Cremate?
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 been already,
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to happen among those who come after.
I hated all my work in which I had worked under the sun,
seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me;
and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?
Yet he will be master of all for which I worked
and used my wisdom under the sun,
because sometimes a man who has worked with wisdom and knowledge
and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not work for it.
This also is vanity and a great evil.
What has a man from all the work and strain
with which he works beneath the sun?
All his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation;
even in the night his mind does not rest. This also is vanity.
The fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same;
as one dies, so dies the other.
They all have the same breath,
and man has no advantage over the beasts, because all is vanity.
All go to one place; all are from the dust,
and all turn to dust again.
Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward
and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God;
to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools;
they do not know that they are doing evil.
Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty
to utter a word to God, because God is in heaven, and you upon earth;
therefore let your words be few.
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun,
and it lies heavy upon men:
a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor,
so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires,
yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger
enjoys them; this is vanity; it is a sore affliction.
Even though he would live a thousand years twice told,
yet enjoy no good - do not all go to the one place?
Consider the work of God: who can make straight
what he has made crooked?
In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider,
God has made the one as well as the other,
so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.
In my vain life I have seen everything;
there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness,
and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil-doing.
Be not righteous overmuch, and do not make yourself overwise;
why should you destroy yourself?
Be not wicked overmuch, neither be a fool;
why should you die before your time?
It is good that you should take hold of this,
and from that withhold not your hand;
because he who fears God shall come forth from them all.
No man has power to retain the spirit,
or authority over the day of death;
there is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness
deliver those who are given to it.
Then I saw the wicked buried;
they used to go in and out of the holy place,
and were praised in the city where they had done such things.
This also is vanity.
Because sentence against an evil deed is not done speedily,
the heart of the sons of men is fully set to do evil.
Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life,
yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God,
because they fear before him;
but it will not be well with the wicked,
neither will he prolong his days like a shadow,
because he does not fear before God.
There is a vanity which takes place on earth,
that there are righteous men to whom it happens
according to the deeds of the wicked,
and there are wicked men to whom it happens
according to the deeds of the righteous.
I said that this also is vanity.
But all this I laid to heart, examining it all,
how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God;
whether it is love or hate man does not know.
Everything before them is vanity,
since one fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked,
to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean,
to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice.
As is the good man, so is the sinner;
and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath.
This is an evil in all that is done under the sun,
that one fate comes to all;
also the hearts of men are full of evil,
and madness is in their hearts while they live,
and after that they go to the dead.
But he who is joined with all the living has hope,
because a living dog is better than a dead lion.
The living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward;
but the memory of them is lost.
Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished,
and they have no more for ever any share in all
that is done under the sun.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might;
because there is no work or thought or knowledge in Sheol,
to which you are going.
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise,
nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Man does not know his time.
Like fish which are taken in an evil net,
and like birds which are caught in a snare,
so the sons of men are trapped at an evil time,
when it suddenly falls upon them.
If a man lives many years, let him rejoice in them all;
but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many.
All that comes is vanity.
Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you
in the days of your youth;
walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes.
But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
Remove vexation from your mind, and put away pain from your body;
because youth and the dawn of life are vanity.
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the evil days come, and the years draw near,
when you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them;'
before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened
and the clouds return after the rain;
in the day when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few,
and those who look through the windows are dimmed,
and the doors on the street are shut;
when the sound of the grinding is low,
and one rises up at the voice of a bird,
and all the daughters of song are brought low;
they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way;
the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire fails;
because man goes to his eternal home,
and the mourners go about the streets;
before the silver cord is snapped,
or the golden bowl is broken,
or the pitcher is broken at the fountain,
or the wheel broken at the cistern,
and the dust returns to the earth as it was,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.
The sayings of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed
are the collected saying which are given by one Shepherd.
My son, beware of anything beyond these.
Of making many books there is no end,
and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
The end of the matter; all has been heard.
Fear God, and keep his commandments;
because this is the whole duty of man.
God will bring everything done into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether good or evil.
What are the causes why more and more people choose to be cremated, and to cremate, upon their own or someone else's demise?
Obviously, the financial motive is first to come to mind, being that it has gotten so expensive to engage the services of the typical modern funeral director and funeral home personnel for preparing display of the corpse, for choice of expensive casket, for cemetery plot, for cement vault, procession and hearse services, etc.
It is only somewhat cheaper to choose to be buried, or bury someone, in a plain pine box, but State law still might require the repose to be planted in some also-expensive cement vault - with or without display of the dead body for public perusal.
There might be more sinister or godless motives, however, why people choose to be burned when dead, or burn others to ashes in crematoriums when the deceased are dead -- in that there are religious inferences for viewing and gazing upon a dead body in a casket, in contrast to staring at an urn supposedly containing the alleged ashes of the deceased.
It is not simply that the tradition of Biblical burial for respected ones as recorded in The HOLY BIBLE is present throughout both Old and New Testaments, and (in stark contrast) that the bodies of accursed enemies were usually burnt in righteous retaliation and vengeance.
One consequence of bodily display of the deceased is blatant and in-your-face exhibitionism of someone totally and completely obedient to the Divine command of the Creator to phenomenally be absolutely silent 24/7, to stop terrorizing and relentlessly sinning repeatedly after being warned over and over, to forever quit the gossip and slander and malice and sexual impurity and greed, to henceforth perfectly cease sexually harassing victims with warm-weather immodesty, to permanently stop polluting all society with incessant wickedness:
Job 19:25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last He will stand upon the earth;
Job 19:26 and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God,
Job 19:27 whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall observe and consider, and not another. My heart faints within me!
Job 20:11 His bones are full of youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust.
Job 40:13 Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below.
Psalm 7:5 let the enemy pursue me and overtake me, and let him trample my life to the ground, and lay my soul in the dust. Selah
Psalm 22:15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; You do lay me in the dust of death.
Psalm 37:10 Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look well at his place, he will not be there.
Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth!
Psalm 89:39 You have renounced the covenant with Your servant; You have defiled his crown in the dust.
Proverbs 30:4 Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name? Surely you know!
Jeremiah 10:5
Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Be not afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good.
Lamentations 2:21 In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old; my maidens and my young men have fallen by the sword; in the day of Your anger You ahve slain them, slaughtering without mercy.
Isaiah 26:19 Your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. Dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For Your dew is a dew of light, and on the land of the shades You will let it fall.
Isaiah 29:4 Then deep from the earth you shall speak, from low in the dust your words shall come; your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and your speech shall whisper out of the dust.
Isaiah 45:23 By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return: 'To Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.'
Daniel 12:2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Habakkuk 2:20 But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.
Zephaniah 1:7 Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is at hand; the LORD has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated His guests.
Zecariah 2:13 Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for He has roused Himself from His holy dwelling.
Romans 14:11 for it is written, 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.'
What is etched into the memory of the living who, with captivated intrigue, take a long pause to study a perfectly and permanently motionless and lifeless human corpse, is deep and non-forgettable shame of the humiliation of death overcoming and conquering frail and fallible human beings.
Death is a horrifying and shocking negative -- a sordid guilt-manifested punishment for sins of the lifeless form in the casket and evil others directly and indirectly responsible for the death.
It is a stark and bizarre sign of that Supernatural Source inflicting the transition and comparison of that which was seamlessly engrained and practically taken for granted, compared to the eerie condition of that dead body which now is; that the same Creator, who gave the uniquely-personal life-giving spirit, has painfully, quickly, or gradually caused it to inevitably slip away, and its clear and profound absence in a motionless dead human body is striking. What has been taken away, was extricated out as Divine retribution for admittedly-hideous failures and mistakes of the deceased and others who more or less also contributed to the demise of the now-deceased.
Perhaps those choosing cremation presume (not "assume") - with spooky superstition - that unless the bodies are burned beyond recognition, the dead might come up out of their graves to stalk and haunt others (as depicted in various Hollywood-special-effects monster movies) who were directly or indirectly responsible for their deaths. Perhaps the anti-religious presume that it would be impossible for God to reconstruct and resurrect ashes for Last-Day Judgment if there is nothing but scattered ashes dispersed wherever and whenever and however. Perhaps some consider it an act of spirit worship to mix ashes with "Mother Earth" as their last token of devotion to the supposedly endless cycle of reincarnation or evolution.
Some consider it grossly disrespectful for relatives receiving inheritance benefits from cherished loved ones to burn their dead bodies in crematoriums -- those who benevolently and sacrificially provided for them. Maybe some presume that it will be easier for God to reconstruct dead bodies for Last-Day Judgment if the bodies are left intact within crypts, make it more convenient to revitalize lifeless bodies if some scientific marvel technique is someday invented to bring the bodies back to life, or allow mortal remains to be exhumed for expedient-in-the-future DNA-identification-related purposes.
Further information about this aspect of human experience can be found at:
http://finalnotices.tripod.com