Ecclesiastes Lesson 18

The Uncertainty of HVP life – 6:10-12

Ecclesiastes 6, by way of review, we have a section in which Solomon is advising people to stay out of entanglements, specifically to not get involved in plans, programs, operations, business, religion, you name it and the principle applies, but don’t get involved in anything where there is some sort of planning that depends upon the future because if you do, and you have no basis in the Word for doing so, then you are wasting your life. And his point is developed throughout chapter 5 and 6 in that all of this thing is one grand waste of time if you are not in fellowship with the Lord. You are either in fellowship or out of fellowship at any given moment, and Solomon is out of it. Solomon is out of the will of God and therefore he is absorbing human viewpoint, he is a victim of his culture, he is wishy-washy, he is very passive mentally so he accepts anything that comes along, and he is absorbing his culture right and left with the result that it leads to a certain set of behavior patterns.

Now this is an important principle from the Word of God that you’ll get again and again, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” We’ve had a generation of people in this country that are fed that you should behave in a certain way and it doesn’t matter how you believe. That’s a lot of nonsense, the opposite is exactly the truth; everything depends on how you believe because how you believe determines how you behave. You show me a behavior pattern and I will show you deep in that person’s heart he has a certain mental construction of reality, he has a certain basic philosophy of life and he is operating according to that system. So how you believe determines completely how you live. And if you are a Christian who is out of fellowship and does not have the true joy and peace that comes from fellowship with God, or if you are an unbeliever and know nothing of the salvation experience in Christ, and you know nothing of the objective facts of Christianity, then you would be best to behave as Solomon does, because he shares your basic framework of belief.

His behavior pattern we have covered several times and we want to start in verse 10, because verses 10-12 illustrate once again how Solomon believes and how the system of belief affects his behavior pattern. Everything depends on how you believe; the greatest thing a Christian has going for him in the Christian life is Bible doctrine because it’s only through Bible doctrine, absorbing it and utilizing it that you can live for Jesus Christ.

Verse 10, “That which has been is named already, and it is known that man is the one who may not contend with him that is mightier than he.” There’s a translation difficulty in this verse as there has been periodically throughout this book. But the last phrase, getting it right before we develop it is: “that man is one who may not contend with him that is mightier than he.” Now in verses 10-12 you are going to see what Solomon believed. This is what was going through his mind and let to his behavior pattern; this is why you cannot change the way people behave and you will never change society unless you change how people think. This is the system that’s called in the Bible repentance, for the verb “repent” means to change your mentality or the way you think.

Now it’s very interesting because in our day, particularly in fundamental circles, nine people out of ten have the idea of repentance of somebody shedding great tears of emotion and coming down to the altar, etc. Now emotion may accompany the shift in thinking but emotion is not itself the shift in thinking. Judas Iscariot had great tears of repentance and yet as far as we determine from the Word of God he’s in hell. So it didn’t solve his problem one bit to have great tears of emotion. Judas Iscariot was a very emotional man; he was very sorrowful about how he handled the Lord Jesus Christ and yet it didn’t solve his problem one bit. We have other men in the Bible, we have Esau; Esau it says went through a tremendous shattering emotional experience and yet as far as we can determine Esau was completely alienated from the covenant and outside the will of God. Emotions didn’t solve Esau’s problems. Only the mentality, only what you are thinking solves your problem. Christians who do not take in Bible doctrine are going to be suckers for anything that comes along.

And in verse 10 you have this illustrated because Solomon gives you here what he thinks, and I say that this probably is the only logical alternative to Christianity. “That which has been is named already…” “That which has been” refers to events in history up to the present moment and Solomon is adopting a system of philosophy that borders on fatalism at this point. He is saying that there is a purposed behind the universe; he says that this purpose is evident in many areas. We found this in chapter 3, this is a famous area of Ecclesiastes, there’s a time for this and a time for that, and there’s a time for this and there’s a time for that. Solomon believed there was an outer purpose in history but Solomon himself could not find that purpose; he couldn’t find it. So therefore in verse 10 since he can’t find it he’s just saying well, things go on around me, “that which has been is named already.”

Now you have to understand the significance of the word “named” in Hebrew. The word “named” characterizes the essence of a thing. Turn to Isaiah 40:26 and you’ll see how this word “named” is used in the Word of God. When the Bible says I name something, it refers to the fact that I designate its role or its essence. That’s why in Isaiah 9 the Lord Jesus Christ is called “the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of Eternity.” Now the fact that He’s called “the Mighty God” should settle once and for all anyone who has questions as to whether the Jews of the Old Testament expected a divine Messiah. Why would monotheists call a human person “Mighty God,” and in that context you can tell very clearly that Isaiah means God because in Isaiah 10, the very next chapter he applies it to Jehovah. So it’s clear he’s not talking about some great super personage or hero. The “Mighty God” means that Messiah of the Old Testament would have to be God Himself. I realize that Satan’s Witnesses and a few other people who deliberately mistranslate the Bible when it suits their purpose, always try to say that Mighty God doesn’t mean Mighty God, it means something else. Well, I’m sorry to report to you that Isaiah 10 defines “Mighty God” as God and God only; the Messiah of the Old Testament had to be God.

In Isaiah 40:26 we have another incidence of the use of the word “name.” “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that bring out their host by number; He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might; for He is strong in power. And not one fails.” “He calls them all by names” refers to the fact that God is omniscient and He knows the innermost character and that He “calls them by names” it means analyzing it He knows it totally. When He names something He names it characteristic of its essence, or its characteristics. This is why Jesus Christ is called Immanuel, God with us. And you say wait a minute, Jesus was never called Immanuel in the New Testament, Jesus is never called Wonderful Counselor, Jesus was never called Mighty God, Jesus was never called Father of Eternity. That’s true, because He had many, many names; the names were depictions of his character. He had a proper name that He used, Jesus of Nazareth, but as far as His ministry goes He had many, many, He had dozens of names. Just like all the kings of Israel had dozens of names, it didn’t mean they went around and changed their name every day. It means, however, that they were known officially by these names, it was called a [not familiar with word, sounds like: pe tul ary] list, a list of titles and it was common throughout the Old Testament.

So when we see “called by names” we mean that God knows things intimately and when He labels it the label means that it corresponds one to one with the content; the name is not just the concept that’s attached, the name is a revelation of the essence of the thing that is named. So therefore back in Ecclesiastes 6, when Solomon makes the claim, “that which has been is named already,” he means that it is known by a plan. In other words, looking back in history here’s the past; Solomon says that the past goes on according to some purpose, some master plan, but he doesn’t know what it is; he knows it is there, but he says “that which has been is named already,” it is intimately known, there’s nothing new under the sun, this is his whole point, that it is known, “and it is known,” now here’s the other half of verse 10, the first half shows that the universe has a purpose behind it.

I can think back when I was an unbeliever and say to myself I remember things happening in my life and I can remember circumstances entering into my life and I can remember thinking, well, there must be a plan behind this. And yet I didn’t know the One who planned it; didn’t know the know the One who brought these things to pass, but I was aware that there must be a plan behind it. And you, for example, if you’ve ever seen a person in tragedy, if you’ve ever counseled with a person who’s all shook up because of something, it’s inevitable that somewhere along the line the question comes out, why did this happen to me? Well, that very question shows that basically they kind of are halfway aware there might be a problem here, and it’s possible there’s meaningfulness coming in here and this thing happened for a reason, I don’t know what it is.

Well this is the same thing with Solomon, he says “that which has been” in his life and other men’s lives, “is named already, and it is known” and now when he begins with the next clause, “and it is known” he begins to give you the other side to the fatalism. In other words, first the external, the history, now he shifts to something else and he says now this is really what scares me; this is really what shakes me up, Solomon is saying, because I know, and it is known, it’s a common fact, “that man is one who cannot contend,” now may not has an imperfect tense in the Hebrew, an imperfect tense in the Hebrew means action which is out of sight, in other words, as far as the author is concerned he doesn’t see the action as starting and stopping; he just conceives of the action out there happening. And it says, this is a sense of capability, “man is one who is not able,” who is never able, who is NEVER able, “to contend with one that is mightier than he.”

Now here’s the mystery Solomon faces; he says look, I look outside my life and I see all these things happening. I look at history and I see these things happening. There’s a plan there, I don’t know it, but the one thing that shakes me up is that I’m hopeless before the [can’t understand word] of whatever it is that’s running the universe. Now this is what is deeply scary to Solomon, and this is something that he doesn’t like and it’s something that no man likes, but you are not the lord of history and no matter how great you are, the Bible tells us that we can never affect the reels of history in a significant way in the sense that we will set ourselves up as God and run it. Now we can affect history but it’s under the sovereign plan of God.

And verse 10, when he says “it is known that man is one who is not able to contend,” the verb “contend” means judge; it’s din in Hebrew, by the way, that’s the word from which we get Daniel. Daniel’s name, speaking of names, take it apart, Dan comes from din, judge, and El is the word for God, God is judge. And of course it’s significant that Daniel wrote the book where God is the judge over the nations in prophecy. So when we come here and it says that “man is not able to judge” the word means that man can’t contend or argue with this purpose. It’s like lying down on a railroad track and watching the train run over you, you can argue with the engine all you want to, it’s still going to run you over. Now this is Solomon’s pathetic result from his fatalism. You see, he sees this purpose, he doesn’t know what it is, and so he sees himself prostrate before the purpose, helpless, and this basically is the role of the unbeliever. It’s the role of the non-Christian because unless you are in one spot and only one spot this is the way life must appear to you, that the universe has a purpose behind it, but you’re helpless to assess the purpose, you can’t change the purpose, it’s swept along with the tide. There’s only one exception to that rule, that is, when the Christian is in fellowship and he’s operating… then he participates, you might say, and he really can make significant things in the plan of God.

So “that which has been is named already, and it is known that man cannot argue,” he cannot enter into discussion, “with him that is mightier than he.” And he doesn’t call this God because Solomon at this point has manipulated the use of the word “God” to equal our word “fate.” Solomon has broken away from the Word of God so the word G-o-d means something different to Solomon than it does to you at this point, and so to Solomon it’s fate. And that’s what he’s saying here, you can’t fight it, in other words, so get with it. These things come into your life, you can’t stop them so you might as well accept them, the philosophy of pacifism here, you just kind of accept what comes into your life and work with it the best you can, but you can’t affect its overall purpose, so he claims.

Now verse 11, “Seeing there are many things that increase vanity, what is man the better?” Now this word “seeing there be many things that increase vanity,” “things” refer to words, explanations, religions, activities of life that man tries to crank out to cover up the problem. You see, a person who is an unbeliever, or if you are a Christian who is weak, here’s the way your mind looks. At the center you have self and around self you have all these various chaotic things of life, you may have your job, your health, your possessions, you may have philosophy over here, history over here, art, music, fellowship with loved ones and it’s just chaotically arranged around yourself, because self is at the center. And a few things that bother you you repress. For example, there are certain things on the job that remind you of your weaknesses, etc. so you kind of plug down in the subconscious and suppress it, and a few other things you can suppress, but basically you have a chaotic arrangement in your mind. You have no overall organization, you’ve never tied the whole together.

But what you should be aiming at as a Christian is to build a divine viewpoint framework in the mentality of your soul where God is at the center; around Him you have Bible doctrine, around Bible doctrine you have philosophy, history, art, music, science, you have fellowship with believers, with loved ones, friends, society, you have your job, your possessions, sex and health, etc. all these activities that can be structured around the Word of God and you have something that is fantastic. You have something that you can build in the mentality of your soul that will withstand every catastrophe of life. You have something that will withstand every possible intellectual experience you will ever have and you need never fear that any intellectual argument is going to send this thing to the bottom because it’s absolutely true, everything can be correlated, God at the center, Bible doctrine and in this area you have a totally unified area of truth here. And this should be the objective of you as a Christian so you don’t get into the mess that Solomon is saying. When he says “seeing there be many things that increase vanity,” he’s referring to this human viewpoint muddle and he says I try to crank out this solution, that solution, etc. and it doesn’t cut it. Nothing seems to answer the question because Solomon does not have within the mentality of his soul a divine viewpoint framework.

Now you have got to do this, if there is one generation of Christians that need to develop the divine viewpoint framework it’s our generation. We are being bombed out with an anti-Christian culture; ideas slip to your mentality through the newspaper, through the media and if you don’t have this thing in the mentality of your soul you are going to be a sucker and you are going to be mentally passive, and a passive person can’t be a soldier and Christians are called to fight. In 2 Cor. 10 we are called to aggressively destroy the cultural concepts that are non-Christian; move out into the battle field and tear them apart, that’s literally what 2 Cor. 10 says. And if you are passive as a Christian, if you are confused, if you don’t know where the issues are, then you can’t do anything and you’re just sitting in the barracks cooling your heels while one or two Christians are out getting clobbered out on the battlefield where you should be. Christianity is not a spectator religion, Christianity is a participating conflict and together we move out.

Some of you may have facility in the area of music, this means that you’re called upon by the Lord Jesus Christ to do more than just sit around and play tidily-winks on the piano. This means that you’re to do more than play some of these kindergarten things that we have in our hymnal. It means that you should study the structure and lyrics of music and begin to bring about something that’s worthwhile, some good quality music that will reflect the structure of the Word of God; the lyrics will honor Jesus Christ. And if you need some lyrics and you’re interested in writing music I have about 400 different songs located in the Word of God and I’ll be happy to provide you a literal translation from the Greek or Hebrew at any time. We have 150 songs that you could begin with that are just itching for someone to set them to music. We have areas in the book of Revelation, the hymns that are sung in eternity before the throne of God; one of the most fantastic set of lyrics that you’ll ever find is found in the book of Revelation. And it’s the lyrics that the angels use to sing and adore Jesus Christ with. And yet we fiddle around with hallelujah and praise the Lord and all the rest of it when the Word of God gives us fantastic things and yet Christians never take advantage of them and we remain atrophied believers in the area of music.

This is what I mean about Christians getting out and moving into every area of life, following the Word of God out. I heard this one song the other day, they started singing Jesus loves all the little children of the world and I thought my goodness, how did this ever slip on. And after they got down to the end of it where Jesus loves all the children, black and white, red and purple or something, and they got to the end of it and the next part of the song completely destroyed the concept of that hymn. That hymn is a declaration of the plan of salvation and what they had done was take this whole thing and then they tack on “everything is beautiful in its time” or something after that. What they have done very cleverly in that song, and I’ll bet nine out of ten Christians never caught on, they probably got mad because it was stuck together, but they didn’t understand what they were doing. They took the first part of that thing that declared absolute truth of the Word and then when they got through the music continued right into this other lyric and the lyric completely destroyed it because the lyrics that came after it taught relativism. There’s our old enemy again, it doesn’t matter what the thing is it just matters how it seems to you now. Everything is beautiful in its own way, or in its time, etc. it all depends how you see it, so you get it in the music and you should be able to see that. What happens, next time you hear that thing, or the children, what’s going to go through their mind, you’ve just destroyed the whole hymn; that hymn has been rendered inoperative. You get that played maybe 50 times a day and what’s going to be your reaction the next time you hear the hymn; the message of the hymn is completely tubed; completely done, you might as well just cross it out because that hymn has been destroyed, methodically, cleverly, diabolically through the use of the media.

And that’s what’s going on and this is why we need Christians out there that are going to write and are going to fight in these areas and stop saying well that’s worldly. It’s not worldly; worldly is how you think, human viewpoint. I have met legalists that are the most worldly people imaginable. I have people stomp out of here because they heard me say I’m not going to have an invitation. And yet these same people, when you talk with them, have so much human viewpoint in the mentality of their soul you couldn’t put it in two dump trucks. It’s amazing, absolutely amazing. And that’s worldliness; worldliness is how you think. And you see it’s not just the lyrics, you do the same thing in the schools.

The whole system of school education, the idea that we’re going to develop little Johnny over here and we’re going to work with him and mold him and shape him as a useful tool for society. Let me tell you something; there is no purpose for education apart from the Word of God. Some of you don’t like that; some of you are teachers etc. and that’s good, you should be, but watch it, there is no purpose for education apart from the Word of God. If the Word of God is not true why should you educate anyone? If the Word of God is not true, if God really isn’t there, then why bother to educate people. Education came originally in the world… and by education I don’t mean learning a few techniques, they knew this in Egypt. You had apprenticeships in Egypt where you could learn mathematics, you could learn to solve polynomial equations in the 18^th dynasty of the new kingdom, so you could solve some of these things. These were techniques, that’s not what I’m talking about in education. By education I mean structuring the mentality of the soul, and the school system is not doing it. What we need to do is develop a divine viewpoint framework and the only way you can do that is, I hate to say it, but you have to slug it out yourself; the school system isn’t going to help you. You have to take in Bible doctrine and then you have to take what you learn in school and struggle through.

We are struggling and this is the struggle of our life, to build up a divine viewpoint framework and if you’re not engaged in this, if you’re not busy taking in Bible doctrine and using it, you are out of it; and it’d be best for you never even to bother to come to church or bother with the whole thing because it’s basically a waste of your time. I’m sure I’m not the most pleasurable to listen to and I don’t know why you sit around listening to me if this isn’t true. If the Word of God isn’t stimulating enough to activate your mentality so that you begin to grasp some of these things and begin to fight; that’s the area of fight. Remember the old concept in the Word of God, grace and truth; ideas we fight, not people. This is where the area of truth is, ideas, you exercise grace to people. And some people can’t distinguish the difference between fighting ideas and fighting people; fundamentalists always knock the person. It’s not the person you knock, it’s the ideas they hold. The person is very valuable in God’s sight or Jesus Christ would never have died for them.

Now in verse 11, what is Solomon saying about these “many things.” These “many things” are human viewpoint; these the things that a man tries to bring in to anesthetize his grief. “Seeing there be many things” but what do these things do? They are constantly increasing vanity; vanity, emptiness, vapor, trying to fill the vacuum with nothing, fill the vacuum with vacuum, contradiction. “…what is man the better?” Now has to be rearranged, what it’s saying is “what profit is it to the man?” In other words, what profit is it to sit around in life and suck up things to fill up mental vacuum and it doesn’t fill it up. It’s absolutely stupid to sit there like a vacuum cleaner and sucking up dirt. The trouble is, you don’t have anybody to come along and empty the bag and it just gets full and fuller and fuller. And this is what happens.

Here is a person that comes along in life that’s an unbeliever and he has developed human viewpoint, things that increase vanity, he has filled the mentality of his soul up with all of these things, and he accepts Christ. Now I don’t know under what circumstances he received Christ, it may be a very brief evangelistic presentation; this has advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages it has is that the person quickly accepts Christ, moves out in this area and what happens? Guess what he carts with him? All the human viewpoint garbage in his mind. Now I can tell you from my own experience, this immobilized me for many years, because of the human viewpoint garbage that I had picked up as an unbeliever and it had warped and twisted my thinking for years until I got it straightened out from studying the Word of God. So you see, the only way you can get rid of this stuff in your mind is to take in the Word, take in Bible doctrine. I don’t just mean memorize verses, I mean understanding the great doctrines of Scripture and being able to apply then, and then you will not increase the vanity of verse 11.

Verse 12, “For who knows what is good for man in this life,” and Solomon goes back to this problem and he says look, I know there’s a purpose, I find all I do is increase vanity, in verse 12 here’s why, no man knows what is good, he says there’s no authority from outside to tell me what should I believe, what is the truth? There’s no authority there. “Who knows what is good for man in this life,” who is able to make a perfect evaluation? Have you ever stopped to think of this? Just neutralize your thought for a moment apart from the Word of God. Many of you are holding a Bible in your lap, just pretend it’s not even there, pretend you never thought, never heard of it, don’t know anything about it.

Now let me ask you a question; in that state, not knowing the Word of God, not knowing God is there, not knowing any words from God, you might have an idea of God but not having in your hands any information from Him about yourself, about history or anything, let me ask you a question. How then can you erect a sane solid principle on which you can build your life? Now if you think hard on it for a moment you’ll see the answer is “I can’t.” There’s no possible way I can build something firm; I can borrow from another man’s philosophy but he’s not the authority, he hasn’t lived infinitely long, he doesn’t know everything that ever happened or will happen in history. There’s no basis on which to build my life. So why is it then, that many of you are taking concepts of the world, human viewpoint, and erecting and building and structuring your life about them, building your houses on sand. That’s what it is, because you’re not building it on the firm foundation of the Word, and this is again, “who knows what is good for man,” you don’t, this is the problem of Fletcher, one of the liberals of our day. Fletcher has written a book which is one of the best sellers called Situation Ethics, and he’s the guy that’s come out with the concept that it really doesn’t what you do as long as you exercise love toward the other person, and it doesn’t matter what happens as long as the people don’t get hurt doing it. Now in one sense he’s right; there’s only one fatal problem with his philosophy, you have no way of applying it. How do you know whether it’s going to hurt someone or not hurt someone. There’s no way of knowing. How do you know? If you say I will use one criteria of right and wrong, if it hurts somebody I’m not going to do it, if it’s okay, I’ll do it.

Now I’ll come back on you and I say okay, here’s a situation down here; suppose we have some situation involving two people, a couple, we’ll make it premarital sex, because this is one that is usually excused on the basis of Fletcher’s ethic. And you say, well we will do this, we’ll play around because after all as long as neither one of us gets hurt, fine. And that’s true but there’s only one problem; how do you know that you won’t cause deep scars in the unconscious mind? How do you know that you won’t cause deep inner mental anguish that may be covered up for a few years and later on that person is going to be a case for the funny farm. How do you know that isn’t going to happen. I can show you many cases where it has so you can’t come back and say that never happened before. I can show you many, many cases. I deal by the hour trying to eradicate the scars that promiscuous behavior has caused in people. Now you come t me and say well, we’ll go ahead, we’ll do what we want as long as it doesn’t hurt someone. But how do you know it’s not going to hurt someone?

And this is the whole point Solomon is making in verse 12. No man, including Fletcher, “knows what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he lives under the sun.” There’s no possible way of applying the principle; it’s a beautiful principle but there’s no possible way of applying it. In fact, you could take Fletcher’s principle and say that that’s what the Word of God tells you; the Word of God defines the way of life that won’t hurt anyone because it comes from one who has perfect knowledge of all the factors, and He says this is the way of life, this is what you do and if you do this you won’t hurt someone. The Word of God is actually, totally incorporation of this, of course this is where he’s borrowed it from without the content.

So in verse 12, this is the problem that an unbeliever, and you would face if you were cut off from the Word of God. “Who knows what is good” for this life? And I will challenge any of you who have a flippant attitude for the Bible, who are not studying the Bible, I will just simply ask you, how do you run your life with authority, what authority, what standard of right and wrong, what standard of truth do you have, and I’m afraid there’s not one person here that could come up with authority that’s as well grounded, as consistent, as logical, and is right as the Word of God.

All right, “all the days of his vain life,” the days of his vanity, literally, all the days of his human viewpoint operation, operation bootstrap, trying to fill up the vacuum by means of human solutions, “which he spends as a shadow.” Now this business of shadow indicates that Solomon’s bothered by the lack of time in his life. He’s saying not only do I have the pressure of not knowing how to live my life, but I have the pressure of the fact that I’m forced to acknowledge I’m going to drop dead one of these days. And of course, when Solomon wrote this he was a very elderly person. So it was very much on his mind. As people get older they think more and more of the problem of death and the fact that their life is shortening every day they go by, their life is one day shorter. And so the tragedy is what do you do? This thing is but a shadow, how do you live effectively? And you have no solution apart from the Bible. Knock the Bible all you want to but be honest to accept the results of it. I don’t mind, and I truly say this, I do not mind a person knocking my faith, I do not mind a person knocking orthodox Christianity, if and only if, if that same person has the guts to accept the logical conclusion of his own condition. Now that’s a person I deeply respect, if a person wants to knock Christianity go right ahead, but let your nose be rubbed in the garbage that comes out of the non-Christian position and be willing and have the honesty and the guts to follow non-Christian where it logically leads into despair and nothing.

So then he concludes in verse 12, “For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?” Now this we are introduced to one of the greatest concepts of the Word of God, the concept of revelation. “Who can tell a man what shall be after him,” this means who is going to tell you what’s going to happen the rest of your life; it’s not just talking about after death, “after him,” it’s an expression that means after the moment, now, right now. What’s coming after you, that’s the point, what’s ahead of you? That’s be a better way of translating it. “Who can tell a man what’s ahead of him? Who can tell you what’s ahead of your life? Until you have an authority that can give you the future perfectly, you haven’t got authority that you should follow to live your life by. If the authority that you follow in living your life can’t tell you what’s going to come off one moment from now, it’s not worth having.

Let’s go back in the Old Testament to Deuteronomy 18 and you’ll see how this tension, this desire for an authority that’s firm and sure was answered. Here’s the problem historically. In the 18^th chapter of Deuteronomy the nation was left after the death of Moses; Moses’ death was imminent, and they said look, it’s great Moses, we like you and all that, and you’re able to tell us all this information and it’s so fine to sit here, Deuteronomy was his last sermon, and we sit here Moses and we get all this information, and you tell us how to live here and how to live there and you give us all this great advice for life. There’s only one problem Moses, what do we do after you’re dead? What do we do down in history when new situations arise in history and all we’ve got is the first five books of the Bible? What do we do then? Where’s our authority? Who can we follow? Now what do we do?

And Moses gives them a warning, Deut. 18:9, “When you are come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you will not learn to do after the abominations of those nations,” there is always the tendency on the part of an honest unbeliever, when he gets down, way down the road, we’ll just indicate bumpy road and all of a sudden it gets worse and worse and worse, and he gets down there and all of a sudden it dawns on him, you know something, I don’t have any authority for my life, I don’t have one authority that’s trustworthy, not one. And so what is the panic reaction? To go into spiritism, like is happening today, because there at least I’m promised that if read my Ouija Board right and if I go to the astronomical tables I can find out what’s going to happen tomorrow. So a lot of the spiritism that we see coming into our society today comes out of this desire to have a sure authority, and to get a sure authority you have to have one that’s going to predict my life.

And so in verse 9 Moses says, Israel, after I die and you want to know the future, and you want advice on how to run things, there’s one thing that you never, never, never, never, never want to do; he kind of heads them off at the pass here because he knows what’s going to happen. Verse 10, “There shall not be found among you anyone that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire,” this is one clever means of divination they had in the ancient world, take your little child and get a big bonfire going and make the kid run through the fire and if the kid gets burned, God’s will one way, if the kid gets through and he’s all right, God’s will another way.

Then, “one who uses divination,” and divination here and “an observer of the times or an enchanter,” those four terms, “makes his son pass through the fire, or uses divination, or an observer of the times, or an enchanter” are four systems of divination. Some of these people are divination by chance. The next one, “he that uses divination,” in the ancient world was they’d take arrows and they’d notch the arrows and they’d put them in a quiver, this is how Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, they took a quiver and they just heaved the quiver out in the road and they’d find out which arrow had gone the furthest and that would be the will of God. Divination by chance, and then the next one, “an observer of the times,” this is a person who would go to a séance, or into a trance and this person would sit there and get these visions, and Moses says this is verboten, this is negative, negative, negative! “Or an enchanter,” an enchanter was one who would go through black and white magic and go through various conjurations and so on to bring about the future, the crystal ball users, etc. So here we have four systems of divination that were off limits to the nation.

The next two, “a witch, or a charmer,” are people to conjured; what is a conjurer? A conjurer means to put a curse on someone or it means to so manipulate so that you can bring about your will in a certain situation. There are conjurers in Europe, we had great tragedies, they are still reaping the results of this in Europe, where Christian women after World War II in Germany who lost their husbands, or much of the German army was in American prison camps or Russian prison camps and these German women would wonder, is my husband alive or not, they’d be in the same agony as many of the widows in Vietnam, and they don’t know, are they a widow or not; it’s a tremendous situation, the pressure on the women is very intense.

But forsaking the will of God, many of these Christian women, by the thousands and thousands, went to these diviners in Germany and they went to these séances to see if their husbands were alive, and of course many times, as tragedies happened, I know one case in the study of this where a lady went to one of the conjurers and this conjurer said your husband won’t return, so she went a few months later and he finally said your husband is dead, and she went home and shot herself and her two children, and within six hours her husband returned to the house, released from a Russian prison camp. You can imagine what happened when he walked in the door and found that she had killed herself and her children, because she despaired that she’d ever see him again. This is dead on by these conjurers, they are not from the will of God, these people are phonies or many times they are demonic. Any person who tampers with anything like this is asking for trouble, serious trouble. So here Moses lays down the line.

And then finally he says “a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer,” now a necromancer is one who professes to speak with the dead. This is a person who seeks to say look, come to me and give me $50 and I’ll bring up any relative you want and we’ll walk about this. So what happens is that this person, here’s the victim, here’s the person that’s the medium, and the medium professes to hear voices down here of the dead. Now in some cases its phony and in some cases there are real voices and there’s a real phenomenon here but the Bible tells us in 1 Sam. 28 and other passages, Isaiah 13 I believe it is, that these voices of the dead are not voices of the dead, they are voices of demons, speaking to this person impersonating the dead person. So you have the medium and she is genuinely sincere, she hears voices, and oftentimes if you’re in the room you will hear voices too. And other times it’s just a hidden speaker, etc. it’s a trick. But in many cases it’s the case of an actual demonic possession, as in 1 Sam. 28, and this is why it says “ consulter with familiar spirits,” the “spirits” here are demons, the “familiar” are those demons that specialize in impersonating dead individuals. And they hide behind these mediums. This is not a mere faculty of the soul that hasn’t been discovered yet; this is a demonic addition to the personality of the medium through which that medium is able to deal with these things.

And Moses says in verse 12, “For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD; and because of these abominations the LORD thy God does drive them out from before thee.” It is because the Canaanites practiced divination, séances, and involved themselves in occultism that God judged that group of people like He has never, never judged any other group of people in the world before. And please notice in verse 12 the sin that led to the judgment upon the Canaanites; it was not the sins of immorality, it was not the sins of sheer unbelief, it was more than that, it was the things of engaging in spiritism, and God says when a person engages in this and goes so far down the line, when this happens, in this case these people were unbelievers, He says when that happens those unbelievers are beyond redemption in many, many cases, it’s a very, very serious thing. And we find in 1 Samuel 28 that Saul, when he consulted the witch of Endor, God said all right Saul, I have allowed you to sin and I’ve disciplined you, and I’ve allowed you to sin some more and I’ve disciplined you, but Saul, this cuts it, and God condemned Saul to die and within 24 hours after he consulted with the witch of Endor Saul was dead. God said I will not allow My children to worship and have intercourse with demons; they will be cut off from these powers of darkness. So therefore He said this is one of the great, great, great sins of Scripture, dabbling in occultism. And yet today we see this thing coming in today. And this is a very, very dangerous thing that we face in our day. I’m laying it on the line and I want you to be able to know passages of the Word of God that show why this is wrong; this is one of those passages.

You say that’s fine, these people who haven’t got any authority for their life, if they crave spiritism and dabbling in the occult because they want to find something to build their life on, then what are you going to do, they’ve got to have some authority. So God gives them the authority and in verse 15 Moses tells the nation what it is that He is going to replace the spirits with. “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of they brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken. [16] According to all that thou desire of the LORD thy God….” So here he’s saying that the Word of God will come through a prophet to the people. So here you have it now, the replacement and answer to spiritism and unauthorized seeking after knowledge in these fields is to be replaced by a seeking after the Word of God.

One of the key points of spotting this is in the last three verses of this chapter, [20] “But the prophet who shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.” Capital punishment. [21] And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?” And in verse 22 the test is this, “When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him.” The test here is the empirical test, one of two tests given in Scripture, the empirical test means that you have to have 100% verification. Jeanne Dixon has about 80% verification, therefore she is a witch and in the areas of Israel she would have been executed or thrown out of the country. Any person who professes to have a gift from God and does not have 100% verification is a phony. And that’s the way the Word of God puts it, 100% or nothing, 100% verification because if the person is a prophet they tap in on the omniscience of God and omniscience is never, never wrong. If a person is a phony or demon possessed they are tapping in on the powers of darkness and they do not know because they do not have omniscience.

The second test that is given in the Bible is Deuteronomy 13, which simply says that they must teach in accordance of the Word. So you have the test of Deuteronomy 18 and test is this: are they 100% perfect, and Deuteronomy 13 is do they teach the doctrines of the Word of God. Those are the two tests.

We face in our time the problem that Solomon faces here; people have run out of speed, there’s no purpose left, so people are craving a purpose and being driven into these areas of occultism and demonism. And you can laugh at my words, but I’ll tell you this, I have already done enough study and investigation on this and talked to people who are involved in this thing to know dogmatically and assuredly that if there is one faster way to ruin your life, I don’t know what it is, including the gross sins of sin. Gross areas of disobedience to the will of God won’t tube your life as far as playing with occultism. So let me lay it on the line loud and clear; don’t touch the area unless you want to hurt yourself and you want to hurt loved ones. One of the horrifying things about occultism and demon influence is that it affects people within the family, including the children of the family. This kind of thing is extremely dangerous and I couldn’t warn you enough to stay away from it.

And Solomon saying here, the logical conclusion is this, chapters 5 and 6, if you don’t know the will of God, you don’t tamper with demons but you don’t come to the Word of God, then there’s only one thing left, and that’s Solomon’s philosophy of life that expresses, eat, drink and be merry, get what you can now because that’s all the pleasure you’ll ever find. However, those who are interested in submitting to the will of God and recognize the truth, God will provide things in your life, God will work in your life, there will be peace and there will be joy that cannot be replaced by any other thing. It cannot be replaced by any created thing; nothing can ever replace the vacuum that God alone can fill. And not only that, but you will have blessing in eternity that you will not have if you tamper in any of these other areas.

With our heads bowed.