QB73 The Bride Has Come of Age (Part 5)
The Anointing and Baptism of the Bride
“(2) [The Shulamite] I sleep, but my heart is awake; [It is] the voice of my beloved! He knocks, [saying], “Open for me, my sister, my love, My dove, my perfect one; For my head is covered with dew, My locks with the drops of the night.” (3) I have taken off my robe; How can I put it on [again]? I have washed my feet; How can I defile them?” – Song of Songs 5:2,3 NKJV
I have shared previously in Quick Bites 65 to 68 how this night encounter in Song of Songs between the Shulamite and her beloved provides a beautiful window into our own personal journey of intimacy with Yeshua, now I would like to adopt this same passage and explore how it can also be applied to us on a corporate level, and in particular when the Bride comes of age. Let’s recap briefly on the story. The Shulamite (representing the Bride) describes herself as asleep but her heart awake when she hears her beloved approach and ask her to open the door to him. However, rather than the safety and secrecy of hosting him within her chamber, she soon discovers the romantic interlude hoped for takes an entirely different turn when upon opening the door she finds him gone. I explained previously why I reject the view he had left because she delayed approaching the door, rather it was an invitation for her to leave home in search of him during the night.
We have grown accustomed to Yeshua coming to us. There is an expectation wherever two or more gather in His name He will be in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). Certainly our whole Christian community is based upon this one principle that when we congregate He will be there: Immanuel God with us. Certainly this is a justified and welcomed belief, after all, has He not promised to never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5)? And when commissioning His disciples did He not reassure them “Lo I am with you always even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18)? Indeed, it is of great comfort knowing His abiding presence and it is right we should hold to Him tightly in this way. But I suggest beyond the familiar walls of our past and current experience with Yeshua as Saviour and Lord, there is yet a deeper revelation and encounter with Him as our Bridegroom that requires us to muster and move out from our positions (Joshua 3:3).The church worships Yeshua as Saviour and Lord and of course this we should do with all our heart, but a different dynamic exists in the relationship between Yeshua as Saviour and Yeshua as our Bridegroom one which necessitates our departure into the unknown. We are most assuredly comforted by His promise to never leave nor forsake us, yet if we truly desire to know Him in the deepest way then another intrinsic element is required. I believe He has come to His church and is asking her to “come away with me”. Can you hear His call? “Come, come leave your Father’s house to the place of encounter prepared for us beyond the veil of knowing because beyond which you have seen or understood exists a place in which only My Bride may enter.”
Let’s explore this idea a little further.
“(4) My beloved thrust his hand in through the latch opening. My heart pounded for him. (5) I rose up to open for my beloved. My hands dripped with myrrh, My fingers with liquid myrrh, On the handles of the lock. (6) I opened to my beloved; But my beloved left; gone away. My heart went out when he spoke. I looked for him, but I didn’t find him. I called him, but he didn’t answer.” – Song of Songs 5:4-6 HNV
Notice the account given here. The beloved thrust his hand through the latch opening which aroused the Shulamite’s heart for him, but rather than let himself in, he smothered the handles of the lock from the inside with liquid myrrh then departed. This smearing with myrrh could be described as anointing them, because that’s what anointing means: to smear. Myrrh is the Bridegroom’s aroma and it arouses the Bride’s desire towards Him. I believe this is true of the church today. The Lord has thrust His hand inside the church and aroused His Bride to awake, but something has changed: He has not come in a way we have known Him come before. Instead He has left a fragrant anointing upon a handle that compels His Brides towards the door provided for her exodus. Like the Shulamite, the Bride must venture into the night even when not fully knowing where He may be only that she can no longer stay where she has been.
Previously we have seen how the guardians will not readily allow the Bride to leave, as with the Shulamite her brothers said if she was a door they would enclose her with boards of cedar (SOS 8:9), but when the Bride touches the handle of the door, she touches Yeshua’s anointing left there for her, and her hands and fingers will drip with this anointing. I believe it is a breaker anointing that will breach the control and restraint imposed upon the bride by her guardians. In other words, no matter what attempts made by the Bride’s guardians to confine her, the anointing she carries will enable her to break through, it is an anointing to open doors no man can shut and shut doors no man can open.
“(7) The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; The keepers of the walls Took my veil away from me.” – Song of Songs 5:7 NKJV
Once the Shulamite had gone out into the night in search of her beloved she was not treated well by the watchmen or keepers of the wall. Like her brothers, these also represent guardians. Their duty was a protective one as watchmen and keepers, and yet they were unable to assist the Shulamite in the pursuit of her Beloved. They cared not for her wellbeing rather to guard against any perceived threat to the city even if that meant cruelty to those in their ward. Her behaviour was unacceptable to them, and they took offence at her candid display of passion in the night hours. The tragic consequence of such abandon in pursuit of love was her wounding by those supposed to protect her, and her veil stripped away. This word veil (H7289 rāḏîḏ ra deed) here means a cloak or covering. This was the covering the Shulamite brought from home out into the night. In the same way when the Bride ventures beyond the boundaries of her guardians the covering she had once known will also be stripped from her. Any denominational covering will not be afforded to the Bride, that’s because she cannot be found wearing any garment or covering that belongs with the guardians. Okay, just to be clear what am I saying here? I’m saying that when the Bride comes of age, her covering will not be, cannot be one of any denomination, institution or any other form of designation, any such apparel has to be removed.
The following is an excerpt from a prophecy I released in 2021, and it talks very much about the removal of garments we have grown accustomed to.
Then the One who stands amid the seven lampstands reached out and touched me saying, “Write down this despatch for my church. I will heal the fallen image of whom you think you are to Me, and I will render your hearts with an inoperable ferocity for passion and a love for all that is pure. My Bride will be untethered from the rhythm of this world and be yoked to Me as the Lion roaring by her side.” Then I heard a different sound than the war-cry I had heard before, this warrior sounded like the roar of thunder. “If you trust me, if you really trust me, I want you to take off your armour. For you cannot come into my bridal chamber with your armour on, but it is here that I will anoint you for the day of battle. Do not go out in your armour,” says the Lord, “but go out in the strength that you have with a vulnerability towards me and each other, for my strength is made perfect in your weakness. Do not fortify your positions neither embellish yourselves with armour, because your bastions will be a snare to you and your armour a weakness. Behold the day is coming and now is when your confidence in me shall be resolute and with the sound of the trumpet blast you shall invoke my jealousy toward you, and I will respond like a mighty warrior to fight on your behalf and assign angels to your stations. I will delight in your vulnerability,” says the Lord, “for you are irresistible to me. Wherever you go My Bride, I will enshroud you with My glory which will dazzle and confound your adversaries. I will place a canopy over you and keep you concealed; I will hide you away until the great day of unveiling comes. When they seek you they will not find you, but when they seek you they will stumble upon me standing guard over you by day and night and their audacity will melt like wax in the heat of my passion. Behold, I will bewilder their strategy so they will come at you in one way but flee from you in seven. See I am faithful in my love towards you, and I have no other. No one else who has ravished my heart; I am captivated with just one look of your eyes.”
Although the guardians will strip away the veil from the Bride, this veil or covering is not befitting for the Bride of Yeshua. She may become exposed and vulnerable but what the guardians will fail to anticipate is how the Lord Himself will cover His Bride with His glory. I believe when the Bride makes this transition out into the darkness of the unknown she will be baptised into a new glory she has not known before. That’s exactly what happened when the Bride of Israel came of age and left the home of her guardians in Egypt. The Bible tells us they were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea (1 Corinthians 10:2). This pillar of cloud by day and fire by night was a manifestation of the glory of God that enabled them to travel by day or by night, but it also hid them out of sight from their former guardians, the Egyptians (Exodus 14:20). Baptism is the immersion into Christ. It is the identification with His death, burial and resurrection. We have known this individually upon salvation, but there is a corporate baptism for the Bride that awaits her when she leaves her guardians. When that happens her former identity is crucified upon the Cross as she returns back into Him, identifying entirely with Him in death, that she might arise most glorious indeed. There is a new anointing for the Bride that enables her to pass through the gate, and there is a glory for the Bride that provides her with a new veil and covering.
