover put His hand through the
opening;
my heart trembled within
me,
and I grew faint when He spoke.
I rose to open to my Lover—
but my Lover had
departed, gone.
I sought Him but I did not find Him;
I called to Him but He did not answer
me."
(Songs of Songs 5:2-6,
New American Bible)
The rest of the chapter pretty well
describes our decades of history that have rolled by relentlessly ever
since. All this is known to the heavenly universe; only we have stumbled
on in blindness and pathetic shame, seeking Him whom we once spurned so
tragically:
"The watchmen came upon me
as they made their rounds of the city;
They struck me, and wounded me,
and took my mantle from me,
the guardians of the walls.
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
if you find my Lover—
What shall you tell him?—
that I am faint with love" (verses
7,8)
What does it mean? "Faint with
love" is "sick of love" in the familiar King James Version.
The Hebrew word means to be "sick, weak, diseased". It does not
mean what we commonly mean as "love-sick", that is, deeply in
love. All other uses of that word in the Old Testament mean
"diseased".
What does the next verse mean?
The Charms of the Lost Lover
"How does your Lover differ from any
other,
0 most beautiful among women?
How does your Lover differ from any other,
that you adjure us so?" (verse 9).
Is there something distinctive about the
Christ whom we will yet learn to love very deeply?
Another word in the Septuagint Song of
Songs is arresting. The other women have asked our heroine to tell us why
her Lover is so "different" from others. She rhapsodizes on His
excellencies in verses 10-16, and then concludes by saying: "Such is
my Lover, and such my friend, 0 daughters of Jerusalem". The
word translated "friend" is plesion, which means
"the other one near or close to" in Greek (cf. John 45). What is
distinctive about the Christ whom we are to love and proclaim to the
world? Ellen White says of the 1888 message:
On Sabbath afternoon many hearts were
touched, and many souls were fed on the bread that cometh down from
heaven.. We [she and Jones and Waggoner] felt the necessity of presenting
Christ as a Saviour who was not afar off, but nigh at hand. (Review
and Herald, March 5. 1889, emphasis added).
Clearly this is an allusion to the
Christology that Jones and Waggoner presented that made Him
"nigh", that brought Him truly near as our "kinsman"
who came "in the likeness of sinful flesh", "tempted in all
points like as we are, yet without sin". There is also a tie-in with
Zechariah 12:l0 in the Septuagint. The reader will remember the tender
passage that describes the close sympathy that God’s people will learn
to feel for Christ when they realize that He is the One "whom they
have pierced". The King James Version says "they shall mourn for
Him, as one mourneth for his only son", but the Septuagint reads,
"they shall mourn for Him, as for a beloved one", the same word
as in the Song of Songs.
Note how Ellen White clearly ties in the Song of
Songs phraseology with the results of the 1888 message:
The Christian life. which had before
seemed to them [the youth] undesirable and full of inconsistencies, now
appeared in its true light, in remarkable symmetry and beauty. He who had been to them as a root
out of dry ground. without form or comeliness, became the chiefest among
ten thousand. [Song of Songs 5:l0] and the one altogether lovely. (Ibid..
Feb. 12, 1889)
It is a love story indeed — the most
poignant ever penned. It breathes the same hope of ultimate reconciliation
and reunion as does the Laodicean message.
Such a hope is worth dying for, and worth
living for. Whether our own poor little souls are at last saved and we get
to Heaven to bask in our rewards — this is not at all important. What is
important is that the deeply disappointed Lover and Bridegroom-to-be
receive His reward, that He at last receive as His Bride a
church which is capable of a true heart-appreciation of Him.
Appendix
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