Season 4 Podcast 7 “The Journey”
There is an intriguing scripture in Ecclesiastes written by King Solomon.
“9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
I have pondered that so many times trying to discern what it means. Perhaps if we break it down.
“The thing that hath been”
Refers to the past.
“It is that which shall be”
Refers to the future. In our jargon the past often repeats itself which is validated by a study of history. It is explained by scriptures. Everything is governed by law. There are temporal laws and there are spiritual laws. Laws are subject to the principle of causality. In other words, for every cause there is an effect, and for every effect there is a cause. History repeats itself because laws never change; therefore, consequences never change, whether temporal or spiritual. The laws of nature are fixed. That is what gives science predictability. It depends upon King Solomon’s statement being true.
“The thing that hath been, is that which shall be.”
The same is true with spiritual laws. Obedience to the laws of God brings blessings. Disobedience to the laws of God brings cursings. That is why history repeats itself. The second part of Solomon’s statement is a repetition with variation of the first.
“And that which is done is that which shall be done.”
Every generation must learn for themselves right and wrong, good and evil, law and lawlessness. Though we are all unique in our own way, we are alike in everything. Differences manifest themselves because we have agency. We cannot choose laws. Laws choose us, but we can choose to ignore temporal laws and thus suffer the consequences or break spiritual laws and thus suffer the consequences. It is sin that creates variety. It is the ability to choose between good and evil that creates agency. People who commit the same sins suffer the same consequences.
The third statement is a little more complicated.
“And there is no new thing under the sun.”
We can only assume that if two people are on a journey in a dimension where nothing is fixed, then time is relative. If one stops, but the other keeps going, how is the distance between the two measured? Is it quantitative or qualitative? On earth, with the appearance of fixed referents, it may appear quantitative, measured in kilometers or miles or landmarks, or time but on our journey through life, it is qualitative.
Only on earth is time linear, and that is an illusion. The earth isn’t fixed. It spins at 24,000 miles an hour giving us the appearance of a day. Entropy is the only thing that gives time its arrow. What happens to time in a world where nothing dies? The earth appears flat only because of our perspective. We may digitize time, but our celestial clocks measure time in circles, everything returning to its origin. Because we travel in circles, growth is not linear. In the temporal dimension our physical body changes. In the spiritual dimension where the soul is immortal, change only happens within us regardless of our coordinates.
The moon circles the earth, the earth circles the sun, our solar system circles the Milky Way, the Milky Way circles other galaxies, and all galaxies circle the throne of God, our creator, wheels within wheels, ending where we began.
It isn’t where we are when we die that matters. It is who we are. The only thing that breaks the pattern is death. We all die somewhere between sunrise and sunset. We remain in the earthly dimension travelling in circles around and around the sun until death releases us. What matters if we die at perihelion or aphelion, we are no further away from God?
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