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Koheleth
The Secret Code
In 1934 the Ovaltine company gave a secret decoder ring to anyone who joined the “Little Orphan Annie” club. With the ring you were able to reveal the real message hidden in a line of plain text. Today, a great many books and sermons about Ecclesiastes also offer a secret code that unlocks the message […]
IN THE END
QUESTION Was King Solomon right when he said in Ecclesiastes that the only thing that matters in the end is to fear God and keep his commandments? VANSWER It’s important to note that we don’t know for certain who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. Whoever it was only identified themselves as Kohelet, a word that […]
THE BEST BOOK OF THE BIBLE
QUESTION Why do some firmly believe Ecclesiastes is the greatest and wisest book in the entire Bible? VANSWER Kohelet means “to gather” so early translators decided that it meant to gather people together and teach them wisdom. In latin such a gathering is an “ecclesia” and the one doing the gathering was the “ecclesiastes”. At […]
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
COMMENT A person’s final words may contain the wisdom of a lifetime distilled into a sentence. John Wesley’s last words were repeated several times, “The best of all is, God is with us.” Wise Solomon at the end of Ecclesiastes wrote, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God […]
It’s Not Meaningless
If you read the words of Kohelet (the author of Ecclesiastes) in some modern translations you will find that the endless repetition of the word “meaningless” is like Chinese water torture. Work is meaningless, pleasure is meaningless, money is meaningless, life is meaningless, wisdom is meaningless and even death is meaningless. With all this “meaningless” […]
DAILY BREAD OR GET AHEAD
COMMENT My guess was that the author of this book, who I believe was a man of great wealth and power, was trying to say that everything we do that is for our own sake and not for God is meaningless. Working and “toiling” has no purpose and will not “bear fruit” unless God’s purpose […]
JULIA’S POEM
Julia posted an interesting poem. http://hellopoetry.com/poem/649203/ecclesiastes/ Ecclesiastes You ask me what I feel & think (because the two are distinctly their own) about the utter absurdity & pointlessness of life & out the windows cars go by & up in space meteors fly & sitting in this vinyl booth is me; not alive long enough […]
PAIN AND SUFFERING
COMMENT The more pain and suffering we endure, the better we can empathize with the position others face during their times of distress. We learn more through our failure and loss than through our success and winning. A RESPONSE Thank you for telling us all how lucky we are to suffer and what life is […]
THE LOST BOOK OF THE BIBLE
QUESTION The Book of Ecclesiastes does not get used/read/considered often enough. In a similar vein to Job, Ecclesiastes explores the meaninglessness and nihilism inherent in life. Man is ignorant. Man cannot do what is best for himself. We cannot ascribe higher powers to anything, so we should just enjoy the gifts God has given us. That’s […]
THE WHOLE TRUTH
COMMENT Our church is in the midst of a series on Ecclesiastes and a certain passage has stuck in my mind: “When I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under […]