Ecclesiastes 3:11; 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.
Eternity can be defined as infinite or unending time, it can also be defined as a state to which time has no application; timelessness, also theologically speaking as endless life after death. The Bible text in Ecclesiastes 3:11 requires understanding from God, seeing that eternity is infinite or unending time, whereas the text informs us that God has set eternity in our hearts, therefore what or where is the relevance or application of ‘beginning’ and ‘end’.
To understand ‘beginning’ and ‘end’, we have to refer to another Scripture text that can be found in Revelations 1:8; “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Alpha and Omega, in Christianity, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, used to designate the comprehensiveness of God, implying that God includes all that can be. In the New Testament Revelation to John, the term is used as the self-designation of God and of Christ. The reference in Revelation likely had a Jewish origin, based on such Old Testament passages as Isa. 44:6 (“I am the first and the last”), and Ps. 90:2 (“from everlasting to everlasting thou art God”). In rabbinic literature, the word emet (“truth”), composed of the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, is “the seal of God,” and in Judaic tradition it carries somewhat the same connotation as Alpha and Omega.
What is ‘the beginning’ and what is ‘the end’? Has anyone seen or witness ‘the beginning’, and has anyone seen or witness ‘the end’? Since life as we know it is still ongoing, it falls to reason that we are not or have not yet reach ‘the end’. What about the beginning? The answer to that can also be found in the Scripture from the only One who was there, let us listen to Him in Job 38:1-41;
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’? “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?
The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment. The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken. “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen? “Can you bind the chains[b] of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear[d] with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth? “Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? Who gives the ibis wisdom or gives the rooster understanding? Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?
We can gather from the One who was before the Beginning that we do not know the ‘Beginning’. When He says in Isaiah 46:10; I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ We can also surmise that He knows the ‘end’, which we do not know, since we are not at the ‘end’ yet. Furthermore, we are told in Ecclesiastes 3:11, that ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time’, given that we are His Creation, part of the universe He created, and we are informed in Psalm 139:14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.; The text in Ecclesiastes 3:11 is verified, in that we do not know ‘the Beginning’ and ‘the End’ or we do not know the Alpha and the Omega, to be precise, we do not know God. Though, He came as Jesus Christ, so that we may know Him.
In conclusion the Scriptures tells us in Acts 17:24-28; “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
