Don't you deserve a little happiness? They are the questions that plague us:
Or to put it another way, "Where can I find a little heaven on earth?" History's most successful man, Solomon, wondered just that. As David Jeremiah shows you, he was a man who tested life's haunting questions head-on and who found his answers in the last place he thought to look.
Listen, then, to his voice. A voice that, if you pay attention, will speak directly to your flesh and bones and heart. A voice that admits: Maybe happiness is an empty hope. Or maybe we've simply been looking in all the wrong places.
This study guide serves as an invaluable aid to Searching for Heaven on Earth.
“Solomon wrote three books: Song of Solomon as a young man; Proverbs as a middle-age man, and Ecclesiastes in his latter years—his book of regrets. He looked back over his life and realized how many foolish choices he made in his search to find the meaning of life. Fortunately, he came to a godly conclusion at the end of the book, but it was too late for him to enjoy it personally.” (Page 10)
“Here is the key to understanding the book: Solomon is describing life as if there is no God at all in the picture. And his conclusion is that life is meaningless without Him. His phrase ‘under the sun’ (used 29 times in the book) is how he expresses his description of life in terms of the world without God.” (Page 11)
“One of the keys to this book is found in 3:11: ‘He has put eternity in their hearts.’ The heart of man is oriented toward eternity, and there is nothing in this temporal world that can satisfy it.” (Page 14)
“The word ‘Ecclesiastes’ means ‘the gathering.’ Solomon calls himself, in Hebrew, qohelet, or ‘the preacher’ or ‘the quester.’ He was a man on a mission—a mission to discover the meaning of life.” (Page 11)
“Life can be a great source of joy when we learn to view it against the backdrop of God who created life and gives it as a gift to His creation.” (Page 22)