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Continued From No.683
The passage below from the Watchtower Society's bible is deliberately
misquoted. Watch for the revision.
• Ps 146:3-4 . . Do not put your trust in nobles, nor in the son of earthling
man, to whom no salvation belongs. His spirit goes out, he goes back to his
ground; in that day he loses awareness.
The actual passage says "his thoughts do perish" which is quite a bit
different than losing awareness.
The Hebrew word for "thoughts" in that passage is 'eshtonah (esh-to naw')
which means thinking. Unfortunately, Ps 146:4 is the only place in the entire Old
Testament where 'eshtonah appears so we can't compare its uses in other contexts.
According to Webster's the word "thinking" is ambiguous with quite a variety
of meanings to choose from; including, but not limited to: concerns,
anticipations, conceptions, opinions, imaginations, visualizations, ideas,
epiphanies, plans, schemes, fantasies, arguments, aspirations, deliberations,
and the like.
For the rich man in Jesus' parable at Luke 12:16-20; I would choose ideas,
plans, and schemes.
"I will say to my soul: Soul, you have many good things laid up for many
years; take your ease, eat, drink, enjoy yourself. But God said to him:
Unreasonable one, this night they are demanding your soul from you. Who,
then, is to have the things you stored up?"
For a contemporary example: consider all those people who perished in the
World Trade Center, and in the Japan and Indonesia tsunamis, and the Haiti
earthquake. None of them woke that day planning on it being their last on
earth. No, on the contrary; they had people to see, places to go, and things
to do: but before the day ended; whatever was on their itinerary lost its
importance-- their priorities went right out the window and became no more
significant than green cheese on the moon.
All their plans, their dreams, their schedules, their appointments, their
schemes, their problems, their ambitions, their loves, and their aspirations
went right down the tubes as they were suddenly confronted with a whole
new reality to cope with.
So then, an alternative to the Watchtower Society's interpretation is that
people don't lose awareness when they die; no, Ps 146:3-4 only means to
say that whatever was on their minds before they passed away is now null
and void.
Take for another example Pop singer Michael Jackson. While working on a
new world tour, Jackson died in his sleep. As a result; his tour wrapped on
the spot.
When my eldest nephew was paroled from prison, he quit drinking, and
began going to college with the goal towards becoming a counselor. For 2½
years all went well. His parole officer was happy, and he was on track and
getting good grades. My nephew's future looked assured. And then on the
morning of Sept 25, 2015, he dropped dead to the floor of natural causes.
My nephew's passing was a terrible disappointment to everybody; but
actually we all kind of expected it. He was grossly overweight, had high
blood pressure, high cholesterol, rarely exercised, and smoked. But the point
is; my nephew's dream ended just as abruptly as flipping a light switch. And
all of our hopes for his success ended the same way, viz: our thoughts
perished right along with his.
Death is the mortal enemy of human ambitions. It often casts its long
shadow when people set about planning their lives. The Scottish poet Robert
Burns noticed that life sometimes throws a curve ball that makes all your
careful preparations strike out instead of getting you on base.
He was working one day plowing in the field and uprooted a mouse's
underground nest who was all set for the oncoming winter. The mouse had
picked a fallow field as the site for its winter retreat thinking it would be safe
and snug; unmolested during the cold. But it didn't (or maybe we should say
it couldn't) know the workings of powers higher than itself-- in this case,
farmers and their machinery.
Mousie, you are not alone in proving foresight may be vain.
The best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew,
And leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy.
_
