- 40th International Bible Conference, July 27, 2008        “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”  Hebrews 4:12-13     What Profit Has a Man from All His Labor in which He Toils under the Sun?“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher; ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labor; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come after.”  Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 As I read these verses, it occurs to me that their content is very philosophical, but at the same time psychological, and aims at immersing the reader deep in thought. Nevertheless, before we discuss what is written in the book of Ecclesiastes purely from a philosophical or psychological viewpoint, as people who live as God’s creations within the environment that God has created, I think we need to consider first of all the fact that everything in the world follows a certain order. Although each cell, each joint, each part of our bodies is separate, together they make up a person. In a similar way, the words of the Bible were recorded by the hands of various different people living at different times, and yet they were all recorded by the power of God, who see everything at once. This is why everything in the Bible is connected, and if you do not connect those part of the Bible with one another part of the Bible, a problem may arise. “One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever.” “That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been in ancient times before us.” If we just read these verses without thinking about the flow of the Bible as a whole, they may seem similar to the writings of Socrates or Confucius. When we come across verses like these in the Bible, however, we need to consider man’s condition in relation to God’s plan as revealed in the Old Testament, and how, through the history in the Old Testament, God is watching and diagnosing mankind and the way that people are living in this world. First, let’s think about the words, “under the sun.” “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come there they return again.” The Bible has a premise about how all of these follow an order, which is that they are all under the sun. This is somewhat different from the image of the new heaven and new earth that appears in the book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem, the new age which will unfold and into which we will enter when we escape the confines of the environment in which we now live. And there is a time called ‘“eternity,” of which God is Lord. Only God has a hold on eternity and He alone can understand it. Further more, as you read the Bible, you can see that the “present” also belongs to God. When Moses asked God what His name was, He answered, “I AM WHO I AM.” God referred to Himself as always existing in the present (see Exodus 3:13-14), but can we understand this concept as mere human beings? We say very easily that we live in the present, we live in the present time, but is there a time between the moment you get up in the morning and the moment you go to bed that you can actually designate as being the present? First, we need to consider whether the concepts of the present and eternity, as presented in the Bible, are something that we are able to understand with our human flesh and human mind. We live in this world walking with our shadows “under the sun.” For as long as we are living under the sun, we are always followed by our shadows, which have exactly the same form as ourselves. Why is the phrase, “under the sun,” recorded amongst these words of the prophet, and not just once or twice, but several times? These are not words that appear as a title in a poem or essay written by some poet or philosopher; these words have been recorded in order to explain man’s life under the sun as seen through the eyes of the Lord of Creation. As human beings, we long for eternity and make an effort to find it, but whether we understand these things or not is up to us. We are aware that the life of a person has a starting point and some day it must come to an end. Our time is limited. No matter how healthy, wealthy, or smart we may be, time passes, our flesh grows old, and death comes to us. And then, after we die, we face a new realm of time. There are people who have a vague idea about this, and there are those who know precisely about it through the Bible. People long for and desire eternity, but they are destined to face their end at some point in time. Where did this problem begin? Man became a being destined to face death when Adam disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit, even though he was under the command of God who had told him, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). As descendants of Adam, we have been born with the same fate as Adam. Then, in the course of this short life, we have a vague longing for what is called eternity, as if searching for water on a hot summer’s day or for food when you are hungry. “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 When it says here, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven,” this is linked to the proviso of “under the sun” that we read in Ecclesiastes chapter 1. So this passage goes on to talk in a little more detail about the state in which we are living our lives “under the sun.” It says, “A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to weep, and a time to laugh,” continually referring to there being a beginning and an end to all things, and then it says that God has given man a heart that longs for eternity. In the English Bible it says, “He has put eternity in their hearts” [NKJV].We also need to consider, however, how people who long for something eternal actually understand time, and whether they understand precisely what is meant by the concept of time referred to as “present.” Since people live their lives within the realm of time that is “under the sun,” they are not really aware of what is the “present.” Such are the limits of our lives and our thoughts. Even as we are speaking, our words pass in time and disappear. Of course, our words may remain in our memories, but the words that come from our mouths flow into the past and the words that we will soon speak remain for the future. Such is the state in which we now live. It is the same when it comes to our flesh. If we understood what the present is, and could apply it to our flesh, eternal life would be possible, but this is impossible for as long as we are living in this world with blood flowing through our veins. The only way that time stood still we would be able to experience the present. But if time were to stand still, what would happen to the constant movement of the blood that the heart pumps and sends flowing throughout our bodies, even to the depths of the smallest capillaries? The movement of the blood would stop, and then our lives would come to an end.God said, “I AM WHO I AM.” Also in First Peter it says, “The word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23). It is important for us that the word of God is alive. People who are “under the sun” live each day walking with their own shadow under the sun. I wonder if perhaps in God’s eyes the life within our blood resembles the shadow that follows us around. God has given us the Bible and wants us to find an answer through the words of the Bible, but I wonder if, in His eyes, the brief lives of men appear like a shadow of the eternal life that allows us to live forever in the same realm of time as that in which God dwells. Otherwise, there would be no reason for God to have had the Bible recorded for us, and no reason for Him to have moved the spirits of the prophet and had them record the words of the Bible. Why in the world did the Preacher who recorded the book of Ecclesiastes write these words? He said, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to gain, a time to lose, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones.” He is saying that this life under the sun, which began at some point, will some day come to an end, and each of us lives within a realm of time which, like a watch in the night, is far briefer than the events of history as they unfold under the sun. When we consider the physical body of man, we find that the same concept applies. The blood is circulating inside the body, and in the blood there are the red blood cells which contain the red hemoglobin. The life span of these red bloods cells is 120 days. They do not circulate with the blood inside the body forever; after 120 days, they are excreted from the body with the urine or feces. Even this blood which sustains my life has a beginning and an end. Also, the blood is filtered through various different channels, and some of it becomes the cerebrospinal fluid that encases the brain. This cerebrospinal fluid, which fills the spinal cord that connects from the top of the head to the end of the tailbone, envelopes the central nervous system and then flows out through the veins and is excreted with the urine. Even if we just take our flesh as an example, we can see that nothing given to man is eternal. Everything comes to an end some day. It is to man in this state that the Bible says, “He has put eternity in their hearts.” There is a time that can be understood by the God who said, “I AM WHO I AM,” a time that can be said to be “true time,” a time that man wants and longs for, and the Bible had already written about this time even before I knew it.   God’s Plan which Appears Through the History of the Old TestamentLet’s think about the words, “All his labor in which he toils under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:3). These words can apply to the individual, but they are also talking about the whole of mankind, born as descendants of Adam. So we need to go beyond the individual and consider the nation of Israel, taking a look at their toil under the sun and the things they went through. There is a time, a beginning and an end for everything, and within all of this, God has provided mankind with an opportunity to gain something eternal. In going about this, He mobilized one nation. God also gave the words, “The life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11) to the nation of Israel while they were in the wilderness. Whether we want it or not, God’s wisdom and all His plans were recorded and presented to the world through the nation of Israel. This is God’s way of giving mankind?those who live under the sun?the opportunity to be with God. A careful examination of the history of Israel in the Old Testament reveals that it can be summarized as a history of sacrifice. At that time in Israel, there were kings, there were prophets and there were priests. The king was the political leader; a prophet was a servant of God who kept the king in ch

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