Jews and Gentiles
We come now to our final study – and I would like to draw a word-picture of the last coming of God’s King (Jesus Christ) to Zion, in terms of the Song. I have already demonstrated that Solomon in the Song represented God, and was the type of God’s ruler on earth; and that the Shulamite was the Kingdom of Israel. At the time when Jesus will return to the earth, this Kingdom will have grown to include Gentiles, and will continue to grow until it fills the whole earth.
Though, therefore, there has been in the past a Jewish wife, and a Gentile one, in the final outworking of the type there is only one faithful Israelite bride of Christ, when, as Paul says in Rom.11:26, “all Israel shall be saved”.
Dead and Alive
In the Song there is a picture drawn of Solomon approaching Jerusalem in a chariot (or palanquin), accompanied by his valiant men, while the daughters of Zion are told to go forth to meet him (Song 3:6-11). In the first study I brought evidence to show that the Davidic king presented himself to Zion as her king by riding into the city from the east, from the Mount of Olives, and in the case of Solomon,he was met outside the city by the dancing Shulamite and her companions, representing the Kingdom of Israel which Solomon was taking as his bride.
Now comes the problem: if this ascent into Zion is a true type of the return of the Lord Jesus to his capital city, who are the daughters who greet him, and who are his valiant men?
Previously I have divided Christ’s people into Jews and Gentiles; but now I would like to divide them in a completely different way – into the living, mortal saints who are alive at his coming, and the dead, resurrected ones. It seems very clear from 1 Thess. 4:15-17 that the saints who have died before Jesus’ return, and those alive when he comes, are not dealt with as one group. There is a definite order of events; first the dead are raised and made immortal, and afterwards the living are judged and rewarded. Now it seems to me from this study of the Song and its historical background that not only are the living ad dead judged and immortalised at different times, but also at different places.
The Bride’s Veil
To show this, let us look first at Is.25, where there is a picture of a marriage feast.
“And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.
“And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.
“He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it ” (Is.25:6-8).
This is the marriage feast of the Lamb – as may be seen by comparing v.8 with Rev.21:4. But the bride is veiled – veiled with a black veil called DEATH. So at some time during the feast the Lord must remove and destroy this veil, and wipe away the tears and shame from the face of his lovely bride, before the perfect consummation of the marriage. He must see her as in the Song – “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee” (L:7).
You will notice that Isaiah (25:7) says quite emphatically that the veil of death is removed “in this mountain”. What mountain? Sinai? Of course not. It is Mount Zion of Is.24:23 which is the “city of the terrible nations” of 25:3, and the “mountain” of verses 6 & 7.
But before you rush on and think I am saying that the dead are judged in Zion, pause for a moment. The veil is the veil of death, not that of hell, or the grave. And there is a difference. Let us turn now to 1 Cor. 15:54, which quotes Is.25:8 –
“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
There are two classes here – the corruptible and the mortal. And by the meaning of the words themselves, the ‘corruptible’ must be the dead saints, rotting in the grave; the ‘mortal’ are the living saints, under sentence of death. You are not mortal when you are dead, nor do you corrupt when you are alive. It is only when both classes are made immortal that ‘death’ is swallowed up in victory – and as always, the ‘mortal’, the living, are dealt with after the ‘corruptible’, the dead.
We know also from 1 Thess. 4:15-17 that the dead are raised first. So that the last curse to be removed, or, as Paul puts it, “the last enemy” to be destroyed is ‘death’ (1 Cor.15:26). ‘Death’ in this context means ‘mortality’, i.e. the sentence of death – while ‘the grave’ is used to describe those who have died already (v.55), or ‘the dead’ (v.52). It is these who are made in-corruptible, while the mortal are ‘changed’ and made ‘immortal’. (The same distinction between ‘death’ and ‘hell’ is made in Rev.20:13.and 1:18.)
We now return to Is.25. It can be said that the living, mortal saints , will be made immortal in “this mountain”, Zion, by having the veil of ‘death’ removed at the wedding feast of the Lamb. Can we therefore now look at the Song, and suggest that the Shulamite and the daughters of Jerusalem who greet their Lord with joy and are led back to Zion to have reconciliation made for them, typify in this final outworking of the type the living but mortal faithful – both Jew and Gentile?
The Valiant Men
But Solomon did not approach the city alone. He was accompanied by “threescore valiant men…of Israel” with swords on their thighs. My belief is that these are the “armies of heaven” of Rev.19:14, who accompany the Lord in his final battle, and ascend with him out of the wilderness, as he comes with winepress-stained garments (Is.63:1); they then go through the gates of Zion with him (Is.62:10-12). They are the dead saints who have been raised first, and made immortal; they have been judged somewhere in the wilderness (Sinai, perhaps), and,having defeated the enemies of the Lord, now approach the joyful city.
These valiant men are armed “because of fear in the night”. They have the sword of the Spirit because in their lifetime they trusted God; and are now not afraid of the terror by night (Ps. 91:5); they are of the day, armed with the armour of light. And so, as the day breaks, they come with their Lord from the “mountains of Bether” (2:17) in the east. They, too, come and eat with their Lord at the marriage feast, for they are his ‘friends’ (5:1). This last verse is worth studying. It seems at first to be speaking only of the Bridegroom coming into his enclosed bride-garden to eat fruits which belong to him alone; yet there with him are his friends, eating and drinking. These are so unified with him as to be spoken of as one. They are the ‘body’ of Christ, now so close to him, since their raising to his nature, that they seem only one being. They are the “ten thousand” of which the Bridegroom is the standard-bearer (5:10).
Thus these immortal saints join in the feast of the Lamb not as part of the bride, but as friends of the Bridegroom. Now immortal, they joy with him to see other mortal men and women redeemed and sanctified.
The Wedding Feast
So the bride and her maidens go forth to meet the Bridegroom, and together the two processions go into the city where the feast is ready, and the door of the city is shut. Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whore mongers… and the faithless virgins who had no oil. The wedding feast begins. When does it end? Why, it ends with the consummation of the marriage, which cannot take place until the Lord has removed the veil of death; that is, the feast ends when the last mortal has put on immortality. It must therefore extend for the whole of the Kingdom age, a “feast of fat things” under the “banner of love”. The King reigns in Zion until the last enemy is put under his feet (1 Cor.15: 25,26). After that, there is no longer bride and Bridegroom, King and people; but only One, God, all and in all. By the act of love, ‘two’, man and God, are made ‘one’, and God is thus united to His people through His Son.
“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One