Solomon’s wisdom, setting forth four facts of life, is still timely:

I. "The Living Know That They Shall Die"

The author of the book of Hebrews confirmed the first of Solomon’s four facts: "it is appointed unto men once to die" (9:27). Likewise, Paul spoke of man’s earthly future: "as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned" (Romans 5:12).

All responsible people certainly are sinners (1 Kings 8:46; Romans 3:23), but to say that everyone at birth has inherited the guilt of Adam’s sin is a false doctrine. Indeed, all people inherit the consequence, the penalty, of Adam’s sin, but no one inherits guilt. The NRSV is not to be complimented in its rendering of Psalm 51:5, "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me." Similarly, the NIV puts sin on a baby’s soul nine months before his birth: "Surely, I have been a sinner from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."

As regards guilt, Moses wrote:

A thousand years later the prophet Ezekiel restated God’s law that guilt is not transferable:

Then, 500 years after Ezekiel, Paul carried the same principle of personal responsibility down to the judgment day: "So then each one of us shall give an account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12).

The repulsive idea that God sends a newborn from a mother’s womb already a sinner in no way harmonizes with Jesus’ declaration about little children: "to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14). A translation of Psalm 51:5 that rejects the idea that God lays guilt on unborn children is as follows: "Indeed, in [a world of] iniquity I was born, and when my mother conceived me she was a sinner." This does not mean that David’s mother, the wife of Jesse, David’s father, had fornicated, but it does mean that she, along with all other responsible people, was a sinner. Someone who understood the true meaning of Psalm 51:5 has paraphrased the verse this way: "Indeed, in a potato patch I was born; in a field of spuds my sinful mother conceived me, but I was not born full of potatoes."

In a gospel meeting in a tent at Carbon Hill, Alabama, on the night of July 3, 1938, a Nazarene pastor spoke up from his seat, disputing what I had said about babies being sinless, and challenged for a debate. Publicly I replied, "You be here tomorrow night and we will divide the time."

I was scared! In the audience was Gus Nichols, who had come from Jasper, 30 miles away, to encourage our meeting. Immediately I rushed to him and asked him to sit with me the next night. He replied that he was booked to begin a meeting the next night at Christian Chapel, near Amory, Miss. But he saw that I was shaking. He said, "I’ll send Flavil for that appointment, and I’ll be here with you. I’ll come at 8 o’clock in the morning, and we’ll study all day."

Early the next morning Bro. Nichols came with black oil cloth and white paint, and made some charts for me. During the debate the Nazarene preacher argued that the very fact that a baby cries shows he is a sinner. I did not know what to say, but Bro. Nichols whispered to me, "That makes Jesus a sinner, for Jesus wept, John 11:35." That refutation was all I needed, and it so demoralized the Nazarene he quit the debate.

The pastor of the Methodist Church, at the time my mother was sprinkled as a baby, according to the Methodist Discipline prior to 1910, was to say: "Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin, I baptize you into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." That formula was altered in 1910 to say: "Forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in Christ, I baptize you into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." Thus the Methodists removed the reproach they had previously laid on humanity, and then made another error by teaching that all people are in Christ before baptism.

On the one hand, as it is wrong to make Psalm 51:5 give David a tainted soul at his birth, so it would be wrong to make Psalm 22:9-10 give David a faith in God at his birth:

One just has to say that the words of Psalm 22:9-10 are an example of what is called "poetic license," for faith comes from hearing God’s word (Romans 10:17), and David’s parents were commanded to teach that word to him (Deuteronomy 6:1-9). David was not teachable about God "from my mother’s womb" nor "at my mother’s breast." His faith in God had to be developed later.

The words of Psalm 22:9-10, therefore, cannot be literal. If it had been possible for the infant David to make God his trust "even at my mother’s breast," and to claim the Lord as "my God" from "my mother’s womb," certain it is that he did not believe he was "a sinner when my mother conceived me" and that he "was born guilty" (Psalm 51:5, NRSV, similarly the NIV).

That the words of Romans 5:12, "all sinned," were not meant to include babies is clear from a recognized Greek idiom, "a phrase frequent in classical Greek" (Thayer, 181), namely: hos epos eipein, "so to say" (Thayer), "one might almost say" (B-G-D, 305). The author of the book of Hebrews used that classical Greek phrase when he wrote that Levi "paid tithes" (7:9, NRSV). But he explains that Levi, though he did not actually pay tithes, "one might almost say" (hos epos eipein) that he did, "for he was yet in his father’s loins when" Abraham "gave a tenth of the choicest spoils" to "Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God most High" (Hebrews 7:1, 4,9-10, NRSV).

In parallel, though babies were not included in the words "all sinned" (Romans 5:12), "one might almost say" that they were included, not to say that babies have sinned, but because the penalty for Adam’s sin is handed down to babies as it is to all people.

The only known exceptions to Solomon’s first fact of life ("the living know that they shall die") are (1) Enoch (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5); (2 Elijah (2 Kings 2:11); and (3) those "who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:15).

II. "The Dead Know Not Anything"

As regards Solomon’s second fact of life, if a human being is only physical, he has "no preeminence above the beasts" (Ecclesiastes 3:19, ASV). If he is only physical, when he is dead, "he is dead all over," and consequently knows nothing.

But, thank God, man is more than physical. The beasts are not made in the likeness of God, but man is (Genesis 1:26-27). Since God is a "spirit" being, not "flesh and bones," man’s "spirit," which God forms in him, is that part which is the "likeness" of God (Zechariah 12:1; John 4:24; Luke 24:39).

Man’s spirit, his soul, is immortal (Matthew 10:28; 22:32), and even after his body dies, he knows what is going on. Samuel’s spirit came back to the earth and talked to King Saul (1 Samuel 28:14). Likewise, Moses and Elijah came back to the earth and talked with Jesus (Luke 9:31). The buried body of "a certain rich man" knew nothing, and still knows nothing, but his spirit knew where Lazarus was, and he knew about his five brothers back at home (Luke 16:19-31). But, in the grave, "there is neither working nor planning, nor knowledge nor wisdom" (Ecclesiastes 9:10, NIV).

III. "Neither Have They Any More a Reward"

Solomon’s third fact of life shows that one receives no more paychecks when he is buried. His corpse is "in the land of gloom and deep darkness," where "the worms find" every dead body "sweet," where "maggots are bed beneath" and "worms are a covering" (Job 10:21; 24:20; Isaiah 14:11, NRSV).

A dead man has no more a reward "under the sun." The phrase "under the sun" is the key to the book of Ecclesiastes, occurring 29 times in 12 chapters. But out from "under the sun" in the spirit world where God lives, the righteous dead will be rewarded and the wicked will be punished (Matthew 25:31-46). Every human being can be among "the spirits of the righteous made perfect" if he wants to be (Hebrews 12:23; Revelation 22:17). Not to dead bodies, but to eternal spirits the Lord has promised, "See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work" (Revelation 22:12).

IV. "The Memory of Them is Forgotten"

After a few generations, most deceased people, both good and bad, are forgotten.

On April 14, 1912, the "unsinkable" Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southhampton to New York, struck an iceberg, and sank, drowning 1595 people. Among those drowned were 40 prominent citizens of Belfast in Northern Ireland, the city in whose shipyards the Titanic had been built. The city mourned. A brass plaque, with the 40 names inscribed, was placed for a memorial on a downtown street.

In 1962, exactly fifty years later, Joe Nisbet, the gospel preacher working with the Eastside Church of Christ in Belfast, copied the names of the 40 from the brass plaque. On Sunday at church he read the list of names, and asked if anybody recognized any of them. No one did. Then he referred to Solomon’s fourth fact that "the memory of them is forgotten."

All people "under the sun" are quickly forgotten, but what makes life worth living is the fact that beyond the sun, in "the heaven of heavens," there is Someone whose memory of the righteous never fades:

Unforgotten, "a righteous man will be remembered forever" (Psalm 112:6, NIV). Furthermore,