This weeks Ask at the Cathedral
These are the notes that people were given:
Ecclesiastes Ch. 3 – A Time for Everything – The burden of beauty and eternity
(Why do I feel there is something more?) ch.3
1) The Life of Faith – ch.2 v. 24-26
“There is no reason to suppose that a man’s life has any more meaning than the life of the humblest insect that crawls from one annihilation to another.” Prof. Joseph Wood Krutch,
‘he who leaves God out of his reckoning does not know how to count’.
2) Everything has a Time – ch.3 v. 1-8
“Come gather round people, wherever you roam, admit that the waters around you have grown, …O you’d better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changing”
3) Time is Meaningless without God – ch.3 v. 9-15
Walter Kaiser “a deep seated desire, a compulsive drive.. to know the character, composition and meaning of the world… and to discern its purpose and destiny”.
The result is almost invariably the exact opposite of what’s intended. Thus, expanding public education has served to increase illiteracy; half a century of pacifist agitation has resulted in the two most ferocious and destructive wars in history, political egalitarianism has made for a heightened class-consciousness. and sexual freedom has led to erotomania on a scale hitherto undreamed of. “Malcolm Muggeridge
“I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end”
Conclusion – Is that it?St Andrews – Ecc 3
Yapeh to Yahweh
“Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.” (Thomas Watson)
And here are the slides I used.
No Satisfaction!- (Why are wealth, wisdom and sex not enough?) Ecclesiastes 2 – Ask at the Cathedral
Correct translation: ” He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11
Explained: Men’s hearts love this present world, and that is why they can’t find out God’s eternal plan.
No – that is not the ‘correct’ translation. The translation ‘eternity’ fits the Hebrew better and also the context. Your translation suggests that God sets the world in men’s hearts, then blames them for having the world in their hearts! Hardly just…
I will respectfully disagree. The AV is always the correct translation. Think carefully about what is being said. God doesn’t blame man for not finding eternity within his own heart. ” The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. Man needs to look upward not inward. By hearing God’s word we discover the eternal things that he discloses to mankind by revelation, not by introspection.
You are saying that the KJV is always the correct translation – there is little that I can do then. There was no point in my studying Hebrew – King James clearly had more inspired writers! You believe that God puts the world in people’s hearts, then blames them for having the world in their hearts!
>You are saying that the KJV is always the correct translation – there is little that I can do then.
You can believe: ” …when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” 1 Thessalonians 2:13
There’s no “eternity” residing in the unregenerate “desperately wicked” heart of fallen man, and chastising him for the failure to “fathom” God’s eternal plans within such a defective “eternity” of utmost deceitfulness is plainly heretical nonsense.
The Authorized Version is (as always) the correct translation. It says that man was made to enjoy the present natural world and lives in the moment “so that” no man can find out God’s work – meaning God isn’t particularly surprised at that, and he rather expects him not to. The relevant cross reference would be: ” For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” Isaiah 64:4.