Richard Wurmbrand

Author of the bestseller Tortured for Christ

Sweetest

By the same author

Tortured for Christ

In God's Underground

Christ on the Jewish Road

Reaching Toward the Heights

Victorious Faith

From Torture to Triumph

THE SWEETEST SONG

By RICHARD WURMBRAND

LIVING SACRIFICE BOOK COMPANY

BARTLESVILLE OK 74005

©1988 by The Voice of the Martyrs, Inc., formerly called

Christian Missions to the Communist World, Inc.

Formerly published 1988 by Marshall Pickering.

Published by Living Sacrifice Book Company, P O Box 2273,

Bartlesville OK 74005-2273.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wurmbrand, Richard.

The sweetest song : the Song of Solomon expressed through the

lives of saints and martyrs / by Richard Wurmbrand.

p. cm.

Originally published: Basingtoke, England Marshall Pickering,

c!988.

ISBN 0-551-01652-3 (pbk.) : $5.00

1. Bible. O.T. Song of Solomon-Commentaries. 2. Persecution.

I. Title.

BS1485.3.W97 1993

223\906-dc20 93-18513

CIP

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

~ Contents ~

Introduction 7

Chapter 1 17

Chapter 2 76

Chapter 3 121

Chapter 4 137

Chapter 5 160

Chapter 6 174

Chapter 7 191

Chapter 8 201

Last Considerations 218

References 223

~ Introduction ~

In Zohar (The Light), main book of the Kabbalah, a work

which contains the Jewish mystical tradition, it is written:

The Song of Songs is superior to all songs that preceded

it, for those which were sung by Solomon's predecessors

ascended only to join with the songs chanted by the

company of angels; as for instance, the 'Song of Degrees

to David' [the literal translation of the Hebrew U David],

which means 'The song which celestial grades sing to

David' to solicit nourishment from him . . . But when

Solomon came, he sang a song that is higher even than

David's song, one that is the very same as that sung by

the great ones of the realms above, the pillars of the

universe, in honour of the Supernal King who is the

Lord in all peace and harmony. Other men send up

praises by means of lower chariots, but King Solomon

by means of higher chariots ...

On the day when this song was revealed the Shekinah

(God's glory) descended to earth, as it is written, 'And

the priests could not stand to minister because of the

cloud.' Why? Because 'the glory of the Lord had filled

the house of the Lord' (1 Kings 8:11). On that day this

hymn was revealed, and Solomon sang this song in the

power of the Holy Spirit, wherein is to be found the

summary of the whole Law of Moses, the whole work of

creation, the mystery of the Patriarchs, the story of the

Egyptian exile, and the Exodus therefrom, and the

Song of the Sea. It is the quintessence of the Decalogue,

of the Sinaitic covenant, of the significance of Israel's

wanderings through the desert until their arrival in the

Promised Land and the building of the Temple. It

contains the crowning of the Holy Name with love and

joy, the prophecy of Israel's exile among the nations, of

their redemption, of the resurrection of the dead, and

all else until that day which is 'Sabbath to the Lord'. All

that was, and shall be, is contained in it; and, indeed,

even that which will take place on the 'Seventh Day',

which will be the 'Lord's Sabbath', is indicated in this

song.

It is a song in which those who are above and those

who are below participate; a song formed in the likeness

of the world above, which is the supernal Sabbath, a

song through which the supernal Holy Name is

crowned. Therefore it is holy of holies. Why so?

Because all its words are full of love and joy.

In the Babylonian Talmud (another sacred book of the

Jewish people) the following words spoken by Rabbi

Akiba are recorded: 'No day in the history of the world is

so precious as the day on which the Song of Songs was

given to Israel; for all the other Scriptures are holy, but

the Song of Songs is holiest of all.' By the same token, we

could say that the lives of all diose who really deserve the

name of 'Christian' are holy. We are all sanctified by

faith, by the blood shed for us, because that blood was

Divine. But there are lives which are holiest of all - the

lives of die persecuted Church, the lives of those who

suffer in jail or in psychiatric asylums, in chains and in

hunger, deprived of their loved ones, because they follow

faithfully in the footsteps of the Master.

This book will be a kind of commentary upon

Solomon's Song. It will be a unique commentary - or

rather, a new translation of the Song. It will be a

translation of it into the lives of saints and martyrs, most

of them from our own times, who belong to the

Underground Church in the Communist countries.

8

The decision about which Jewish books should be

included in, and which excluded from the Old Testament

was taken by the Synod of Iabne. The Synod debated

very heatedly over the inclusion of the Song of Songs as a

sacred book. It was accused of being a worldly book,

because it spoke with simplicity about love between a man

and woman, and sometimes it employed sexual imagery.

But in the end the Song's opponents were overruled.

In this book, as in many other parts of the Bible, the

images of relationships such as those between bridegroom

and bride are only poetic devices to represent the union of

the believing soul and God, of the chosen people and their

Master. The author of Solomon's Song is a mystic: he

expresses himself in the normal language of mysticism.

If the inclusion of the Song in the Bible was a matter for

heated debate, it is no wonder that the Underground

Church in Communist countries is also hotly debated.

Some prelates and theologians consider it to be a bunch of

fanatics without any justification.

It is alleged that those who are imprisoned for Christ's

sake in Communist countries suffer from masochistic

tendencies, that they want to suffer, that they have a

'martyr complex'. It is said that they are not reasonable.

They refuse to make the compromise demanded by life

and by a dictatorship - compromises which would result

in liberty to worship within the limits prescribed by the

atheist government.

Not all souls are the same. Some rivers flow quietly

between their banks; others overflow. There exist choice

souls, whose love of God cannot be confined to the narrow

limits of what is considered a normal faith. Their cup runs

over. Their love of God burns.

Solomon's Song answers to the desires of such hearts.

Only men such as these are found in the Underground

Church.

Rabia of Basra, a Moslem mystic, used to pray: 'O

Lord, in public I invoke You in the way one invokes his

master. In public I say, 'O my God,' but when we are alone

I say, 'O my Beloved.' She also said: 'O Lord, if I adore

You because I fear hell, let me burn in hell; and if I adore

You because I hope for paradise, exclude me from paradise.

But if I adore You for what You Yourself are, do not

deprive me of the vision of Your eternal beauty.' She said to

God, 'I do not desire from You either this world or the one

to come. You are enough for me.'

Solomon's Song is written for such hearts. It is a poem

of love between Israel and his Saviour.

Spiritual greed

There is a burning spiritual desire which might well be

called 'spiritual greed' by sceptics, because it is outwardly

very similar to fleshly greed.

A beggar once said to an emperor who wished to give

him charity, 'Give me anything you like; but I will

impose a condition.'

The emperor was intrigued. He had never met such a

beggar. 'And what is that condition?' he asked.

'You must fill my bowl up completely.'

The emperor laughed. 'I can certainly do that,' he

replied. 'I can even fill your bowl with diamonds!'

He called for diamonds to be poured into the beggar's

bowl. As they fell in, they disappeared.

The emperor roared in fury. 'I will not be shamed by

this beggar, even if my whole kingdom disappears!'

But no precious stones that were poured into the bowl

ever stayed there; they always disappeared.

Finally the emperor swallowed his pride and asked the

beggar to tell him the secret of the bowl.

'It is made out of human selfishness,' he explained. 'It

covets all things, yet it remains always empty, always

hungry, never satisfied.'

10

Luxurious cars, big bank accounts, fine houses, high

position and reputation - they are only challenges to the

ego, serving only to whet its appetite for more. This, then

is fleshly greed.

Spiritual greed exists too. Some of the disciples asked

Jesus, 'Grant unto us that we may sit, one on Your right

hand, and the other on Your left, in Your glory' (Mark

10:37). They did not know what they were asking for.

In spiritual matters, the only real glory is in the

renunciation of glory. The jewels of personal glory and

self-aggrandizement will be swallowed up by the beggar's

bowl, even if they are jewels of the spirit. The bowl is

never satisfied. It is never filled.

Solomon's Song belongs to those who have made the

greatest renunciation of all: the renunciation of

themselves. For them, only the Beloved counts.

Singing the Jesus Song

The famous pianist Rubinstein was in the company of a

large number of music-lovers who were discussing the

works of Chopin. One of them asked, 'How would

Chopin himself have played his compositions?'

Rubinstein sat down at the piano and began to play.

When he finished, there were tears in his listeners' eyes as

they said, 'Now we have heard Chopin himself.'

Comment upon what King Solomon sang to the praise

of the Saviour in his rare moments of spiritual exultation

must be made in the same state of the spirit as Solomon's

when he composed his Song. When reading a

commentary upon the Song of Songs, the reader should

feel that he has heard Solomon himself at his best.

It is said that when David was a young boy at the court

of King Saul, he asked permission to play on a beautiful

11

harp that was lying unused in the throneroom. The king

said, 'It's useless -1 have been cheated. I paid a great

deal for that harp, because it was spoken of highly. But

the best harpists have tried it, and it was painful to hear

the ugly sounds it produced. ïi's the worst harp that you

could imagine.'

But David persisted, and because the king loved him

greatly, permission was granted. When he played, the

music was so beautiful that when it ended, all the court

wept. They had been moved to the depths of their hearts.

'How is it,' demanded the king, 'that so many tried to

play this harp, and only you succeeded?'

David replied, 'All the others tried to play their own

songs, and the harp refused to yield to their wishes. I played

to the harp its own song. You saw its joy when I reminded it

of the days when it was a young tree in the forest. I told it

about sunbeams playing in its branches, about chirping

birds, and about lovers embracing each other in its shadow.

The harp was glad to remember those days.

'Then I told the story of the evil men who came and

felled the innocent tree. It was a sad day. Its life as a tree

had finished. But I told the harp that death cannot

triumph over life. The tree has died as a tree, but its wood

has become a harp which can sing forever the glories of

the eternal God. And the harp, which had wept when I

told about her death, now rejoiced, made jubilant again.

'When the Messiah comes, many will try to play their

own songs on his harp. The results will be tragically

dissonant. On the Messiah's harp, you must play his own

song - the song of his eternal glory with God, the song of

his humiliation as a babe in a manger, the song of a life in

sorrow, opposition and poverty on earth, the song of his

being whipped and crucified and buried. But then also the

song of his resurrection, ascension and enthronement in

heaven.

'Then the harp will give a beautiful sound. Then his

congregation will shine like a sun.'

12

In writing this book, I have no song of my own to sing.

I sing the Song of Jesus and of His bride as Solomon sang

it; and to make the song resound more beautifully than

ever, I illustrate it with lives of saints and martyrs. Let us

sing for him with the same burning love and adoration

with which the angels sang in Bethlehem at Jesus' birth.

A great sinner's song

There is something remarkable in the title of the book,

The Song of Songs which is Solomon's. God arranged

that the holiest book of the Bible should be written by one

of its worst characters.

There was much that was positive in King Solomon's

reign over Israel. He secured the nation a long period of

peace, but in his personal life he was beneath contempt.

He had a large number of wives and concubines. Every

one of them lived in palaces and was provided with

luxuries. He indulged in all the pleasures which fleshly life

can provide. This cost enormous amounts of money

which had to be raised by slave labour. He frequently

flogged men into complying with the demands of his

debauchery.

In the light of all this, many theologians have expressed

doubts as to whether Solomon has any part in God's

salvation. Happily, God does not always agree with the

theologians: he saves whom he wishes. Salvation is all by

grace and condescension. To demonstrate this, he gave

the inspiration to write his most beautiful book to one

whose moral achievements were very few.

Miracles are signs of the presence of God. Divine

inspiration of this book is proved by the miracle that such

a bad man wrote it. You would not have thought he was

capable of it. The only man we know for sure is in

13

paradise (because Jesus confirmed it) is a man who had

been a robber all of his adult life and only in his very last

moments said a few words expressing faith. One of the

foremost apostles, Saint Paul, had been a murderer.

Mary Magdalene had been a loose woman. One of the

most moral and profound of love stories, The happy prince,

was written by Oscar Wilde, a man convicted for

debauchery. There are many other similar instances. So

we should not be surprised that the most beautiful song in

the Bible was composed by a great sinner.

Think of Richard Wagner. He is described as ungrate-

ful in love and irresponsible in politics. He was conceited

and suffered from senile erotomania; he was also a fierce

anti-Semite. But this in no way diminishes the value of his

music.

We must learn to distinguish the value of a work from

the value of the man who is behind it. The fact is that God

sometimes uses very bad men for very good deeds, and

that sometimes very good men do poor work.

All the 'types' or foreshadowings of Jesus in the Old

Testament were men who had committed many bad

deeds. We could not expect it to be otherwise; the type is

always inferior to the typified.

Only one thing counts

One of the greatest accusations of the Soviet press against

the Underground Church is that many of its leaders are

former thieves, murderers and even war criminals whose

hands are stained with blood. This would not discredit

those church leaders in our sight, even if the things being

said against them were true.

The Russian poet, Tiutchev, wrote: 'You can't

understand Russia with your mind. You can't measure it

14

with the usual yardstick. Russia is something unique; you

can only have confidence in it.' These words are even

truer when applied to the most beautiful part of the

Russian nation - its Christians gathered in the

Underground Church.

Where unique events happen, as in biblical times, very

bad characters can be inspired with the most beautiful

thoughts; robbers and murderers become illustrious

saints. The children of God can rejoice about this.

The following is one of the oldest sermon illustrations

used in the Christian Church. It is also a good test of

one's understanding of what Christianity is about.

There once lived a dwarf who was also a hunchback

and very, very ugly. Nobody ever invited him to a party;

nobody showed him love, or even attention. He became

disillusioned with life and decided to climb a mountain

and throw himself from its peak into the abyss.

When he ascended the mountain, he met a very

beautiful girl. He talked to her and discovered that she

was climbing the mountain for the same purpose. Her

suffering was at the other extreme. She had everybody's

attention and love, but the one whom she loved and who

had loved her too had forsaken her for another girl,

because the other was rich. She felt life had no meaning

for her any more. They decided to make the ascent

together.

While they continued to climb, they met a man who

introduced himself as a police officer in search of a very

dangerous bandit who had robbed and murdered many

people. The king had promised a large reward to the

person who captured him. The police officer was very

confident: 'I will catch him because I know he has a

feature by which he can be recognised. He has six fingers

on his right hand. The police have been looking for him

for years. For the last two or three, nothing has been

heard from him, but he has to pay for a multitude of

crimes in the past.'

15

The three climbed the mountain. Near its peak was a

monastery. Its abbot, although he had become a monk

only recently, had quickly attained great renown for

saintliness. When they entered the monastery, he came to

meet them. You could see the glory of God in his face. As

the girl bowed to kiss his right hand, she saw he had six

fingers. With this, the story ends.

Those who hear this story are perplexed; it can't finish

like this! What happened to the dwarf, the girl, the

policeman; and was the criminal caught?

The beauty of the story is that it does finish here.

Something beautiful has happened: a criminal hunted

because of his many robberies and murders has become a

great saint, renowned for his godly life. AU the rest is of

no further interest. The great miracle has been

performed. Christ has been born in the heart of a man of

very low character.

The Hebrew language has no superlative. It says

'vanity of vanities' for 'the most worthless vanity' or 'the

heaven of heavens' for 'the highest heaven.' With God

everything is possible: the Song of Songs (which means in

Hebrew, 'the superlative song') is written by a superlative

sinner.

Because of this, the heights of Solomon's song are

accessible to every one of us, whatever our past has been,

and however deep we may have fallen in sin.

16

Ä Chapter 1 ~

Only his kiss

The bride says, 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his

mouth: for your love is better than wine' (1:2).

The Zohar says that at Mount Sinai, when the Law was

given, every individual Israelite was asked by God if he

would accept him and all his commandments, to which

the reply came, 'Yes.' He was asked again, 'Will you

accept me and all the penalties attached to my Law?' And

again he answered, 'Yes.' Then he was kissed on the

mouth. Similarly, the bride in Solomon's Song says, 'Let

him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.' The Zohar

continues:

'No other love is like unto the ecstasy of the moment

when spirit cleaves to spirit in a kiss, more especially a kiss

on the mouth, which is the well of the spirit and its

medium. When mouth meets mouth, spirits unite one

with the other and become one - one love. '

The Hebrew word for 'love' is written A H B H. The

Zohar says, 'First comes the letter Aleph (our A). Then

comes the letter H which unites itself with the Aleph in

love. From these two other letters issue and spirits are

interlocked with spirits of love.'

Let us compare these words with the boring, prosaic,

annoying prayers which we say usually and we will realise

the distance between us and the soul enamoured widi

God - a soul which has a burning love like that of the ideal

bride. She knows no peace nor rest until she finds God

17

himself. Every other being, every other thing, only

increases her desire, her thirst to see him. She is never

satisfied with anybody or anything except himself. She

has drunk enough of the water of this world and she has

remained thirsty. Now she desires him, saying: 'Let him

kiss me with the kisses of Aw mouth.'

, A believer is attached to his spiritual leader - to his

pastor. But if the pastor is aware of his responsibilities, he

must strive to make the believer more and more inde-

pendent of him. A psychiatrist, having solved the

complexes of his patient, has a duty to free him also from

the complex of dependence upon the physician which has

arisen during the treatment.

A pastor must be like a matchmaker, who persuades a

girl to marry somebody else. He must be very careful that

the girl does not fall in love with himself, the matchmaker.

The pastor must be a guide enabling the believer to reach

the bridegroom. He must ignite a love for the bridegroom

in the hearts of the believers, so that after hearing one of

his sermons the congregation should not say, 'How

beautifully he has preached' but 'How wonderful Jesus

is!' Remaining attached to the pastor and not passing

through him to the Saviour about whom he preaches can

be a deadly danger for the believer. Pastors are men and

have all the temptations of men. Some of them are very,

very weak.

The movement called 'Christian Endeavour' within

the reformed churches is forbidden in Communist

Rumania, but exists underground. A girl belonging to

this movement was beaten and tortured to force her to

make accusing statements against her pastor. She

remained faithful to Christ and refused. But to her

surprise, when she was brought before a court that same

pastor came as a prosecution witness against her. He had

yielded to pressure without much resistance. His

testimony against her contributed to her being sentenced,

but her love for Christ did not depend upon the attitudes

18

and behaviour of the pastor who had brought her to

salvation. She had been freed from that attachment to

him. She continued to remain faithful, and she never said

one bitter word about the pastor who had been so

treacherous.

This was a soul who had a right to receive the kisses of

Jesus himself. When you are in his embrace, disappoint-

ments with pastors don't count anymore. The soul which

burns with love for Christ is not satisfied with his

messengers, even his finest messengers. They don't

answer the deep need of the soul. Their presence serves

only to irritate. The duty of a pastor is only to reveal to

men how unhappy they are without Jesus. Then he must

tell them how he has found Jesus, and how they can find

him too.

For the bride, the simple fact that she is surrounded by

messengers of the bridegroom is a proof of the sad fact

that the bridegroom himself is absent. She desires him,

only him. None of his messengers can adequately

represent him. None of them can take his place. The most

gifted preachers can only stutter about him. She has one

desire: 'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.' She

longs for him, and yearns that his presence should show

itself through a kiss. In biblical times people kissed the

hand of the king, and even this was considered a

privilege. Until quite recently, everyone who approached

the Pope had to kiss his foot. The faithful Christian soul

desires a kiss from Jesus' mouth.

The relationship between God and the faithful soul is

really like the relationship between a bridegroom and a

bride. Both desire kisses. The heavenly Father, who

knows the desires of Jesus, in Psalm 2:12 commands us to

'Kiss the Son.' Jesus reproves a Pharisee, telling him,

'You gave me no kiss' (Luke 7:45). He could make this

reproach to many of us. We gave him many words; we

gave him our energy and our time; we put our money in

the collection boxes of the church. But we did not give

19

him the one, supreme thing for which he longs - a kiss.

The faithful soul's desire is the same as his. She sighs,

'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.'

This reciprocal desire has been frequently satisfied.

Mary Magdalene kissed the fçet of Jesus. After her, many

penitents have done likewise, and many prodigal sons

who have returned to the Father have seen him coming to

meet them, embracing them and kissing them repeatedly.

Only those who have ever received such a kiss can know

the sweetness of Jesus. Only the person who has humbled

himself for his sins or entrusted himself to God in great

dangers can say how dear are his promises: that now there

is peace between him and God, that God loves him and

will protect him.

We have to be careful that the kiss should be Jesus' kiss.

Souls in sorrow seek comfort, and accept it readily from

wherever it comes. But not so the true Bride of Christ.

There is only one object of her love. She does not even

consider it necessary to say whose kisses she receives. She

doesn't name him. For example, Mary Magdalene,

seeing the empty tomb of Jesus, tells the man whom she

supposed to be the gardener, 'They have taken away my

Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.' (John

20:13). Who is the Lord about whom she speaks? Does

she have to pronounce his name? She thinks that only one

can be 'the Lord.'

For the Bride, only one person exists. She assumes that

others feel the same. She does not profane the Holy Name

by pronouncing it too often. The elect of God will

understand. The Beloved can't be anybody else but Jesus.

Young brides

Souls who have such an intimate knowledge of Jesus

20

adopt unique attitudes. One such soul is Leonas Sileikis.

When a seventh grade pupil at school, he was summoned

to a meeting of the school administration where his faith

was to be considered. Leonas' father came to the meeting

uninvited. Leonas was asked whether he had read the

atheistic books his teacher had given him. He had - six of

them in all.

'What do you think of these books?' they asked him.

'They're lies and slander,' Leonas replied.

After a long discourse against religion, the teacher,

Miss Misiuniene, asked Leonas, 'Do you renounce your

faith?'

'I believe, and I will continue to believe,' was the reply.

The teacher then explained to the father how religion

supposedly damages children. 'Nowadays, very few

people go to church, so one must go along with the

majority', she said.

To this, Leonas replied, 'Only a dead body is carried

along with the current. A live person can always swim

against the stream.'

Leonas will have to suffer for his faith. But he has

known the kiss of Jesus, and so the adversity of the world

does not count for him.

In Rumania, you cannot study in a university without

being a member of the Communist youth organisation.

You must render lipservice to its God-hating doctrines.

Lydia C. had been the first in all grades of high school.

Now a university education was guaranteed. As an

exceptional student she would also receive an allowance

for her further education. She had only to deliver a speech

at the inauguration of the year of study. The big shots of

the Communist Party were there.

She praised Communism, all right. She got great

applause. But she finished with the words: 'These things

one has to say, if you wish to advance in our society. But I

don't believe one word of what I just said. I believe in

God and will follow him.'

21

With this, she had ruined her whole future. Instead of

becoming a doctor as she had desired, she became a

seamstress. But souls who have received Jesus' kiss

cannot compromise. They can praise only him.

Where can you get his kiss?

It is not difficult to receive his kiss. This was no problem

for the Virgin Mary. Her Saviour was her obedient child.

She could receive his caresses whenever she desired. Mary

Magdalene and even Judas could kiss him. And there is

no doubt that he reciprocated their kisses.

Christ lives with every believer as much as he lived in

his mother's home, (though as a diamond yet unearthed,

enclosed within the ground), because we are his image,

members of his body. The Virgin Mary kissed Jesus' lips,

and his hair, his hands and his breast. She could kiss his

physical body. But Jesus is the only person who has two

bodies: that of the Jewish carpenter who lived 2,000 years

ago, which is seated now in heaven, and that of the

Church. So we can kiss him when we kiss our brothers

and sisters, and in the same way we can receive his kisses.

Jesus said, 'Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall

see God' (Matthew 5:8). They will see him not only in the

next world. They will see him in every brother - yes, in

every human being. Those who sentenced to death St

Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity, 'looking

steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of

an angel' (Acts 6:15). They could see the angel in their

victim. Let us at least learn from them how to look upon

our brethren. Then we will be able to receive as many

holy kisses as the Virgin Mary was able to obtain from

Jesus.

Jesus taught also that anyone who feeds the hungry,

22

gives drink to the thirsty, takes in strangers, clothes the

naked or visits the sick and the prisoners does this to him

(Matthew 25:35-40). He identifies himself with the suf-

ferers. The kiss of a person starving, oppressed or longing

after love is his kiss.

For example, I know of a Christian prisoner in a Com-

munist prison camp. He was near to death; his wasted body

lay on the floor. Then he saw what seemed to be a girl bathed

in glory. She looked like a nun. In her hand she held the

living bread, and put it to his parched mouth. I know, too, of

a sister-in the USA. She had a vision in which she saw herself

in a Communist prison, putting bread to a prisoner's mouth.

No walls separate the persecuted Church from that which

enjoys freedom. The most amazing letter I ever received

came from Canada. It was from a man who had been in jail

for robbery. As a punishment for misbehaviour he had been

put into solitary confinement. There he sought God, but had

difficulty finding him. Then he heard an inner voice speak-

ing to him, comforting him and giving him counsel. He was

converted. Once out of jail, he joined a church. In a book-

shop he found a book that caught his interest. It was my

book, Sermons in Solitary Confinement. He recognised the

sermons. It had been my voice that had spoken to him. We

had been in solitary confinement at the same time - he in

Canada, I in Rumania. Angels carried my words to him.

Prison walls, two continents and an ocean had been no

barriers to them.

The kisses of his glorified body

The Bride desires Jesus' kisses. She wants her mouth to be

touched. Jeremiah says, 'The Lord put forth his hand and

touched my mouth' (Jeremiah 1:9). Isaiah says, 'Then flew

one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand,

which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

23

and he laid it upon my mouth' (Isaiah 6:6-7). Thus the

iniquity of Isaiah was removed. The church fathers saw in

this burning coal a symbol of the Son of God incarnate. In

Christian Syriac poetry, Jesus is called Kemurta Denura,

which means 'the burning coal.' He must touch our lips, so

that we can praise him with fire.

I can be kissed by those who belong to his body on earth,

but is it possible to kiss Jesus who is in heaven? Can the lips

of his glorified body touch our lips? How can I know if my

prayer has been heard? How can I know if I have received

that kiss which I desire?

Some prominent saints have had this privilege. Saint

Anthony held Jesus at his breast. According to a legend,

Hermann Joseph presented an apple to an image of the child

Jesus; Jesus put aside his sceptre, descended from the image

and took the apple.

Henry Suso asked die Virgin Mary to show him the baby

and to allow him to kiss Jesus. He took Jesus into his arms;

he held in his arms die small baby who is bigger than the uni-

verse. One minute of such an experience transforms wolves

into meek men, angry people into quiet people, the proud

into the humble.

To St Mechtild, Henry's sister, the Child said, 'When I

was born into the world I was immediately wrapped in swad-

dling clothes in which I could not move; it demonstrated that

I and all that I brought with me have been given into the

hands of men, who may dispose of us as they wish. The

bound man has no might. He cannot defend himself. You

can take from him what he has. When I left the world I was

nailed to a cross. I could not move. It was a sign that I left all

men the good I had done for them.'

Saint Birgit of Sweden saw Jesus' birth. He was born

painlessly, in a moment, looking towards the east, while the

Virgin knelt in prayer. He lay naked and shining on the

ground, more radiant than die sun. When Mary realised

that he was born, she adored the child with great reverence.

'Welcome, my Lord and my son,' she said.

24

Thérèse of Lisieux became Jesus' toy. Charles de

Foucauld received at Bethlehem the illuminating revelation

that he ought always to take the least significant place, in

order to be small and helpless like his Master at his birth.

But what should we others do, who are not capable of

such mystic elevations?

Sanctified imagination

We all know the plague of erotic fantasies. In prison,

sexual obsession is one of the greatest sufferings of saints,

especially the younger ones. Many of them never saw

their girlfriends or their wives. I myself saw virtually no

women or girls for fourteen years. You sat on concrete in

a common cell with hands on knees, and you were

forbidden to move. You never had a book; you were not

allowed to speak, even whisper, to your cellmate;

sometimes you were on your own; you could do nothing

but fantasize or think. For hours, erotic images paraded

before the Christians' eyes. The more they were

suppressed, the more powerful they became.

Sometimes the Communist jails are very refined. They

used to parade girls in miniskirts in front of the sexually

hungry prisoners. They took prisoners to the beaches and

showed them girls in bikinis. They told them, 'This is

what you can have if you deny your faith.'

When Milan Haimovici, a Rumanian Hebrew

Christian pastor, was in prison they brought a prostitute

into his solitary cell and forced him to share his bed with

her, night after night, when for years he had been isolated

from the world. The wardens spied through the peephole,

watching to see if anything happened. They had cameras

ready to photograph him embracing her, so that they

could disgrace him.

25

Girls or men whom you see only in your imagination,

when you kiss, embrace or mate in your sexual fantasy,

might not be physically present, but they are very

real - so real mat they can drive you mad.

The only defence against erotic obsession is to

spiritualise it, to see in every erotic image (as Solomon

teaches us) an image of our intimate love as brides of

Christ for our Bridegroom. Everybody can become a

bride of Christ, through faith. A male who is converted

becomes not a bridegroom, but a bride. (It was Jung who

identified a female element in men which he called the

anima, just as in women there is a male element, the

animus). Through assiduous spiritual exercises we can

train our imaginations. We can adopt the posture of the

bride longing for the Bridegroom, desiring and receiving"

the kisses of the holy Lover and finding our full joy in

him. Like many other visions of the saints, this can

become a spiritual reality in our lives. By dreaming about

an ardent union of his soul with Jesus, Pastor Milan

Haimovici overcame die temptations of the prostitute.

Souls who know the spiritual realities no more doubt

such kisses than one doubts a kiss received from an

earthly lover.

Saint Thérèse of Avila writes, 'As those who love each

other do not allow themselves to be disturbed, those who

have received this kiss despise all the things of the world,

according them very small worth. Having seen die vanity

of material things they despise them.' The person who has

received the kiss knows he has received it. Then he desires

to be kissed more and more, and to be left undisturbed by

anybody or anything, in sweet fellowship with Jésus.

Don't try to fight erotic fantasies head-on. Use the

expulsive power of sanctified imagination. You can't stop

a little girl playing with dolls. No educator's theories can

achieve diat. But there comes a time when the girl grows

up. She acquires new interests, and these displace from

her heart the pleasure of playing with dolls. In the same

26

way, if you let sexual imaginings alone, and if every

moment you are free of them you cultivate more and

more spiritual imaginings, in time the spiritual fantasy

will expel the mind's erotic obsessions.

In Nash Sovremennik, a Soviet magazine, the writer J.

Kasakov wrote in 1977 that he sometimes observed his

baby smiling in his dreams. His mother interpreted this to

mean that angels were playing with the child. (They were

Communists, who had not been taught about angels.)

Kasakov wrote, 'What is the smile? What does a babe

know that is concealed from grown-ups?'

Another Soviet writer, L. Vorobiov, tells of a father

and daughter eating in a monastery in Russia, which the

Communists had transformed into a restaurant. The

daughter said reproachfully, 'We drink beer and become

gluttons, where once monks ate their meals in piety.'

The father replied that the monks also drank.

She upbraided him for condemning monks for

hypocrisy, when the Communists today were no better.

Then she told him that she wanted to enter a convent.

'I suggest that you read some pornography,' he

answered.

'I have,' she said. 'I am bored by it.'

On the way back home, travelling by boat, the father

had a mystical experience in which he saw the golden

cupola of a cathedral advancing towards him. This

happened in 1976 in Moscow.

If the Communists can spontaneously experience

spiritual imaginings, how much more can the bride of

Christ, versed in Scripture, consciously bring before her

imagination the heavenly things. She can rejoice in them

with jubilation, and expel much of the harm of erotic

fantasies.

I will not, however, gloss over one difficulty. Many

who, over decades of imprisonment, have conquered

erotic obsessions, cannot so easily master diemselves

when, freed, they see real females again. It is the same for

27

Christian women when they were released. Instincts, long

restrained, took their revenge. Even with the best of

brides, the struggle never ends. But they can be finally

victorious, if they never give up. They can come to rejoice

in the embraces of Christ.

The mouth which is covered by kisses only

momentarily breaks free to speak words of love to the

beloved, which will indicate more kissing. When one has

received the heavenly kiss of unspeakable sweetness one

falls silent. One lady for years told everybody about her

experiences with Jesus. Then one day she had a real

experience with him. From that time on, she kept quiet.

Sometimes those who receive die heavenly kiss do not

know the Bible well, and cannot speak in biblical

language; but they too can know the Bridegroom's

embraces.

The Christian Mission to the Communist World has

often been threatened by terrorists. Its Swiss branch,

called 'Relief Action for the Martyr Church', received a

Üireatening letter from a group called the Red Army

Faction. The Swiss Christians remained unafraid and

continued their work, for which they were rewarded by

the Lord. One day diey received a letter'from a terrorist.

'I had an experience with Jesus and hesitate between

terrorism and God,' it read. 'I am out of balance, please

advise.' Anyone who has been kissed by someone

previously unknown but very lovable will know how he

felt.

The Christians established contact with him

immediately. Soon they received a second letter: 'Since

the age of seventeen I have been a terrorist. Now I have

surrendered my heart to Christ. It was terrible when I

realised how huge my sins were; they were higher than the

Himalayas. I was also an adorer of Satan. Now I would

not like to be the sort of Christian who only prays a little

and reads the Bible rarely, but rather a fighter in the front

line.'

28

His two natures

'Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,' says the

bride at the beginning of Solomon's Song, 'for your love

is better than wine.' It is as if the bride is speaking about

two different persons: 'Let him kiss me . . . for your love

. . .' The bride is thinking about the two natures which

combine in the person of Jesus - the human nature and

the divine.

The love of Jesus' human nature is better than wine,

better than all die pleasures this world can offer. But the

bride wants more. She wishes to see the glorified Son of

God in all his splendour, and she desires the kisses of his

divine nature.

Some Christians' lives and deaths are far more painful

than our own. Equatorial Guinea was for many years

under the oppression of the dictator Marias Nguema,

who was supported by Soviet, Cuban and East German

advisers. At the time, refugees fleeing to Gabon from

there told of diirty-six Christians who were buried up to

the neck in the forest. The next day only two heads were

still moving. They were disfigured by insect bites and die

eyes had been eaten. In another incident, a prisoner had

his feet hacked off; in another, a girl who refused the

sexual advances made by her guards was tortured

unspeakably with a burning torch.1

Lukewarm Christians cannot endure such things. The

privilege of bearing such a heavy cross and remaining

faithful and hopeful is the monopoly of those who have

received die holy kiss of his divine nature, though they

may not have diought about or even heard of this biblical

phrase.

Bonaventura was the first Superior of the Franciscan

Order after the death of its founder. He was once asked

by Saint Thomas Aquinas where all his extensive

knowledge came from. He pointed to the crucifix on his

29

desk. 'That is the source of all my knowledge,' he said. 'I

study only Jesus Christ, and him crucified.' Bonaventura

had received the holy kiss of the divine nature of Jesus.

The savour of his ointments

In the Orient, perfumed wood was sometimes used in the

building of mosques. It is like hearing sermons preached

in a church in which incense is burned or in one

decorated with sweet-smelling flowers. But I have heard

the Word preached or recited in Communist prison cells,

in which sometimes 200 prisoners were crammed

together, in indescribable squalor. Some of us were

unable to wash for years. Our clothes were filthy. Water

was scarce, and so was soap. Overflowing barrels in the

cell served as lavatories for 200 people. Faeces and urine

filled one corner. Many of the prisoners simply suf-

focated. The windows were shuttered so that air could

not enter. Men would lie down on the floor so as to

breathe the draught from the tiny gap at the bottom of

the door.

In that situation there were some believers who dwelt

not only in these terrible earthly surroundings, but at the

same time in heavenly places. Scarcely breathing, like

asthmatics, they talked among themselves and with

others about the sweet savour of sacrifices brought to

God and of fragrances like those of heaven. They quoted

scriptures about frankincense and myrrh, about roses

and lilies.

The Jewish Talmud states that every meal at which the

conversation is about something other than the Word of

God is an idolatrous meal. When Christians were in the

Rumanian prison of Piteshti, they tried to think about the

Word of God while they ate, and to speak to each

30

other about it. However, their torturers then decided to

make them eat their own bodily waste. In Piteshti eating

excrement and drinking urine was a daily routine. But

while they did this, they thought of the Bible's words

about the savour of God's good ointments. They

meditated upon the perfumes described in the Word of

God. So in prison one is made aware of how independent

the spiritual life is from the life of die flesh.

A Russian priest, Nikiforov-Volghin, tells in his book

Dust on the Road of the following story, told to him by a

Christian he met in prison:

One day I arrived home and heard somebody cry out. I

found my wife, stabbed in the heart by somebody we

knew. The murderer fell at my feet, begging my

forgiveness. I said to him, 'Go, and do not do so

anymore.' I went to the police and accepted

responsibility for the crime. I was sentenced. Then in

Krasnoyarsk prison one prisoner murdered another.

For that, too, I accepted the blame. Now I am

sentenced to life imprisonment. I could not do other

than I did.

Loving God, I look on all men as I look upon angels.

My only prayer is, 'I am yours and you are

mine - have mercy on me.' If you had not been a priest

I would not have told you these things. You asked me

why I am here, and you are entitled to the truth.

When this prisoner died it was as though heaven had

opened. His last words were, 'Lord, I would like to

continue to suffer for others; but diy will be done.' Those

who are present at such a death, though prison squalor

surrounds them, sometimes detect a heavenly fragrance.

It is the odour of the high places in which the bride of

Christ lives.

31

What is in his name?

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the girl thought of her

lover's name. The two belonged to warring families. He

was a Montague, she a Capulet. Her family would never

have consented to their marriage. So she advised him to

change his name. 'What's in a name?' she asked. 'A rose

by any other name would smell as sweet. ' She was right

about roses. A rose is called a 'rose' only in the English

language; in other languages it has different names. And

she was probably right about Romeo as well. She could

have loved him even if his name had been Sebastian or

Antonio.

I do not rule out the possibility that some love Jesus by

another name. They have never heard the name 'Jesus' but

they love Love. They love self-sacrifice, they love

forgiveness and goodness. They love Divinity coming down

to earth, and earthly beings uniting with Divinity. They love

the poor and oppressed, those who represent Jesus on earth.

You can love Jesus without knowing his name.

Many who call in prayer upon Krishna, Buddha or

some other name may perhaps in reality mean 'Jesus'.

But with Jesus his name is important. In Hebrew it is

Yeshua, which means 'salvation'. His very name

proclaims what he stands for! You say 'Jesus', and it is

like the pouring-out of ointment. Because of that name

you know that there is salvation for you and for all people.

Another of his names, 'Immanuel', means 'God is with

us.'

Only the bride can say to the Saviour, 'Your name is

an ointment poured forth.' Jesus did not have a good

name in the world. He was called a glutton, a winebibber,

a Samaritan (which at that time was the same as calling

him a heretic); he was called a deceiver, they said that he

had a devil, and so on. To this evil talk about Jesus the

bride is deaf.

32

Souls who truly believe in Jesus are also widely

slandered. In the Soviet press faithful pastors are called

'scoundrels, hooligans and villains'. They call

Solzhenitsyn, the distinguished Nobel prizewinner, a

traitor.

Concerning the finest Christians of all, the

Communists spread the rumour that they are stool-

pigeons of the communist authorities and secret agents of

the police. As a result they are beaten up by their fellow-

prisoners. However, they know that in the eyes of their

Bridegroom, their name is good.

Holy love

The bride says, 'No wonder die virgins love you!' (1:3),

and there is no jealousy in what she says. This is what

distinguishes holy love from worldly love: not merely that

we who love him are not jealous, but that we want many

other souls to love him as well, and we desire him to pour

out on them his caresses and his kisses.

In Australia a Christian lady stopped a young girl in the

street. 'You look so sad! You are crying. ï am a Christian.

Could I be of help? Could I share your sorrow?'

'Thank you for your kindness,' replied the girl, 'but

nobody can help me. The man I love has left me.'

Our sister said, 'Don't worry. I have a beautiful

Bridegroom. I will give him to you.'

The girl, thinking she was being made fun of, said

'Why are you mocking my grief?'

Then our sister spoke to her about her heavenly

Bridegroom - about Jesus. She explained that he can

share his love with many, and yet to every one of them he

gives all his love. The girl was brought to Christ.

Those who preach Jesus are not in competition with

33

one another. They are fellow-workers. So if a soul that

was attached to one flock moves to join another, there is

no need for sadness. It simply means that the spiritual

atmosphere of the first flock did not suit that particular

soul. No Christian teacher can claim that he is equally

helpful to every individual.

It is not absolutely necessary that somebody should be a

member of my church. Let him go to any church where he

can grow spiritually, and I will accompany him there with

my prayers.

'Draw me'

The bride s*ays, 'Draw me, we will run after you. The

king has brought me into his chambers; we will be glad

and rejoice in you, we will remember your love more than

wine; the upright love you' (1:4). She prays, 'Draw me.'

She prays like this because she knows that she is still very

far from him. 'Whilst we are at home in the body, we are

absent from the Lord' (2 Corinthians 5:6). She prays like

this because she longs to arrive at union with him.

It is not enough that he should draw her by convincing

her. She does not have the moral power to follow her

convictions. He must draw her with supernatural grace.

He has to give her the will to come to him and the means

to fulfil diat will. He has said it himself: 'No man can

come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him'

(John 6:44). Nobody can come to Jesus by his own will.

Looking to the ascended Jesus, my prayer is 'Draw me.'

What could hinder the fulflhnent of this prayer? The way of

ascension is open for everyone. Elijah was a man who had

the same weaknesses as we all have, and he ascended into

heaven. Everyone who consents to ride in a chariot of fire,

as Elijah did, can ascend like him. Jesus said, 'He that shall

34

humble himself shall be exalted' (Matthew 23:12).

We can come to where Jesus is; we can sit with him on

his throne (Revelation 3:21). But we have to follow the

way he went, 'Who, being in the form of God . . . made

himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a

servant and was made in the likeness of men; and being

found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and

became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.

Wherefore God has also highly exalted him and given him

a name which is above every name.' (Philippians 2:6-9).

God is not only the Father of the Lord Jesus, but also

our Father; and we can all ascend to him if we follow the

way of Jesus. He lived for thirty-four years on earth in

misery, poverty and unmeasured sorrows. Let us beware

of wealth and exalted situations as of a burning fire, and

our prayer to be drawn by him will be fulfilled.

Running after him

The bride says, 'Draw me, we will run after you.' We

have not to walk after the Lord, but to run. The apostle

Paul tells the believers, 'Let us run with patience'

(Hebrews 12:1), 'So run that you may obtain the prize' (1

Corinthians 9:24); 'I therefore so run, not as uncertainly'

(1 Corinthians 9:26). Only running can symbolise a living

longing for God and a vigorous faith in him. Psalm

119:32 says, 'I will run the way of your commandments.'

It is written of die children of Israel that when they

worshipped the golden calf, they 'sat down to eat and to

drink' (Exodus 32:6). While Joseph was sitting, his

brothers conferred as to how to sell him. (Genesis 37:25)

It is a great catastrophe when the people of God sit down;

they must run - run with all their heart, not listening to

whispers or shouts from different sides, but violently

35

rejecting any hindrance to their running. We have to run

with our bodies stretched forward to seize the prize,

before our feet arrive at our goal.

We have to run with extreme speed. Jesus told us we

are lights. Light has greater speed than anything else in

the natural world. In telling us that we are lights, Jesus

told us to run with the speed of light. It is not the case that

souls who run slower don't arrive in the end, but they do

lose the prize reserved for those who arrive first.

In the bride's words, 'Draw me, we will run after you,'

we observe the sudden passing from the singular to the

plural in the midst of the sentence. The bride is saying,

'Jesus should draw me alone; then we - many of us - will

run after him. You, Jesus, take care of me, drawing me

with all your might, that I might influence others.' King

David, too, says, 'Restore unto me the joy of your

salvation, and uphold me with your free spirit, then I will

teach transgressors your ways; and sinners shall be

converted unto you. ' (Psalm 51:12-13).

Let the words, 'We will run' stay in our minds. Are we be-

lievers who are running? This is easy to find out. The one

who runs quickly covers a great distance in a short time. How

great a distance have you covered since you came to God?

Communists who found Christ

Communists hate not only Christians, Jews, Moslems,

patriots and those belonging to other political parties;

they also hate one another. It once happened that five

Russian Communists were in a prison cell, sentenced to

death by their own comrades. While awaiting execution,

one of them paced up and down in the cell, singing over

and over, Safe in the arms of Jesus. Just those few words.

The others asked.him what he meant, but he did not

36

know. He only knew that his mother had sung a song that

began with those words. His mother died when he was

young. What had remained fixed in his memory was that

there is a place where one is safe. This place is called 'In

the arms of Jesus.'

Another of the Communists said, 'I once saw an ikon of

Jesus with his arms stretched out on a cross.' Now they

knew two things - that Jesus died on a cross and that, in

his arms, you are safe. A third said, 'In Russia, even

now, we call the first day of the week Voskresenie

(Resurrection). Is the one who was resurrected the same

one who stretched out his arms on the cross? Is this what

gives us safety, even in death?'

From these fragments of knowledge the Communists

reconstructed the essence of the gospel. They went to their

deaths singing, Safe in the arms of Jesus.

That is the speed at which the light was spread in death

row. In no time at all, one had been drawn by Christ; and

all the others followed him. You may not know very much

about Jesus. But share quickly the little that you do know

with others. There could be great consequences.

In Red China, where Christians were fiercely

persecuted, somebody wrote on a wall, God loves every man.

The next day he found more writing below: even the

Communists. These words were probably written by a Red

Guard who had found assurance that God loved him, too.

The light had passed quickly from one soul to another.

The responsibility of soul-winners

The bride says, 'Draw me, we will run after you' (1:4).

The faithful soul wins other people for Christ. By so

doing, it takes upon itself a huge responsibility. In the

Free World a soul-winner does not readily perceive this.

37

The man he wins for Christ will become a church

member, sing in the choir, marry a nice Christian girl and

lead a quiet Christian life. But to be a soul-winner in a

Communist country — to be an evangelist in the Under-

ground Church - burdens you with heavy problems.

When St Paul preached in Rome he knew that those

who responded to his message could be thrown to the wild

beasts and devoured in the circus arena. They could be

crucified or burnt on stakes. Should he preach, in such

circumstances? Or would it be better for him to remain

silent? Is it right to propagate an idea if it will bring men

to prison, to torture and to death? How many unbelieving

wives, parents and children must have cursed Paul,

because his preaching brought such sorrow to their

families? But when you are drawn by Jesus, you must

make others run after him.

I was in jail with a man whom Traian Dorz, the famous

Rumanian poet, had brought to Christ. He was sentenced

for his faith, and he had left a wife and six children at

home. I asked him, 'Are you resentful towards Dorz, for

taking you out of your life of tranquillity and setting you

upon this dangerous path?' He said, 'I can't thank him

enough.'

During World War II, Mrs Roosevelt, the wife of the

President of the USA, carried in her purse this prayer:

Dear Lord,

Lest I continue

My complacent way,

Help me to remember

Somewhere out there

A man died for me today.

As long as this fight continues,

I then must ask and answer -

Am I worth dying for?

38

Every ruler and every officer who sends soldiers to

die - yes, every conscientious citizen - must ask himself

or herself the same question.

In the Underground Church the pastor gives

assignments to his church members which might result in

their death. He asks them to organize secret printing

presses, to secretly transport Christian literature from

place to place. If they are caught these people will go to

prison. Because of those printing presses, many people

have died.

The Christian Mission to the Communist World has

sent couriers into Communist countries to smuggle holy

books in. One of these, Wang-Shin-Mei, was beaten to

death in China. Two others, Tom White and Mel Bailey,

were caught in Cuba; they received prison sentences of

twenty-three years each. Others were wounded while

taking Bibles into Communist Mozambique.

A soul-winner in the Underground Church is not

allowed to be complacent. He must remember that his

brothers and sisters may die for what he has told them to

believe and to do.

In the Free World, Christians must be taught to carry

crosses and to learn to renounce. The soul-winner must

know and practise this himself, before he teaches it to

others.

In the king's chambers

The bride prayed, 'Draw me', and the prayer was granted

immediately. The king brought her into his chambers.

We read of Blessed Ann Marie Taigi (1769-1837), a

woman of simple background and mother of seven

children, that she saw a mysterious sun suspended before

her, a little above head height. By its light she saw all the

39

visible and invisible things of earth. She penetrated also

into the depths of the abyss and into the high places of

heaven, just as St Paul rose to the third heaven (2

Corinthians 12:2). With great clarity she observed the

fates of diverse men and the secrets of nature and grace.

She could discern the secret thoughts of people near at

hand and far away.

For her, there was no time; she could see men and

events in the past and the future. Everything happened in

that single moment, in die mystical sun. In one glance she

perceived a multitude of things, with perfect knowledge

and in complete detail.

Ignatius of Loyola saw, in a rapture, divine things.

While sitting near a river and allowing his eyes to rest on

the water, his sight was opened and he understood many

things - secrets of faith and revelations from the realm of

natural science - with such an overwhelming clarity that

he had no doubt it was a revelation from God.

These were people who had been in the King's

chambers. I have myself known men who have been

there. In jail, I was thrown together with a Christian

sentenced to death. He sang songs which he had

composed. He told us, 'Death does not scare me. I sing

here; I will do the same after I am shot. Only the songs

will be different. Here, my hymns somehow centre

around myself, telling of my longings, how sinful I have

been, how I was saved, although the Lord taught us in his

prayer to pray without using the word "I". Heavenly

songs are different. The angels sing that God is thrice

holy, and that the earth is filled with his glory. They

rejoice over it, and they have nothing to ask. About

themselves they say nothing, neither good nor bad. At

Christ's birth they sang "Glory to God in the highest, and

on earth, peace to men on whom his favour rests." There

was no petition for personal needs. '

My Christian cellmate went to his execution singing

one of the new songs which he had learned in the

40

chambers of Jesus. In his spirit, he had been in heavenly

Jerusalem, the city far away, before his physical death.

We are all meant to visit the chambers of Jesus and to

learn these new songs.

•We will be glad'

The bride says, 'The king has brought me into his

chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in you' (1:4). The

grace given her affects many others. Once again she

passes from the singular case to the plural: 'The king has

brought me into his chambers; we will rejoice.' It is

enough that one single soul should be in right fellowship

with God, and the whole Church of which he is a part will

be blessed, and will have joy and gladness.

There are no useless words in the Bible. It is written,

'We will be glad and rejoice,' and it might seem that this

is repetitious. But there is a progression here from inner

joy to outward gladness. Gladness can be faked. It must

be united to a joy in the heart which makes it genuine.

Many people display gladness even though their stony

hearts have been long incapable of knowing true joy. God

continually insists that joy and gladness must go together;

there should be neither laughter without the heart's

participation, nor a joy in the heart too miserly to show

itself outwardly and thus gladden others. The archangel

Gabriel said to Zacharias the priest, 'You shall have joy

and gladness' (Luke 1:14). The prodigal son's father said

to his other .son, 'It was meet that we should make merry,

and be glad: for this your brother was dead, and is alive

again' (Luke 15:32). Jesus tells us to 'rejoice . . . and leap

for joy' (Luke 6:23). So rejoicing should be accompanied

by outward signs of jubilation.

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Loving unto death

The bride says, 'We will remember your love more than

wine' (1:4). The wine represents the king's gifts, as

distinguished from his person. That he himself unites with

us is of more value to humanity than all the things he

gives to us.

'The upright [literally, 'uprighteousnesses'] love you.'

They love Jesus even unto death. Bishop Seraphim of

Phanarion in Greece was martyred, on 4 December 1601.

He had been falsely accused of plotting and rebelling

against the Turks. They shouted at him, 'Rebel and

subverter of our authority! Behold, thou hast come into

our hands, and thou wilt receive that which is thy

due - unless, perchance, thou shouldst wish to abandon

thy faith and become a Moslem. Then we would forgive

thee, and honour thee greatly, for by this we would know

that thou hadst repented and become as one with us.'

The saint was an upright man who loved Jesus. He

desired martyrdom for Christ and did not become in the

least fainthearted. He said to them with a clear and serene

countenance, 'I will never agree in any circumstances to

forsake my faith, so that I might be spared my death. I

will never forsake my most sweet Jesus, my God and my

Creator.

'Now, because I suffer unjusdy, I have the more hope

on that account that I shall receive from my Master even

greater honour. I would never deny my faith; nor shall I

ever be separated from my sweetest Master and God,

Jesus Christ. Though I shall die ten thousand deaths for

his holy name, I would count it all joy and gladness. O,

Ruler! Be it slaughter or mutilation, do whatsoever is

within thy power.'

The ruler, Hamouza Bey, then ordered him to be

flogged and his nose to be cut into small pieces. This

upright man loved Jesus. He endured all these torments

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as if they were happening to somebody else, thanking God

and blessing him.

The next morning he appeared before Hamouza Bey

again, and his attitude was die same. 'I will never

abandon my Lord Jesus, my Creator who shaped me,

only to believe in a mortal man - an illiterate - an enemy

and blasphemer of my Christ!'

They tore him to pieces. But even his merciless

executioners marvelled to sec that he endured it all with

thanksgiving, and that his face was bright and joyous as if

he were at a feast. In the end he was impaled.

Legends often arise around such great saints. It is said

that his head and those of others condemned as criminals

were placed on spears and arranged in a row facing west.

This was done each evening, and by morning the heads

would be as they had left them, except for that of

Seraphim: his head would be found looking toward the

east, towards Jerusalem, the Holy City.

The Kenyan periodical Target reported that the

Anglican Bishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum, was shot in

front of President Amin because he refused to kneel and

beg for mercy. The same demonic spirit seems to be at

work in Communist Cuba as well. Fidel Castro attended

the execution by firing squad of a Christian. As his hands

were tied behind his back, Castro urged him, 'Kneel, and

beg for your life.' The Christian shouted back 'I kneel for

no man!' A sharp-shooter put a bullet first through one

knee, then the other. Castro exulted: 'See! We have made

you kneel!' The man was finished off slowly by being shot

through the non-vital parts of die body, so diat die agony

was prolonged. This incident is described by John

Martino in his book / was Castro's prisoner.

The devil himself works through these anti-Christian

dictators. We are reminded of the words he addressed to

the Lord: 'All diese things will I give you, if you will fall

down and worship me' (Matthew 4:9).

Christians such as these I have described are each one a

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personification of 'uprighteousness. ' Therefore the

Hebrew text says, 'Uprighteousnesses love you.'

'Black and comely'

The bride says, *I am black [but] comely, O you

daughters of Jerusalem,' (1:5). An important emendation

to the translation is needed here in the Authorized

Version. We read, 'I am black but comely.' This gives

the impression that black people are usually ugly, and that

Solomon's bride was an exception, comely despite her

blackness. There is no trace of this idea in the Hebrew

original, which reads simply, 'I am black and comely.'

There are as many beautiful black girls as beautiful white

girls or yellow girls. There is no hint of racism in this

verse.

Blackness is absence of light, and it is in this sense that

the Bible uses the term. The Church is black because

some believers do not obey God; but she is beautiful

because of her saints and perfect Christians. She is black

in the eyes of men, because those whose souls are blind

cannot perceive the beauty of the kingdom of God within

us, but she is beautiful before God.

We are black because of our own weakness, but

beautiful and strong through God's grace, which is ours

in abundance. A man can be black because he is guilty of

many sins, but beautiful in God's eyes from the very

moment he puts his joyful trust in Jesus, the Saviour of

sinners, who forgives him and will change his soul.

Today's decayed Church can be black on account of

her deeds, but she is beautiful on account of those who

have gone before in faith. She is beloved because of the

first generation of Christians who were aflame with gentle

love, just as Israel, even though it rejected Jesus,

44

remains beloved because of the Jewish patriarchs.

Though she may be blackened by persecution, the

Church is beautiful through her penitence. She may be

weak, but the words of Psalm 45 apply to her: 'The king's

daughter is all glorious within' (verse 13).

Never be afraid when you discover your weakness and

sinfulness, when you discover the lack of light or

blackness. You are only one in a large flock. A small part

of a body can be affected by disease while the body as a

whole remains healthy. Similarly you are 'healthy' or

beautiful by virtue of the Church to which you belong,

which possesses the beautiful characters of the saints.

Their beauty reflects upon you.

In Red China, a wedding took place at an execution

ground. Zhou Wen Yong and Chen Tie-Zhun had been

workers together in the Underground Church and had

both been sentenced to death. They were in love. At the

place of execution Zhou asked Chen, 'Will you be my

wife?' She consented. He declared 'So we are married

before God! Let the Communist bullet be the seal of our

wedding. We will feast our marriage in paradise.'

A Soviet prisoner wrote from jail, 'I bow my head in

humility before our mother, the Church. I thank God for

die education she gave me. The Church of Christ has

many sufferings, but also an overflow of joy. In die

Siberian cold, we warmed the icy winter's embraces with

the Word of God.'

Let us thank God that we belong to this Church which

has such saints as members, even if we ourselves are

unworthy. We are black and beautiful.

Every believer is tempted at some time to think, 'You,

who are so black - how can you speak about the Lord?'

Every preacher at some time thinks, 'How can I, who am

so wicked, even climb into the pulpit?' Our courage

evaporates when we consider what state we are in.

But look at the apostle Peter. He, who had denied

Christ with oaths and curses, stood in the Jerusalem

45

marketplace and rebuked the people: 'You denied the

Holy One and the Just' (Acts 3:14). He who had himself

committed this very sin, in the most heinous manner,

rebuked others for the same sin, though they were much

less guilty. He could do this because he knew that he was

not only black but beautiful - not only sinful, but also

forgiven and beloved by God. The darkness in him did

not make Peter despair. He knew he was wicked, but he

also knew that when he preached, it was not him speaking

but Christ, who lived in him.

The night is black, but it gives rest to the earth. Black

bread is very nutritious. A pastor who by his own deeds is

in darkness but is beautiful by the grace he receives from

God, can feed a hungry flock. I trust Jesus' taste more

than my own! I see myself as black, he sees me as

beautiful. He sees himself mirrored in us. He sees us as

we shall be.

The bride compares her blackness to that of the tents of

Kedar and the curtains of Solomon (1:5). Kedar was a

district of Arabia inhabited by Bedouins. They made their

tents from black goat hair. The curtains at Solomon's

palace were also said to be black. Black curtains keep out

the light from a room. This image means that great care

was necessary to ensure that the many sins committed by

the bride should not come to light.

Do not be critical

The bride admonishes, 'Look not upon me as being

blackish' [the meaning of the Hebrew word] 'because the

sun has looked upon me' (1:6). She had described herself

as 'black' (shechorah), but now, pondering the fact that

she is also beautiful, she no longer calls herself

'black'. She is only 'blackish' (shecharchoret). Men

46

should not even regard her as that. They should learn to

see her beautiful side.

The believer should regard nobody as 'black'; he

should be careful not to slander even his weakest brother.

The apostle Peter says, 'God has shown me that I should

not call any man common or unclean' (Acts 10:28). The

bride is blackish, but listen to her defence! 'I am blackish

because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's

children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of

the vineyards.' If my brother has sinned, the reason may

be the many sufferings, temptations and persecutions

which he has endured. When the Spirit of God does his

work, my brother will confess his sins himself, like the

bride in Solomon's Song.

To explain how she came to be 'blackish', she reviews

her past life. 'My mother's children' - that is, the

members of the Church, which is the believer's

mother — 'were angry with me; they made me the keeper

of the vineyards' - an occupation in which you get

heavily sunburnt. 'I have been given great assign-

ments,' the bride complains. 'I have been appointed a

pastor, a teacher of the brethren.' Other believers

might well envy her situation, but it was in that

situation that she was burned by the sun and became

blackish.

Christians, don't compete for the honour of being

leaders in the Church. It is a calling that should make you

tremble. Saint James writes, 'My brethren, be not many

masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater

condemnation' (3:1). Christians, don't judge. Coventry

Cathedral in England was destroyed by German bombs

during World War II. When it was rebuilt two charred

logs from the old building were made into a cross bearing

the inscription, 'Father, forgive'. There was no 'them' at

the end. The British knew that they too needed to be

forgiven.

Terrorists sin. So do all Arabs who do not love Zionists.

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And Zionists have committed sins towards Arabs.

Communists sin. Christians in Communist countries sin

too, because they are not being holy and zealous enough

to prevent men from becoming Communists. The best of

pastors sin more than all of diese. God gives them a

vision, but they neglect many of their duties.

For all of us, our only hope is die Lord's sacrifice on

Good Friday; the Easter event, his resurrection, is our

only source of peace. So do not misuse your moudi by

criticizing, and especially by criticizing the bride of

Christ.

The dangers of the pastorate

Be very cautious before you accept the office of pastor, a

keeper in God's vineyard. The believer's preference is for

a hidden life with God. Listen to a biblical parable:

Once, die trees went forth to anoint a king over diem.

And diey said to the olive tree, 'Reign over us.' But the

olive tree said unto diem, 'Should I leave my fatness

wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to

be promoted over the trees?'

And die trees said to die fig tree, 'You come and

reign over us.' But die fig tree said unto diem, 'Should

I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be

promoted over the trees?'

Then said die trees unto die vine, 'You come and

reign over us.' And die vine said to diem, 'Should I

leave my wine, which cheers God and man, and go to

be promoted over die trees?'

Then said all die trees unto the bramble, 'You come

and reign over us.'

And die bramble said unto die trees, 'If in truth you

48

anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust

in my shadow. And if not, let fire come out of the thistle

and devour the cedars of Lebanon (Judges 9:8-17).

Only valueless Christians long for important positions in

the Church of God and rejoice when they are given them.

They are misguided, because important positions in the

Church leave no time for maintaining the beauty of your

own vineyard. You become so concerned with caring for

others that you don't care about yourself. You will be in

danger of the same catastrophe which overcame ancient

Israel, to whom the apostle Paul wrote: 'You therefore

who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who

preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? You who

say that a man should not commit adultery, do you

commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you commit

sacrilege?' (Romans 2:21-22).

The only man who should become a pastor or a

missionary is the man who cannot be anything else. He

who can say with the prophet Jeremiah, 'His word was in

my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was

weary with forebearing, and I could not stay' (Jeremiah

20:9). Young converts, don't push yourselves forward for

leading positions in the churches and in missions! Don't

begin preaching at the earliest opportunity out of a sense

of obligation! It is better to keep the beauty of your own

vineyard.

Where can he be found?

The bride says, 'Tell me, O you whom my soul loves,

where you feed, where you make your flock to rest at

noon: for why should I be as one that turns aside by the

flocks of your companions?' (1:7). She gives Jesus a

49

beautiful name, 'You Whom My Soul Loves'. The

Church is the beloved of God's soul, and God is the

Beloved of our souls.

The bride wants to know the exact place where her

Beloved is. She wants to go to the place where he rests,

where he feeds his flock, because in her diffidence she

does not want to distract him from his preoccupations by

asking him to come to her. She will go to him, and will be

able to speak with him while helping him in his work. She

will not abuse his time. But she must know exactly where

he is. She does not want to wander around among his

companions' flocks. She does not want to find herself

among die flocks of the other founders of religions, who

are not like him.

Jesus has given us an exact address where we can find

him. It is written that on the day of the Last Judgement,

men will hear these words from him: 'I was in prison and

you came to me,' or these: 'I was in prison, and you

visited me not' (Matthew 25:36, 43). And then he will

explain: 'Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you have

done it ... [or] did it not to one of the least of these my

brethren, you have done it ... [or] did it not unto me'

(25:40, 45). Whoever wishes to meet Jesus must meet him

in places where brothers and sisters of Jesus are hungry,

thirsty, naked, unwanted, sick or in prison. Whoever

keeps himself distant from these places remains distant

from Jesus.

In his book The Unmasking, G. Dumitrescu - a former

jail inmate in Communist Rumania - writes:

Prisoners were so tortured that nobody dared to use a

hand for making the sign of the Cross. We did it with

our tongues. We had to stay the whole day with hands

lifted, even when at toilet. We had to put the dish with

food on the floor, kneel near it, and lick the food

without using the hands. We were animals. The food

burned our lips. We were beaten with sticks on the

50

shinbones, but could not rub our feet. The hands had to

stay unmoved. Every prisoner was asked to beat his

best friend, his brother in faith. If he refused, the

brethren were tortured until they agreed to beat him

with truncheons on the soles.

The prisoner, Nuti Patrashcanu, had become a

sadistic torturer of his friends. Then they tortured him

almost to death. Twelve of them sat on his body; he

excreted and was made to eat his own excrement.

The Patrashcanu mentioned above later shared a prison

cell with me, and God gave me the grace to bring him to

Christ. His bride* who was free, was also converted. He

later died in jail.

The last words of the Christian Sherban Gheorge, who

was killed in an atrocious manner in Piteshti, still echo in

our ears: 'The Communists' crimes are too horrible. I

can't pray for them to God from a distance. I must go to

him to speak on their behalf. Do not avenge my death. '

Jesus' companions

The bride says, 'Why should I be as one that turns aside'

by the flocks of your companions?' (1:7). In this verse the

founders of other religions are called the companions of

Jesus, not his competitors. Jesus has no competition. He

is not threatened by all those who have inscribed high

thoughts about God in the Vedas of the Indians and in the

holy books of other nations; he is not threatened by

Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Muhammed and other

founders of religion who, in the measure of the light which

they had, tried to bring men to better ways.

The bride's question as to where the Beloved sleeps

arises from a legitimate desire to see his face; but it does

51

not receive a direct answer. On the last evening, Thomas

asked the Lord, 'We know not where you are going: and

how can we know the way?' (John 14:5). But Jesus had

already replied: 'Where I go you know, and the way you

know' (14:4). He concedes to no man the possibility that

he would not know what his duty is, that somebody

sincerely seeking the King of Kings would not be able to

distinguish between him and one of his companions or a

deceiver, that he would not know how to distinguish

betwen the lilies with which he feeds his flock and the

simple grass of the others. That would be to despair of

human thought. Jesus believes that men are capable of

thinking correcdy.

Only love Jesus with a perfect love, from your whole

heart, and you will know where he feeds his flock as surely

as every man who loves drugs or alcohol knows where to

find them. 'What man is he that fears the Lord? Him shall

he teach in the way that he shall choose' (Psalm 25:12).

The difficulty is not lack of knowledge, but a moral

weakness. His bride cannot make the decision to go to the

place of deep suffering, which is the surest place of

encounter with the greatly-Beloved.

Would you like to know where Jesus feeds his flock?

Deny yourself and take up your cross. Then you can be

sure of following him. Would you like to know where he

rests at noon? Once, he rested in the bosom of the Father;

now he rests in the heart of every believer who gives him

room. But he is pre-eminently resting in the hearts of the

believers who are undergoing suffering; in the hearts of

those who have purified themselves from attachment to

created things, so that they may remain entirely

indwelling in the Creator.

I remember a Good Friday in a cell in the Rumanian

jail, Jilava. We were all very hungry, but that day when

the bowl of gruel was brought we refused to eat. We

fasted. Good Friday is the only fast-day described by the

Lord himself: 'The days will come, when the bridegroom

52

shall be taken from them, and then they shall fast'

(Matthew 9:15). Days of fasting, with deep repentance for

our past sins, are the greatest gifts anybody can give to the

Underground Church and the missions which help it.

As a punishment for refusing the food on Good Friday

we were made to stand to attention for the whole of Easter

morning. That provided a captive audience for a sermon!

If anybody had desired to be with Jesus on that day, he

should have travelled in spirit to be in fellowship with us.

Jesus was in jail with his disciples on that day. Prison is

one of the places where we should look for him. I wonder

at the numbers of Christians from the Free World who

visit Communist countries but never ask permission to

visit a jail and encourage their brothers and sisters in

pain.

In Solomon's Song Jesus did not say directly where he

feeds his flock. He wants us to think for ourselves. But on

the Day of Judgement we will be reproached or approved,

according to whether or not we have been among this

world's sufferers.

By the footsteps of the flock

In the Song, Jesus' reply to the bride's question is: 'If you

do not know yourself - so the Hebrew reads - 'O you

fairest among women, go your way forth by the footsteps

of the flock, and feed your kids by the shepherds' tents'

(1:8). The Bridegroom calls her, 'The fairest among

women.' Nothing is more beautiful in God's sight than a

believing soul. He is blind to its weaknesses.

The Bridegroom shows us a simple way to find him. If

she wishes with all her heart to come to where he is, the

bride must 'go by the footsteps of the flock.' In this world

there are men who bear the visible sign of being Jesus'

53

sheep. Go after them; imitate their example. Do as they

do. They are in fellowship with Jesus. If you follow in

their footsteps you will come into fellowship with him too.

When in Central Africa the first pygmy came to believe

in Jesus, another pygmy, Kiwebulaya, who could not

understand what his friend was talking about, decided to

follow him to find out the secret of his changed life. One

day he saw him leave the village. He went after him,

unobserved, into the jungle. He watched his friend kneel

in the grass, fold his hands, and speak with his new

invisible friend Jesus.

Now Kiwebulaya knew what he had to do. After his

friend had finished praying and departed, he went to die

same place, knelt in the depressions in the grass left by his

friend, folded his hands as he had done and said, 'Jesus,

you who made my friend happy, make me happy too.'

A voice replied: 'Come unto me, you pygmy who

labour and are heayy laden, and I will give you rest.'

Kiwebulaya said, 'I would come to you, Jesus, but I don't

know how.' He received a reply again: 'I will be with you

always.' When he rose from his praying, Kiwebulaya's

face shone with happiness just as his friend's face shone.

He had come to where Jesus was by following in the

footsteps of one of his sheep.

But be very careful that those whom you follow are

really Jesus' sheep. To use another animal analogy,

hunters sometimes have useless dogs. They run after die

real hunting dogs, and if they were persistent they would

arrive at the kill widi the others. But instead they stop at

every bush and every curiosity. The hunting dogs we

should follow are the real ones, which go through fire and

water.

The Bible says, 'Walk in the way of good men, and

keep die paths of the righteous' (Proverbs 2:20). Paul

says, 'Be followers of me, even as I also am of Christ' (1

Corinthians 11:1). He also says, 'Be not slothful, but

followers of them who through faith and patience inherit

54

the promises' (Hebrews 6:12). The best way of advancing

in the life of faith is to take as our examples the most

worthy believers of die Church's history, not those who

have the latest fanciful doctrines. In art galleries one can

see many young painters copying the masterpieces of

painters of die past. Young believers must copy die

outstanding saints of die past.

When die Communists took over Angola, they began

to threaten and persecute die Christians. Those who were

true believers remained unafraid. One Sunday morning

die Communist soldiers entered die Evangelical Church

in die town of Chiasso. They drove catde into die church,

slaughtered diem and mounted the animals' heads on die

pulpit and the communion table. A sign on die pulpit

announced, 'These are die gods you now worship.'

The believers were given a choice: eidier to die, or to

deny their faith. The pastor, Aurelio Chicanha, and 150

church members remained steadfast and were murdered

there and dien. The mission compound was turned into a

military base. Similar killings and appropriations of

churches have happened in Chissamba, Dondi, Bungue

and Elemde.

These believers were real sheep, whose example we can

follow. Not all of us are called to die a martyr's death, but

all of us are called to have die same spirit of self-sacrifice

and love to the very end as diese martyrs had.

My former fellow-prisoner Ion Stanescu, a Rumanian

Orthodox deacon, died from tortures suffered in prison.

He once told me die following story.

Colonel Albon, die director of the slave labour camp

where Stanescu was imprisoned, was informed that

someone had dared to preach in Stanescu's cell. He

entered carrying a cane and demanded to know the

culprit. When nobody answered, he said, 'Well dien,

everybody will be flogged. Unbutton!'

He started at one end of the cell, and there was the

usual yelling and tears. When he came to Stanescu, he

55

said, 'Not ready yet? Strip this minute!' Stanescu replied,

'Neither I nor the others will be beaten any more. There

is a God in heaven, and he will judge you.'

With that the fate of Stanescu appeared to be sealed.

Surely he would be beaten to death! But just at that

moment, a guard entered the cell and said, 'Colonel, you

are wanted urgently in the office. Some generals have

come from the Ministry.' Albon left, saying to Stanescu,

'We will see each other again soon.'

However, the generals arrested the colonel

(Communists hate and jail one another for no apparent

reason) and, after an hour, Albon was back in the cell,

this time as a prisoner. Many of the inmates jumped to

lynch him. But Stanescu defended his defeated enemy

with his own body, taking many blows himself as he

protected the torturer from the beaten prisoners.

Stanescu was a real priest. We have to follow in the

footsteps of men like this, loving our enemies but also

resisting their evil deeds.

It is easy to walk 'by the footsteps of the flock' because

sheep follow only beaten tracks, and will never take even

one step to the right or to the left away from it. But again,

let us be careful to walk only by the path of Jesus' sheep.

Not all sheep have virtues to be imitated. Some can be very

cruel. Any farmer will tell you about sheep who, by with-

holding milk, let their lambs die of starvation. Sometimes

they even smash the lambs' heads against a wall. Also,

certain sheep of different breeds hate one another; those of

the Hampshire breed cannot tolerate those of the Suffolk

breed. Avoid Christian sheep of this kind.

Where to feed our kids

The Bridegroom tells the bride, 'Feed your kids beside the

56

shepherds' tents.' The meaning of these words is clarified

by this Jewish proverb: 'If you wish to smell pleasant,

stand near those who sell perfumes.' The nearer a faithful

soul is to his pastor, the more he will make his valuable

teachings his own and the clearer he will see the face of

Jesus.

Saint Basil the Great said, 'When you are sick, you

don't go to any physician but the best. Neither should you

listen to sermons at random. Seek the pastor who

prepares conscientiously the best food for your souls.' The

leaders of the Church must take care that only men of

spiritual maturity and great abilities preach. These words

of the Bridegroom are also a challenge to pastors. The

believer will have to feed his kids beside the shepherds'

tents. Can somebody feed the kids near you? Are you like

Jesus, a good man on the bosom of whom others are able

to rest?

We can take as an example Gheorge Calciu, the

Rumanian Underground priest. He is Orthodox, but had

warm brotherly relations with the persecuted Protestants.

He was at one time a fellow-prisoner of mine. Arrested at

the age of twenty-one, he spent twenty-two years in jail

for belonging to a patriotic organisation. In jail he

suffered the worst torture. He was one of those forced to

eat his own excrement and to drink his own urine. One

could escape these atrocities by claiming to have been re-

educated in the Communist spirit and proving it by

torturing one's friends. Calciu cracked for a while under

the pressure, but he received grace from God and he was

converted. Freed, he became an Orthodox priest and a

heroic one. All fear to which he had yielded for a while

was gone. From great depths of sin he rebounded to the

heights of holiness. Seminary students and other young

people flocked to hear him preach. When the

Communists locked the door of the seminary to prevent

students from going to hear him, the students jumped in

through the windows. The Communists locked the

57

church; Calciu preached on its steps. He protested about

the tearing-down of Orthodox churches in Bucharest and

in the provincial towns, though he was warned that in

Communist countries priests must be on the side of the

atheists who are in power.

He continued his stand despite threats of detention in a

lunatic asylum. Later he was sentenced to ten years in

prison. Calciu valued courage, the rare gift of God, like a

precious stone. From his story we can see that a man who

has sinned can become a good pastor, near whose tents

brides of Christ can feed their kids.

Pharaoh's chariots

The Bridegroom says to the bride, 'I have compared you,

O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.'

With these words he rebukes the numerous believers who

ignore the advice that they should follow in the footsteps

of the flock. On first reading the comparison is hard to

understand. How could he compare his beloved, 'the

most beautiful among women', to horses?

Solomon's Song is an ancient book, written in a time

when people thought about animals differently to us

today. Julius Caesar erected a marble effigy of his horse in

a temple. The Emperor Nero nominated his horse to be a

senator. The Emperior Caligula made his horse a consul

and invited the animal to dinner and waited upon him.

In the Bible we find these words 'The Lord of Hosts has

visited his flock, the house of Judah, and has made them

as his goodly horse in the battle' (Zechariah 10:3). The

patriarch Jacob pays his son a compliment by saying,

'Issachar is a strong ass' (Genesis 49:14). Jesus calls his

believers 'sheep'.

There is nothing insulting in comparing a human being

58

to an animal. Ancient Egypt was famous for its horses,

which were the finest in the world, so the Bridegroom

compared his beloved girl to a horse. But these words also

contain a rebuke. Huge possibilities of spiritual victories

lie ahead. He wishes to lead us in his chariot of trials.

Seated there, we can conquer all fears, temptations and

sins. But instead of accepting his invitation, we allow

ourselves to be harnessed to the chariot of Pharaoh. We

do not sit with him in the chariot. We have to pull it, and

in it Pharaoh sits alone.

Why should we sweat in his service? Why should we

draw his cart? Why should we be harnessed to the chariot

of sin? Why be yoked in an uncomfortable yoke with

unbelievers? Why does a believing soul need to stoop to

dirty politics - even dirty ecclesiastical politics? You

might only be a horse pulling the chariot of some

unbelieving president or prime minister who cares

nothing for you. What good are dishonest transactions

and ugly amusements to you? Don't let yourself be

harnessed to Pharaoh's chariot. Ride with the noblemen

in Jesus' chariot of triumph.

Being harnessed to Pharaoh's chariot is not pleasant.

Drawings from ancient bas-reliefs in the Nile region show

that the ancient Egyptians did not understand the

anatomy of the horse, nor the correct way to harness it.

They attached the reins to the horse's throat, almost

suffocating it. Instead of allowing its neck to be extended

in the normal way, they held the head in line with its

chest, sometimes pulled even back further. Just as the

ancient Egyptians did not know the horse's anatomy,

neither do Pharaohs know the intimate structure of a

believer's soul. They harness these souls in a way that

torments them.

It is sad that the Bridegroom must so rebuke his bride.

There are Christians who support the terrorist Palestine

Liberation Organisation. There are Jewish Christians in

Israel supporting the anti-Arab measures of their

59

government. There are Christians who support the

Communist guerrilla movements in the Third World.

Other Christians defend the Soviet persecutors of the

Church or other dictatorships. Many believers are

involved in unjust transactions, and extramarital

relationships and in the world of amusement are in places

where they should not be. It is sad that brides of Christ

should be harnessed to Pharaoh's chariots!

How to rebuke

But even as he rebukes, the Bridegroom uses words of

gentleness. He says, 'I compare you, 0 my love, to a

company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.' She who causes

him sadness is addressed, *O my love'. Let us also learn to

sweeten our reproofs with good words. Praise must go

hand in hand with rebuke.

In his Epistles St Paul sometimes rebukeß believers with

great harshness, but his rebukes were accepted because

they never arrived unaccompanied. They came with

gentle words, expressing appreciation of the good

qualities in the believers. Before rebuking them, he writes

to the Romans, 'First, I thank my God through Jesus

Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout

the whole world' (Romans 1:8); to the Philippians; 'I

thank my God upon every remembrance of you'

(Philippians 1:3); to the Thessalonians, 'We give thanks

to God always for you all, making mention of you in our

prayers' (1 Thessalonians 1:2). This is how one removes

the bitterness of rebuke.

Antonina was the abbess of the women's convent in the

town of Kizliar in the Soviet Caucasus. In the early days

of the Revolution, when the plundering of monasteries

was a common occurrence, a mob of Bolshevik bandits

60

broke into the convent. They looted and destroyed, and

shot dead several nuns who resisted them. The abbess

Antonina fled to the convent of Vladikavkas; but posters

were displayed locally offering a reward of 3,000 roubles

to anybody reporting the whereabouts of the former

abbess of Kizliar. The Communists could not trace her,

though they suspected that she was concealed in another

convent.

Time passed. Then a young girl arrived at the convent.

With many tears she begged the abbess of Vladikavkas to

take her in, saying that her father and mother had been

killed and their estate burgled. She played the part so well

that she succeeded in winning the confidence of the abbess

who, out of sympathy, not only took the girl in and was

kind to her but soon even confided to her the secret that

Antonina was in hiding there.

Soon after this the girl disappeared. She had been an

agent of the secret police, looking for Antonina. That

night the militia surrounded the convent. Nobody could

escape. They broke in to search, demanding that the

abbess should be given up. When the two cell attendants

went upstairs to tell Antonina what was happening, she

said, 'Well, what can I do? If it pleases the Lord that they

find me, let it be so. But if it is not his will, he will close

people's eyes; they, seeing me, will not see me. Come, we

will go out in front of them.'

The nuns put a sheepskin coat on her, and the three

women went down the stairs and simply walked out of the

convent gate, before the very eyes of all the Red Army

soldiers. They had not gone far when they heard the

commander shouting. 'Who just went out of the gate?

Who was let out?'

'We saw nobody,' answered the soldiers.

'What do you mean?' retorted the angry commander.

'Someone just left in a white sheepskin coat, accompanied

by two nuns.'

Before her martyr death several years later, Antonina

61

met the girl who had informed on her. She did not start

with words of rebuke, but said to her, 'I valued very much

the tears you shed when asking to be received as a nun in

the convent. It is very difficult to fake tears. They must

have come from a heart in whose depths there is a spark of

genuine love for Christ. You have been misused. You

were young, you did not know what you were doing. But

God did not only see you denounce me. He heard those

prayers which you said, in which not all was falsehood.

There may have been an occasional note of sincerity. God

will pity your soul; only repent.' There was so much

friendliness, spiritual beauty and complete lack of

resentment in the words of Abbess Antonina that the

girl's heart was pierced. She became a real believer in

Christ. Let us also learn to rebuke like this.

Holy nonsense

The Bridegroom says, 'Your cheeks are comely with rows

of jewels, your neck with chains of gold' (1:10). The

words 'of jewels' and 'of gold' have been added by the

translators to make sense of the Hebrew text. They are

not in the original. The authors of the Septuagint, who

were the first to translate the Old Testament into Greek,

also tried to make sense of the text and wrote, 'How

beautiful are your cheeks as the turtledove's.' But doves

have no cheeks! The Targum - the Aramaic

translation - renders it, 'Your cheeks are comely with

bridles.' What does all this mean?

We are prejudiced. We think that everything in the

Bible must make sense. If we don't find a meaning we

invent one. But not all the Bible consists of logical,

reasonable, purposeful thoughts. Much of it is the

expression of a wide gamut of feelings, of reactions to

62

events, or of impulse. Not all the Bible makes sense, and

life and the human mind have their nonsensical features

also. Nobody who fails to give nonsense a place can

mirror the whole of reality in his religious writings.

Depths of emotion cause lovers to talk a great deal of

nonsense. How much of it there is in the conversation of

Romeo and Juliet!

The simplest explanation is that Solomon wished to

compliment his bride; saying, 'Your cheeks are comely.'

They were so comely that instead of comparing them to

something he just kissed them. But then he wanted to

convey something more. He used the word batorim, which

can mean 'turtledoves' or possibly 'bridles'. And then,

instead of explaining himself further, he bestowed further

kisses.

Then he said, 'Your neck is chains.' What would he

have added? 'Of gold'? Or did he, perhaps, imagine his

bride with iron chains on her neck, bound to the poles or

stakes on which she was to be sacrificed by her captors?

Or did he see her chained like those unfortunate women

who were driven from Africa to America in slavery, with

iron chains round their necks? In any event, he did not

continue. Her neck was too comely for him to think of it

being so abused. He preferred to kiss it.

No life is complete without its nonsensical side. Let us

sanctify it.

God's jewels

The Bridegroom promises the bride, 'We will make you

borders of gold with studs of silver' (1:11). God is a lover

of beauty. He made his heavenly city of pure gold; its

gates of pearls; its foundations of costly stones. The places

where believers gathered for worship were to be beautiful

63

also, the religious services solemn. The individual

believer's soul must also have beauty, and this we can

obtain through faith. The human soul cannot ornament

herself. God is the one who ornaments and perfects her.

God die Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit

work at dais; dierefore die plural is used here: ' We will

make . . .'

God's jewels are unusual. Golden objects are normally

given studs of costly stones or platinum, which increase

their value. God gives them studs of silver, which

decrease it. He gives us spiritual truth - which is gold - in

the shape of simple human words, because odierwise we

could not wear it. He made the Eternal Word, his Son, to

have the body of an obedient servant, so that he could live

among us. He puts studs of die silver of humility in die

golden chains of the truth.

It is not always the most celebrated Christians - those

who have studs of diamonds in dieir chains of gold - who

are the best Christians. One of the best-known American

evangelists published a 'Ten-point plan for happiness'.

He started widi 'Love and be loved', forgetting that Jesus

said, 'You shall be hated for My name's sake.' The

evangelist went on: 'Guard your health.' How can you do

mat when you belong to the 60% of the world diat is

undernourished? He said: 'Keep a sense of humour.'

How can those who are being tortured for their faidi keep

their sense of humour? Again: 'Appreciate nature.' This

advice is given when many Christians are in underground

jails where they never see the sun.

But diere are odier, humble Christians whose chains of

gold have modest studs, perhaps of even less value than

silver ones. Their names are not well known in the world,

but they have proved to be heroes in times of great

tribulation.

It is reported from China diat a Christian in

Manchuria protested at the Communists' indiscriminate

killings. He was dragged into a people's court and

64

accused of crimes against the people. Then the judge

ordered those watching to march past him, beating him

with clubs until he died. But the people refused,

declaring, 'He is a good man.'

Changing tactics, the judge promised the man freedom

if he would renounce Jesus. 'Which do you choose,' he

demanded, 'Jesus Christ - or Communism?'

'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!' the Christian shouted back.

Then they took him to the riverbank for execution, and

on the way he sang 'Jesus loves me' and the twenty-third

Psalm set to Chinese music. He was shot in the back, but

instead of falling forward on his face to grovel in the dust

as victims usually do, he fell backwards, as if falling into

the arms of Jesus. Reportedly the entire community was

stirred by his testimony.2

The name of this martyr is unknown in the Free World.

He had lived in humility, and that is how he died. God so

ordered it that the beauty of his soul should not become

the object of human praise; but he is highly

God.

'My spikenard'

The bride says, 'While the king sits at his table, my

spikenard sends forth the smell thereof (1:12). When the

King enters the soul, the bride, like Mary of old, anoints

the feet of the Bridegroom with a pure nard of grateful-

ness and adoration, and the world is filled with the

perfume of the nard.

Nard or spikenard is made from a very small and

despised plant. The fragrance from this plant comes from

its root being trodden on or otherwise bruised. So, in the

Church, the spiritual nard spreads its perfume only when

it is bruised under the burden of the Cross.

65

The bride's spikenard sends forth its aroma only as

long as the King sits at his table. As soon as Jesus ceases to

be in your soul, the nard's fragrance disappears and the

believer can no longer bring the good aroma of God to the

world.

A Russian Orthodox priest named Dudko had been in

jail for eleven years because he had preached what is in

the Bible. His enemies nearly succeeded in killing him in

a faked car accident. He continued without fear.

A Russian Christian named Orlov was imprisoned for

his faith. He was fed on salted herrings and so would

become very thirsty. But his captors would allow him a

drink only eight hours later. Also he was not allowed to go

to the lavatory when he needed it. I myself have spent

fourteen years in Communist prisons, so I know what

terrible torture this.is. Treat yourself as he was treated,

for a few hours. Then you will know what your brothers

and sisters suffer.

The Russian Orthodox priest, Dudko, was re-arrested,

after a period of liberty. This time he cracked and denied

his convictions publicly on television. Orlov remained

steadfast. Yet not only Orlov, but Dudko also served

Christ! His sermons, and the books he wrote before he

broke, have remained; and they continue to spread die

perfume of Christ.

'A bundle -of myrrh'

The bride says, 'A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved

unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts' (1:13).

Every word in this verse is full of significance. The

Saviour is called, 'my well-beloved'. It has sometimes

been asked whether Christianity is compatible with one

political doctrine or another. Christianity is compatible

66

with nothing! For Juliet, nothing else counted except

Romeo. She never talked about anything else. He was die

Beloved, die only one. So, too, Jesus should be our only

Beloved.

It is remarkable that the bride says, 'A bundle of myrrh

is my beloved unto me.' No matter what Jesus might be for

others, die bride says what he is for her. The apostle

Thomas calls him 'My Lord and my God.' No matter

what he might be for others, for me he is Lord and God.

On one occasion the disciples told Jesus what men were

saying about him - diat he was John the Baptist, Elias,

Jeremias or one of the prophets. But then Simon Peter

added what Jesus was for him: 'You are the Christ, the

Son of the Iivng God' (Matdiew 16:14-16).

The bride calls Jesus 'a bundle of myrrh' - a bundle

rather than a single stalk, because she found in him a

multitude of qualities. There is no word in Hebrew for die

English 'face' in the singular. You can only say panim,

which means 'faces'. When the Bible says 'Seek die face

of God,' it does so only in our translations. How easily

believers of different Christian confessions would come to

peace with one anodier if Uiey would only realize that

each believer has seen just one of die many faces of God,

and that his brother has seen a different face! That is how

diey arrived at different convictions. The convictions do

not exclude one anodier. Jesus is a bundle of myrrh; and

it may be that die different confessions have each seen a

different stalk.

In Communist countries Christians of many confes-

sions suffer persecution. In Rumania the Orthodox

priest, Calciu, Pitaru, a Christian from the BreUiren

assembly, Traian Dorz, from the Army of the Lord, the

Pentecostal, Shamu, the Seventh-Day Adventist,

Dragomir and the Cadiolic priest Godo all suffered in

prisons and psychiatric asylums. They did not quarrel

widi one another diere. They knew that Jesus is for diem

a bundle of myrrh.

67

The bundle which the bride keeps between her breasts

is of myrrh, a plant with, a bitter taste. Even if he brings

her through fears and difficulties, she makes a place for

him between her breasts. In the Orient women used to

carry litle bags of perfume there. The bride has replaced

this bag with die sufferings he allows her to experience.

They are dear to her. Theirs is the fragrance she likes

best.

Between her breasts

She considers that the best place for the bundle of myrrh is

between her breasts. Well-educated men do not usually

speak or write easily about women's breasts. Some people

have been offended because this book uses erotic imagery.

Because of its erotic vocabulary the Song of Songs has been

greatly misused. Rabbi Akiba, who died around 135 AD,

cursed those who sang this song in taverns. It must have

been a common happening, or he would not have needed

to pronounce the curse. The Syrian dieologian, Theodore

of Mopsuestia in Cilicia (350-428), considered the Song of

Solomon a worldly, obscene poem without dignity,

allegedly written by King Solomon to defend his marriage

to an Egyptian. But the Fifth Ecumenical Synod of 553

condemned Theodore and all his writings. Later the

humanist theologian, Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563),

was forced to leave Geneva because he had called

Solomon's Song a worldly work. However, the Church has

always insisted that it is a holy book, and has explained it

allegorically.

We should not be offended at the mention of women's

breasts. I can see no reason why the Creator of the breasts

of women should not inspire a biblical author to write

about diem! The breasts are the prominent part of a

68

woman's body. Jesus finds his rest between a believer's

most prominent virtues. He expects all his disciples to be

prominent in some way. He asks them, 'What do you do

more than others?' (Matthew 5:47). Millions said of the

works of Jesus, 'Never have such things been seen.'

'Never man spoke like this man' (John 7:46). It should be

possible to say the same of us. We must be prominent

through fearless self-sacrifice, offering our own lives for

the salvation even of our worst enemies. We must risk our

lives even for the wicked, we must put them at stake in

order to do any good at all.

We will see at the end of the Song the concern

expressed by the believers over the fact that they have a

little sister who has no breasts. They ask themselves,

'What shall we do for our sister?' (8:8). Pastors of

churches must be preoccupied about souls that do not

become prominent through a gift. God speaks with

satisfaction of the virgin of Israel, saying of her, 'Your

breasts are fashioned' (Ezekiel 16:7). This means, in

spiritual language, 'You have become remarkable

through exceptional deeds.' Exceptional deeds are a

pleasant resting place for God in a human soul.

The words 'all night' in verse 13 in the Authorized

Version do not exist in the Hebrew. The correct text is,

'He shall lie between my breasts' - period. Read it

again- it could not say 'all night'. Where he is, there is

no night.

'A cluster of camphire'

The bride says, 'My beloved is unto me as a cluster of

camphire in the vineyards of En-gedi' (1:14). Camphire is

a kind of perfume reminiscent of the perfume of the

grapes of En-gedi. It is interesting that the name of the

69

plant, kopher, is also the Hebrew word for 'atonement*.

The Jews used to give the name 'cluster' to men who

possessed all the virtues and all the excellences.

The Jewish teachers in ancient times divided the first

word in the expression, Eshkol kopher, 'a cluster of

camphire,' so arriving at Ish kol kopher, 'a man who covers

all', or 'atones for all' - a fitting name for the Messiah.

The most costly perfume which Jesus spreads about him is

the fragrance of atonement for all sins through his

sacrifice.

The author of the Song of Songs, contemplating the

Saviour, remembers the vineyards of the En-gedi region.

In Hebrew En-gedi means 'the source of the goats'. The

region was so called because many wild goats lived in it. It

was the region to which Solomon's father, King David,

took flight when fleeing from his rival Saul, who pursued

him to En-gedi but fell into die hands of David. It would

have been easy for the latter to have taken revenge, but he

forgave his adversary. When Solomon, David's talented

son, reached maturity, a sentiment of piety led him to

visit various historic scenes of his father's miraculous rise

from the position of a shepherd to that of a glorious king

of Israel.

A serpentine route descends with difficulty from the

Judean deserts to this land through rocks and stones,

eventually arriving at a little river which makes its way to

the Dead Sea amidst rich vegetation and beautiful

vineyards. David the fugitive would have refreshed

himself witfi these grapes. Recalling his visit there,

Solomon puts in the mouth of the bride a comparison

between die Saviour and a grape of En-gedi. He also

refreshes and gladdens the heart, and gives new life to the

oppressed and persecuted of this world.

Jesus warned his disciples, 'They will persecute you'

(John 16:20). In this respect we all share King David's

fate and we all need the comfort of the Saviour. Fifteen

Roman emperors strove to eradicate the Christian faith

70

from the world, using torture to intimidate the believers.

Tender maidens and children received atrocious

treatment.

Saint Agnes and Saint Priscilla, both thirteen years old,

were torn by metal hooks, roasted on grills and crowned

with red-hot helmets. In the persecution by Diocletian,

17,000 Christians were slain in a single month. In Egypt

alone 144,000 of them were put to death and another

700,000 sent into exile. The total death toll reached

11,000,000, which means 30,000 a day.

But the extent of the slaughter did not bring panic to

those Christians who survived, because they had the

comfort of the vineyards of En-gedi, just as persecuted

David had. Amidst the torment they retained their joy

and their calm, so that Augustine wrote, 'Every one of

them seemed to be two people-one, somebody who

suffers greatly, and also somebody who speaks words of

gladness, of wisdom and of praising the Lord.' This is

why the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the

Church; it caused the Church to grow.

In the sixteenth century hundreds of Christians in

Japan died for their faith. Some were roasted over slow

fires or cut to pieces. Others had their flesh torn with

pincers. The necks of some were sawed through, little by

little, over a period of a week, until they finally died.

Others were buried alive or were frozen to death. But all

these, too, enjoyed the grapes of the mystical vineyards of

En-gedi.

While she was being buried alive, the Japanese

Christian Tecla, held a three-year-old girl in her arms and

encouraged her to meet death with the hope of paradise.

A boy of nine opened his collar himself to offer his neck to

the guillotine. A boy of five, woken from sleep by the

executioner's henchmen, proudly dressed in his finest

clothes and was carried in the executioner's arms to the

place of death; he also offered his head to the beheading

block.

71

No Christian is alone during his tribulation; no-one is

left without comfort. Just before Betty and John Stam

were captured to face martyrdom at the hands of

Communist soldiers in the Anwhei Province of Red

China, John Stam wrote to his father: 'We're now in

dangerous territory, but we're not afraid. The enclosed

poem exactly expresses our feelings.' The poem was by

E.U.G. Hamilton, written at the time of the martyrdom

in China of the missionary Vinson:

Afraid? Of what?

To feel the spirit's glad release?

To pass from strain to -perfect peace,

The strife and strain of life to cease?

Afraid - of that?

Afraid? Of what?

Afraid to see the Saviour's face,

To hear His welcome, and to trace,

The glory beam from wounds of grace?

Afraid - of that?

Afraid? Of what?

A flash - a crash - a pierced heart;

Darkness - light - Oh, Heaven's art!

A wound of His a counterpart/

Afraid-of that?

'Doves* eyes'

The Bridegroom says, 'Behold, you are fair, my love, you

are fair,' you have doves' eyes' (1:15). How strange is our

relationship with our Bridegroom. Usually brides think of

themselves as beautiful. Not the bride of Jesus. She says

72

about herself, 'I am black, I did not keep the vineyards of

my beauty.' In our union, it is the Bridegroom who

convinces us that we are beautiful. He tells us, 'Behold,

you are fair, my love; behold, you are fair.'

If he considers my soul to be beautiful, why should I

worry about him ever rejecting me? We are beloved by

him for our beauty. Holiness is always beautiful. Because

of it we are beloved, even when we are greatly tempted,

even if for a time we fall. Even if all men forsake us, we

will be loved by him to the very end. He says, 'Behold,

you are fair.' The bride is inclined to brood upon her

blackness. He wishes us to know ourselves as he sees

us - as beautiful. Humility is good only if it is a balanced

humility. To overcome any doubt in us, he repeats

himself: 'You are fair . . . you are fair.'

The attributes in us which especially attract Jesus are

our doves' eyes. He said, '//"... your eye is clear, your

whole body shall be full of light' (Matthew 6:22).

Whoever has clean eyes will be beloved by Jesus. The eyes

should not even look towards evil; they should not be

attracted by sin. They should betray no lust; they should

not see the straw in someone else's eyes. They should be

open to the glory of God and to the heavenly beauties.

The bride has doves' eyes. Doves are chaste and faithful

to their mates.

Oleg Miliutin, a Russian Orthodox, was six times com-

mitted to psychiatric institutions for openly declaring his

Christian faith. He was gagged and beaten and put in a

straight-jacket. He did not yield.

Khrapov, of the underground Soviet Baptist Church,

resumed his evangelistic work after twenty years'

confinement. A second eight-year term of imprisonment

followed and then another. He died in jail, as an unbroken

child of God, having spent a total of thirty-four years

suffering for Christ. For a time he had led the underground

Baptist Church while in hiding. Then he wrote a book

which has the amazing tide, The Happiness of a Sacrificed Life.

73

He had doves' eyes. He had no bitter words for

torturers or traitors. He looked on life with good eyes.

There are so many beautiful things to think about, and his

book speaks about them. Christ loves such souls greatly.

Not only the eyes but also the whole nature of the

faithful soul is that of a dove. A dove will not sit on the

green branch, will not drink fresh water, will not seek

shade and will avoid the company of other birds until it

finds its companion. So also is the bride of Christ, so long

as she is separated from her Bridegroom.

On the green bed or in the house

The bride says, 'Behold, you are fair, my beloved, yea,

pleasant: also our bed is green.' The Bridegroom replies,

'The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir'

(1:16-17). The bride, inebriated with happiness because

of the loving words which have been spoken to her, says,

'You are fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant.' He is fair and

pleasant. Many males are handsome but not pleasant;

many are pleasant but not handsome. Jesus has both

qualities.

Then she invites him, saying, 'Our bed is green.' In

the midst of nature, among the blooming of lilies and the

chirping of birds, upon the green grass which is a witness

to the care of God towards his creatures, there the faith-

ful soul wishes to give Jesus her love. She calls the bed,

'our bed', and he will call the house, 'our house'.

Between the bride and Jesus there is a community of

goods - everything which is hers is his; everything which

is his is hers.

The people of Israel knew Solomon's Song, but when

Jesus once commanded them to sit on the grass, they did

not remember the Scripture. They ate on the grass; their

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hunger was satisfied; but they did not give him their love.

At picnics today on the green grass there's plenty to eat

and drink and we too fail to give him our love.

The Bridegroom puts forward an alternative to the

green bed. The house of cedar wood is durable and does

not rot. The rafters there are of fir, a fine wood used in

palaces. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus invites those

who belong to him to enter into the closet (Matthew 6:6).

There, in quiet, we shall enjoy the love of God.

Christians can enjoy communion with him not only in

nice homes, but also in prison cells. A Soviet prisoner

wrote:

When I entered jail, in mockery I was given gigantic

shoes and clothes twice my size. The sleeves reached

my knees. I looked like a clown or scarecrow. When I

entered the barracks, the criminals, incited by the camp

commander, greeted me with laughter and ridicule.

A prisoner bowed, in fake piety. 'I greet you, holy

Father; you are the ambassador of Christ Himself. Do

you represent the interests of heaven?'

The mocking words gave me courage. Forgetting

how I looked, I told them I indeed represented heaven,

for which the atheists imprisoned me. While preaching

to those despising sinners, the sermon affected me too.

I wanted to embrace them for having reminded me of

my high calling.

Many fear suffering. In the past I, too, feared. But

the presence of the Lord in jail has given me so many

happy experiences that I would not have changed them

for years of easy living in freedom.

This man has known the discreet embraces of Jesus not in

a house of cedar wood, but in a Communist prison cell.

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~ Chapter 2 ~

Before going on to the second chapter, there are a few

general considerations to be made concerning Solomon's

Song. Origen, who died around 253 AD, really began the

Christian allegorical interpretation of this book. Later a

Mariological interpretation was devised by Ambrose

(339-397), in which the bride of the Song was considered

to be prophetic of Mary. From then on, commentaries

either chose between these two possibilities or combined

them.

As I have already said, the Church took very harsh

action against those who considered the Song of Songs to

be an ordinary worldly book. The Song contains not only

religious teaching but also a very simple human message.

Any young man who cannot love a girl wholeheartedly,

and any girl who cannot love a man passionately, is not

yet ready to be a marriage partner. And with such an

attitude they will not be able to properly love their friends,

their parents or their children.

The Song teaches a healthy attitude towards sex.

Whoever is ashamed to think about sex ought also to be

ashamed of the woman who gave him or her birth or of

the child whom he fadiers or the babe to whom she gives

birth. Most of all, such people ought to be ashamed of

their own sexuality. There is nothing wrong in sexual life,

just as there is nothing wrong in any bodily function.

Jesus had a body with all the organs and instincts we

have, only he was never dominated by sin. God has

ordained sexual life; he wills that there should be love

between the sexes. The Zohar says: 'Sexual pleasure with

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your wife is a religious pleasure, and one which gives joy

to God, too. Performed with gladness, the religious duty

of conjugal intercourse, in the presence of God's glory [the

Shekinah], gladdens your wife for the sake of the honour of

the heavenly partner.'

We should not be offended that there is so much carnal

love in the Song of Solomon. The body as well as the soul

is created after the image of God. Our creed says that the

body will be resurrected as well as the soul. Orthodox

mystics speak about 'the holy flesh', because the flesh will

have a part in resurrection. Jesus loved not only the souls

of men, but their flesh too. Why should he not speak of the

bodily charms of his bride? Justin the Martyr wrote, 'If

the flesh were to be useless, why did Christ heal it? Why

did He resurrect the dead? When He resurrected Lazarus

and the young man in Nain and the young girl, He

resurrected them soul and body.'

Solomon wrote 1,005 songs (1 Kings 5:12). Only one

has remained; it is probably the most beautiful. Film

actors often perform before the cameras for six or seven

hours a day to produce only two or three minutes of film.

Very little of what we produce in life is of high value and

will endure, but it is worthwhile to write a thousand songs

in order that one might be a masterpiece. We witness to

many about Christ; we do many works for his kingdom.

Very few of these activities have any lasting result. But

those few are worth all the effort.

A carpenter witnessed to me about Christ. He died

knowing that he had brought only my wife and me to faith.

But we brought others to Christ; those, again, brought

others; those again, others. The result is that there are

now Hebrew Christian churches in Haifa, Tel-Aviv and

Jerusalem which have as their true founder that carpenter.

He witnessed to many without result, but he brought one

to Christ who brought others, and those others brought,

others. Some of them became interested in helping the

persecuted Christians in Communist countries. That is

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how a Christian mission to the Communist world began.

A little-known preacher, Mordecai Ham, brought to

Christ a young boy whose name was Billy Graham. Billy

Graham in his turn brought thousands upon thousands to

Christ. Mordecai Ham may have witnessed to many

people. He may not have had big results. But one of those

won by him was exceptional. He was Ham's Song of

Songs. I would encourage you to write many songs. One

of them will be your Song of Songs.

Finally, we should note that in the Song, the

Bridegroom is sometimes called a king, and the bride a

queen. Sometimes he is a shepherd; sometimes they are

workers in the vineyard. Sometimes they are in a palace;

sometimes in the field. This teaches that people of all social

classes are called to participate in spiritual life at the

highest level.

'I am the rose of Sharon'(2:l)

Jewish commentators agree that the subject of these words

is God's chosen people. Christian commentators are

divided; some attribute them to the Saviour, others to the

Church. What good does the debate achieve?

Only one reality exists: Godhead, which for the sake of

expediency we divide into a 'He' and an 'I*. Pronouns

have no place in real religious life. They are only for

everyday usage. Jeremiah writes, 'This is his name

whereby he shall be called, The Lord Our Righteousness'

(Jeremiah 23:6). But he also writes, 'And this is the name

wherewith she shall be called, The Lord Our

Righteousness' (Jeremiah 33:16). Who is 'Jehovah our

Righteousness?' Is it God? Is it his Church? Foolish

questions. When we sit with the Father and the Son on His

throne as it is promised to us (Revelation 3:21), who will

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be able to make a distinction then?

Nothing in the Hebrew corresponds to the 'am' in the

words 'I am*. The verb 'to be' is little used in Hebrew. To

understand what that means, one has to try to read the

Song of Songs omitting words such as 'have', 'has', 'am',

'is', and 'are'.

Nothing 'is'; everything changes. Heraclitus said,

'Nobody can bathe twice in the same river.' Neither can

anybody say of Jesus what he is. 'He has no form' (Isaiah

53:2). The rose of Sharon evokes him - but so do a lamb, a

shepherd, the lion of Judah, a piece of bread in

Communion. He is king, judge, high priest, victim,

bridegroom, vine, brother.

The removal of the word 'is' from one's religious

vocabulary saves one from the sin of judging. Nobody is

only a bad man or a criminal, just as nobody is only a

dentist. The dentist is also a father or mother; a Briton or

Indian; a twentieth-century person; a Christian or

Buddhist; a Socialist or Conservative; a virtuous or bad

man, and so on. The word 'is' fixes a person to a single

attribute. Life is not like that. No crook is only a crook. He

can also be a man full of remorse, an incipient saint. No

apostle is only an apostle; he can also be a lover of money, a

trait which will transform him into a Judas. Hebrew, the

language of Solomon's Song teaches us to think without

the verb'tobe'.

The flowers

'I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys' (2.1)

Jesus compares himself to flowers. He also compares his

bride to a lily (verse 2). He says that he is like a rose. The

rose is distinguished from all other flowers by the fact that

it blooms in different climates and different soils. So Jesus

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is present in many countries, in many climates, in liberty

and in persecution, in poverty and in abundance, in

sickness and in health.

Roses exist in a great many colours - white, pink,

purple, violet, black. The souls who reflect Jesus are also

very different, and belong to different religious

denominations. Only blue roses, having the colour of

heaven, do not exist. So we do not have to be excessively

sad about the fact that we are not yet fully heavenly! There

has never yet been a blue rose. Let us strive onward,

without despairing because of our weakness.

To the Greeks, the rose was a plant of love, consecrated

to the goddess Venus. Comparing himself to just such a

rose, Jesus is telling us that he is a lover.

The Hebrew word translated 'lily' is havatzelet. This is a

particular flower called by botanists colchicum autumnale or

filius ante patron ('the son before the father') because it has

the distinctive characteristic of blossoming before its leaves

appear. The havatzelet is a symbol of men whose character

is the opposite of those Jesus meant when he cursed the fig-

tree which had rich foliage but no fruit. Those men are

hypocrites, having much self-advertisement and an

appearance of religion, but without its love and joy. Jesus

is filius ante patrem. With him, and with those who belong to

him, the fruits come first and the leaves afterwards.

Havatzelet is a flower which you find in Israel at every

step; a flower without much outward beauty; a fitting

symbol for the one who came into this world having

divested himself of his divinity, living as a humble servant.

The saints of God are also humble like Jesus, without

added ornamentation. They are also like havatzelet.

The Christian Mission to the Communist World

operates in Red China. Its co-workers there accept only

used clothing and minimal salaries. They explain:

'Otherwise, we might become attached to things.' One of

them spent many years in jail working ten hours a day

barefoot in an iron mine, because she had written music

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for the Gospel of Luke. I heard a tape of her first song after

she was released from jail. It was like hearing an angel's

song. Now she gathers 300 ladies together every Sunday.

The leader of the Underground Church in that region

sometimes covers 800 miles by bicycle to visit all the

groups. But these Christians do not wish their names to be

made known, and they refuse every small amenity of life.

They accept only the simplest things.

Shir-Hashirim-Rabba, an old Jewish commentary on the

Song of Songs, explains Jesus' comparisonof himself with

a lily of the valleys thus: 'As the lily withers when it is

burned by the sun, but flourishes when it is wetted by the

dew, the same Israel withers, as long as it lives in the

shadow of Esau; but in the future world when the shadow

of Esau will have disappeared, it will be full of sap.' Hosea

writes, 'I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the

lily' (Hosea 14:5).

Pliny says of the lily, 'It has a weak body which is not

adequate to bear the weight of the head. ' In the same way,

the Church is slender and weak. Christ is too big for her.

He has to bend like the head of the lily because of this.

Jesus tells us he is 'the lily of the valleys'. I myself have

had a beautiful encounter with him in the deep valleys of

suffering. When I was in solitary confinement in a

Communist prison, without a Bible, I prayed that the

Lord might speak to me directly. Then I heard his voice

asking me, 'What is your name?' I had always known that

my name was Richard. But I could not say this to Jesus,

because I knew about another man who had borne this

name.

Saint Richard was a Christian who lived in times of

persecution. He was sentenced to death for his faith. When

he was on the gallows, the hangman had some difficulty

fixing the noose of the rope. Richard bowed. 'I am a

farmer, and skilled in these matters,' he said gently.

'Please allow me to help you'. The hangman responded

courteously and allowed Richard to attend to it.

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After fixing the noose he thanked the executioner for his

kindness, assured him that he bore him no grudge, and so

died.

I did not have the courage to tell Jesus I bore the name of

such a saint, because I was so unlike him.

We all bear beautiful names, names as Mary, Paul or

John, of which we are not worthy because we are not

immaculate, zealous or loving like those who bore those

names before us. So I bowed before Jesus and said, 'I have

no name. I long to bear yours.' To renounce the self and

allow Christ to be your personality is the secret of a

victorious life.

Jesus does not put such questions to you, nor does he stir

you up to see their seriousness, except in deep valleys; and

it is only in deep valleys that he unites himself with you to

take your place, so that you in your turn might become a

lily, even as he is.

Thorns and daughters

The Bridegroom says, 'As the lily among thorns, so is my

love among the daughters' (2:2). God and his people pay

each other the most beautiful compliments. Israel tells his

Creator: 'Who is like unto you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises,

doing wonders?' (Exodus 15:11). Here God tells Israel

that in his eyes she is a beautiful flower. He does not

compare her to the rose which has thorns, but only to the

lily which has none. Most souls are like thorns, without

value or use. They prick, like the thorns in Jesus' crown.

In the end, they will be burned. But not all souls persist in

evil; amid the thorns there are roses.

The Bridegroom has among the girls one who is his own

beloved; and, just as when he was crucified on Golgotha

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near a garden, the flowers remained faithful to him,

sending their perfume to the cross to refresh him, so now

the lily-shaped soul of his bride is his comfort and his

source of strength.

Beautiful as lilies

Jesus teaches us to look closely at spiritual believers, and

learn from them. He said in the Sermon on the Mount,

'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,

neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even

Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these'

(Matthew 6:28-29). Those who have the happiness of find

ing teachers whom God sends, grow beautifully; the

teachers' own secret consists of 'feeding the kids beside the

shepherds' tents' (1:8). The Scripture says that Jesus has

given some to be our bishops; others, pastors; others, evangel-

ists; others, teachers who will help us to grow in all respects.

They give us to be 'in Jesus'. In Him, the whole building of the

Church grows to become a holy temple of God.

Christians who suffer in Communist prisons for the

Holy Faith are examples of how we ought to live and are

good teachers for us. A Christian named V. Petkus, was

tried in a Communist court in Soviet Lithuania. No friend

was allowed to attend. Petkus refused to take any part in

the trial. Guards had to drag him forcibly into the

courtroom. He would not accept an attorney and would

not speak a single word in his own defence (neither would

I, when I stood trial). The charge which was manufactured

against him was a base one. Like Joseph in the Old

Testament who was, though innocent, sent to jail under

the accusation of attempted rape, so Petkus was charged

with homosexuality because he gathered young men

together in his home to teach them the faith.

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We have not become like the lilies yet; therefore we

protest loudly whenever the slightest harsh word is said

against us. On the other hand, Petkus was happy because

Jesus loved him, Jesus knew him, Jesus appreciated him.

He did not say one single word to prove that what was said

about him by evil men was untrue.

It is a habit of the Communists to invent numerous

charges against believers. Sister Arbutenko was charged

with ritual murder; Solzhenitsyn, with incest; the

Bulgarian Pentecostal pastors Ladin and Haralan Popov,

with counter-revolutionary spying activities and the arrest

of Communists under the old regime. The Hungarian

Cardinal Mindszenty had allegedly speculated in foreign

currency -1, too, was accused of similar crimes. A group

of Baptists in Russia received jail sentences because it was

claimed that they had plotted to spread disease among the

population by baptising people in the same river, giving

Communion with the same cup and giving each other the

holy kiss.

Although fools may have believed such accusations

spread by evil men, the lily-shaped saints did not defend

themselves. Their purity spoke for itself. Those who knew

Brother Petkus said as much before the court: 'We know

him to be a good Christian and an honest man. We have

nothing else to declare. We believe like him, and have

done the same things. If they are considered wrong, we too

should be prisoners like him.' They answered no

questions. Outside, many young people sang for hours in

the street. Petkus was sentenced to ten years of prison, plus

five years of deprivation.

Under his shadow

The bride says, 'As the apple tree among the trees of the

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wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under

his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to

my taste' (2:3). We desire to sit down under his shadow.

When it is very hot, one finds great comfort in sitting in

the shadow of a tree. The angel told the virgin, 'the power

of the Highest shall overshadow thee' (Luke 1:35). She,

too must have sat in this shadow with great delight. At the

time of the apostles, it was a great privilege for men that

the shadow of Peter should pass over them because they

were healed by it. Similarly it is happiness for us to sit in

the shadow of Jesus, especially in the shadow of Golgotha,

where he obtained for us the forgiveness of our sins by

dying for us.

It is said of St Jerome that he always studied and wrote

in the shadow of a large cross. Once he was asked why he

did so. He replied, 'This tree of life gives me a shadow

which shades me from all evil; it gives me fruit to

strengthen me in everything which is good. I desire to

spend my whole life in its shadow, and Ilong that its fruit

should always nourish my soul.'

The important thing is that one should not push oneself

to the fore. The Virgin, when overshadowed by the Holy

Spirit, remained in the shadows. Most martyrs for Christ

remain in the shadows. They are anonymous. Their

names will never be known on earth.

Frankfurter Allgemeine, the West German newspaper,

announced on 17 October 1978 that in Ethiopia,

Communists sew up the eyes of Christian prisoners or

gouge them out. It might well be expected that in such

extremities of terror, every Christian activity would cease.

In the Free World, the slightest setback is sometimes

enough to discourage us from church activity. How much

more then, in situations of fear, where the flesh recoils

before the prospect of appalling pain or death under

torture, might one expect the Christians to give up.

However, in Ethiopia just the reverse happened.

Christians whose names are unknown to anybody in the

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Free World - who remain in the shadows so that Jesus

might shine-are busy with Bible distribution as never

before. They spread the Scriptures, knowing that they

might be dipped in burning oil as a result of doing so.

Let us, also, sit down in the shadow of the apple tree.

There we will see that its fruit which represents the Word

of God, is sweet to our taste. As Psalm 119:103 says, 'How

sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than

honey to my mouth!'

The banqueting house

The bride says, 'He brought me to the banqueting house,

and his banner over me was love' (2:4). The Church is a

banqueting house. God brings us into this happy place,

into which we would not otherwise have come. The soul

which was satisfied to sit quietly in his shadow is now

brought to greater joys. In his banqueting house we will

know what it means to become inebriated with his love. He

has prepared for us not merely meals but banquets, with

meat, milk and wines available without payment.

The great mystics and saints can be our guides towards

this banqueting house. Their examples teach us that,

when the Holy Spirit enters into a heart and there for the

first time ignites the fire of love, that fire gives birth to an

insatiable thirst. Then the believer says, 'As the hart pants

after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee, O God'

(Psalm 42:1). As the hart's thirst is even greater when

pursued, so is the believer's thirst for God under

temptation. The thirsty hart plunges his whole body into

the water and drinks his fill; we must eat and drink our fill

in God's banqueting house.

St John of the Cross wrote, 'May we forget about

ourselves. When we are intoxicated by his presence, we

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will feel that we can do miracles, that we can pass through

fire and water, and that we can remain unafraid when

thousands of swords are drawn against us. By his grace, we

won't fear anymore - neither life nor death, joy nor

sorrow. We will be drunk with faith.

This is called 'jubilation'. Sometimes you smile,

sometimes you weep, and sometimes you sing. Those

rational people who have no idea what the Holy Spirit does

with those who belong to him ask, 'How can you be so

mad?' Our reply is, 'God has permitted us to drink in his

banqueting house!' But they cannot understand such a

thing. The soul who has been in God's banqueting house

knows unspeakable joy. He rejoices even for the pain he

must endure. Whatever is done to him, however well or ill

he fares, he is always peaceful and joyous. Rivers of living

water flow from his heart. ' Saint John of the Cross sang:

I drank from my well-beloved

and when I walked out,

I knew nothing more

of this whole field;

and I had lost the flock

which I had followed before.

My soul has put itself,

with all its resources,

into His service.

Now I have no flock anymore;

I have no duties anymore

Because my whole duty consists in loving.

The banner of love

As conquerors hoist their flag over conquered cities, Jesus

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hoists his flag over the souls he has conquered. It is a

unique flag, a flag of love. ' His banner over us is love. ' It is

a persistent, unvarying love. He longs to see this love

expressed in the way we behave towards one another.

The famous Egyptian hermit, St Macarius, once asked

God what degree of holiness he had attained after several

years of fasting, prayer, solitude and sacrifice. He fell

asleep, and an angel appeared to him and told him that he

was still far from having reached the degree of holiness

which had been attained by a certain pair of women, and

that he should learn from them a better way.

Macarius went into town and found the women. They

were not nuns; just ordinary housewives. 'What is the

secret of your holiness?' he asked them. They wondered at

the question. They were very busy caring for their

husbands and their several children. They had little time

to pray. Because of the amount of work they had to do,

they often missed church. They were illiterate and so could

not read Holy Scripture. They were simple-minded and

could not meditate much. They were as they described

themselves: 'poor wives amidst constant worldly cares'.

Macarius continued to make enquiries about them and

discovered that they were married to two brothers. They

lived together under the same roof, not once quarrelling,

or permitting harsh words to pass between them. From

this St Macarius learned that living together in love,

passing through all frictions without ever saying a harsh

word or throwing a harsh look, can be more grace worthy

in the eyes of God than a great deal of fasting and prayer.

The banner over us is love.

In the Jilava prison in Rumania, several prisoners were

put naked into a cell without beds, without blankets and

without a barrel to serve as a lavatory. They were never

allowed to leave their cell to fulfil their bodily needs.

Imagine passing the night, completely naked, in such a

stinking cell.

One of the prisoners was sick with pulmonary

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tuberculosis. Late one night, he could not bear to stand on

his feet any longer. He fell, and would have frozen to death

on the cold concrete, had not the Christian Mircea

Vulcanescu, used all his powers of persuasion to convince

the sick man that he, Vulcanescu, was perfectly healthy.

Therefore he would stretch himself out on the concrete and

the sick man would then be able to seat himself on his body

and have the protection of his bodily warmth.

Vulcanescu's insistence was so great that the sick man

could not resist indefinitely, and he accepted. Vulcanescu

remained stretched out naked on the concrete while the

sick man slept for a few hours. He too fell asleep. When

they awoke, Vulcanescu was almost frozen. The other

prisoners had spent the entire night moving around

without sitting on the concrete. Vulcanescu contracted

pulmonary tuberculosis himself. Soon after this he died,

but he demonstrated that the Saviour's banner over us is

love.

In Florence, in Italy, the Red Brigade leader Furbelone

planned a bank robbery-what the Brigade terms an

'expropriation'. Two revolutionaries disguised as

policemen stood at the entrance to the building, while two

others entered to force the teller to give up the money. A

car with a false licence number waited in front of the bank

to ensure the escape. Furbelone himself, disguised as a

beggar, sat on the steps of the Santa Maria Church

opposite the bank, from which post he was to give the

signals controlling the operation.

Just as he was about to signal the start of the robbery, a

little girl at her mother's side, on her way to school,

ascended the steps for a short prayer. Seeing the beggar,

she took her lunch out of her bag, broke off a part for

herself, and gave him the remainder.

Irritated by this interruption in his plans, Furbelone

intended to push the girl aside. But all at once he was

struck by the thought: This is a human being who looks

upon me with love, who considers me honest and wordiy

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of esteem. Instead of giving the signal to start the robbery,

the notorious terrorist took the sandwich from the smiling

girl and entered the church with her. His criminal life was

over.

A man does not lack possessions if he gives to the poor.

This little girl obtained the double blessing of bringing a

soul to Christ and of stopping a serious crime.

'Comfort me'

The bride says, 'Stay me with flagons, comfort me with

apples: for I am sick of love' (2:5). The bride must be

strengthened to bear the embraces of the Bridegroom. The

archangel Gabriel said to the Holy Virgin, 'The power of

the Highest shall overshadow you' (Luke 1:35), in order

that she might bear the descent of the Holy Spirit upon

her. It is written of John the Baptist that he would walk

before the Saviour in the Spirit and in the power of Elijah.

So we can see that we must be empowered to bear spiritual

love. Showers of blessing are not easily borne.

Ezekiel says, 'The Spirit entered into me and set me

upon my feet' (3:24). Saint Ephrem knew such jubilation

that he cried, 'God, take your hand away from me for a

little, because my heart is too weak to bear such a joy. '

Saint Peter, when he saw Jesus work a miracle, fell at his

feet saying, 'Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O

Lord' (Luke 5:8). A sinful man has not the power to

witness the beautiful magnificence of the Lord. We who

know his embraces need power. Those who pass through

great suffering for his sake need power too.

In Maputo in Mozambique many Christians were

jailed. Some were natives, others were from Zimbabwe,

South Africa, Portugal and America. The torturer

Karonga used to torment the prisoners in the following

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way. He ordered his soldiers to tie the hands of the

prisoner tightly behind his back with string. His arms

were wrenched up to the height of his chest, and then tied

in such a way that if he moved at all the string would cut

cruelly into his flesh. For a few minutes the prisoner sat in

agony, and then the soldiers poured water into his gaping

wounds and rubbed salt into them. The prisoner would

roll about on the ground in absolute torment. The other

prisoners were forced to sit nearby and watch. No-one

was allowed to go to the victim's aid.

Prisoners were almost eaten alive by mosquitoes, lice

and bedbugs. They had to work as slaves in labour

camps with only three or four hours for proper sleep.

Girls were raped. Sometimes prisoners were unable to

wash for a month. When they insisted on being allowed

to wash they were taken to a river that was full of

crocodiles. There the Communists forced some of the

men into the water.

In the prisons of Mozambique, we have brothers and

sisters who are spreadeagled on the ground and beaten,

or hung from trees by their feet. Many die from

exhaustion, tetanus and snake bites. Without strength

from God, they could not bear these tortures for his

sake. Without strength from on high, they could not

bear his embraces either.

The bride is sick of love. Her love is passionate. In the

Orient, the sickness of love is much more widespread than

in Europe or America. It is written of David's son,

Amnon, diat 'he fell sick for his sister Tamar' (2 Samuel

13:2). Men can die from this sickness. The bride asks to be

stayed with flagons, a kind of pie made of the grapes which

have had the juice pressed out of them. These flagons were

usually brought as offerings to Ishtar, the Babylonian

goddess of love. The bride also asks to be strengthened

with apples. But she will soon discover that the sickness of

love cannot be cured with pressed grapes or apples. It can

only be cured by the presence of the Most Beloved. Our

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thirst for Jesus is not quenched but merely soothed by his

gifts which are a foretaste of the happiness we will possess

in his presence in heaven.

Don't envy the bride

We become jealous when we hear of somebody having

such love as the bride's, which is so passionate that it even

makes her ill. But not everyone has to have such a richness

of feeling, with which also comes great responsibilities.

Men are of different types. With some, the power of

reasoning predominates; with others, the imaginative

faculty. One will have little judgement but rich

imaginative powers; another, the gift of penetrating

intellect but cold emotions. It is wrong to envy what

another possesses. We must consecrate to God the gifts

that we possess. The Lord accepts various attitudes.

Pastor Son was imprisoned in Korea during the

Japanese occupation. A guard wanted to help him, and

told the prosecutor, who was questioning the pastor, 'He

performs the rites at the Shinto shrines faithfully.' (The

Japanese had imposed on the Korean people the obligation

to bow before the image of the emperor at these shrines;

they considered him to be the god of all the earth.)

If Pastor Son had only kept silent, he would have been

freed. But he contradicted the guard. 'That is not so', he

said. 'I have never taken part in shrine worship.'

The prosecutor was perplexed. 'It has been nearly three

years since you've seen your family. Don't you want to see

them? Will you not give up your obstinate ideas?'

Pastor Son replied, 'I can't give up my faith.'

'Haven't three years of suffering made any difference to

you at all?'

'A Christian faith grows stronger through suffering,'

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replied the pastor. 'So it has done me good to be in prison.

I do not mind what happens. If I return home, Christ will

be with me; and if I stay in prison, he will still be with me.'

Pastor Son's was one possible attitude in the circum-

stances - the attitude of a perfect lover of Jesus. On the

other hand, other Christians used their reasoning powers

and by giving clever answers tried to escape suffering if

possible.

During World War II, Protestant Christians were

greatly persecuted in Rumania, which was under Nazi

domination. A preacher was brought before the police

inspector. 'Do you preach love?' he asked.

The Christian replied, 'I do.'

'Do you also preach that one should love one's enemies?'

'Indeed I do. That is the teaching of Jesus.'

And now came the big question. 'Then do you also love

the soldiers of the Soviet army?'

The preacher knew that if he answered 'Yes', when the

Soviet army was fighting against Rumania, it would mean

certain imprisonment. So he answered: 'How can you ask

me whether I love the Soviet army? Our country is at war

with them.'

The police inspector was very pleased. He said, 'You

are a real patriot.'

During the War the services of Baptists, Adventists,

Pentecostals and other denominations were forbidden in

Rumania. A Christian was asked by a police inspector,

'Do you still gather for worship?' He replied, 'Christian

gatherings are forbidden now. '

The inspector shook him by the hand, saying 'I am

happy that you are a law-abiding citizen.'

Such Christians had not stood up clearly for the truth;

neither had they told a lie. They simply used a trick, and they

succeeded. Some used stratagems determined by reason,

whereas the attitudes of some were dictated only by passion-

ate love. In no circumstances would the latter compromise.

Passionate love is not the only possibile attitude towards

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Christ. He receives also those who are attached to him

instead by their reasoning powers.

His embrace

The bride says, 'His left hand is under my head, and his

right hand does embrace me' (2:6).

In Solomon's Song, the loving bride is also wise. She

knows that, according to biblical symbolism, the left side is

the side of God's rigour, while the right side is the side of

compassion. Therefore she lies down to the left of her

Beloved, among the sinners. Putting her head upon his left

arm, she immobilizes this side; she incapacitates his

severity, and he has only his right hand free — the caressing

hand of love.

There is great variety in the experiences of believers.

The Carmelite nun, Anne of St Bartholemew

(1549-1626), companion of Teresa of Avila, wrote in her

biography:

Christ the Lord appeared to me in the shape in which

He walked on this earth. He was exceedingly

handsome, though He seemed very sad. Approaching

me, He put His right hand on my left shoulder with an

unspeakable weight, which I could never explain to

anybody. Thus He caused His pain and suffering to

enter into my heart, and He said to me, 'Behold the

souls I lose.' He challenged me to work for the

salvation of souls, and showed me all France so

impressively and so clearly that it was as though I were

present in every place; and I saw how many millions of

souls are lost. This happened in a single moment, and

if it had lasted any longer I feel my life would have

ended.

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Christ put his hand on her to make her share his pain. It

was different with the bride in the Song. He used his right

hand only to embrace her.

Being thus reassured, the bride can fall asleep with his

left hand under her head. Her soul is in sweet communion

with Jesus; angels watch around them.

An army of roes

Her last words before falling asleep are, 'I charge you, O

you daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds

of the field, that you stir not up, nor awake my love, till he

please' (2:7). The oath is made by the roes and the hinds of

the field because they are symbolic of the Beloved, and

because they are timid creatures which must not be

troubled when their time of love comes.

The Hebrew word for 'roes' is sabaot. One of God's

names is Jehovah Sabaot, which means 'The Lord of Hosts'.

So Sabaot means both 'roes' and 'hosts', which is very

strange. It shows that God's army is an army apart. Roes

are shy, timid creatures which attack nobody. They have

conquered the hearts of many nature lovers, poets and

painters by their beauty. God's army is like an army of

roes.

But what of the many military exploits of the Jewish

army under Moses, Joshua and David? Consider the

Salvation Army of today. It speaks in military language.

Its magazine is called The War Cry. The Army is composed

of corps instead of churches. Instead of preachers it has

officers. In its beginning, its vocabulary was entirely

military. It boasted that it had 'assaulted' places of sin,

that it had 'taken prisoners', and so on. The Salvation

Army fights in order to bring people to peace with God.

The army of Israel is also meant to be an army of peace,

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but this is a phenomenon so unique that there are no words

to describe its battles. It has to speak of its works of peace in

the language of men of war, in much the same way that

modern microphysics continually uses the language of clas-

sical physics, even though the scientists know that that

language does not describe the facts of microphysics. The

physicists have not yet had time to develop a new vocabulary.

So when we read in die Bible of'die sword of the Lord', of

armed and bloodthirsty angels, of a carnage prepared by

God himself, we must understand that the exploits of God's

roes - unarmed, shy, loving creatures, who would rather die

Üian attack anybody - are spoken of in military terms only

because humans have no other appropriate language.

The sleep of faith

Taken literally, we have here a demand to die friends of the

bride that diey must not disturb the nuptial joy of die young

pair during the seven days of the wedding feast. It is an

unkind act to wake somebody from sleep for no good import-

ant reason. It is even worse to trouble a believing soul

sleeping die quiet sleep of faith, in the protecting arms of

Jesus. That soul is in communion with the Lord, and whoever

prods him will get his punishment, whoever he might be.

What a wonderful sleep this is! Scripture teaches us that

for die soul who sleeps trustfully, believing in the One who

considers the sinner to be just, his faith; his quiet sleep is

accounted as righteousness. God delights in this quiet

loving sleep of faith. There is no activity which he prefers

to it. Nobody is allowed to disturb the ecstasy of love. The

soul must not be stirred up or awakened.

To stir up and to awake are two different things. The

one who awakes only calls the sleeper, who then has to

conquer sleep himself. The one who stirs him up makes a

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better job of it; he forces him to come out of sleep. Both are

forbidden when somebody sleeps in the arms of Jesus.

Many things trouble the quiet sleep of Christian faith. In

Communist countries it is troubled by the stooges of the

Communists among the clergy. Bingh, the Catholic bishop

of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minhville) and a Communist

stooge, published the following statement in the

Communist newspaper Humanité: 'Previously, Catholics

have had strong prejudices against revolutionaries. The

propaganda of the former regime presented the

Communists as the destroyers of all religions. Now we have

seen the reality. Our church is the victim of no persecution. '

But he surely knew about the mass graves filled with the

bodies of thousands of people killed by the Viet Cong in

Hue and Quang Tri. He knew that his parishioners were

forced to denounce one another, or else face imprisonment.

He knew about the parents who had killed their children to

keep them from falling into the hands of godless

Communists.

Bishop Bingh knew what had happened to his own

Catholics. The convents in Thu Due were closed. Clergy-

men were arrested; all the monks in Mossard and the

Trappists in Phuoc-Son and Phuoc-ly were jailed. They all

fell asleep quietly in their prison cells, trusting in Jesus,

and keeping their faith in him. It was wrong of the bishop

to trouble their quiet sleep.

The Jesuit priest, H. Stephenson, after visiting China,

described the Communist Chinese as 'exemplary anony-

mous Christians whose examples should be emulated by

Western Christians. They value people above things.' It

did not disturb this Jesuit that the murderers whom he

calls 'anonymous Christians' have jailed or killed

absolutely all the Jesuits of Red China, and many other

innocent Catholics and Evangelicals besides. The bishop

Kung Pin and the Protestant pastor Wan-Min-Dao have

been in jail for twenty-five years?

Similar betrayals happen amongst Protestants. Pastor

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V. Rumatshik, of the Soviet Baptist Underground

Church, wrote:

Unfortunately, we also have some believers who work

together with the Communist authorities. This gives

them the possibility of travelling abroad in order to lead

foreign Christians astray in the matter of religious

liberty. These preachers render the atheists a great

service by hiding from the public the real situation.

They make the world believe that we have much

freedom without chains and oppressions. These men

behave so, because they love this world; and they

receive their reward on earth.

The prisoners spend their years in the quiet embrace of

Jesus, sleeping faithfully on his bosom. They ought not to

be troubled by such lies uttered by men of the clergy.

Do not awake love

The demand addressed to the daughters of Jerusalem also

has another meaning. We must not awaken artificially the

love that is in us. We must wait until it is given to us by

God. God's heart must encounter our hearts. Even the

false faith of another person should not be corrected by

force before the time is right. That would do them more

harm than leaving them temporarily in their erroneous

beliefs. Allow time to do its work.

A Moslem in a Russian jail asked a Christian pastor, 'If

Christianity is so great, will we have this faith after we

die? Where will Muhammad, our prophet, be then?'

The pastor replied, 'Muhammad, like everyone else,

will receive there according to his deeds. I do not believe

God will reject him. God loves everyone'.

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'Our religious leaders say that only Moslems will be

saved, and that Christians and Jews will go to the devil.'

'Are you married?' asked the pastor.

'Yes, and I have children.'

The pastor continued: 'If you had three children, and

two were blind, would you think of all of them as yours?'

'Of course,' answered the Moslem. 'And I would love

the blind ones more than the other. '

'Similarly,' concluded the pastor, 'God loves men of all

faiths. Compared to his love, ours is like a piece of ice

compared to the sun. God sends nobody to hell because he

belongs to another religion.' Soon the Moslem was bap-

tised, and received appropriate instruction in the

Christian faith.

Stirring up love, using brutal means to bring somebody

to the true faith and exercising coercion, produce great

catastrophes. There are enough evils in this world. We do

not need another - artificial, unnatural, faked love.

It is terrible to awaken needs that don't exist. Why

don't we wait until the needs come? Why do we stir up

feelings by artificial techniques? How often this great

crime is committed by religious leaders. All manner of

means are employed to attract the masses!

So it comes about that men fill the churches, not

because they love the Saviour, but because they are under

some kind of physical or psychological compulsion. When

persecution comes, it becomes obvious that these souls did

not have a real love for God. Our love towards Christ

must be authentic, bridal love.

Bridal love

The secret police had come to search the house of Antonii,

the Orthodox bishop of Arkhangelsk. Finding die vessel

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used for Holy Communion, they threw it on the floor and

trampled on it. The bishop threw himself across it, trying

to protect it with his body. He lost consciousness. When

he awoke he was in jail.

They asked his opinion about the future of the Russian

Church, and wanted to know if he desired die overthrow

of the Soviets. He answered that the Church would be

glorified through die suffering of its martyrs, as it was in

die first centuries, and that he prayed daily that die Soviet

government would not shed blood and would be forgiven

for its sins.

First he was threatened with death, dien was promised

freedom if he would become an informer for die police.

The bishop was not frightened, and could not be bought.

He was put in a small cell together with five others. They

endured bitter cold, and received only two glasses of

water a day and nothing else. They could not wash or

change dieir clothes, and lived in their own stench. They

lost dieir teedi. The bishop became so weak that he could

not clean the invading bugs and lice out of his beard.

When he felt death near he chanted his own funeral

service. He died with prayers on his lips. He was an

audientic bride of Christ.

Leaping upon the mountains -

The bride says, 'The voice of my beloved! behold, he

comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon die

hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart; behold, he

stands behind our wall, he looks forth at die windows,

showing himself through die lattice' (2:8-9). He comes

leaping upon the mountains. Difficulties mean nothing to

him. He does not know discouragement. He bears for us

the curse, the burden, of death on the cross; he fights the

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powers of darkness. He leaps over our bad deeds as well;

he leaps over them as if they had never existed.

Some people doubt that our salvation can be very near,

because not all the biblical prophecies about the last times

have yet been fulfilled. But when Jesus returns, he will not

worry about our calculations. He leaps upon the

mountains.

'He stands behind our wall'

Only a wall separates us from him. This knowledge was a

great comfort to prisoners in a Communist camp who were

compelled to stand facing a wall for weeks.

Midrash Rabba, a rabbinical commentary on the Song,

says that what is meant here is the Wailing Wall in

Jerusalem, a wall from which the glory of God never

departs. But we recall Job's words: 'I know that my

Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day

upon the earth' (Job 19:25). Our flesh, our body, is the

wall which separates the bride from the Bridegroom. He is

behind this wall. After death we will be face to face with

him.

For the time being he looks through the windows;

sometimes one, sometimes another. He examines one side

of our character, then another side, to know what stage of

spiritual maturity we have reached. We, too, must be

attentive to what is going on in our souls. Knowing this, St

Blandine, a slave girl from Lyon, went to her death before

the wild animals 'radiant with joy as if she had been

invited to a wedding feast'. Saint Ignatius, bishop of

Antioch, wrote, 'Let me be die fodder of the beasts, by

which I might find God. Let me imitate the example of my

God.' Also Origen, another celebrated teacher of the

Church, said in a sermon, 'I do not doubt that in this

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assembly there are men known to God alone, who are

already martyrs for him by the testimony of their

conscience; because they are ready even now, if asked, to

shed their blood for the name of Jesus Christ.'

The winter is past

Here the most beautiful part of Solomon's Song begins.

What follows are words appropriate for those convicted of

sin; and they are a great source of comfort for the saints

when they have passed through a period of depression.

They are also fitting words for the time of a believer's

death: 'My beloved answered and said unto me, "Rise

up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the

winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers

appear on the earth; the time of the singing birds is come,

and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree

puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender

grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and

come away. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,

in the secret places of the stairs, let me see your

countenance, let me hear your voice; for sweet is your

voice, and your countenance is comely" ' (2:10-14).

The bride hears the voice of her much-beloved. She does

not see him, but she recognizes his voice, and is

overcome by an unspoken joy.

The bride says, 'My beloved answered and said unto

me' (this is the precise translation of the Hebrew). We

often find this expression used elsewhere about the Lord;

he is said to have answered when nobody has asked him

anything. He responds to the unspoken anxieties of the

heart. We should practise not only vocal but also mental

prayer. Let our unspoken thoughts and affections rise up

to him!

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The word anah used here means 'to answer' and 'to

sing', or, rather, 'to chant', as they do in synagogues,

Orthodox churches and mosques. Solomon's Song, like

the whole Hebrew Bible, contains not only text but also

musical notation, indicating how it should be chanted.

The Zohar says, 'the tonal accents were also delivered to

Moses on Sinai. ' This applies to the Law of Moses and also

to the other books of the Old Testament. Anybody who

does not know the tonal accents does not know the entire

revelation of God. The same words sung in different keys

stir up different feelings. This book has in truth been given

to us as a song. In fact, Solomon has been described as the

first composer of opera.

'In the clefts of the rock'

Believers are strong and unyielding towards sin. That is

why it is written, 'Judah is like a lion's cub.' But in their

relationship with God, they are like innocent and

inoffensive doves, loving quiet and serenity. Like doves,

they are faithful to their mate, the Bridegroom.

This dove is in its right place - in the clefts of the rock

which is Christ. If she is with him, # cleft of a rock is as

good as the King's chamber, a prison cell as good as a

comfortable house. Jesus encourages her to have

communion with Him: 'Let me hear your voice; for sweet

is your voice, and your countenance is comely.' How

sweet is the voice of the believer in Jesus! A Jewish

commentator asks why the wives of the patriarchs

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were barren. It was because

God loved their prayers, their words and their voices. God

allowed them to be barren so that they would need to pray

for healing from barrenness. Why do believers undergo

troubles? Because to God, their voices are sweet. He

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desires that they should lift their voices in prayer and in

song to him.

Some believers have been known to produce

tremendous effects with their voices. A Christian, released

not long before from a Lithuanian prison, wrote:

My outward appearance is not attractive. In the slave

labour camp, I worked underground. There was an

accident which left me a hunchback. Once a boy

stopped me on the street and asked, 'Uncle, what do you

have on your back?' I was sure that mockery would

follow, but I still replied, 'A hump.'

'No!' said the child. 'God is love, He gives

deformities to nobody. You do not have a hump, but a

box below your shoulders. Inside, angel's wings are

hidden. One day the box will open; and with those

wings you will fly to heaven.'

I began to cry with joy; I am crying now, even as I

write.

Such was the achievement of one Christian child's voice.

Because his voice was rightly modulated, he could make a

hunchback happy. Therefore the Bridegroom says, 'Let

me hear your voice, for sweet is your voice.'

Cederholm, a Finnish prisoner in the USSR who

eventually got free because he was a foreigner, says that

in Leningrad he was put in a cell reserved for men under

sentence of death. There he found, among many other

inscriptions written by those who had been awaiting

execution, the following words: 'In the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,

Archimandrite Anthony, of Alexandro-Nevsky monas-

tery, is to be shot tonight for refusing to burden his

conscience with a grievous sin. Forgive them, Lord, for

they know not what they do. Good people, tell my

brethren I leave this world with peace in my soul.' The

inscriptions on the walls alternated with inscribed crosses,

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under which were names and dates. In the corner of the

cell was an image of St Seraphim of Sarov, drawn in

indelible pencil. The image was poignantly drawn by an

untrained hand, but all the details were carefully done,

and it was signed thus: 'Ecaterina, the servant of God,

drew this image, thinking of her little children who are

praying to the just God for their Mama. ' How beautiful

are the voices of those who speak like this!

*Sweet is your voice'

Saint Augustine wrote, 'Whoever praises God in song

praises Him twice - in the words, and in die music. ' Much

depends on the spirit in which we sing. In the Soviet

Union, there were Christians who have not owned a

hymnal for decades. In Red China the same is true. With

what exuberant joy they sing when hymnals are smuggled

to China for them! We should sing with the same joy.

In Communist prisons, naked Christians were thrown

crosswise over narrow tables. Their legs dangled from one

side; from the others, the head and arms. The legs were

tied to the arms with straps. One either side, Communists

stood with whips and beat the prisoners until they bled.

Before being beaten, diey were told to sing. They could

have refused, and paid for dieir refusal with a more savage

beating. But why should they not sing, when hymns like 0

Sacred Head now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down

were demanded from them?

One of those who underwent this ordeal was a Hebrew

Christian. He knew the story of Rabbi Akiba, who sang

while being combed with red-hot iron combs and died a

martyr's death under the ordeal. Akiba's disciples asked

him, 'How can you sing when you are suffering so

greatly?'

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He replied, 'AU my life I have desired to love God with

all my heart and all my soul, but I was always distracted by

worldly things. Now for the first time I can praise God

with all my heart. '

It was a rare privilege for that Hebrew Christian to sing

such a song just before being flogged until he bled.

Let the reader imagine himself in such a situation. Let

him visualize the scene, and try to sing those words

himself:

0 Sacred Head now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,

Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown.

0 Sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine

Yet though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.

Sometimes Christians were ordered to sing 'A mighty

fortress is our God', in the certain knowledge that after a few

minutes they would be tortured. Nevertheless they sang

that God is a trusty shield and weapon, that 'He helps us

free from every need that has us now o'ertaken.' The

Communists mocked them. 'Do you really believe that

God will help you free from this need?' they said.

Catholics sang the song, Hail, Mary, full of grace.

I personally went through the extremes of temptation

and doubt when I passed through similar situations. I was

forced to sing Psalm 121, '. . . My help comes from the

Lord. He will not suffer your foot to be moved . . . He that

keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is

your keeper'. We asked ourselves then 'What is the value

of such words when they don't correspond in any way to

the reality in which we are living?' And in that situation I

had a revelation, which forever pacified my mind,

however terrible the circumstances.

I thought, 'To whom are such promises made?' There

was only one possible answer: 'To me, and to the "me" of

every believer.' But who is this 'me'? A 'me' only has

existence as an abstraction, just as pure gold or uranium

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are abstractions. In nature we only find ores. These have

to be melted down in a furnace in order to extract one little

bit of uranium or gold from huge quantities. The case is

similar with the 'me' in every believer. In a soul there are

so many elements which do not belong to the 'me'. They

are the influences of heredity, of a poor education and of

all kinds of demonic evil. Only very little of us forms the

'me', what St Teresa of Avila called 'the inner castle'.

My real personality - my uniqueness - is an image of

God; it is my sanctified being, united widi Christ; it is

what St Peter calls 'the hidden man of the heart' (1 Peter

3:4). The promises that nothing will hurt us, that we will

be protected from all harm, do not apply to the whole ore.

In order that the real me should live in perfect cleanliness

and holiness, the ore has to pass through cleansing fire. I

know that the inner castle will not be harmed, diat the God

of Israel watches over it. The only part of me that matters

can be at peace. No enemy will ever reach it.

Let us sing in this spirit; and then we too will hear the

Bridegroom say, 'Let us hear your voice; for sweet is your

voice, and your countenance is comely.' The word used in

the Hebrew is actually a plural word-'countenances'.

The relaxed, serene face of a Christian at ease; the joyful

face of one having a good time; the distorted face of one in

pain; the marred face of one who is enduring torture; the

radiant face of one in ecstasy - diey are all comely in his

sight.

'The little foxes'

The Bridegroom tells the bride, 'Take us the foxes, the

little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender

grapes' (2:15). He does not say, 'take me', but 'take us'.

Both Bridegroom and bride desire to enjoy the fruit of the

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vine. It is their common interest to eradicate the foxes

which spoil it. All who wish to help in this task, and are

capable of it, are included in this calling.

What is meant by these foxes? Firstly, they are our

corruptions. Those things in us which hinder the

flourishing of godly life must be set aside. Foxes are

animals which often turn their heads and look back. They

are usually portrayed in that attitude. It is a characteristic

in us also, and one which must be reformed. Whosoever

has put his hand to the plough of the Kingdom and looks

back, is not worthy of Jesus. The fox is also a byword for

cunning. A believer should not be devious.

Our battle is not only against major sins but also against

minor ones. It is possible for the sun in all its greatness to

be reflected in a mirror, even though the sun is so much

larger than the earth; yet the tiniest object that interposes

itself between the mirror and the sun obscures it. So our

litde hearts can mirror the great God; but the slightest

thing can hide our hearts from him. Thomas More wrote:

Alas, how light a cause may move

Dissension between hearts that love.

Hearts that the world in vain has tried

In sorrow, but more closely tied

Which stood the storm when waves were rough

Yet in a sunny hour fell off

Like ships that have gone down at sea

When heaven was all tranquillity.

We should never underestimate die harm a small sin can

do. Think what damage a tiny microbe or an invisible

virus can do; they can bring about your death. So it is with

sin. Little flies and ants destroy animal carcasses with

astonishing speed. A swarm of ants can devour a horse's

corpse as quickly as can a lion. Our vineyards are not yet

in fruit; because even if they have reached great

excellence, our earthly virtues are only blossoms. The fruit

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will not be seen until the life to come. For the time being,

the vineyard is in bloom. And we must beware of

foxes - even little foxes.

Let us remember that just as the soul can be devastated

not only by gross sins but also by a multitude of neglected

minor sins, so the life of holiness in its turn is not only

composed of great heroic deeds, but also of a multitude of

small actions and brief words. It is not only the miracles

and the martyr deaths which have significance, but also

the small deeds. It is not only the lightning which counts,

but also the sunbeam; not only the powerful torrents and

roaring waterfalls, but also the quiet pools of Siloam.

It matters that we should avoid small evils, refrain from

little sins and minor inconsistencies and weaknesses. We

should avoid foolishness and not fall into some small

indiscretion or imprudence. It matters that we should

resist making concessions to our self, to our earthly nature.

We need to beware those fleeting moments of laziness and

indecision and those small acts of cowardice. An important

element of the holy life is the rejection of these things.

When the United States first launched its space shuttle,

it was announced that the failure of a tiny piece of plastic,

worth mere cents, had resulted in a million-dollar delay in

America's space programme. A brief quarrel with a

marriage partner over a trifling matter can destroy a

Christian marriage, wreck the children's personalities and

bring the gospel into disrepute in the neighbourhood.

Two women went to a monastery to worship. One had

her conscience burdened with a great sin. The other did

not regard herself as a sinner, because she had been guilty

only of small things. The abbot listened to their

confessions, and then sent them both to a field. He ordered

the great sinner to bring the largest stone she could find.

The one with only small sins was told to bring only little

stones. This they did. After they had brought the stones to

the abbot he said, 'Now put them back, each in the exact

place you found it. '

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The woman who had brought the small stones hesitated.

The abbot asked her why. She answered, 'It is difficult,

because there are so many, and I can't remember where

they all came from.'

Then the abbot told her, 'Remember, your companion

has committed just one, big, evil deed. But she remembers

it, regrets it, and washes it with her tears. She knows the

place from which the stone was taken. But you, with your

small and unimportant sins, just like the little foxes in

Solomon's Song, which spoil the vines, can't remember

how or when or to whom you did wrong. And because

your sins are small and numerous you may not even be

able to repair them. They remain a burden on your soul,

just as these little stones remain in your apron.'

Hearing these words, the woman bowed her head and

acknowledged that she was no purer than her sister. She

understood that she, who had committed only small sins,

also needed to repent of them and be forgiven in order to

purify her soul. Let us take heed of small sins.

Once two men built a wall. When one of them was

placing a brick, he noticed that it was thicker in one place

than another. 'Throw it away,' said his friend, 'and get

another.. Otherwise the results will be unsatisfactory. '

'Leave me alone,' the first man retorted. 'How can such

a little thing, which nobody is going to notice, do any

harm? You take things too seriously.' He continued

putting one brick upon another until evening, when they

finished their work and went home.

What did they see when they came to work the next day?

Because of that one uneven brick, the wall had not been

vertical. Because of the way it had been built, it had leaned

further and further over. As a consequence it had

collapsed during the night, and the work had to be done all

over again. So it is with every small sin or little untruth in

our hearts. A very small lie will grow and grow in us, until

it brings us shame and reproach. Don't regard little sins as

unimportant.

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Our universe is made up of things so tiny that they

cannot be seen even through the most powerful of

microscopes. The diameter of the dome of St Peter's

basilica in Rome is about the same measurement as the

height of a fourteen-storey house. Imagine a dust particle

in it. As the size of the dust particle is to that of the basilica,

so (approximately) is the size of an electron compared to

that of an atom. And if everything were to be increased in

size so that a baseball became the size of the planet earth,

then the atoms of the baseball would become the size of

grapes. When the electrons and protons function

normally, they sustain our lives. When they are tampered

with, a town like Nagasaki disappears. It is of the greatest

importance that the smallest of things should function

correcdy. Beware of litde foxes!

Children's sins

Often we are not serious in drawing the attention of

children to their sins, because they are so small. But small

sins can poison a child's life. On the other hand, children

who have repented of their small sins and have been

purified by the blood of Christ are capable of great things

for him.

In a small village school in Communist Hungary there

were children who had fought their small sins and now had

great faith. A new teacher arrived - a militant atheist

whose objective was to root out religion from the hearts of

the children.

One day she summoned little Angela - a very pious

girl - and asked her, 'What do you do if your parents call

you?'

'I come immediately.'

'What happens if your parents call somebody else?'

Ill

'They come, too. '

'Well,' said the teacher, 'they all come, and you come,

because you really exist. But suppose your parents called

your grandparents, who have been dead a long time.

Would they come?'

'Surely not!'

'And if they were to call Red Riding Hood or Snow

White — would they come?'

'Surely not, because they are just imaginary.'

'You see, children,' said the teacher triumphantly,

'only living beings, which actually exist, can respond to a

call. If somebody doesn't come when called, he is not

alive. Is that clear?'

'Yes,' replied the whole class.

The teacher sent Angela out of the classroom and told

her to stand by the door. Then she said to the other

children, 'Call her!' The children shouted, 'Angela!

Angela!' Angela immediately entered the room.

'Now, everything is clear,' declared the teacher. 'You

have all been brought up to believe in Jesus. You believe

that he exists, that he is alive, and that he hears you when

you speak to him. Is that so?'

'Yes.'

'Now, we will try an experiment. Angela entered the

classroom when we called her. So, everybody, on the

count of three shout as loudly as you can, "Come, Lord

Jesus; come, Lord Jesus!" One, two, three-begin to

call!'

Nobody dared to shout. The teacher laughed. 'There

you have the proof. You don't even dare to call him,

because you know he would not come. He could not come,

because he is just as imaginary as Red Riding Hood or

Snow White.'

Then something unexpected happened. Angela turned

to the children and said, 'We will call Jesus! All

together - Come, Lord Jesus! '

With hands folded and a deep yearning in their hearts,

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with total confidence, the children began to chant, 'Come,

Lord Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus!' Angela prompted them

again and again: 'Come, Lord Jesus!' They shouted so

loudly that it seemed as if the walls would crumble.

What happened next, according to the children's later ac-

ount, was that they saw the door opening; then a great light

shone through; and dien standing bathed in that light was a

beautiful child, smiling at them. At the same time they heard

dieir teacher's desparing cry. 'He has come! He has come!'

She rushed from the room, slamming die door behind her.

She had to be put into an asylum; she had gone mad.

The children were rigorously cross-examined by pastors.

Their accounts of what had happened did not contradict one

another. This is an authentic, story.

Little children can do great things for die Lord, if diey

forsake their little sins!

'I am not'

The bride says, 'My beloved is mine, and I am his' (2:16).

Baalshem-Tov, the founder of the Hassidic sect within

Judaism, fainted whenever he read these words. For a

believer, they are too much to contemplate.

But there is something even better than this peak of

beauty. Male love is often selfish and ambitious to possess for

itself, but our love for Jesus is of the female type - free of

selfishness, persisting only in die ambition to give itself

completely.

The believing soul is continually growing. Its first word is

an exclamation of triumph. The soul possesses the beloved,

and exclaims, 'My beloved is mine, and I am his. ' When she

has grown, she does not put herself first anymore, but

modesdy says, 'I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine'

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(6:3). The order of the words is changed. When she has

grown even more, she is satisfied in giving herself without

asking for anything in return: 'I am my beloved's, and his

desire is toward me' (7:10).

The Hebrew word for 'his' is lo, but the same word also

means 'not' in spoken Hebrew (there is a difference in the

way the word is written, but the oral form came first and is

more significant here). The verse, when only spoken,

could quite accurately be translated, 'My beloved is mine,

and I am not.' He is everything in the believer's life. No

place remains for a 'me.'

Those rare souls who have really attained to the truth,

that the Beloved is theirs and they 'are not' anymore, have

unique experiences.

By those who 'are not' I mean those who have come to

the height of heights, those who in prison have known not

only heavenly raptures but raptures to the heaven of heavens

(1 Kings 8:27); those who-eluding all enquiry,

withdrawn from all knowing - have come to that place

from which one looks down to heaven. It is that part of the

temple above of which God says, 'Behold, there is a place

by me' (Exodus 33:21).

Almost all these believers died in prison or shortly after

their release, like Bishop Hirtsa and Mgr Ghicay. I have

had the privilege of sharing a prison cell with such a man.

He did not say much. From the little he did say, I gathered

that he saw what St John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila

tried to describe.

He discovered that you can know things better by

looking to the God in whom they have their being, life and

movement than by looking at those things themselves. All

things are dark. Even physical light is dark. Only he

throws a light on them. Therefore the Psalmist said, 'In

your light we see light' (Psalm 36:9). Others come to know

God by looking at the things he has created. The mystics

know the reality of creation by looking at the Creator.

Such prisoners did not see him face to Tace. God is

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veiled, and anybody who sees God without a veil has not

seen die whole reality of Godhead. The veils are part of it.

If you see a man without his skin you do not see him

properly, because the skin is part of who he is. It veils his

inner parts, which should be veiled.

Ten doctorates and a lifetime lasting thousands of years

would not teach a man what those believers saw in a single

moment of such rapture.

What I have written above is an educated guess as to

what they would have said, if what diey knew could have

been expressed in words. When they came back from this

rapture, they returned as people who had seen men, events

and things as God sees them. They did not say a great

deal, and what they did say they said to very few. But their

faces and their eyes spoke for diem.

I was reminded of these, my former fellow-inmates,

when I read of the manner of the conversion of Rosario

Rivera, the Peruvian terrorist. She chanced to attend an

evangelistic meeting led by the well-known Latin

American preacher Luis Palau. Afterwards, she wrote:

He [Luis Palau] put Rosario Rivera, who had come as an

eminent member of the Peruvian Communist Party,

before her own eyes in all her crude inner reality. Not

even Che Guevara [her chief, and model of terrorism]

could see what I was like inside, though I had been at his

side for four months. But this man described my life, and

brought to light the things that were deep inside me. I bit

my tongue; I did not know what to do. He told me the

things I had done, how I had robbed, killed, perverted

young people, abused my home, trafficked in drugs, and

much more besides. I saw myself stripped naked.

Luis Palau had seen her with God's eyes. But he saw her

also as very beloved by God and brought her to salvation.

Such is the privilege of those who 'are not'.

Mary, the mother of the Lord, is an example of how far

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a human being can rise if one effaces onself before God.

Jacob of Saroug, a Syrian bishop in the fifth century who

composed Christian hymns, wrote in a hymn to her:

She is highly blessed because the limits of her body have

contained the Unlimited, who fills the heavens without

their being able to circumscribe Him. She is most

blessed, because she gave breast to the One who rules

over the waves of the sea. She is most blessed, because

she carried the powerful giant who carries the world.

She has embraced Him and covered Him with kisses.

She is most blessed, because her lips touched the One

whose burning love causes angels of fire to withdraw.

She is most blessed because she has nourished with her

milk the One who gives life to all the world.

'My beloved is mine and I am not.' What has happened to

me, when I am no more and only he remains? The aim of

my life has then been fulfilled. Basil of Caesarea wrote,

'Every spiritual being is, by his nature, a temple of God

created to receive in himself the glory of God.' When my

Beloved is mine, and I 'am not', what is visible of me

continues. But each of us has two natures: the visible and

the invisible. If I have submitted to divine will, the

invisible part of me has united with God.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa said that man is simultaneously

a micro-cosmos and a micro-God. In the life of the bride,

the micro-cosmos decreases in importance, and God, in

the literal sense of the word, is magnified. Pascal wrote,

'Man is infinitely more than man.' In his own life he was

able to make a reality of Jesus' words, 'You are gods'

Qohn 10:34). When God makes his dwelling in us, we

have more than mere biological, sociological and

psychological possibilities within us. The sun and the

moon are called 'light' in the Bible. In the same way we are

called 'the light of the world.' Our possibilities are

immense. Saint Gregory wrote, 'When you turn to watch

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him, you become what he is. ' We have the aptitude for it;

let us not waste it. It is for this that we were created in

God's image. Let us follow the bride's passionate decision

to be his. God can do everything, except compel somebody

to love him. That decision must come from us.

But take care! There are beautiful compliments

addressed to the people of Israel in the Bible, who were

God's beloved. But, after a time, the people-turned to sin,

and God's opinion of them changed. We cannot simply

rely on beautiful loving words addressed to us by God in

the past. We must take care to abide in his love.

Feeding among lilies

The bride says, 'He feeds among the lilies' (2:6). He has

said that his brides are his lilies.. We, his flock, feed with

him among the lilies, who already are the saints of the past

and present; The example of their lives nourishes us.

A Rumanian Christian, Lydia Arsenescou, had been

sentenced to death for her faith. She was a young girl of

eighteen or nineteen, and she was very beautiful. Her last

evening had come. The execution always took place

promptly at midnight, and for this reason the Christians

called the firing squad 'the midnight bride'.

Wardens had brought some gruel in pottery vessels into

the cell. It was the evening meal. All the prisoners were

hungry but none cared to eat. All the other women pitied

the young and beautiful girl who had to die that night.

But suddenly her face began to shine. She lifted the

pottery dish and said, 'I have a boyfriend. I love him

greatly, and he loves me. He hoped that one day this my

body would be in his embrace. But it will not be so; tonight

I will be shot. And after a few years, what was my body will

have become clay, just like the clay from which this pot was

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made. And, after a few more years, some other potter will

make a vessel out of what was once my body. Who knows

what is in this vessel? Perhaps what was once the beaming

eye of a lover! My body will decay, but I will not die.

'Jesus said, "Whosoever lives and believes in me will

never die." And I believe these words of Jesus more than

the rifles which will be pointed at me tonight. I believe

them more than the bullets that will pierce my chest

tonight. I believe them more than the open grave which is

already waiting for me.

'I am not my body. I am an eternal spirit. Tonight I

shall not die. Jesus is a gentleman; he will keep his word.

Tonight, by his grace, I will enter through gates of pearl

into the golden city. I will see and hear angels playing on

their harps. I will be with the saints and the finest men of

all the centuries, and above all, I will rest on Jesus' bosom,

and there I will wait for my boyfriend to come too. '

They came for her a few minutes before midnight. As she

passed through the vaulted corridors of the underground

prison, her voice could still be heard, reflected from wall to

wall. She recited the Creed - the same Creed we all recite in

church-but in her mouth, it had an entirely new

significance. When she said, 'I believe in one God, maker of

heaven and earth,' she really meant it. She knew; there

really is a heaven. The proof was that she forsook earth for

it. When she said, 'I believe in the one Lord, Jesus Christ,'

the words rang true. Jesus really was her Lord. She was

ready to give up her youth for him. And then they heard her

last words: 'I believe in the resurrection of the body, and in

life everlasting. ' After this a few shots were heard. The poor

Communists believed that they had killed her. They did not

know that they had sent her to the embraces of the most

beautiful Bridegroom of all.

On such examples, Jesus feeds us. He feeds his flock

among the lilies. He has other saints as well, whose

mentality is completely different to that of Christians of

this century. The Church considers as saints believers such

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as Simon the Sty lite, who remained on top of a column in

the Egyptian desert for thirty years. When he was too weak

to remain there, he had a post erected and chained himself

to that. Many others followed his example, and stood in

the burning heat of the day and the cold of the night. By

doing so, they were trying to annihilate the part of them

that lusted after sin.

Saint Etheldreda also believed that the flesh is evil and

dirty. She refused to cleanse it, and walked about

unwashed. So did the man whom Church history records

as St Anthony the Great, who is remembered for his stand

with St Athanasius in the great fight against the Arian

heresy.

We would not enjoy being in the company of such

people. But when a reed is bent, the only way to straighten

it is to bend it in the opposite direction. In a world in which

so many die from hunger and others spend their money on

useless creams and costly perfumes, it is good that here

and there individuals exist who demonstrate, by extreme

attitudes, the vanity of our way of life. They too are lilies,

among whom Jesus feeds his flock.

Christians were prevented from washing for weeks,

months and sometimes years in Communist prisons, and

they became full of lice, loathsome to themselves and

others. It was a very great help to them, and a

reinforcement of their faith, to remember that there were

once saints who adopted this burden voluntarily.

Jesus feeds his sheep among lilies. No other shepherd

can do that.

The sending away of the Beloved

The bride says, 'Until the day break, and the shadows flee

away, turn, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart

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upon the mountins of Bether' (2:17). I know of a Christian

who was in solitary confinement for years, in much hunger

and pain. Sometimes he was aware of Jesus asking him, 'Is

it too difficult for you? Shall I ease your lot?' Again and

again he replied, 'Please, Jesus, see to others. I can bear it;

I'm all right.'

This is the mentality of the bride. She tells Jesus to

follow his calling as a king. She can carry the cross allotted

to her in the hope that, when the evening comes, he will

return to her. She is reluctant to make continual demands

upon him.

When the apostle Peter realized who Jesus was, he said

to him, 'Depart from me; for I am a sinful man' (Luke

5:8). Peter was very grateful that Jesus had increased his

catch to an exceptionally great multitude of fish. But he

also knew that a being like Jesus could do greater things

than merely provide a fisherman with a miraculous haul.

Like the bride in the Song, he wanted him to go away and

do his more marvellous work. Peter was prepared to be

content with a normal-sized catch.

The bride sends the Bridegroom away to the mountains

of Bether (2:17). The word bether means 'separation'. She

believes it is possible to exist without him, to be separate

from him. This thought brings us to the third chapter of

the Song of Songs, a book so important that Origen, one of

the distinguished teachers of the Church in the third

century, wrote twelve volumes about it. Saint Bernard of

Clairvaux delivered eighty-six sermons on the first two

chapters alone. The great German writer, Goethe, called

it 'the most divine of all love songs. ' Herder said of it, 'The

song is written as though from paradise. ' It is a book which

repays thorough study.

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= Chapter 3 ~

Seeking the Bridegroom

The bride says: 'By night on my bed I sought him whom

my soul loves: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise

now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad

ways I will seek him whom my soul loves: I sought him,

but I found him not' (3:1 -2). Theologians will tell you, 'It

is difficult to find God; wherewith will you find him?'

Dionysius the Areopagite wrote:

If it should happen that somebody should see God and

understand what he sees, then he has not seen God

Himself ... for He surpasses any intelligence and any

essence. He exists only to the degree to which He is totally

unknown . . .

Thus we say that the Universal Cause situated beyond

the whole universe is neither matter nor body.

It has no face. It has no shape, no form, no quality, no

mass. It is in no place, it cannot be apprehended by our

senses . . . Ascending higher, we say now that this Cause

has no soul and no intelligence ... It cannot be

expressed, nor conceived.

It has no number, no order, no grandeur, no

smallness, no equality, no similitude, no dissimilitude. It

does not rest unmoved; neither does it move. It is neither

power nor light. It does not live and is not life.

It is not essence, nor perpetuity, nor time. It has no

knowledge, no truth, no wisdom. It is not one, nor

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unity, nor divinity, nor good; neither spirit nor

affiliation nor paternity, in the sense we use this word.

But the bride mistrusts philosophy - even religious phi-

losophy. She seeks him diligently, night after night (the

Hebrew word in verse 1 means 'nights'). She has been

promised that, provided she does not seek the living among

the dead, she will not seek in vain: 'Whoever seeks, shall

find' (Luke 11:10). She deceived herself when she imagined

she could live separated from him; now she seeks him.

You cannot find him from a bed of ease, lying quietly in

comfort. You have to strive. The bride realizes that her

sighing, and demanding and others' intervention do not

bring her the Beloved. The soul must become active; it

must practise spiritual exercises.

Exposing herself to all the risks which any girl runs who

walks alone at night-time, the bride walks on darkened

streets, seeking her Beloved. She travels all kinds of roads.

There is no place where she does not seek him. She looks in

the face of every passer-by, to see if she can can glean

information from anybody about the one she loves.

But the Beloved is not a man of public places. Righteous

men usually shun such places, because there one can

expect to find mostly evil. Jesus too lived, for the most

part, a private life. When He was twelve years old, his

parents lost him. They looked for him in the wrong place;

in the caravan, where he never is. So he asked them, when

they found him, 'How is it that you sought me?' He told

them where he always is, where he can readily be found by

anybody: at 'My Father's business' (Luke 2:49). That is

the only place where he may legitimately be sought. -

Jesus said these words not only to Mary, but also to his

adoptive father, Joseph. What we must understand from

this is that the child had already made up his mind. His

supreme ambition was not to be an assistant in Joseph's

workshop. He had another Father, a heavenly Father; and

he was going to be in his service.

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The watchmen of the city

The bride says, 'The watchmen that go about the city

found me: to whom I said, "Saw you him whom my soul

loves?" It was but a little that I passed from them, but I

found him whom my soul loves: I held him, and would not

let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's

house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me'

(3:3-4). The watchmen of the city are the bishops, priests,

pastors, preachers, rabbis and mullahs of different

religions. Some brides fall in love with them and with their

ornate services and beautiful sermons, and because of

these they forget to go on seeking the Bridegroom himself,

whom you can find only when you go on from them. You

find Jesus only when you have left every creature behind.

In practice it is difficult to distinguish the ambitions of

such as Horeb, Datan and Abiram (who in the Old

Testament rebelled against Moses, the God-appointed

authority over the people) from those of the brides who,

because of their unlimited love for Jesus, leave the

watchmen behind without despising them. But it is not for

us to judge others. We trust that everyone does the best of

which he is capable.

In the end, the bride finds the Beloved outside the city,

at night. And what energy she shows then! She takes hold

of him, and says to him-as Jacob once said to an

angel - 'I will not leave you until you bless me.' She took

hold of him and would not let him go. Simply to find Jesus,

is not enough. You must also know how to keep him.

The bride brings him into the house of her mother, the

Church. Saint Cyprian said, 'Whosoever has God as his

Father, has the Church as his mother. ' The worth of a

church service consists only in the fact that the

worshippers, the brides, have come to the service bringing

Jesus with them.

There are some very bad church leaders. Many

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Protestant and Catholic church leaders have remained

silent about the closure of tens of thousands of churches in

Russia, China North Korea and Albania. Even worse

than that, some Catholic and Protestant church leaders

praise the persecute«, describing them as nice people.

Other church leaders, while probably being worthy

individuals, are not truly ready to die for what they

believe.

In the Rumanian prison of Piteshti, prisoners were

forced to actively deny their faith by gross blasphemy of

the Eucharist. They were made to scream sacred melodies,

in which filthy words replaced those of the hymns. They

were made to gesture degradingly with their genitals.

They were made to eat excrement. This obscene parody of

the Eucharist was intended to transform the worship into a

demonic drama of evil and hatred.

The result was minds in chaos. The brainwashers

thereby achieved mastery of the prisoners, who identified

with their new masters and so felt loyalty to them. Then

the prisoners were expected to prove that loyalty by

inflicting torment on another group of inmates. Should

one of these 're-educated' prisoners be observed to be

lenient in his beating of others or careless in depriving

them of sleep, such mercy was interpreted as a breach of

his new loyalty. He would then be put through the agony

again himself.

Sometimes Christians who, after unspeakable tortures,

had turned Communist in prison were asked to conceal

their new loyalty. They invented a so-called fake Christian

organisation and enlisted teenage prisoners. Those

teenagers believed that they had found 'watchmen' who

could tell them about the Bridegroom. Imagine the shock

in the hearts of those young people when the very teachers

who had brought them to Christ at a pre-arranged signal

produced cudgels and beat them viciously. They were

assaulted until they denied Christ, whose adoration their

persecuters had previously taught.1

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In Guyana, 'Reverend' Jim Jones, leader of the

People's Temple, ordered the suicide of all his followers

and the slaughter of their children. In all 920 people died.

Jones was a 'watchman' who had mixed Marxism with

Christianity, a mixture in which the latter always perishes,

leaving only murders and Marxism.

Horrors such as this and the atrocities at Piteshti were

happening at a time when Communism was well spoken of

by some church leaders in the East and the West.

Obviously, a bride has to leave such 'watchmen' behind, if

she is to find Christ himself.

But there are also some very trustworthy church leaders.

The late Rumanian Bishop Hossu, who spent twenty-two

years in prison, said, 'You cannot know how painful the

suffering of a bishop is, over the sad destiny of his church

and his nation. It can only be compared to the torment of

Jesus in Gethsemane and on the cross, when He foresaw

all the persecutions that would be unleashed through the

centuries, by the enemies of the church.' Another

trustworthy leader was the Russian Adventist Shtshelkov,

who died in prison aged eighty-four, after twenty-four

years in jail, standing firm for what he believed. Sadly,

such leaders are few and far between.

But the bride does not need to stop at pastors. We are

not limited to hearing the Word only from them. The

bride in Solomon's Song finds Jesus when she leaves the

watchmen behind. She finds sweetness even in barbed

wire thorns. In Siberian snows, among ferocious prison

guards, brides of Christ detect the fragrance of the Rose of

Sharon and the Lily of the Valleys in the smells, sights and

sounds of the concentration camps.

In Golgothaean Christianity, personal meetings with

Jesus are frequently described. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

wrote:

I never knew the precise moment of the coming of the

Word. I felt His presence. I remember He was with me.

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I sometimes had a presentiment that He would come,

but I sensed neither His coming nor His going. I do not

know where He went after leaving me, nor by what

means He came and went.

You will ask me how I know that He was present, if

His coming was incomprehensible. I will reply that He

is alive and full of energy. Immediately upon entering

me, He awoke my sleeping soul. He aroused and

softened and taught my heart, which had been as hard

as stone. He began uprooting and pulling down,

planting and building, watering the dry places and

lightening the dark ones.

There have been some visions of angels and of Christ in

the prisons, but these are not the norm. More often one

can tell that the bride has seized hold of Christ by the

profound change in the attitude of the Christian prisoners.

The beautiful daughter of the Lutheran pastor, Traube,

worked in the office of a Soviet Collective. The local

Communist Party secretary offered her the choice of

becoming his lover or seeing her father arrested and his

church closed. After a long resistance she yielded. She

became pregnant, hanged herself, and left a letter in her

pocket explaining why she had done so.

A comrade found the letter and brought it to the guilty

Communist, who destroyed it and forged another in her

handwriting. It claimed that her father had raped her and

that she could not bear the shame. As a result the father

was sentenced and the church was closed.

Sex offenders in jail are attacked by other prisoners.

Though falsely accused, Pastor Traube suffered a great

deal at the hands of his fellow-inmates. He tried to pray, in

vain. He could not say the words, 'Forgive them Father,

for they know not what they do.' He could not forgive the

wicked wrong done to him by the Communists. He

became ill.

One day, a new prisoner was put in the cell. It was the

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man responsible for his daughter's death, the closure of his

church and all the torment he had undergone. The

Communist had been jailed for embezzlement.

When Traube realized the misery that this criminal was

experiencing - overburdened by guilt, jailed by his own

comrades, lacking any knowledge of the Saviour-he

drowned his own sufferings in the much deeper ones of

the Communist. On his deathbed, the pastor finally said

the Lord's Prayer right through. He forgave. He died

with a look of radiance on his face. He had the soul of a

bride who has sought the Beloved, and at the end had

seized hold of him. He had had a personal meeting with

Jesus.

Christ, known in personal experiences in exceptional

circumstances such as these, can be brought to the

mother's house, the Church. The Church will be greatly

blessed by our encounters with Christ.

The bride ascends from the desert

The bride says, 'Who is this that comes out of the

wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and

frankincense, with all the powders of the merchant?

Behold his [palanquin], which is Solomon's' (3:6-7). The

bride has passed out of the city into the desert, and she has

learned a great deal there. The desert is not in fact as arid

as people believe. Thousands of different plants thrive

there. What characterizes them all is great adaptability.

Without it, in a region with little rain and a summer

temperature above 120 degrees, they would be lost. The

bride could not survive either, were she not adaptable to

different social structures and political regimes.

The saguaro is a cactus of the Arizona desert. Its roots,

seeking out every drop of moisture, can spread as far as a

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hundred feet. During rainfall it takes in reserves of water

like a camel, in preparation for dry periods which can last

for years. It literally grows fat with water. Its girth can

increase by half, or even more. One saguaro was found to

contain more than thirty tons of liquid, 'an engineering

feat which probably has no parallel in any artificial

structure in existence.' Similarly, in the spiritual desert

the bride learns to be deeply rooted in the Kingdom and to

provide herself abundantly widi the water of life.

When she was seven, my daughter Amely was not much

' of an eater. She only wanted to eat desserts. Once I chided

her about this. She said to me, 'I eat as it says in the Bible!

It says there that God wants us to live on desserts only.'

She showed me the verse: 'God led his people forty years

through the desert.' She was not wholly wrong. Life in the

desert is a delicacy, a dessert reserved for God's beloved.

What a marvellous sight it must have been when the

people of Israel came from the desert to the country of

Canaan, or when they returned to their own country from

the Babylonian captivity. It is the same when a soul

returns to God from the desert of this world and cleaves to

Jesus. Thereby it enters into a state of grace, and the bride

is brought to the Bridegroom.

Should we be frugal in anointing Jesus with myrrh? It

was Judas Iscariot who criticized the woman who anointed

Jesus before his arrest.

The valiant men

The bride says, 'Threescore valiant men are about

[Solomon's bed], of the valiant of Israel. They all hold

swords, being expert in war: every man has his sword

upon his thigh because of fear in the night' (3:7-8). The

Church has never lacked valiant men. On 15 August 1714,

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die Rumanian king Constantin Brincoveanu died a

martyr death. For the twenty-five years of his reign he had

been a valiant defender of the Christian world against

Islam. On Good Friday 1714 he and his whole household

were arrested by the Turkish sultan's men and taken to

Constantinople, where diey were put in the notorious

Yedikuleh prison. On his sixtieth birthday, Brincoveanu

was sentenced to death together with his four sons.

Before the executioner raised his axe, the sultan said, 'I

will pardon you, if you tell me where the wealth of your

country is, and if you will deny the Christian faith and

convert to Islam.'

Brincoveanu replied, 'I will never abandon the Chris-

tian faith. I was born in it, have lived in it and will die in it.

I have filled my country with churches, monasteries and

hospitals. I will not worship in your mosques, neither I nor

my children.' Then he turned to his sons. 'My beloved,

be strong in faith. We have lost all things. Let us not lose

our souls as well. '

The sultan ordered that the sons should die first. Young

Constantin prayed and quietly put his head on the block.

As he was beheaded, his father sighed. 'God, your will be

done.' The next two sons followed. Then Matthew, who

was only sixteen, wavered at the sight of the blood and hid

himself near his modier. 'Follow your brothers,' urged

Brincovaneau. 'Do not deny Christ.' The youngster put

his head on the block and said to die executioner, 'Strike'.

The king followed them. Kneeling, he prayed with

many tears. 'God, accept our sacrifice. For the blood of

our martyrdom, I desire that the Rumanian principates

should remain Christian. Amen.'

In the seventeenth century, in what is now

Massachusetts, a law was passed declaring that all

Quakers entering the British colony should be whipped,

imprisoned and put to forced labour. Every exiled Quaker

who returned was to be hanged. The 'crime' of the

Quakers was their belief in an inner illumination, a direct

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communion with God without the intermediary of clergy

or ritual.

Mary Dyer, though she had been whipped and

threatened with death, came again and again to the colony

from Rhode Island to visit her brethren in jail. Finally

Mary and two others were sentenced to hang. She

attended the execution of the other two, then her hands

were tied and a black sack was put over her head. But at

the last moment she was reprieved and deported.

She returned again. She was risking public flagellation,

and having her tongue pierced with a red hot iron. At her

trial she declared, 'If you do not revoke your unjust laws,

the Lord will send other witnesses of the truth after my

death. Compared with liberty and truth, my life does not

matter.' For this she died, valiant Christian. There is a

statue honouring her in Boston.

Nowadays, Christians who would behave towards

imprisoned believers in Communist prisons as she did

towards the suffering brethren of that time are rare. God

has valiant men and women, but they are few.

William Booth, a Hebrew Christian, founded the

Salvation Army. His followers called him 'General',

which made him a laughing stock. His motto was, 'Go for

souls and go for the worst. ' Today he would have said, 'Go

for Communist torturers and murderers.'

He went about with men he called 'godly daredevils', a

mob of uneducated but converted men chosen from

saloons, brothels and gambling houses. The owners of

such places counterattacked. Salvation Army preachers

were drenched with the contents of chamberpots. Booth

did not care. He ordered his Army to charge into saloons

and drag drunkards out for conversion.

Today the Army is active in 92 countries. It preaches in

111 languages and operates 900 schools in non-Christian

lands. In many countries it has influenced social

legislation. Booth was another valiant man around

Solomon's bed. Even today we have such valiant men.

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Some of the special tortures devised by Communists for

Christians are described by the Rumanian Communist

writer Paul Goma. One prisoner was 'baptized' daily by

having his head stuck in the barrel which served as a

communal lavatory, while other prisoners were made to

sing the baptismal service.

During festivals, and especially Lent, blasphemous

masses were organised. One prisoner was dressed in an

excrement-smeared robe. Round his neck, in place of the

cross, was hung a phallus made of a mixture of bread, soap

and DDT. All the prisoners were forced to kiss it and

pronounce the sacred Orthodox formula, 'Christ is

resurrected. '

What do these indignities have to do with Socialism and

the interests of the proletariat? They are nothing more

than satanic orgies. Some valiant Christians refused to

participate, and as a consequence they died under torture.

When Christians have to bear crosses they make roses

blossom in them. The life and death of the Lutheran pastor

Joseph Jurash of Czechoslovakia will illustrate what I

mean. He had been invited to become a collaborator, but

had refused. So the Communists sentenced him to thirteen

years of imprisonment. They inserted sharp objects under

his fingernails and toenails and pierced his body with

needles. Soon after his release from prison he died. A

fellow prisoner wrote of him, 'His personality glowed in a

special way.'5

In the Soviet Union, over a hundred people gathered in

a single room at the house of Brother Kozorezov when he

returned from prison. He preached to them from Matthew

5:10: 'Blessed are they which are persecuted for

righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'.

Flowers were presented to him. A nun named Sister Alia

spoke of her recent arrest, and the surprise of the Secret

Police officer when she told him she had to pray first before

answering his questions. She knelt in his presence and did

the same when the interrogation was over. A major

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watching was impressed and helped her to rise from her

knees. (All our discussions would be more peaceful if we

practised the same habit in our daily lives. In Korea I have

seen brethren praying first when they entered one

another's houses, and only then conversing.)

A tape of this meeting in the USSR was sent to us. On it,

police can be heard shouting, 'Finish! Disperse! To hell

with you!'

Kozorezov can be heard answering, 'We preach the

love of Christ. '

A police officer: 'What do I care? It's forbidden here.

Disperse while we're still speaking politely to you.'

Kozorezov replies. 'We are servants of love. Whence

comes the evil?'

The police officer retorts, 'I know nothing of that. I

want no sermons. You are not allowed to gather here.'

As the tape finishes, the choir begins to sing.

Such as these are today's valiant men around the

Bridegroom's bed. In the Hebrew it says of them, 'They

are held by the sword. ' It will not let them go. They are the

slaves of the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Solomon's palanquin

The bride says, 'King Solomon made himself a chariot

[ « palanquin] of the wood of Lebanon. He made the

pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the

covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with

love, for the daughters of Jerusalem* (3:9-10). There are

still many things that are wrong in the bride's heart, but

she is in Solomon's palanquin the pillars of which are of

silver. In the Bible the Word of God is described as silver

cleansed in the furnace. So the palanquin is based on

God's Word. The covering is of purple, which means that

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the bride is covered by the blood of Jesus, shed for her.

The interior of the palanquin is paved with love shown

by the daughters of Zion. Love is belittled in our world, as

mere sentimentalism or time-wasting. In reality it works

very efficiently. Mary Magdalene, when sitting at Jesus'

feet, seemed to be doing nothing. In fact, she was doing

the most important thing of all - she was loving. While she

appeared to be quietly sitting, her love was weaving

beautiful ornaments for Solomon's bed, in which she

herself would later rest. It is not our service that Jesus

seeks, but our love. Only a faith that engenders love has

value in his eyes.

There is a love that forgives all things. In his book, It

Was Not the Black Cat, the former Rumanian Zionist

prisoner T. Lavi describes how prisoners were mockingly

called 'parrots', and were forced to spend hours shouting

brief sentences deriding their creed. They could either

repeat, 'Jesus is not the Son of God' or utter obscenities

about the

Virgin. Jewish prisoners likewise were forced to say ugly

things about their religion. Before having to declaim their

blasphemous sentences, they had to run for whole nights

around their cells, being whipped if they ran too slowly.

The Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty was one who

endured such treatment. The alternative to uttering

blasphemy was to face being beaten to a pulp.

Many were weak. Nobody should be taken in by the

notion that all who are in prison for their faith are men of

heroism, full of virtues and endurance. It is not so. Many

Christians who suffered there were frail. Many gave in

and said words that no Christian ought to pronounce. And

then followed the self-justifications: 'After all, I am only a

man!' . . . 'What does it matter if I say these things? God

does not worry about it' ... 'Surely God would rather I

live, than die for refusing to say a few words - anyway, the

words are nonsense.'

Some went to the other extreme. In their consciences

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they heard not voices of self-justification, but accusations

which drove them to despair. In Red China, many who

had denied Christ, or betrayed secrets of the Underground

Church under torture, hanged themselves or threw

themselves out of windows.

The true bride of Christ does not need to go to either

extreme. The Word of God gives her comfort and teaches

her about forgiveness. Even when her fall has been a heavy

one, she knows she can rest in the palanquin of Solomon.

We who are free, and have sinned greatly, can do so as

well.

The mother's merit

The bride says, 'Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and

behold King Solomon with the crown wherewith his

mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the

day of the gladness of his heart' (3:11). In this passage

Solomon, the wise and rich king-the builder of die

Temple of God - is a type of the Saviour Jesus, for whom

the name of Solomon is also fitting. In Hebrew it means

'peace*. The mother of Solomon is a type of Jesus' mother.

There is still a custom in the Oriental Orthodox Church

that the bridegroom's mother puts a crown on his head.

Christ has possessed glorious crowns from all

eternity - the crown of the eternal Sonship of God, the

crown of love, of goodness, and of wisdom - but he owes

one crown to his mother. She gave him something that he

had never had before: a human nature. She made him

man as well as God. It was her gift to him, at the wedding

of the godly and the human that was his conception. God

had always known the life of all men, but from the outside,

so to speak; from the perspective of Godhead. Now he

knew it from the inside.

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Under the Communist regimes, many former judges

and prosecutors in the old capitalist system were jailed.

Having now experienced prison for themselves they

regretted the harsh sentences they had passed earlier. A

few years of prison may not sound very much in the mouth

of the judge, they realized, but those same few years of jail

meant great suffering to the sentenced prisoner. 'Every

minuté spent in prison is a bitter pill like no other,' one

judge said. 'Had I known this, I would have been less

harsh in my judgements.'

Because of die obedience of Mary, by whom he became

man, God was able to experience human life and know it

from the inside. He was tempted in all things, just like us.

He experienced the inner struggles we experience, and

because of this, we have in him a merciful and faithful

High Priest (Hebrews 2:17). That is why all nations call

Mary 'blessed'.

Onute Vitkauskaite, a Lithuanian Christian prisoner,

wrote this letter to her mother on Mother's Day:

There is so much to think about and remember. But

let's leave all that in die care of our beloved mother

Mary. She taught our mothers love, sacrifice and

kindness. May the humiliation and scorn that we suffer

be as a prayer of thanksgiving for that! But I would also

like it to be a form of atonement for those so-called

mothers, who, without the least twinge of conscience,

murder not only the bodies but also the souls of infants.

Having scorned the Mother of Love, they have lost the

source from which they could draw love, kindness and

strength on the road of maternal sacrifice. In the labour

camp I have come to discover how terrible is man's life

without God, widiout eternal love.

Another Lithuanian prisoner, Julius Sasnaukas, wrote to

his family on the same Mother's Day:

My best wishes to Mother and Grandmother. It is

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difficult to fînd the right words for this occasion. Here

by my bunk I have a tiny Leonardo Madonna on a

postage stamp and it seems that life, love and eternal

spring seep into this dismal abode.

It can help us all to think frequently of the beautiful

example of the virgin Mary.

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~ Chapter 4 ~

The bride with no veil

The Bridegroom says:

Behold, you are fair, my love; you are fair; you have

doves' eyes within your locks: your hair is as a flock of

goats, that appear from Mount Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even

shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every

one bears twins, and none is barren among them.

Your lips are like a thread of scarlet, and your speech

is comely; your temples are like a piece of pomegranate

within your locks.

Your neck is like the tower of David built for an

armoury, whereon hang a thousand bucklers, all shields

of mighty men.

Your two breasts are like two young roes that are

twins, which feed among the lilies.

(4:1-5)

In those days (and even today in some Moslem countries),

girls in the Orient walked with their faces veiled. The

bridegroom sees the bride unveiled for the first time only

after the wedding ceremony. Then he sees the beauties

which were hidden from him until that moment. When

our Bridegroom comes, we will be like him, and he will

discover in us unspeakable splendours; and we will give

them to him, to give him pleasure.

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The greatest beauties, in the case of this bride, are her

'doves' eyes'. Like those of God, they are so clean that

they cannot even see evil, and cannot look upon

unrighteousness. The two rows of her teeth represent her

faith and meditation, by which the soul feeds upon Jesus.

They are white as shorn sheep when they come up from the

washing. Her faith is white and pure, not faked.

Her teeth are strong; strength is a characteristic of this

bride. The teeth are covered by lips - usually they are not

seen. So, the bride has a hidden faith in her clean

conscience, not a self*advertising faith which shouts in the

marketplaces. And, just as the teeth chew the food for the

whole body, not for themselves, the souls of brides spend

themselves in the service of others, keeping back nothing

for themselves. Each sheep bears twins. Christians, like

twins, share identical attitudes, because they are of one

heart and of one soul.

Her lips are like a thread of scarlet. That shows that she

is healthy. Her temples are like half a pomegranate, a fruit

with red seeds which are easily seen when it is cut. This

reminds us of a pure girl, blushing in humility at the

remembrance of her sin and unworthiness. This modesty

makes the bride attractive in the Bridegroom's eyes.

The neck is what joins the body to the head. The Church

is the body; Jesus its head. What unites them is faith. The

faith of the bride is strong, therefore, the Bridegroom tells

her, 'Your neck is like the tower of David built for an

armoury. ' In antiquity, towers were adorned with shields

or bucklers. So the tower of David - representing the faith

of the bride - has a thousand shields hanging on it, all

shields of mighty men. They are reminders of the battles of

the saints of old, who have defeated the devil, the world

and sinful nature.

The way the name 'David' is written here is unusual.

When it first appears in the Bible, 'David' is written DVD.

When David commits great sins, as when he took the wife

of one of his soldiers, it is written like that. But David had

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beautiful moments in his life as well. At such times a Y, the

first letter of God's name, is added, and it is written

DVYD. That is how his name is written at the end of his

life's story. He had his wanderings, but he finished the

course well. And now, in the Hebrew text of the Song,

David's name is not only written DVYD, to emphasise the

godly side of his character, but above it is inscribed a

circle, showing that because his son has written a song such

as this, David has reached the highest point of union with

God.

The breasts of the bride look like a meadow full of lilies

on which two young roes graze. Souls who have wept for

Jerusalem will drink the milk of its comforts.

The mountain of myrrh

The bride, having heard so many words of comfort from

the Bridegroom, makes him this promise:

'Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get

me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of

frankincense' (4:6). There she will stay until the miseries

of this life pass away,.

The mountain of myrrh recalls Mount Moriah, on

which the Temple was built, and in which so much incense

mixed with spices was burnt daily to the glory of God that

(so says the Talmud) the daughters of Jerusalem did not

need to perfume themselves. There the bride will retire for

prayer.

We can be sure that our Lord, as he sees the brides who

suffer for him today in Communist and Islamic prisons,

has the same words of admiration and wonder for them as

he has for the bride of Solomon's Song.

The Lithuanian Christian prisoner, Mrs Ona Prans-

kunaite, describes in a letter how she was transported from

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prison to labour camp in a railway wagon divided into tiny

cells. From a nearby cell, the Christian Lapienis

comforted her with words from Scripture, and from

Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ: He said, 'Onute,

let us try to fulfil our assignment from God, so as to serve

his glory in the honour of our nation.' Ona wrote:

I will march with strength, eyes toward heaven,

wherever the torments of life lead me. Everyone has a

treasure worthy of being protected. Trusting in the

grace of the Lord and in your prayers, I am sure to find

the strength to bear all difficulties. I fear only one

thing - that I might do evil.

Do not worry about me. I find comfort and joy in

prayer, in sacrifice, and in trying to help my comrades in

suffering. Here we work fourteen to fifteen hours a day.

Brethren and sisters in Christ, do not fear the

tempests of our times. God permits sufTering but also

gives us strength to bear it. The believers who sold their

consciences for a plate of lentils, and became our

persecutors, need penitence. So do we.

Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary wrote from his insect-

ridden cell, 'We are small; but we can grow. The saints always

reached heights when they descended into the most profound

depths of human sufTering. Lord, grant me only a morsel of

the strength of saints.' During the civil war following their

revolution, Russian Communists tortured the Orthodox

priest George Snesarev of Voronesh. Nails were driven under

his fingernails and toenails. He was wounded sixty-three

times. Seven nuns of the Protection Convent were boiled in a

cauldron of tar. Their crime? They had been praying for anti-

Communists. The monk, Nektary Ivanov, was made to drink

'communion wine' made with molten pewter. '

In all such atrocities many Christians remained faithful

to their Bridegroom. Their deeds and their beauty are

outstanding, like the breasts of the bride.

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All fair

The Bridegroom says, 'You are all fair, my love; there is

no spot in you. Look from the top of Amana, from the top

of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the

mountains of the leopards' (4:7-8). The decision of the

bride to give herself to prayer makes her even more

attractive in the Bridegroom's eyes. He calls her 'all fair

. . . without a spot. ' (This is, incidentally, a good example

of how husbands should regard their wives. The apostle

Paul says, 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also

loved the church, and gave himself for it' (Ephesians

5:25). He, loving his Church, saw her to be all fair and

without a spot. We must have doves' eyes like him.)

He calls her 'bride' for the first time. How did she come

to bear the proud title of the bride of God's Son? It is

because she gave herself for him in persecution, just as he

gave himself for her.

A Rumanian Christian named Babutz had much to tell

when he arrived in America. He told how prisoners were

systematically beaten on the kidneys, after sandbags. Kad

been placed on their bodies to prevent marks.

Together with thousands of others he had been sent to a

slave labour camp. His job was to clean the weeds from the

River Danube, by hand. Many prisoners, standing waist-

deep in the icy water in winter, died. Coming and going, the

prisoners had to look at the swollen corpses of their friends

exhibited at the entrance to the camp. They were told, 'That

will be your fate as well, if you do not meet your quota.'

In winter, their thick clothing was taken from them.

They were told, 'The cold will make you work harder.'

Prisoners went hungry when the rats ate what little they

received. One hid a slice of bread in his shirt, saving it for

the next day. In the night mice chewed through his shirt

and ate the bread.

Another, forced to work in the fields, stole 20 onions to

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share with his friends. He was caught. He was made to

choose between eating them all at once or getting twenty-

five lashes on the soles of his feet. To avoid the

excruciating pain of the flogging he began to eat the

onions. Soon he collapsed, his eyes swollen from their

sockets, like a frog's eyes.

Yet another caught a serpent and tried to roast it on the

guards' fire. When caught he was made to eat the serpent

raw. Once an almost blind prisoner came to Babutz

joyously, wanting to share with him some crumbs of maize

cake he had found. Babutz told him, 'It is not maize cake.

It is mouse droppings.' The other exclaimed, 'Get away

with your dirty jokes!' and ate the droppings. For months

they were given no salt with their food. Then suddenly it

was saturated with salt. Many fell sick.

Babutz's daughter was told that she could only be

accepted for college if she denounced her father for

'compelling her to be a believer', a charge which would

mean he would be sentenced again.

But if you want to see happy people, you should look at

men like Babutz, and the others who have suffered in

Rumanian jails. They have taken a course in happiness;

they drown their sorrows in the deep ocean of Jesus' tears

for the sins of the world and the sufferings of his flock.

Their own pain counts litde beside his.

Let us try to do die same. We may be degraded. We

may be frustrated. But we surely never ate mouse

droppings. Let us take up our crosses joyfully. Then we

too will hear the words of the Bridegroom, 'Come with me

from Lebanon, my spouse; come from die lions' dens.'

Come from Lebanon

Lebanon is a range of mountains separating Syria, a

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heathen country, from the Holy Land. We have left

heathendom; but we have not yet arrived in the

Promised Land. We are still in the Lebanese mountains,

'the mountains of leopards,' full of savage beasts. But

from the mountains of Lebanon one can see Israel, the

heavenly fatherland, where we will be with the Most

Beloved. Even the mountains over which we must pass

are full of beauty.

'Look from the top of Amana' says the Bridegroom. It

is from here that the rivers Amana and Parpar

flow - rivers of which Naaman the Syrian spoke when he

said, 'Their waters are better than all the waters of Israel.'

On top of Mount Amana, we are not yet in the Promised

Land, but here we experience joys, some of which we

shall not even know in heaven. It is a joy to win souls for

the heavenly kingdom. That joy we can only know on

earth - and how intense a joy it is!

Only here can we know the joy of faith. In heaven there

will be no faith, only sight. There are other joys awaiting

us, but we will be deprived of the joy of faith. We who for

the present know only these joys, value them. And we also

are tempted to say that the rivers which flow from Amana

are better than all the waters of Israel.

'Look . . . from the top of Shenir'. The Targum of

Jerusalem, an ancient Aramaic translation of the Bible, says

that on this mountain so much fruit grows that it cannot all

be harvested, and much of it rots. Here the bride learns to

bring her fullness of harvest to the Bridegroom.

It is interesting to observe that the 'lions' dens', the dens

of those lions which desire to consume believers, are

situated on the heights of Amana. Amana shares the same

root as the Hebrew word for 'faith', Emunah. Nowhere is

one exposed to the devil's attacks so much as on these

peaks. Where you bring most fruit, you attract his worst

fury.

Those who have not themselves passed through the

lions' dens, who have always lived in comfortable places

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and never on the mountains of leopards, who do not

ascend the peaks of faith and prayer, are often apathetic

towards the sufferings of their brothers and sisters in

Christ.

In the Soviet Union the Orthodox priest Yakunin

sheltered Christians of every denomination for fifteen

years. When he was arrested, I received a smuggled letter

from another Orthodox in Russia, describing these past

activities of Yakunin the priest. He said they were

convinced that the authorities would never touch him;

Yakunin was well known, and so they would be afraid of

the uproar his imprisonment would arouse in the West.

However, the letter continued:

No vociferous complaints, no mass demonstrations

followed his arrest. No voice which could have

awakened the western public was raised in time.

It seems that even the Soviet authorites were

surprised that the arrest of a well known priest and

defender of religious freedom should arouse such a

minimal reaction in die West. Because they now knew

there would be no protest, very soon afterwards the

Communists arrested the renowned Hebrew Christian

historian, Regelson; and then came the Soviet attack

upon Afghanistan.

Afterwards another witness for Christ, the priest

Dudko, ascended the Golgotha prepared for him a long

time ago. [Dudko and Regelson later recanted under

duress.] The Adventist leader, Shtshelkov, who suffered

greatly for his Christian faith, died at the age of eighty-

four in Yakutia prison camp.

So it will continue if we remain silent and forget the

sufferers. We must appeal to men of good will

throughout die entire world. I have no words to express

my despair and my feelings of powerlessness.

One is reminded of this passage in Isaiah:

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'None calls for justice, nor any pleads for truth . . . [The

Lord] saw that there was no man, and wondered that there

was no intercessor' (59:4, 16).

But those who have been in the lions' den provide

examples of spiritual beauty. A prisoner in Cuba wrote to

his wife, 'The Holy Spirit brings your love and prayers to

me daily. Even if I don't receive your letters, angels keep

us a united, happy and contented family which rests in the

arms of the King, Jesus.' This should be a lesson to those

who have their marriage partners close to them and yet

have not learned happiness.

In Communist countries there is not only a dreadful

oppression, but also a Christian resistance to it. When you

read of it, your spirit rejoices. There are heroes in our

time. When one lives in tragic circumstances miracles

become everyday events. 'He who has not suffered has not

seen God. We will not see Him from satellites, but in the

lives of those who are not afraid of suffering. ' So wrote

Dudko before his arrest and downfall. Others who suffered

even more under the Communists did not crack.

The Soviet professor, Tatiana Shtshipkova, wrote,

I refused even to talk to the officials of the secret police.

To talk to them is the first step towards collaboration. I

was driven from my job as teacher of Roman history at

the university, because I spoke of my faith. I showed the

Bible to students who had never seen one before. My son

and his girlfriend were expelled from the Institute also.

My daughter Liuba, a non-believer, was expelled

from the Communist youth organization because she

had not denounced me as a Christian. After this, Liuba

became a believer.

A group of policemen behaved in an unseemly way

towards us. I slapped one of them. I expect a one-year

sentence for this.

Ogorodnikov is sentenced for one year. He has

turned from Marxism to a deep Christian faith.

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Ermolaev, nineteen years old, is imprisoned because

in the subway he expressed his opinion about the

Communist Party.

We have no aggressive intentions. We cause no

upheavals, we print no leaflets, we do not preach

insurrection. We wish to live as Christ taught, which

means, we want to live and pray together, help each

other, witness to our faith and speak of Christ to those

who want to listen. Are we dangerous? Surely so; the

proof lies with the persecutors.

The well-deserved slap which Shtshipkova gave the

policeman for his obscene gesture reminds us of

Archbishop Luke of Tashkent. He shook the ladders on

which the Communist workmen were climbing in order to

tear down the crosses from the cupola of his cathedral.

Then, because he was also a doctor, he took care of their

bruises.

Many Christians have given their lives for Christ. Six

Soviet Baptists who were sent to Afghanistan as soldiers

were executed there, because they refused to shoot Afghan

freedom fighters. They righly judged that the Soviet Army

had no business to be in a peaceful neighbouring country.

It is right to defend a free fatherland, but it is wrong to

fight in the name of a God-hating, murderous regime.

They came from Lebanon, from the lions' dens, from the

mountains of leopards, and are now in the embrace of

Jesus.

They knew the biblical way of happiness: 'You have

loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God,

even your God, has anointed you with gladness above your

fellows' (Hebrews 1:9). They loved the righteous command-

ment, 'Do not kill. ' They hated the iniquity of Soviet rule

and died for their convictions. Now they know the unsur-

passed happiness of heaven. In addition, they experienced

hours of jubilation before their execution, just as Jesus went

singing toward Gethsemane (Matthew 26:30).

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The value of our looking

The Bridegroom says:

You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse, you

have ravished my heart with one of your eyes, with one

chain of your neck.

How fair is your love, my sister, my spouse! how

much better is your love than wine! and the smell of

your ointments than all spices!

Your lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb:

honey and milk are under your tongue; and the smell of

your garments is as the smell of Lebanon.

Jesus calls the believing soul 'sister' and 'spouse' -

concepts which are normally mutually exclusive, because

it is an abomination to have your sister as your spouse.

But the unique relationship between Jesus and a believing

soul is typified in the Old Testament by the fact that

Abraham took as his wife a girl who was also his half-

sister.

The relationship between Jesus and the Christian can

take many forms. Sometimes it is that of an older brother

advising a younger sister; at other times it is the passionate

love of à bridegroom towards a bride. One analogy on its

own would be inadequate to express the variety of the

relationship.

Even in the Old Testament, God speaking to Israel

sometimes calls himself a father, sometimes a comforting

mother and at other times a bridegroom, a husband or a

friend. One and the same God - and so many analogies!

Jesus tells the bride, 'You have ravished my heart.'

There is really no satisfactory translation of the Hebrew

expression in the European languages. The nearest we

could come would be to say something like, 'My love for

you drove me out of my mind.' The Hebrew word for

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'love' used here is a plural form - 'loves'. The bride loves

him with intellectual love, with rational love and with

passionate love.

The Son of God acknowledges that through love, he has

become our prisoner. How does this happen? Then, as

sometimes now, oriental girls veiled their faces. To be

flirtatious they would lower their veil just a fraction,

showing one eye, if they were near somebody in whom

they had an interest. So the believing soul ravishes the

heart of the Saviour with one of her eyes, with one of her

glances.

It is written in die Old Testament that the Jews, bitten

by serpents in the wilderness, had only to look at the

brazen serpent erected by Moses in order to be healed.

One look at Jesus is sufficient to bring a soul to salvation

and to make him an heir of the eternal life.

How can a mere look have such huge results? It is

because we ravish his heart. We take from his mind

everything but ourselves. Through a single look, we

inflame him with love. So great is die poweer of a loving

look! God can thereby become ours.

Happy is the soul that loves. It takes God prisoner, and

God listens to it in all things. You cannot obtain from God

by mighty deeds what you can obtain from him by a single

loving look.

A farmer was seen to spend many hours in- church

before die altar, but he never seemed to pray. When he

was asked what he was doing, he said, 'I just kneel and

look at God;' So it is that one single quality of the

bride - one single loving look - secures God's whole heart.

Let us likewise love men for a single quality we perceive in

them, and close our eyes to all the rest which might be

inadequate.

In the Old Testament the caresses of the truly faithful

soul were more pleasant to God than all die incense which

was offered to him in die Temple of Jerusalem.

The Bridegroom also tells the bride, 'honey and milk

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are under your tongue.' The Jews endured forty years of

hardship, to finally see the Promised Land flowing with

milk and honey. After conquering Canaan, they fought

hard to keep it. But all those years they already had the

joyous realms of 'honey and milk' - right under their

tongues. We all have the Promised Land the moment we

stop looking for it in the far distance. It is there, in the

power of our tongue. Our own bitter words bring us to

hell. But confessing with the mouth that Jesus Christ is our

Lord, brings us salvation.

A garden enclosed

The Bridegroom says:

A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut

up, a fountain sealed.

Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with

pleasant fruits; camphire with spikenard,

Spikenard and saffron; calumus and cinammon, with

all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the

chief spices;

A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and

streams from Lebanon.

(4:12-15)

Jeremiah predicted a time when the souls of Israel would

be well-watered gardens. For the bride this is already

accomplished; she is a well-defended and enclosed garden.

Using these images, Jesus praises her chastity. Nobody

can enter a closed. garden or draw water from a sealed

fountain except the owner. When he does not come to visit

her, the garden of the bride is locked. She knows that, just

as a perfume bottle does not lose its fragrance if it is kept

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closed, neither does the soul which tends only to God lose

the warmth of love and the power of virtue.

It is said of the resurrection Lord that he came to his

disciples when the doors of their rooms were kept shut for

fear of the Jews (John 20:19). If they kept their doors shut

against those who could only kill them in this world, how

much more should we be like locked doors for fear of the

demons who can destroy our eternal life! To keep the

doors locked - to be an enclosed garden - to be separated

from the world - that is the proper state of your heart, if

you wish Jesus to show himself to you.

We have to be wary and lock our doors against

influences which are harmful to our souls. Spiritual

enemies can quench the Spirit in us. They take God from

us and spoil our intimacy with him, the divine solace and

eternal life. Why should you be an open fountain, at

everybody's disposal, so that men can spit in it or throw

their garbage in? Is there anything that pleases you more

than the presence of the Holy Spirit?

Our inner castle, where God's kingdom thrives, must

be kept locked against the images of the outside world. We

must ensure that the world remains outside, that it finds no

foothold in us, so that we shall not be destroyed. Our

imagination and our fantasies must be as beautiful as a

locked garden. Certain things may be allowed to enter and

others must be forbidden. God and the devil come with

their gifts to the gate of this garden. God's gifts must be

accepted, the devil's rejected.

God said to Cain, 'If you do not well, sin lies at the door.

And unto you shall be his desire' (Genesis 4:7). In

Revelation 3:20 Jesus says, 'Behold, I stand at the door,

and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I

will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. '

The faithful soul desires that only the Lord shall enter.

But the devil, knowing this, disguises himself as an angel

of light. How can we distinguish between them? What

must we do? We must keep our doors locked. We need to

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be an enclosed garden. The fact that our doors are locked

is no hindrance to Jesus. He knows how to pass through

locked doors.

Nobody has to be more righteous, more loving, than the

bride in the Song of Solomon. She is alert when she lies on

her bed: she hears the voice of the Beloved: 'Open to me,

my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled* (5:2). But she

also knows that the devil can imitate the voice of Jesus.

The many compliments make her especially suspicious.

Then she - who is sick of love for him, who has sought

him for many nights, walking the lonely streets and

marketplaces seeking the Beloved - now, when she hears

the voice at the door, refuses to open it: 'I have put off my

coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how

shall I defile them?' (5:3).

Jesus is pleased with her wise refusal, and exclaims in

admiration, 'A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a

spring shut up, a fountain sealed* (4:12). The Jesus she

refused is the true Jesus, because he does not become

angry. He knows us. He sees us. He searches our hearts,

and knows we are with him. He knows for what good

motives we refuse him.

He also knows why we cannot be gardens forever closed.

He knows our commitment brings us into contact with

many sins, many cultures, many false religions and

denials of God to which we would not be exposed if we

remained permanently enclosed gardens. We cannot share

our faith with others without also hearing their stories of

wickedness in their lives and their arguments for other

beliefs. It is unavoidable that some of this should seem

alluring. There have been cases of missionaries falling into

sin with those they were to bring to holiness.

The best thing is to avoid extremes. We must avoid

being so enclosed that others will die because, like black

holes, we emit no light. And we must avoid being so

outgoing that we forget that without times of withdrawing

into a quiet garden we cannot have a love-life with Jesus.

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He praises the enclosed garden. The flowers and fruits

mentioned are mostly exotic in Israel, and as such are

types of the rare pleasures that the bride offers to the

Bridegroom. She is a garden full of them. Originally the

word for garden was par des, a Persian word from which we

derive 'paradise'. For him to come near the bride was the

same happiness that we shall receive when we enter

paradise, because the Church produces the most exquisite

fruits for him. Where aloes grow, all the air is perfumed.

The Church fills the air with the choice perfume of Jesus.

The bride is called 'a fountain of gardens, a well of

living waters, and streams from Lebanon.' The rivers

flowing out of Lebanon are very fast-flowing and crystal

clear. So is the source of wisdom, which continually flows

from the mouth of the bride. So are the rivers of living

water, coming from her heart, which has become a temple

of the Holy Spirit.

Only keep your heart as an enclosed garden, and Jesus

will enter it with his burning love.

The privilege of enclosed gardens

Every 8th October the Russian Orthodox Church

celebrates the birth of the seventeenth century saint,

Tryphon of Viatsk. His enemies stripped him of his clothes,

bound him and threw him in the snow. When they later

went to retrieve the frozen corpse, they found instead a

living body which was unusually warm. The snow around

him had melted. In Rumanian prisons it was said that the

same thing happened when they threw the Christian, Budu,

naked into the snow. I myself have known many who were

put into refrigerated cells at freezing temperatures and

survived. Jesus entered through the locked doors of the

cells, and the Christians filled them with songs of praise.

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Freezing circumstances in your own life will not freeze

you, if you are close to the burning fire of Godhead.

I once attended an evensong celebrated by Seraphim, the

archbishop of the underground True Orthodox Church in

the Soviet Union. He has led his church for thirty years, yet

the Communists never discovered his whereabouts.

At that evensong, after he had chanted the first words -

'In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy

Ghost' — the whole congregation was already in tears. I had

heard and said those words thousands of times. But as

Seraphim said them I realized as never before the dramatic

truth that all we have of God is his name to call upon. During

the fourteen years of my imprisonment, 'Father' was only a

name to my son. He was deprived of the reality of a father-

son relationship. We are in the same position with the

heavenly Father, but we have the comfort of knowing mat he

is a loving Fatiier. His Son died for us; his Holy Spirit guides

us. The whole message was revealed to me in the way Sera-

phim chanted the words. Several people in the congregation

asserted that they could see a luminous being conducting die

service with him, although he was alone. I believe that

anyone who commits his soul to the act of imparting the

gospel (1 Thessalonians 2:8) has angels at his side at the altar.

This is the privilege of men who live in enclosed

gardens; who allow none to enter their intimacy; who shun

all influence. The right influence, the Bridegroom himself,

can leap over hindrances.

Awake, winds

The bride says:

'Awake, O north wind; and come, south; blow upon my

garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my

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beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. '

The Bridegroom replies: 'I am come into my garden, my

sister, my spouse; I have gathered my myrrh with my

spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have

drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends, drink, yea,

drink abundantly, O beloved' (4:16-5:1).

Though she is so appreciated by him the bride whispers

into his ear that she still needs to make preparations befor

presenting herself to him. The girls who had to enter the

presence of the earthly king Ahasuerus first had to beautify

themselves for twelve months: six months with oil of

myrrh and six with sweet odours (Esther 1:12). How much

more so should girls who must present themselves before

the heavenly king beautify themselves. Therefore the

bride calls the winds.

The north wind represents the punishments of God. The

south wind, opening the pores of the leaves to allow them to

exhale their sweet fragrance, represents the comforts of

God. Both are signs of his love, and both are needed so that

the garden of die bride may spread her perfume.

The Church has a rich share of punishments and

comforts. Above all, it has the privilege of being blown

upon by the wind of the Holy Spirit, which descended

upon the disciples at Pentecost. That was a fulfilment of

the bride's prayer.

The north wind blows with unprecedented fierceness

upon the Christians in Communist countries, whose rulers

have a long record of crime. In Addis Abeba, the capital of

Communist Ethiopia, the prisons are filled with Christians

and Moslems. The torturers use Cuban-made manacles

which can be rapidly tightened until the bones break. A

prisoner in the Andijane jail in Uzbekistan, USSR,

reported: 'The inmates are beaten to death or put in

straightjackets. The chief torturer is Umayukulov. Those

who suffer for their convictions are put in cells together

with bandits, who sodomize them.'

In Czechoslovakia 3,000 nuns were prisoners in their

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convents, which had been made into slave labour camps.

The number of priests and monks who have had to endure

the same fate is not known. Since books with a religious

content cannot be printed legally in Czechoslovakia, secret

printing presses have been set up at enormous risk. Such

presses are also run in Russia, China and other

Communist countries. When they are discovered the

printers go to prison.

Tito, the late president of Yugoslavia, was the murderer

of one in seven of the country's priests, and of countless

residents of convents. Also on his conscience is the death of

Cardinal Stepinac, who personally protected 7,000

children and defended Jews and Serbians during World

War II.

At the end of that war the Soviet army occupying East

Germany killed the priests Sonsalla, Demczak and

Goerlich. Innumerable girls were raped. Some of them

were nuns. Brutes of the same quality still control the

Communist countries.

All these crimes have been surpassed by the holocaust in

Cambodia. Around two million people were killed by the

Communists. Men with university degrees were

eradicated. The wearing of spectacles was made a crime

punishable by death, because it indicated the ability to

read. Of 500 physicians, only 57 are still alive. The

children of undesirables were chained together and buried

alive. Scarcely any children below the age of five

remained. In the beginning, no local men had the strength

to unload the relief parcels from abroad.

Yakunin, the Russian Orthodox priest, was imprisoned

for protesting against church leaders who compromised with

Communism, that is, brides of Christ who are in bed with

his enemies. He wrote: 'Authority in the church belongs to

Christ alone who obtained it by shedding His precious

blood. The church is His holy spouse, His living body.

Whoever permits power-seekers to interfere with the eternal

life of the church, abandons Christ's bride to corruption.'

155

Men like this would be able to agree with these words of

Hudson Taylor, founder of die China Inland Mission:

I was envied by some, despised by many, hated perhaps

by others, often blamed for things I had nothing to do

with; an innovator of what have become established

rules of missionary practice, working in many respects

widiout precedence and with few experienced helpers;

often sick in body as well as perplexed in mind, and

embarrassed by circumstance.

Had not the Lord been especially gracious to me, had

not my mind been sustained by the conviction diat die

work is His and He is with me, I must have fainted and

broken down. But the battle is the Lord's - and He will

conquer.

In Gardenas, in Byelorussia, USSR, Communists have

destroyed a fourteendi-century Gothic church. The same

thing happened with the splendid temple of Vidzial. In

Varanavas, women tried to prevent demolition of the

church by dirowing diemselves in front of the bulldozers.

Such devotion to the very end is the highest pleasure that

you can give to Jesus. The bride of Christ under

persecution gives him that pleasure in the worst possible

circumstances. She has only one purpose. To make Jesus

joyous.

Holy fantasy

She calls upon die Bridegroom to enter into her soul: 'Let

my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant

fruits. ' When she called upon the Lord, he replied, 'Here I

am.' His response was immediate. He came in to her and

she spent a splendid bridal night with him. He found his

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delight in her, and remembers her caresses now with joy;

'I have come into my garden, my sister, my spouse, I have

gathered my myrrh and my spice; I have eaten my

honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with

my milk.' These are all different descriptions of the

pleasure she has given him. Jesus, having known his bride,

soars on peaks of joy, because those delights were so richly

varied and full of beauty.

Normally, people do not eat the comb with the honey;

neither do they drink a mixture of wine and milk. But the

delights which Christ finds in the Church are unique

delights. She does 'more than others' (Matthew 5:47).

And the bridegroom calls his friends: 'Eat, O friends;

drink, yes, drink abundantly, O beloved.' These men are

not like the bride. They do not know the joys of intimate

fellowship with Jesus, but only participate, through his

benevolence, in others' privileges.

When you are invited to a meal, those who invite you do

not always wish you well. There may be small-talk at their

meals, and backbiting afterwards. But the invitation

which Jesus extends is sincere and comes whole-heartedly.

Jesus calls us all to his banquet, to the joy of seeing sinners

converted, and he calls us to attend the wedding feast of

the Bridegroom and the bride. Blessed are those invited to

this banquet! God commands the guests to eat and drink

abundantly. Only one greater happiness exists, and that is

to be part of the Body of the bride herself.

Atheists reject the wedding feast as fantasy. A courier

who smuggled Bibles into a Communist country was told,

'We don't accept books like these; they are fairy tales.'

The courier replied, 'Don't you have fairy tale books

in your country?' To this, the customs officer had no

reply.

The courier then said to him, 'There is nothing wrong

in works of fantasy, if the fantasy is sanctified and is only

employed in the embellishment of true facts. '

The union between Christ and the believer is such a true

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fact. We can embellish it. Fantasy is a beautiful gift of

God. In the first Greek translation of Zechariah, it is

written 'The Lord made fantasy' (Zechariah 10:1). It is a

product of imaginative creation.

Christian hymns are the product of saintly fantasy. For

example, consider ' There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn

from Emmanuel's veins. ' The blood of Jesus coagulated in his

hands and feet when he was crucified. Otherwise he would

have bled to death within minutes. Only trickles of blood

oozed from his wounds. But fantasy enriches reality. The

sinner sees before him a deep fountain of cleansing blood

into which he can plunge. There is more spiritual reality in

the fantasy than in the strict historic event.

Without fantasies, there would be no achievement in

life. Technology, medicine and art would all wither away.

Science fiction anticipated science fact. Flights of fantasy

preceded flights into space. Each step forward begins as a

step of fantasy which later becomes a reality.

The pleasures of the union between bride and

Bridegroom, and the final wedding feast, are surely the

product of fantasy; but when the reality takes place, they

will be seen as a fantastic description of a real event.

Christians believe in this invitation to the wedding feast of

the Lamb. They believe in the inebriating joys of drinking

abundantly at his feast. Therefore they gladly bear their

crosses.

In the village of Martuk in the Aktiubinskaia region of

the Soviet republic of Kazakh, the school director - a man

called Goroh - threatened a fourteen-year-old Christian

girl, Arganessa Tissen. He said that if she continued to

win souls to Christ, he would audiorize children to put a

rope round her neck and hang her on the spot. He

compelled Christian children to crawl on all fours, in a

travesty of kneeling at prayer. He called them 'Fascists'.

The Baptist Anatoli Y. Khailo was imprisoned on a false

charge of raping and beating a girl, even though somebody

else has already confessed to this crime. The girl's mother

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has also admitted that the prosecutor instructed her to give

false evidence against Khailo. Just like Joseph in the Old

Testament, who was imprisoned on a charge of attempted

rape even though he was holy and refused to sin, Khailo

must suffer.

This ugly side of life can distress us. But we know about

the wedding feast to which we are all invited. We do not

look merely on the rain, but on their iridescent rainbow.

The Baptist Church in Belgorod, after enumerating

many facts about the persecution, writes: 'We thank God

that He found us worthy of such an honour. We pray that

He will give us all the strength not to be shaken, because

the hour of the Lord's coming is near. May the Lord bless

us, and teach us to understand the shrewd methods of His

enemies. '

The Christians of Belgrorod are looking forward to the

coming wedding feast. Though the banquet is a product of

holy fantasy, it is a picture of future reality.

In Solomon's Song even erotic fantasy is sanctified. By

that means he describes the coming drunkenness of love

which the bride will experience in the embrace of the

heavenly Bridegroom. This holy fantasy has helped many

Christians to win through in Communist prisons.

Many people are attracted to so much that is ugly, to

things worse than reality. We who are Christians are

attracted to the beautiful, to the righteous, to the real,

expressed in the most gorgeous images.

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~ Chapter 5 ~

A sad chapter in the life of the bride

The bride says:

I sleep, but my heart wakes: it is the voice of my beloved

that knocks, saying, 'Open to me, my sister, my love, my

dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and

my locks with drops of the night. '

I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have

washed my feet; how shall I defile them?

My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and

my bowels were moved for him.

I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands

dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling

myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.

I open to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn

himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spoke: I

sought him but I could not find him; I called him, but he

gave me no answer.

(5:2-6)

She sleeps; but he who is in her heart never sleeps nor

slumbers. Just when the bride has fallen asleep, the word

was fulfilled: 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock.' She

hears the Beloved's voice.

Those who are awake must seek Jesus; but he comes

himself to the one who is asleep. There is not the slightest

rebuke in his words, no anger at finding he asleep. He says

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only, 'Open to me, my sister, my dove, my undefiled. ' The

Talmud says, 'Open to God a door as big as the point of a

needle, and He will enter witfi a cart full of blessings. ' How

can one not let in someone who begs you, 'Open to me,

sleeper with beautiful eyelids' ? How can one refuse entry to

somebody who says not one angry word, though such words

would be justified, but only says that he, the ruler of heaven

and earth, has nowhere to lay his head? Where will he rest,

if his bride does not call him? His hair is filled with dew

because he has spent the night in the fields, without a roof

over his head.

However, the bride prevaricates. She will not open to

him at once: 'I have put off my coat.... I have washed my

feet,' she says. But if she has put her coat off, she can either

receive Jesus naked, or she can make haste to clothe herself

again. If she has put off the garment of sin, she should never

put it on again; but as for other garments, she can put them

on in no time. And what sort of reply is this, that she has

washed her feet and fears to defile diem again? She knows

that Jesus washed his disciples' feet. He will do it for her

also. She is merely prevaricating.

And then he puts his hand by the hole of the door. When

we offer excuses, the grace of God tries to force the

entrance. But even he cannot open the door of the heart.

That door can only be opened from the inside.

It was only then that pity moved her. If you can't manage

any other sentiment for Jesus, at least have pity for one who

has been hurt so much.

When she rose to open to the Beloved, her hands dripped

with myrrh, which was on the handles of the lock. Oriental

keyholes are usually very large, and he must have poured

perfume on the handles from outside, out of a bottle he had

brought for her. When she put her fingers on the handle,

this perfume dripped from them.

She opens to the Beloved; but he has gone. He has

wididrawn himself. She did not open at the first knock, and

now he cannot be found. How many reasons for sadness we

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give ourselves, when we neglect opportunities that God

offers!

She remembers now how sweet his voice was. Her soul

had failed when he spoke. The Vulgate, the first Latin

translation of the Bible, says here, 'My soul melted when he

spoke.' That is how one can tell that it is the Lord who is

speaking. Disciples of Jesus who talked with him after the

Resurrection said to each other, 'Did not our hearts burn

within us, while he talked with us along the way, and while

he opened to us the Scriptures?' (Luke 24:32). It is always a

thrilling event when the Lord speaks to his souls.

But human beings are strange. The bride fainted when

she heard him; but she did not open the door. Afterwards

she seeks him and does not find him. She calls for him, but

he does not answer; It would all have been unnecessary, had

she opened the door at once. There are times in the life of a

man or woman when answers from Jesus cannot be

obtained anymore. Why did they delay in answering the

door? Was it because they had put off their clothes? The

clothes of righteousness should never be put off.

A young man was married to a girl by a priest of the

outlawed Uniate Catholic Church of the Ukraine. The

Communists arrested her, and told her husband that his

new wife would be raped by scores of soldiers if he did not

denounce the priest. At that moment he should have

opened his heart to Jesus, the Saviour who was ready to .

suffer for God's glory. Opening his heart at that moment

of tragic dilemma, the young Christian would have known

the simple truth that a Christian is never a denunciator,

no matter what the circumstances. But he did not. He

gave in. He denounced the priest who was in hiding.

When his wife heard of this she tried to commit suicide.

His mother died of a broken heart, and the priest went to

prison. The husband later confessed his guilt, and died

after valiantly protecting an innocent thirteen-year-old girl

from the Communists.

Others who have allowed Jesus to enter their hearts have

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acquired his courage. In Vietnam, everyone must have a

permit to leave his quarters. Permits are not available to

pastors. But they do leave their quarters, to answer calls from

sick parishioners or simply to preach the gospel elsewhere.

When caught, some were punished by being made to kneel in

front of their doors for a whole week. So they knelt, and

kneeling, they made plans about how they would propagate

the gospel when they were allowed to rise to their feet. If they

were caught again they risked new punishments, perhaps

prison or even death. The pastors Nguyen van Thang and

Nguyen van Nam died in Vietnamese jails.

All church property has been confiscated: schools,

seminaries, universities and orphanages. However, God's

children continue their work.

The Communists demanded that nuns working in

hospitals should perform abortions. They refused, and so

had to leave dieir work.

Since May 1975, 247 Catholic priests have been killed,

and hundreds more have been sent to re-education camps,

from which not all returned. The Evangelical clergy met the

same fate.

In Uganda under the dictator Idi Amin, Christians, as

well as political opponents of the regime and common crim-

inals, were imprisoned in the concentration camps Mabira

and Namamve. These prisoners were not fed at all. They

lived by the law of the jungle; the strong ate the weak.

Obviously, the Christians were among those eaten. It is an

old African custom that such victims are not killed before

being eaten; one piece after another is stripped from the

living body. This information is taken from die records of

an International Commission of Jurists at the United

Nations.

Christians bore this with faithfulness. In their suffering,

many must have cried to him and had the same experience

as die bride In Solomon's Song: 'I called to him but he gave

no answer.' Great faith is tested by long periods of waiting.

But in the end, there is no such thing as an unanswered

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prayer. The answer will surely come. It might not be the

answer that we desired, but it will surely be the best answer

for us.

Bad pastors

The bride complains: 'The watchmen that went about the

city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the

keepers of the walls took away my veil from me' (5:7). The

watchmen of the city represent the pastors of the Church.

Instead of helping the bride to find her Beloved, they beat

her and wound her and take away her veil. Jesus foresaw

that some of his pastors would begin to persecute his

servants. They would care only about eating and drinking

and enjoying themselves. In olden times many great

persecutions against believers were unleashed by priests

who, under the pretext of defending the Church, mistreated

the children of God who were meek and spiritual.

The priest Eli rebuked holy Anna for drunkenness, but

he had not one word of reproach for his wicked sons. Many

pastors have grieved the hearts of the righteous. Even good

pastors commit this sin. So the bride walks about, saddened

by her own conscience and now by her pastors.

Prisoners in Communist prisons do not only suffer from

the persecutor; they suffer also from betrayal by the leader-

ship of their denominations. At the exact time that Pente-

costalists in Rumania were being beaten by the police, the

official leaders of the Pentecostal Union of Rumania, who

are received as brethren at conferences in the Free World,

congratulated the Rumanian government in the columns of

the Communist press for the 'full liberty' it bestows. They

sent a letter to all the churches, obliging them to refrain from

preaching about God's judgement, because the Com-

munists do not like to hear this subject spoken about.

164

In Red China during the Cultural Revolution,

opponents of the regime (and all Christians were

automatically defined as such) had to kneel for ten minutes

of self-examination in front of a portrait of Mao, and slap

themselves on the face ten times each morning before

entering their workplace, and again in the evening before

they left. They were singled out to dean the lavatories. With

heads shaved, they were tied up and dragged away for

physical punishment.

At that time some Christian leaders in the West were

praising the Maoist regime as a fulfilment of God's

kingdom. Later, the Chinese Communists themselves

discovered the crimes committed under Mao. However,

some pastors had covered them up.

Sick of love

The bride says, 'I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if

you find my beloved, that you tell him, that I am sick of love'

(5:8). Beaten by the watchmen on the walls, the bride is

unable to continue her search. She demands of others that

they should pray for her. She uses third parties as interces-

sors on her behalf. The lover uses all means possible to make

contact with the Beloved.

'If you find my beloved' - she does not name him. A

powerful love always supposes that everybody else loves

the Beloved as well. She gives them a command: 'Tell him

that I am sick of love.' You can tell when someone is sick

from love, when that person cannot be dissuaded further

from doing and suffering all things for the Beloved. It is

written, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your

heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might'

(Deuteronomy 6:5). Have you known what it is like to be

love-sick?

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You may well know what sea-sickness is. There is also

such a thing as love-sickness. Do you know it? Do you know

what it is to love to madness, to love to a paroxysm of love?

This is love which, instead of drawing on its own large

resources, demands even more love. It is better to have this

dissatisfied love for Jesus, than a satisfied love for the world.

This is the message that her messengers are to bring to him:

that though she has been neglected, she still loves.

She does not ask him to come. She only tells him her pain.

Here we are taught that prayers should only mention one's

needs without making explicit demands; then he, knowing

our needs, will do what he thinks best. There are many such

prayers in the Bible. For example, Martha's prayer:

'Behold, he whom you love is sick' (John 11:3). This prayer

ony speaks of the need. The mother of our Lord at the

wedding in Cana says only this much: 'They have no wine'

(John 2:3).

Prayers which only express the need have a unique

beauty. He is the Master. You tell him only the situation.

He knows better than we do what needs to be done in such

circumstances. He feels more pity when he sees the beloved

soul suffering with resignation, selflessly. Only speak your

sorrow, without demanding what you think is necessary.

The bride sends messages to tell him only, 'I am sick of

love.'

We have many examples of this sort of love in the

persecuted Church in the Communist world today. Valya

was a twelve-year-old Russian girl. One day the director of

her school decided that she should become a member of the

Communist children's movement known as the Pioneers.

She refused. Her refusal was invalid, because the director

had legal rights over her such as only parents have in the

Free World.

Enrolment day arrived. The chosen candidates stood

before a table on which lay three-pointed Pioneer scarves.

One by one the girls stepped forward to don the scarf and

take the oath.

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'Valya Vastchenko,' called the director. 'Valya, step

forward. Take the oath.'

Valya's mouth stayed tightly shut.

'Say die oath, Valya!. . . Very well. I will read it in your

name.' The director pointed to two other girls. 'Place the

scarf around her neck as I read. *

He began. 'I, Valya, pioneer of die USSR, promise

before my comrade-patriots who decide die question of my

admission to die organization, that I will stand firmly for die

cause of Lenin and die victory of Communism. I promise

» ■

His next words were drowned as Valya burst out in

prayer to God and began to sing a hymn: ' We will stand firm

for the Faith, for Christ, following His example. '

That child knew from die experience of many others that

she had destroyed her future career for the rest of her life.

She knew she might be put into an atheistic boarding

school. She knew that her parents might be put into prison

and might even die there, but she did not rationalize. She

loved Jesus to a paroxysm, so she could not do odier than

what she did.

Thomas Aquinas was discussing die Song of Solomon

when he died. On his death, die song diat he wrote entitled,

I adore You, expressing his love and desire for Jesus, became

especially relevant:

Jesus, whom for the present, veiled I see,

What I so long for, Oh! vouchsafe to me;

That I may see Your beauteous face unfolding

And may be blessed, Your glory in beholding.

The bride is sick of love, which means that she suffers. We

have to defend our faith against the heresy of a Christianity

widiout suffering, widiout a cross. Let me quote from

typical sermons as preached frequendy on American

television.

'If a man can stand totally in the presence of Almighty

167

God, he will never be sick.' Thousands are sick of

tuberculosis contracted through hunger in Communist

prisons. Others were maimed by torture. Others went mad.

'The grace of God brings about his blessings in the

spiritual and the material realm.' Prisoners in the

Communist camps shiver in the cold, their families are fired

from their jobs and have no money to buy bread for their

children. Their goods are confiscated. Where is the material

blessing?

'As his children, it is not our place to be in die maelstrom

of die storm that swirls around us. We do not have to be

buffetted around by all the torments that afflict the world.

Even when trouble comes, die sunlight of God is shining

and there is peace upon us.' This celebrated preacher

doesn't seem to have heard about die dark night of the soul

through which well-known saints have passed. I dispute die

claim that Christians are at peace in all circumstances.

The bride in Solomon's Song knows deep peace, but she

also knows grave torments and sickness.

What does our beloved have more than others?

The bride is asked: 'What is your beloved more than

another beloved, O fairest among women? what is your

beloved more than anodier beloved, that you so charge us?'

She replies:

My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten

thousand.

His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy,

and black as a raven.

His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters,

washed with milk, and fitly set.

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers; his

168

lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly

is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine

gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as die

cedars.

His palate is sweetness and all desires: yes, he is

altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and diis is my

friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

(5:9-16)

The world does not know the beauty of the Bridegroom, but

I can see the beauty of the bride, of the Church. She really

is the fairest among women.' The world wonders about her

love for Jesus,and asks her, What does your Beloved have

more than others?' Rabbi Solomon Iarcbi, a celebrated

commentator, writes: thus the nations ask the Israelites:

What is your God more than all gods, that you are burned

up with hunger for him like this?*

She answers with a model sermon. It is a sermon

preached by a soul that loves to a paroxysm. It is not a bor-

ing exposition of bible verses, it is a description of what the

beloved is. Isaiah preached in the same way:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows,

and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces

from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our

sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God,

and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was

bruised for our iniquities: die chastisement of our peace

was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned

every one to his own way; and die Lord has laid on him

die iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened

169

not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he opened

not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgement: and

who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of

the land of the living; for the transgression of my people

he was stricken.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the

rich in his death; because he had done no violence,

neither was there any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to

grief; when he shall make his soul an offering for sin, he

shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the

pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be

satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant

justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

(Isaiah 53:3-11)

So also did the apostle John preach:

And so in the midst of the seven candlesticks [I saw] one

like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to

the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as

snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a

furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his

mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his

countenance was as the sun shines in his strength.

(Revelation 1:13-16)

With Isaiah we find Jesus' state of humility described; with

John the Evangelist, a description of His glory. The bride

describes his beauty. She has had his body lying near her,

she has caressed it, she knows it.

170

Yet the description of the Bridegroom is very far from

reality. The body is too shiny. The beauty of the young man

seems more that of a gilded statue than that of a human

being. It is probable that she is comparing him to a work of

Egyptian art. Ancient Egyptian sculpture was colourfully

painted, and the flesh of males was painted red. Therefore

she calls him 'ruddy*. (In 7:2 we find concerning the bride

the words, 'Your belly is like an heap of wheat set about

widi lilies'; this image is explained by the fact that female

sculptures were always painted yellow, the colour of wheat.)

The Egyptians also made bronze figures inlaid with gold,

silver and copper. Surely we are reminded of this when the

legs are described as columns of alabaster and the feet as

gold. It was a common device in Egyptian statues. To the

bride, diese features represent stability and grandeur.

Here die young man's legs are described in their entirety;

in 7:1, only the feet of die girl are mentioned. In old

Egyptian art, the legs of males were unclothed, whereas die

legs of females were never revealed except in die cases of

children, dancers or dolls.

What is said here about the Messiah has a deeper

spiritual significance. He is white because he is God and,

though a man, without sin. He is red from the many

whippings and sufferings he has endured. He is white, to

show sinners that their sins too, can become white. But the

red also warns them of the coming vengeance of God

against sinners.

'His eyes are as the eyes of doves.' In jail I had the

opportunity to observe the lives of doves. They nested in the

prison walls. I never saw fierceness nor fury in their eyes.

They were always loving. This verse reminds me of them.

Of the Bridegroom's hands, the bride says (according to

the Authorized Version), 'they are as golden rings set with

the beryl' - a precious stone. The Hebrew says, 'set in

Tarshish'. This is a strange word, for in the Bible it can

mean either a personal name, a kind of ship or a country.

Nobody knows for sure where the place called Tarshish was.

171

Here the use of this word teaches us to see God's loving

hand in what is achieved by human hands, in material

objects and in great events involving whole nations.

Modest brides do not describe their beloved's belly to

their girlfriends. The bride sets aside the normal

conventions of decency and does so. She wants to suggest to

every soul that Jesus can be known in the most intimate

embraces. What needs to be concealed? His naked body was

displayed in public on die Cross.

She ends her description by saying, 'He is altogether

lovely' or, 'He is all desires. ' Every desire of a bride can find

fulfilment in him. 'This is my beloved, and this is my

friend.' She is sure he is her beloved, though for a time he

left her.

We see how beautiful Jesus is in the eyes of his bride, by

the description of him in Christian poetry, and by the works

of the great sculptors and painters. We also see his beauty in

the heavenly music composed in his honour by renowned

composers.

The persecuted Christians know his beauty. The pupil

Atkociunaite told her teacher in Soviet Lithuania, 'I don't

care what you do to me. On the eve of Easter I will remain

the whole night in adoration in the church.' If he were not

beautiful, nobody would spend a whole night looking at him

in adoration!

In a book published secretly by the Orthodox

Underground Church, the author writes:

A man travelled on the shores of the Azov sea. He saw

fishermen at work. The thought came to him, 'If the sea

contained no fish, nobody would be fishing. Nobody goes

to a well that has no water. If there were no grace in the

church, nobody would go there.

A fool can go into a cellar and proclaim that there is no

sun in the universe. Truly, for those in cellars there is

none. So, there is no God, for those who are in the

darkness of God-denial and evil.'

172

Living under fierce persecution, this author writes, 'God

is richness, fullness of life, love. All beauty, all power, all

good, is only in God. ' He writes thus, a member of a church

whose people are jailed, tortured and killed.

The Orthodox priest Nicholas Ivassiuk was assassinated

in Tchardjow, Turkmenia, on 5 December 1978. Six men

in police uniforms entered his house. Next morning

Ivassiuk was found dead. His eyes had been gouged out

(just as happened with the Baptist Victor Sedletskii), and his

body had been burned by cigarettes and red-hot irons.

There were also numerous lacerations. He had been

finished off with two bullets through the head. Such things

belong to the ritual of Satanist sects. The crime was

perpetrated on the eve of the Feast of St Nicholas, whose

name the priest bore, as a calculated mockery of the saint.

Ivassiuk left five daughters.

And yet from such a place of cruelty and sorrow, the

Orthodox Underground Church publishes writings full of

joy, jubilation and adoration of the beauty of Jesus! They

know what that beauty is. They have seen him.

Michaela, a Rumanian Orthodox nun, like all Orthodox

and Catholic Christians, believed that the Communion

bread and wine really are the body and blood of our Lord.

Every time she looked at the Sacrament, she saw his

intoxicating beauty. When the police took over the

Vladimireshti convent, she protected the altar with her own

body. For this she was thrown into prison and mistreated

beyond description. But from her solitary cell she tapped

out the gospel in Morse code through the wall to her fellow-

prisoners until she died. She had seen his beauty, and would

not give up sharing her love for him.

173

~ Chapter 6 Ä

* Whither is your beloved gone?'

The bride is asked, 'Whither is your beloved gone, O

fairest among women? Whither is your beloved turned

aside? That we may seek him with you.' She replies, 'My

beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of

spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies'

(6:1-2). Now that the girls have heard from her what

makes her Beloved greater than any other, they also seek

him. It is enough that one soul should seek Jesus in utter

sincerity; then others will join in the search for him. Thus

the girls now ask, 'Whither is your beloved gone?'

The bride knows that she is going to have to give good

directions to those who ask. She is inspired; she gives a

remarkable reply: 'My beloved is gone down.' For

anyone who does not know Jesus, these are incom-

prehensible words. The celebrated Rabbi ben Ezra wrote

this commentary on the text: 'This - of the One who

ascended on high? He is said to gather lilies, because He

dwells with the angels who are the righteous ones. ' In the

same way, most believers who have lost Jesus do not find

him, because they think that now that they have fallen, he

is far above them. But he did not ascend. He went down.

He descended far below the level to which they have

fallen, so as to be able to meet them in their misery. The

bride who fell into sin by refusing to receive him in her

home when he knocked on the door, now knows that 'He

has gone down.'

174

In the beginning, God created man after his own image.

When we lost that image, God came down and took upon

himself the image of of man. He became incarnate, in a

body like that of sinners. That is the way he always deals

with us. If we cannot ascend to him, he descends to us. As

ours sins increase, so does his grace. Because we cannot be

saints, he puts himself on the same level as the sinners.

That is the only way in which continual fellowship with

him is made possible.

Encounters with Communists do not only create heroes

of the faith. Many believers fall away. In Rhodesia,

Communist terrorists kidnapped Simon Chengeta, a black

Member of Parliament and a Christian. They forced his

son, Steven, to beat him to death. The son, who bears the

name of Christianity's first martyr, could have refused.

Probably the result would have been that they would have

hacked him to death alongside his father, using somebody

else to do the deed. But Steven did not want to die. So he

fell away from the faith and became a parricide.

It is a privilege to become a hero by choosing to suffer

instead of making the Son of God bleed. Those who make

the right choice have the joy of loving and forgiving even

their torturers. But not all make the right choice.

In Addis Ababa, the Communists arrested a couple with

their older children. The children under six were left

behind in their home. Nobody dared to bring them even a

crust of bread. That might have been considered a crime

punishable by death. Christ teaches us to help, even when

the circumstances put our lives at risk. I have known

German Christians who helped Jews, and Jewish

Christians who later helped Germans, when they were

persecuted by the Soviets, even though the punishment for

such acts of love was death. In the case of that Ethiopian

family, Christians opted to fall away from the law of love

and from Christ. The children died of hunger. That falling

away was absolute for those who believed that the pure

Jesus is far above the fallen or backsliding sinner. But

175

those who believed that Jesus had come down, found the

way back to him.

Once I shared a cell with two Uniate bishops. Under

torture they had 'confessed' to being spies, black

marketeers, and collaborators with the pre-revolutionary

police. They 'confessed' that they had denounced

Communists and had caused their arrest. Their tears

never ceased. (It is said of the apostle Peter, that to the end

of his days he wept whenever a cock crowed.)

The bishops constantly reproached themselves for their

lack of heroism. They did not know how heroic their

'confessions' were. It was not the heroism of those who

never give in, but heroism it was; a heroism of the fallen

who know that though they are brought low, Christ went

lower still, down to utter despair. So they found the

courage to acknowledge their sinfulness - something rare

among church leaders.

In Rumania, the Communists killed a Baptist pastor. At

first a promising teacher, he later became an informer for

the Secret Police. One of the pieces of information he

passed on to the police concerned a secret meeting I had

with a French Christian in Rumania. Everyone was

suspicious of him. The brethren shunned him. He had no

peace in his heart: he know that what he was doing was

wrong.

He was astonished to find himself invited to the

Lausanne Conference on Evangelism. After all, he was

widely known to be a Communist agent. Once arrived in

Switzerland, he criticized the true Christians in Rumania

as lawbreakers; but all the time he could not understand

why the pastors from the Free World, who had no

obligations to the Secret Police, did not contradict him.

Why were neither he nor the other Judases blamed?

In an attempt to ease his conscience, he confessed to a

Western Christian publisher that he was working for the

Communist Secret Police. The publisher smelt a good

story and offered him an advance on a book. He was

176

disappointed; he had hoped that this fellow-Christian

would set him back on the right path.

He had to return to Rumania in the end. He was

determined to repent. Soon he broke off all relations with

die Police. They retaliated by staging a car 'accident' in

which he was killed.

But he had understood that Jesus has gone down, far

below the depuis to which he himself had sunk. He died at

peace with the Lord, thanks to the prayers, love and

forgiveness of the Underground Church,

A faithful Bridegroom

The bride says, 'My beloved is gone down into his garden,

to die beds of spices, to feed in die gardens, and to gather

lilies. I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feeds

among the lilies' (6:2-3). He who loves gardens and

flowers has gone down into his garden to die bed of spices,

which typify the various denominations. He picks lilies

(spiritual believers) from them all. These keep dieir trust

in him. They say, 'I am my beloved's, and my beloved is

mine. ' The bride retained this trust even though for a time

he forsook her. God has sworn that he will be faithful. He

will not lie to the disciples of David's Son. Our

Bridegroom is always faithful.

Ion Cazacu was one of my best friends. During the Nazi

occupation of Rumania he risked his life by 'stealing'

Jewish children from the ghettoes. The Jewish Christians

in Iashi were in danger of death. Already, 11,000 Jews had

been killed. The rest were not allowed to leave the city.

Then a friendly official was persuaded at my request to

issue warrants of arrest against all Hebrew Christians. As

a result they were able to travel in comfortable train

compartments as 'prisoners', guarded by Cazacu, who was

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armed. Once they arrived safely in Bucharest, the order

of arrest was torn up and the prisoners were brought to

my house.

Cazacu and his wife were also the only people who

succeeded in entering heavily guarded prisons with

carloads of food for the hungry Christians in detention

there. That is the sort of life lived by men who know that

Christ is always faithful.

In Rhodesia, Communist guerrillas killed forty

Catholic, Pentecostal and Salvationist missionaries, along

with their families. The victims - a three-week-old baby

among them-were beaten to death with hammers,

bayonets and axes. Mrs Pickering, die mother of one of

the dead, said: 'We have prayed that God may forgive

our enemies. There is no bitterness in our hearts.'

Tremendous things are happening in Poland. Those

fed by Jesus among lilies organized, for the first time in

world history, a strike of 600,000 workers brandishing

such weapons as prayers, Christian hymns, and Holy

Communion. They occupied the factories, but there were

no violent words or deeds. The leaders were motivated

by a Christian spirit. Their chief demands were full

religious liberty, the Church's right to time on television

and radio and the right to publish. The striking workers

made it possible for the anti-Communist Cardinal

Wyszinsky to preach on television after thirty years of

prohibition.

A new phase of world history was opened by the

Christian Lech Walesa, the Polish strike leader. A man

powerful because of God's deep peace, he risked his life

and his liberty. He did not remain an obscure private

soldier in the Christian struggle. He realised that officers

and generals were needed. He developed the necessary

spiritual qualities, and God promoted him to a high rank.

Jesus is the only shepherd who feeds his flock in

gardens, among lilies. That is something no other

shepherd would do! But we expect the unusual from him.

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Beautiful as Tirzah

The Bridegroom says:

You are beautiful, my love, as Tirzah, comely as

Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.

Turn away your eyes from me, for they have

overcome me: your hair is as a flock of goats that appear

from Gilead.

Your teeth are as a flock of sheep that go up from

washing, whereof every one bears twins, and there is not

one barren among them.

As a piece of pomegranate are your temples within

your locks.

(6:4-7)

The Bridegroom compares his bride with the capitals of

the two Jewish kingdoms: Tirzah - which means in

Hebrew, 'the pleasant' - was the capital of Israel until

Omri built Samaria; and Jerusalem was the capital of

Judah.

Faidiful souls are sometimes sad, and ask themselves,

'Do I deserve to become an inhabitant of the heavenly

Jerusalem?' What a senseless question! In the eyes of the

Bridegroom we are as pleasant and beautiful as Jerusalem

itself. Therefore, naturally, that is where we should be.

The beauty of the bride makes her 'terrible as an army',

with the banners under which it advances to victory. We

overcome the world by faith; and widi our beauty, we

overcome God as once he was overcome by Jacob, who

wrestled with him.

The image of the army shows that by his 'bride* not one

individual is meant but the whole Church. The Church is

'terrible for God' through the irresistible power of the

attraction it has for him. We advance victoriously towards

God. God wishes one thing; we, in prayer, express another

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wish, and so we can be conquerors. The Bridegroom

pleads with the Church, 'Turn away your eyes from me,

for they have overcome me.' God declares himself

defeated. We defeat him, with our doves' eyes.

In Exodus we read that God had decided to destroy

Israel after it had sinned by making the golden calf. But

Moses defeated that plan of God. He made him change his

mind (Exodus 32). Every spiritual believer can do the

same.

When the bride is with him, and he looks into her great

pure, penetrating eyes, he lowers his own. The charm of

her eyes is unbearable to him. The Bridegroom says,

'Your eyes have overcome me.' Rabbi ben Ezra translates

this as, 'They are stronger than me.' The Septuagint

renders it, 'They have caused me to flee. ' Such can be our

victory in prayer, through one loving look. Christians are

called "more than conquerors". They are the conquerors

of him who has overcome all.

When the apostles watched Jesus ascend into heaven,

two angels came and stood by, and asked them, 'You men

of Galilee, why stand you gazing up into heaven?' (Acts

1:10-11). If they had continued looking, perhaps Jesus

would have been unable to separate himself from the

earth. He could not have ascended. Their eyes would have

impressed him so much that they would have persuaded

him to fulfil their longing that he should remain with them.

We have God's command: 'Look unto me and be you

saved, all the ends of the earth' (Isaiah 45:22). And in

Solomon's Song we also have the command to the

contrary: 'Turn away your eyes from me. ' The latter verse

serves as a warning to prying eyes, seeking out of curiosity

to search mysteries which God has reserved only for

himself.

The Bridegroom's words, 'Your teeth are as a flock of

sheep ... as a piece of pomegranate are your temples' are

an almost verbatim repetition of the compliment which he

pays the bride in chapter 4. Before she refused him access,

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he praised her. Now he pays her the same compliment, to

show her that he has the same love for her after as before

her fall. Even if his people are full of weakness, Jesus loves

them. In the eyes of the king, the bride is as beautiful after

her fall as she was on the day she was first presented to

him. His love knows no alteration.

It is not necessary that the eyes of Christians be phys-

ically beautiful, for the bridegroom to be impressed. A

Christian who has undergone torture is not a pretty

sight.

A former Rumanian prisoner, R. Radina, describes his

experiences in jail:

Religious poems were being recited when, all at once, a

man with his head red with blood entered the cell.

Maddened with pain, he could not speak, but only

howled like an animal. The prison director had beaten

his face with a stone.

An imprisoned Christian child, Mihica, was beaten

with a stick on his head and on his lame leg. His crime

was that he had shared his bread with other sufferers.

He had considered a slice of bread too sumptuous a meal

to eat all by himself.

In Cambodia, women were tortured with poisonous

spiders. In Sarsar Sdam, children were torn to pieces and

old women nailed to the doors before their houses were set

on fire. Prisoners were hanged on trees after their bellies

were ripped open.

Pure souls whose eyes are swollen, ringed with dark

circles, bleeding, lift up a loving look to the Bridegroom.

He has suffered for us as the Son of God, for whom

goodness and love were the norms. These souls, though

sinners, have loved him. Having to conquer their own

nature in order to be able to love at all, when they look at

him in adoration they are unconquerable. The prayers of

martyrs are not rejected.

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Radina also tells the story of the Rumanian Uniate

priest, Onofrei Pompei. He was abused and hanged in the

loft of his house. When the assassins departed the rope

broke, and the priest came back to consciousness. God can

save a person, even when it seems that all hope is gone.

After that experience, Onofrei spent years in Communist

prisons. Radina says of him, 'His expression radiated a

strange light. He seemed a true saint.' This is the look

which conquers even God.

His harem

The Bridegroom says, 'There are threescore queens, and

fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. My

dove, my undefiled, is but one; she is the only one of her

mother, she is the choice one of she that bare her. The

daughters saw her and blessed her; yes, the queens and the

concubines, and they praised her' (6:8-9). Towards the

end of his life Solomon had some 700 princesses as wives

and 300 concubines. When he wrote the Song of Songs,

they were fewer.

In the spiritual sense these words show us that all souls

of believers are God's, that all the Christian churches are

his. But we are not all equally loved. Only one is his dove,

his undefiled, 'the only one of her mother'. There is one

holy and apostolic Church, and it is made up of all the

children of God. This Church is one, just as Noah's Ark in

the period of the flood was one.

That does not mean, however, that those who are not

members of it physically are excluded from the kingdom of

God, or cannot be Jesus' sheep. There are some sheep

which have to be brought into the true fold (John 10:16).

The heart of Jesus embraces everybody in its love. But it is

specially drawn to this choice dove, just as David, who had

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many wives, desired only Michal. Jesus longs for souls

who belong to the only true Church with all their hearts.

In Communist lands, Jesus has his queens in ever)'

denomination. After eight years in prison I had grown

accustomed to the routine. But one day a group of recently-

arrested Orthodox priests were jailed. It was for them the

very first day of the ordeal. It was winter; we sat on the bare

concrete. From time to time, drunken guards would bawl

'All priests out!' The priests were taken from the cells and

were severely beaten. I had known one of them for many

years, and I asked him: 'Brother, are you grieved?' He

answered, 'I know only of one grief, that of not being a

saint.' In such circumstances, the words vividly showed the

beauty ofthat soul, and made a lasting impression upon me.

Seventh-Day Adventists courageously stand up for their

faith in Russia. Anatolii Miller, Karpenko Boris,

Kovaltchuk and Galetskii are names of some of the

Adventists who belong to Jesus and were jailed for their

beliefs. The child, Michael Kozak, was kidnapped by the

Communists from his parents, because they taught him

the Adventist faith. When the child, who was interned in

an atheistic boarding school, insisted on going back to his

parents, he was put in a psychiatric asylum to be 'healed'

of this desire. In spite of such things, the Adventists

remain faithful to their Saviour.

In Cernanti in the Soviet Union, the Sedletztzy family

received the sealed coffin of their son, who had refused to

give up his faith while serving in the army. The officers

demanded an immediate burial, but the family opened the

coffin. They found the youth's face distorted from

beatings, the eyes gouged out, the tongue torn out, the

fingers cut off. He was a Baptist, faithful unto death.

In Rumania it seemed that St Basil the Great was alive

again, because his words were on the lips of saints under

interrogation. When a pastor was threatened with

deportation, his reply was: 'Where can you exile me? I will

be in my Father's world wherever you send me.'

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To the threat of property confiscation, the reply was:

'That's all right by me, but you will need a very long

ladder. I have gathered my treasures in heaven.'

'We will kill you!'

'We Christians do not fear death. It means passing over

to a better life.'

'You are fools. We will not kill you, but keep you all in a

prison cell behind locked doors and iron bars. We will not

allow anybody to visit you.'

'We have a friend who can pass through locked doors

and iron bars. We cannot be separated from the love of

Christ.'

Christians are those who have promised faithfulness to

God unto death. God keeps his promise. He never breaks

it. Neidier should we.

A Catholic seminarian, Ion Budu, died near me in a

Communist prison. His greatest wish had been to be a

missionary in India or Japan. His last words to we who

were with him were diese: 'If any of you ever go to Asia,

tell the people there that I love them. May I die serving

them through my longing for them, so that my death will

be a sacrifice on their behalf.' I am the only survivor of

that prison ward of dying men. When I went to Asia I saw

how deeply moved the people were, as I told them how

diey had been loved for Christ's sake by a prisoner who

had died a martyr death.

Jesus has many queens in every denomination, but also

he has concubines. Concubines are girls or women who

have illegitimate relationships with men. The only

consistent attitude towards the Communist authorities is the

Underground Church. The official churches, which have

compromised with Communism, are anti-churches. Some

of dieir pastors or bishops are real believers, but they are

believers who waver between two masters, - Christ and

Communism. They serve Communism, but stealthily slip

away from it to say words of love to Christ. When he was on

earth, too, Jesus had his secret believers. There are now

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secret believers in Christ among the members of the

Communist Party, and even among the officers of the

Communist Secret Police. However, they do not want to

lose their livings and their positions. What they are doing

is wrong, but Jesus accepts them as his concubines.

The glory of the Church

Who is she that looks forth as the morning, fair as the

moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with

banners?

I went down to the garden of nuts to see the fruits of

the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished, and

the pomegranates budded.

Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the

chariots of Ammi-nadib.

Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we

may look upon you. What will you see in the Shulamite?

As it were the company of two armies.

(6:10-13)

The description of the Church in verse 6 is very like that in

Revelation 12:1: 'A woman clothed with the sun, and the

moon under her feet.' It is written in the Zohar.

Israel's light will come little by little, until they will

become strong. God will illumine them forever. AU then

will ask, 'Who is she that looks forth like the dawn,' this

being a reference to the first tiny streak of the dawn;

then 'Fair as the moon', the light of the moon being

stronger than that of the dawn, and then 'clear as the

sun', that is a still stronger light; and finally 'terrible as

an army with banners', expressive of the light in its full

strength.

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For, just as when the dawn emerges from darkness its

light at first is faint, but gradually brightens until full

daylight is reached, so when God bestirs Himself to

shine upon the Community of Israel, He will first shed

on them a streak of light like that of the daybreak which

is still black, then increase it to make it 'fair as the

moon', then 'clear as the sun', until it will be

'tremendous as an army with banners'.

She shines so intensely because she has followed Jesus'

example. He has gone down (6:2). The bride too has gone

down. Jesus said to Zaccheus, 'Make haste and come

down.' Whoever belongs to Jesus must humble himself.

The bride says, 'I went down into the garden of nuts.'

There she has learned something important! A believing

soul is like a nut. It might be dirty and muddy outwardly,

but the dirt never reaches the kernel. It is the same with the

Christian when he is polluted by living in this world.

Because she has humbled herself and gone down, the

Bridegroom takes her up, in the chariot of Ammi-nadib.

Some commentators believe Aminadib to have been the

name of one of Solomon's celebrated chariot drivers. The

speed of his driving would be symbolic of the swift res-

ponse of the Saviour to the call of love. But the old Jewish

interpreters divided the world thus: Ammi-nadib. This

means, 'the chariots of my willing, or princely, people.'

Return, O Shulamite

Seeing her thus glorified, die other girls call out to her.

They shout what the average man, for centuries, has

shouted to those who sit near to Jesus in his chariot of

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of trials: 'Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return!'

The world is very demanding; it wants to draw us back to

its own level.

At a jail in a Communist country, young officers would

take girls out of the cells and invite them to go to

restaurants with them. The girls, who had no fresh air in

cells crammed with a hundred other unwashed people,

were offered ice-cream and the cosy surroundings of a

cinema, where they were shown erotic films. Most

believers refused. One girl accepted. The Communists

had been nice to her; she had to be nice too. The voice had

been too insidious: 'Return, O Shulamite. Love me. You

probably do not know the blessedness of the love of a man.

I'll reveal it to you. My kisses will warm you. ' She did not

answer 'I belong to God', as she should have done.

Everything else followed.

When she was freed, she accepted an invitation to speak

to her fellow-inmates, attacking the faith. As she spoke

against Jehovah, tears rolled down her face. She had

returned to the world, while the others, the true brides,

had remained steadfast.

Oleg Berdyuk, a Ukrainian writer in jail, has described

how he came to accept the faith. He was a child when an

artificial famine engineered by the Communists killed six

million Ukrainians. He went to visit a relative, but she had

starved to death. In an open Bible on her table, he read

Magdalene's words, 'They have taken away my Lord, and I

know not where they have laid him.' Turning round, she

saw Jesus, who asked her, 'Woman, why do you weep?' The

one she had considered dead was alive! (John 20:13-15).

That impressed him, but the Church disgusted him.

Once he heard a priest chanting in the sanctuary, 'God,

grant a long life to Stalin, God's chosen one, devout

Christian and leader.' That was how religious stooges

referred to the murderer of millions of innocents. This left

him open to the call of the world: 'Return, O Shulamite.'

He became an atheist.

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But then he dreamed two dreams. In one, he saw Christ

with an incredible weight on his shoulders, blood streaming

down his body, his eyes sorrowful yet hopeful. In another

dream, Christ, wearing a crown of thorns, showed him

raging torrents, high mountains and cliffs, and said, 'Follow

the path.' He asked, 'Why?' Christ replied only 'Go.'

Then one day he seemed to feel the presence of Christ

while he was awake. It was not a thought about Christ. It

was Christ himself. Oles knelt and said the only words that

hallow God: CI accept all that fate brings.' These words are

similar to those of the virgin Mary: 'Be it unto me according

to your word.'

And now, for the first time, we discover the name of the

bride. It is 'Shulamite'; the Shulamite is the same person as

the Shunamite. The bride's name is a reference to Abishag

the Shunamite, one of David's concubines.

In Hebrew the word shulamite means 'peacemaker'. It is a

name like Solomon which means 'peace'. The bride is a

female Solomon. Jesus is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9), and

the Church is the princess of peace, the Shulamite. Those

who look at her can only think she' is beautiful,

accompanying angels in their dance.

The persecuted Church in truth 'looks forth as the

morning' and is 'fair as the moon, clear as the sun'. The

Orthodox monk Michael Ershov was in jail for forty-five

years. While in prison he has healed many possessed, lame

and blind people. What reason could have have for

complaining or grumbling against Christianity? Instead of

doing so, he used even his life in prison for doing good.

Kiwanukas, a trustee of the Jesus to the Communist

World mission in Uganda, died in 1977. Together with

fourteen other Christians, he was murdered by a

hammer-blow to the head. His head was then cut off and

taken to president Amin's house. His body was thrown

into a lake.

Bishop Luwumba was asked by Amin whether he had

any weapons. The Bishop showed him the Bible. Amin

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shot him first in the mouth, then in the chest. This

murderer of Christians drank his blood and ate a piece of

the victim's flesh. His advisers assisted him.

Despite such sufferings, the bride of Christ continues to

spread the knowledge of his beauty in dark Uganda. She

in truth looks forth as the morning and is fair as the

moon, clear as the sun.

What a beautiful soul is the Russian believer Ghenadii

Shimanov! Because he was an active believer who sought

to win souls for Christ, he was put into a psychiatric

asylum. There, Dr Shafran argued with him: 'Why won't

you abandon your way of life, and hold on to your life,

your freedom, and the happiness of your family? You

could also keep the core of your faith intact. All you have

to do is to give up propagating it. It only brings you

sorrow. The odds are against you. You have the whole

State opposed to you. In this sort of situation, every fight

becomes an act of suicide. And what does your religion

say about suicide? It forbids it. So, you see ...

'One of my neighbours is a priest. We live in the same

house. He is high in the Moscow patriarchy, an educated,

intelligent man. One day he said to me, "Religion and

life are two completely separate things which shouldn't be

allowed to mix." A highly intelligent man! He can help

you to reach decisions of which you are not capable on

your own. Or do you prefer the martyr's crown?'

Shimanov replied briefly to the psychiatrist. 'The devil

is smart.'

Shafran demanded, 'Am I the devil?'

'Oh, no. What ideas you have! I wasn't speaking about

you. I am speaking about the devil. The real one.'

Shimanov refused to abandon his Christian activities.

He remained in the asylum. He had to endure gagging

and straightjackets. But he looked forth as the morning.

He was fair as the moon, clear as the sun.

The end of verse 13 would be better translated, 'two

companies of mahanaim, ' a category of angels which

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specializes in sacred dancing. When God the king entered

into his sanctuary, 'Singers went before, the players on

instruments followed after; among them were the damsels

playing with timbrels' (Psalm 68:24-25). So it happens

when the Shulamite meets her Bridegroom. In Genesis

32:1-2 it is written, 'Jacob went on his way, and the

angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he

said, "This is God's host' ' : and he called the name of that

place Mahanaim. '

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~ Chapter 7 «

The holy dance

The Bridegroom says:

'How beautiful are your feet with shoes, O prince's

daughter! the joints of your thighs are like jewels, the

work of the hands of a cunning workman.

Your navel is like a round goblet, which wants not liquor:

your belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.

Your two breasts are like two young roes that are

twins.

Your neck is as a tower of ivory; your eyes like the

fishpools in Heshbon, by die gate of Beth-rabbim: your

nose is as die tower of Lebanon which looks toward

Damascus.

Your head upon you is like Carmel, and the hair of

your head like purple; die king is held in the galleries. '

(7:1-5)

The bride is here described as a dancer. People have

always danced to the glory of their God. After they passed

through the Red Sea, the Israelite women 'went out after

[Miriam the prophetess] with timbrels and widi dances'

(Exodus 15:20). When David returned from his victory over

Goliath, 'women came out of all die cities of Israel, singing

and dancing, to meet King Saul' (1 Samuel 18:6). David

danced mightily before God; Ecdesiastes says that there is a

time to dance (Ecdesiastes 3:4). Jephthah's daughter came

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to meet him with timbrels and dances (Judges 11:34).

Jeremiah prophesied that girls would rejoice with dancing

when Jacob was ransomed. And when the prodigal son

returned to his father, there was music and dancing.

The Shulamite also dances. She dances gracefully, like a

true princess. Again her beauty is described to us, but with

different imagery to that used before, because no earthly

analogy alone is adequate to portray all the splendour of a

faithful soul.

The description of the bride at this stage of her spiritual

growth - after she has fallen into the sin of refusing to receive

him - reveals her as more beautiful than she was immed-

iately after the wedding. The sinner who repents is more

beautiful in God's eyes than the righteous person; therefore

the angels find greater joy in looking upon such a person.

One realizes, reading these verses, that the Bridegroom

cannot find enough words to show his love to the bride who

returns to him. He borrows images of oriental sensuality,

and gives such free rein to his imagination that the translator

is tempted to water down the vividness of the original.

Solomon uses language which nobody in the West would

dare to use, except to describe a woman abandoning herself

totally, without reservation. It is the language which

Solomon used to speak of the dancers in his harem. The

Bridegroom praises even the most intimate charms of his

bride. He praises her beauties, and she praises his. He

honours us; we honour him.

His first word of praise is, 'How beautiful are your feet

with shoes. ' She has shod her feet with the preparation of the

gospel of peace (Ephesians 6:15). Hers are the shoes of mes-

sengers bringing good news, telling of peace and salvation.

'The joints of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the

hands of a cunning workman. ' Saint Paul says that the Body

of Christ - the Church - gets its nourishment by the joints

(Colossians 2:19). This is an image of those pastors who lead

their flocks well and teach them. Such pastors are jewels in

the eyes of God.

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The bride dances naked before the king, or wrapped in

flimsy veils. Fascinated by her dance and her body, he

exclaims, 'Your navel is like a round goblet, which wants not

liquor; your belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. '

The belly is the organ from which food is distributed to the

whole body. So it is also the secret castle, that which gives the

bride a choice wine mixed with spices, which animates all

her spiritual life. (The word translated as 'liquor' means in

Hebrew 'mixture', indicating the variety of blessings she

receives.)

Her two breasts are like 'two young roes that are twins'.

This means that both Old and New Testaments are a delight

to her.

Her neck is like 'a tower of ivory'. The neck, uniting the

head and the body, is a symbol of faith. This means that her

faith cannot be strangled.

Her nose is like the tower of Lebanon, one of the towers

built by David in the north of Palestine to serve as an

observation post against the Syrians.

It is important that believers have a keen sense of smell.

They must discern the spirits. As from the tower of Lebanon

one could see enemy armies from afar, so the bride scents

heresy which is far off.

Our intellect prefers to see the similarities between

doctrines rather than the differences between them.

Consequently it gives vague information. We need a nose

like the bride's, capable of discerning the spirits. Pastors in

the Underground Church need such a nose to discover

Communist infiltrators.

The tower looks towards Damascus, the capital of Syria,

always Israel's enemy. To her enemies she is 'terrible as an

army with banners'.

Her head is 'like Carmel', a hill full of rich vegetation. She

has a beautiful abundance of red hair. The Nazirites were a

kind of monk living at that time. No razor ever passed over

their heads. It was believed that the secret of their power lay

in their hair. The bride's power of attraction also resides in

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the richness of her hair, those locks that bind the King of

Kings.

There are not enough words to describe the beauty of the

bride of Christ under persecution today. In Guinea in

Africa, under the dictator Sekou Toure, Cardinal

Tchidimbo and other Christians were kept for up to eight

days without food or water in the tropical heat, in cells full of

rats, lice and insects. The cables which bound them cut into

their flesh. They were flogged and called 'Christian dirt'.

Three hundred prisoners were iocked into a single

unventilated room, where they suffocated.

Others were given electric shocks while their hands were

tied to iron bars placed so high that only the tips of their toes

reached the floor. For days the full weight of their bodies was

taken by their tied hands.

Some were forced to kneel on sharp stones. Their skin was

flayed and pepper was poured on their open wounds. Hot

pepper was introduced into the rectum; this is a torture

which produces unspeakable pain. All the time they were

told, 'If you denounce others, we will give you water.'

Some died; they did not become Judases. The Cardinal

survived, and, after his release, he wrote in Rome a splendid

book demonstrating how suffering has purified him and

made him love the Bridegroom more.

In South Africa, the Communist-backed terrorists,

supported by the leftist World Council of Churches, hacked

pregnant women to death. They slit the throats of babies.

They peeled the skin from an old man's face, and left him to

die in the blazing sun, impaled on a barbed-wire fence. They

cut off lips. They gouged out eyes. But the bride of Christ in

South Africa remains unafraid.

One of the strangest verses in the whole book follows the

praise of the bride: 'The king is held in the galleries.' The

Hebrew word translated as 'held' is asar which also means

'imprisoned with chains and fetters'. The word rahat which

the Authorized Version here renders as 'gallery' is in

Genesis 30 translated as 'gutters'.

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All Jewish commentators agree that the king spoken of

here is the Messiah. The Kabbalah says that he does not come

yet, because God keeps him bound in heaven in golden

chains. Others believe that he is bound there with locks of

women's hair, which are like eddies of water in water

troughs. Hence this image. He ardendy wishes to come, but

God restrains him in this way.

We cannot accept these fancies. The Messiah has come.

Jesus is his name. The explanation of the verse is much

simpler than those above. The king has found himself a

bride in the world's gutter. Publicans, crooks, loose women,

murderers, those of us with more 'respectable' sins - all of

üs are lost. When we are converted he admires the beauties

of our souls, described in detail in the preceding verses. His

love for his bride binds him to her as if with fetters.

Jesus admires his bride

The Bridegroom says:

'How fair and how pleasant are you, O love, for delights!

This your stature is like to a palm tree, and your breasts

to clusters of grapes.

I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the

boughs thereof: now also your breasts shall be as clusters

of the vine, and the smell of your nose like apples.

And the roof of your mouth like the best wine for my

beloved, that goes down sweetly, causing the lips of those

that are asleep to speak.'

(7:6-9)

There will never be anything more delightful than love

which bears all things, believes all things and hopes and

endures all; love which is extended even to enemies and

beyond the grave; love which gives its life for the beloved.

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Love is the wisest thing. That is why the Syriac translation

calls this book, The Wisdom of the Wise.

Jesus speaks to the bride in the language of admiration.

We must not be surprised at this. Faithfulness was a part of

Jesus' nature. For him it was natural to be faithful. He came

from heaven. But faithfulness is practised also by many

downtrodden, wronged men of this earth, who do not

understand the reason for their suffering. They still

maintain their faithful, pure love for God, and that is

something for which God himself has admiration.

I knew a railway worker who was a Christian. His only

daughter, whom he loved very much, died when she was

fourteen. She was drowned head-downwards in a ditch full

of sewage. The man did not torment himself with doubts,

but continued in his love for God, and was prepared to suffer

imprisonment for his sake. God made our souls pleasant and

beautiful, and he admires Us as an artist admires his work.

The stature of the bride is like that of a palm

tree - straight, powerful, high and gracious. The palm tree

was an emblem of Israel. A medal was struck for the Roman

Emperor Titus, who destroyed the Jewish state. It bore the

figure of a grieving woman seated beneath a palm tree. The

inscription read, Judaea capta - 'Judaea is taken'. She might

be a captive, but Israel was still a palm tree, standing erect,

refusing to bow to heathen idolatry.

The Bridegroom says to himself, 'I will go up to the palm

tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof. ' He is expressing

his desire to be strongly united with the believing soul. Let us

take heed of the words 'I will go up'. There are believers

towards whom Jesus 'goes up'. He said that there are some

who will do greater works than his (John 14:12). Towards

those disciples, he ascends. He will grasp the boughs of these

palm trees. When he does so, it will be seen whether they are

strong and resistant or not. A palm tree which he embraces

becomes sanctified.

Not only in Solomon's temple, but also in Ezekiel's ideal

temple, there were figures of palm trees as well as cherubim.

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The use of the palm tree as a symbol for a bride is

emphasized by the Hebrew text in these passages, since the

word used for 'palm tree' is not the usual tamar, but its

female form, timmorah.

The bride's breasts 'shall be as clusters of the vine'. Just

as grapes refresh a man, so Jesus is refreshed by our

fruitfulness, by our work for him. One of the character-

istics of oriental love is that it takes pleasure in anticipating

its joys beforehand. So Jesus exults beforehand, in the joy

which he will receive from faithful souls.

In the entire Soviet Republic of Moldavia, there were

only two Catholic churches. One of them, in Sloboda-

Rashkovo, was bulldozed to the ground by the police.

They are mindless. They destroyed the physical building,

yet the church is now more beautiful than it was before.

The Catholics, weeping, lifted from the mud the church's

Communion wafers, which they believed to be the real body

of Christ. They ate them with reverence. Walls had been

torn down, but the Christians' reverence for God had

increased. Jesus 'goes up' toward such believers.

In the Soviet Union the police frequently raid meetings

of the Baptist Underground Church, confiscating Bibles,

hymnbooks, and the private purses of some of the

believers. They kick Christians in the belly and in the

chests. The Communists are mad. Usually the believers,

while they are being beaten, pray and sing. Such music has

a spiritual beauty of its own. To these believers, Jesus says,

'How fair and pleasant are you, O love, for delights!'

These are the Christians likened by him to palm trees, to

whom he goes up.

The Communists do not know the words of Gregory of

Palama: 'The Christian's life is outside, beyond, and

higher than its physical self.' 'Truth', wrote Luther,

'becomes more triumphant when attacked, more glorious

when oppressed. '

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'Gome, my beloved*

The bride says: 'Come, my beloved, let us go forth into

the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us go up early to the

vineyards; let us see if the vines flourish, whether the tender

grapes appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there I will

give you my loves' (7:11-12).

We are the object of two desires. God says to Cain, 'Sin lies

at the door. And its desire is for you' (Genesis 4:7). In Psalm

45 it is written, 'Harken, O daughter, and consider, and

incline your ear; forget also your own people, and your

father's house; so shall the king greatly desire your beauty'

(Psalm 45:10-11). Two powers compete for our love.

And now she who has chosen Jesus will demonstrate how

greatly she desires him. She says, 'Come, my beloved, let us

go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.' Faithful

souls hate towns full of sin and noise. It is difficult to serve the

Lord if things continually distract you. Isaac went out into the

field to meditate quietly (Genesis 24:63). Jesus advises us,

'When you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have

shut your door, pray to your Father' (Matthew 6:6). The

bride does not seek amusement in noisy places. She desires

solitude. She doesn't want Jesus to judge the Church with the

same judgement that will be meted out to the spoilt residents

of the town. Jesus will see the reality of her faith in a quiet,

rural environment. In company with him, she will go early to

the vineyard to see if the vines are flourishing and whether the

tender grapes have appeared. They will examine souls, to see

whether diey have grown in grace and truthfulness.

Wang-Min-Dao, a hero of the faith in China, broke

under torture and acknowledged before a large crowd, 'I

am an anti-revolutionary criminal. I am grateful to the

government for pardoning me and saving me from the

depths of my sins.' But he repented later. He went to the

police station with his wife and said, 'I am a Judas. I have

betrayed my Lord. Imprison me. ' He sat in jail for over

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twenty years. Now he is free in Red China.

If the Bridegroom and the bride go up to the vineyards of

Red China, they will find that the vine has flourished, and

the tender grape has appeared.

In Omsk, in Russia, die Baptist Church was celebrating

Easter. Its members had garnered at the home of Sister

Helen Siusa. Thirty policemen, mostly drunk, rushed in

and jumped upon the believers. They ruthlessly beat up

everybody, including old people, women and children.

When the police tried to arrest the preachers, men who

had already been in prison, the children cried, 'We will not

give up our fathers!' Their tears were heartrending, but the

police did not think so. They kicked them with their boots

and shouted: 'You are enemies of the people! You should

have no work and no food! There is no law to protect you!'

The Christians, however, were unafraid. That same after-

noon they held their worship service again in the same house.

A Russian Pentecostal believer, Vashtshenko, had been

twice in prison. His four sons carried on his work. One of

them, Hariton, became a Pentecostal bishop. His children

were asked to deny Christ and to blaspheme in school. They

refused to comply. They were taken away from their parents

and put into an atheistic boarding school. Their mother was

forbidden to visit them. This is what they wrote to their

parents: 'We weep at night. The boys beat us. But do not

worry, Papa and Mama, for God is our protection. We weep

because we are not allowed to come home. '

Their daughter, Valia, refused to eat without saying

grace. She was mocked but with other Christian children,

she continued to thank God for her food. She wrote: 'The

director shouts at us and this is good; the bigger our sorrow,

the nearer we are to God. By God's will I shall remain a bel-

iever. I do not want to learn anydiing in this atheistic school. '

An Orthodox priest, Talantov, and his son were killed by

the Communists. His other son, Boris, continued to witness

openly for Christ. For tfiis he also was put into prison, where

he died.

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The Baptist preacher Peter Vins died in prison for his

faith. His wife too was in prison for three years. Their son

George, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of the

USSR, also went to jail.

The bride can quietly call the heavenly Bridegroom to get

up early to go with her to the vineyard. They will see the vine

flourish and the tender grapes appear. Christianity in

Communist countries bears rich fruit for God.

A pleasant perfume

The bride says, 'The mandrakes give a smell, and at our

gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I

have laid up for you, O beloved' (7:13).

The precise identification of the mandrake is unknown. It

could be the cantaloupe. This has a pleasant perfume, which

typifies the perfume spread in this world by believers;

especially by young believers who have been born into a

family of the faithful and have not known the life of sin.

In antiquity the fruit and roots of the mandrake were

thought to have aphrodisiac qualities. Leah gave mandrake

to Rachel. The fragrance we spread in the world stimulates

the faculty of love in others.

Unlike the evil workers in the vineyard who have withheld

their harvest from the master, the bride has laid up fruits at

the gate. He is not greedy; he is not in a hurry to collect

them; he allows them to mature.

We know how to keep the fruits which were not picked by

the master, just as women know how to preserve fruit. The

bride has kept new and old fruit for her master. 'Every scribe

who is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a

man that is a householder, who brings forth out of his

treasure things new and old* (Matthew 13:52)

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~ Chapter 8 ~

'If you were my brother*

The bride says:

*O that you were as my brother, that sucked the breasts of

my mother! When I should find you without, I would kiss

you; yes, I should not be despised.

I would lead you, and bring you into my mother's

house, who would instruct me: I would cause you to drink

of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.

His left hand should be under my head, and his right

hand should embrace me.

I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you stir

not up, nor awake my love, until he please.

Who is this that comes up from the wilderness, leaning

upon her beloved?

I raised you up under the apple tree: there your mother

brought you fordi: there she brought you forth that bore

you.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your

arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the

grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which has a most

vehement flame.

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 be utterly condemned.'

(8:1-7)

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The most intimate of relationships with Jesus cannot be

expressed in public. Before the world, we may only have the

relationship between brother and sister, in which kisses are

considered respectable.

The Shulamite is modest. She knows how far she is from

what a wife should be. She still has to learn. So, she says that

if she should find him, she would lead him into her modier's

house, the Church.

What daring words she uses! We are accustomed to think

he leads us as king, shepherd and teacher. But we can also

lead him - by prevailing love and prevailing prayer. In fact

a contest is taking place. He wishes to lead us to the

mansions he has prepared for us in his Father's house: we

insist on first taking him to the house of our mother (we shall

speak further of this). There, the bride will learn to give him

spiced wine, the juice of her pomegranate. The mother, the.

Church, has long experience of the kind of adoration which

pleases him. We all have to learn from her.

The bride's friends ask, 'Who is this that comes up from

the wilderness leaning upon her beloved?' First it was the

Jewish people. Now, it is the Church and every individual

believing soul. Every 'coming out' from the wilderness is a

'coming up'.

The wilderness is exhausting. You cannot come out of it

in your own strength, but only by leaning upon the Beloved.

The literal translation is, 'her arm under his arm-pit' - an

expression of great familiarity.

She says, 'I raised you up under the apple tree.' We

believers raise up the Saviour through our prayer. The

disciples woke him up repeatedly during a storm: 'Awake!

why do you sleep? Awake!' This is also the frequent prayer

of the Psalmist.

She prays that she might keep his love: 'Set me as a jewel

upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.' Men in the

Orient sometimes wear, on their breast or on their arm,

jewels with the portrait or the name of their bride engraved

on them. She wants the Beloved to have such a jewel. She

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would like to be a seal on his heart, so that nothing else

might enter. The soul wants to know for certain that it will

remain in God's love.

The bride's prayer has been fulfilled. John's Gospel tells

us that Jesus said on the Cross the word which is rendered

in Greek as tetelestai — 'It is finished. ' In the New Testament

all Jesus' words are translated, for he spoke in Aramaic.

The word he must have actually used is kalah. It has two

meanings. One is 'It has been accomplished' or 'finished'.

The other is, 'bride'. It is possible that his very last word

before death was a loving sigh for his bride.

Of some souls God has said, 'I have engraved you upon

my hand.' God says to a believer who has reached diis

spiritual state, as he said to Zerubbabel, 'I will take you O

Zerubbabel and will make you as a signet; for I have chosen

you' (Haggai 2:23). But before this is fulfilled, terrible

things must happen.

What God says to Zerubbabel is: 'I will overthrow the

throne of kingdoms, and I will destroy the strength of the

kingdoms of the heathen; and I will overthrow the chariots,

and those that ride in them; and the horses and their riders

shall come down, every one by the sword of his brother. In

that day . . . will I take you ... as a seal (the same word as

is translated 'seal' in Haggai 2:22-23).

Sometimes we pray foolishly. We are like doctors who

would like to destroy tuberculosis but object to the

destruction of the microbes that cause it. We want the

kingdom of God, the only state in which we will know in

perfection what it is like to be near the Beloved; but as often

as something happens that signals the destruction of

Satan's kingdom, we make intercession: 'Don't let

anything be destroyed!' The churches storm heaven with

their prayers.

That is what I alluded to when I compared the desire of

the Bridegroom, who wants to lead us into his Father's

mansions, to that of the bride, who wants to lead him to her

mother's house. We will come to be a seal on his heart only

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when our prayers quieten down, to 'Hallowed be thy

name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done' - though I

know that this will involve the perishing of all those who,

despite having had a better light offered to them, oppose it.

Even when you have arrived at this place, vigilance is

necessary. The assurance that one is in the favour of God

can only be maintained by patience, goodness and

righteousness.

Love is like death

Now the bride brings arguments to show why she has such

pretensions, and why she makes such demands.

Death and love have many common features. Just as

nothing can resist death or avoid it, and in the end

everything must come under the law of death, so it is with

love. He whom death assails, must die; he whom love

assails, must love. The phenomenon of death makes man

understand that there are limits to human power.

However, I cannot resist telling a joke in this context. A

pastor was once delivering a thundering sermon about sin

and hell. 'One thing is certain!' he said. 'Every man,

woman and child in this parish will die one day. There is no

escape! '

A boy in the front seat began to laugh.

'Every person in the parish will one day die!' the pastor

reiterated.

The boy continued to laugh.

'What are you laughing at?' demanded the pastor

angrily.

'I'm not from this parish!' said the boy.

Death happens of necessity. There is no point in

dissipating energy in struggling against it. It can be

postponed for a time, but not escaped. So with love. You

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cannot decide with whom you will fall in love. There are

two people destined for each other: when they meet, the

barriers fall. Because of love, Edward VIII of Britain gave

up the throne of an empire, for a divorced woman; King

Charles II of Rumania did the same. The elect bride can do

no other than love Jesus ardently. He can do no other than

love her.

It seems at first glance strange that the bride could not

have found more appropriate images of love than death

and the grave. The Zohar asks the question whether God's

words when he finishes the creation - 'And behold, it was

very good' (Genesis 1:31) - included in their meaning the

Angel of Death. The Zohar concludes:

Concerning this mystery, R. Simeon gave us the

following explanation: 'And behold it was good' refers to

the Angel of Life; 'very' to the Angel of Death, for he is

of greater importance. And why? When the Holy One,

blessed be He, created the world, all was prepared for the

coming of man, who is the king of this world. Man was

fashioned to walk in the straight way, as it is written:

'God has made man upright, but they have sought out

many inventions' (Ecclesiastes 7:29). He made man

upright, but he gave himself over to corruption and was

therefore driven out of the Garden of Eden. This garden

was planted by the Holy One, blessed be He, on the

earth, and made an exact likeness of its prototype, the

Paradise above, and all supernal forms were fashioned

and shaped in it, and the cherubs were there - not those

carved in gold or any material that could be fashioned by

human hands, but of supernal light, fashioned and

broidered through the agency of the perfect Name of the

Holy One. All the images and forms of all things in this

world were there fashioned,.all having the similitude of

the things in this world. And this place is the abode of

holy spirits, both of those that have come into this world,

and also of those that have not yet come into this world.

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Those that are about to come are invested with garments

and with faces and bodies like those in this world, and

they gaze upon the glory of their Lord until the time

comes for them to appear in the world. When they leave

the Garden for that purpose, these spirits put off their

celestial bodies and garments and take on the bodies and

garments of this world; they henceforth make then-

abode in this world in the garments and bodies fashioned

from the seed of procreation. So when the time comes for

the spirit to leave this world again, it cannot do so until

the Angel of Death has taken off the garment of this

body. When that has been done, he again puts on that

other garment in the Garden of Eden of which he had

had to divest himself when he entered this world. And

the whole joy of the spirit is in that celestial body. In it he

rests and moves, and contemplates continually the

supernatural mysteries which, when he was in the

earthly body, he could neither grasp nor understand.

When the soul clothes herself with the garments of that

world, what delights, what joys, she experiences! And

who caused the body to be inhabited by the spirit? Why,

he who took off the garment of flesh, the Angel of Death!

The bride sees nothing wrong in death, which brings her

into his embrace. For her, it is natural to compare love to

death.

In the fourth century AD, in Sebaste in Armenia, forty

young Christians were sentenced to death by freezing. In

winter they were forced to go naked into a river. They were

told that if they denied their faith, they would be allowed to

come out and warm themselves at a fire that was ready on

the shore. The mother of one of them helped her son to

enter the vehicle in which they were to be taken to the river.

She did not weep, but said, 'Go, walk with your brethren.

Don't linger. Do not arrive in the Lord's presence after

them.'

One of them did recant. But then a soldier watching on

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the shore saw an angel descend from heaven, widi forty

crowns in his hand. He placed a crown on every head,

but was left with one over; the youth for whom it was

intended had fled the Angel of Death, the harbinger of

the final triumph.

The soldier immediately stripped off his clothes and

plunged into the cold water, shouting, 'I am coming,

Angel!' He died with the rest. That is how brides feel and

act.

Just as death is impressed by nothing, and cannot be

bribed or persuaded not to act, so is love. Love for God,

just like death, takes away from man the desire for

transitory things. Just as death never releases its prey,

neither does love.

Surely, this is what the love of God towards us is like.

For his beloved bride, he puts aside his glory, his

righteousness, his law, his divinity, his eternity. For her

he becomes a slave. He dies on a cross - for her. His love

is a love to the end.

His jealousy is cruel as the grave. It is love's legit-

imate reaction against any insults brought to it by the

beloved. He is jealous when we fall into idolatry. We, for

our part, have to be jealous and intolerant of the things

that belong to our lower nature. Our prayer is, 'Lord,

be jealous of me; and do not give me into the hand of

anything else.'

A book without the word 'God'

The bride says, 'The coals [of jealousy] are coals of fire,

which has a most vehement flame.' The Authorized

Version here translates exacdy what is in the Masoretic

Hebrew text. However, some Jewish copyists wondered

how it was that this biblical book contains no mention of

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God. Therefore, in some manuscripts they divided the last

word of this verse, shalhebetiah ('vehement flame'), into

shalhebet-Jah - 'flame of the Lord' (Jah being the older form

of Jehovah). The same is found in several English

translations.

This is acceptable but superfluous. God resonates in

every verse in this book. God is love. Where bride and

Bridegroom show burning, loyal feelings towards each

other, when you have said 'love' you have said 'God'. In

this Song, mutual love and the giving of self to each other,

and to the One to whom they less directly belong, is

religion itself. There is no need to dress it up with religious

phraseology. Solomon's Song does not include the word

'God'. But it is an eloquent proof of his existence.

The philosopher, Immanuel Kant, said that the moral

law demands that men be rewarded in proportion to their

virtues. Since in everyday life evil men often fare better

than those who are good, it follows that there must be

another existence, and there must be a God who gives

rewards in eternity. Brides like the one in Solomon's Song

surely do not get their rewards on earth.

Vincent Van Gogh was a preacher in a squalid mining

village in Belgium. He became more humble than the

humble, and renounced everything: house, clothes and

food. He overwhelmed his hearers with his evangelical

fervour. During a typhoid epidemic he gave away as

bandages even the few rags that he wore. Then he

discovered his talent for painting. Now, over ninety years

later, his paintings sell for millions. But Van Gogh himself

never made any money from his art. He continued to live

in the darkest misery, creating master-works.

Chinese Christians have always endured suffering with

fortitude. During the Boxer Rebellion, when killers

entered the house of sister Ming, she asked them to allow

her the favour of changing her dress. She then put on her

bridal gown and most beautiful ornaments. For her, death

was a wedding feast. And so she died.

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Prisoners brought to the Wronski jail in Poland were

asked, 'Who among you is a believing Christian?' All

stepped forward.

'We have kneeling chairs for you,' they were told.

The prisoners were then made to kneel on ordinary

stools. 'Pray aloud!' they were ordered. 'And take your

shoes off!' During their prayers, blows fell on their bare

feet. The Christians all had difficulty walking next day.

In Wronski, the cells are cold. Many windows are

broken. Christmas dinner consisted of plain bread and

overcooked potatoes, yet the prisoners had to work at

felling trees v Whoever stayed in the toilet more than five

minutes received truncheon blows.

'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the

floods drown it.' God, loving the little Israel, did not

forsake it for the cause of some mighty empire. On the

contrary, he gave other nations as a ransom for Israel.

The love of God for the faithful soul will last forever. This

is the summary of this whole book, and its moral. The

love magnified in this book is true love, which does not

lose heart when faced with great danger. It is a love which

inspires courage and sacrifice, preferring voluntary

poverty to servile richness; a love which hates with vigour

everything which is false and mean; a love which matures

into calmness and faithfulness.

Priceless love

'If a man would give the substance of his house for love, it

would utterly be condemned. ' Such love is not for sale.

Like wisdom, it cannot be bartered for gold. It cannot be

bought with silver.

It is written in the Bible, 'Buy truth.' (Proverbs 23.23)

Jesus said, 'I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in the

, 209

fire, that you may be rich; and white raiment, that you

may be clothed' (Revelation 3:18). Interpreting words like

these, upon which he had not meditated very profoundly,

Simon the sorcerer offered money to the apostles, and said

to them, 'Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I

lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost' (Acts 8; 19).

His fault was that he did not understand spiritual things.

God's gifts cannot be bought with money. Isaiah says,

'Buy wine and milk without money and without price'

(Isaiah 55:1).

The commandment is strict: it is forbidden to pay for

God's gifts with money.

To simply give everything is the responsibility of all

Christians. Simon sinned by the fact that he still had

money, and he offered it to the disciples in exchange for

something. The first Christians gave everything at the

time of their conversion.

The gifts of God can be bought, but it is through the

renunciation of sin and vanity. Moreover, riches are incom-

patible with love; the believer must consistently refuse the

hope of riches. As Jesus refuses our money and seeks us, so

the bride must seek not his gifts, but Jesus himself.

A missionary, captured by the Chinese Communists

some years ago, was about to be beheaded. Suddenly she

began to laugh. Her captors asked, 'What is so funny

about being beheaded?'

'I was just thinking,' she replied, 'how ridiculous my

head would look rolling down the hill!' They let her go.

With this sister, love was as strong as death.

After the Russian Revolution a civil war raged for many

years between the conservative population and their foes,

the Communists. At that time an Orthodox priest, walk-

ing down the street, saw five soldiers of the conservative

White Army tie a Communist soldier to a tree and prepare

to execute him. On seeing the priest, the officer who led

the firing squad greeted him with the usual Russian

greeting, 'Bless us, father.'

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'I can't bless a killing,' answered the priest.

Moved, the officers freed their prisoner.

A few weeks later a woman called that priest to

administer the last rites to her dying son. As he entered

the house, the priest heard the son yell to his mother,

'Why did you call a priest? All those villains must be

killed! I am a Communist. I can't stand priests.'

But then, recognizing the priest, he exclaimed, 'You

are the one who saved me from being shot. You said, "I

can't bless a killing." Do you see the big knife on the

table? My assignment was to kill you with it. If you had

known that, would you still have stopped my execution?'

'Even in that case,' replied the priest, 'I would not

have blessed the killing, because God has forgiving love

for us all. God has sent me a second time to save you.'

A minute later, the man was dead, but all the hatred

had disappeared from his face. The love of that priest

was also stronger than death.

In the Soviet Union, there still are brothers and sisters

in psychiatric asylums. A letter smuggled out told of

Sitchovka, a prisoner in an asylum, who was shown a

straitjacket by a Secret Police officer posing as a doctor.

He said, 'Don't worry - we won't use it on you. We've

got something better;,the chemical straitjacket.'

The prisoner was led into a room where cats, under

the influence of an alkaloid drug, were unable to move

even when threatened, pinched or when a flame was

brought near their whiskers. When an officer tried to

push a cat forward, it displayed every sign of stupor.

Another cat stood motionless, with its hind legs on a

chair and its front legs on the floor. In the room were

cats, mice, apes and birds, all drugged by some poison,

standing petrified like statues.

The officer laughingly said to the believer, 'One of

your brethren mentioned the prophecy that when Jesus

returns, wolves will dwell with lambs. We don't need

Jesus. We do it ourselves! We have our own saviour,

211

and we will break you with it. You can't withstand

this.'

Our Christian brother added in his letter, 'The

magicians at Pharaoh's court also imitated the miracles

that Moses did. But Moses remained God's man.'

The love of such Christians, who know these horrors

await them if they remain faithful and who continue to

serve the Church, is not only as strong as death but

stronger still. It is stronger than the fear of being deprived

of your mind for ever.

A little lister

The bride says:

'We have a little sister, and she has no breasts; what

shall we do for our sister in the day when she will be

spoken for?

If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of

silver: and if she be a door, we will enclose her with

boards of cedar.

I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers; then was

I in his eyes as one that found favour. '

(8:8-10)

Here we have a supplement to the Song of Songs. Once

she is sure of the unlimited love of God, the bride has her

mind at rest and can turn to the problem of her sister.

Jesus and the bride, united in full reciprocal love, discuss

what is to be done with the younger sister who has no

breasts yet, which means that she has no prominent

qualities in her body; she has done no exceptional deeds

in the service of God.

Jesus assures the bride that the Holy Trinity will do

212

everything for her. If she be a wall - which means, if she is

a person who cannot fall under temptation, if she is strong

as iron, if she can resist - then God will do her great

honour. But if she is a door, which can easily be opened - if

she falls easily in sin, if her virtue is not solid - she will be

enclosed with walls of cedar, a strong and durable wood.

The weak believer is guarded in a special way, though even

believers who are able to resist sin are not left unwatched,

because strong castles can also fall.

The bride is assured of what God will do for her small

sister, remembering the miracles he did for her who is like a

wall and who has breasts like twin roes, typifying

unconquerable virtues. She has found favour with him.

The Shulamite, the princess of peace, has found shalom

(peace) with Solomon, the Prince of Peace.

Some Christians are strong. All seductions rebound off

them. On such strong walls, Jesus can build castles of

silver. I am reminded of Hannington, the Anglican bishop

of Uganda, who was eaten by cannibals. He went to his

death reciting the Lord's words, 'Love your enemies, bless

them that curse you.' On that wall, God built a splendid

castle. Hannington's sons became missionaries and

baptized their father's murderers. Those converted

cannibals told the story.

Some twenty Russian girls were novices in a secret

convent. When it was discovered, they were all sent to

Siberia. The last advice of the abbess to the girls was to stay

together if possible, and to say as soon as they met

anybody - be it friend or enemy, policeman or fellow-

prisoner - that they belonged to Christ.

They were sent to forced labour, and had to fell trees.

One night, a group of other prisoners who were common

criminals came to the girls' barracks. The girls were

frightened, but the men told them, 'You have spoken

about your faith. So, explain to us about God. We have not

seen a priest for thirty years. We need a word from God. '

Frpm that night the barracks became a mission centre.

213

Even the guards sympathized. Many people were con-

verted, and the novices baptized them. The former

criminals helped the girls fulfil their work quotas so that

they could have time for prayer.

These are the brides of Christ, with great and strong

breasts.

Solomon's vineyard

The bride says:

'Solomon had a vineyard at Baalhamon; he let out die

vineyard unto keepers; every one for die fruit thereof

was to bring a thousand pieces of silver.

My vineyard, which is mine, is before me: you, O

Solomon, must have a thousand, and those that keep

die fruit thereof two hundred.

You who dwell in the gardens, the companions

hearken to your voice: cause me to hear it.

Make haste, my beloved, and be like to a roe or to a

young hart upon the mountains of spices. '

(8:11-14)

In Hebrew hamon means 'a great, noisy crowd'.

Solomon had a vineyard in Baalhamon. Jesus has his

vineyard, his Church, in die midst of a noisy multitude.

The bride discusses with him what fruit their vineyards

must produce. She says to him, 'My vineyard, which is

mine, is before me.' Before, she did not look after her

vineyard. Now she has decided to care for it, so that God

will be able to build a palace of silver upon her testimony.

She promises Solomon one thousand pieces of silver from

the profits of her vineyard, and allows two hundred for

the workers who tend it.

214

The Zohar rightly says, 'Wherever the name of Solomon

is mentioned in Solomon's Song it is holy, except in the

words "A thousand unto you, O Solomon." ' The author

has descended from celestial heights down to financial

dealing. He could not help revealing that the Word of God

has passed through human hands.

Rembrandt painted a splendid picture of the good

Samaritan. In front of the inn where the wounded man was

brought, he painted a dog relieving itself. This is the most

prosaic thing in life. In the middle of his most tragic tirade,

Shakespeare's King Lear speaks to the Fool in bawdy

language. No work of art or religion is exempted from at

least a token acknowledgement of the meanness of human

nature.

But there is also an important lesson in this verse. The

bulk of a church's finances must go towards the propag-

ation of the gospel. Ministers must be provided for, but not

luxuriously. It is a scandal that some ministers in the USA

have large salaries, when those in the Third World often

live at poverty level. And as for those under Communist

persecution, who thinks of them?

Now it is time for the Bridegroom to depart. He goes

into the mountains: the bride remains in the gardens

below. His last words are, 'You who dwell in the gardens,

the companions [the angels, the glorified saints] hearken to

your voice: cause me to hear it.' He asks her to pray. Thus

this beautiful book comes to an end.

Towards the close of his life, Solomon was disappointed

in the Shulamite to whom he had dedicated his Song. In the

beginning her love was passionate, but it finished with who

knows"what tragedy. When he was old, the king wrote, 'I

did not find a woman.' Will our soul also disappoint the

Prince of Peace? When the Son of Man comes, will he find

faith on earth?

The bride's love is great, but great love needs to be

tended to remain great. If you put a single gram of radium

in a vault and leave it untouched, after a certain period it

215

will only be half a gram of radium and after a further period

it will only be one quarter of a gram. Radium disintegrates.

Love disintegrates, too. It must be kept warm, and must be

made to grow through frequent meditation and contem-

plation of the Beloved. The love described in the Song of

Solomon, where the bride gives the Bridegroom a thousand

pieces of silver, is not a hopeless ideal. It really exists.

Igor Ogurtsov, an Orthodox believer, was sentenced to

twenty years in prison for his Christian activities.

Converted by his grandmother, he was one of the

organizers of the Social Christian Union for the Liberation

of the Russian People. For a time he had been detained in a

psychiatric asylum, for being too religious.

A fellow-prisoner describes him as a man of pathos. All

who drew near him felt that Ogurtsov was far ahead of his

contemporaries. He declared that his aim was the

Christianization of politics, economics and culture. After

ten years of prison and torture, he was still strong enough to

write:

There is only one choice before mankind: a free return to

God and acceptance of His love, whereupon all the

powers and beauty of man will flourish; or departure

from God, whereupon we will have a Satanocracy and a

twisted conscience, as a result of losing the true aim and

purpose of life. Capitalism and its sick child,

Communism, can be conquered only by the Christian-

ization of the whole social order.

At forty he had lost all his teeth in jail. He suffered from

avitaminosis and hypertonicity. He could hardly stand on

his feet, but he still had to do slave labour. Neither the

world nor the churches mention him, but he offered a great

feast to Christ. He paid to him his full due: a thousand

pieces of silver.

Petras Plumpa, a Catholic, is serving a five-year

sentence. He writes from prison:

216

Wherever we live, the most important problem is the

salvation of souls. If the King of souls has sown us in the

field of sorrows, let us bloom in sorrow; if in solitude,

then in solitude let us bloom. The Creator sows the most

beautiful flowers in inaccessible places among mountain

tracts, and, though no man sees them, they have their

own value. The anguish of a soul, though unseen, can be

plucked and offered like a flower to the Saviour. This is

the most beautiful decoration in the altar of Jesus.

Lacking such decoration, even the finest churches have

sad faces.

For the sake of souls like this, our Beloved, who is now

like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices, will

return. The bride who dwells in the garden of faith amidst

sorrows waits for him.

217

~ Last Considerations ~

Arriving at the end of this book, we wonder. Everything

written in it, even the most intimate sexual details, is about

the love of a faithful soul for a Bridegroom she has never

seen. She speaks of kisses, of caresses, of embraces,

although she has never touched him, nor even perceived

him with her senses.

It is so. But in a similar way, our universe is mostly

hydrogen, and no-one has ever seen a hydrogen atom.

Millions of them would fit on a pinhead. The hydrogen

atom is ? speculation in our minds. Yet the whole of our

physics and chemistry is based on unseen atoms. We can

even construct atomic bombs, using atoms which we

cannot see. Space and time are only mental constructs.

But that does not stop us from living comfortably in space

and in time.

A heavenly Bridegroom does not have to be touchable to

be loved or to be such that one finds one's complete delight

in him. It is good that he cannot be understood. Instead of

trying to understand him we need to draw nearer and

nearer to him, in order to know him.

When an electron jumps from the outer shell of an atom

to the inner shell, light is emitted. Similarly, whoever does

not remain outside the Godhead, but runs to his embraces,

becomes an emitter of light. The words of Jesus, 'You are

the light of the world', become a reality.

There are some things which are completely absent

from the Song. For example, the word 'truth'. Why is

this?

When scrutinised, many accepted beliefs are seen to be

218

inadequate. At best they prove to be partially true - true

for the left side of the brain. Our brains are divided in

two. Only the left operates logically, and declares what

is true and what is not. The right side is as important as

the other, but is usually left out in the search for truth.

It is irrational, lyrical, prompted by impulse, feeling and

emotions. A 'truth' examined only by the left side of the

brain cannot be entirely true. It ignores half of reality.

What is normally termed 'truth' brings things to a

halt. Therefore Solomon never uses the word. For him,

the only thing that comprehends the whole of reality,

that unites the two halves of the brain's experience, is

love like that between the heavenly Bridegroom and his

bride. Only belief in love to the uttermost can pass

every test.

Another curious omission from the Song is any

mention of good deeds done by the bride. The reason is

that - as Kant said - nothing can be called good without

some qualification. We all have access to the state of

being a chosen bride. Some of us, because of natural

disadvantages or the possession of a niggardly nature,

lack the power to do good deeds. But even such people

can shine like jewels, if they only have ardent love and

good will. Fruitfulness would not add to their value, nor

fruitlessness diminish it. 'To him that works not, but

believes on him that justifies the ungodly, his faith is

counted for righteousness' (Romans 4:5). The Zohar

says, 'Blessed is he that nourishes good thoughts towards

his Lord; for, even if he cannot put them into practice,

the Holy One takes the will for the deed. ' It is not good

deeds which qualify you to be a bride of Christ.

This Song shows how right St Augustine was when he

said, 'Love - and do what you like,' or St Paul, when he

taught, 'Love is the fulfilment of all the law.' When we

experience holy, supreme love, the moral law which

defers to deeds stands mute in adoration.

One final thing is lacking in Somonon's Song-a

219

biography of the bride. What is her story? How did she

live before becoming a believer? Was she a decent girl or

a loose one? What sins had she committed, and how

many? Humans have biographies. But she is more than

human. She partakes of the divine nature.

Darwin looked in vain for the connecting link between

ape and man. But we know the link between the entire

creation and the Creator. It is the bride. She is the

highest point that creation can reach. She met the One

who came down to the lowest level to which Godhead

can ever descend, and they united. She is a queen; and

she is the servant. She is as tiny as a worm; and she is a

god. She is outside the sphere of beings who have

biographies.

Most of us are not yet truly human. We are still in an

embryonic stage, living in mankind's pre-history. Jesus'

teaching, 'You are gods,' sounds oddly in our ears. So

we find the nature of the bride hard to grasp. We would

enquire about her past; for Jesus, she is simply the bride.

Jesus never gave us his own biography. The evan-

gelists are silent about his life between the ages of twelve

and thirty. She does not ask him his life's story. He

rewarded her discretion by not asking questions about

hers. Today they are Bridegroom and bride. Like the

high priest Melchisedec of old, they appear 'having

neither beginning of days, nor end of life' (Hebrews

7:3).

Adam must have been created as a man of a certain

age. Like him, the bride does not have a past. She and

the Bridegroom know only an eternal 'today' of love.

Handel composed his Messiah while enraptured, in

ecstasy. For twenty-three days, he hardly ate. When he

completed the second part with the Hallelujah Chorus,

his servant found him sitting at his desk with tears

running down his cheeks. He said, 'I saw paradise truly,

and the great God himself.' Solomon must have com-

posed the Song in such a state of mind.

220

Therefore the prayers of the bride are innocent as

spring mornings, clear as mountain streams. She does

not utter prayers for forgiveness, for they are what

sinners need. She has passed beyond this. Christ has

finished his work with her. All she can do is sing

hymns. Eardi and heaven ring with her hallelujahs.

But she does not isolate herself on the peaks. She

prefers not to be called a 'saint'. Dorothy Day said,

'That's how people try to dismiss you. If you're a saint

you must be impractical and Utopian and nobody has to

pay any attention to you.' Brides are in close fellow-

ship with Jesus. But they also seek such fellowship with

us.

I must finish with an apology. I could not make

words convey what happens between the Bridegroom

and the bride, for the same reason that you cannot

weigh granite columns in pharmaceutical scales.

Solomon could not do it, so I most certainly cannot.

We all retain primitive concepts from our early

religious training. When we climb unknown spiritual

mountains, to describe the unknown, we use the

language of the known. There is nothing else we can do.

It is the same in science. In any chunk of ordinary

matter you have 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

atoms, made up of who knows how many billions of

billions of elementary particles. It is unimaginable

and inexpressible. Science therefore uses primitive

pictures. It uses models of atoms, though it knows

well enough that no atom conforms to the model.

Reality puts shivers up one's spine. It cannot even be

described.

But for believers, there is a way to know the quality

of the relationship between the Bridegroom and the

bride. Become a bride yourself; and then you will

personally experience that relationship.

But when you become a bride, do not become blind

in one eye, seeing only the celestial, without concern

221

for the earthly. Both belong to God. Be a great saint, but

be a human saint! Remember that Solomon's Song is

only one of many books in the Bible.

222

Ä References Ä

Chapter 1

1. Reported in Deutschland Magazine, July 1978.

2. Jay and Emma Hefley, By Their Blood, Mott Media

Publishing House.

Chapter 3

1. A. Ratziu, Stolen Church.

2. H. Hartfeld, Faith in Spite of the KGB. Hartfeld is a

former prisoner in Soviet jails.

3. The Arizonian, November 1982.

4. Paul Goma, Gherla, (Gallimard, France).

5. Lutheran Witness, October 1972.

Chapter 4

2 Orthodox Life, No 78.

Chapter 6

1 R. Radina, Testaments from the Death House.

223

In October of 1967 Pastor Richard Wurmbrand,

along with his wife Sabina, founded a non-profit

missionary organization to bring assistance to

persecuted Christians around the world.

Today The Voice of the Martyrs, Inc., directed by

Pastor Wurmbrand, continues to carry out this work.

For more information about the mission activities or

a complete listing of books and tapes by Richard

Wurmbrand, please write to THE VOICE OF THE

MARTYRS at the addresses below.

USA: P.O. Box 443

Bartlesville, OK 74005-0443

CANADA: P.O.Box 117

Port Credit

Mississauga, Ontario, L5G 4L5

AUSTRALIA: P.O. Box 598

Penrith NSW 2751

NEW ZEALAND: P.O. Box 69-158

Glendene, Auckland 8

ENGLAND: P.O. Box 19

Bromley, Kent, BRI 1DJ

weetes

no song of my own to sing. I sing the song of

nd of this bride as Solomon sang it; and to

make the song resound more beautifully than ever, I

illustrate it with lives of saints and martyrs. '

So writes Richard Wurmbrand — a man who has suffered much

for Christ. The Sweetest Song is his unique and distinctive study of

the Song of Solomon, as illustrated by the lives of Christian saints

and martyrs. A topic which he is particularly well-equipped to

tackle and which makes The Sweetest Song a wise, distillation of a

life spent in the torment of actual captivity, where the authority of

Pastor Wurmbrand wrote The Sweetest Song after meditating on

the sayings of Rabbi Akiba in the Babylonian Talmud" where he

calls The Song of Songs' the holiest of all the Scriptures.

Translating this idea. Wurmbrand argues that the lives of the

persecuted church are the holiest of all. Hence the poignancy and

depth of this new commentary.

After a lifetime of service in Eastern Europe, Richard Wurmbrand

now works from California to support Christians under

persecution. He is author of the bestselling Tortured for Christ.

ISBN O-551-O1652-3

Table of Contents

The Sweetest Song: The Song of Solomon Expressed Through the Lives of Saints and Martyrs