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Proverbs 8New Living Translation

Wisdom Calls for a Hearing

8 Listen as Wisdom calls out!
    Hear as understanding raises her voice!
² On the hilltop along the road,
    she takes her stand at the crossroads.
³ By the gates at the entrance to the town,
    on the road leading in, she cries aloud,
⁴ “I call to you, to all of you!
    I raise my voice to all people.
⁵ You simple people, use good judgment.
    You foolish people, show some understanding.
⁶ Listen to me! For I have important things to tell you.
    Everything I say is right,
⁷ for I speak the truth
    and detest every kind of deception.
⁸ My advice is wholesome.
    There is nothing devious or crooked in it.
⁹ My words are plain to anyone with understanding,
    clear to those with knowledge.
¹⁰ Choose my instruction rather than silver,
    and knowledge rather than pure gold.
¹¹ For wisdom is far more valuable than rubies.
    Nothing you desire can compare with it.

¹² “I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment.
    I know where to discover knowledge and discernment.
¹³ All who fear the Lord will hate evil.
    Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance,
    corruption and perverse speech.
¹⁴ Common sense and success belong to me.
    Insight and strength are mine.
¹⁵ Because of me, kings reign,
    and rulers make just decrees.
¹⁶ Rulers lead with my help,
    and nobles make righteous judgments.^[a]

¹⁷ “I love all who love me.
    Those who search will surely find me.
¹⁸ I have riches and honor,
    as well as enduring wealth and justice.
¹⁹ My gifts are better than gold, even the purest gold,
    my wages better than sterling silver!
²⁰ I walk in righteousness,
    in paths of justice.
²¹ Those who love me inherit wealth.
    I will fill their treasuries.

²² “The Lord formed me from the beginning,
    before he created anything else.
²³ I was appointed in ages past,
    at the very first, before the earth began.
²⁴ I was born before the oceans were created,
    before the springs bubbled forth their waters.
²⁵ Before the mountains were formed,
    before the hills, I was born—
²⁶ before he had made the earth and fields
    and the first handfuls of soil.
²⁷ I was there when he established the heavens,
    when he drew the horizon on the oceans.
²⁸ I was there when he set the clouds above,
    when he established springs deep in the earth.
²⁹ I was there when he set the limits of the seas,
    so they would not spread beyond their boundaries.
And when he marked off the earth’s foundations,
³⁰     I was the architect at his side.
I was his constant delight,
    rejoicing always in his presence.
³¹ And how happy I was with the world he created;
    how I rejoiced with the human family!

³² “And so, my children,^[b] listen to me,
    for all who follow my ways are joyful.
³³ Listen to my instruction and be wise.
    Don’t ignore it.
³⁴ Joyful are those who listen to me,
    watching for me daily at my gates,
    waiting for me outside my home!
³⁵ For whoever finds me finds life
    and receives favor from the Lord.
³⁶ But those who miss me injure themselves.
    All who hate me love death.”

Sermon Overview

Scripture Passage: Proverbs 2:1-9

The Book of Proverbs was not written by human experience, but by divine revelation. The insight encased in these pages are not just things worked out by human ingenuity. They are God’s words of wisdom, given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. 

The Book of Proverbs is King Solomon’s love letter of wisdom, given to him by God alone, to his child. And we, as children of the King of Kings, can read it with full confidence that these words from our Father are for our best interest. They are for our health, wealth, and wisdom. 

But the greatest of these is wisdom. 

Wisdom is the most important virtue we could ever obtain. Proverbs 8:11 says: “For wisdom is better than rubies and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.” 

Wisdom’s worth comes from the Father. He is the One who provides it, promises it, and initiates the purpose of it. 

The Bible says that great men are not always wise. There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. A lot of people have head knowledge but lack wisdom. You can obtain knowledge without the Holy Spirit, but you cannot get true wisdom without the Holy Spirit. And it comes, not from books, but from knowing Jesus. 

In order to know the secrets of the universe, you have to know the Lord Jesus Christ, for the Bible says in Colossians 2:3 “In him (Jesus) lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” 

Adrian Rogers said it this way: “When a man reverences God, when a man receives Christ, when a man has a personal encounter, that man receives the wisdom of God and here is the incomparable worth of wisdom. It, dear friend, is provided by the father. It is produced by the spirit but only by the presence of the son. When you have the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart then you are ready to have that real Wisdom.” 

Apply it to your life

True wisdom comes from a relationship with Jesus. Ask him for wisdom today and pursue Scripture, perhaps starting in the Book of Proverbs, with fresh eyes. Hide what you read in your heart. Appreciate it. Appropriate it. Simulate it. Activate it in your life. 

This message is a part of this audio series.

• God’s Way to Health, Wealth and Wisdom – October 2019

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Ronald Reagan with Milton Friedman

It is my very great pleasure to present to you our speaker today, professor Milton Friedman .What I want to talk about is really an issue which is very much related to the whole problem of human freedom.It has to do with the question of whether capitalism is humane and what you mean by.I am sure many of you have heard the funny of the old story about the two poles who met one another, and one pole said to the other.Tell me: do you know the difference between capitalism and socialism, and the other pole said?No, I don’t know the difference, and the first pole said: well, you know under capitalism, man exploits man.00:56The other fellow shook his head.Well under socialism.He said it’s vice-versa.Well, now that, as a matter of fact in the present intellectual atmosphere of the world is a relatively favorable evaluation of capitalism, the interesting thing to me about this is that the all of the arguments, the issues in this debate, which has been going on for so Long about the form of government have changed the argument used to be about strictly the form of economic organization.Should we have government control of production and distribution, or should we have a market control and the argument used to be made in terms of the supposedly greater efficiency of centralized government and have centralized control?01:50Nobody makes that argument anymore.There is hardly a person in the world who will claim the nationalized industries or socialism as a method of economic organization, is an efficient way to organize things.The examples of Great Britain, the examples of Russia, the examples of some of the other states around the world that have adopted these measures, plus the domestic grown examples of the post office in its fellows, have put an end to that kind of talk.But the interesting thing is that, nonetheless, there is widespread opposition for cat to capitalism as a system of organization, and there is widespread sewer support for some vague system, labeled socialism.The most dramatic example of the change in the character, the argument and the paradox that I’m really bringing out is Germany here was Germany, which experienced all the horrors of the Nazi totalitarian state in the 1930s.Here is Germany, which, after the war under the Erhard policy of socio, marked fear, shaft social market economy had an economic miracle, with an enormous rise in total income, enormous rise in the well-being of the German people of the ordinary people, and yet in German.Despite the demonstration of the horrors on the one side of a totalitarian state and on the other of the benefits of a relatively free market here in Germany, you will find a very large fraction of all.Intellectuals remain, and not only remain, have become even more strongly anti-capitalist have become proponents of collectivism of one form or another.Only a small number have gone into the more extreme versions that you’ve been reading about in the paper of the of the terrorists, but a very large fraction of the intellectuals.Those who write for the newspapers, those who are on television and so on, are fundamentally anti-capitalist in their mentality, and the question is why what is it that has produced this shift?04:11Now, one of the most enough is shift.What is it that produces this consistent attitude of anti capitalism on the one hand, and pro something called collectivism on the other among intellectuals?One of the most interesting analyses of these problems, I know, is by a Russian dissident mathematician named Schaffer ravitch, his essay, which has never been published needless to say in Russia, but it appears in English translation in a book called under the rubble, which has been edited By Alexander Solzhenitsyn and I strongly recommend that particular paper to you in it he discusses the appeal of socialism over the ages.He goes back a thousand or two thousand years, and he comes out with the conclusion that, just as Freud pointed to the death wish in individuals as a fundamental psychological propensity, the appeal of capitalism, he argued, I’m sorry, the appeal of socialism.The opposition to capitalism is really a fundamental sign of a death wish for society on the part of intellectuals.It’S a very strange and at first sight, highly improbable kind of an interpretation.Yet I urge you all to read that essay, because you will find that it is very disturbing by having a great deal more sense to it than you would suppose.05:45Such a position could possibly have I’m not going to take that line.Maybe he’s right, but I think, there’s a very much simpler analysis, a simpler reason for this, and that simpler reason is a combination of a supposed emphasis on moral values and ignorance and misunderstanding about the relationship between moral values and economic systems.I may say the emphasis on moral values is almost always on the part of people who do not have economic problems, it’s not on the part of the masses, but the problem with this approach, the problem of trying to interpret and analyze a system either pro or Con in terms of such concepts as a morality of the system or the humanity of the system, whether capitalism is humane or socialism is humane or moral or immoral.The problem with that is in moral values are individual, they are not collective.Moral values have to do with what each of us separately believes in holds true.What our own individual values are: capitalism, socialism, central planning our means, not ends they in and of themselves.They need a more alluring world, humane or humility in human.07:12We have to ask what are their results?We have to look at what are the consequences of adopting one or another system of organization, and from that point of view, the crucial thing is to look beneath the surface.Don’T look at what the proponents of one system or another say, are their intentions, but look at what the actual results are.Socialism, which means government ownership and operation of means of production, has appealed to high-minded fine people to people of idealistic views because of the supposed objectives of socialism, especially because of the supposed objectives and equality of equality and social justice.Now those are fine objectives and it’s a tribute to the people of good will that those objectives should appeal to them.But you have to ask the question: does a system, no matter what its proponents say, produce those results and once you look at the results, it’s crystal clear that they do not wear our social injustice is greatest social injustice, Azhar, clearly greatest, where you have central control.The degree of social injustice and torture in a place like in incarceration in a place like Russia is of a different order of magnitude than it is in those Western countries where most of us have grown up and in which we have been accustomed to.08:49Regarding freedom.As our natural heritage, social injustice in a country like Yugoslavia, which is a much more benign communist state than Russia, and yet you asked Jesus who languishes in prison for having written a book, you asked the people at the University of Belgrade who have been sent to Prison or many others who have been ejected from the country, social injustice in China, where you have had thousands of people murdered because of their opposition to the government.Again, you look at the question of inequality of equality.Where do you have the greatest degree of inequality in the socialist states of the world?I remember about 15 years ago my wife and I were in Russia for a couple of weeks.We were in Moscow and we were, we were going with.Our interest died and happened to see, I happen to see some of the fancy Russian limousines up there, the Zips they were sort of a take-off on the 1938 American Packers, and I asked our interest guide out of amusement.How much did those sell for all?10:04She said those aren’t for sale.Those are only for the members of the Politburo you have in a country like Soviet Union.Enormous inequality in the immediate literal sense that there is a small select group that has all of the services and amenities of life and very large masses that are in a very, very low standard of living.Indeed, in a more direct way, if you take the wage rate of foremen versus the wage rate of ordinary workers in the Soviet Union, the ratio is much greater than it is in the United States.I am reminded again of another if I seem somehow to be referring to Poland, but on this same trip that we took to Russia, we stopped in Poland in Warsaw for a while, and we met there, a marvelous man, a man by the name of Edward Lipinski, Who was in this country a year ago at the age of eighty, three or four, I believe was arrested when he got back to Poland, because he had been one of those who had signed an author to Declaration against the suppression of freedom of thought and speech.In Poland, but at the time we met Edward Lipinski, he would seem to be fairly afraid.He is a militant man who had been a socialist all his life, and this was really very hard for he was now in his 70s.I may say when we saw him, he was retired, very hard thing for a man to go back on all of his lifelong beliefs, and so he said as follows to us.He said you know.He said I used to believe in socialism.I still do, but socialism is an ideal.We can’t have it in the real world.He said until we’re rich enough to be able to afford it, and he said socialism will be practical when every man in Poland has a house and two servants, and I said to him, including the servants, and he said yes now.12:02Capitalism, on the other hand, is a system of organization that relies on private property and voluntary exchange.It has repelled people, it’s driven them away from supporting it because they have thought it emphasized self-interest in a narrow way, because they were repelled by the idea of people pursuing their own interests rather than some broader interest.Yet if you look at the results, it’s clear that the results go, the other way around there isn’t it’s in the capitalist societies of the world, where only where capitalism has prevailed over long periods.If you had both freedom and prosperity, the greatest measures of freedom, if you look at the Western countries where freedom prevails, it doesn’t prevail perfectly.We all have our defects, but by an eye on buying on the large few would deny that in the United States in Great Britain and France in Germany, in the Western Europe, we have a greater degree of freedom on an individual and personal level than you do.In most other places around the world in Australia, Japan to a considerable extent today, though, not two hundred years ago, if you look, you will find that freedom has prevailed where you’ve had capitalism and that simultaneously so has a well-being and the prosperity of the ordinary man.There’S been more social justice and less inequality now the question is that you have to ask and you have to ask the proponents of these two system.13:36Has socialism failed because it’s good qualities were perverted by evil men who got in charge?Was it simply because Stalin took over from Lanen that communism went the way it did?Has capitalism succeeded despite the immoral values that pervade it?13:56I think the answer to both questions is in the negative.The results have arisen because each system has been true to its own values, or rather a system doesn’t have values.I don’t mean that has been true to the values it encourages, supports and develops in the people who live under that system.What we’re concerned with in discussing moral values here are those that have to do with the relations between people.It’S important to distinguish between two sets of moral considerations, the morality that is relevant to each of us in our private life.How we, each individually conduct ourselves, behave and then what’s relevant to systems of government and organization, are the relations between people and in judging relations among between people.I do not believe that the fundamental value is to do good to others, whether they want you to or not.The fundamental value is not to do good to others, as you see their good, it’s not to force them to do good.As I see it, the fundamental value in relations to Hmong people is to respect the dignity and the individuality of fellow men to treat your fellow man not as an object to be manipulated for your purpose, but the treat him as a person with his own values.In his own rights, a person to be persuaded not coerced, not forced, not bulldozed, not brainwashed.That seems to me to be a fundamental value from in social relations in all systems, whether you call them socialism, capitalism or anything else.15:51People act from self-interest.The citizens of Russia act from self-interest in the same way as the citizens in the United States.Do.16:00The difference between the two countries is in what determines self-interest?The man in the United States who is serving as a foreman in a factory.16:12His self-interest leads him to worry about not getting fired.The man in Russia who is acting as Foreman in a factory.His self-interest leads him to worry about not being fired, both are pursuing their own self-interest, but the sanctions, the effects, what makes it in their self-interest is different in the one case and in the other, but self-interest should not be interpreted as narrow selfishness.I quote a man who speaks much more eloquently than I can.This is Thoreau, and I quote him from here’s what, though the Thoreau said about unselfishness as a moral virtue, he said there is no odor, so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted it.If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.Nay, it is greatly overrated and it as to our it is our selfishness which over rates it if anything, L a man so that he does not perform his functions if he have a pain in his bowels.Even for that, as a seat of sympathy, he forthwith sets about reforming the world being a microcosm himself.He discovers and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it that the world has been eating green apples to his eyes.In fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe and straight away.His drastic philanthropy seeks out the Eskimo and the Patagonian and embraces the populous, Indian and Chinese villages.That’S the row on unselfishness as a moral value, more important and more fundamentally, whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.You realize this is highly relevant to what I’m saying, because the essential notion of a capitalist society which I’ll come back to is voluntary cooperation.18:47Voluntary exchange.The essential notion of a socialist society is fundamentally force if the government is the master if society is to be run from the central center.What do you do?What are you doing?You automatically have to order people what to do?19:07What is your ultimate sanction?Go back a ways: take it on a milder level.Whenever you try to do good with somebody else’s money, you are committed to using force.How can you do good with somebody else’s money unless you first take it away from them?The only way you can take it away from them is by the threat of force.You have a policeman, a tax collector who comes and takes it from them.This is carrying much farther if you really have a socialist society, if you have an organization from the centre, if you have supposed government bureaucrats running things that can only ultimately rest on force, but whenever you resort to force even to try to do good, you must Not questions people’s motives, maybe they’re evil sometime, but look at the results of what they do give them the benefit of the doubt assume their motives are good.You know, there’s an old saying about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.You have to look at the LT and whenever you use force the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.The reason is not only that famous aphorism of Lord Acton, you all know it you’ve all heard absolute power corrupts absolutely I’m sorry.20:28Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely that’s a whole aphorism.That’S one reason why trying to do good with methods that involve force lead to bad results because of people who set out with good intentions are themselves corrupted, and I may add, if they’re not corrupted, they’re replaced by people with bad intentions, who are more efficient at Getting control of the use of force, but also the fundamental reason, is more profound.The most harm of all is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their instincts of their and of the purity of their intentions.That Thoreau says that philanthropy is a much overrated virtue.Sincerity is also a much overrated virtue.Heaven preserve us from the sincere reformer who knows what’s good for you and bye-bye heaven is going to make you do it, whether you like it or not.That’S when you get the greatest harm done.I have no reason to doubt that Lenin was a man whose intentions were good, maybe they weren’t, but he was completely persuaded that he was right and he was willing to use any methods at all for the ultimate good.21:53Again, it’s interesting to contrast.The experience of Hitler versus Mussolini Mussolini was much less of a danger to human right because he was a hypocrite because he didn’t really believe what he was saying.He was just in there for the game.He started out as a socialist.He turned to a fascist, he was willing to be bribed by whoever would bribe him the most.As a result, there were at least some protections against his arbitrary rule, but Hitler was a sincere fanatic.He believed in what he was doing and he did far greater harm or, if I may take you on to a minor key in which you may not join me.I realize Ralph Nader is a modern example of the same thing.I have no doubt that Ralph is sincere.I have no doubt that he means what he says, but that’s.Why he’s so dangerous a man who is threatening our freedom in the past in the past few decades?In the past few decades there has been a great decline in the moral climate.There are a few people who doubt the decline in the moral climate.We see evidences of it here, the lack of civility and discussions among people the resort to chance.Instead of arguments, these are all evidences on one level of a decline in moral climate, but we see it also in the rising crime statistics, in the lack of respect for property in the kind of rioting that broke out in New York after the blackout.In the problems of maintaining discipline in elementary schools, why why have we had such a decline in moral climate?I submit to you that a major factor has because it been because of a change in the philosophies which had been prominent in society, from a belief in individual responsibility, to a supposed belief in social responsibility, from a tendency to get away from the individual from his Responsibility for his own life in his own behavior, if he doesn’t behave properly, that’s his responsibility needs to be charged connected to a belief that, after all, it’s society that is responsible.24:19If you adopt the view that everything belongs to society, then it belongs to nobody.Why should I have any respect for property if it belongs to everybody, if you adopt the view that no man is responsible for his own behavior, because somehow or other society is responsible well, then why should he seek to make his behavior good?Now?Of course, don’t misunderstand me on a scientific level, it’s true that what we are is affected a great deal by the society in which we live and grow up.Of course, all of us are different than we would have been if we had grown up in a different society, so it’s not denying in the slightest the effect on all of us of the social institutions within which we operate both on our values and our opportunity.On our opportunities, but I am only saying that a set of social institutions which stresses individual responsibility, which stresses a responsibility for the of the individual, given the kind of person he is.The kind of society in which he operates to be responsible for himself is a kind of a society which is likely to have a much higher and more responsible moral climate than the kind of a society in which you stress the lack of responsibilities.25:42The individual.For what happens to him, let me note the schizophrenia in the talk about social responsibility.There’S always a tendency to excuse the people who are harmed by what happens or the people who are regarded as a victims, there’s always a tendency to excuse them from any responsibility.They didn’t riot in Harlem because they had no control over their emotions because they were bad people or because they were irresponsible people.No, they rioted because of what society did to him.That’S the argument, but nobody ever turns it around and argues the other way.If the people who rioted our innocent of guilt, because society who did it to it, then aren’t the people who are singled out as the oppressors, also free of guilt?26:36Do you hear these scenes saying people say?Oh no, we mustn’t blame those bad people who trampled the poor under their feet because they’re not doing it out of their own individual will society is making them forcing them to do it.If you’re going to use the doctrine of social responsibility, you ought to be even-handed both ways.It excuses both the victim and the person who is responsible, because that would be inconsistent in the person who is alleged to be responsible for the victimization.27:10And similarly, you must be even-handed on the signs.We must all of us be individually responsible for what we do to our fellow man, whether that be harm or good, there’s, an additional reason why you’ve had a decline in the moral climate.You’Ll.Pardon me for returning to my my discipline of economics, but there’s a fundamental economic law which has never been contradicted to the best of my knowledge, and that is, if you paste more for something there will tend to be more of that something available.If the amount you’re willing to pay for anything goes up somehow or other somebody will supply more of that thing, we have made immoral behavior far more profitable.We have, in the course of the changes in our society, been establishing greater and greater incentives on people to behave in ways that most of us regard as immoral on each of us separately.We’Ve all been doing it.One of the examples that has always appealed to me along these lines is the example of Great Britain, not now, but in the 19th century and 18th century.You know.In the 18th century, Britain was regarded as a nation of smugglers of law of avoiders of people who broke the law in the 19th and early 20th century.Britain got the reputation for being the most a law beating country in the world, an incorruptible civil service.Everybody knew about the fact that you couldn’t bribe a civil servant in Britain away.You could want to say Italy or New York.29:00How did that come about?How did a nation of smugglers with no respect for the law, get converted into a nation of people?Obedience of the law, very simply by Allah by the less a fair policy adopted in the 19th century, which eliminated laws to break.If you had complete free trade, if you had complete free trade, as you did after the abolition of the Corn Laws, there was no more smuggling.29:30It was a meaningless term.You were free to bring anything into the country you wanted.29:33You couldn’t be a smuggler who’s impossible.If you didn’t need a license to establish a business, you didn’t need a license to open up a factory.What was there to bribe a civil servant for the civil servants became incorruptible because there was nothing to bribe them for now.Of course, these patterns there’s a cultural lag, as you have all learned in your anthropology courses and these patterns, once they develop, lasts for a while.But what has been happening in Britain in the last 30 and 40 years as Britain has been moving away from?Essentially, let’s say fair and toward a much more controlled and centralized economy.30:09This reputation for law obedience is disappearing.You’Ve had repeated scandals about ministers of the government about members of parliament about civil servants who have been brought about the rise in gang warfare and the rest.Why?Because you’re establishing an incentive you’ve got more laws to break now, it’s much more fundamental, when the only laws are those laws which everybody regards is right and valence.They have great moral force when you make laws that people separately do not regard as right invalid.30:45They lose their moral force.Is there anybody in here who has a moral compunction to speeding?I’M not saying you may not have a Prudential objection to speeding, you may be afraid you’ll get caught, but does it seem to you Lee immoral to speed?Maybe if so you’re a small minority, I have never yet found anybody who regarded it immoral as immoral to violate the foreign exchange.Regulations of a foreign country here are people who would never dream for a moment of stealing a nickel from their neighbor who have no hesitancy on manipulating their income tax returns so as to reduce their taxes by thousands.Why?Because the one set of laws have a moral value that people recognize independent of the law of the government having passed these laws, the other cent do not appeal to people’s moral instincts, so I believe well, let me give you some more examples from the United States.Prohibition of liquor, which was attempted, as you know, had disastrous effects on the climate of law, obedience and more relevant, something which had been legal to buy and drink.Some alcoholic beverages became illegal and you converted, law-abiding citizens into bootleggers.I heard over the 60 minutes on the program last Sunday night, a great story on butt legging.This has to do with the fact that the New York state tax on cigarettes is very much higher than the tax on cigarettes in the state of South Carolina.So you have people going down to South Carolina and buying the South Carolina low, taxed cigarettes and smuggling it into New York State and forging New York state tax stamps on it and then selling it to publicly a large fraction of all cigarettes sold in New York.32:38State are but light now there you’ve provided an incentive for people to break the law, so they break the law.It’S like prohibition in a different form.The obvious answer is for New York State to lower its taxes, and you will eliminate, but legging overnight and them and be able to take whatever may be.The number of policemen who are devoted to enforcing that kind of thing.You will be able to take them and turn them to useful work.I go back, however, to the essence of capitalism and its relevance to the question of humanity.As I say, the essence of a capitalist system in its pure form is that it is a system of cooperation without compulsion, a voluntary exchange of free enterprise.Now, I hasten to add, no actual system conforms to that notion in the actual world.You’Re always dealing with with more or less in the actual world.You always have impediments and interferences to voluntary exchange, but the essential character of a capitalist system is that it relies on voluntary exchange on you’re agreeing with me that you will buy something from me.If I will pay you a certain amount for it, the essential notion is that both parties to the exchange must benefit.This was a great vision of Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations that individuals, each separately pursuing their own could promote the social interest because you could get exchanged between people on the basis of mutual benefit.Now I want to emphasize to you here for this purpose that this notion extends far beyond economic matters, narrowly conceived.That’S really the main point I want to get across here, and I want to give you some very different kinds of examples.34:35Consider the development of language, the English language.There was never any central government that dictated the English language that set up some rules for it.There was no Planning Board that determined what word should be nouns in what words vowels, and I mean what words adjectives.Language grew through the free market through voluntary cooperation.I used a word.You used a word if was mutually advantageous to us to keep on using that word.35:05We keep on using language grows.It develops, it expands it contracts through the free market.Consider the body of common law, not legislative law, which is a very different thing, but the body of common law people voluntarily chose to go to a court and allow the court to adjudicate their dispute in the process.35:27There arose and developed the body of common law.Again, no central plan, no central coordination.You are here in an academic institution.How did scientific knowledge and understanding arise?How do we get the development of science?Is there somehow or other a government agency that decides what are the most important problems to be studied?35:48That prevents cooperation.Unfortunately, there are developing such agencies, but in the history of science that isn’t the way science developed science developed out of free-market exchange, it developed on occasion with a patronage of an authority but voluntary cooperation among the scientists.I read voluntarily the work that is done by economists and other lands.They read my work, they take the parts of it.They like they discard the parts they don’t in the process.You build a more and more complicated system through voluntary, free, voluntary exchange based on the principle of mutual benefit.36:26Similarly, to a free market and ideas.Again, that is a free market of exactly the same kind as the economic market and no Durman, and the two are very closely interrelated.Is it a violation of the free market in goods or the free market in ideas?If a country as Great Britain did immediately after the war has exchanged control under which no citizen of Britain may buy a foreign book, unless he got authorization from the Bank of England to acquire the foreign currency, is that any restriction on human and economic freedom, or Is it a restriction on ideas on the free market and ideas?I want to give you a final example which goes back to the fundamental question: we’ve been raising and that’s voluntary charitable activity.I want you to ask you a question: go back to the 19th century in the United States it was a period when you had about the closest approximation to a capitalist society.You can imagine in which the federal government, who is spending roughly an amount equal to roughly 3 percent of the national income almost entirely on the Army and Navy state and local governments, were spending about 6 or 7 percent of the national income, mostly on schooling.Very little of what has come to be regarded as welfare, yet the 19th century was a period of the greatest burst of voluntary charitable activity that we have seen in this country or any other country at any other time.When was Cornell established how it was established by the voluntary benefaction of the man who gave you your name sometime?What was it 1860 something that period of the 19th century saw the emergence of a host of private colleges, universities throughout the country?My own University of Chicago was established in 1890 and voluntary by voluntary eleemosynary activity.It was also the period which saw the growth and development of the nonprofit charitable Hospital.It saw the establishment of foreign missions of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of the Boy Scouts.You name it.38:43There is hardly a voluntary activity carnegie libraries, the free public libraries.Why was it that voluntary activity flourished because, again, the free market, voluntary cooperation among people cooperating to pursue their common interests, is a far more effective and efficient way of producing charitable results than any other known to man?I ask you: what is a common element in all of these cases?I’Ve mentioned language, common law, scientific knowledge, ideas, charitable activity, the development of an elaborate and complex structure without any central planning and without coercion, no central planning and language, common law and scientific knowledge, and I did in voluntary activity.And yet you develop complex mechanisms, complex structures with order with structures which, after the event, you can analyze in logical terms, without coercion.39:49You have progress through harmony rather than the attempt to impose progress.Through course, capitalism is often reproached as being materialistic.It’S often repro she’s erecting money as the chief motives, but yet again look at the facts.I may say you know: money is not a very noble motive, but it’s cleaner than most, but look at the facts who has produced the great achievements of mankind.40:22Can you name me a great play that has been written by a government committee?Can you name me an invention that was produced by a government Bureau, the great works that are the great achievements of mankind of all been the achievements of individuals of a Shakespeare or a George Bernard Shaw.George Bernard Shaw is a beautiful example because of course, as you know, he wrote the book the famous book, the Intelligent Woman’s Guide to socialism.He regarded himself as a socialist, but his career and his performance is a striking demonstration of the virtues of a capitalist system.He opposed again in science, it’s Einstein Copernicus Galileo, who are the great contributors of scientific ideas, not through government central organization, but mostly in spite of it in Galileo’s cases.You know, despite persecution, by the centralized authorities of his time again in the areas of charity.Florence Nightingale was not a government civil servant, she was a private individual, human being who was seeking to achieve the objective she held dear.41:43She was pursuing her self-interest.The plain fact is that in any society, whatever may be its form of organization, the people who are not interested in material values are a small minority.There are no societies in the world today that are more materialistic than the collectivist societies.It’S the Russian societies.It’S the Chinese societies, it’s the Yugoslavs ayahs that put all their stress on materialism on achieving economic goals and five-year plans that the non-materialistic achievements of mankind.Why?Because they are in a possession of position to suppress minorities.What we want for a society that is at once, humane and gives opportunity for great human achievements, is in a society in which that small minority, a minority of people who do not have materialistic objectives who are interested in some of these other achievements, have the greatest Degree of freedom and the only society that anybody has ever invented than anybody has ever discovered that comes close to doing.42:55That is a capitalist society.When you hear people objecting to the market or to capitalist, and you examine their objections, you will find that most of those objections are objections to freedom itself.What most people are objecting to is that the market gives people what the people want.43:15Instead of what the person talking thinks the people oughta want.This is true whether you are talking of the objections of a Galbraith to the market, whether you are talking of the objections of a Nader to the market, whether you were talking of the objections of a Marx or an angles or a Lenin to the market.The problem is that in a market society in a society in which people are free to do their own thing in which people make voluntary deals, it’s hard to do good.You’Ve got to persuade people and there’s nothing in this world harder.But the important thing is that in that kind of society it’s also hard to do harm.It’S true that if you had a concentrated power in the hands of an angel, he might be able to do a lot of good as he viewed it.But one man’s good is another man’s then, and the great virtue of a market capitalist society is that it be by preventing a concentration of power.It prevents people from doing the kind of harm which really concentrated power can do so that I conclude that capitalism per se is not humane or inhumane.Socialism per se is not humane or anyway, but capitalism tends to give the give free rein, much free rein to the more humane values of human beings.It tends to develop a climate which is more favorable to the development, on the one hand, of a higher moral atmosphere of responsibility and, on the other, to greater achievements in every realm of human understanding.Thank

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 7 of 7)

October 21, 2011 – 12:15 am

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. […]By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 6 of 7)

October 14, 2011 – 12:14 am

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things […]By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 5 of 7)

October 7, 2011 – 12:13 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 5 of 7 MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having […]By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 4 of 7)

September 30, 2011 – 12:12 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 4 of 7 The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 3 of 7)

September 23, 2011 – 12:11 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]

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Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 2 of 7)

September 16, 2011 – 12:10 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7)

September 9, 2011 – 12:09 am

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 7 of 7)

March 16, 2012 – 12:25 am

  Michael Harrington:  If you don’t have the expertise, the knowledge technology today, you’re out of the debate. And I think that we have to democratize information and government as well as the economy and society. FRIEDMAN: I am sorry to say Michael Harrington’s solution is not a solution to it. He wants minority rule, I […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 6 of 7)

March 9, 2012 – 12:29 am

PETERSON: Well, let me ask you how you would cope with this problem, Dr. Friedman. The people decided that they wanted cool air, and there was tremendous need, and so we built a huge industry, the air conditioning industry, hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous earnings opportunities and nearly all of us now have air […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 5 of 7)

March 2, 2012 – 12:26 am

Part 5 Milton Friedman: I do not believe it’s proper to put the situation in terms of industrialist versus government. On the contrary, one of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 4 of 7)

February 24, 2012 – 12:21 am

The fundamental principal of the free society is voluntary cooperation. The economic market, buying and selling, is one example. But it’s only one example. Voluntary cooperation is far broader than that. To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 3 of 7)

February 17, 2012 – 12:12 am

  _________________________   Pt3  Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 2 of 7)

February 10, 2012 – 12:09 am

  Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 1of 7)

February 3, 2012 – 12:07 am

“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]

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_

Francis Schaeffer noted:

let us think of the sex relationship. What is man’s attitude towards  the girl? It is possible, and common in the  modern setting, to have a “playboy” attitude, or  rather a “plaything” attitude, where the “play-  mate” becomes the “plaything.” Here, the girl is  no more than a sex object.  

But what is the Christian view? Somebody  may offer at this point the rather romantic no-  tion, “You shouldn’t look for any pleasure for  yourself; you should just look for the other per-  son’s pleasure.” But that is not what the Bible  says. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We have a right to pleasure, too. But what we  do not have a right to do is to forget that the  girl is a person and not an animal, or a plant, or  a machine. We have the right to have our plea-  sure in a sexual relationship, but we have no  right whatsoever to exploit a partner as a sex  object. 

There should be a conscious limitation upon  our pleasure. We impose a limit—a self-imposed  limit—in order to treat the wife fairly as a per-  son. So although a husband could do more, he  does not do everything he could do, because he  must treat her also as a person and not just as  a thing with no value. And if he does so treat  her, eventually he loses, because love is gone,  and all that is left is just a mechanical, chemical  sexuality; humanity is lost as he treats her as  less than human. Eventually not only her  humanity is diminished, but his as well. In con-  trast, if he does less than he could do, even-  tually he has more, for he has a human rela-  tionship; he has love and not just a physical  act. It is like the principle of the boomerang—it  can come full circle and destroy the destroyer. 

Proverbs 5 New Living Translation
https://youtu.be/djsxMznYjOo

Proverbs 5New International Version

Warning Against Adultery

5 My son,^(A) pay attention to my wisdom,
    turn your ear to my words^(B) of insight,
² that you may maintain discretion
    and your lips may preserve knowledge.
³ For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
    and her speech is smoother than oil;^(C)
4 but in the end she is bitter as gall,^(D)
    sharp as a double-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
    her steps lead straight to the grave.^(E)
6 She gives no thought to the way of life;
    her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.^(F)

⁷ Now then, my sons, listen^(G) to me;
    do not turn aside from what I say.
⁸ Keep to a path far from her,^(H)
    do not go near the door of her house,
⁹ lest you lose your honor to others
    and your dignity^[a] to one who is cruel,
¹⁰ lest strangers feast on your wealth
    and your toil enrich the house of another.^(I)
11 At the end of your life you will groan,
    when your flesh and body are spent.
¹² You will say, “How I hated discipline!
    How my heart spurned correction!^(J)
13 I would not obey my teachers
    or turn my ear to my instructors.
¹⁴ And I was soon in serious trouble^(K)
    in the assembly of God’s people.”^(L)

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
    running water from your own well.
¹⁶ Should your springs overflow in the streets,
    your streams of water in the public squares?
¹⁷ Let them be yours alone,
    never to be shared with strangers.
¹⁸ May your fountain^(M) be blessed,
    and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.^(N)
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer^(O)—
    may her breasts satisfy you always,
    may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
²⁰ Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
    Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?

²¹ For your ways are in full view^(P) of the Lord,
    and he examines^(Q) all your paths.^(R)
22 The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them;^(S)
    the cords of their sins hold them fast.^(T)
23 For lack of discipline they will die,^(U)
    led astray by their own great folly.^(V)

Adrian Rogers noted:

You don’t put all this garbage and this filth and this immorality and this nudity in your mind! Don’t go to those movies! Don’t read those magazines! Don’t watch that program! Don’t do it! Don’t do it.  “Can a man take a fire in his bosom and be not burned?  You’re not smarter than God! You’re not going to outsmart God.  And you put it in your mind, it’s going to come out in your life, “for out of the heart are the issues of life,” and we’re going to talk about that, and I’m going to be bringing a message on the poison of pornography before we get out of this series in the Book of Proverbs because the Proverbs have a lot to say about that.  God willing, I will do that. But notice here the distance that we should keep!

——

Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomonand Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.

THE AMERICAN DREAM IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT JESUS
ECCLESIASTES 2:1-26
FAIRVIEW CHURCH
February 8, 2015

*Wouldn’t all of this be great and make you happy?
*Achievements: I built houses (his 13 yrs & bigger than temple-1Kgs 7:1ff. & for his wives;7:8!)
-I could have a lake house, a beach house, etc. then I’d be happy
-He built whole cities (2 Chron 8:1-6), planted vineyards (Song of Songs), gardens, etc.
-The best of architecture and agriculture and engineering
-Your gardening hobby or Minecrafting pales in comparison to THIS!
-Literally he’s trying to create a new Garden of Eden/Paradise (Longman 90)
-He’s trying to get back to Eden, but doesn’t work in a fallen world
-Waited on hand and food by slaves (wouldn’t that be nice? Baker, maid, etc.)
-Lots of HERDS & FLOCKS more than any person in Jer before him
-Much $ from vassals (military fame) & his people (Silver common as stone; 2 Chr9:27)
-Loved the arts: had his own choir (Garrett 292)- like guy on Psych w/ Curt Smith
-A harem w/ Concubines – simply for purpose of sexual pleasure (meet his urges)
-So many on endless search for sexual pleasure/constant newness (Porn/50shades)
-Solomon could out locker room boast Wilt Chamberlain & Hugh Hefner
*He denied himself nothing. He had most success, best houses, possessions, lifestyle,
sophistication, finest wines/foods, nicest lawns, waited on hand & foot, more $ than we could
possibly imagine, military success, fame, popularity, entertainment, and as much sexual
pleasure as 1 could want – empty (all of it a violation of Deut 17)
-Point: he outdid anything we could ever do
-Wasn’t 1 fantasy he didn’t play out
-We think I just need more, and he says NO (what’s gonna make diff? 1001 women)
-Nothing brought meaning…if that’s true for him what hope do we have!
*So I did more than anyone before me…indulged in every desire & reward of my toil
-It was all of it was meaningless, chasing wind, nothing gained!
-When will you be happy? What would you put in the blank? Won’t work!
3
-Always need for more, bigger high, longer lasting pleasure
-I thought if I could just have the American Dream and have as much fun as possible
everything would be different, I’d be happy, but I’m not!
-It’s all fleeting (state championships fade, money goes, etc.)

__

Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen:  Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley,  Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis,    Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell,  Ken Whitten, Ed Young ,  Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.

In the next few weeks I will be posting some letters that I sent to Hugh Hefner that were based primarily on the sermon series BETTER THAN which is a study in the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES done by our pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 2016.  Our teaching pastors here are Mark Henry,

Ben Parkinson

and Brandon Barnard.

Today’s letter is based on a sermon by Mark Henry.

_

January 24, 2016

Hugh Hefner
Playboy Mansion  
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815

Dear Mr. Hefner,

Last week I talked about you admitting that you were a workaholic during the formative years of building your magazine and that I got that quote from the article,  “Playboy at 60: Hugh Hefner Looks Back,” You noted, “I had been really consumed the first few years on the magazine.” 

Then I went on  to quote from our sermon last Sunday from Mark Henry who is one of the teaching pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH.

(Pictured below Pastor Mark Henry with his family)

Here is the 2nd part of that sermon below:

WORK BEGAN WITH GOD. GOD IS A WORKER. Jesus was a carpenter. He had a job too. 

GOD CREATED ADAM AND EVE TO WORK AND BUILD A CULTURE THAT WOULD GLORIFY HIM. WE ARE WORKERS. Being made in God’s image also includes being designed to work, and we have that desire is in us. But in Genesis 3 because of our sin God’s beautiful design for accomplishing and doing comes to a bitter and untimely end. God cursed the ground so that creation continually wars against itself making all of our labor a frustrating toil. 

THERE IS NO WORK IN OUR LIVES THAT HAS NOT BEEN KISSED BY THE CURSE OF THE FALL. 

Ecclesiastes 2:18 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Vanity of Toil

¹⁸ I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me,WHAT MAKES OUR WORK TOIL IS THAT EVER SINCE THE FALL WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING TO OUR WORK TO GIVE US A SENSE OF IDENTITY. We believe we are what we do. Our work is a toil because we try and find our identity in our work rather than find our identity in Jesus. Why do you think there are so many workaholics? Workaholics have this obsessive desire to succeed and this comes out of the hope that maybe that some amount of work and accomplishment will bring meaning to their life. However, no amount of work can bring true satisfaction to our souls. No matter how much money we make there is always this sense that something is missing and there has to be more to life.Solomon says if you think you can cheat this because you are saying that you are doing all this hard work for your kids, well that is vanity too!!!!!Remember SOLOMON IS OLDER AND HE SEES THAT FINISH LINE OF DEATH QUICKLY APPROACHING and he has worked to build this massive empire and the question that haunts him is this: WHAT IF THE KID WHO INHERITS ALL MY STUFF IS AN IDIOT?”Ecclesiastes 2:21 English Standard Version (ESV)

²¹ because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

Our works and achievements don’t truly last. In time what we have accomplished and gotten will be lost by the next generation because they didn’t earn it themselves. They don’t value it the same way. 

___

There are two points that my pastor made that I want to directly personalize to you HUGH!!!!

1st point: HUGH, YOU LIKE SOLOMON ARE IN THE FINAL DAYS OF YOUR LIFE (YOU SEE THE FINISH LINE APPROACHING) AND YOU NEED TO LOOK AT SOLOMON’S FINAL CONCLUSION IN THE LAST TWO VERSES OF ECCLESIASTES:

¹³ The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.¹⁴ For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

2nd point: HUGH, DON’T ATTEMPT TO CONTINUE YOUR BUSINESS LEGACY BY PASSING IT ON TO YOUR SON COOPER HEFNER!!!!!

Solomon points out that is like CHASING THE WIND to try and pass on your legacy to your son because he may be an idiot. (Someone like Cooper who is entering a marriage soon is certainly an idiot if he hopes to sustain a successful marriage in the Playboy environment).  A much wiser move would be to pass on these wise words of Solomon from Proverbs 5 to all our of your sons.

My son, give attention to my wisdom,
Incline your ear to my understanding;
² That you may observe discretion
And your lips may reserve knowledge.
³ For the lips of an adulteress drip honey
And smoother than oil is her speech;
⁴ But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death,
Her steps take hold of Sheol.
⁶ She does not ponder the path of life;
Her ways are unstable, she does not know it.

Again, your business is built on the PLAYBOY PHILOSOPHY and that is hurtful to marriages such as your son Cooper will be entering into soon.

Why are these words in Proverbs 5 so wise? Adrian Rogers explains in his sermon“THE PLAYBOY’S PAYDAY,” :

Go back to chapter 5 and look if you will in verse 7 and 8: “Hear me now therefore, 0 ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.  Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh to the door of her house.”  Are you listening to me? 

This sin of immorality is not a sin we’re told to fight in the Bible.  It is a sin that we’re told to flee.  The Bible says, “Flee fornication.”  The Bible says, “Flee youthful lusts.” You just get out of that compromising situation.  If there is a person that works in the office where you work, and that person is flirting with you, and you feel that lust and that attraction, if you find something happening that’s ugly and impure in your heart, it would be better for you to quit than to stay in that office.  Just resign. You say, But my job!  Your purity! If you’re walking down the street, just go all the way around the block just to miss it.   That’s exactly what he’s saying here. 

Listen.  Listen.  “Remove thy way from her and come not nigh the door of her house.” Just get away! Don’t see how close you can come to the edge without falling over.  See how far that you can stay away. Flee fornication!  Flee fornication! I know what you young men feel.  I felt it.  When I was in college, well, know they say that what a man thinks about, he becomes.   I almost turned into a girl.  Man! It’s real! But I’ll tell you what, I had a motto on my desk.  And this is what it said.  I put it right on my desk where I studied.  “He who would not fall down, ought not to walk in slippery places.” Amen.   He who would not fall down, ought not to walk in slippery places.  The distance that we should keep! 

You don’t put all this garbage and this filth and this immorality and this nudity in your mind! Don’t go to those movies! Don’t read those magazines! Don’t watch that program! Don’t do it! Don’t do it.  “Can a man take a fire in his bosom and be not burned?  You’re not smarter than God! You’re not going to outsmart God.  And you put it in your mind, it’s going to come out in your life, “for out of the heart are the issues of life,” and we’re going to talk about that, and I’m going to be bringing a message on the poison of pornography before we get out of this series in the Book of Proverbs because the Proverbs have a lot to say about that.  God willing, I will do that. But notice here the distance that we should keep!

Now, the message is over, but let me just tell you one or two or three things.   Number one, if you’re not saved, you get saved.  Listen to me now.  Don’t put things off.  Just listen.  If you’re not saved, you get saved.  You’re not going to make it without Jesus in this sex-saturated society.   If you’re not saved, you get saved!

Francis Schaeffer rightly observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.” Even though wrote this wise words in Proverbs 5 he also fell into the trap of sleeping with many women. Don’t let your sons make the same mistakes that you have HUGH!!!

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

PS: This is the 15th letter I have written to you and again I have taken an aspect of your life and responded with what the Bible has to say on that subject.

Hugh Hefner’s Son, Cooper Hefner, Engaged to Actress Scarlett Byrne

______________

Like father, like son: Playboy founder Hugh poses with his sons Cooper and Marston

_

The featured artist today is Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction. After earning his BA from Catholic University in Washington DC, Puryear joined the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and later attended the Swedish Royal Academy of Art. He received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1971. Puryear’s objects and public installations—in wood, stone, tar, wire, and various metals—are a marriage of minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. Puryear’s evocative, dreamlike explorations in abstract forms retain vestigial elements of utility from everyday objects found in the world.

In Ladder for Booker T. Washington, Puryear built a spindly, meandering ladder out of jointed ash wood. More than thirty-five-feet tall, the ladder narrows toward the top, creating a distorted sense of perspective that evokes an unattainable or illusionary goal. In the massive stone piece, Untitled, Puryear enlisted a local stonemason to help him construct a building-like structure on a ranch in northern California. On one side of the work is an eighteen-foot-high wall—on the other side, an inexplicable stone bulge. A favorite form that occurs in Puryear’s work, the thick-looking stone bulge is surprisingly hollow, coloring the otherwise sturdy shape with qualities of uncertainty, emptiness, and loss.

Martin Puryear represented the United States at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1989, where his exhibition won the Grand Prize. Puryear is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. Puryear was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1992 and received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1994. Martin Puryear lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York.

_

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