WHERE CAN I FIND MEANING?

By Dorman Followwill


Everywhere we turn, there are circles. One of the first words uttered to man was, "...You are dust, and to dust you shall return," thus introducing the circularity within which every human life is bound. Our ancient forefathers observed the courses of the sun, moon, and stars and found in the heavens a celestial circle drawn by all the heavenly bodies, both by day and by night. Some of the oldest and wisest of the ancient observers even noticed the circularity in time itself: History always repeats itself. "That which has been is that which will be...." (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

This observation of and fascination with circularity has continued throughout history. Leonardo da Vinci's most famous drawings depict a man whose outspread arms and legs define the circumference of a circle. Copernicus rocked his world by observing that the circuitous routes of the stars do not represent orbits of the planets around the earth, but rather, the earth itself is a planet in orbit around the sun. In Columbus' day the radical concept was that the world itself was round, a great globe, not a flat surface with edges over which the seas poured into some dark abyss; and that by sailing west we would eventually reach east.

In our world today, the enchantment with circles continues. One of the most popular songs of Disney's animated movie The Lion King was entitled "The Circle of Life." There is also in popular culture a resurgent interest in the spiritual systems of the American Indians. For many tribes, the circle was the dominant spiritual symbol. It was the shape of the base of the teepee, many amulets and "dream-catchers," and their sacred drums. Many people in our era wear the yin-yang circle around their necks, again binding life within the symmetry of a circle. From the beginning of human history until now, across many widely varying cultures, we have been spellbound by circles and the circularity of life on this earth.

Solomon, the wisest man who lived before Jesus Christ, considered this circularity in human experience more deeply than anyone else in history. He asked a fundamental question: Where can I find meaning? His quest for meaning is what the book of Ecclesiastes is all about.

Overview of Ecclesiastes

The English title "Ecclesiastes" unfortunately has no meaning for us. It comes from the Hebrew word Qoheleth, which is found in the first verse and is translated in most English versions as "Preacher." But the root verb underlying Qoheleth in Hebrew, qahal, means to come together or to bring together. Thus the one who goes by this description is actually the one gathering together or bringing together observations and thoughts and summarizing them for us. A better title for the book in English might be The Gatherer, or in this age of CNN, The Investigative Reporter.

But who was this Gatherer? The text gives us enough evidence to determine exactly who this man was in history. In Ecclesiastes 1:1 we learn that he was "the son of David, king in Jerusalem." In 1:12 we learn that the Gatherer was "king over Israel in Jerusalem." The only man who accurately fits both of these descriptions is Solomon, the only son of David who ruled over united Israel from the capital city of Jerusalem.

In sum, what Solomon records in Ecclesiastes is humanity's quest for meaning. It is the most philosophical of all the books in the Hebrew Scriptures. In it, all of human life "under the sun" is either observed, personally experienced, analyzed, or reviewed according to human wisdom. From beginning to end, Solomon's thesis in the book is, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." This idea is repeated whenever he concludes a thought by saying, "This too is vanity and striving after wind." The book is remarkably difficult to outline, because the thought does not flow in a linear fashion, but is entirely circular. It begins with the thesis statement, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," in 1:2, and that same conclusion is made almost verbatim in 12:8 at the end of the search. The search itself is circular, and is thus a vain search. The quest for meaning recorded in this book begins with meaninglessness and ends with meaninglessness. The key to this book is to discern how this gnawing meaninglessness can be transcended.

Since this book is so philosophical, we need to begin by defining our terms. When I am talking about meaning here, I am talking about that which is personal, that which is eternal and thus beyond the circularity of the marked time of my own dust-to-dust life, and that which is relational and thus beyond the confines of my dying self. Ultimate meaning is something that marries these two: an eternal relationship. It is this meaning that Solomon attempts to find throughout his quest.

Summary of the quest, Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

The first two verses declare the author and his thesis:

"The words of the Preacher [Gatherer], the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 'Vanity of vanities,' says the [Gatherer], 'Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.'"

When Solomon tells us, "All is vanity," he is saying, "All is meaningless." The phrase "vanity of vanities" is a doubly weighted word pair, making it superlative: Nothing could be more transitory and empty, more meaningless, than what he is about to describe. He moves on to say, "All is vanity"; thus, all that can be observed under the sun is ultimately meaningless. Certainly such a bold claim will need to be substantiated.

I recall when I was a young boy visiting my grandparents' cotton farm in Texas. To teach us kids a solid work ethic, they told us to go out and hoe the cotton field. I remember our walking out to the field in the cool of the early morning, hoes slung over our shoulders. When we got to the field, each of us took one row several hundred yards long, and we started down it, hacking away at the weeds. Before long the sun was baking our backs. When we reached the end of the row, we moved down to another row and worked back. The rows seemed to stretch on endlessly. After a week of this, I remember walking by my very first row, and what do you think I saw in that row? A healthy new crop of weeds! I experienced this "vanity": No matter how hard you work, the rows just keep coming, and the weeds just keep growing. The monotony of it sank into my soul.

Maybe you feel this way in your job, where the projects keep rolling at you as if on an invisible assembly line that never fails to keep you busy and doesn't allow any time for rest. Maybe you're young and think life is like a bunch of hoops set up for you to jump through: You finish high school, then you go to college, then you work awhile, then you look to get married, then to have kids, then to buy a home, and so on. Maybe you're older and have jumped through all the hoops, and you're asking, "What was that all about?" Solomon must have felt the same way and asked the same questions, until he decided, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

To illustrate this, Solomon wrote a poem in 1:3-11. Before we read the poem as a whole, I want to isolate verse 3 for us. The question here is one to which Solomon returns again and again throughout the text:

"What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun?"

In other words, is there any point to all a man does in all his days under the sun? This question is both profound and deeply rooted.

The roots of this question are found in Genesis 3:17-19. In fact, the entire book of Ecclesiastes is simply a larger commentary on the truths found in this Genesis passage, and the only way to understand Ecclesiastes is to read it in light of that context, the narrative of the fall. Here is what Genesis 3:17-19 tells us: "Then to Adam He said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, "You shall not eat from it..."

Cursed is the ground because of you; In [sorrow] you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.'"

In this passage God proclaimed his consequence for man's sin in the garden. It introduced a sense of futility and meaninglessness into man's work and his entire life. His work would be tainted by sorrow, and all his achievements would dwindle away in the mind-numbing circularity of the statement, "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return." It is just this futility in work, this meaninglessness in human life, that underlies the question introducing the poem of Ecclesiastes 3-11:

What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; and hastening to its place it rises there again. Blowing toward the south, then turning toward the north, the wind continues swirling along; and on its circular courses the wind returns.

All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again.

All things are wearisome; man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done.

So, there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, "See this, it is new"? Already it has existed for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things; and also of the later things which will occur, there will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.

In this poem Solomon gives us his overview of the book. His chief question is posed in verse 3, and his initial findings are listed in verses 4-11. Solomon observes the many circles within our world that illustrate the vanity of life under the sun. There is the generational cycle, one coming and one going, and the earth remains unchanged. There is the solar cycle, which is maddening in its changelessness. There is the weather cycle, the wind blowing on its "circular courses." He even contemplates the water cycle, from the ocean to the clouds via evaporation, back to the ground via precipitation, back to the ocean via the rivers. All things seem to be caught in wearisome circles that fail to satisfy the observing eye or the listening ear. Then he explores the circle of time: "That which has been is that which will be...." concluding with the oft-quoted phrase, "...There is nothing new under the sun." He is not talking about technology or the material things of life here, but about human life and experience itself, which is never new. His poem ends with the dark reflection that there are endless time cycles binding humanity to a treadmill of repetitive history, because there is no remembrance. The more we contemplate these endless and changeless circles, the more all does seem meaningless.

I believe the most honest and astute observers of life see this circularity. One of these observers teaches at the elementary school my children attend. She is a kindergarten teacher, and our whole family has delighted in knowing her for about three years. She sends home summaries at the end of each school week, and her summary of June 8, 1995 impressed me with its thoughtfulness: "Continuity In the Universe: In the fall kinders were introduced to the concept of pattern: finding relationships in things at first seemingly unrelated.... " Then she described their year-end field trip to a local farm, during which they drove right by Webb Ranch, the location of their first field trip in the fall. Geographically, they came full circle. She also spoke of how a little bird had flown into the classroom back in the fall, nested for awhile in a little basket, and then after the children left for the day, hopped out of the room. Then one afternoon in June after class had been dismissed for the day, the teacher came back into her empty classroom and found that another little bird had hopped into her room. She opened both doors, and the little bird soon flew away. She closed the letter with this final thought: "The kinders, too, have come full circle. Watching them be about so independently and happily altogether at Wednesday evening's picnic, I noted, they, too have sprouted wings and have begun to fly."

In 1934 another astute observer named T. S. Eliot wrote Choruses from 'The Rock,' From beginning to end these choruses reflect the progression in his own life from meaninglessness to hope through faith in Jesus Christ. Here is the opening chorus, which recalls for us the spiritual emptiness Eliot felt before he knew God:

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to G O D.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from G O D and nearer to the Dust.

The modern perspective on the historical development of human life is the evolutionary model. The basic thesis of Darwinistic evolution is that human life started from a single-cell creature, and through a vast series of micromutations evolved into the complex form of homo sapiens. This theory suggests that human life has thus developed in an entirely linear fashion, proceeding from lower to higher over vast periods of time. Thus our basic model for human life is an upward-pointing arrow. As this theory goes, we are getting better and better all the time, at least as a biological organism. The problem with this paradigm is that this upward-pointing arrow leads us farther and farther away from God, who is our true origination point. And the destination point is obscured from our view. Ultimately the destination point is nihilism now and hell later.

Certainly if we look at humanity's technological development, this paradigm seems to hold. We are vastly more technologically developed now than we have been in the past, what with the advent of the computer, the airplane, space travel, nuclear energy, etc.. But how does the upward-pointing arrow of evolutionary development explain the mind-numbing circularity of human life and the patterned cycles we see in the universe? Are we getting any better morally or ethically? Why does history seem to repeat itself? Why is it that "the more things change, the more they stay the same"?

The paradigm for human life in Ecclesiastes is the mind-numbing circle. It is God's curious answer to the man in the garden, an answer that encircles the natural world and human life within an unbreakable ring. The universe is bound within changeless circularity, and human life is defined by this dust-to-dust treadmill.

We need to embrace this new paradigm for ourselves. To enter into an appreciation of this, just consider the following exercise. Mark off about fifteen feet and walk forward along an imaginary straight line. Walking along that line feels good: You are making progress, going places, always moving forward without looking backward, even though the destination point to which you are walking is obscure. Now, mark off a circle whose circumference is about fifteen feet. Walk around that imaginary circle for awhile. At first it seems to have a certain poetry to it; you continually end where you begin. But it takes only a few minutes to enter into the mind-numbing boredom of the circle. It becomes more tedious with each revolution. You are always walking but getting nowhere. So you start craning your neck to look around beyond the circle for whatever else is out there. Circularity begs the quest for meaning, defining meaning as something beyond the familiar circle.

This mind-numbing circle paradigm is both very realistic, accounting for the circularity in the universe and in human experience, and very hopeful, because Solomon discovers that this treadmill was redemptively designed by God to compel us to look beyond the circle for meaning in relationship with him.

The quest for meaning under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1:12-12:8

Solomon describes for us his intended search in 1:13:

"I [have] set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven."

But his search is summarized at the very beginning in verse 14:

"I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind."

"...All is vanity and striving after wind" is the end-phrase we see time and again throughout his search.

Solomon's exploration through all the philosophies and experiences of this world begins with hedonism in chapter 2. He tells us in 2:1,

"I said to myself, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself.' And behold, it too was futility [vanity]."

He tells us in 2:3,

"I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine...and how to take hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years [days] of their lives."

The phrase "for myself" appears six times in verses 4-8. But in verse 11, he says,

"...I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold, all was vanity and striving after wind...."

So much for hedonism; it too yields a crop of meaninglessness.

So in 2:12-18 he pursues the path of wisdom, as opposed to the path of folly. But he goes only a few steps along this path before he discovers an arresting truth: Whether you are a fool all your days or a wise man from your youth, you end up dead. He mourns in verse 16,

"And how the wise man and fool alike die!"

This plunges him into depression:

"So I hated life...because everything is futility [vanity] and striving after wind."

So far in chapter 2, he has walked down two paths, hedonism and wisdom, but both were circuitous routes taking him right back to his original thesis, that all is vanity.

But in 2:24, 25, there is the first glimmer of hope. There is a strong subtext throughout the book of Ecclesiastes having to do with finding enjoyment in the little everyday things of life, which are gifts from God. This theme is introduced here and can be seen again in chapters 3, 5, and 9. Solomon tells us in 2:24,

"There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God."

But then someone makes a startling interjection in the text in verse 25. Another voice says,

"For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without [Me]?"

Here God interjects his wisdom in all of Solomon's searchings. God's point is this: There is no such thing as true human enjoyment apart from knowing him. He is the Author of human enjoyment as surely as he is the Author of human life.

This idea of enjoying one's work and being thankful for God's good gifts resonates deeply with me. Every year in the fall, I go through a season of working very hard to kick off the new academic year, and last fall I worked harder than ever. That fall was also filled with a lot of distractions for me, which seemed to compound my work. By the end of the fall, I was tired and grumpy, and my work didn't seem as exciting to me as it usually does. But then my Lord opened my eyes to something. He guided me one day to sit down at my computer and list out all the pros and cons of my job. As I began, I found a long list of sterling pros: Our church sets its pastors free to study the word of God deeply, without burdening us with administration; our church elders give pastors total freedom to follow the vision the Lord gives them; our elders make decisions on unanimous vote, and thus we move forward without a lot of factions; we keep the word of God at the center of what we do as a church. There were more and more pros the farther I went on. I stopped after eight or nine pros, and found myself in prayer thanking God for the gift he has given me in my work here. He makes my work meaningful and wonderful; it is a great gift from him.

In chapter 3, Solomon gives us one of the most profound reflections on time to be found in any literature. Here is his poem in 3:1-8:

For everything a season, and a time for every matter under heaven---A time to bear, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to tear down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to wail, and a time to dance. A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to seek, and a time to let perish. A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear, and a time to sew together. A time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate. A time of war, and a time of peace.

In the format of this poem in the Hebrew Scriptures, these opposites are lined up across from each other. The poem is like a great pendulum on some cosmic clock, swinging back and forth between extremes, defining time. Solomon traverses the gamut of human experience here, from birth to death in the opening merism to war and peace in the closing merism.

But in 3:9, Solomon returns to the theme question underlying his search:

"What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils?"

However, he begins to uncover the answer he is desperately seeking in verse 11:

"He has made everything appropriate [beautiful] in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end."

Here he begins to look beyond the circularity of the clock. After his great poem on time in verses 1-8, he points to the fact that in the human heart there is a deep yearning for eternity beyond time. The timeless has been placed in the heart of the one trapped in the circle of time. There is some meaning for each person, but that meaning lies outside of time. And the One who put that yearning in the heart is none other than the eternal God, who exists outside of time. Could it be that what is personally meaningful for me in all this meaninglessness can be found only in the eternal God?

But verse 14 is the most important verse in the book thus far. It is the first glimpse of Solomon's final conclusion:

"I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear him."

Here he recognizes the eternality of God and his works, as opposed to the temporality of man and his work and achievements. It is this consideration that leads him to conclude that this chief difference between God and man, the eternal vs. the mortal, has been set up by God to lead humanity to respect and honor God. The two concluding words, "fear him," will be revisited in chapters 5, 7, 8 and finally in 12:13. These two words are the sum of Solomon's wisdom.

Solomon's quest for meaning in chapters 4-12 is one long, tortuous repeat of the cycle we have seen him follow thus far through the book. Again and again he will circle back to his original points. But because we have looked at all this in chapters 1-3, I don't want to numb you with the continued repetition of Solomon's search and his findings. This book, if nothing else, wears us down with its repetitions, which is exactly the point: The mind-numbing repetition of life makes us yearn for something more. Solomon as poet tells us about meaninglessness along the circle of life not only in the content of his writing, but in its repetitive form as well.

In 11:9 Solomon opens the door to eternity again as he did briefly in chapter 3. He says,

"Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things."

Solomon has concluded toward the end of his search that what we see in our time under the sun is not all there is. There is more to come, beginning with a judgment on what we have done in this world, in this time.

At the end of his quest in 12:1-8, Solomon instructs the young man,

"Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come..."

Then he catalogs what those days might look like, leading up to the evil day when

"...the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it."

Then Solomon concludes the entire search right back where it began, as he reaffirms in 12:8,

"'Vanity of vanities,' says the [Gatherer], 'all is vanity!'"

Solomon's epic quest reminds me of the life of the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, Franz Liszt. Liszt began his life as a child prodigy likened to Mozart as a boy. One story says that Beethoven rushed up to the stage at one concert the boy gave and swept him up in his arms, because he recognized Liszt's genius. His adoring crowds even referred to him as "the eighth wonder of the world." Throughout his life, Liszt claimed to love God and be a Christian, yet "Liszt led a life of epic sensual self-indulgence. Throughout most of his adult life, Liszt participated in a series of celebrated love affairs." His path led from one tragic love affair to another, and he fathered several illegitimate children along the way. He was a man who gave himself over to seeking pleasure for the better part of his adult life, traversing a circle of failed relationships. He was a man searching for something. His life reminds me of Solomon and his quest: a man trapped on the treadmill of meaninglessness.

Solomon's quest ended right where it began back in 1:2, that all is vanity, all is meaningless. But wait---there is a conclusion attached to this investigative report....

The conclusion of the quest: meaning only in fearing God, Ecclesiastes 12:9-14

Solomon's conclusion is highest drama. It is almost as if you can hear a drum roll in the distance, and a hush come over the eagerly listening crowd, when Solomon says in verses 13, 14:

"The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil."

Solomon sought the meaning of human life, and he found mind-numbing circularity. So he had to look beyond the circle, and beyond the circle he saw the face of God. And in fearing God he discovered not human wisdom, but the beginning of true wisdom. Solomon knocked on the door of every human philosophy and experience. He discovered at every door that he had been knocking for God. His quest for meaning could lead to only one Person. He found that respecting and loving God was the only thing that was personally meaningful: He was in an intimate relationship with God as an eternal being, and the "God-shaped void in his heart" was filled. Meaning can be found only in eternal relationship with him! So Solomon said, "Fear God...." which simply means to humbly respect him in relationship with him. This is the answer.

The sum of Solomon's wisdom is seen in his ability to boil down all his experience and a lifetime of thought into the two words, "Fear God." And Solomon's conclusion here is very weighty: he was a man who possessed genius in wisdom, inexhaustible wealth to finance his inquiries into the meaning of life, and the absolute power of a king so that he could undertake such a search. No man in history could have made a better investigative reporter on the meaning of life than Solomon did. All his words have weight, but his conclusion has the greatest weight of all he said or wrote.

But this relationship of fearing God is further defined by the fact that we must walk in obedience to his commandments. We who know Jesus Christ are aware that we can obey only in deepest intimacy with the indwelling Spirit of God. And this obedience is critical, because we are not simply bound in this time, with no consequences looming on the horizon of our lives. We are eternal beings, and on the horizon of this life there awaits a judgment. This life takes on importance in the here-and-now because it is the preface to the great "book" we will write in oneness with God in eternity, a book that will get better with every turn of the page.

The end of Franz Liszt's life mirrored the conclusion reached by Solomon. Liszt suffered mentally and spiritually from the great contradictions between his unbridled sensuality and his Christian sentiments. As his life went on, his faith became more and more important to him. At one point he wrote to the great composer Richard Wagner, "I will pray to God that he may powerfully illumine your heart through His faith and His love. You may scoff at this feeling as bitterly as you like. I cannot fail to see and desire in it the only salvation. Through Christ alone...salvation and rescue come to us." Liszt clearly looked to the cross of Christ as the heart of his faith: "The ardent longing for the Cross, and the elevation of the Cross have always been my true, my innermost vocation." Finally, on April 25, 1865 he achieved a lifelong dream to devote himself exclusively to God, and he became a Franciscan monk of the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi in Rome. He considered that day to be the most important day of his life. Like Solomon, Liszt found out after a long and painful journey that a relationship with God gave him the meaning he had sought in all his other relationships and achievements.

The beauty of what God has accomplished through Solomon in this book is to free us from the sentence of meaninglessness in the mind-numbing circle, and give us hope. This life is not all there is...What we see under the sun is not all there is..."Dust to dust" is not all there is...There is more as we enter relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Through him we have eternal life because he is the first-born of all those who will burst through the unbreakable circle of "dust to dust" through the power of resurrection. This book thus becomes a wonderful word on hope, not on the desperation and doom of "all is vanity." Our hope is based on the resurrection life of Jesus Christ, the first human being to break out beyond the bound of the circle and return to tell about it and promise similar freedom and resurrection life to all who believe in him. Thank God that as we fear him and enter into relationship with him, we too experience eternal life both now in this age and for all eternity after our resurrection with Jesus Christ.

So where can I find meaning? Meaning is found in an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ, the only one whose resurrection has broken the bond of "dust to dust." In him we still walk the circle, but we do not walk it alone. Most of us go through life feeling so terribly alone. But we have his promise that he is with us always. And he takes our flat, two-dimensional circle and adds a third dimension to it: The circle becomes a spiral staircase reaching to our heavenly home. Every step we take along that spiral staircase now brings us one step closer to what we have always longed for and never found. Every step takes us closer to a life of eternal joy and beauty in perfect oneness with God and open community with the believing. Knowing Jesus Christ makes it all worthwhile. In him our lives have meaning. And as Solomon proved beyond a doubt, meaning can be found nowhere else.


Catalog No. 4445
Ecclesiastes
by Dorman Followwill (followwill@aol.com)
Single Message
June 25, 1995

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