Timeline or Vicious Cycle?

Timeline or Vicious Cycle?

Ecclesiastes 1

Ecclesiastes 1:6 (NASB)

6 “Blowing toward the south, Then turning toward the north, The wind continues swirling along; And on its circular courses the wind returns.”


In ancient pagan thought the world was not regarded as the creation of a personal God. Instead, the world had always existed. “God” was simply another way of saying “world” or “nature.” Perhaps the world emanated out of this “god” and then is reabsorbed back into “it.” 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 “oscillating universe,” which goes from Big Bang to Big Crunch again and again forever.

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 “myth of eternal return” 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.

In his famous book The City of God, 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 “self-creating” 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 moving upward toward God’s planned and prophesied future.

Thus, each human being has a destiny. Each of us has a future, an eschatology in God’s 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.

CORAM DEO (Before the face of God)

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 consummates 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.

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