AI Is Not Fundamentally Novel

AI Is Not Fundamentally Novel

Please stand when you have that. Ecclesiastes chapter one. The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. "'Vanity of vanities,' says the preacher. "'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

"'What does man gain by all the toil "'at which he toils under the sun? "'A generation goes and a generation comes, "'but the earth remains forever. "'The sun rises and the sun goes down "'and hastens to the place where it rises.

"'The wind blows to the south "'and goes around to the north. "'Around and around goes the wind, "'and on its circuits, the wind returns. "'All streams run to the sea, "'but the sea is not full "'to the place where the streams flow.

"'There they flow again. "'All things are full of weariness. "'A man cannot utter it. "'The eye is not satisfied with seeing, "'nor the ear filled with hearing. "'What has been is what will be, "'and what has been done is what will be done, "'and there is nothing new under the sun.

"'Is there a thing of which it is said, "'See, this is new? "'It has already been. "'And the age is before us. "'There is no remembrance of former things, "'nor will there be any remembrance of later things "'yet to be among those who come after.

"'Amen.'". Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. It gives us excellent wisdom that is useful for all of life. We pray that you would lead us into all godliness by your word.

In Jesus' name, amen. As you can see in your bulletin, we're beginning a sermon series. It says here, Christianity in the Age of AI. I think I intended to name this a biblical view of AI, a biblical view of AI.

The Foundation: Nothing New Under the Sun

And we're beginning here with Ecclesiastes, because I believe this is a foundational place to start off thinking about things like AI and technology. And that is on whether or not they are fundamentally novel.

And the answer is they are not fundamentally novel. There is nothing new under the sun. There is a thing of which it is said, "'See, this is new? "'It has been already. "'And the age is before us.'". Now, if you look at people who are exceedingly positive about AI, those people who are exceedingly negative about AI, and even those commentators who get their living off of talking about things like AI, they will all emphasize one point.

It's the novelty of AI. It is so unlike anything that has come before that therefore, you should think of it as a great messiah. Therefore, you should think of it as the doom to the world, or therefore, you should just care a lot and read this article.

And this is the way that it goes. Yet, if you understand Ecclesiastes, and you understand the wisdom of the Bible, there is nothing new under the sun. And if you think that there is, if you think that there is something truly, fundamentally novel in the world, you will be prone to great folly.

The Speaker's Background and Approach

Just a little word about background as we begin this first message for myself, some background on me. I studied my master's in computer science with a form of AI that is not the current form that everyone talks about.

I was very interested in AI for a long time. My professor would always tell me, one thing that he would say is that neural networks, which is the kind that is the basic building block of the AI that exists now, neural networks are the second best way of doing anything, because at the time, there was always a better way.

Now that's no longer true. So I ceased to really explore that field because I thought it taking off in a greater way, we're many decades away, little did I know it was only one decade away from being a consumer technology.

Then in seminary, as I was studying, I ended up writing on money and ministry, but I had considered very seriously writing my thesis on topics related to AI, and this was back in 2017. So I have been thinking about these things for a while, yet I don't come to you today as someone who is some kind of expert in technology.

I come to you as someone who wants to point you to the timeless principles of scripture. This is where we will get our bearings. This is where we will learn to live life to its fullest and where people in every age have gone.

Now, here at this church, we sing primarily hymns, and it's pretty rare that we mix in a newer song, but one contemporary music, contemporary song that I like in worship, I don't know if you've ever heard it, but it's the Michael W. Smith song, Ancient Words.

I love that song because it talks about the ancient words that were written long ago, but have told men how to live their life in every age. And that is what we have before us, ancient words that tell us exactly how we should live our life today.

If you are concerned about this sermon series being sensational, I don't think you have anything to worry about. If you were hoping for something sensational, you are going to be very disappointed because really at the heart of every one of these messages, I'm just going to be explaining the scripture to you.

In fact, I had considered going into this, not even labeling these things having to do with AI and just in my own study of what passages I thought would be most helpful for us, that being dictated by the errors I see people making as they handle new things that come into the world.

But I decided in the end, it is best to speak about things directly. And so here we are speaking about things directly. But for much of this message, just going to be talking about scripture. Is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new and has already been in the ages before us.

The Meaning of Vanity: Brevity of Life

The key word that goes throughout Ecclesiastes is this word here that is in the ESV, vanity, is the Hebrew word hebel. That word hebel literally means vapor. If you were to look at the Berean literal Bible, which is the literal companion to the Berean standard Bible that most of you I think are aware of, it uses the word vapor.

So other translations will often say vanity. That is because the word means kind of a weightlessness. And so in the Latin Vulgate, that was the way it was presented as a vanity. And so many people talked about it primarily as vanity.

And there's a sense in which it implies a sort of futility about things. But ultimately the point of this word is about the brevity of life, the brevity of life. In fact, this word hebel is the same word that is Abel's name in Genesis chapter four.

Abel, his life was a vapor. It was very, very short. And the fact that life is a vapor needs to instruct how we think about things. If you think about our lifespan on this earth, Psalm 90 verse 10 says that the years of man's life are 70 or 80 by reason of strength.

That has a lot of implications for our life. The fact that it's so short means that very little can happen in the course of our life. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book that famously observed that for someone to become an expert in something, it generally takes about 10 ,000 hours.

That's about five years of a full-time job. Typical career is about 40 years. So if you think about it, you spend five years just wasting your time trying to get good. And then 35 years exercising that career and then you're done and that's it.

And then the next generation has to figure it out and the next generation. And so there's just very little that can be accomplished in any generation. The time span, the lifespan of people's lives prior to the flood, what is known as the antediluvian era, the time before the flood, was much longer.

But even then, people could only do so much. What can you do with even 950 years? Well, you could build a ship with your bare hands. And that's about all you can do. And we live less than an order of magnitude under that.

950 years, most of us just living 70, very short lives. And the point in this book from beginning to end is that if you contemplate that truth, the brevity of your life, it will lead you to wisdom. And if you fail to contemplate it, it will lead you to great folly.

Verse two, it says, Vanity to vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity. Vanity of vanity, all is vanity. That is vapor, vapor, all is vapor. It's all brief, it's all very brief. And then at the very end of this book, book-ending it, in chapter 12, verse eight, Vanity of vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity.

All of life is so brief. If you fail to recognize this, you'll be a fool, like the fool of Luke 12, who gathered all his things, and then he built barns for himself and said, now I'm going to enjoy life, and did not realize that that very night his soul would be required of him.

But if you are one who contemplates this truth about the brevity of life, it can lead you to great wisdom, like Solomon himself, the son of David, the preacher who speaks here in this passage, the wisest, the wisest man who has ever lived other than Christ Jesus.

You can have great wisdom if you contemplate the brevity of life and allow it to instruct your thinking about everything. The very simple point from this passage is that there is nothing that is fundamentally novel in the ordinary course of things.

There's nothing that is fundamentally novel in the ordinary course of things. Now, I can qualify what I mean by that. Hopefully you understand that that has to be qualified in some sense. There are things that are somewhat novel.

There are things that are not precisely like things that have been before. We're Christians, we're not Hindus. Okay, Hindus imagine time as this cyclical thing where everything repeats perfectly. Okay, this is not what I'm saying.

Nothing is a perfect replica of the past. But when it comes down to fundamental realities about your life, that you live a short little while on the earth, you will face the same kinds of temptations that every other generation has faced even if they take slightly different shapes because you live in a different world with different social features and a different kingdom with different culture and technologies around you.

It will still be the same fundamental temptations. You will still have the same fundamental joys. If you think about what things people enjoy in this life, well, it's still primarily those things that are needed for the survival of the human race.

It's still eating food, marriage, propagation, et cetera. These are still the most fundamental joys that people enjoy in this world. Nothing has really changed. It is all fundamentally the same. And still it is the case that people have short lives.

Political Kingdoms: Nothing New

Now, we can walk through some examples about these things. First of all, think about politics, think about kingdoms. Okay, there are some kingdoms that you might call new, right? The Roman Empire had some newness about it.

The United States, there are a lot of things new about the way that it was structured. It is structured. But here we are, 250 years into our nation's life. And really, are the things that we face any different than the things that the Bible faces when we read in 1 Samuel 11 about Saul being made king?

Are the things that the nation of Israel faced really any different than the things we face? We still face war. We haven't managed to figure that one out. Nothing has come to a final rest. We have not finally arrived.

And those people who think about politics and kingdoms that way, as reaching this place of arrival, are the most clueless of them all, who label themselves by that progress, progressives. There is no real arrival at anything.

We are facing the same problems that we faced back then. And Daniel made it clear with his many visions about kingdoms rising and falling that that is what kingdoms do. Kingdoms rise and fall. It is only the kingdom of God that lasts forever and it will destroy all the other kingdoms.

In fact, those who study politics, those who study kingdoms will be the first to tell you that if you do not know history, you'll be doomed to repeat it because this is the nature of history. It just keeps happening over and over.

Doctrine: No Truly New Teaching

Now, you can also consider things in the church. There is no truly new doctrine since it's all been given in a final revelation in scripture. As man comes to clarity, the church does mature. Ephesians 4 talks about the church maturing.

Peter speaks of the temple being built. There's some kind of progress there, but at the end of the day, the doctrine that man pulls from the Bible is not something new, it was something there all along and it's just slight little bits of clarity on things that people already had before.

I'd like to read you a quote. This is from Charles Bridges, if you know that name. This is someone in the 1800s. I find the 1800s a particular interesting time to source comments on things like the change of the world in technology because they were experiencing so much change at that time.

You know, the Industrial Revolution, things like that. All ecclesiastical revolutions and the ever varying phases of doctrine are only the same scene over and over again. A new truth in the sense of something neither expressed nor virtually asserted before, not implied, involved in anything already known, cannot be properly looked for in religion.

A full and final revelation having been made, that means in the word of God, a completed canon. No discovery, properly so-called, of any high importance is to be expected. There's not going to be some new doctrine that's truly new in a fundamental way because it's all already been revealed to us in scripture.

And this is the case as you look at false doctrine as well. The false doctrines that arise are not new. They are just repeats on the same themes over and over. In fact, in the 1800s, when so many people got excited about the kind of progress that was happening in the world, there were a lot of restorationist movements.

The restorationist movement is a movement that thinks we need to get back to the early church by just abandoning all tradition that has come before, refusing to learn from history, and just asking, what does the Bible say?

And not consulting, what have others said about the Bible? Let's listen to the wisdom of ages past as they have read the Bible themselves, but let's just throw it all away. And what happens, and this is not the fault of scripture, this is the fault of failing to understand that scripture would have us to hear from older generations and to have us learn from teachers.

Okay, if you refuse to learn from teachers as scripture tells you, you are not actually going to Sola Scriptura because scripture tells you to hear the wisdom of scripture through various means, not just directly from the pages as though that were the only means that it was given.

It is a very fascinating thing that God in his providence, though he had given a perfect word, decided that the primary means it would go forward is by preaching. Okay, that is a thing that is very wild to me, that he gave a perfect word, yet chose that the primary way it would go forward is imperfect vessels.

But those restorationist movements came up with all the same kind of heresies over and over. Okay, Jehovah's Witnesses denying the deity of Christ, Seventh-day Adventists came up with their weird views of the afterlife that are just repeats of what people had said before, and they even had, in the early days, weird views of the Trinity, once again, repeats of errors that had been made before.

The various heresies, the various false doctrines that you will see in this life are just repeats on things that have already come before. Now, this conference that we're doing in September on the doctrine of Simon, the reason why we're doing this is because this is such an important truth that there is no real, fundamentally new doctrine.

I understood this when I wrote the book, The Dorian Principle, that's why I dedicated a whole chapter to this, to understanding, in history, where has this doctrine come from? But one of the most common criticisms that the work has received is just that, well, this seems new, this seems novel, and that's a problem, because there's nothing new under the sun.

And while I don't think that that is a fair criticism of anything that I said, I do understand it as a fair concern. And so, that is why it is important to see what has the church said about this, because if it is something that's truly novel, and if it really is something that no one has said before, and I've gotten compliments to that effect that I don't like, I don't like hearing that, then it's false, okay, it's false, if it is truly, fundamentally novel.

But the doctrine of Simon is an old thing, the concern about selling the word of God, selling spiritual things is an old concern, it's a concern as old as Simon Magus, it's a concern as old as the New Testament, it's a concern as old as the Old Testament.

Gehazi tried to sell the miracles of Elisha to Naaman, and received leprosy in exchange, it's an old concern. Now we can go on to technology. Aren't technologies truly, fundamentally new things? Not really.

Technology: Ancient Concerns in New Forms

Consider the words of John Gill. The same arts and sciences, trades and manufactures obtained formerly as now, though in some circumstances there may be an improvement, and in others they grow worse. And even such things as are thought of as a new invention, it may be only owing to the ignorance of former times, history failing to give us this account of them, thus the art of printing, the making of gunpowder, the use of guns and bombs, and of the lodestone, and mariner's compass, were thought to be of no longstanding, and yet according to the Chinese histories, the people were in possession of these things hundreds of years before, and circulation, the circulation of the blood, supposed to be found out by our countrymen in the last century, was known by Solomon, as is thought designed by him in Ecclesiastes 12 .6.

In Ecclesiastes 12 .6 it talks about the cistern and the wheel, et cetera. Many people understand him as talking about the various parts of the heart. So these things that they thought were later inventions were actually earlier inventions.

So some things, there's some things that are, that people think are new, that are actually just not new at all. They were discovered by former times. And I will remind you of that antediluvian generation.

How many things did people who had careers that were not 40 years long, but 900 years long, how many things did they discover that we just don't know of because it all got washed away by the flood? This has been the subject of many people's thoughts, fiction, Tolkien's work, The Lord of the Rings.

He considered that to be a time in earth that was much earlier that had been forgotten. In other words, the antediluvian era. Now, you know, that's just fiction, but once you let your mind wander for a little bit about what could people create if they had that much time to retain their expertise and really build things up, guys, that could be a lot of things.

But then what about those things that haven't been, haven't had exact replicas in the past? What about those? Let me read you from another person in the 1800s, Richard Whatley. Gill was 1700s, by the way, but Richard Whatley in the 1800s, he says, look again at man and all his pleasures, pursuits and changes of life.

His intellect may be gratified and his appetite for novelty supplied in the multiplied new openings of science, but no new springs of vital happiness are open to him. He is as far as ever from true rest.

Our disappointed forefathers in bygone days never found it. We shall find the world as they did. And so we shall leave it to our children, a world of vexation, a shadow and a bubble. That is all the world is.

Every generation faces the exact same fundamental issues. And then I could give you many examples having to do with AI itself and the way that people speak of it as something that is fundamentally novel.

AI's Supposed Novelty: Examining the Claims

It really isn't. People talk about its agency as being something that is unlike anything before. People have used animals in the past. People have trusted other men in the past. People have trusted automation of various kinds, dating way back, depending on how you consider automation.

Even court cases around whether or not it's appropriate to set a trap that could hurt a man because you would be deciding without any human present to kill a man. Okay? These are things that people have been thinking about for a long time.

The agency of AI is not a new problem. People talk about it imitating humans. Well, their virtual characters have existed for a while. Idols have existed from the very beginning. And idols are something that imitate mankind.

They're being someone who speaks for it, pretending like it's a real person. They're pets, right? Pets, a lot of times people are treating them not as just something for man's enjoyment, but as another human, basically having them replace mankind.

These are not new concerns. People talk about AI deceiving and that you can't understand reality the way you used to be able to. What happened before there were even photographs? How can you trust the printed page?

Lies are not new, lies are as old as Satan himself. Photoshop has existed. No, these are not new. People talk about it taking pleasures away. If all the cars become autonomous vehicles, then you can't drive anymore and driving is such an important pleasure.

Well, people used to get around on horses. They don't do that anymore. These are not new things. People talk about it taking jobs. Every innovation disrupts, takes jobs. Every time there's a new kind of productivity, it removes all kinds of productivities.

People say it will destroy art. What about the photograph? You know what that do? I wanna read you a quote once again from the 1850s. This is 1859, 20 years after photography became kind of a mainstream thing.

As the photographic industry was the refuge of every would-be painter, every painter too ill-endowed or too lazy to complete his studies, this universal infatuation bore not only the mark of blindness and imbecility, but had also the air of vengeance.

So this person in France writing in the 1850s is saying, basically, it's all the bad artists that are becoming photographers because they can't handle real art. If photography is allowed to supplement art and some of its function, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether thanks to the stupidity of the multitude, which is its natural ally.

If you pay attention to any of the discourse on AI, this is the way a lot of people talk about AI, but people are saying this about photographs for a very long time, right? And if you say, but look, modern art really has degraded, et cetera.

I'm not saying that there aren't real concerns. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is these are not new concerns. These are not new problems. Cognition, you know, people talk about AI reducing man's ability to think.

That's a really old problem. Plato wrote a dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates where Phaedrus invents the writing implement and says, look, I have found a cure for memory that you can write things down and remember it, and then you don't have to, and you can always trust that.

And Socrates responds that this will keep people from being able to think if they rely on these external things. This has existed with all kinds of technology, search engines, whatever. People, when they can trust things outside themselves, they go and focus their mind on other things.

It's true, there are ways it changes cognition, et cetera, but these are not new problems. People say it will overload people with information as you have all kinds of AI-generated content. Once again, not a new problem.

What did Solomon say at the very end of this book? Of making many books, there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. He was concerned about these things from the beginning. Now, I focused on the negative things, but there are positive things too.

People say this will end work forever. That is not true. Read Genesis 3 about the curse, read Ecclesiastes. Work will not end. People say it will end suffering. It will not end suffering. People think it will cure mortality, make us all immortal.

It will not. It is no savior, right? But if you are inclined to think there is something fundamentally novel about AI, that is, that it will radically change the human experience and its basic characteristics, you'll be inclined to all sorts of folly.

So it is important to recognize that there is nothing fundamentally new in the ordinary course of things in order to receive wisdom. You can have great wisdom from understanding this, but this is not the normal thought of man.

The Natural Tendency Toward Thinking of Eternity

The typical thought of man concerning things is not the brevity of life, but rather the eternity of it. Ecclesiastes 3 .11 says, God has made everything beautiful in his time. He has put eternity into man's heart, yet not so that he can find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

In other words, everybody is kind of built with this sense that everything is going to last forever, and there's a sense in which it all is going to last forever, but your life in this way is not going to last forever.

But this is how people think. People generally live their life as though there are just infinite tomorrows for them to experience so that they do not have to plan for the future, so that they do not have to think the deep thoughts of brevity.

That is the natural thing. Be aware that that is the way that God has created man. God created Adam in order to experience a life that would go on forever, and mankind has kept that in his heart. It is a good thing in a sense because we are to desire that eternity.

We're to know that our soul's not going to cease completely. Even the souls of the wicked will go on forever, but life as it is, do not let that tendency in man to think that way, to think of eternity, to cause you to fail to consider the brevity of life.

And what happens as you consider the brevity of life? You receive great wisdom, but the temptation is to fail to consider it. Ecclesiastes 1, verse 11 says, "'There is no remembrance of former things, "'nor will there be any remembrance of later things, "'of later things yet to be among those who come after.'".

People tend to forget what has happened in the past. They tend to forget the lessons learned by past generations. If you contemplate the truth of the brevity of life, you will be less inclined to lose important things.

Now, there are some things that are just inherently going to be lost, but if you contemplate the brevity of life, you will not be so distracted from the goals that God has actually given us. There is wisdom to be had in understanding these things.

There is folly to be had otherwise. True wisdom is found in knowing the purposes that God has for us, in knowing man's purposes in the short of this life. What is Solomon's whole purpose in Ecclesiastes?

It's to give people wisdom that's founded on contemplating the brevity of life. And what kind of false confidence will people have as they are led astray by the idea that things are gonna go on forever?

What kind of false confidence are people going to have as they think that there are things in this world that are fundamentally novel? They will think that, well, this truly is a Savior. This is going to finally give us rest.

This is going to be the end, and we are going to have arrived. They will basically be building the Tower of Babel, thinking that they can reach heaven on their own, on their own merit. That is not the case.

And then there's the fear. Okay, there's the false kind of confidence you can get out of thinking that things go on forever and thinking that things are fundamentally new, and there's the fear, the undue fear that arrives also.

When something seems fundamentally new that you don't understand, well, you can't apply old wisdom to it, can you? There's not much you can do about that. And so what do you do? You resort to all kinds of foolish behavior.

I don't have to explain to you how many dumb things people do when they think they live in unprecedented times. Okay, you've heard that phrase a lot the past six years, unprecedented times, unprecedented times, and it justifies all kinds of foolishness.

God's Sufficient Provision in Scripture

God has given us wisdom that we can rely on permanently. He has said in 2 Peter 1 .3, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

God has given us everything we need in his word. If you do not think that, if you think that something is fundamentally novel, something that the word might not address, you won't go to the word for it.

Okay, this is the problem with thinking that things are fundamentally new, that they change the human condition. Consider also the words of Job. Well, this is the words that build that in the book of Job.

Eight through 10. For inquire, please, of bygone ages and consider what the fathers have searched out. For we are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you and utter words out of their understanding?

Okay, the point is that because our lives are so brief, we should learn from previous generations. Okay, if you think that something is fundamentally novel, like so many people do, they will not learn from previous generations.

A lot of people just have this mindset that everything is fundamentally novel. There are many, including pastors who think this way, and so they only read commentaries by relatively recent people because they think older things are not going to have any wisdom.

You know, they're not listening to the things of Bildad. They're not listening to the wisdom of Bildad. They're not listening to what he says here about inquiring of bygone ages. If you think everything is fundamentally new, that the problems we face are truly new things, you will not think that the past has any wisdom to offer.

And moreover, what's the other alternative if things are truly new? Is there even a gospel if things are truly fundamentally new? Hebrews 4, 14 through 16 says, since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.

Let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Okay, what gives us confidence that we can go before the throne of grace with a sympathetic high priest? He has experienced all the same things that we have. There was nothing that we experienced that's fundamentally different than the things he experienced.

He experienced the same temptations. We are not facing anything new. You undermine the gospel even by saying that things are fundamentally new. And even if you still have a gospel, you are undermining the glory of the gospel because you are failing to recognize that that is the truly new thing.

Okay, the gospel of God or God is glorified in the gospel when you recognize that nothing is fundamentally new in the ordinary course of things. The reason why I keep saying the ordinary course of things is because there is something that is fundamentally new.

The Truly New Thing: The Gospel

And that is the gospel. The gospel makes a new creation. It is something that is fundamentally new. That's how scripture even speaks of it. The passages that we've been looking at in Isaiah, they speak of the gospel as being something fundamentally new.

There are many passages in Isaiah that talk about this, but the one that we'll be looking at this afternoon, this evening, is Isaiah 43, 19. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness, in rivers, in the desert. The gospel is something wonderfully new. Jeremiah 31, 22. How long will you waver, O faithless daughter? For the Lord has created a new thing on the earth, a woman encircles a man.

This is referring to the virgin birth just before Jeremiah 31 begins speaking of the new covenant that we have in Jesus Christ, which later Hebrews 8 quotes. It speaks of the virgin birth as being something fundamentally new.

A woman encircles a man, the virgin birth. Unlike anything that had been in creation before. Something that truly does answer the problems of man's condition. Changes it drastically. Changes relationship with God so that man can be at peace with God.

Changes man's relationship with man so man can be at peace with man. Changes the nature of kingdoms. Paul says there's no longer Jew or Greek, man or woman, slave or free. It's not that those have no reality at all, but in the gospel, those distinctions fail to mean the same thing anymore.

There is a fundamental way that everything has changed. And then moreover, lifespan. Yes, you will live this life you're appointed once to die and then comes judgment. But, but after that, it goes on forever and ever.

It changes the whole lifespan problem so that now you would have eternity in your heart properly. You would not have to worry about brevity forever and ever because you will be in the new heavens and the new earth.

And there it cannot be said that the seas fill up and never arrive, et cetera, et cetera. Then things will have their place. Things will be accomplished different. You might be used to thinking of it the opposite.

A lot of people think about it this way. Things are always changing on this earth. You know, things are progressing somewhere, et cetera. But then once we reach there, it's all static. We're just singing before God forever and ever.

It's the opposite. Read this chapter in Ecclesiastes 1. Here, everything's going on repeat. There, there is true progress. Of the increase of his government and peace, there is no end. Okay, what is peace?

That refers to the kind of prosperity you have during peace times. You can build during peace times. That's why Solomon was able to build so much is because he lived during a time of peace while David was during a time of war.