to check the branch office of Thailand and see what could be done to help advance the work of Jehovah’s witnesses throughout the country. On Wednesday evening Brother Knorr spoke to fifty-seven of the local congregation. Wonderful improvements have been made in the city of Bangkok since Brother Knorr’s last visit there. It is good to see the advancement made by the country in hygiene and living conditions in this short period of time. But it was especially good to see the new peak of publishers in Thailand and to observe that the missionaries were working diligently on learning the language and were able to speak in the tongue of the people. Arrangements were made to open up new territory, sending missionaries in to take care of the interest and establish congregations.

Questions From Readers

● A person I was preaching to insisted that such things as airplanes were here long ago, and as proof she quoted Ecclesiastes 1:9 about there being no new thing under the sun. What is the correct understanding of this text?—D. M., United States.

After years of observation and profound meditation King Solomon wrote under inspiration by God concerning the repetition of natural events: “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 for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round 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.”—Eccl. 1:2-9, RS.

In the above the inspired writer describes the viewpoint, not of exuberant youth or of appreciative servants of Jehovah, but of the aging person alienated from God. It is the outlook that gradually comes over persons of this old system of things as time overtakes them, weakens them, wears them down. They see their generation going out of existence and a new one coming in to take their place on the earth that remains forever. When they were young with their life span ahead of them it looked long, but now that it is nearly spent and they look back on it in their old age it seems to have been no more than a breath. The literal meaning of the Hebrew word translated “vanity” is “breath,” and it is used to proclaim that this life is as fleeting and transitory as a breath and that the toil of the man alienated from God is futile, lacking in any abiding gain for him. His generation is just one of many, preceded by undetermined ones and to be followed by more, just one of a long repetition of generations coming and going on an earth that endures.

As analogies to this repetition the inspired writer points to the sun that rises, sets, and hurries around to where it will rise again; to the winds that blow and circle and return to repeat their circuits again and again; to the streams that run to the sea without filling it because water is evaporated from it and carried inland by wind and condensed as clouds that shed rain to replenish the rivers and keep them running to the sea. Throughout their life persons see this repetition of natural events, and as they become old and energies wane, eyes dim, ears dull, joints stiffen and the other senses fade, they lose the zest for living they had in youth, and the repeating days and nights, worries and toils, fill them with an unutterable weariness, a sense of frustration and futility. Their eye is not satisfied with seeing this endless repetition, nor is their ear satisfyingly filled with hearing it over and over again. It is in this setting of natural events, within the scope of these narrated cycles in nature, that the statement occurs that there is nothing new under the sun. We cannot properly take the statement out of its setting and apply it to everything. There are new things invented and made but they follow the principles which God has already established