The Song of Solomon – Part 4c

Introduction

New Beginnings and the End of All Things

Central Thesis

The Shulamite’s healed heart does not remain merely a private, internal transformation. It completes itself in action: the very symbols that once represented her resistance become instruments of wholehearted giving; she consciously and permanently escapes the pattern of the Great Whore; and she discovers that she has no desire whatsoever to return to what she once was. This personal, intimate reversal is not an isolated romantic drama—it is the microcosm of the entire cosmic architecture this study now traces to its conclusion: from the cross, to the First Resurrection, through the Millennial Reign, the final rebellion, the Second Resurrection, and the ultimate restoration of all things under the Father.

She Is No Longer Trying to Use Her “Breasts” as Leverage

This is one of the central symbols running through these studies. The breasts represent her heart, particularly her emotional and relational centre. In the carnal state, that wounded heart becomes a means of controlling or resisting the husband.

But in the Shulamite, the very thing that formerly represented resistance becomes an instrument of wholehearted giving.

This is why the interpretation of Song of Solomon 8:1-2 is so important:

Song of Solomon 8:1-2 (KJV)  “Son 8:1 O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! When I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised. I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.”

And earlier, in Song of Solomon 1:13:

Song of Solomon 1:13 (KJV)  “A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.”

The Shulamite is no longer withholding herself until her Husband proves something to her. She is actively seeking an opportunity to express her love to Him. This represents her unparalleled love—her extravagant giving to her Bridegroom defines her very identity.

So her “breasts” have effectively changed from instruments of wounded resistance into symbols of a healed heart that wants to nourish and delight her Husband.

Her Purpose Is Not Merely to Receive Intimacy, But to Delight Christ

This is the decisive difference between Babylon and the Shulamite. The Bride explicitly discovers that her purpose is not simply to achieve greater sensual satisfaction. Rather, she understands her purpose as celebrating intimacy with her Husband. That means her joy becomes fundamentally Husband-centred.

She doesn’t think, “How much pleasure can Christ give me?”

She thinks: “How can I delight my Husband?”

That is precisely the mindset of the recreated Shulamite Bride’s immense desire for her Husband, and the repeated language of the Song of Solomon: “Thou hast ravished my heart…” (Song 4:9). The Bride has become capable of ravishing Christ’s heart because Christ has first ravished hers. The relationship becomes reciprocal rather than manipulative.

She has discovered the pearl of great price in Christ by ravishing Him with her God-given unified spirit. In the flesh, this mirrors a carnal wife’s enthusiastic, unashamed ravishment of her husband, knowing full well from a wise mother’s instructions that he will respond physically involuntarily and spiritually completely, as Christ does with the Bride. Critically—and paradoxically, yet understandably given the curse’s original circumstances—the very intimacies she once controlled and evaded become the conduit for the transcendent, profound closeness she continually yearned for but never fully achieved. That heavenly state is what Solomon’s Shulamite Bride profoundly understands and now enjoys.

She Has Escaped the “Great Whore” Pattern

The contrast is especially sharp when we set the Bride’s transformation against Babylon’s condition. The Great Whore takes the very things God intended for righteous intimacy—beauty, sensuality, authority, emotional influence—and turns them toward self-exaltation and self-worship.

Revelation 18:7 (KJV) “How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.”

The Shulamite takes those same symbols and turns them completely on their head. Her spiritual use of her “jewels” reverses the Great Whore’s unrighteous use of them:

Carnal Wife / Babylon Shulamite Bride

Seeks validation Already trusts Christ’s love

Uses intimacy as leverage Gives herself freely

Wants to control Rests in Christ’s authority

Resists the Husband’s Word Craves His Word

Seeks what the Husband can give her. Seeks to delight the Husband

Emotional insecurity Sabbath rest

Manipulative responsiveness Enthusiastic responsiveness

Self-centred intimacy Christ-centred intimacy

The Bride, therefore, ecstatically understands her own enthusiasm as living evidence that the curse is being reversed within her, verse by verse, day by day (1Co 15:31).

The Astonishing Part: She Doesn’t Want to Go Back

The Bride doesn’t merely leave Babylon because it is unpleasant. In fact, Babylon is incredibly rich in sensualities and in mankind’s rapidly increasing wisdom and knowledge—signified by the very “tower” mankind builds in pride. The very wisdom she enthusiastically sought in eating the forbidden fruit in Eden, she leaves because she has discovered something infinitely better—now pursuing only the knowledge of the “good”.

Song of Solomon 6:13 (KJV) “Return, return, O Shulamite; return, return, that we may look upon thee. What will ye see in the Shulamite? As it were the company of two armies.”

Paradoxically, Solomon himself is left bewildered. Without the mysterious fullness of the holy spirit, he cannot fully see how his Shulamite creation can exist, given what he experienced with his one thousand intimacy-manipulating wives. His own natural understanding of the emergence of a Second Army, apart from the holy spirit, remains insufficient.

But she sees herself as having crossed from the first army—Old Jerusalem, Old Israel—to the second army, the heavenly Jerusalem. She has tasted the reality represented by her transformed self and therefore has no desire to return to the old relationship.

The old relationship was characterised by:

Command → resistance → manipulation → chastisement → temporary repentance → renewed resistance.

The Shulamite relationship becomes:

Word → understanding → trust → desire → enthusiastic response → deeper unity.

Just as Cleopas and the unnamed disciple had the risen Christ walk and talk with them (Luke 24:32), their “burning within” is the same as the Bride’s burning with such urgency. That is why she cannot be drawn back, no matter how sensual Babylon’s allure may appear.

The Final Picture: Two Women, Two Jerusalems, Two Kinds of Intimacy

The Shulamite-Bride beholds herself departing from her sister’s garden, where the intimacies of marriage lie entangled beneath thorns and thistles, under the shadow of Genesis 3:17–19. Her Husband has granted her entrance into His own vineyard—the one He Himself has already seeded and cultivated in her before the First Resurrection—signifying a spiritual life lived wholly for Him, the living counterpart to her Old Man, Old Jerusalem, Sodom and Egypt, collectively known as Babylon.

The Lord’s fiery word fenced off the old garden from the Tree of Life, turning each and every way (Gen 3:24). The Shulamite, representing heavenly Jerusalem, somewhat ironically, enters into spiritual union with the Tree of Life Himself—Christ—the very same sword having temporarily exiled her for four thousand years from “knowing” her Husband, and mankind for seven thousand years from knowing (not espousally) their “parents”—the Bride, Christ, and the Father.

So the Bride’s journey is really the reversal of the condition exposed in Eden:

Eve: “I want what the serpent says will make me wise.”

Israel: “I want God’s blessings, but resist His Word.”

Babylon: “I want Christ’s benefits while retaining my own authority.”

Shulamite: “Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.”

And finally: “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3).

That is the fire of it. It is not, at root, a hunger for physical intimacy, but the ardour of a healed heart that has at last discovered this astonishing truth: complete submission to Christ is not loss, but liberty — not deprivation, but rest, security, joy, and the very intimacy the carnal woman once reached for in vain through sensual craft.

Thus the Bride’s sordid pilgrimage through harlotry — once mirrored in Old Israel and Babylon — not merely bends in accommodation, but is ground to powder from resisting her Husband’s spiritual embrace to answering Him with eager, undivided devotion of her every jewelled joint of Her Body.

The Culmination: Where This Entire Doctrine Is Heading

We have now traced the intimate, personal dimension of the Bride’s reversal. But this transformation does not exist in isolation. It is part of an architecture that spans the entirety of human history—from Eden to the Great White Throne Judgment—an architecture in which the Bride’s transformation is not the whole story, but the necessary first act that makes possible the salvation of every soul who has ever lived.

Jas 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Jas 1:18 Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we [First the Bride alone] should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

The entire biblical narrative—from Genesis 3 through the final chapter of Revelation—moves toward one singular conclusion, unfolding in a precise, unalterable sequence:

1. The harlot within is judged
2. Babylon within falls
3. The old identity dies
4. The New Adam appears
5. The Bride is made ready
6. Christ and His Bride become one

This is not a cycle that repeats indefinitely. It is a linear, purposeful movement toward consummation.

The First Resurrection: For the Bride Alone

Revelation 20:4-6 (KJV)  “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus… and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”

There are two resurrections—not one general resurrection for all humanity simultaneously, but two, separated by a signified thousand years, with entirely different populations and entirely different purposes.

The First Resurrection is only for the Bride of Christ. He showed her the way through His own death and resurrection, and her inheritance is nothing less than Himself, in covenant marriage, at this First Resurrection.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (KJV) “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

This is her wedding day—the consummation toward which the entire Song of Solomon points typologically.

The Millennial Reign: The Bride as Co-Regent

Immediately following the First Resurrection begins the One Thousand Year Reign—Christ ruling through His now-Wife. This is not merely Christ ruling with the Bride as a passive spectator. She actively reigns with Him, functioning as Queen and Priest.

The Bride of Christ is scripturally portrayed as a queen, but in a symbolic, spiritual sense, not as an independent ruler alongside Christ. This is drawn primarily from Psalm 45, understood as a Messianic prophecy:

Psalm 45:9 (KJV) “Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir.”

This connects directly with Revelation 19:7-8, where the Bride is clothed in fine linen. The fine linen is associated with both priesthood and royalty—the Bride’s exalted status: she is dressed not only as a priest but also as a queen, fitting attire for the consort of the King of kings.

Revelation 5:10 (KJV) “And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”

This is the direct fruit of the transformation traced throughout this entire study: the woman who was once “against” her Husband, whose ancestral wound produced control and rebellion, now reigns with Him in perfect unity of purpose—the very fulfilment of the “for” orientation [as opposed to being “against”] established across every prior section.

The Final Rebellion and the Second Resurrection

But the story does not end with a thousand years of peace. At the close of the Millennium, Scripture records a startling final test with a predestined conclusion:

Revelation 20:7-10 (KJV) “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth…”

Rev 20:9  And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. 

Rev 20:10  And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. 

Act 4:26  The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ. 

Oba 1:21  And saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD’S. 

Satan is released once more, deceiving the entire world to rebel against Christ and His Christs—meaning His unified Wife, functioning collectively as extensions of His own authority and anointing (note the plural: His Christs, the Bride made up of “many members,” ironically few, of the one Body, operating in complete union with her Husband’s authority).

This final rebellion gives Christ and His Wife occasion to bring an end to all remaining flesh, opening the way for the next and final movement: the Second Resurrection—the Resurrection to Judgment, also called the Great White Throne Judgment, or the Lake of Fire.

Revelation 20:11-13 (KJV) “And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened… and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.”

The Lake of Fire: Spiritual, Not Physical, Death

Here, the doctrine already established in this system’s foundational architecture becomes essential: Since it is appointed for carnal man to die once, this “second death” in the Lake of Fire is spiritual transformation, NOT physical destruction by the tongue-gnawing delusion of Orthodox Christianity’s belief. (Rev 6:16, 16:10)

The Lake of Fire “mentally and spiritually” kills the old beast-harlot system embedded within the trillions of humanity who have ever lived, as they are transformed into the same spirit nature as Christ and His Wife—becoming, in the fullest sense, their Children in the Father.

This is the moment when every soul who was never called to be part of the First Resurrection Bride—the overwhelming majority of humanity across all of history—finally encounters the truth they could not previously access. They acknowledge their sins. They see the destructive nature of the rebellion they inherited. And through the fire of this judgment—not eternal destruction, but purifying correction—they are brought to repentance and newness of spiritual life.

John 5:28-29 (KJV) “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”

The word rendered “damnation” here is krisis—judgment, not eternal destruction of the person, but eternal destruction of opposition in being “against” Christ and the Father. This is consistent with the entire architecture: the second resurrection is not eternal punishment without purpose, but corrective judgment leading to the ultimate newness of eternal life.

The Final Order: All Things Under the Father

The culmination of this entire architecture is breathtaking in its scope: all of humanity is fully redesigned in God’s image, no longer ruled by the Old clay Adam bowing to the Great Whore, but united with Christ and His Wife, in perfect harmony, as their Children in the Father.

The final order of headship, once fully established, ascending, looks like this:

 – Humanity (numerous as the stars of heaven, the redeemed Children) — under
– The Bride, the Wife of Christ (their spiritual Mother) — under
– Christ, her Husband — under
– The Father, the supreme Husband and only God

1 Corinthians 15:24-28 (KJV) “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power… that God may be all in all.”

This is not a chaotic, competing hierarchy but a perfectly ordered household—every relationship healed of the wound Adam and Eve’s curses exposed and formalised in the Garden, every headship rightly honoured, every submission joyfully received, culminating in God being, in the fullest sense, all in all.

Why This Matters: The Bride’s Transformation Is Overwhelmingly for Others

Here is the truth that must reorient every remaining page of this study: the entire Bible—from creation to the Great White Throne Judgment—is overwhelmingly, nominally 99%, dedicated to the Bride of Christ’s transformation, not as an end in itself, but as the necessary means by which the rest of humanity, her spiritual children as numerous as the stars, will ultimately be saved.

This changes everything about how you understand your present suffering, your daily crucifixion, your struggle to move from “against” to “for” in your relationship with Christ. You are not simply being sanctified for your own sake. Your transformation—including, remarkably, your growing capacity for enthusiastic, unashamed intimacy with your Husband—is the pattern, the pathway, the intercessory mechanism through which billions of souls who lived and died without ever hearing the true gospel will eventually be reconciled to God.

This is why the Bride is so ravished for personal change by her Husband’s word, and Paul could write, almost inconceivably:

Colossians 1:24 (KJV) “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.”

Your dying daily (1 Corinthians 15:31), your crucifixion of the old patterns of control and manipulation, your daily God-given ability to trust rather than deludedly imagining your former trustworthy, feminine manipulative techniques will work as they did in the clay—effectively “having one’s father’s wife” (1Cor 5:1) — rather, this is a private sanctification. It is the very mechanism by which Christ, through his Bride, will eventually reconcile all things to Himself in their own time and order.

Colossians 1:20 (KJV) “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.”

Summary: The Complete Architecture

Let this summary crystallise everything established across Parts 4b and 4c of this Introduction:

Scripture portrays only two fundamental spiritual identities through the symbolism of two women. The first woman is the harlot of Babylon, representing the Old Adam—fallen, carnal humanity organised in false religion and spiritual adultery, resisting her Husband’s Word and weaponising her sensuality to control rather than trust. The second woman is the Bride of Christ, representing the New Adam—those transformed by God’s spirit into faithful union with Christ, whose once-wounded heart now overflows with enthusiastic, self-giving devotion.

These are ultimately two conditions of the same people, emanating from the same harlot mother (Old Israel), in two successive—not simultaneous, not separate, but from the same lump of clay—stages of God’s redemptive purpose: the natural comes first, then the spiritual. The harlot in the Bride is judged in this present age so she may be raised in marriage at the First Resurrection to Christ, so that she will ultimately, in the Second Resurrection encompassing the rest of humanity, participate in bringing all into salvation.

Up and until the First Resurrection, this represents Christ’s Bride becoming His Wife, having made herself ready (Revelation 19:7)—though never through her own strength, always through His sovereign choosing and empowering work within her (John 15:16; Philippians 2:13). It represents her finding the pearl of great price—Christ, her Husband—and discovering her Abishag-like vibrancy, her reason to devote her entire mind and body to Him, in the very place where every Eve (churches) of the world has failed.

Jeremiah 29:13 (KJV) “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (KJV) “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

Proverbs 14:1 (KJV) “Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.”

1 Corinthians 7:2-7 — the entire counsel on marriage, mutual devotion, and the sanctity of the marriage bed, itself a shadow of the greater union this study has been tracing across every part.

Final Word: The Doctrinal Foundation Complete

The doctrinal architecture is now fully established. Adam’s priestly disqualification. The Two Women as Scripture’s only taxonomy. The sequential, not separate, nature of Babylon and the Bride. The intimate mechanism of her healing—arousal before desire, the Word as kisses, the breasts transformed from leverage into gift. The complete eschatological sequence: First Resurrection, Millennial Reign and forced submission without the transformation of a single soul therein, final rebellion, Second Resurrection, and the ultimate restoration of all things under the Father.

Every verse of the Song of Solomon that follows must now be read as a reflection of where the Bride has come: not as isolated romantic poetry, but as the intimate, verse-by-verse, already unfolded very essence of having “made herself ready” before Solomon conceived his Song of Songs! Just as Christ deems the still-sinning Elect of God already saved, while still on occasion moving from her Babylonian condition into the fierce, devoted, Abishag-like union with her Husband that has already qualified her to reign with Him—and, in reigning, to become the very instrument of salvation for all humanity.

The Shulamite’s opening cry—”Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth”—is where this transformation has been increasingly actuated since the cross. It is where your transformation is dynamically realised and unashamedly engaged daily!

The doctrinal foundation is complete. The full verse-by-verse exposition of the Song of Solomon may now proceed.

But first, in the next study, we will consider a few points about the structure of the Song of Solomon: “What Can Be Gleaned from the Song of Solomon’s KJV Headings?”

End of Part 4c