On the subject of music influencing people, I was nine years old when we first returned from being missionaries in the jungles of Ecuador (HCJB, Shell) and I got my wish for Christmas--a portable record player.
So, what was the first vinyl record I ever purchased? It was a 45 of the 1973 international hit single "Rock On" by David Essex.
The tune starts out: "Hey, kid, rock 'n' roll, rock on
Ooh, my soulHey kid, boogie, too, did ya?
Hey, shout, summertime blues
Jump up and down in my blue suede shoes
Hey, kid, rock 'n' roll, rock on"
Now, I did not a know a thing about what this song meant. It was the sound that attracted me. I remember my parents did not care one iota what I purchased from the record store and it could have been anything.
So, here's the real funny part. Sometime after we moved to Loudonville in 1974, I figured out I could have fun by myself (I was a lonely kid at the time) using my mom's old tennis racket to hit tennis balls against the cinder block walls in the basement.
I would purchase candy cigarettes from the store and "smoke" them as I played tennis with--get this--my two friends who were IMAGINARY! The cigarettes would sometimes break off when the ball came back to me in an uncontrolled way.
Who were they? One was Julie, a hairdresser, and the other was an English rock singer in a rock band whose name was Wesley Essex! Of course this was a made-up name that I gave him.
This would begin a string of "friends" I kept in my head, including Johnny Appleseed, who I would think of as I cycled through the Mohican Forest and countryside around Loudonville where Appleseed was known to traverse and plant apple trees.
Unbelievably, I have kept specific persons in my head in the cities I've lived in, EVEN NOW living in Dayton, Ohio. This person, who I will reveal soon as I collect my thoughts better, is long dead but was a legendary comedian who appeared frequently on Johnny Carson's talk show. He was from Dayton.
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In my copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible,” the chapter on the Song of Solomon has the headline parenthesis (Parental Warning: Explicit Lyrics). Imagine the Bible being censored by today’s standard of what’s “too sexual”!
The authors, supposed experts in the Bible with all kinds of accolades to their credit, have no real idea what the book means. They even admit as much, writing, “And what is the song about? Love, obviously—but is it about ordinary romantic love, or is it an allegory? Some say the song is about the relationship of love between God and the nation of Israel, or Christ and the Church his bride, or Christ and the individual.”
The passage goes on, “These days a woman might not be as happy to hear that her hair is like a flock of goats, her teeth are like a flock of sheep, her temples are like the halves of a pomegranate, her neck is like a tower, or her breasts are like two fawns. (Song of Songs 4:1-7). The description sounds like Picasso’s kind of woman. Really, the Lover (the man) is praising the Beloved’s flowing black hair, lovely white teeth, rosy face, majestic bearing, and soft, enticing body.”
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Of course, the writers don’t even touch on any prophetic value of the book, which happens to serve as one of God’s many biblical “dress rehearsals” for the last days and the Second Coming.
As Richard Jordan explained in a study from the Book of Hosea, “The Song of Solomon is one of the songs of Israel and it’s a prophetic song about the last days of Israel. It’s about the ‘little flock’ or the ‘believing remnant’ in Israel resisting being seduced away by the Antichrist and how the Lord Jesus Christ, the real bridegroom, keeps their heart fixed on Him. It describes how they face the seduction attempts and how the Lord Jesus Christ, the real Christ, will protect them from it.
“When you study a book like Song of Solomon, it’s not just a love story to tell a man how to love his wife or a wife how to love her husband. Now, you can do that stuff, I’m not recommending against it, I’m just saying that’s not what it’s for in the Bible.
“So when you find a passage like Hosea and he says, ‘Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.’ The issue here is, ‘Come back, Lord, come back, and save us and deliver us and revive us up.’
Song of Solomon 6:13 says, "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."