The Unannounced Christmas Visitor by Patrick Higgins

Author:Patrick Higgins [Higgins, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780965897808
Publisher: For His Glory Production Company
Published: 2014-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

19

LYDIA PREPARED THE TABLE and Enoch blessed the food.

The old man dipped his BLT sandwich in the tomato soup and blew on it. He took a small bite and swallowed. “As I was telling John earlier, with its many dire warnings and constant air of futility, it’s easy to see why Ecclesiastes can be such a depressing book to read.

“One of its main focal points is that sustained contentment can never be found in human endeavors or in material things. Even the wisest man that ever lived was forced to conclude that knowledge and wisdom can only take mankind so far. In and of themselves, they leave too many unanswered questions to give anyone a sense of completion.

“But those who read Ecclesiastes closely will see a progression from depressive analysis to hopeful solutions.”Enoch could almost see John shrinking in his seat, knowing he leaned more on his intelligence for his day-to-day guidance than anything else in life.

“King Solomon’s fall from grace was a culmination of many things going all the way back to his childhood. If you study the first book of Kings in the Old Testament, you will clearly see that his biggest downfall happened at the hands of foreign women. This was a clear violation of what God had instructed for His chosen people.

“The end result was when King Solomon was old, his wives had indeed turned his heart away from God. So much so that he started chasing after other gods. In order to pacify his many wives, the king of Israel built temples and altars to their gods, thus trading the wisdom of God for the wisdom of the world.

“Oftentimes when man has an abundance of money, his need for God decreases. Solomon was no exception. As he continued down that destructive path, he started thinking more highly of himself and less highly of his Maker. So prideful did he become that even the Temple he built for the Lord was eventually called Solomon’s temple.”

Enoch shook his head, as if out of shame. “The world-weary tone of his writing in Ecclesiastes reflects someone looking back on a life that was long on experience but short on lasting rewards.

“Viewed distinctively through human eyes, Solomon vividly describes his life without God, by using the absurdities of life and pushing them to their logical end-points. He ultimately concluded that life is destined to remain unsatisfying apart from mankind’s recognition of God’s intervention in all things.

“Solomon repeated the phrase ‘under the sun’ twenty-nine times, signifying man’s view of the world, when God is left out of the picture. He used the word ‘vanity’ more than thirty times to constantly demonstrate that when man pursues things under the sun, apart from God, life ends up becoming rather pointless, meaningless and even absurd.

“By simply reading it, it becomes crystal clear that Solomon not only saw his departure from his Maker—the very Source of life—we also see him being restored back to God after sincerely repenting, much like his father David had done,

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