ECCLESIASTES 1<\/b><\/p>\n
The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course<\/i><\/p>\n
(Ecclesiastes 1:6)<\/i>.<\/p>\n
In ancient pagan thought the world was not regarded as the creation of a personal God. Instead, the world had always existed. \u201cGod\u201d was simply another way of saying \u201cworld\u201d or \u201cnature.\u201d Perhaps the world emanated out of this \u201cgod\u201d and then is reabsorbed back into \u201cit.\u201d Since the world is eternal, it would have to emanate back out again and then be reabsorbed, over and over for eternity. In the modern world we call this myth the \u201coscillating universe,\u201d which goes from Big Bang to Big Crunch again and again forever.<\/p>\n
For the pagan, time and history are circular. Life is nothing but a vicious cycle of insignificance. There is no escape, but if life becomes too painful, you can always commit suicide. In the modern world the \u201cmyth of eternal return\u201d was strongly promoted by Friedrich Nietzsche. He said that human life oscillates between times of Apollonian rationality, order, and purpose, and Dionysian irrationality and chaos. Taking Nietzsche seriously, writers like Ernest Hemingway held that death ultimately wins, and that the only way we can cheat death is by taking dominion over it through the act of suicide.<\/p>\n
In his famous book The City of God,<\/i> the great early theologian Augustine pointed out that the Christian and biblical view of time completely contradicts the pagan view of cycles. The biblical view is linear. The Bible says that time and history have a beginning, at the point of creation. The world is not \u201cself-creating\u201d or eternal, but rather was created by God, who is completely separate from the world. The world and human life have an orderly and purposeful starting point and are moving toward a destiny. Whatever cycles may appear to exist in history are really spirals<\/i> moving upward toward God\u2019s planned and prophesied future.<\/p>\n
Thus, each human being has a destiny. Each of us has a future, an eschatology<\/i> in God\u2019s plan. Life has meaning in terms of that plan. God actively superintends that plan. Each of us has a part to play in that plan. Faith in God leads to hope in His plan, and such hope breaks us out of the despair caused by the myth of eternal cycles. In a sense the battle between Christianity and secular humanism is the battle between the line and the circle.<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
Jeremiah 14\u201316<\/p>\n
1 Timothy 5<\/p>\n
WEEKEND<\/b><\/p>\n
Jeremiah 17\u201322<\/p>\n
1 Timothy 6, 2 Timothy 1<\/p>\n
Jesus is called the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Our ultimate hope as believers is being raised to life eternal when God consumates His kingdom at the end of history. If you are a believer, praise God for the heavenly destiny with Christ He has prepared for you.<\/p>\n
For further study: Jeremiah 29:11 \u2022 Ephesians 1:11<\/i><\/p>\n
WEEKEND<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ECCLESIASTES 1 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course (Ecclesiastes 1:6). In ancient pagan thought the world was not regarded as the creation of a personal God. Instead, the world had always existed. \u201cGod\u201d was simply another way of saying \u201cworld\u201d … Continue reading “TIME LINE OR VICIOUS CYCLE?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}