Wisdom in a Solomonic Age (Shame and the Silence of 666: Solomon Like Blindness)
Introduction
I’ve omg struggled with the contradictory biblical image of Solomon. How can you equate the tyrannical, militaristic, sex maniac of 1 Kings 10-11:42 with the wisdom and glory of his kingdom in 2 Chronicles 3-9. (In largely ignoring Solomon, the New Testament resonates with my convictions.) The Spirit indicates we are in a Solomonic age. Two very public examples come to mind. When Pentecostal Brian Houston was forced into resignation from Hillsong leadership last year, and Martin Iles, the visible “face” of politically conservative Australian Christian Lobby (A.C.L), suddenly announced his stepping down, my responses were near identical. Brian could have confessed his addictions and pleaded for prayer before his megachurch long ago, and why hadn’t the 260,000 members ACL been asked to pray over the simmering tensions inside their organisation? The root problem in both cases is shame. From its roots in the Fall, shame is a sense of the loss of the glory of God silencing people over sin and provoking futile cover up (Gen 3:7ff.). The lack of unembarrassed transparency amongst us reveals Satan’s extreme power over today’s Christianity. We desperately need help from God’s prophets (2 Chron 20:20) to free us from our current submergence in the cult of personality.
The Cult of Personality
The power of this cult explains why “coming out” has been given the religious status of a conversion event. Whilst recognising personhood is part of accepting the image and likeness of God in us (Gen 1:26-28; Col 3:10), the veneration of “personality” types, traits and tests is demonic in origin. For any attempt to make a “personality assessment” of the “Lord of all” (Acts 10:36) fails, both from lack of data in the New Testament, but ultimately because it attempts to subject Jesus to our fallen standards. The cult of personality isa form of self-worship, for humanity, body, soul, and spirit, is oriented in total being to the glory of God (Isa 43:6-7; 1 Cor 10:31). (This comes up in Solomon’s sin below.) Though labelled over the years as an introvert and an extrovert, I try to live in the upward call of God following Paul (1 Cor 11:1; Phil 3:14) as he imitated Jesus: ““Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.” (John 5:19). Whilst contemporary Christianity enslaves people in terms of what they can do, e.g., in the “5-fold ministry”, our Father loves us in seeing our destiny in Christ as mature sons already complete in eternity (Rom 8:28-30; Col 1:22).
“Where are the Prophets?”
“Where are the Prophets?” was what I loudly exclaimed from my cockroach-infested study years ago as I despaired over the state of the Church. Not at all realising that I would be called to be a part of the answer. You remember the prophet Nathan’s devastating prophetic utterance to the adulterous-murdering David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD,…” (2 Sam 12:7 cf. Gad 2 Sam 24:11ff.), but Solomon lives uncorrected by any prophetic voice in direct violation of God’s command that no king must ever multiply horses, wives and gold and silver “for himself” (Deut 17:16-17 cf. 1 Ki 10:26,28; 11:1-3; 10:14). Whilst God graciously appears to his early life in dreams (1 Ki 3; 2 Chron 7), as he did to both Pharoah and Nebuchadnezzar (Gen 41; Dan 2; 4), no prophet ever appears to Solomon. When Ahijah prophesies to Jeroboam that Solomon’s kingdom will soon be divided because he has turned to worship the gods of the nations, the king shows no remorse but instead works to frustrate the word of the Lord (1 Ki 11:29-40).
Solomon’s prohibited “love for many foreign women” (1 Ki 11:1ff) is infamous. How can a man meaningfully consummate a relationship with 700 royal brides, and 300 concubines? Only one wife is named, as the mother of the next king (1 Ki 14:21); Solomon was far from the ideal lover of the Song in his name (SoS 1:1)! Beyond building the Temple, he constructed shrines to countless gods, some of which demanded human sacrifice, and spent twice as long building his own palace as the house of the Lord (1 Ki 6:2, 38; 7:1-2; 11:7-8). Most shocking of all, the Hebrew word (מַ֖ס) used to describe the “forced labour” of Solomon is the same as for the labour gangs imposed on the Israelites by Pharoah (Ex 11:1). Where is Solomon’s fabled wisdom in all this (Proverbs 1-9; 1 Ki 10:1-13)? An answer to the contradictory characteristics of this king appears, not unexpectedly, in Revelation’s language concerning the identity of “the beast”.
666
“This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.” (Rev 13:18). “666” appears as a symbol of royal power in the Bible only in relation to Solomon’s receiving 666 talents of gold annually for himself (1 Kgs 10.14; 2 Chr 9.13). 666 symbolises a divinely appointed ruler’s depravity and ingratitude: his inordinate wealth, exploitation of his own people and deliberate breaking of God’s law. In true beastlike character and cunning within a Babylonian system he has no place for the suffering prophet (cf. Rev 18). Intoxicated by his Adam-like mastery “of good and evil” (1 Ki 3:9 cf. Gen 2:17), vast understanding of flora and fauna (1 Ki 4:33 cf. Gen 2:19-20), and his dominion over the nations (1 Ki 4:21, 24 cf. Gen 1:26-28) Solomon falls and his way is rejected by God “forever” (1Chron 28:9). As someone who completely “believed in himself” (“believed his own publicity” DY), this wisest of fallen humanity (1 Ki 4:29; 10:23) necessarily fell deeply into sin as the Lord gave him over to the intentions of his own heart (1 Ki 11:9 cf. Rom 1:24, 26, 28). Solomon is our spiritual contemporary. Since Rev 13:18 can be translated, “666…is a number of humanity.” (LSB; NIV footnote), it represents the complete sinful incompleteness common to all fallen humanity. 666 points us beyond Solomon to a final extraordinary incarnation of evil but ultimately to our common depraved nature! Apart from Jesus, you and I are the beast. Which returns me to my main prophetic point.
Conclusion
Jesus unfavourably compared “Solomon in all his glory” (Matt 6:29) with the prodigious care of God for his children, for Jesus understood the fading glory this king accrued for himself was one with the glory offered to him by the devil (Luke 4:6). A glory the Lord refused in choosing the eternally abiding glory of crucifixion-and-resurrection (Rev 5:6ff.). Compared to the transparent bleeding and groaning Jesus (Matt 26:38; Luke 22:44) and his weeping apostle (Acts 20:37; 1 Cor 2:3), the average Christian leader in Australia, as a spiritual orphan (1 Cor 4:15), is incredibly “inauthentic”. Praying intensely over such things recently I sensed the Lord’s desire to “gut us like a fish” (put our insides on open display cf. Gal 3:1). Though mocked for describing the prophetic ministry as guarding the government of God, in an age when “mail reading” prophets have been added to a list of notable revered “personalities” (cf. 1 Ki 10), I incite you in Jesus’ name to ask the Lord to raise up a new generation of prophets through whose help we may reach God’s great goal, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). My life motto is “Jesus, the whole Jesus and nothing but Jesus, so help me God.” (Rev 19:10). Who is your glory?