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A Christian’s review of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Part 1

July 22, 2014 – 4:25 pm

A Christian’s review of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Part 1

Nathaniel Branden on “My Years With Ayn Rand”

Uploaded on Nov 11, 2009

Throughout Ayn Rand’s career, no collaborator was closer to her than Nathaniel Branden, whom she once named her “intellectual heir.” 

In Rand, Branden found a fearless advocate of individualism and of man as a heroic being. In Branden, Rand saw her vision come to life in flesh and blood. “She gave people a sense that they could be effective. That if they would persevere, stick by their standards, work hard, you could achieve something you can be proud of. Find that part in you—she would say the hero in your own soul’—and work towards that,” says Branden.

After a decade at the center of Rand’s inner circle, Branden founded the Nathaniel Branden Institute with the goal of promoting her philosophy. The Institute was largely responsible for the spread of Rand’s ideas during the 1960s, but came to an abrupt end when romantic conflict between Branden and Rand tore apart their professional association.

Despite the official and unreconciled split between the two, the 79-year-old Branden has remained true to the spirit of Rand’s work during his prolific career as a psychologist of self-esteem. To this day, their legacies remain inseparable and in 2000, Branden authored My Years with Ayn Rand, his second memoir of his relationship to the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Approximately 10 minutes. Nathaniel Branden was interviewed by David Nott, filmed by Alex Manning, and edited by Hawk Jensen and Alex Manning. 

This video is part of the Reason.tv series Radicals For Capitalism: Celebrating the Ideas of Ayn Rand.

__________________________

Was Ayn Rand Right?

  • Article ID: JAF1324
  • By: Jay W. Richards

Synopsis

In response to the critics of capitalism, many conservative Christians turn to philosopher Ayn Rand for ammunition. Rand was a staunch defender of capitalism, but also an anti-Christian atheist who argued that capitalism was based on greed. Greed, for Rand, is good. But if Rand is right, then Christians can’t be capitalists, because greed is a sin. Fortunately, Rand was wrong. She missed the subtleties of capitalism. First, we should distinguish self-interest from selfishness. Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, famously wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” True enough; but that alone isn’t a problem. Every time you wash your hands or look both ways before you cross the street, you’re pursuing your self-interest—but neither activity is selfish. Second, Smith never argued that the more selfish we are, the better a market works. His point, rather, is that in a free market, each of us can pursue ends within our narrow sphere of competence and concern—our “self-interest”—and yet an order will emerge that vastly exceeds anyone’s deliberations. Finally, Smith argued that capitalism channels greed, which is a good thing. The point is that even if the butcher is selfish, he can’t make you buy his meat. He has to offer you meat at a price you’ll willingly buy. So capitalism doesn’t need greed. What it does need is rule of law, freedom, and human creativity and initiative. And we can point that out without any help from Ayn Rand.

If you’re over forty, you probably remember the 1987 movie Wall Street. Kirk Douglas played the key role, a ruthless corporate raider named Gordon Gekko. Gekko is famous for his defense of selfishness: “Greed…is good,” he tells a young broker. “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all its forms…has marked the upward surge of mankind.” Gekko embodies the enduring stereotype of the greedy businessman.

Given the coverage of the current financial crisis, it’s no surprise that Twentieth Century Fox is now producing a sequel. Many people, including many Christians, believe that the crisis is the product of greedy capitalism—pure and simple. Others, including many Christians, want to defend capitalism, but end up drawing on the work of philosopher and playwright Ayn Rand, who called greed a virtue. That puts most of us between the proverbial rock and the hard place.

As if in response, some prominent evangelicals such as Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and Ron Sider have criticized capitalism as based on the “greed principle” (to quote Campolo).1 And it’s hard to blame them, since even many fans of capitalism, such as Rand, seem to agree. And certainly for Christians, greed is not good. Greed, selfishness, or “avarice” is one of the seven deadly sins, and the Bible has nothing good to say about it. In the Gospels, when Jesus was asked to settle an inheritance dispute, He responded: “Watch Out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15 TNIV). The Tenth Commandment says, “Do not covet,” which no doubt applies to greed as well. Jesus includes greed with murder and adultery in a long list of sins (Mark 7:21– 22). Paul tells the Ephesians that no greedy person—“that is, an idolater,” he explains—will inherit the kingdom of God (Eph. 5:5 ESV). These are just a few of the dozens of biblical passages condemning greed.

So what do we do? Must we embrace Rand’s anti-Christian philosophy to defend capitalism? Or must we reject capitalism because it’s based on greed? I don’t think we have to do either. The truth is much more interesting, and much more encouraging.

THE BEEHIVE

Rand wasn’t the first one to identify capitalism with greed. That honor goes to a Dutchman named Bernard Mandeville. In 1705, he wrote a poem called The Fable of the Bees. Nobody noticed it. So in 1714, he republished it with a lengthy commentary explaining that the poem was a metaphor for English society. Mandeville saw humans and bees as little more than bundles of vicious passions. The Parable reflected that belief.

In the beehive, different bees do different tasks, but they all have the same motivation—vice. The poem describes avarice, pride, and vanity as producing great wealth for the hive. The bees, however, are discontent. They grumble at the lack of virtue around them. They gripe so incessantly that Jove eventually gives them what they ask for. Honesty and virtue now fill the hive. And everything collapses. The bees’ virtuous actions led to disaster whereas the individual acts of evil had led to social good.

Taken literally, Mandeville’s claim is ridiculous. Good doesn’t come from evil. Virtue isn’t born from vice. Virtue doesn’t destroy society. Still, he did get one thing right: bad intentions don’t always yield bad results. Recall that the Apostle Paul once delighted that some were preaching the gospel out of envy of him. He didn’t delight in the envy, but in the preaching. So even private sinful acts may lead to a social good.

THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS?

After Mandeville came the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, who in 1776 wrote the most famous book in the history of economics, The Wealth of Nations. Though the book is long on pages and detail, its basic purpose was simple. Smith wanted to defend what he called the natural system of liberty: rule of law, unobtrusive government, private property, specialization of labor, and free trade. To prosper, a society needed “little else,” he said, “but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.”2 But so far from flattering the business class, Smith famously said that “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”3 Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Smith never credited the happy outcomes of trade and business to the virtues of business people. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker,” he wrote, only to be quoted by every economics textbook ever written, “that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”4 Nevertheless, through the invisible hand of the market, individuals will “promote an end which is no part of [their] intention.”5 That end often benefits society overall.

If you don’t read Smith carefully, you might think that he’s making the same argument as Mandeville: individual greed is good for society. That’s a misreading of Smith, which was made wildly popular by Ayn Rand.

THEN COMES RAND

Perhaps more than anyone else, Ayn Rand not only identified capitalism with greed, but defended it in those terms. She even wrote a book called The Virtue of Selfishness.6 For Rand, greed was the basis for a free economy. Capitalism and greed go together like fat cats and big cigars. To prevent readers from thinking she was using hyperbole, Rand went out of her way to espouse atheism and stridently denounce Christian altruism as antithetical to capitalism: “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible,” she said, “they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.”7 In fact, she had a hard time distinguishing Christian altruism from socialism.

Rand was born in Russia in 1905 as Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, and immigrated to the United States in 1925, just as communism was securing its stranglehold on the Soviet Union. Her hatred of the collectivism she saw in her youth was etched into her worldview, her writings, even her strange personality. After coming to the U.S., she worked as a script writer in various Hollywood studios. The release of her novel The Fountainhead in 1943 made her famous. Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, made her a sensation.

In her novels, she developed characters that expressed her philosophy “of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”8 Her books read more like tracts for her philosophy of “objectivism” than ordinary novels. As Daniel Flynn puts it, “The themes of Rand’s four novels—We the Living, Anthem, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged—are identical. As far as the philosophy of her novels goes, to read one is to read them all.”9

But for millions of readers, her books still inspire. I discovered Rand during my senior year in college. Her books were like a blow to the chest. She mercilessly skewered every leftist cliché that I had taken for granted. I found her bracing prose and iconic heroes attractive and repellant at the same time. For a few months, she seized me. I frittered away a week of my senior year reading Atlas Shrugged rather than studying for a German final.

The book tells about an elite group of creative entrepreneurs and inventors, “individuals of the mind,” who go on strike against a state that implements the communist principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” For Rand, these entrepreneurial heroes, like Atlas in Greek mythology, hold up the world. By pursuing their long-term self-interest, they create value for everyone. So when they shrug—that is, strike—society begins to decay.

The hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, founds a secret community off the collectivist grid, called Galt’s Gulch. Here in this New Jerusalem, individuality and self-interest are prized above all else. One long chapter of the book, “This is John Galt Speaking,” is nothing but a speech by Galt. It’s the perfect distillation of Rand’s philosophy.

Despite Rand’s official praise of selfishness, however, John Galt doesn’t look anything like Ebenezer Scrooge or that fat, cigar-smoking, tuxedo-clad guy in Monopoly. On the contrary, Galt is a pioneer, a brave creator of wealth who pursues his vision despite powerful obstacles, including a malevolent state bent on destroying him. In fact, although Rand despised Christian self-sacrifice, Galt is suspiciously Christ-like. He preaches a message of salvation, founds a community, challenges the status quo and official powers-that-be, who hunt him down, torture him, but ultimately fail to conquer him.

To be sure, there are dissonant notes. His symbol is not a cross, but the dollar sign. The book ends with Galt and his lover tracing the sign of the dollar across a dry valley. But insofar as Galt’s character works, it’s because he contradicts the miserly stereotype that Rand’s philosophy leads the reader to expect. In fact, not one of Rand’s best fictional characters fits her philosophy very well.

Rand convinced me that collectivism was a false moral pretense. She also taught me the importance of entrepreneurs in creating wealth. Rand knew, better than some economists, that you can’t have capitalism without capitalists. Rand continues to be popular with some conservatives, including some Christians. Based on my brief description of her work, that might seem unlikely. But the lack of robust moral defenses of capitalism has left a void. And for many, Rand has filled it.

That’s a problem, of course, since her philosophy as a whole is clearly incompatible with the Christian worldview. Fortunately, we don’t need Rand’s philosophy to defend capitalism. Capitalism and Rand’s defense of it are two different things. This is clear once you realize that Rand bought into a myth more common among critics of capitalism, that the essence of capitalism is greed.

SELFISHNESS AND SELF-INTEREST

Some thirty million books by Rand have been sold, and more than five-hundred thousand copies of her books are still sold every year. In a poll conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in the 1990s, Atlas Shrugged came in second behind the Bible as the most influential book. Although her work is best known in the U.S., it’s read around the world.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that many conservatives, including many Christians, embrace her: they think they have nowhere else to go. Who but Rand made industrialists the heroes of novels? Whatever the reasons for her popularity, however, she completely missed the subtleties of capitalism. Her hatred of Marxism and collectivism led her to defend a caricature of capitalism more grotesque than anything Marx imagined.

Her praise of “greed” is the reduction to the absurd of a bad interpretation of Adam Smith’s concept of self-interest. Smith, a moral philosopher, didn’t goad butchers, brewers, and bakers to be more selfish.10 He believed that normal adults aren’t self-absorbed monads but have a natural sympathy for their fellow human beings. His point about self-interest is that, in a rightly ordered market economy, you’re usually better off appealing to someone’s self-love than to their kindness. The butcher is more likely to give you meat if it’s a win-win trade, for example, than if you’re reduced to begging. Smith isn’t suggesting that butchers should never help beggars.11

Smith was a realist. He wasn’t naïve about the motives of merchants and everyone else. In fact, like most academics, he harbored snobbish prejudices against business. He knew the difference, however, between self-interest and mere selfishness.12 Smith believed humans are a mixed breed. We are pulled to and fro by our whims and passions, but we’re not a slave to them, since our passions can be checked by the “impartial spectator” of reason. We are capable of vices such as greed and virtues such as sympathy.

Unlike Mandeville, moreover, Smith didn’t view all our passions as vicious. We may be passionately committed to a just cause, for instance. At the same time, he saw greed as a vice. So while he agreed with Mandeville that private vices could lead to public goods, he was an ardent critic of the Dutchman. “There is,” he said, “another system which seems to take away altogether the distinction between vice and virtue, and of which the tendency is, upon that account, wholly pernicious: I mean the system of Dr. Mandeville.”13 You’d never catch Smith endorsing Ayn Rand.

For Smith, pursuing your self-interest was not in itself immoral. Every second of the day, you act in your own interest. Every time you take a breath, wash your hands, eat your fiber, take your vitamins, look both ways before crossing the street, take a shower, pay your bills, go to the doctor, read a book, and pray for God’s forgiveness, you’re pursuing your self-interest. That’s not just okay. In most cases, you ought to do these things.

In fact, proper self-interest is the basis for the “Golden Rule,” which Jesus called the second greatest commandment, after the command to love God: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12 NIV). I’m supposed to use my rightful concern for myself as a guide in how I treat others. This makes sense, since I know best what I need. “Every man is, no doubt, by nature,” Smith said, “first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.”14

Self-interest isn’t just looking out for number one at everyone else’s expense. Since we’re social beings, our self-interest includes our friends, families, communities, coworkers, coreligionists, and others.15 When I pay my bills, I’m not just pursuing my narrow interest, but the interests of my family, my bank, my community, and whomever I’m paying. I chose my church and my neighborhood and my car not just for myself, but for my children. (Mostly for them, in fact. If I were childless, do you think I’d drive a grey Honda Accord?)

Most of your choices involve the interests of others, too. Self-interest has to do with those things we know, value, and have some control over. I’m most responsible for what I do. Smith’s point was not that the more selfish we are, the better a market works. His point, rather, is that in a free market, each of us can pursue ends within our narrow sphere of competence and concern—our “self-interest”—and yet an order will emerge that vastly exceeds anyone’s deliberations.16 The same would be true, even if we did everything with godly rather than mixed motives. The central point is not our greed, but the limits to our knowledge. The market is a higher-level order that exceeds the knowledge of any and all of us.

FALLING INTO CAPITALISM

So, contrary to Rand, capitalism doesn’t need greed. At the same time, it can channel greed, which is all to the good. We should want a social order that channels proper self-interest as well as selfishness into socially desirable outcomes. Any system that requires everyone always to act selflessly is doomed to failure because it’s utopian. That’s the problem with socialism: it doesn’t fit the human condition. It alienates people from their rightful self-interest and channels selfishness into socially destructive behavior such as stealing, hoarding, and getting the government to steal for you.

In contrast, capitalism is fit for real, fallen, limited human beings. “In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity,” Adam Smith wrote, business people “are led by an invisible hand…and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.”17 Notice he says “in spite of.” His point isn’t that the butcher should be selfish, or even that his selfishness is particularly helpful. His point is rather that even if the butcher is selfish, even if the butcher would love nothing more than to sell you a spoiled chunk of grisly beef in exchange for your worldly goods and leave you homeless, the butcher can’t make you buy his meat in a free economy. He has to offer you meat you’ll freely buy. The cruel, greedy butcher, in other words, has to look for ways to set up win-win scenarios. Even to satisfy his greed, he has to meet your desires. The market makes this happen. That’s making the best of a bad situation, and of a bad butcher.

DOES CAPITALISM MAKE PEOPLE GREEDY?

Even if capitalism doesn’t need greed, doesn’t it feed greed? Many religious scholars don’t even distinguish capitalism and greed.18 Capitalism is just greed elevated to economics, or so they think. And if you happen to catch Donald Trump on The Apprentice, you might suspect they’re on to something.

To be sure, Rand and other champions of capitalism appeal to greed, even glory in it. There’s no evidence, however, that citizens of capitalist countries in general, or Americans in particular, are more greedy than average. In fact, the evidence suggests just the opposite.19

Of course Americans should be more generous, more loving, more thankful, more thoughtful, and less sinful. If you look, you can find greed all across the fruited plains and in every human heart. That’s because we’re fallen human beings, not because we’re Americans or capitalists. Every culture and walk of life has heaping helpings of greedy people. There are greedy doctors, greedy social workers, greedy teachers, politicians, park rangers, and youth pastors. That’s why greed can explain why capitalism works no better than it can explain the universal thirst for, say, well-synchronized traffic lights: greed is universal. Capitalism is not.

THE GIFT GIVERS

Think of a stereotypical miser like Ebenezer Scrooge (as opposed to the ordinary greedy person). Misers hoard their wealth. They hole up in their bedrooms, counting their gold bullion and hiding it in their mattresses. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal,” Jesus commanded His disciples, “but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven….For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus is talking about the person who hoards, who trusts his possessions rather than God. “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matt. 6:19–21, 24 NIV). The Apostle Paul said that greed is idolatry (Eph. 5:5). If religion involves our “ultimate concern,” as Paul Tillich said, then the miser is an idolater. He worships his money. That’s because you can only have one ultimate concern.

Many of the biblical warnings seem to apply to misers, but how many misers have you met? Do you know anyone who keeps a bag of money in his mattress, where he can count it? Probably not. We see misers on TV, read about them in children’s books and in Dickens. In capitalist societies, however, misers are in very short supply. That’s because capitalism discourages miserliness, and encourages its near-opposite: enterprise.

“The grasping or hoarding rich man is the antithesis of capitalism, not its epitome,” writes George Gilder, “more a feudal figure than a bourgeois one.”20 The miser prefers the certainty and security of his booty. Entrepreneurs, in contrast, assume risk. They cast their bread on the waters of uncertainty, hoping that the bread will return with fish. They delay whatever gratification their wealth might provide now for the hope of future gain. The miser treats his bullion as an end in itself. The entrepreneur, whatever his motives—including the desire for more money—uses money as a tool. The carpenter uses hammer and saw; the doctor, scalpel and stethoscope; the entrepreneur, cash and credit.

Only by the constant din of stereotype could we come to mistake the entrepreneur for the miser. In his modern classic, Wealth and Poverty, George Gilder explores a surprising feature of enterprise: supply precedes demand. After all, before you can exchange, you must first have something to exchange. I must have a good or service, a coconut or a potholder or an iPod that someone wants in order for trade to ever get started. Right off the bat, if I’m an entrepreneur, I have to think about the wants and needs of others. In a free economy, great entrepreneurs, including greedy ones, succeed by anticipating and meeting the desires of others. In that sense, Gilder argues, they are altruistic—alter in Latin means “other.” Entrepreneurial investments, he argues, are like gifts, since they are made without a predetermined return.21 Competition between entrepreneurs in a free economy thus becomes an altruistic competition, not because the entrepreneurs have warm fuzzies in their hearts, or are unconcerned with personal wealth, but because they seek to meet the desires of others better than their competitors do.22

Not for nothing did Ayn Rand dedicate her final lecture to a tirade against Gilder. But her view of the capitalist, in the end, was skewed by the Marxist stereotype she had officially rejected. Gilder’s view captures much better the nature and subtlety of entrepreneurial capitalism.

Far from requiring vice, entrepreneurial capitalism requires a whole host of virtues. Before entrepreneurs can invest capital, for instance, they must first accumulate it. So unlike gluttons and hedonists, entrepreneurs set aside rather than consume much of their wealth. Unlike misers and cowards, they risk rather than hoard what they have saved, providing stability for those employed by their endeavors. Unlike skeptics, they have faith in their neighbors, their partners, their society, their employees, “in the compensatory logic of the cosmos.”23 Unlike the self-absorbed, they anticipate the needs of others, even needs that no one else may have imagined. Unlike the impetuous, they make disciplined choices. Unlike the automaton, they freely discover new ways of creating and combining resources to meet the needs of others. This cluster of virtues, not the vice of greed, is the essence of what Rev. Robert Sirico calls the “entrepreneurial vocation.”24

I’m convinced that Ayn Rand continues to be popular, in part, because she dared to make entrepreneurs the heroes of her novels. Whatever her other failings, this was a keen insight. Without entrepreneurs, very little of what we take for granted in our economy and our everyday lives would exist. Here in my office, the concrete forms of entrepreneurial imagination are everywhere: paper, scissors, pens, highlighters, ink, CDs, an empty Tupperware container that held the pork loin I ate for lunch, a flat-screen monitor, fonts, lamps, light bulbs, Post-it notes, windows, sheet rock, speakers, a laptop computer, and an optical mouse. Behind all these visible objects lay real but less visible innovations in finance, manufacturing, and transport that I scarcely comprehend. All of these things are gifts of entrepreneurs. Only the most miserly moralizer could look at this mysterious efflorescence of cooperation, competition, and creativity—of entrepreneurial capitalism—and see only the dead hand of greed.

Does this mean that if you’re a Christian, you must embrace capitalism? No. But it does mean that Christians don’t need to adopt Ayn Rand’s anti-Christian philosophy to defend the morality of capitalism. Once we comprehend the nature of entrepreneurial capitalism, we see that it has fit within the Christian worldview all along.

Jay W. Richards is the author of Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, 2009). He has held leadership positions at Discovery Institute and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute.

notes

1 Tony Campolo, Letters to a Young Evangelical (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 142.

2 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (New York: Modern Library, 1994), xliii.

3 Ibid., 148.

4 Ibid., 15.

5 Ibid., 485.

6 With Nathaniel Branden (New York: Signet, 1964).

7 Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), 195.

8 Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Random House, 1957), appendix.

9 Daniel J. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas (New York: Crown Forum, 2004), 200–201.

10 See the excellent article on this point by Robert A. Black, “What Did Adam Smith Say about Self-Love?” Journal of Markets and Morality 9, 1 (Spring 2006): 7–34.

11 The “butcher, brewer, baker” quote is notoriously misinterpreted when pulled out of context. For context, see Wealth of Nations, 15.

12 So Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, says: “It is the great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville’s book to represent every passion as wholly vicious which is so in any degree and in any direction.” Quoted in F. B. Kaye’s commentary to Bernard Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924; repr. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), 414.

13 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976; reprint Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). Quoted in P. J. O’Rourke, On the Wealth of Nations (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), 157.

14 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments.

15 Smith understood this, but he is often misinterpreted by later economists working in a more thoroughgoing utilitarian and individualistic mindset. As James Halterman puts it, “Clearly Smith’s notion of self-interest is not expressed as the isolated preference of an independent economic agent, but, rather, as the conditioned response of an interdependent participant in a social process.” In “Is Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy an Adequate Foundation for the Market Economy?” Journal of Markets and Morality 6, 2 (Fall 2003): 459.

16 Robin Klay and John Lunn develop this idea in their excellent article, “The Relationship of God’s Providence to Market Economies and Economic Theory,” Journal of Markets and Morality 6, 2 (Fall 2003): 547–59.

17 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part Four, chap. 1.

18 See, for instance, the edited collection by Paul Knitter and Chandra Musaffar, Subverting Greed: Religious Perspectives on the Global Economy (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002).

19 For statistical evidence, see International Comparisons of Charitable Giving (Kent, UK: Charities Aid Foundation, November, 2006), http://www.cafonline.org/research. See also Arthur C. Brookes, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism (New York: Basic Books, 2006).

20 George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1993), 30.

21 Ibid., 27.

22 Ibid., 20–24.

23 Ibid., 37.

24 Robert A. Sirico, The Entrepreneurial Vocation (Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2001).

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    John MacArthur on Isaiah 53 (April 16, 2012)

    July 22, 2014 – 4:18 pm

    The Astonishing Servant of Jehovah (Isaiah 53) John MacArthur

    Published on Apr 16, 2012 by

    http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-435

    Now for this morning, I finally want you to open your Bible to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53, and we are about to embark on a study of this immensely important portion of the Old Testament as we begin our series in the Old Testament, Finding Christ There.

    The reality this morning is, folks, I give you sort of fair warning. The reality is you’re going to think you’re in an upper division class in the Master’s Seminary because it is essential to me to give you the ground work and the foundation and something of the structure of this section of Holy Scripture. You need to understand its character, its context so that you can be able to draw all the richness that is in this chapter. I have heard sermons on Isaiah 53 but you’re going to get more than that, you’re going to get a series that could last as long as a couple of months. And in order to make that all that it should be and for you to be able to see what is really in this incredible section of Scripture, I’m going to have to give you an introductory message this morning. And so you need to put on your scholastic cap and think carefully and thoughtfully about this, expect to be on overload a little bit. We’re going to test your gigabyte capacity this morning, how much you can handle. But we’re going to lay this one down on CD, if you will, or on MP3 file for the future, it will be the kind of thing you’ll probably want to go back to and listen and absorb in the future….

    __________

    Here is the transcript:

    Now for this morning, I finally want you to open your Bible to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53, and we are about to embark on a study of this immensely important portion of the Old Testament as we begin our series in the Old Testament, Finding Christ There.

    The reality this morning is, folks, I give you sort of fair warning. The reality is you’re going to think you’re in an upper division class in the Master’s Seminary because it is essential to me to give you the ground work and the foundation and something of the structure of this section of Holy Scripture. You need to understand its character, its context so that you can be able to draw all the richness that is in this chapter. I have heard sermons on Isaiah 53 but you’re going to get more than that, you’re going to get a series that could last as long as a couple of months. And in order to make that all that it should be and for you to be able to see what is really in this incredible section of Scripture, I’m going to have to give you an introductory message this morning. And so you need to put on your scholastic cap and think carefully and thoughtfully about this, expect to be on overload a little bit. We’re going to test your gigabyte capacity this morning, how much you can handle. But we’re going to lay this one down on CD, if you will, or on MP3 file for the future, it will be the kind of thing you’ll probably want to go back to and listen and absorb in the future.

    As we come to Isaiah chapter 53, I have to say that the beginning of the passage is really in chapter 52, verse 13. So when I make reference in general to a study of Isaiah 53, I’m actually including 52 verse 13 through 53 verse 12, that entire section of 15 verses, starting in 52:13. It all belongs as one. I could only wish that when the scholars had labeled chapter 53, they had actually started it at verse 13 because verse 13 sets up what is detailed in the fifty-third chapter.

    Now if you’ve been a Christian for any time at all, you’re very familiar with this section of Holy Scripture, and you should be. It has been called by some scholars in the past, “The Fifth Gospel…The Fifth Gospel,” to be added to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It was Augustine who said way back in the fifth century, “It is not a prophecy, it is a gospel.” It was Polycarp, the student and friend of the Apostle John who called this section of Scripture “The Golden Passional of the Old Testament. Martin Luther himself said, “Every Christian ought to be able to repeat it by heart.” So, that is going to be your assignment, to memorize Isaiah 52:13 through 53:12, and you will draw on it the rest of your life. It is very likely that you already know most of it if you have been a student of Scripture for any length of time.

    A couple of German scholars writing in 1866 said, “It looks as if it had been written beneath the cross of Golgotha. They further said, “Many an Israelite has had it melt the crust of his heart.” The same German scholars went on to say this, “This chapter is the most central, the deepest and the loftiest thing that Old Testament prophecy out stripping itself has ever achieved,” end quote.

    You’re going to find in this section of Holy Scripture the root of Christian thinking, even though it is Old Testament. You’re going to find here phraseology that has entered and remained in Christian speech and conversation. You’re going to find in this section of Scripture the text that has been used by more gospel preachers and writers through history than any other portion of the Old Testament. In fact, Isaiah 53 is the heart of Hebrew writings. It is the epoch messianic, prophetic Scripture that stands above all others in the Old Testament.

    Now the luster of this prophetic gem is intensified by its setting. So get your Bible handy because you’re going to have to grasp this with me. I want to give you the sense of what we’re dealing with here, starting with a bit of a wider panorama.

    Isaiah is divided into two sections, chapters 1 through 39 and chapter 40 through verse 66. Obviously a long and very detailed and magnificent Old Testament book. It was written about 680 B.C. or seven hundred years before Christ. The first half of the book, chapters 1 through 39, speak of coming judgment and captivity—thirty-nine chapters where God speaks through the prophet Isaiah, speaking of judgment, judgment on Israel to come immediately. And it did come, it came less than a hundred years after it was written in the beginning of the Babylonian Captivity when the whole Southern Kingdom of Judah, the only part that remained, the Northern Kingdom already had gone into captivity some years earlier, 720. The captivity of the Southern Kingdom is the target of the first 39 chapters. And beyond that, there are warnings about divine judgment on sinners of all ages and all time and even indications of a final, terminal, eschatological day of great judgment. But the chapters 1 through 39 are about judgment and captivity in terms of the Babylonian Captivity and the greater issue of judgment on sinners and even the greater issue of final judgment at the end of human history.

    So that chapter 39 ends with a pronunciation of the judgment that’s going to come on Israel in the Babylonian Captivity, when they will be taken away by the powers of Babylon. Listen to verses 6 and 7, “The days are coming—verse 6 of chapter 39—when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have laid up on store to this day will be carried to Babylon, “Nothing will be left,” says the Lord, “and some of your sons who will issue from you whom you will beget will be taken away and they will become officials in the palace of the King of Babylon.” This is a specific prophecy about the Babylonian Captivity which began in 603 about 80 years after Isaiah wrote it. He prophesied that would happen, it did happen, there were three deportations, 603, 597 and 586 the final one and they didn’t return until 70 years after that final captivity. So the first section can be verified as divinely authored because history proved its fulfillment to the letter.

    That brings you to the second section, 27 chapters remain, chapters 40 through 66. The theme of the second section is grace and salvation…grace and salvation. These 27 chapters, starting in chapter 40, are the most sublime and rich portion of Old Testament prophecy. It really is a single prophecy, one glorious vision, one majestic revelation of salvation through the coming Messiah. It is sublime, it is sweeping, it is comprehensive. It encompasses not only the deliverance of Israel from Babylon, not only the deliverance of sinners from sin, but the deliverance of the nations from the curse into the Kingdom of Messiah. So it has those same elements. The first part talks about judgment on Israel, it talks about judgment on sinners, and it talks about final judgment. The second half talks about deliverance for Israel, deliverance for sinners, and a final deliverance into the messianic Kingdom.

    Most interestingly the second half, which is what we’re going to be looking at, 40 to 66, begins where the New Testament begins. I want you to look at chapter 40 for just a brief moment and the parallel is quite interesting. In chapter 40 we read, “Comfort, O comfort My people, says your God.” And that’s the turn in the book of Isaiah from the pronunciation of judgment in the first 39 to comfort in the back half because of grace and salvation. Speak kindly to Jerusalem. And then comes the prophecy in verse 3 of John the Baptist. “A voice is calling, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.” And, of course, it was John the Baptist who came, who was the fulfillment of that prophecy, he was the forerunner of Messiah, he was the voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord, making the desert a highway for our God.” So, that’s where the New Testament begins, the New Testament begins with John the Baptist, and that’s where the back half of Isaiah begins. So this so-called gospel section of Isaiah begins where the actual New Testament gospel begins.

    Now this section of Isaiah ends where the New Testament ends as well. And that is another remarkable feature in the 65th chapter of Isaiah, as you’re getting to the very end and verse 17 we read this, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.” The new heavens and the new earth, chapter 65 verse 17. Then in the final chapter, chapter 66 verse 22, almost at the very end, “For just as the new heavens and the new earth which I make will endure before Me, declares the Lord,” and so forth. Guess where the New Testament ends? It ends in Revelation 21 and 22 with the new heavens and the new earth.

    So this section of Isaiah begins where the New Testament begins, with the arrival of John the Baptist. It ends where the New Testament ends, with the new heaven and the new earth. And thus we see the magnificent way in which this incredible prophecy parallels the New Testament. And all of it is written 700 years before Messiah comes to begin to fulfill it.

    Now, who is going to bring this grace and salvation? Who is going to be the one to provide this deliverance? The answer is the servant of the Lord…the servant of the Lord. That is how He’s designated. The Hebrew word is ebed and it means slave or servant. It’s used many hundreds of times in the Old Testament. It is the Hebrew word for slave as well as servant. The Slave of Jehovah, the Servant of Jehovah, He is the one who will bring salvation. He is the one who will bring comfort. He is the one who will bring the forgiveness of sins. He becomes then the theme of this final section of the book of Isaiah.

    Now let’s go to chapter 53 for a moment, with just that kind of broad picture, and you will find in verse 13 of 52, “Behold My servant…Behold My servant,” My ebed, My slave. This is the same designation that has been indicated much earlier in this section of the book of Isaiah. This is the fourth of specific prophecies of the servant. Chapter 42 is one, chapter 49 is another, and chapter 50 verses 4 to 11 is the third. This is the fourth of what we would call Isaiah’s servant songs, or servant prophecies.

    Now in this presentation of the servant before us, the prophet calls on us to look at this servant and be astonished. If I were to title this message, I would entitle it, “The Astonishing Servant of Jehovah.” I don’t know what they put in the Grace Today but I would entitle it, “The Astonishing Servant of Jehovah.” This is the most complete, most powerful, most important revelation of the Messiah in the entire Old Testament, right here in front of us.

    Now a little more background on this. If you go back to Samuel, let’s say, you sort of begin to have the revelation of God coming through prophets. Moses was a prophet, in a sense, he did give divine prophecy, he did predict even the Messiah, a prophet who would come. He identified Him. But really the prophetic office as we know it begins with Samuel. Others, of course, spoke for God and that would be a prophetic ministry. But the prophetic office sort of begins with Samuel. That’s about a thousand B.C. so 300 years say before Isaiah. And the prophets were regularly told that there would be an age when God would rule and reign in Israel and from Israel over the world. Okay, that’s just basic. There would be an age when God would reign and rule from Israel over the world. This, of course, had connections to the promises to Abraham and to David, as you well know. God would reign and rule in Israel over the world, and here’s the key, through a righteous king, through a righteous king called in the Abrahamic Covenant the seed, and in the Davidic Covenant, the Son of David, a righteous King. This King would deliver Israel from its enemies, as we saw in Zacharias benedictus, this King would deliver Israel from its sins.

    So it would be a temporal deliverance, and more importantly a spiritual deliverance. Since the promises of the Seed and the King and the righteous King who would come and bring salvation and bring deliverance for Israel and through Israel for the world, the hopes of the Jews had been high. They wanted that King. They looked for that King. And, of course, you can go all the way back into the era of Samuel and you will remember that they wanted a king so they chose a king by the name of Saul. They put their hopes in Saul and maybe they actually assumed that Saul would be that one king who would come and bring salvation and make Israel the gem of the world and reign from Israel over the whole world, and bring a Kingdom of Righteousness and Peace. Saul, however, was rejected, he was rejected by God for his gross intrusion into the priestly function, his overreaching and overstepping his bounds. He was a sinful man.

    Not only was he rejected, but his line was cut off from ever reigning again in Israel. Hopes then shifted to David. But David had his own problems. And David was such a sinful man and such a bloody man, that God didn’t even allow David to be the one to build the temple. You remember David said to Nathan, the prophet, “I’m going to build the temple.” And Nathan said, “Go for it, do it.” And God came to Nathan at night and said, “Why did you tell him that? You didn’t ask Me, I don’t want him to build that. He’s a man of blood.” David had his issues and David was sinful and David wasn’t going to be that righteous King. But the promise came in 2 Samuel 7 that it would be a son of David and hopes must have set immediately on Solomon and it must have looked really good when Solomon came along because he enlarged the Kingdom vastly and he became the wealthiest person in the world by a large margin.

    And not only that, because at the sort of beginning of his reign he asked for wisdom, God gave him abundant wisdom and so he was able to be successful in everything he did. But it turned out that Solomon was a total tragedy. Solomon had his heart turned away from God because he married so many wives and had so many concubines; he was engaging himself in physical relationships with hundreds of women. He was a very debauched man. He was not going to be the righteous king. By the time you come to the end of his Kingdom, the whole Kingdom splits in pieces and the Northern Kingdom goes away, and every king after that in the Northern Kingdom is wretched and corrupt and vile and wicked. There’s not one good one. And the Southern Kingdom struggles to survive with a long list of mostly corrupt kings and a few decent ones sprinkled in. People were beginning to lose hope in the human king, even out of the loins of David. In fact, the line of David was so bad that at one point, one of David’s descendants by the name of Manasseh became king. You probably remember King Manasseh. Let me give you the post-mortem on Manasseh and this is all you need to know. Second Chronicles 33:9, “Manasseh mislead Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel.” A son of David led Israel to do more evil than the Canaanites had done whom Israel displaced and the Canaanites were a vile, idolatrous, pagan people. That’s how bad it got.

    All the kings in the north are corrupt. Virtually the kings in the south are corrupt, with a few exceptions. They all fail to fulfill the possibilities of being a righteous king. They’re all failures at one degree or another. There were a few noble kings in the south, as you know. But no human king seemed to be capable to fulfill this anticipated promise. In fact, Isaiah’s life comes to an end during the reign of Manasseh. Isaiah’s life comes to an end during the reign of Manasseh when Manasseh has Isaiah sawn in half with a wooden saw. And that’s what tradition tells us and it’s consistent with Hebrews 11:36 and 37 which refers to Old Testament heroes being sawn in half. That was Isaiah. How bad was it? No human king was a hope. It is just before Isaiah is sawn in half, just at the time of Manasseh taking over, Isaiah actually prophesied during the reign of four kings. If I remember right, Ahaziah, Joram, Ahaz, Hezekiah…Ahaziah, Joram, Ahaz, Hezekiah. You remember in the year Uzziah died I saw the Lord…chapter 6. And those other three. And it was his prophesying during those years that is recorded in his prophecy. But it was when Manasseh came in, as best we can tell historically, that he was sawn in half in about 686 B.C., and probably wrote Isaiah just prior to that.

    So he wrote this prophecy of hope and grace and salvation at a moment in the history of Judah which was as dark as any moment had ever been. They had Manasseh as a king and they were going into captivity. It couldn’t get any worse than that. Their temple would be destroyed, their capital would be destroyed, the Northern Kingdom was gone permanently never to return, and they were next. In a time when the line of David was the most corrupt and the most vile, and the most wicked, God steps in and gives to Isaiah a dramatic new revelation about the righteous King…a dramatic new revelation about the righteous King. If ever there was a time in their history they needed it, it was then, right? When all hope was gone. I mean, they were gone, they were leaving. It was over. And it was a bloody massacre when the Babylonians came. And here was the news, the shocking news, the astonishing news. He would not be only a reigning King; he would be a suffering Slave. He would not only be a reigning King, he would be a suffering Slave and His glory would not come until He had suffered. And further, He would not suffer for any evil that He had done because He would be a righteous king, but rather He would suffer for the evil that others had done. He would suffer vicariously.

    This is a new revelation. The righteous King would suffer. The righteous King would die. But He would not die for His own sin, He would die for the sins of the people. He would die in paying the penalty for the sins of His people. He would be a substitute who died in His people’s place. And though that reality is pictured in the animal sacrifice system, right? It’s pictured there, it wasn’t until this prophecy that it was made clear.

    Now let’s meet this suffering Servant. Let me read, starting in verse 13. “Behold, My Servant will prosper. He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at You, so His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle, or startle, many nations.

    “Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him, for what had not been told them, they will see. And what they had not heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, or appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised and we did not esteem Him. Surely our grieves He Himself bore. And our sorrows He carried.

    “Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgression. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell on Him and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He didn’t open His mouth.

    “Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away, and as for His generation, who consider that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people to whom the stroke was due. His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief. If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied.

    “By His knowledge, the righteous One, My Servant will justify many as He will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great and He will divide the booty with the strong because He poured out Himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors, yet He Himself bore the sins of many and interceded for the transgressors.”

    Do you see Christ there? Proof that God is the author of Scripture and Jesus its fulfillment is found in that one chapter alone, in the minute essential details exactly fulfilled in the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, intercession, coronation and salvation provided through Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself, the Apostles of the New Testament, the writers of the New Testament in proclaiming the gospel point back to Isaiah 53 many, many times. Jesus referred to it, the Apostles referred to it, the New Testament writers referred to it again and again and again. There are references to Isaiah 53 in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 1 Peter and 1 John. No Old Testament Scripture so often and so convincingly is applied to Jesus Christ by the New Testament as this one. The New Testament writers refer to virtually every verse in the fifty-third chapter. It contains the sum and substance of the gospel and to reject Christ is to reject the clear testimony of history, fulfilling every detail in this prophecy.

    But, on a bigger scale than the history and the fulfillment as vital and important and wonderful as it is, is this question: what does that mean to me? That’s the big issue. You could be in awe of the history. You could be amazed that detailed prophecies concerning a person’s life and death and resurrection could be predicted 700 years before the person arrived, and you should be. You could be in awe of the fact that no man could know that and therefore Scripture is authored by the only one who knows the future and that’s God, who not only knows it but determines it. You should be in awe of the divine nature of Holy Scripture, you should be.

    But that’s not where you want to stop, because there’s a bigger, grander question than that—what does it mean to you? What does it mean to me and everybody else?

    So let me talk about that for a minute. The truth of this ancient prophecy and its fulfillment in Jesus Christ answers the most crucial, essential, critical question that can ever be asked by any human being. I’m going to pile up the adjectives on you. This passage answers the most significant question any person can ask, the primary question, the principle question, the most vital question, the most weighty question, the most serious question, the most monumental question, the most meaningful question, the paramount question and that has nothing to do with health, nothing to do with wealth, nothing to do with success, education, morality, well-being, philosophy, sociology, politics, the most important question that any human being will ever ask and have answered has nothing to do with the issues that occupy people’s minds.

    I suppose if you could Google on your computer—what are the most asked questions?, you would go through thousands of them before you would ever, ever, if you ever did discover the appearance of this question. But it should be first. It is the most necessary question, it is the most essential question, it is the most determinative question, and it is, frankly, the most avoided question. It transcends all other questions infinitely—infinitely and yet it is almost non-existent on people’s priority list.

    What is the question? Here is the question. How can a sinner be right with God so as to escape hell and enter heaven? That’s the most important question. How can a sinner be right with God so as to escape eternal hell and enter eternal heaven? That’s the question. How can a man be made right with God? How can a holy God declare a sinner righteous? That’s the question. This is the great moral dilemma that exists in the world. This is the great moral dilemma that exists in the world. Listen, it is precisely to answer that question that the Bible was written. Did you get that? It is precisely to answer that question that the Bible was written. It is precisely to answer that question that Isaiah 53 was written. That is THE question.

    In the New Testament era there were millions of slaves and there was an awful lot of abuse of slaves. The numbers are sometimes astronomical, some say fifteen million slaves, some saysixty million slaves. People would assume, people who are socially sensitive, that the New Testament probably should have taken on the issue of human trafficking, human slavery, ’cause they had their sex slaves, as you well know if you know anything about ancient history. And they had all the abuses of slavery. But it fascinates me that the Apostle Paul who writes thirteen books of the twenty-seven in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul never wrote about the social injustices of slavery. What he did do was write a massive treatment on how a sinner can be right with God and escape eternal hell and enter eternal heaven, and it’s called the book of Romans. Isaiah 53 is the Romans of the Old Testament. Romans is the greatest New Testament revelation answering that question. Everything else in the New Testament also is part of the answer to that question, of course. But Romans pulls it all together and focuses specifically on answering the question and Isaiah 53 is the greatest Old Testament revelation on the same question.

    Both Isaiah and Paul, by the way, give the same answer. They both give the same answer. A sinner—here it is—can be right with God and escape eternal hell and enter eternal heaven because the Servant of Jehovah became a substitute and suffered the judgment of God in the sinner’s place. That’s the message of Romans, and that’s the message of Isaiah. God spent His wrath toward sinners on the Servant substitute.

    Now this is the heart of the section from 40 to 66, I’m going to show you how interesting just this little aspect of it is. There are 27 chapters, take my word for it, 40 to 66, that’s 27 chapters. They’re divided into three sections 9, 9 and 9 in terms of subject…terms of subject. The first section ends with this statement, “There is no peace to the wicked.” The second nine ends with this statement, “There is no peace to the wicked.” The third section ends, chapter 66 verse 24, with a similar judgment statement. Each of the three sections ends with a warning of judgment on the wicked. But all three sections promise salvation. They’re very evangelistic. They promise salvation and they end with a warning if you reject it. All three feature blessing and peace to the righteous and no peace and judgment to the wicked. All three determine that righteousness and wickedness is fixed forever. Destiny is not to be altered.

    Section one talks about salvation from the Babylonian captivity. Section two talks about salvation from sin. And section three, the last nine, salvation from the cursed earth. So the first has to do with the deliverance of Israel from Babylon. The middle one, as I said a lot earlier, has to do with the deliverance of sinners from sin. And the third one, the deliverance of the earth from the curse, the glorious coming Kingdom of Messiah.

    So the middle one is the one we’re in. The middle section that we’re in runs from 49 to 57. And this middle one is the issue of forgiveness of sins and it asks the question about salvation from sin, not temporal deliverance from Babylon, and not the eschatological Kingdom to come in the future, but deliverance from sin. Now that poses a very important question. Don’t miss this; this would be worth waiting for.

    Why does God need to save His people from their sins? This is huge. This is huge. And this was the issue with the Jews. They were not convinced that they needed—listen—a Savior. They thought they just needed a righteous King. They thought that by virtue of their Abrahamic descent, by virtue of the Covenants and the promises and all of that, that they were in the place of blessing by virtue of their goodness and their religiosity by virtue of their efforts at religious activities, ceremonies, rituals, the attempts to obey the Law of God they had earned their favor with God so they had it by race and they had it by merit.

    So this message about a Savior to deliver us from our sins so that we escape eternal hell and enter eternal heaven, this is a foreign language to them. It shouldn’t have been. Go back to the first chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah is trying to communicate the message to them, chapter 1 verse 4, “Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evil doers, just like your parents, sons who act corruptly. They have abandoned the Lord, they’ve despised the Holy One of Israel. They’ve turned away from Him. Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion?” Then this, “The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint, or weak,” like Jeremiah 17. “The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.”

    From the soul of the foot to the head, there’s nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged nor softened with oil. Your land is desolate. Your cites are burned with fire. Your fields, strangers are devouring them in your presence.” He talks about desolation. “Hear the Word of the Lord,” verse 10, “you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me? Your phony religions, says the Lord. I’ve had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats. All your religion is hypocritical and useless. When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies, which, by the way, God ordained. I cannot endure iniquity in the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals, your appointed feasts. They become a burden to Me, I’m weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I’ll hide My eyes from you even though you multiply prayers. I will not listen, your hands are covered with blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Reprove the ruthless. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord, “though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.”

    They needed salvation. They desperately needed salvation. They were a wicked people. And as I said, right at this juncture of the reign of Manasseh, the worst of them leaving them to behave like Canaanites, they desperately needed salvation and redemption.

    So when you come to the servant songs of Isaiah chapter 42, the promises that He’s going to bring salvation—chapter 42, I wish I could read it all to you, but “Thus says the Lord God,” verse 5, “who created the heavens and stretched them out, spread out the earth and its offspring, gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. I am the Lord, I’ve called You in righteousness. I’ll hold You by the hand. I’ll watch over You. I will appoint You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations.” He’s talking to the Servant. He’s talking to the Messiah. “I’m going to make You the covenant to the people. I’m going to make You the light to the nations. I’m going to have You open blind eyes, bring prisoners out of the dungeon. Sing to the Lord—verse 10—a new song. Sing His praise from the end of the earth. The Lord is going to bring salvation to His people.”

    Chapter 43, verse 1, “Thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, He who formed you, O Israel, don’t fear for I have redeemed you. I’ve called you by My name. You’re mine. When you pass through the waters I’ll be with you and through the rivers they’ll not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you’ll not be scorched. The flame won’t burn you. I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel—what’s the next line? Your what? Your Savior. I’m your Savior…I’m your Savior.” Verse 11. “I, even I the Lord and there is no Savior besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved. Thus says the Lord—verse 14—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.” I’m going to be your Savior. I’m going to be your Redeemer. And that’s why this section begins comfort, in chapter 40, comfort…comfort My people, speak kindly to Jerusalem, call out to her. Her warfare has ended, her iniquity has been removed. She’s already received double from the hand of the Lord for all of her evil. Salvation is coming.

    Did they need salvation? Yes, the diagnosis that’s given in chapter 1 is reiterated in brief in chapter 6 when Isaiah has a vision of God. And he says, “I’m a man with unclean lips and I dwell amidst a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah understood the need for salvation, the need for cleansing.

    So the centerpiece section of these three nines, the first has to do with salvation from Babylon; the last eschatological kingdom salvation; the middle one, salvation from sin for the people of God, Jew and Gentile, and it’s going to come through the Servant who will be the Savior sent from God.

    So, the middle section—listen—chapter 49 to 57, the middle chapters are 52 and 53. And the middle verse of 53 is verse 5, “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the chastening for our well-being fell on Him and by His scourging we are healed.” Middle section, middle chapters, middle of the chapter, middle verse. Everything just focuses down on the substitutionary piercing of the Servant of Jehovah for us.

    By what means will God save His people? By what means will He forgive their sins? By the substitutionary vicarious death of His Servant, His Slave, the Messiah, the righteous King. And that one will fulfill this prophecy. This text, dear friends, points to the Lord Jesus Christ, is so clear as to be unmistakable.

    Now let me give you a little history. Ancient Jews interpreted this prophecy as messianic originally, okay? In all the ancient Jewish literature, this chapter 53, this whole area, whole section, mid-section of the final 27, it was all messianic. All of it was messianic, though they were not clear on how the Messiah would suffer. When they came to chapter 53, they wrote this, the rabbis wrote this, “That He will be compassionate, that He will sympathetically feel our pain,” and that’s as far as they would go. They understood that He would be a sympathetic Messiah, that He would be a righteous King, put it another way, who felt so sorry that such a noble people had suffered so greatly that He felt their pain. They saw no messianic substitutionary death in spite of the fact that every day of their history animals were dying, portraying substitutionary death. All they saw in their writing was sympathy…sympathy. This messianic view of this section, by the way, shows up in the Jewish liturgy for the Day of Atonement. This is a quote what they would say. “Horror has seized upon us. We have none to deliver us. He has born the yoke of our iniquities and our transgressions, is wounded because of our transgression. He bears our sin on His shoulder that He may find pardon for our iniquities. We are healed by His wound at the time the eternal will create Him as a new creation. O bring Him up from the circle of the earth. Raise Him up from sear to assemble in the second time on Mount Lebanon by the hand of Yenon.” Yenon is a Hebrew word for Messiah. So they literally at the Day of atonement event paraphrased Isaiah 53 and then back away from it and say it simply means He’ll be sympathetic toward us. The idea of Messiah Himself dying? Not possible, unacceptable. That’s why Jesus went to the Old Testament to speak of His necessary suffering and the apostles even preached that. They had no interest in that.

    Listen, here’s the point. This is very important. They had no need of a Savior. They had no need of a sacrifice for sin. Nobody in a works system needs a Savior. They needed a sympathizer. They welcomed a sympathesizer. They wanted a King who was sympathetic to their plight and thus would come out of sympathy and compassion and give them what they actually deserved. That was the view of ancient Judaism. That was the view of New Testament Judaism. That was the view of Post-New Testament Judaism. That is the view of modern Judaism. Judaism would never define itself in the terms of Isaiah 1, sick from head to toe. They don’t need a Savior. You see, if you don’t understand the doctrine of depravity, and you don’t understand that you are unable to save yourself by anything you do, then you don’t need a Savior to save you. You achieve salvation. And any system that has any achievement that saves, has no place for a vicarious, substitutionary atonement.

    After the Lord Jesus came, and the church was born, the church clearly interpreted Isaiah 53, all the New Testament writers, as I said, did, the church began to preach to the Jews that Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah 53. They didn’t want to hear that, so they persecuted the church, they killed the Christians, as you know. And even to this day, Judaism as an institution rejects Jesus Christ and rejects Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of Isaiah 53. When I read it to you earlier, it was a moving experience, wasn’t it?, just to hear it read because every Christian reader feels the power of this description of Jesus Christ. You feel the power of His sin-bearing work on your behalf on the cross. On the other hand, a Jew reading that sees something completely different. He sees—this is the common interpretation—Israel there. This is suffering Israel. Israel is the suffering servant who has suffered and suffered and suffered and will one day enter in to glory. The glory of Israel is coming but right now they’re going through suffering, unfair, maybe unjust. This is a flattering Jewish view of Isaiah 53, that they as a noble people are suffering unjustly, going through agonies. But some day they will emerge into the glory promised to them and they will become THE supreme nation and bless the whole world. They will earn their glory by their religion, by their self-righteousness, and listen, by their suffering, but Jesus isn’t in Isaiah 53.

    Well, that’s why Isaiah 53 has been called The Torture Chamber of the Rabbis. Isaiah 53 has been called the guilty conscience of the rabbis because you can’t put Israel in here. Israel was not a humble…is not a humble sufferer; Israel is not a voluntary sufferer. Israel is not a righteous, sinless people suffering unjustly in one sense and yet vicariously for anyone else. There is no way in the world to make Israel the object of Isaiah 53. This has to be Jesus.

    But at this point, I just want to mark out for you something that will be helpful. Israel then, Israel at the time of Jesus, and Israel now has no need for a substitutionary sacrifice. They have no need for a vicarious Savior. They have no need for a Mediator to die for them. All they need is a sympathizing King. They just want a ruler. They just need a King. No need for a Savior to bear their sins. No need for a Savior to take the wrath of God for them. They just need a King to rescue them from all the suffering and all the injustice, and the pain and give them the exaltation that they’re entitled to by virtue of their Abrahamic descent, Davidic promise, and their own goodness.

    So, whenever you talk to a Jew, the question to ask them is, “Do you need a Savior? Do you need a Savior?” Christianity offers you a Savior. Do you need a substitute to die in your place? Do you need someone to bear the wrath of God against your sin? That’s the question and that goes back to the question of all questions: How can a sinner be right with God so as to escape eternal hell and enter eternal heaven? And the only answer is, “If that sinner has had his sins completely paid for and the only one that can do that is the chosen vicariously substituted sacrifice, Jesus Christ Himself. The fundamental, and it is a critical thing, the fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity is this; Judaism is a religion that magnifies human effort and doesn’t need a Savior. Christianity is a religion that depreciates human effort and desperately needs a Savior. That’s the difference. Jews don’t need a substitute to bear the penalty for their sins. God will accept them based on Abraham and based on their goodness and their privileges and their promises. That’s the difference. Don’t for a minute think that there’s not a massive gulf fix between those two. Jews don’t need a Savior to save them from their sins personally; they just need a deliverer to rescue them from their enemies and their difficulties. Christians need a Savior to save them from their personal transgressions, iniquities and sins.

    So, the question to ask any Jew is, “Do you personally need a Savior to take your place and die under the judgment of God for your sins? Do you need a Savior?” That’s the question. And that is the moral problem of all human existence.

    My Servant, verse 11 of 53, “My Servant will justify the many, He’ll make them right with God—how?—He will bear—what?—their iniquities.” In the atonement, the Servant of Jehovah justifies many. He’s promised in the Old Testament to come from the nation of Israel, descend from Abraham, to come down through the family of David. The Old Testament says He’ll be born in Bethlehem, Isaiah said He’d be born of a virgin. But it’s not until He arrives that we know who He is. They couldn’t know who He is. But when He arrived, we know who He is because at His baptism from heaven, the voice of the Father, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.” What was God saying there? He was echoing Isaiah 42:1, “Behold My Servant whom I uphold, My chosen One in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him.” That’s what happened at the baptism, the Spirit descended like a dove.

    The sufficient Servant by the very testimony of God and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, is none other than Jesus. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So in closing, turn to Acts 8. I did pretty good, I thought I’d be an hour and a half, this morning. I’m going to close with Acts 8. There’s no way around this. The rest won’t be this long. You remember Philip and the eunuch in Acts 8? And Philip is led by the Spirit to go to the chariot of this man who is an official in the court and he comes to this man, he’s…he’s a Gentile proselyte to Judaism, he’s been to Jerusalem, he’s reading Isaiah…he’s reading Isaiah, the prophet. And he asks him in verse 30, “Do you know what you’re reading?” And he says, “How can I unless someone guides me.” So Philip got up into the chariot and the passage he was reading, “He was led as a sheep to slaughter as a lamb before its shearers is silent so He doesn’t open His mouth. In humiliation His judgment was taken away. Who will relate His generation for His life is removed from the earth?” Right out of Isaiah 53. “And the eunuch answered and Philip said, ‘Please tell me of whom does the prophet say this, of himself or of someone else?’” Who’s he talking about? I love this. “Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him.”

    Folks, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to preach Jesus from that same Scripture.

    Father, we thank You for our time, this morning, a time to celebrate, time to rejoice, a time to worship, a time to contemplate the greatness of Your Word and Your Son and our Savior. Be with us to bless us, we pray today in His wonderful name we pray. Amen.

    By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

    Review and Pictures and Video Clips of Woody Allen’s movie “MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT” Part 1

    July 22, 2014 – 8:20 am

    David Letterman – Dave Tells Emma Stone About His Metaphysical Encounter

     

    Review and Pictures and Video Clips of Woody Allen’s movie “MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT” Part 1

    BY ERIC KOHN
    JULY 18, 2014 7:02 AM

    Review: Woody Allen’s ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ is Exactly What It Looks Like

    “The gullible are so stupid they deserve it,” says Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), the cocky stage magician devoted to debunking spiritualists in Woody Allen’s “Magic in the Moonlight.” Allen has built a career around cheeky one-liners, but with this one he’s practically thumbing his nose at the audience. There’s no mistaking “Magic in the Moonlight,” which takes place in the jazz age, features plenty of witty repartee and the shadings of an old school Hollywood romance, as the kind of blithe, talky comedy that Allen produces on autopilot. But 48 years since Allen’s first feature “What’s Up, Tiger Lily,” there’s a clean distinction between endearing Allen comedies and afterthoughts. “Magic in the Moonlight” unquestionably falls into the latter category.

    The director, who turns 80 next year, cranks out a movie per year with an arbitrary track record that often depends on whether the material provides enough substance for his cast to do something interesting with it. “Magic in the Moonlight” belongs to the pool of lesser Allen comedies, yet Firth and Emma Stone — as the alleged necromancer Sophie Baker, the object of Stanley’s scrutiny and eventually his affections — bring all the zany energy they can muster. Unfortunately, unlike Cate Blanchett’s remarkable capacity to wrestle the material of last year’s “Blue Jasmine” into her own furious showcase, the actors are provided with a limited range of options.

    That being said, this is no travesty of “Scoop”-level proportions, nor does it show the markings of clumsy storytelling like Allen’s most recent misfire, “To Rome With Love.” Instead, “Magic in the Moonlight” offers a half-baked scenario and follows through on it with largely unmemorable results. But maybe that’s worst: it’s simultaneously possible to detect Allen’s voice in every scene and recognize the sheer lack of ambition behind it.

    Anyone familiar with Robert B. Weide’s 2012 “American Masters” documentary on Allen knows that he keeps a small box filled with scraps of paper on which he jots down brief ideas for projects. Sometimes, that’s just enough to provide a foundation for his traditional storytelling to gel with the actors eager to inhabit his stylish world. “Magic in the Moonlight,” however, registers as more paper scrap than movie. Within the opening minutes, when Stanley’s old magician pal Howard (Simon McBurney) beckons Stanley to the south of France so he can scrutinize Sophie’s seances, viewers may be able to relate to her supernatural claims by predicting plot’s future direction: Naturally, the skeptically-minded Stanley is entranced by Sophie’s abilities — in addition to her physical appearance, of course.

    But forget about the 28-year age difference between the pair. This is a Woody Allen movie! Their romantic attraction marks one element this feature gets right, once again because Allen apparently cedes control to his cast. Firth and Stone generate terrific onscreen chemistry, as the older actor’s leery expression clashes nicely with Stone’s wide-eyed reactions whenever she claims to have received a premonition. It’s obvious that not every motive comes from a sincere place, but given those expectations, Firth and Stone are pleasant enough to watch.

    If only Allen gave them more to wade through. It’s no major huge spoiler to reveal that after hearing Sophie make psychic pronouncements about his past, he grows abruptly convinced of her powers — so much so that he even calls for a press conference to denounce his atheistic point of view. Would someone dedicated to the pursuit of scientific evidence give up so easily? Or did Allen, sitting at his typewriter, shrug and decide to just speed things up for the final act?

    Such questions would be moot if “Magic in the Moonlight” didn’t place them front and center. Unlike “Curse of the Jade Scorpion” or “Midnight in Paris,” Allen’s latest playful treatment of supernatural events deals more with its characters’ philosophical relationship to otherworldly phenomena rather than their ramifications for the plot. Yet it offers only one truly satisfying investigation into crises of faith: a single shot in which Firth’s character, faced with sudden catastrophe, unleashes a makeshift prayer before changing his tune. Watching him come to his senses is akin to witnessing the movie itself smarten up.

    That single late-in-the-game scene nearly saves the movie. Even as it arrives at a rather basic climax, “Magic in the Moonlight” conveys the shadings of a nimble romcom with keen existential undertones. Per usual at this juncture, cinematographer Darius Khonji gives the period a bright, detailed palette that matches the sparkly quality of Allen’s sensibilities. But as a whole, his screenplay feels oddly toothless, as if the filmmaker hopes to relish in the humor of his scenario but failed to come up with enough punchlines to carry it out.

    Whenever Allen makes a bad or even just a mediocre movie, it begs the question of whether he’s lost his comedic touch. Certainly his movies lack the smarmy, vulgar polish of earlier efforts, and there are plenty other directors well-positioned to take the mantle of refined comedic filmmaking he’s dominated for so long.

    With the success of “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Wes Anderson has firmly entered Woody Allen territory by making delightfully eccentric comedies with blend goofy antics with serious undertones. Michel Gondry, whose stylish “Mood Indigo” opens this week, also brings a degree of visual invention to comedy that hasn’t manifested to a satisfying degree in Allen’s movies for ages.

    Still, Allen’s been playing his game for a long time, and his track record can’t be discounted, especially since it directly informs the work. There are just enough cheery quips and verbal asides to allow “Magic in the Moonlight” to accrue the precise appeal of its creator.

    But there’s also just enough to make its shortcomings clear: The pratfall of Allen’s ridiculous output is that every misstep suffers from comparison to better versions from the same director. He’s become so prolific that even his true believers must experience the occasional crisis of faith, but with production already underway for his next feature, it won’t take long before he gets another chance to win us back again.

    Grade: C+

    “Magic in the Moonlight” opens in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago on July 25 followed by a nationwide expansion.

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    MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT – Official Trailer (2014) [HD] Emma Stone, Colin Firth

    Published on May 21, 2014

    Release Date: July 25, 2014 (limited)
    Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
    Director: Woody Allen
    Screenwriter: Woody Allen
    Starring: Emma Stone, Colin Firth, Marcia Gay Harden, Hamish Linklater, Simon McBurney, Eileen Atkins, Jacki Weaver, Erica Leerhsen, Catherine McCormack, Paul Ritter, Jeremy Shamos
    Genre: Comedy, Drama
    MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for a brief suggestive comment, and smoking throughout)

    Official Websites: https://www.facebook.com/MagicInTheMo…

    Plot Summary:
    “Magic in the Moonlight” is a romantic comedy about an Englishman brought in to help unmask a possible swindle. Personal and professional complications ensue. The film is set in the south of France in the 1920s against a backdrop of wealthy mansions, the Cфte d’Azur, jazz joints and fashionable spots for the wealthy of the Jazz Age.

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    Review of Woody Allen’s latest movie MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT (Part 1)

    July 7, 2014 – 5:04 pm

    __________ Review of Woody Allen’s latest movie MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT (Part 1) Emma Stone stars in the new Woody Allen movie ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ – here’s the trailer Emma Stone and Colin Firth star in ‘Magic in the Moonlight,’ which is directed by Woody Allen. Emma Stone recently starred in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man […]

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    July 2, 2014 – 1:35 am

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    My personal visit with Bill Kristol on 7-18-14 in Hot Springs, Arkansas!!!!

    July 21, 2014 – 10:07 am
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    Bill Kristol

    Published on Jul 20, 2014

    The Weekly Standard editor and publisher Bill Kristol discusses Clintons, Pryor-Cotton and 2016.

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    On Friday July 18, 2014 I had the opportunity to visit personally with Bill Kristol who is the founder of THE WEEKLY STANDARD MAGAZINE. I told him that I had the privilege to correspond with both his father, Irving Kristol, and his father’s good friend Daniel Bell back in 1995. I actually gave him a copy of both letters I received back from them and he read them both as we stood there. I told him that those copies were his to keep, and he thanked me for that. (Actually just a few moments after Bill Kristol left the arena, I ran into our friend from church Dr. Jack J. Sternberg, who told me he wanted to tell Bill about his journey from Judaism to Christianity!I wish I had seen him 10 minutes earlier!)
    I went on to explain how the correspondence started.  I had come across several quotes from Daniel Bell when I was reading the books HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?  and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by Francis Schaeffer (and this second book was co-authored by Dr. C. Everett Koop). Dr. Koop’s name caught Mr. Kristol’s attention and he said he found that interesting. I pointed out those quotes by Bell led me to eventually begin a correspondence with both Bell and Kristol’s father Irving on the subject of what the Old Testament scriptures have to say about the Jews being returned from all over the world back to the land of Israel.
    Finally, I asked how his mother was doing and he said that she was doing very well in fact. I told him how much I respected her work as a historian.
    Let me make a few observations about Irving Kristol who I was very fascinated with because of some of his comments in the 1990′s. First, isn’t it worth noting that the Old Testament predicted that the Jews would regather from all over the world and form a new reborn nation of Israel. Second, it was also predicted that the nation of Israel would become a stumbling block to the whole world. Third, it was predicted that the Hebrew language would be used again as the Jews first language even though we know in 1948 that Hebrew at that time was a dead language!!!Fourth, it was predicted that the Jews would never again be removed from their land.
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    Bill Kristol opines on Pryor-Cotton race, talks about Clinton in 2016

    Submitted by The City Wire Staff on Sun, 07/20/2014 – 5:50pm

    story from Talk Business & Politics, a content partner with The City Wire

    The Weekly Standard founder, publisher and editor Bill Kristol says Arkansas is “almost” a must-win for Republicans if they are to take back the U.S. Senate. Appearing on this week’s Talk Business & Politics TV program, Kristol said the Mark Pryor-Tom Cotton U.S. Senate battle is high on national political watch lists and that a Cotton victory is crucial to GOP ambitions. “If Republicans want to win the Senate in November, this one is almost a must-win,” said Kristol, who was in Arkansas as a keynote speaker at the Arkansas GOP’s Reagan-Rockefeller dinner. Kristol said he expects a close race this fall in the high-profile match-up and that there are two reasons why the contest is so tight. “Incumbents are hard to beat and, I gather from my friends in Arkansas, that a Pryor is hard to beat,” Kristol said. He added that outside Democratic group attacks have been effective in tainting Cotton, although he disagrees with their accuracy. Kristol offered his take on why Arkansas has not shifted into a Republican stronghold like other Southern states such as Mississippi, Alabama or Texas. One reason, he said, is the political power of Bill Clinton whom he described as a “very different kind of Democrat” as governor and as president. Clinton “tacked to the center” often unlike President Barack Obama. “Barack Obama is not the kind of Democrat that traditional Arkansas Democrats are interested in supporting,” Kristol said, citing Clinton’s bipartisan budget deals, welfare reforms, and foreign policy efforts. ARKANSAS IMPORTANCE Kristol also said that Arkansas has always carried much sway in U.S. politics owing to its larger-than-life, influential state politicians who’ve made big impacts on the national stage. “Arkansas has always been a state of outsized interest and importance nationally,” he said. Kristol grew up studying Sen. J. William Fulbright, and he’s long watched the careers of other politicians like Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee. “For a small state, it has always produced nationally significant politicians. I think people in Washington kind of remember that,” said Kristol.

    While 2014 will be a monumental election year, it’s hard not to think about 2016. Kristol said it’s too early to predict the GOP Presidential nominee, but he sees a reversal of fortunes in what he describes as a “wide-open” Republican field. “Republicans used to nominate the next in line, the second place finisher from four or eight years before. Democrats usually have interesting wide-open races,” he said. “It looks like this time, the Democrats are nominating the next in line — the person who ran second in 2008, Hillary Clinton. Republicans are having more of what looks like a classic Democratic primary — governors, senators, former candidates. A lot of them young, a lot of them untested nationally. As a Republican, I like that.”

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    While he voted for Dole, McCain and Romney, he said those Presidential nominees weren’t the best match-ups versus Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. “The irony in 2016 is the Republicans will have the younger, fresher face and the Democrats will be nominating someone whose been around for awhile,” he said.

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    My correspondence with Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol about the rebirth of Israel!!!!

    July 18, 2014 – 8:45 am

    Irving Kristol pictured below: In 1980 I read the books HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? by Francis Schaeffer and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by both Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I saw the film series by the same names. In those two books Daniel Bell was quoted. In HOW SHOULD WE […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    The nation of Israel and Genesis 12:3 (Series on Israel part 1)

    January 18, 2012 – 12:47 pm

    The Birth Of Israel (2008) – Part 1/8 I can’t say I agree with every word from Chuck Colson’s words below but it is a good article though. Covenant and Conflict Israel’s Place in the World Today By Chuck Colson|Published Date: February 18, 2003 When our BreakPoint Managing Editor Jim Tonkowich returned from this year’s […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Candidate #8 Michele Bachmann , Republican Presidential Hopefuls (“Obama…a betrayal of our friend Israel.″ ,Part 3)

    May 22, 2011 – 9:42 am

    One News Now reports on Friday Obama’s comments a ‘gross error’ GOP lawmaker and Tea Party Caucus founder Michele Bachmann says President Obama has defined his Middle East policy: “blame Israel first.” Supporters of Israel are expressing outrage over President Barack Obama’s call yesterday that Israel give back territory it gained when attacked by Arabs […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Edit | Comments Off

    Candidate #8 Michele Bachmann , Republican Presidential Hopefuls (“America has stood with Israel since 1948″ ,Part 2)

    May 20, 2011 – 11:36 am

      Michele Bachmann released this statement yesterday: Washington, May 19 – Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN-06) released the following response after President Obama’s speech today on his Middle East policy, which included a dramatic shift away from support of Israel: “Today President Barack Obama has again indicated that his policy towards Israel is to blame Israel first. […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)

    Candidate #8 Michele Bachmann , Republican Presidential Hopefuls (“We will do well to…support ..Israel..”,Part 1)

    May 20, 2011 – 10:09 am

    “Drink Your Energy Drink & Away We Go!” Michele Bachmann Federal Spending & Jobs Summit Michele Bachmann Wikipedia notes: She married Marcus Bachmann in 1978.[17] They have five children (Lucas, Harrison, Elisa, Caroline, and Sophia), and have also provided foster care for 23 other children.[18][19] Bachmann and her husband own a Christian counseling practice in […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)

    Transcript of President Obama’s speech of May 19, 2011 on Israel

    May 20, 2011 – 9:25 am

    President Barack Obama addresses an audience during a campaign fundraising event, in Boston, May 18, 2011.  (AP Photo/Steven Senne)     Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton greets President Obama before his speech at the State Department. Clinton introduced Obama, who joked that she has been accruing quite a few frequent-flier miles.   Below is […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama | Edit | Comments (0)

    RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! (PART 4 NOBEL LAUREATE Douglas Osheroff, physicist, Stanford )

    December 16, 2014 – 1:43 am

    _________________ On November 2

    By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

    MUSIC MONDAY Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Hello Kitty”

    July 21, 2014 – 12:04 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song  “Hello Kitty”

    Avril Lavigne – Hello Kitty (Lyric Video)

    Avril Lavigne, ‘Avril Lavigne’: Track-By-Track Review

    By , New York | November 04, 2013 4:33 PM EST

    “A first taste like honey, you were so yum/Can’t wait for a second, cause it’s so fun,” is a line from the song “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” off Avril Lavigne’s self-titled fifth studio album. It’s a line that’s cutesy and cloying, but look, if you can, beyond it, and soak in the beautifully crafted pop song that houses it. From “Sk8er Boi” to “Girlfriend” to the underrated “What The Hell,” Lavigne has always released pop music that defies dissection, ruffling the feathers of scholars with cries of “Hey, hey! You, you! I don’t like your girlfriend,” and disregarding high art for a meaty chorus. The thing is, Lavigne has always been highly skilled at this practice — ever since she began spitting the polysyllabic pile-up of the “Complicated” chorus, Lavigne has stayed in her lane, cranked out an album’s worth of enjoyable pop-rock every three years or so, and kept her image and integrity intact. For someone who often focuses on the irresponsibilities of youth, Lavigne has proven herself as one of mainstream music’s most reliable personalities; her commitment to bestowing us with impudent anthems is almost workmanlike.

    There are new faces on “Avril Lavigne” — notably her husband, Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, who co-wrote most of the album and sings with Lavigne on “Let Me Go.” There is a new label, Epic Records, which reunites Lavigne with Antonio “L.A.” Reid, who helped bring her music to the masses. But for the most part, Lavigne’s fifth full-length encapsulates everything worth loving about the 29-year-old’s long-running artistry. There are zero attempts at growing up, but instead there is “Here’s To Never Growing Up,” the album’s marvelous lead single, as well as a kick in the groin called “Bad Girl,” featuring Marilyn Manson; “Bitchin’ Summer,” about how awesome the summer is going to be; and “Falling Fast,” a love song that could soundtrack a flurry of proms come springtime. In spite of the subject matter, the songwriting has never been sharper, and unlike 2011’s “Goodbye Lullaby,” which featured moments in which Lavigne sounded unsure of herself, the singer is fully in control here. When she concludes that line from “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” with “Third base, I’m headed for a home run/Don’t stop baby, don’t stop baby now,” she tries to sell her words with the most charming of poses. Needless to say, she succeeds.

    Which songs on “Avril Lavigne” are worth adding to your hottest playlist? Check out our track-by-track breakdown of Avril Lavigne’s new album.

    _______________

    7. Bad Girl feat. Marilyn Manson – The high-profile collaboration with Marilyn Manson is salacious, sloppy, muddied rock music  — as it damn well should be. As Lavigne writhes in the spotlight, Manson shrieks his encouragement, and the rubber-necking audience is treated to a spitballing session that turned into glorious chaos.

    8. Hello Kitty – As compelling of a car-crash “Bad Girl” was, “Hello Kitty” has the opposite effect: it’s a bold stab at a genre outside of Lavigne’s oeuvre (here, dark-edged techno-pop), but it never comes together. By the 20th time “Hello Kitty, you’re so pretty” is declared, the listener’s attention is already on the next track.

    9. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet – Lavigne travels back to her well-worn pop-rock path and spins a tale of quickly forged romance that could have easily fit in on “The Best Damn Thing.” “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” is not quite as solid as “Avril Lavigne’s” uptempo singles, but it’s almost there, and the unabashedly joyful bridge is worth a listen on its own.

    10. Sippin’ on Sunshine – The first song on the album to shove the bass to the forefront, “Sippin’ on Sunshine” is a light, surprisingly funky hoedown that translates the echoing chorus of “Here’s To Never Growing Up” to a lyrics sheet that could play well on adult contemporary radio.

    11. Hello Heartache – “I was champagne/You were Jameson,” Lavigne laments on this straightforward breakup track. The ghouls crowing “la-la-la” in the background amplify Lavigne’s pain, and although the sentiment at the heart of “Hello Heartache” is a simple one, it’s no less impactful.

    12. Falling Fast – There are moments on “Avril Lavigne” that the singer seems primed for a country-pop makeover, and “Falling Fast” is the clearest, and best, example of Lavigne’s subtle shift toward Nashville’s biggest genre. The song’s breathy delivery, hushed rock elements and crystallized melody would all be at home on a Taylor Swift album.

    13. Hush Hush – The great thing about the songwriting on “Avril Lavigne” is that it always conveys a deeper meaning without overreaching or busting out the thesaurus. The piano-driven “Hush Hush” emits a rush of feelings — regret, anger, desperation, nakedness, and finally, faint hopefulness — and unpacks them tidily while presenting Lavigne as a pop artist one can still trust to handle the job.

    Related posts:

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the Avril Lavigne song “Give you what you like”

    October 23, 2013 – 12:07 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the Avril Lavigne song “Give you what you like” Give You What You Like – Avril Lavigne (Sub. English-Español) Here are the lyrics: If you give me what I want Then Ill give you what you like When you turn off the lights I get stars in my eyes […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Let Me Go”

    October 22, 2013 – 12:56 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Let Me Go” Avril Lavigne – Let Me Go ft. Chad Kroeger Let Me Go (Avril Lavigne song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search “Let Me Go” Single by Avril Lavigne featuring Chad Kroeger from the album Avril Lavigne Released 15 October 2013 Format Digital download […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote many of the songs on Avril Lavigne’s new album

    October 21, 2013 – 12:52 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote many of the songs on Avril Lavigne’s new album Preview “Avril Lavigne” iTunes 30 Second Snippets According to Wikipedia: Avril Lavigne (album) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Avril Lavigne Studio album by Avril Lavigne Released 1 November 2013 Recorded 2011–2013 Length 46:07 Label Epic Producer Rickard B. […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the hit song “Crush” sung by David Archuleta

    July 29, 2013 – 12:52 am

    David Archuleta – Crush Crush (David Archuleta song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Crush” Single by David Archuleta from the album David Archuleta Released August 12, 2008 (See release history) Format CD single, digital download Recorded 2008 Genre Pop Length 3:33 Label Jive Writer(s) Jess Cates, David Hodges, Emanuel Kiriakou Producer Emanuel Kiriakou David Archuleta singles chronology “Crush“ (2008) “A Little Too Not Over You“ […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the hit song “What about now” for Daughtry

    July 26, 2013 – 12:49 am

    Uploaded on May 11, 2011 “What About Now” is the seventh single from American rock band Daughtry’s eponymous debut album. The song is a ballad, that was written by Ben Moody, David Hodges (both former members of Evanescence), and Josh Hartzler, who is married to Amy Lee (the lead singer of Evanescence) It is one of […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock Native David Hodges co-wrote the top 10 hit Evanescence song “Bring me to Life”

    July 24, 2013 – 7:00 am

    Evanescence – Bring Me To Life From David Hodges website: David Hodges is a Grammy award-winning writer/producer/artist hailing from Little Rock, AR. As the former writer and keyboardist of the band Evanescence, he and his band mates took home Best New Artist as well as the Best Hard Rock Performance trophy for their hit “Bring […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the hit song “There’s a Place for Us” sung by Carrie Underwood for the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia”

    July 22, 2013 – 5:41 am

    Carrie Underwood | There’s A Place For Us | Music Video Uploaded on Dec 27, 2010 Music Video of Carrie Underwood – There’s A Place For Us – The Chronicles Of Narnia – Voyage Of The Dawn Treader Soundtrack This video is created using various trailers from the film The Chronicles Of Narnia – Voyage Of The […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock Native David Hodges co-wrote the hit Evanescence song “My Immortal”

    July 19, 2013 – 6:38 am

    Evanescence – My Immortal From David Hodges website: David Hodges is a Grammy award-winning writer/producer/artist hailing from Little Rock, AR. As the former writer and keyboardist of the band Evanescence, he and his band mates took home Best New Artist as well as the Best Hard Rock Performance trophy for their hit “Bring Me To […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the song “The Lonely” sung by Christina Perri and the theme music of the TV Show “Revenge”

    July 17, 2013 – 12:36 am

    Christina Perri- The Lonely (official music video) Distance (Christina Perri song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Distance” Single by Christina Perri featuring Jason Mraz from the album lovestrong. Released March 20, 2012 Format Digital download Recorded 2011 Genre Pop Length 3:55 Label Atlantic Writer(s) Christina Perri, David Hodges Christina Perri singles chronology “A Thousand Years“ (2011) “Distance“ (2012) Jason Mraz singles chronology “I […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock Native David Hodges co-wrote the hit Evanescence song “Going Under”

    July 15, 2013 – 6:29 am

    Evanescence – Going Under From David Hodges website: David Hodges is a Grammy award-winning writer/producer/artist hailing from Little Rock, AR. As the former writer and keyboardist of the band Evanescence, he and his band mates took home Best New Artist as well as the Best Hard Rock Performance trophy for their hit “Bring Me To […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock Native David Hodges co-wrote top ten hit song “Because of You” sung by Kelly Clarkson

    July 11, 2013 – 6:43 am

    Kelly Clarkson – Because Of You From David Hodges website: David Hodges is a Grammy award-winning writer/producer/artist hailing from Little Rock, AR. As the former writer and keyboardist of the band Evanescence, he and his band mates took home Best New Artist as well as the Best Hard Rock Performance trophy for their hit “Bring […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges writes another #1 hit for Carrie Underwood

    July 2, 2013 – 12:06 am

    On June 28, 2013 Underwood was back on top with a song that Little Rock native David Hodges who graduated at Arkansas Baptist High School help write. Carrie Underwood “Sees” No. 1 Again onTop 20 By Sarah Wyland | Leave a Comment Carrie Underwood photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville. Carrie Underwood current single title is prophetic. She makes […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges has song used in “Safe Haven” trailer

    March 29, 2013 – 7:48 am

    Christina Perri ‘Safe Haven’ Interview- New Album Coming! Published on Feb 6, 2013 http://bit.ly/ClevverMusic – Subscribe to ClevverMusic! We caught up with “Jar of Hearts” singer Christina Perri at the Safe Haven movie premiere where her song “Arms” is featured on the soundtrack. We chatted with her on the red carpet about the song, and […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges wrote song for “Breaking Dawn Part 2″

    November 19, 2012 – 7:26 am

    David Hodges is a graduate of Arkansas Baptist High School in Little Rock and he co-wrote the song “A Thousand Years,”with Christina Perri. It was featured in the movie “Breaking Dawn Part 2.” David is one of the three founding members of Evanescence and he has written for Kelly Clarkson,  Celine Dion, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

    Katharine McPhee’s hit song co-wrote by Little Rock native David Hodges

    February 10, 2012 – 12:42 pm

    The “American Idol” contestant-turned-actress is getting positive reviews for her role in “Smash.” The singer plays an actress who is competing for the part of Marilyn Monroe in a Broadway show. The Hollywood Reporter calls it “‘Glee’ for grownups” and Entertainment Weekly calls McPhee “mediocre” but “very likable.” Great song: Uploaded by KatharineMcPheeVEVO on Nov […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Edit | Comments (0)

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote song for “Breaking Dawn” movie

    November 15, 2011 – 5:16 pm

    Little Rock native and Arkansas Baptist High School graduate David Hodges co-wrote a song for the blockbuster movie “Breaking Dawn” that comes out this Friday. Interview: Breaking Dawn’s Christina Perri Twi’s Hard, Dreams Big       By Leah Collins, Dose.ca Nov 1, 2011   More Images »   OMG. Christina Perri went from a […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Edit | Comments (0)

     

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    My 4 favorite movies that James Garner starred in!!! (One of these movies was about a war hero from Arkansas!!!)

    July 21, 2014 – 12:00 am

    I have always loved James Garner and especially in the Rockford Files TV series that ran from 1974-1980.

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “The Rockford Files”

      James Garner as private eye Jim Rockford in the series “The Rockford Files” (1974-80), and returned to the character in several TV movies in the 1990s.

      Garner won the first of his two Emmy Awards for “Rockford Files,” and received 12 other acting Emmy nominations.

      CREDIT: NBC

    • ______________________________

    My four favorite movies that James Garner starred in are these four below:

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “Support Your Local Gunfighter”

      James Garner and Jack Elam returned in 1970 with the comedy “Support Your Local Gunfighter,” co-starring Suzanne Pleshette.

      CREDIT: United Artists

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “Support Your Local Sheriff”

      Joan Hackett and James Garner in the western comedy, “Support Your Local Sheriff” (1969).

      CREDIT: United Artists

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “The Great Escape”

      James Garner (as “The Scrounger”) and Donald Pleasance (“The Forger”) take part in a daring break from a World War II prisoner of war camp, in the 1963 adventure, “The Great Escape.”

      CREDIT: United Artists

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    • “Darby’s Rangers”

      James Garner starred in the 1958 World War II actioner “Darby’s Ranger,” directed by William Wellman.

      CREDIT: Warner Brothers (William Orlando Darby was born and raised in Ft Smith Arkansas and he is buried there today.)

    ______________

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • SAG Lifetime Achievement

      Actor James Garner, pictured at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank in January 2005.

      James Garner 1928-2014

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      • “The Notebook”

        James Garner and Gena Rowlands in “The Notebook” (2004). Garner received a SAG Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as an elderly man relating the tale of a wartime romance.

      James Garner 1928-2014

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      • “Space Cowboys”

        Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood, James Garner and Donald Sutherland are the aging pilots who will save the world in the 20o0 sci-fi flick, “Space Cowboys.”

        CREDIT: Warner Brothers

      • James Garner 1928-2014

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        • Commercials

          In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Garner teamed up with Mariette Hartley in a series of popular TV commercials for Polaroid cameras. Their comfortable banter led many to believe they were actually married.

          CREDIT: Polaroid

      • James Garner 1928-2014

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        • “Tank”

          James Garner in the 1984 comedy, “Tank.”

          CREDIT: Universal Pictures

      • James Garner 1928-2014

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        • “Murphy’s Romance”

          James Garner received his first and only Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the 1985 romantic comedy “Murphy’s Romance,” playing a pharmacist whose courting of a divorced mother (Sally Field) is interrupted by the return of her ex-husband (Brian Kerwin).

          CREDIT: Columbia PIctures

      • James Garner 1928-2014

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        • “My Fellow Americans”

          Ex-presidents Jack Lemmon and James Garner confer with sitting president Dan Aykroyd in the comedy “My Fellow Americans” (1996).

          CREDIT: Warner Brothers

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      • “8 Simple Rules”

        In 2003, following the death of John Ritter, Garner joined the cast of Ritter’s TV series “8 Simple Rules,” playing the grandfather of Kaley Cuoco.

        CREDIT: ABC

    James Garner 1928-2014

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    • “Marlowe”

      As Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe, James Garner knew when to get the draw on Bruce Lee, in “Marlowe” (1969).

      CREDIT: MGM

    Book review: ‘The Garner Files’

    At 83, James Garner pulls no punches in this candid account of his acting care

    By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles TimesNovember 1, 2011

    Many actors have breathed life into a memorable or even iconic role but only a few are capable of reconstructing an archetype. In “Maverick” and then again “The Rockford Files,” James Garner stepped into two of TV’s most calcified genres — the western and the detective series — and set a new standard that others have been chasing down since. Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford were different in many ways — Maverick was a fast-talking con man in the Old West, Rockford a modern L.A. private investigator with motivation issues — but they shared an important trait: They were reluctant heroes. Each would much rather wisecrack his way out of a jam, but if you pushed him hard enough, you would invariably find yourself counting angels on the ceiling.

    So it’s not surprising that it’s taken Garner, now 83, this long to write a memoir. But having made up his mind to write it, with the help of Jon Winokur, Garner follows his own heroic dictum: Plenty of self-deprecating, humor, a general air of live-and-let-live, but when it comes down to it, no pulled punches.

    For Garner fans, “The Garner Files” is catnip; Winokur perfectly captures and sustains the actor’s voice, which includes a penchant for digression, intentional understatement and occasional declarations of war (against bullies; against studio bookkeeping; against certain directors, certain actors and certain studio heads). For industry aficionados, it is a candid accounting, sometimes literally, of a process that is too often over-glamorized and under-chronicled. Two of the most fascinating chapters involve his suits against Universal over syndication of “The Rockford Files” and a description of the physical damage caused by being an action star (he eventually had to have both knees replaced).

    For the rest of the world, including and especially those too young to remember even “The Rockford Files,” Garner’s memoir offers a rare glimpse of a certain type of man, an archetype in itself. In her introduction, Julie Andrews describes Garner as a “man’s man,” but that has too brutish a connotation. Garner, like his characters, is first and foremost a gentleman, the sort who lives by a personal code that preaches patience and tolerance, up to a point. “When I’m pushed, I shove,” Garner writes, quoting one of his own characters, Murphy Jones of the movie “Murphy’s Romance.”

    There are more than a few fistfights in “The Garner Files,” as well as thrown furniture and golf clubs, but usually there’s a reason, as when costar Tony Franciosa actually punched stuntmen during fight scenes: “… he kept doing it despite my warnings to stop … so I had to pop him one.”

    Garner comes by his voice and his persona naturally enough. Born James Baumgarner in Norman, Okla., he lost his mother when he was 4; he and his two brothers were split up among relatives. The Baumgarners survived the Depression better than many Oklahomans, but when James’ father, Weldon, remarried and reunited the family, the result was disaster. Weldon drank and his new wife Wilma beat the children viciously. Finally, James fought back. The marriage fell apart, but Weldon left again. James was 14.

    After working a series of jobs, he joined the Merchant Marine; undone by chronic seasickness, he headed to California to live with his aunt, Grace Baumgarner, and enrolled at Hollywood High, where he was recommended for a Jantzen bathing suit ad. “I wasn’t interested until I heard they were paying $25 an hour. That was more than the principal made!” He was soon kicked out of high school (“There was a slight problem: I never went to classes”), drafted into the Army and headed to Korea, where he was wounded twice and developed an antiwar mentality that would later make Charlie Madison, the dog robber in “The Americanization of Emily,” his favorite role.

    Garner became an actor the old-fashioned way — a soda jerk he met while working at a Shell station once told him that with his good looks he could be a big star. By the time Garner returned from Korea, that soda jerk was a stage producer, who quickly gave him a non-speaking role in the stage production of “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.” There, Garner sat as part of the jury, night after night watching Henry Fonda and learning how to act.

    “The Garner Files” tells the story of Garner’s career with many entertaining backstage stories and Garner’s opinion of his luminous costars, but the kid who survived his own childhood is always present and accounted for. After falling in love with Lois, his wife of 55 years, at first sight and marrying her almost as quickly, he accepted a contract with Warner Bros. at a less than commensurate salary because he had a family to support.

    That contract took him off the big screen and into “Maverick,” a move he was not thrilled with, partly because it was so ill paid. When it became a hit, he dug his heels in and after he was laid off because a writers strike shut down production on “Maverick,” he dug them in further. He and his lawyer, a young man by the name of Frank Wells (who would eventually run Disney), sued Warner Bros. for breach of contract. The judge ruled in his favor and despite all the predictably dire warnings, he did work, and sue, in this town again.

    Garner is a self-described curmudgeon and there are times when “The Garner Files” wobbles dangerously toward the querulous. But it never topples because he is unfailingly candid about his own desires — which are to make money and do the roles he believes he is best suited to do.

    By those standards, he is a wildly successful man, and by more ephemeral ones as well. Thirty pages at the end of the book are titled “Outtakes” and filled with anecdotes, memories and testimonials from Garner’s friends, family and colleagues, including Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, James Woods and David Chase (who got his start on “The Rockford Files”). Although there is an air of Tom Sawyer creeping back to hear his own funeral about this chapter, it is a fine, frank and fun collection.

    More than that, it provides proof that the man the reader has just spent several hours listening to does actually exist outside his own narrative. Just in case you were wondering. Like James Garner knew you were.

    mary.mcmamara@latimes.com

    By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

    My correspondence with Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol about the rebirth of Israel!!!!

    July 18, 2014 – 8:45 am

    Irving Kristol pictured below:

    In 1980 I read the books HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? by Francis Schaeffer and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? by both Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop and I saw the film series by the same names. In those two books Daniel Bell was quoted. In HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? In the chapter entitled, “Our Society,” these words are found:

    Daniel Bell (1919-), professor of socialogy at Harvard University, sees an elite composed of select intellectuals. He writes in THE COMING OF POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY (1973), in the chapter entitled “Who will Rule,” that “the university–or some other knowledge institute–will become the central institution of the next hundred years because of its role as the new source of innovation and knowledge.” He says that crucial decisions will come from government, but more and more the decisions of both business and government will be predicated on government-sponsored research, and “because of the intricately linked nature of their consequences, [the decisions] will have an increasingly technical character.” Society thus turns into a technocracy where “the determining influence belongs to technicians of the administration and of its business, its education, its government, even the daily pattern of the ordinary man’s life–becomes a matter of control by the technocratic elite. They are the only ones who know how to run the complicated machinery of society and they will then, in collusion with the government elite, have all the power necessary to manage it.

    “Bell’s most astute warning concerns the ethical implications of this situation: ‘A post-industrial society cannot provide a transcendent ethic….The lack of a rooted moral belief system is the cultural contradiction of a society, the deepest challenge to its survival.’ He adds that in the future, men can be remade, their behavior conditioned, or their consciousness altered. The constraints of the past vanish. To the extent that Bell’s picture of this future is fulfilled, Galbraith’s form of the elite will be the actuality.” (Schaffer, p. 224-225)

    In the 1990’s I took the opportunity to confront many of the scholars of the sort that Francis Schaeffer had mentioned in his books and Adrian Rogers was mentioning in his sermons and confront them with the evidence that showed that Old Testament prophecies were true and that the Bible could be trusted. Daniel Bell and his good friend Irving Kristol were two of the intellectuals that I had the opportunity to correspond with.

    I sent them both a letter that included many scriptures from the Old Testament that showed that the prophets predicted  the Jews would be brought back from all over the world to rebirth the country of Israel again. Daniel Bell responded in a letter dated September 23, 1995:

    Dear Mr. Hatcher, Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I don’t know whether or not the prophecies of the Ezekiel are being fulfilled. The very nature of such prophecy, or the parables of Jesus, are inherently ambiguous, and so always opaque. As to the survival of the Jewish people, I think of the remark of Samuel Johnson that there is nothing stronger than the knowledge that one may be hanged the next day to concentrate the mind–or the will. Sincerely, Daniel Bell

    On September 21, 1995 his good friend Irving Kristol added this comment, “I am leery of taking Biblical prophecies too literally. They always seem to get fulfilled, some way or other, whatever happens. They are inspiring, of course, which enough for me.”

    Let me make a few observations about Irving Kristol who I was very fascinated with because of some of his comments in the 1990’s. First, isn’t it worth noting that the Old Testament predicted that the Jews would regather from all over the world and form a new reborn nation of Israel. Second, it was also predicted that the nation of Israel would become a stumbling block to the whole world. Third, it was predicted that the Hebrew language would be used again as the Jews first language even though we know in 1948 that Hebrew at that time was a dead language!!!Fourth, it was predicted that the Jews would never again be removed from their land.

    Now let’s take a look at Irving Kristol’s comments on God.

    Irving Kristol 1/6 – Father of Neoconservatism

    Irving Kristol 2/6 – Father of Neoconservatism

    Irving Kristol 3/6 – Father of Neoconservatism

    In this video clip above you will find this exchange:

    Mr. KRISTOL: Oh, I’ve never had a problem with God, never. Even when I was a young Trotskyist, I never had a problem with God. I mean, the so-called existence of God was never a problem for me. I mean, I–however you define God–and that is a serious theological matter, what you mean when you use the word `God’ is a serious theological matter. But I had no doubt, ever since I read the opening of the Bible, that, yes, there is such a thing as original sin, and we all live with it. And if you want to understand the human condition, reading the f–opening of the Bible is as good a place as any, the best I think. And so that part of religion has simply never been a problem for me.
    LAMB: The last several essays in your book, of the 41, is about Judaism or about being a Jew.
    Mr. KRISTOL: Mm-hmm.
    LAMB: Where are you? Are you a practicing Jew?
    Mr. KRISTOL: Sort of. That is, I’m a member of a Jewish congregation, and I go to synagogue on the high holidays. I attend bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. I do not observe Jewish law because I never did. I think if I had it to do over again, I would be more observant. But I don’t have it to do over again, and I’m not going to completely change my life now. That’s rather silly, I think. But being Jewish has never been a problem for me.
    LAMB: What does that mean?
    Mr. KRISTOL: Well, I–I–you know, I…
    LAMB: What is being Jewish? I mean, what i–what’s the culture?
    Mr. KRISTOL: Well, it’s not a question of culture. It’s a question of identity. I always knew I was Jewish. I never thought of not being Jewish. I was always very pleased to be Jewish. After all, not everyone is a member of the chosen people, and so I just went along. Even when I was not all that observant–I still am not all that observant–being Jewish just came naturally to me.
    _____________________
    Burt Reynolds knew the gospel when he was young and he when he became  rich and successful he said that he would live his life for his selfish desires when he was young but when he was old he would repent and serve God. Adrian Rogers in a sermon noted that he doubted very seriously if Reynolds would ever get around to repenting when he was old. Irving Kristol’s statement above reminded me of Reynolds. Kristol noted, “I think if I had it to do over again, I would be more observant. But I don’t have it to do over again, and I’m not going to completely change my life now. That’s rather silly, I think.”
    Here the words of Christ tells us how those who are not righteous after they did really do long for their friends and relatives to follow the Bible’s directives, but they will not even accept the evidence of someone coming back from the gave if they don’t accept what the prophets had to say.

    Luke 16:19-31 The Rich Man and Lazarus

    19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

    22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

    25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

    27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

    29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

    30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

    31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

    New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.________________The famous preacher Charles Finney had some very insightful comments on this passage:The wicked dread to have their friends come to them in this place of torment. You see this feeling most distinctly manifested in this parable. The reason of the feeling is obvious. They are still human beings and therefore it can be no joy to them to have their earthly friends come into their place of woe. They have human feelings. They know they can look for no alleviation of their own woe from the presence of their friends. They know that if those friends come there as they did they can never escape; therefore they beg that those friends may never come. Therefore this rich man prays that Abraham would send Lazarus to his five brethren, to testify to them, lest they also come into that place of torment.The state of mind that rejects the Bible would reject any testimony that could be given. This is plainly taught here, and can be proved. It can be proved that the testimony of one who should rise from the dead is no better or stronger than that of the Bible…When unbelief has taken possession of the mind, you may pile miracle on miracle; men will not believe it. Suppose ever so many should rise from the dead. Men who reject the Bible would not believe their testimony. They would insist either that they had not been really dead, or that if they had been, they did not bring back a reliable report from that other country. They would make a thousand objections, as they do now, against the Bible, and with much more plausibility then than now. Now, they only know their objections are really unfounded; then they would have more plausible objections to make, and would be sure to give them credit enough to refuse to repent under their teachings. They would not be persuaded even then.

    My Dinner with Irving

    On evangelicals, the evangelical Left, and the Jews

    By Wilfred M. McClay

    My Dinner with Irving

    Wheaton College, “arguably the best school in the nation with a Christ-based worldview.” Courtesy Steven Sheets, Flickr.

    Several years ago, I gave a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on the subject of religion and secularism. Afterward, the discussion continued at a relaxed and intimate dinner for selected guests—an occasion greatly enlivened by the presence of the late Irving Kristol, then an AEI senior fellow, and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, the distinguished historian. As usual, Irving had plenty to say. In particular, when the subject turned to the distinctive character of evangelical Christianity, he pronounced himself in a manner that I (and others in the room) remember vividly to this day. “Well, after all,” he remarked, with casual assurance, “religion is what you’re born with.”

    But no, I insisted in response, that was precisely what evangelicals don’t believe. There are no grandchildren in the kingdom of heaven, they like to say, which is their way of asserting that religious truth is something each person must come to individually through a process of personal conversion, a process that does not require a church or a priest but is thought to be a direct and unmediated act of “coming to Jesus.” Hence there are no legacy admissions, for this faith cannot be inherited or otherwise passed along; it must be re-appropriated freshly by each generation. This is why evangelicals say, following Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, that one must be “born again.” The first birth is not the one that counts.

    Irving was completely unmoved by my impromptu catechesis. “Religion is what you’re born with,” he repeated, unraveling an amused smile and seemingly all the more pleased with a formulation that had kicked up some dust in the room. Even his wife sitting next to him, who knows a very great deal about Anglo-American evangelicalism, clearly thought him off-base. “Irving, you don’t understand. . . ,” she started, but then gently shook her head in an exasperation no doubt earned through years of experience.

    As for me, with my deep respect for Irving, I couldn’t help beginning to wonder whether he may have understood something important that I was missing.

    This little episode came to mind as I read Robert W. Nicholson’s thoughtful open letter to American Jews about evangelical-Jewish relations. It came to mind partly because Kristol was one of the first prominent American Jewish intellectuals to proclaim that Jews ought to be less dismissive of their evangelical admirers, but indeed should learn to cherish evangelicals as loyal and reliable allies, preferable in most ways to secular liberals. This declaration brought down on him a level of wrath and ridicule and repudiation that was stunning in its vehemence. Irving fully expected that reaction, and never showed any sign of being upset by it. He realized that the religion that his Jewish detractors were born with—militantly secular liberalism, welded to a sense of ethnic identity—would impel them to deal harshly, even savagely, with his apostasy.

    One thing that Nicholson perhaps underestimates, given his typically evangelical generosity to the ideal of the free and uncoerced conscience, is just how difficult, how very nearly unthinkable, it is for most American Jews to imagine taking seriously the beliefs of most evangelicals. It is hard to judge—and as a non-Jew, I perhaps have no business even trying—whether the greater force in producing this near-unanimity is cultural consensus or cultural fear. Both probably play a role, and the fears involved are powerful ones, manifested not only publicly but on the most intimate levels.

    I think of a Jewish friend, a man of impressive intellect and great moral courage, who converted to Christianity after two decades of waiting . . . for his mother to die. If this sounds like the material for a great Jewish joke, it is also powerful testimony to Irving’s contention that religion is what you are born with. For if this man had really fully believed that his eternal salvation depended on his acceptance of Jesus as his savior, would he have waited all those years? Would he have waited ten minutes?

    That may be putting it ungenerously. Loyalty to what you were born with carries a weight of moral obligation all its own, not only for Jews but perhaps for Jews especially. Strangely, it seems that this logic of loyalty persists even when the specifically religious elements in Jewish identity have been all but banished in favor of full-bore secular liberalism. That would certainly help explain the vehement reaction to Irving’s daring to say a good word about an evangelical-Jewish alliance.

    All this goes to underscore the importance of Nicholson’s message. It is a message that today needs to be heard more than ever as Israel faces mortal peril in a world where it is increasingly alone and abandoned, with anti-Semitism, having acquired a new lease on life, on the rampage. Under the circumstances, American Jews need especially to overcome their hardwired prejudices and see the clear truth that 300 million evangelicals have been, and still are, arguably Israel’s most stalwart non-Jewish allies in the Western world.

    Just as important, what needs to be understood is that this stalwart support is not imperishable and that it cannot be taken for granted in the future. Nicholson supports with his own research and interviews the important work of Gerald McDermott in identifying the rise of an anti-Israel movement within American evangelicalism, potentially a very serious and consequential departure.

    Nicholson is right about this, and the movement he describes is real. At the same time, however, I would urge caution lest one exaggerate the extent or the durability of anti-Israel evangelicalism—or, for that matter, the size and influence of the American evangelical Left altogether.

    Anti-Israel sentiment among evangelical elites is strongest in the academic world and in international missions and relief groups. But the actual influence of such groups on the larger world of American evangelical churches is debatable. One can count on the fingers of two hands, with fingers left over, the number of voluble and publicity-savvy figures on the evangelical Left like Sojourner’s Jim Wallis. (Frank Schaeffer, whom Nicholson quotes as urging “an end to the largely unchallenged influence of Christian Zionism,” is a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy.) And Bethlehem Bible College, while a seedbed for the kind of pro-Palestinian revisionism that is enjoying a run of popularity with the American evangelical Left, is not itself an American college.

    So I would be wary and vigilant, but not unduly panicked. The fact is that evangelicalism thrives on a flat and somewhat amorphous ecclesiastical structure, without popes or bishops or prelates. This renders it hard to be captured by ideological missionaries—particularly ones who openly reject the authority of the Bible as so many on the evangelical Left do.

    Moreover, figures like Wallis have badly tarnished their credibility by their near-total identification with Democratic-party politics. They made a reputation for themselves post-9/11 by opposing the Bush administration’s anti-terror policies, but their abject and total silence as the Obama administration has continued those same policies, expanding them into areas like the use of unmanned drones to assassinate putative terrorists, has left them utterly discredited in the eyes of many of their idealistic young followers. For years, the evangelical Right has been accused of choosing Caesar over God by aligning itself with the Republican party and conservative politics. Now the charge applies in spades to the evangelical Left.

    In any event, much more important, and more worthy of concern, are the “mainline” Protestant denominations, including the Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church, and others. Their antagonism to Israel is blatant and of long standing; of even longer standing is their fealty to the standard desiderata of theological and political liberalism. Indeed, the growing liberalization of American evangelicalism can itself be seen as a convergence with the beliefs and views of these churches, bleaching out the particularisms inherent in the Jewish and Christian faiths and reducing them to a bland universalism. This is a movement that speaks to the status anxieties of the rising generation of young evangelicals, affluent, suburban-bred, and socially mobile, who are intent that, whatever else their church will be, it will not be the church of their fathers. That is generally what they mean in proclaiming their ideal of a “countercultural” faith.

    I do not mean to sound dismissive of this generation. I often lecture in evangelical colleges, and I love the students I meet there. But I am struck by some of the very phenomena that Nicholson describes. They appear to be getting a very limited education, particularly in politics and economics. Instead, they are heavy on emotivism, a disposition that leaves them prepared to speculate endlessly about what they imagine “Jesus would do” but poorly equipped for engagement with challenging points of view.

    How to overcome these limitations and what they might portend? I can think of few better ways than by bringing such students into a fuller awareness of the Jewish roots of their own faith. For how can one possibly grasp the Christian doctrine of vicarious atonement, or the meaning of the Eucharist, without understanding how those ideas are grounded in Jewish understandings of sin, guilt, and expiation? How to understand the source of human rights and inviolable dignity without recurring to the biblical belief that man is made in the image of God?

    To be sure, the evangelical-Jewish alliance will always be at least partially a matter of strange bedfellows. That can’t be helped, and it shouldn’t be denied. The differences are profound. But at the same time, there is a deep commonality, going to the heart of both faiths and revealed by and through the course of two millennia of human history. It is, I think, most succinctly expressed in the idea that both traditions worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That phrase carries the weight of a distinct cosmology, anthropology, and moral universe.

    This, in other words—and in ways that Jews perhaps understand better than evangelicals—is the religion that both groups have indeed been “born with,” as Irving was right to suggest. That bedrock fact points to at least the possibility of an alliance destined, in the fullness of time, to be of far more than mere political convenience.

    ___________________

    Wilfred M. McClay is the Blankenship Chair in the history of liberty at the University of Oklahoma and director of its Center for the History of Liberty. 

    _______________________

    Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology., 

    The answer to finding out more about God is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

    ____________________________________________________

    Adrian Rogers: An Old Testament Portrait of Christ

    Published on Jan 27, 2014

    I own nothing, all the rights belong to Adrian Rogers (R.I.P.) & his website http://www.lwf.org. Story of Abraham is told.

    ______________________________________

    Adrian Rogers: Why I Believe in Jesus Christ

    Adrian Rogers: The Biography of the King

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    ____________

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    __________________________________

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    It’s time for citizens to hold elected officials accountable about spending – even if that means their favorite government-funded program gets axed

    January 16, 2014 – 6:19 am

    ______________ It’s time for citizens to hold elected officials accountable about spending – even if that means their favorite government-funded program gets axed Want Spending Reduced? Support Cutting Your Favorite Government Program Genevieve Wood January 14, 2014 at 9:30 am Credit: SHAWN THEW/EPA/Newscom It’s time for citizens to hold elected officials accountable about spending – […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

    The Sugar Program costs our customers money and should be eliminated!!!

    November 20, 2013 – 6:28 am

    _____________ The Sugar Program costs our customers money and should be eliminated!!! November 7, 2013 5:15PM The Sugar Program Is Central Planning By Chris Edwards Share House and Senate negotiators are working out details of a big farm bill that may pass this year. No industry in America is as coddled as farming, and no […]

    By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)
    By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in spending out of control | Comments (0)

    MUSIC MONDAY Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Sippin on Sunshine”

    July 14, 2014 – 12:05 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Sippin on Sunshine”

    Avril Lavigne – Sippin’ On Sunshine (full song)

    Avril Lavigne, ‘Avril Lavigne’: Track-By-Track Review

    By , New York | November 04, 2013 4:33 PM EST

    “A first taste like honey, you were so yum/Can’t wait for a second, cause it’s so fun,” is a line from the song “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” off Avril Lavigne’s self-titled fifth studio album. It’s a line that’s cutesy and cloying, but look, if you can, beyond it, and soak in the beautifully crafted pop song that houses it. From “Sk8er Boi” to “Girlfriend” to the underrated “What The Hell,” Lavigne has always released pop music that defies dissection, ruffling the feathers of scholars with cries of “Hey, hey! You, you! I don’t like your girlfriend,” and disregarding high art for a meaty chorus. The thing is, Lavigne has always been highly skilled at this practice — ever since she began spitting the polysyllabic pile-up of the “Complicated” chorus, Lavigne has stayed in her lane, cranked out an album’s worth of enjoyable pop-rock every three years or so, and kept her image and integrity intact. For someone who often focuses on the irresponsibilities of youth, Lavigne has proven herself as one of mainstream music’s most reliable personalities; her commitment to bestowing us with impudent anthems is almost workmanlike.

    There are new faces on “Avril Lavigne” — notably her husband, Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, who co-wrote most of the album and sings with Lavigne on “Let Me Go.” There is a new label, Epic Records, which reunites Lavigne with Antonio “L.A.” Reid, who helped bring her music to the masses. But for the most part, Lavigne’s fifth full-length encapsulates everything worth loving about the 29-year-old’s long-running artistry. There are zero attempts at growing up, but instead there is “Here’s To Never Growing Up,” the album’s marvelous lead single, as well as a kick in the groin called “Bad Girl,” featuring Marilyn Manson; “Bitchin’ Summer,” about how awesome the summer is going to be; and “Falling Fast,” a love song that could soundtrack a flurry of proms come springtime. In spite of the subject matter, the songwriting has never been sharper, and unlike 2011’s “Goodbye Lullaby,” which featured moments in which Lavigne sounded unsure of herself, the singer is fully in control here. When she concludes that line from “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” with “Third base, I’m headed for a home run/Don’t stop baby, don’t stop baby now,” she tries to sell her words with the most charming of poses. Needless to say, she succeeds.

    Which songs on “Avril Lavigne” are worth adding to your hottest playlist? Check out our track-by-track breakdown of Avril Lavigne’s new album.

    _______________

    7. Bad Girl feat. Marilyn Manson – The high-profile collaboration with Marilyn Manson is salacious, sloppy, muddied rock music  — as it damn well should be. As Lavigne writhes in the spotlight, Manson shrieks his encouragement, and the rubber-necking audience is treated to a spitballing session that turned into glorious chaos.

    8. Hello Kitty – As compelling of a car-crash “Bad Girl” was, “Hello Kitty” has the opposite effect: it’s a bold stab at a genre outside of Lavigne’s oeuvre (here, dark-edged techno-pop), but it never comes together. By the 20th time “Hello Kitty, you’re so pretty” is declared, the listener’s attention is already on the next track.

    9. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet – Lavigne travels back to her well-worn pop-rock path and spins a tale of quickly forged romance that could have easily fit in on “The Best Damn Thing.” “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” is not quite as solid as “Avril Lavigne’s” uptempo singles, but it’s almost there, and the unabashedly joyful bridge is worth a listen on its own.

    10. Sippin’ on Sunshine – The first song on the album to shove the bass to the forefront, “Sippin’ on Sunshine” is a light, surprisingly funky hoedown that translates the echoing chorus of “Here’s To Never Growing Up” to a lyrics sheet that could play well on adult contemporary radio.

    11. Hello Heartache – “I was champagne/You were Jameson,” Lavigne laments on this straightforward breakup track. The ghouls crowing “la-la-la” in the background amplify Lavigne’s pain, and although the sentiment at the heart of “Hello Heartache” is a simple one, it’s no less impactful.

    12. Falling Fast – There are moments on “Avril Lavigne” that the singer seems primed for a country-pop makeover, and “Falling Fast” is the clearest, and best, example of Lavigne’s subtle shift toward Nashville’s biggest genre. The song’s breathy delivery, hushed rock elements and crystallized melody would all be at home on a Taylor Swift album.

    13. Hush Hush – The great thing about the songwriting on “Avril Lavigne” is that it always conveys a deeper meaning without overreaching or busting out the thesaurus. The piano-driven “Hush Hush” emits a rush of feelings — regret, anger, desperation, nakedness, and finally, faint hopefulness — and unpacks them tidily while presenting Lavigne as a pop artist one can still trust to handle the job.

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    October 23, 2013 – 12:07 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the Avril Lavigne song “Give you what you like” Give You What You Like – Avril Lavigne (Sub. English-Español) Here are the lyrics: If you give me what I want Then Ill give you what you like When you turn off the lights I get stars in my eyes […]

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    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Let Me Go”

    October 22, 2013 – 12:56 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote Avril Lavigne song “Let Me Go” Avril Lavigne – Let Me Go ft. Chad Kroeger Let Me Go (Avril Lavigne song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search “Let Me Go” Single by Avril Lavigne featuring Chad Kroeger from the album Avril Lavigne Released 15 October 2013 Format Digital download […]

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    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote many of the songs on Avril Lavigne’s new album

    October 21, 2013 – 12:52 am

    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote many of the songs on Avril Lavigne’s new album Preview “Avril Lavigne” iTunes 30 Second Snippets According to Wikipedia: Avril Lavigne (album) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Avril Lavigne Studio album by Avril Lavigne Released 1 November 2013 Recorded 2011–2013 Length 46:07 Label Epic Producer Rickard B. […]

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    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the hit song “Crush” sung by David Archuleta

    July 29, 2013 – 12:52 am

    David Archuleta – Crush Crush (David Archuleta song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Crush” Single by David Archuleta from the album David Archuleta Released August 12, 2008 (See release history) Format CD single, digital download Recorded 2008 Genre Pop Length 3:33 Label Jive Writer(s) Jess Cates, David Hodges, Emanuel Kiriakou Producer Emanuel Kiriakou David Archuleta singles chronology “Crush“ (2008) “A Little Too Not Over You“ […]

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    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the hit song “What about now” for Daughtry

    July 26, 2013 – 12:49 am

    Uploaded on May 11, 2011 “What About Now” is the seventh single from American rock band Daughtry’s eponymous debut album. The song is a ballad, that was written by Ben Moody, David Hodges (both former members of Evanescence), and Josh Hartzler, who is married to Amy Lee (the lead singer of Evanescence) It is one of […]

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    Little Rock Native David Hodges co-wrote the top 10 hit Evanescence song “Bring me to Life”

    July 24, 2013 – 7:00 am

    Evanescence – Bring Me To Life From David Hodges website: David Hodges is a Grammy award-winning writer/producer/artist hailing from Little Rock, AR. As the former writer and keyboardist of the band Evanescence, he and his band mates took home Best New Artist as well as the Best Hard Rock Performance trophy for their hit “Bring […]

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    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote the hit song “There’s a Place for Us” sung by Carrie Underwood for the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia”

    July 22, 2013 – 5:41 am

    Carrie Underwood | There’s A Place For Us | Music Video Uploaded on Dec 27, 2010 Music Video of Carrie Underwood – There’s A Place For Us – The Chronicles Of Narnia – Voyage Of The Dawn Treader Soundtrack This video is created using various trailers from the film The Chronicles Of Narnia – Voyage Of The […]

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    July 19, 2013 – 6:38 am

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    July 17, 2013 – 12:36 am

    Christina Perri- The Lonely (official music video) Distance (Christina Perri song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia “Distance” Single by Christina Perri featuring Jason Mraz from the album lovestrong. Released March 20, 2012 Format Digital download Recorded 2011 Genre Pop Length 3:55 Label Atlantic Writer(s) Christina Perri, David Hodges Christina Perri singles chronology “A Thousand Years“ (2011) “Distance“ (2012) Jason Mraz singles chronology “I […]

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    July 15, 2013 – 6:29 am

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    Little Rock native David Hodges writes another #1 hit for Carrie Underwood

    July 2, 2013 – 12:06 am

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    Little Rock native David Hodges has song used in “Safe Haven” trailer

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    Katharine McPhee’s hit song co-wrote by Little Rock native David Hodges

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    Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote song for “Breaking Dawn” movie

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