YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/zZ9GtuUm190
What I want to say today is based on what I believe is a poor translation found in practically every version, from KJV of the 16th cent. to the myriad of recent versions that continue to appear.
No translation is perfect or inspired, including mine, but I have the duty to examine the Scriptures and seek to understand them as clearly as possible. The passage I refer to here is an answer to the question:
“But what about that savage in the middle of Africa who never heard about Jesus?” How many times have you heard that question? Maybe you’ve asked it yourself.
In my 50-plus years of ministry, how many times have I been asked that question when I presented someone with the Bible truth that there is no salvation apart from faith in the person of Jesus? For some reason, questioners always seem to be concerned about a “savage in Africa” and never about an educated scholar in the vastness of China, or a poor family in the slums of Calcutta. My response always ends with the statement, “But I’m not talking to a savage in Africa who’s never heard of Jesus. I’m talking to you, a citizen of a civilized western country who has heard about Jesus to some extent or another, and I’m telling you more about Him right now.”
The core of the debate is, of course, what would constitute a justifiable excuse before God on judgement day? Or could there even be one? The go-to passage for Bible-believing evangelicals is the undeniably clear statement in Romans 1:18-20
For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, 19since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. 20For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.
This issue came up the other day as I was reading the book, How To Inhabit Time, by James K. A. Smith, on the recommendation of a website I check into regularly. The book is a philosophical treatise on the nature of time, and not one for the faint-hearted. At least in the beginning, it was pretty heavy plowing, and I haven’t got far enough to form an opinion on the author’s point he’s trying to make. But in the Introduction he made reference to Eccleasiastes 3.11, so I looked up the passage in the Hebrew original. Verse 11 is familiar to readers of the KJV, and it comes right after the listing of the times and seasons of our experience. There is a time for everything. And going on, the writer says,
He hath made everything beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
Even more familiar, perhaps, to our generation is the wording found in the NIV:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
That wording was the basis for the title of Don Richardson’s book on missions, Eternity in Their Hearts.
These two translations are good representatives of the two major interpretations of the Hebrew text: some translations say God set “the world” in men’s hearts, other translations say, “eternity”. As I read the text in Hebrew, “eternity” seemed preferable to the translation, “the world”. The previous verse says that God made everything beautiful, and no other species seems to have any notion about what is beautiful or appealing to the eyes and ears. Even if we translate the phrase, “God put the world into man’s heart,” no other creature has any concept of the world, its extension, its make up, its past or its future. But just as “beauty” and “art” are concepts that are uniquely human, so too is the notion of “eternity”.
There are also two ways of translating the conjunction between the two halves of the verse. The KJV and its followers use the phrase “so that” -- also he hath set the world in their heart, SO THAT no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end; the other class of translations says “yet”, or equivalent expressions such as“but even so”, “but”, “in such a way that”. He has also set eternity in the human heart; YET
YET SO
BUT
BUT EVEN SO
IN SUCH A WAY THAT
no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
“so that”, would make God responsible for keeping us from understanding His works
What caught me attention was the phrase translated “SO THAT no man can find out” or “YET no man can fathom”. In the first case, “so that”, would make God responsible for keeping us from understanding His works; the second option says that although God has put eternity in the hearts of men, no one can fathom His works. Other versions say, man “cannot fully comprehend” , “can’t grasp”, or “cannot see the whole scope” of God’s work. That’s certainly true. As Paul said in Romans 11.33 “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgement and untraceable His ways!”
But I couldn’t find “so that” or “yet” in the original. For me, instead of SO THAT or YET, the translation should be “WITHOUT WHICH”: “God has put eternity in their hearts, without which no man can find out God’s works from the beginning to the end.” Would it make a difference to say “without which” instead of “so that” or “yet”?
It does make a difference. It means that we can know (find out) God’s works from beginning to end, even if our vision is somewhat clouded now. Paul said in 1 Cor. 13.14, “For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.”
This knowledge, even if partial, is only possible because God has placed eternity in our hearts. Some species of animals appear to be very intelligent. Scientists describe the animals’ ability to communicate with each other or carry out complicated tasks, and as amazing as that may be, not one species has a notion of time and eternity. They react to seasons of the year, but they don’t keep calendars and make appointments in advance. They take no thought as to what awaits them beyond death. At the most, for them, death would be a matter of self-preservation, a motive for self-defense. Unlike human beings, they don’t take out life insurance to provide for their surviving mate or descendants after they die. They don’t set up statues or name schools to honor the memory of a great member of their species.
This is undeniable evidence that we are not just a higher species of animal, we are a special creation of God. He has put eternity in our hearts; therefore, we can know what He is doing. Of course, we can’t fully understand all His ways, but He has given us His Word, the Bible, so we can know where we came from (the beginning) (Genesis 1) and where we’re going (the end). (Revelation 22)
God set eternity in our hearts, without which we cannot/could not understand what God is doing in history, from beginning to end. If God had not given us a nature that can conceive of “eternity”, then we would never know anything about the progression of history.
That interpretation sounded good to me, but I must be careful not to twist a word to make it say what I want it to say. Can the little Hebrew word mibli be translated “without”? I searched translation after translation and they all read, SO THAT or YET, except for just one, Young’s Literal Translation. It which reads
also, that knowledge He hath put in their heart, without which man findeth not out the work that God hath done from the beginning even unto the end.
Well, its “hath put”, “findeth not” and “hath done” date the translation to the mid-1800’s, but it is considered “an extremely literal translation that attempts to preserve the tense and word usage as found in the original Greek and Hebrew writings.” While YLT is the only English translation that says “without which”, I found a number of translations in German, French and Italian that express the same idea. What about the Hebrew OT itself?
I could find only one other occurrence in the OT where the exact same Hebrew word mibli is used. That word is found in Job 24.7 They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold. (KJV), and the word mibli in this verse is universally translated “without”.
I therefore conclude that my initial translation stands, despite all the other translations saying something else. God has put eternity in the human heart, without which no one could ever learn what God’s works are from beginning to end. And because He has put the concept of eternity in our heart, we can find out what God is doing. In fact, He has done everything to let us know what He is doing. Besides preserving the written scriptures, both OT and NT, He sent His Son Jesus.
Hebrews 1.2,3 In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, [who] is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of His nature.
The fact that an agnostic or atheist can even argue about the existence of God, saying that God does not exist, or that we can’t know whether He exists and what He does, proves the point that God has placed eternity in their heart. And as we witness the mind-boggling progress made in AI and robotics, ever more closely replicating the creation of a human being, scientists and programmers will never be able to conquer the last frontier: 7Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being (soul). (Genesis 2.7)
In that breath, God placed eternity in the heart of man. That’s a software patch no programmer will ever be able to install in his most advanced AI-enabled robot.
With robots on the cusp of being able to perform tasks men and women have been performing, and doing them more quickly and efficiently, even to the point of writing poetry, books, and speeches, I’m left to wonder when one will be ordained as a minister or evangelist. I know there is AI that is equipped to write sermons, certainly faster and, very likely, better ones than some ministers produce, gathering Bible texts and making logical arguments in a flash. But there’s one thing a robot can’t put in its message, its soul. It doesn’t have the breath of life. It has no soul, it cannot conceive of eternity or receive any knowledge of God’s plan for each individual.
Revelation 13 describes two beasts, understood to represent the Antichrist and the False Prophet, respectively. This second beast is charged with making the spiritual side of man’s being worship the first beast.
14He (the 2nd beast) deceives those who live on the earth because of the signs that he is permitted to perform on behalf of the beast, telling those who live on the earth to make an image of the beast who had the sword wound and yet lived. 15He was permitted to give a spirit to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could both speak and cause whoever would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
That prophecy of verse 15 is not as farfetched as Bible scholars once thought. Read commentaries of past decades or centuries and see what lengths commentators went to in their interpretation of this verse. From ventriloquism to this being a merely figurative expression, they could not foresee what we are seeing in real time now. Nor can we see just how much more advanced the technology will become. Translations vary in their wording of verse 15…to give a spirit, to give life, to give breath and the word “pneuma” means spirit or breath, but it does not mean “soul”. In creation, God breathed in Adam’s nostrils and he became a living “soul”. Even angels (good and bad) are referred to as “spirits”, but never “souls” that I can recall. The image of the Antichrist will have a spirit, but it won’t have a soul.
Without the divine breath of life, no robot will never become a living soul. It will never ponder its eternal fate or seek to know God. This is the most important app that God installed in us, the one thing that makes us human beings and not robots. It’s the reason the world is divided into nations and languages, as Paul explained to the Athenians (Acts 17.23-28).
Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it — He is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in shrines made by hands. 25Neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. 26From one man He has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. 27He did this so they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. 28For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29Being God’s offspring then, we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.30“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because He has set a day when He is going to judge the world in righteousness by the Man He has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead.”
You, my friend, have a soul; I have a soul; the “savage” in Africa has a soul. I can’t answer for him, or for you. I will be held responsible for myself to find God and worshipmHim correctly. We are all without excuse.
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