Ecclesiastes 8

Bible Passage: Ecclesiastes 8

“Because for every matter there is a time and judgment.”

There is a time to every matter and a judgment. A wise man knows how to discern both time and judgment and thus able to seize the opportunity. Are we wise or are we unwise? Do we think that all things are not within our control and everything is solely God’s timing and judgment?

“So who can tell him when it will occur?

No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit,

  And no one has power in the day of death.”

When will it occur? We never know. When will we give up our spirit and do we have power to retain our spirit? Do we have power in the day of death? How do we prepare for death in which we neither know its arrival and neither have the power over it?

Since we do not know when our time is up and this time is independent of our age. Are we wise to prepare for death? Are we urgent in our preparation to meet Jesus for eternal salvation?

The wise man says he knows how to discern time and judgment. The time is close and so is the judgment. Have we started preparing for the coming spiritual meeting? Are we looking forward to have close communion with Jesus? Are we praying with faith in anticipation for the time when the Holy Spirit will be poured mightily down into our hearts?

If we are wise, we shall seize this opportunity and we shall receive a favorable judgment from God. If we are wise, we shall put in all our hearts, tears and faith in praying for the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and to fill us.  If we are wise, we will ignore other brethren’s cynical eyes of us who thirst for the Holy Spirit. If we are wise, we shall trade tears, perspiration, sore throat, buckled knees, drooping arms and lost voice for the precious living water.

Jesus hears our prayers and He is waiting for us to offer such pleasing aroma of prayers to Him. Jesus is waiting at the doors to pour down abundant spiritual grace and blessings to us. If we are wise, we will not wait and relax but rather we will be proactive to pursue this spiritual grace that Jesus has promised us, His children!

“There is a vanity which occurs on earth, that there are just men to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.”

The wise man has observed something disturbing. The wicked man received the righteous man’s judgment and conversely the righteous man received the wicked man’s judgment. It is unfair! However, the wise man calls it vanity. It is because of this that many people in the world feel that God is not the righteous God. They feel that God does not exist because the evil man persist and prospers!

If evil is paid with evil and good paid with good 100 percent of the time, many people would believe that there is a God and there is justice. Unfortunately, God does not do so and allows evil to persist.

Why does God allow this to happen? Even the wise man admits he cannot understand although he thought over it over sleepless nights.

Perhaps an answer to this is for us Christians to ponder. Evil exists because of sin and because of the wickedness of man’s heart. If there are no evil people, there will not be an opportunity for Christians to shine forth the good light to them. There will not be a differentiation between the good and the bad. Evil people exist to allow Christians to learn to love them, just as how Christ loved all man.

“When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, even though one sees no sleep day or night, then I saw all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun.”

Man cannot find the work that is done under the sun. Truly, there are a lot of things that happen in this world that despite the wisdom of man, it cannot be fathomed.

Till date, I still have many questions that have no answers. These are some questions that I still have…

It is impossible to preach the gospel to every person on earth especially those who are born in countries that have no freedom of religion or are bounded to their religion since birth. How about these people? How can they be saved and how will they be judged?

Why did God create so many stars and why are the distances so vast in space? Why is it that the evolution story by science seems to indicate such a great length of time be it in geology, biology and astronomy?

Science claims that Noah’s flood did not occur and if it did occur they claim it just occurred only in the Black Sea.

What is heaven like?

When we are in heaven, what work do we do?

And many other questions……

Perhaps those wise can tell me the answers.

May God give us the wisdom to seek salvation from Him and may He answer our questions.