Sabbath School Today, Volume 9 - Paul E. Penno

since Pentecost. Ellen White said, "Great truths that have lain unheeded and
unseen since the day of Pentecost are to shine from God's word in their
native purity." [1] The Sabbath and the cross finally came together.
But here the Song of Solomon 5:2-8 comes on stage. [2] The Lover has
come "home" to His beloved after a long trip; tired, lonely, hungry, wet from
the rain; He longs to be with her intimately. He "knocks" (the Hebrew says
banging on the door). The woman whom He loves disdains him, she is too
relaxed, gone to bed for the night; why does He bother her now? (The world
is too comfy a place as it is, says the church of the Laodiceans.) Finally, she
forgets about her own selfish comfort and thinks about Him out in the
darkness, hungry and alone; she belatedly gets up and goes to let Him in, but
when she opens the door, He is "gone."
We've been looking for Him for well over a hundred years (cf. 6:1).
Increasingly, thoughtful people see here the story of "our" disdaining Him in
the "most precious" message of the beginning of the latter rain. In rejecting
the message, says the Lord's servant, we disdained Christ [3], just as "the
woman" did her Lover in Song of Solomon 5:3.
Christ's pathetic appeal in His message to "the angel of the church of the
Laodiceans" [4] ("be zealous therefore, and repent," Rev. 3:19) demands
attention.
Endnotes:
--From the writings of Robert J. Wieland
[1] Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, Aug. 17, 1897, emphasis
supplied.
[2] There seems no reason to include this book in the Bible unless it
speaks of Jesus and His love for the church. Jesus described it as
117