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October 19, 2015
Hugh Hefner
Playboy Mansion
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
I read about your mother Grace being a Bible-believing Christian. Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Seminary noted, “Hefner’s Methodist mother wanted him to be a missionary. In a very real sense, she got her wish in reverse. Hefner became a missionary all right, but a missionary that preached a rejection of the Christian sexual ethic.”
Your mother had such a beautiful name. God’s Grace is offered to you today as you approach your last days. I got a short dose of that reality in 1976 when I was put in the hospital on the amputee floor because I had a fast growing cancer in my leg and I was going to lose my leg and probably my life. During those 5 days I got right with God on my knees and the Lord actually healed my body when I was 15 so I could live till today with both of my legs. I have never forgotten what it was like to know that I was meeting my maker soon.
I have several heroes in my life and three of them have talked about you a great deal. My political hero William F. Buckley (1925-2008) interviewed on FIRING LINE in 1966 and I am going to quote from that interview just below this paragraph. My spiritual heroes were Adrian Rogers (1931-2005) and Francis Schaeffer (1911-1984). Adrian Rogers served 3 times as Southern Baptist Convention President and was my pastor when I grew up in Memphis at Bellevue Baptist Church. Francis Schaeffer coauthored a book called WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? with Dr. C. Everett Koop.
This is your quote from FIRING LINE:
Hugh Hefner: It is an attempt to reevaluate some of the socialand sexual ills of our time. I think what is going on in society at this particular time is a quest for a new morality, is something in which we are one small voice is really an attempt to supply a 20th century code…I think that hopefully we are going to evolve a more what has been called SITUATION ETHICS, an approach to ethical problems where sex is concerned, not unlike the approaches we use for other problems are concerned. In other areas of morality I don’t think it is as cut and dry. You follow a certain law just to follow that law even if sometimes it takes you out the window. In the case of premarital sex, I think this a prime example of this.
William F. Buckley: How so?
Hugh Hefner: Well we have taken the attitude traditionally…it is not Christian in the sense it came from Christ per se but is something that grew through the organization, the historical anti-sexual aspect of the Christian ethic…and it is a rejection of the notion that sex can be, can have any real place, any moral place prior to marriage…I think we are more apt to have a truly monogamous society if we do realistically come to grips with some of these problems….I think that premarital sex can be moral or immoral just as marital sex can.
In 1984 Adrian Rogers said in sermon, “Playboy’s Payday,” these words:
(The text for this sermon was the whole chapter of Proverbs 5)
I’m telling you the Word of God here today. You’re going to blow it, and when you come to the end of it, you’re going to miss the best of life. Do you know what Hugh Hefner said on another occasion? He was reminiscing. Here is this guy who has all of these girls around him, all of this booze, all of these casinos and presumably can have any sensual pleasure he wants. He said, You know, in the next ten years I would rather meet a girl and fall in love and have her fall in love with me than to make another one hundred million dollars. But I fear the man doesn’t know what love is. I feel that he’s missed it. What he’s saying is, I’ve got it all, but I don’t have satisfaction! There’s something that’s worth more than a hundred million dollars to me, and I don’t have it!
Marilyn Monroe, the sex goddess who took her own life, said, “I hate sex.” Everybody says, “Oh, look at the pleasure that she’s having.” In Sweden, Sweden’s a liberated country, they have open pornography, open prostitution, free love in Sweden. It’s all accepted. That’s supposed to be the liberated country in the Western world. The Swedes! Do you know what nation has the highest divorce rate of any nation? Sweden. . “God is not mocked.” I’m telling you there is a disappointment in sin. The cup of sin is sweet, but the dregs are bitter indeed.
They did an in-depth study at Stanford University. These are not a bunch of preachers, and their conclusion of the in-depth study was this: that the more promiscuous people were before marriage, the less chance for happiness after marriage. The try-it-before-you-marry-it idea may sound cute, but it’s not in the Word of God, dear friend. This idea of living together to see if you’re compatible, the more promiscuous people were before marriage, the less chance of opportunity for satisfaction after marriage. Young people, many of them right now are on the beaches of Fort Lauderdale, many of them have gone down there attempting to make it with some girl, to make it with some boy, to jump in bed with somebody. They think that’s the way. And our young people are being told that so much that they think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it!
I have read up on you and watched a lot of your interviews on YOU TUBE and I am very impressed that you have been open about talking about the big questions of life and also your willingness to be interviewed by people such as William F. Buckley and Lee Strobel. It is my view that is because of your attempt to reconcile the Biblical teaching you got from Grace Hefner when you grew up to your beliefs now.
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Hugh Hefner in High School
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Hefner family below:
Here is an excerpt of your interview that I found very interesting:
LEE STROBEL: If you could ask God any one question, and you knew
He’d give you an answer, what would you ask?
HUGH HEFNER: Oh I think the one question I’d really like to know is
uh the question related to an after life. And the other question is
the meaning of it all.
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.
THE FIRST STEP TO FINDING OUT IF THE BIBLE IS TRUE TO INVESTIGATE ITS HISTORICAL CLAIMS. God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop in their book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? Chapter 5 concerning the accuracy of the Bible:
In the previous chapter we saw that the Bible gives us the explanation for the existence of the universe and its form and for the mannishness of man. Or, to reverse this, we came to see that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man are a testimony to the truth of the Bible. In this chapter we will consider a third testimony: the Bible’s openness to verification by historical study.
Christianity involves history. To say only that is already to have said something remarkable, because it separates the Judeo-Christian world-view from almost all other religious thought. It is rooted in history.
The Bible tells us how God communicated with man in history. For example, God revealed Himself to Abraham at a point in time and at a particular geographical place. He did likewise with Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and so on. The implications of this are extremely important to us. Because the truth God communicated in the Bible is so tied up with the flow of human events, it is possible by historical study to confirm some of the historical details.
It is remarkable that this possibility exists. Compare the information we have from other continents of that period. We know comparatively little about what happened in Africa or South America or China or Russia or even Europe. We see beautiful remains of temples and burial places, cult figures, utensils, and so forth, but there is not much actual “history” that can be reconstructed, at least not much when compared to that which is possible in the Middle East.
When we look at the material which has been discovered from the Nile to the Euphrates that derives from the 2500-year span before Christ, we are in a completely different situation from that in regard to South America or Asia. The kings of Egypt and Assyria built thousands of monuments commemorating their victories and recounting their different exploits. Whole libraries have been discovered from places like Nuzu and Mari and most recently at Elba, which give hundreds of thousands of texts relating to the historical details of their time. It is within this geographical area that the Bible is set. So it is possible to find material which bears upon what the Bible tells us.
The Bible purports to give us information on history. Is the history accurate? The more we understand about the Middle East between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100, the more confident we can be that the information in the Bible is reliable, even when it speaks about the simple things of time and place.
The site of the biblical city called Lachish is about thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem. This city is referred to on a number of occasions in the Old Testament. Imagine a busy city with high walls surrounding it, and a gate in front that is the only entrance to the city. We know so much about Lachish from archaeological studies that a reconstruction of the whole city has been made in detail. This can be seen at the British Museum in the Lachish Room in the Assyrian section.
There is also a picture made by artists in the eighth century before Christ, the Lachish Relief, which was discovered in the city of Nineveh in the ancient Assyria. In this picture we can see the Jewish inhabitants of Lachish surrendering to Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. The details in the picture and the Assyrian writing on it give the Assyrian side of what the Bible tells us in Second Kings:
2 Kings 18:13-16
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
13 Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. 14 Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” So the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. 16 At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
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We should notice two things about this. First, this is a real-life situation–a real siege of a real city with real people on both sides of the war–and it happened at a particular date in history, near the turn of the eighth century B.C. Second, the two accounts of this incident in 701 B.C. (the account from the Bible and the Assyrian account from Nineveh) do not contradict, but rather confirm each other. The history of Lachish itself is not so important for us, but some of its smaller historical details.
Archaeological Discoveries
Jewish Captives from Lachish
Isaiah 36:1-2
Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
This sculptured wall excavated at ancient Nineveh illustrates the fall of Lachish by the army of king Sennacherib and the inhabitants being driven into captivity. Before Sennacherib was routed at Jerusalem by the Angel of the Lord, he had captured 36 cities. British Museum
Sennacherib Exiles Lachish of Judah
Sennacherib’s Clay Prism
This beautifully preserved six-sided hexagonal prism of baked clay, commonly known as the Taylor Prism, was discovered among the ruins of Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire. It contains the victories of Sennacherib himself, the Assyrian king who had besieged Jerusalem in 701 BC during the reign of king Hezekiah, it never mentions any defeats. On the prism Sennacherib boasts that he shut up “Hezekiah the Judahite” within Jerusalem his own royal city “like a caged bird.” This prism is among the three accounts discovered so far which have been left by the Assyrian king Sennacherib of his campaign against Israel and Judah. Oriental Institute Chicago, Illinois
Interesting note: Egyptian sources make mention of Sennacherib’s defeat in the conflict with Judah, but gives the credit for the victory to an Egyptian god who sent field mice into the camp of the Assyrians to eat their bowstrings and thus they fled from battle.
(See 2 Kings 19; 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 37)
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Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.
Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221
PS: I plan to write you again and will be responding to your past statements like I did today. Thanks again for being so transparent. It is obvious that you care deeply about the important issues in life.
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Featured artist is Hito Steyerl
Hito Steyerl was born in 1966 in Munich and now lives and works in Berlin. A filmmaker, philosopher, and cultural critic, Steyerl roots her investigative practice in the proliferation of digital images and the large-scale implications of such circumstances. Steyerl’s work takes the form of essays, lectures, installations, video, and photography.
Considering such topics as the ways in which money enters and influences the art world, post-structural philosophy, free ports, and military propaganda, Steyerl’s practice is both acutely political and timely. In addition to teaching, she cofounded the Research Center for Proxy Politics; operating from 2014 through 2017, the organization hosted lectures and discussions on various topics, including the potential for resistance within a networked society and the role of art in emergency situations.
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The Daily Hatch 