Twice a Thousand Years

Ecclesiastes 6

4463 words long.

Published on 2024-05-17

The Seven Gates

Up from Earth's Centre through the seventh Gate

I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,

And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road;

But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate.

- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

As a teen, I loved The Rubaiyat, and the above quatrain was my favorite. Such mystery. What are the seven gates one must pass through? What boon awaits the one who attains to sitting upon Saturn's throne? After reflecting long upon Ecclesiastes, I discovered that it describes the course of life as passing through seven stages, which I call the Growth Pattern. That pattern brings a person from infancy to full maturity, which you might liken to sitting upon a throne, master of your passions, your time and the piece of the world you have built around you.

In what follows, mostly pulled from my books, there are the inevitable references to results from earlier in my work which may confuse. Here is an outline of the process of discovery that led me to my conclusions.

The Poem as Human Growth. Found (during a mind-mapping exercise) that the twenty-eight times from the poem in chapter 3 are parables. Their metaphorical meanings, grouped in quartets, define the process of growth from infancy to maturity for an individual human.
Under the Sun as Punctuation. Found that the phrase "under the sun" appears twenty-eight times. It divides the majority of the book into twenty-eight sections of unequal length. Each section corresponds to one of the twenty-eight times. Thus the poem is the table of contents to Ecclesiastes.
A Full Life. Found that the last three chapters of Ecclesiastes go beyond maturity to the end of life, describing the years of decline leading to death. Thus Ecclesiastes describes the full course of a life.
A Catalog of Clocks. One thing halted my earlier attempts to understand history through the lens of the Bible. That was having no Biblical justification for the kinds of prophetic clocks that I have since discovered. I found that Ecclesiastes 1 has a catalog of the four major types of prophetic clocks, plus a mention of one other clock-like historical pattern.
A Schema for History. Found that the course of one human life, as segmented by the poem, is a prophetic analogy to the course of Judeo-Christian Civilization. Made a rough match between historical events and the series of times, which I call a prophetic clock. The time period of the clock ran from early in the Jewish monarchy to the time of the end. This effort was guided by matching patterns of history to the poem, but without any textual basis to establish the timeline's start, end, and duration of each period.
An Intricate Riddle. Discovered in Ecclesiastes 6 a sublime riddle. The answer to the riddle tells you when the prophetic clock started ticking and how long each of the twenty-eight periods of time would last. This required using the prior results to project the times of the poem onto the remaining text using the "under the sun" divisions. That repeated phrase was like the tick marks on a sundial. This then situates the riddle from chapter 6 in time relative to the start of the clock.
A Fractal Composition. Discovered that time is composed fractally. While the first pattern that I discovered is the main one, this same pattern of times governs history at larger and smaller scales. Also, some of the examples of the pattern include the periods of productivity (chapters 10-11) and decline (chapters 11-12) into a longer pattern. Thus we have patterns for one life, modern Israel (Holocaust to the Christ's return), Judeo-Christian Civilization (from Solomon to Christ's return), and all of humanity (from the Creation to the new Creation).
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Found that the twenty-eight times, in order, form a hidden structure for seven books of the Bible: Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Matthew and Revelation. This shared structure, plus the shared structure of the Harvest Pattern of Jesus, prove that those seven books are set apart in the Bible as a unit. Combined with many other similarities, the seven books can be proven to be the Seven Pillars of Wisdom named in Proverbs.
Discipleship. Found that Paul's first seven letters (Romans to Colossians) each correspond to one of the seven phases of growth, as reported in Paul's Discipleship Program. Thus each of the twenty-eight times and coarser grouping into seven phases has a spiritual analogy. Ecclesiastes teaches us materialistic human growth in the ways of this world. Paul teaches us spiritual growth in the context of community life within the church.

The above process of discovery and refinement has required over a decade to reach the place I am at now. The riddle is about a man who does not want to live twice a thousand years if it means a joyless existence followed by a tragic end. This is the ultimate riddle of human fate to which Omar Khayyam alluded. This riddle is the gate I had to pass through before I could unlock all the riches of wisdom that I have found. It is the hardest riddle I have ever solved.

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;

to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

- Proverbs 25:2

If I never solve another riddle, I will be content. Solving this one makes me feel like a king.

Where I got stuck

Ecclesiastes is a book of riddles. Unlike the poem by Omar Khayyam, if you unravel all its riddles, you will have unraveled that master-knot. You will learn deep things about human fate.

Over a decade ago ago, I tried to solve those riddles. I failed. In my failure, I had three insights into the problem which I wasn't sure were correct, but they were. My insights were that these three things were important:

To decipher the poem of the times in chapter 3 and its relation to the whole
To deduce the purpose of the repetition of "under the sun" throughout
To understand the conclusion, how to "fear God and Keep His commandments" followed from the rest, and how it is an attractive purpose for life

My investigation into those mysteries fills the pages of Peace, like Solomon Never Knew. I summarized some of my findings in the chapter "Ecclesiastes 3: Knowing the Acceptable Time" in Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace. This article repeats part of that chapter. It addresses the first two insights, but five riddles:

What is the outline of Ecclesiastes?
Why are the twenty-eight times times ordered as they are?
What do the times tell us about how to plan our lives?
Are the times prophetic?
If so, when does the period of time spoken of in the prophecy begin and end?

The last riddle is the cleverest riddle I have ever solved. It is marvelous, not just for what it reveals, but also because it opens the door to solving riddles all over the Bible. This one discovery set me on the path to discovering scores of prophetic clocks, identifying the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the structure of Paul's letters, and so much more. Because of this riddle, I believe that Ecclesiastes is the mainspring of God's prophetic clock.

Behold the Master-Knot...

Ecclesiastes 3: Knowing the Acceptable Time

The Psalmist in 69:13 humbly asked the Lord for an answer “at an acceptable time”. Ecclesiastes is all about what is acceptable during each time. Let us reflect on them.

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.

- (Ecclesiastes 3:2-8)

To fit these twenty-eight times (or fourteen seasons, if you pair them) to history you must know what they mean. Only once I had the meaning and a reasonable fit to history, namely a start year, the duration of each period, and the end year, could I even spot the riddle that confirmed my assumptions.

Ecclesiastes is shaped by several overlapping structures, making analysis difficult. It conforms to the seven parts of the Harvest Pattern, but this article shall not make use of that structure. It also follows a chronological structure patterned after a single human life. Accordingly, it is divided into three unequal sections:

Days of Growth (1:1-10:5)
Days of Maturity (10:6-11:7)
Days of Darkness (11:8-12:14)

The first section is divided into twenty-eight sections by the phrase “under the sun” and ends with an assessment: have you by middle age become a wise servant?

The second section has two parts: building your house and diversified investing (cast your bread upon the waters). It, too, ends with an assessment. Did you reach this stage having planned for the long term?

The third section has two parts, set off by the word “Remember”. Only by reflecting on all that came before in your life can you endure the dark days to come: failing health and a fading mind. This section ends with a final progress report. Our whole life is to be judged.

Understanding this structure is critical. Prophetic patterns hidden in Ecclesiastes have two possibilities. One is that they form an analogy of an entire human life, from birth to death. Applied to a civilization, that includes its rise and fall. A second pattern is suggested by chapter 3. The twenty-eighth time of peace is followed not by decline and death but by immediate entrance into eternity:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart,

yet so that he cannot find out what God has done

from the beginning to the end.”

- Ecclesiastes 3:11

In Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, both are explored. Unsaved humanity, called in Revelation “the inhabitants of the earth”, is bound up in a civilization that will perish. It has already reached its peak and its decline and fall will soon begin, if they have not already begun.

On the other hand, the church is destined for glory. These final cataclysms as the world falls apart will be employed by God to perfect his bride and make her radiant. Thus the history of Israel and the Church conforms not to the whole of Ecclesiastes but just the twenty-eight times that end with peace.

Here is what the times mean for a single human as they grow into an adult. Each group of four times corresponds to a seven-year stage of life. They define the principal (but not sole) challenge facing a person at that stage. Collectively, they form a developmental model for life.

Growth Phase	Years of Life	Description

Security	birth to age 7	A time to be born & die, to plant & uproot. The needs are food, shelter, health and parental love.
Ability	age 7 to 14	A time to kill & heal, to break down & build. The needs are to be trained to use mind and hand productively.
Stability	age 14 to 21	A time to weep & laugh, to mourn & dance. The needs are to learn verbal & physical self control, emotional stability.
Amity	age 21 to 28	A time to scatter & gather stones, embrace & refrain. The needs are to cooperate in friendship and marriage in the areas of work and intimacy, to choose and reject relationships wisely.
Opportunity	age 28 to 35	A time to seek & lose, keep & throw away. The needs are to accept or reject immaterial opportunities (where to live and work) and to manage material resources (money and goods).
Community	age 35 to 42	A time to tear & mend, to be silent & speak. The needs are to handle conflict, dissolve partnerships, forgive & restore them, and maintain open, two-way lines of communication.
Loyalty	age 42 to 49	A time to love & hate, for war & peace. The need is to develop loyalty and express it. Love & hate are about defining our loyalties and forming loyal attitudes: who is on my side and who is on the other side. War & peace are about expressing our loyalties by our actions.

Once I saw that the times had an overarching meaning and that it was sequential in time, the next step was clear. I had to see if it was a parable disclosing God’s pattern for history. From the Bible and church history, a few matches between Solomon’s times and world events suggested themselves, beginning with a time to uproot. When the prophets speak of uprooting, it almost always is a reference to exile and to the Babylonian Captivity in particular. Then the time to weep must be when Jesus was crucified, or the time of Rachel weeping for her children, or perhaps the destruction of Herod’s temple and Jerusalem by Emperor Titus in 70 AD. The time to tear seems like a good match for the Protestant Reformation and subsequent wars. After that, the time to speak would be the age of Christian missions, while the time to love is the time we live in now, when God has poured out wealth and facilitated advances in education, medicine, science, agriculture and every other area of human endeavor, extending our lifespan and setting many free from slavery.

With those five events (exile, crucifixion, Reformation, missions and modern prosperity) as constraints, the number of consistent sets of start year, end year and period duration is greatly reduced. In particular, the start year only makes sense if it falls during Solomon’s lifetime. The most logical times are:

990-994 BC - Solomon’s birth
971 BC - Solomon’s Accession to the throne
968 BC - Solomon’s dream (1 Kings 2:39 says “after three years”)
967 BC - Temple Foundation laid (4th year of reign)
960 BC - Temple Dedicated (11th year of reign)
??? BC - Ecclesiastes written
926-930 BC - Solomon’s death

An important challenge was determining when Solomon was born. That is a riddle in itself and opinions are all over the map. The above assumes that Solomon was at most 23-24 years old when he ascended the throne, based on calculations by Pastor D. Thornton whose logic includes subtle Biblical evidence overlooked by others. See The Lifespan of Solomon for the analysis. Into that haze of approximation shone the light of Scripture in the form of a riddle most subtle and elegant.

³ If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years,

so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied

with life's good things, and he also has no burial, I say that

a stillborn child is better off than he.

⁴ For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness,

and in darkness its name is covered.

⁵ Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything,

yet it finds rest rather than he.

⁶ Even though he should live a thousand years twice over,

yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place?

- Ecclesiastes 6:3-6

The above verses occur between the 17th and 18th occurrences of the phrase “under the sun” (in Ecclesiastes 6:1 and 6:12). That phrase occurs twenty-eight times in the book, matching the number of times in Ecclesiastes 3. Thus the first part of the riddle is to recognize that this passage matches the 17th time, “a time to seek”, hence corresponds to an era that begins after sixteen complete periods. The second part of the riddle is to recognize the importance of the word “sun” in verse 5. In Peace, every section where “sun” appears where it is not part of the phrase “under the sun” is significant. It relates to time, because God delegated the sun to rule the day in Genesis. The third part of the riddle is the phrase “live a thousand years twice over”. To whom but Solomon could this apply?

Take as an estimate of Solomon’s birth the year 990 BC. Let’s ignore the missing year zero because the date for Solomon’s birth has an uncertainty of up to four years anyway. That would make the 2,000th anniversary of Solomon’s birth fall in the year 1010 AD. So the riddle marks this parable with the date 1010 AD, which falls five-twelfths of the way through the chapter, using the word “sun” as our marker in verse 5. That means the parable falls 5/12’s of the way through the 17th time. We can reframe this word puzzle as an algebra problem.

The formula says that if you subtract Solomon’s age at the start of the clock from his 2,000 year anniversary, that should equal about sixteen periods of the clock. The formula has two variables. Using high school algebra, you know that to solve equations with more than one variable, you need more equations. We are short one equation. The illustration on the next page shows the problem graphically, on a timeline. The many “times” leading up to 1010 AD are shown on the right of the timeline marked with stars.

Where can we get another equation from? Experience with other prophetic clocks is helpful. They almost always have periods that are whole numbers. If we add this constraint, we turn the equation into a Diophantine Equation. Diophantine equations (named after Diophantus of Alexandria) can be very difficult to solve. However, using bounds derived from matching history we can be certain that the start of the clock occurred during Solomon’s lifetime. Thus the variable age may only range from zero to sixty-four.

Given that some prophecies get down into the weeds and include the precise months and days when events occurred, we shall consider all solutions where the answer is very near an integer. There are only four:

If Solomon's Age is...	then the Clock Starts at...	and the period per time is...	for this starting event...

14	976 BC	121 years	???
30	960 BC	120 years	Temple Dedication
46	944 BC	119 years	Ecclesiastes written? Seems too early.
63	927 BC	118 years	Solomon's death

Of these four, one falls in the year the temple was dedicated (120 year period) and one the likely year of Solomon’s death (118 year period). The solution for age 46 (119 year period) falls when Solomon may have written Ecclesiastes, though I would put that later in his life. The first solution does not match an important event.

I have found several other prophetic clocks with periods of 119 and 120 years and 118 years does not match history as well as either of them. This leaves us with two possibilities for the start year and period. The 120 year choice yields an exact match. The 119 year choice actually comes to 119.025 years, off by nine days. Yet there is a better piece of evidence that permits us to decide between the two:

Then the king and all the people offered sacrifice

before the Lord. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice

22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.

So the king and all the people dedicated the house of God.

- 2 Chronicles 7:4-5, ESV

The very sacrifice used for dedicating the temple included 120,000 sheep and Jesus is considered the Lamb of God! This validates not only the number 120 but also the start year for the clock, 960 BC, the year the temple was dedicated. Thus we have our clock:

960 BC. A time to be born. Israel born by civil war.
840 BC. A time to die. Israel taken captive by Assyria in 722 BC.
720 BC. A time to plant. Judah prospers under Hezekiah.
600 BC. A time to uproot. Judah exiled by Babylon.
480 BC. A time to kill. Haman incites genocide against the Jews but is killed instead, thanks to Queen Esther.
360 BC. A time to heal. Mild Ptolemaic rule.
240 BC. A time to tear down. Harsh Seleucid rule. Antiochus Epiphanes suppresses Judaism.
120 BC. A time to build. Herod’s temple and birth of Jesus, God’s new temple.
1 AD. A time to weep. Jesus crucified.
120 AD. A time to laugh. Justin Martyr. “For I myself, when I discovered the wicked disguise which the evil spirits had thrown around the divine doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from joining them, laughed both at those who framed these falsehoods, and at the disguise itself and at popular opinion and I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian.”
240 AD. A time to mourn. Diocletian’s persecution.
360 AD. A time to dance. Edict of Thessalonica (380 AD). Christianity becomes official state religion of Rome and persecution ends.
480 AD. A time to scatter stones. Rome sacked by Alaric in 410 AD. Fall of Rome in 476 AD.
600 AD. A time to gather stones. Dome of the Rock built, 688-691 AD.
720 AD. A time to embrace. Seventh and Last Ecumenical Council, concerning proper worship, the embrace of God.
840 AD. A time to refrain. Division between eastern and western Christianity. Church corruption, a thing to avoid, not embrace.
960 AD. A time to seek. Church seeks freedom from secular governmental control. Believers seek Jesus’ return.
1080 AD. A time to lose. First crusade. Jerusalem captured & lost.
1200 AD. A time to keep. Saint Francis. Keeping God’s commands.
1320 AD. A time to throw away. God throws away Byzantium.
1440 AD. A time to tear. Protestant Reformation. Wars of religion.
1560 AD. A time to mend. Peace of Westphalia. Religious tolerance extended to Lutherans, Calvinists & Jews.
1680 AD. A time to be silent. In the Pietism movement, Methodist Revival and Great Awakening, people listen to God.
1800 AD. A time to speak. Christian overseas missions triples the number of believers from 200 to 600 million souls.
1920 AD. A time to love. God shows the world unconditional love, blessing it with knowledge, prosperity & longer life.
2040 AD. A time to hate. Civil discord & persecution grow.
2160 AD. A time for war. Armageddon. Leviathan.
2280 AD. A time for peace. Christ returns (if he hasn’t already). Wedding supper of the lamb.

Peace, like Solomon Never Knew goes into greater detail about each era.

The endpoints of the final two times are not certain. In Mark it says:

And if the Lord had not cut short the days,

no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect,

whom he chose, he shortened the days.

- Mark 13:20, ESV

For this reason, Christ may return at any time. Most agreeable would be to cut short the time for war.

A Proper Burial

Coming back to this riddle several years after I first discovered and solved it, I found a question I never bothered to ask. The NIV version makes this clearer, so:

A man may have a hundred children and live many years;

yet no matter how long he lives,

if he cannot enjoy his prosperity and

does not receive proper burial,

I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

- Ecclesiastes 6:3, NIV

The key phrase is "proper burial". What is that about? First, consider how I solved the riddle. The key was to find two yardsticks measuring time, two lines that intersected in a point.

The first yardstick was Solomon, measuring time against his own life. That yardstick started with his birth and ended in about the year 1010 AD, when he would turn 2000 years old, had he lived that long.

The second yardstick was the poem of the times, measuring time from the completion of Solomon's temple to the arrival of the new temple that shall descend from heaven, the New Jerusalem.

These two timelines intersected in the middle of the seventeenth time (a time to seek), following the seventeenth occurrence of the phrase "under the sun" in the book. The start of Solomon's timeline is meaningful, his birth. The start and end of the poem's timeline are each meaningful, dealing with the two temples. What about their intersection? Is there anything special about 1010 AD or the years near it, seeing as our estimate of Solomon's birth year has about a three year uncertainty? That is the question I forgot to ask.

It has an answer. In 1009 AD, Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem. This event (and other persecutions of Christians, including the destruction of 30,000 churches by the caliph), served as the cassus belli that would launch the First Crusade at the end of the century.

Destroying Christ's tomb (from which he rose) is symbolically stealing back from Christ his "proper burial". Thus Solomon is prophesying the desecration of the Messiah's tomb. The prophecy is accurate (to within the error bounds for Solomon's birth) and the prophetic details spot on. Solomon ends with this question, "Do not all go to the same place?" Jesus is the one who changed the answer. No, all people do not go to the same place, not any more. By his death and resurrection, the Lord saw to that.

That is the Master-knot of human fate. That is the one riddle for whose answer the whole world was waiting. Why do so few accept the answer?