Rex Nelson impersonates Houston Nutt at LRTC 08 27 12
Published onOct 2, 2012
Little Rock Touchdown Club has Rex Nelson do the stats for the games played that week. Rex does a lot of impersonations of different people but I like his Houston Nutt the best. Video by Popeye Video – Mrpopeyevideo
My favorites were Phillip Fulmer, Howard Schnellenberger, John Robinson, Gene Stallings, Bobby Bowden, Lloyd Carr, Johnny Majors, Pat Summerall, Pat Dye, and Vince Dooley . Phillip Fulmer told a lot of funny stories. I remember that I heard Phillip Fulmer speak at the Little Rock Touchdown Club and the next week I heard former Arkansas Coach Frank Broyles speak. Phillip Fulmer was a senior offensive lineman for UT in that famous 1971 Liberty Bowl game and Frank Broyles was the Arkansas Coach.
Every week before the main speaker gets to speak, the Touchdown Club hears a 5 minute SEC wrap up show by Rex Nelson who is a local figure who is great at making fun of the the SEC coaches and the one he makes the most fun of is Houston Nutt and the second favorite target in recent years has been “Fat Phil.” Before Phillip Fulmer spoke after Rex spoke and Fulmer said, “Rex, I have heard about some of those things you have said about me and I am not going to let you have this microphone back today.” Therefore, the following Fulmer’s talk Rex could not resist taking another shot at Coach Fulmer the next week before Frank Broyles was to speak and this is what he said,
“I am glad that Coach Fulmer had a good time last week. We were nice to Coach Fulmer and hope he had a good time last week. We were nice to Coach Fulmer because we are always nice to our guests. I don’t see many orange shirts out in the crowd today like I did last week. I didn’t tell Coach Fulmer that old line about why orange is such a good color for UT fans to wear last week but here it is. Why orange is such a wonderful color for Tennessee fans? You can go deer hunting in the morning. You can do roadside litter pick up as part of your sentence in the afternoon. You can go to the game at night and never have to change clothes all day long.”
This may surprise you that Phillip Fulmer said his favorite team was 1994. The team started out with 5th year senior Jerry Colquitt getting injured as QB on the 7th play against UCLA and then Todd Helton (who is now playing professional baseball) getting injured next then Peyton Manning taking over after a 1-3 start.
Coach Fulmer said he talked to Athletic Director Doug Dickey on a Monday after the team had started 1-3 and told him that looking at the schedule he did not know if they would win another game or not with all these injuries and he asked Doug Dickey, “Are you still going to love me?” Dickey responded, “We will still love you and we sure are going to miss you too.”
Coach Fulmer said they had a team prayer meeting that Monday night and the team came together and really committed to listen to the coaches and to get this season back on track and the result was the 8-4 season and that really was the beginning of what would become a national championship group that would play from 95 to 98 and have a 45-5 record during that time
Let me tell you another couple of funny stories from Phillip Fulmer’s talk over here in Little Rock that I got to see. He was asked about the famous fumble in the 1971 Liberty bowland he responded with what he did and he motioned with his hand pointing the direction that UT was heading that night. That is so funny because that is exactly what happened. Look at this clip from the writer Tom Mattingly:
In the 1971 Liberty Bowl, Arkansas had the ball late in the game leading 13-7, when there was a fumble in front of the Vol bench. Players on both sides fought for the ball, with everybody on the Tennessee sideline giving the signal for a Tennessee possession. pointing en masse to the Arkansas goal.
There’s no telling what happened in the pile that night in Memphis, but Carl Witherspoon came up with the pigskin somehow, or at least the officials said he did, and Tennessee went in for the winning score. Arkansas partisans thought they got hosed twice that game, the other call coming for holding on a field-goal attempt. They remember that game to this day, nearly 40 years later.
The Arkansas fans I talked to actually said it was a Razorback that handed the ball to the ref that night.Fulmer went on to say that we he the happiest man in the stadium that night because he was guilty of an unsportsmanlike penalty because he had one of teeth knocked out that game and he went to the sideline and even though he was bleeding the trainer put some gauges in his mouth and said get back in there. Then he went looking for that guy who hit him in the mouth and got the penalty and it happened to come on a big run, so he was the goat for that game unless they pulled it out. Which he was very glad that they did.
Fulmer also talked about Tee Martin taking his shoulder pads off with 3 minutes to go when Arkansas stopped UT on 4th down but Billy Ratliff told Tee to put his pads back on because the defense would get the ball back and look at what happened below:
Vol fans remember – fondly – the “Stoerner Stumble” at Neyland Stadium in 1998, when Arkansas looked to be in control of the game and their destiny. Quarterback Clint Stoerner tripped over one of his linemen coming out from under center and tried to break his fall with the ball. That was a bad move. Billy Ratliff, who had knocked the lineman into Stoerner’s feet, grabbed the ensuing fumble, the Vols went in for the score, and won the game, keeping their hopes alive for a national title.
Fulmer pointed out that it was Ratliff is the one who got the ball back and the rest is history. Fulmer also pointed out that the following year the Vols were in position to possible make defense of their national title but were upset by an Arkansas team that did not have as much talent as the Vols that year.
LITTLE ROCK – The Little Rock Touchdown Club kicked off the 2013 season and announced the club’s line-up of renowned speakers and the state’s finest in football.
The Northwest Arkansas Touchdown Club also released its slate of speaker for 2013.
Bret Bielema – Aug. 28
Jeff Long – Sept. 4
Former Oklahoma St. coach Pat Jones – Sept. 18
Lou Holtz – Sept. 23
Fitz Hill – Oct. 2
CBS College Football Columnist – Bruce Feldman – Oct. 16
ESPNU Lead Host – Dari Nowkhah – Oct. 23
ESPN.com SEC Writer – Chris Low – Oct. 30
During a news conference in the lobby of the Metropolitan Tower, the Little Rock Touchdown Club announced its most ambitious season ever as it celebrates its 10th season as a sports organization. Club President and founder David Bazzel announced four new awards to be presented by the club this year:
Cliff Harris Award – Small College Defensive Player of the Year
Awarded to the top defensive player from a combination of Division II, Division III and NAIA colleges.
Dan Hampton Defensive Lineman of the Year
Arkansas High School Defensive Lineman of the Year Arkansas College Defensive Lineman of the Year
Willie Roaf Offensive Lineman of the Year
Arkansas High School Offensive Lineman of the Year Arkansas College Offensive Lineman of the Year
Sully Award – Best Broadcast Call of the Year
Best High School broadcast play call of the Year Best College broadcast play call of the Year
In addition to the new awards, Bazzel also announced the lineup for the 15 week Touchdown Club season including the kickoff meeting with Arkansas head coach Bret Bielema on August 21st at the Marriott Hotel (formerly Peabody) and the club’s end of season awards banquet featuring former Arkansas head coach & ESPN analyst Lou Holtz in January 2014. Other speakers include former Arkansas head coach Houston Nutt, former Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne and six former Razorback greats.
“This is without a doubt is the biggest year in the history of the Little Rock Touchdown Club” said Bazzel. “Being able to honor such great Arkansas football legends as Cliff Harris, Dan Hampton and Willie Roaf is a great honor for our club and then you throw in the best speakers lineup in our ten year history and it adds up to a football fan’s heaven here in central Arkansas.”
President and CEO of Metropolitan National Bank, Lunsford W. Bridges said: “Once again, we are thrilled to team up with the Little Rock Touchdown Club for what is sure to be another exciting year of Arkansas football. It is rewarding that we have a nationally respected club in our area and we are honored to share in celebrating the successes of the Little Rock Touchdown Club each year.”
The club’s first meeting of the 2013 season will be held on Wednesday, August 21st at the Marriott in downtown Little Rock. Lunch begins at 11:00 a.m. and the program is from 11:50 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Members will meet weekly throughout the fall season and once a month during the winter and spring months at the Embassy Suites. National and regional speakers from the world of college football will address members each week.
In her eighth year as executive director of the Little Rock Touchdown Club, Kelly Lasseigne will coordinate the club’s weekly meetings and will serve as the organization’s member contact.
Returning this year for the Little Rock Touchdown Club is the High School Player of the Week award. Each honoree will be announced at the club meeting.
The annual awards banquet will be held in early 2014 and honors players and coaches from every high school division, as well as players from every college in Arkansas. It also recognizes the SEC offensive and defensive players, Coach of the Year, National Player of the Year and names the winner of the Paul Eells Award. The Little Rock Touchdown Club will team with the sports staff of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to honor this year’s players and coaches.
About Cliff Harris
Cliff Harris was born in Fayetteville, spent most of his formative years in Hot Springs and graduated from high school at Des Arc. He played multiple sports growing up but received little interest from college recruiters. A family friend convinced second-year Ouachita Baptist University head coach Buddy Benson that Harris deserved a chance to play college football, and Harris made a name for himself in the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference from 1966-69. Harris’ father had starred in football at Ouachita in the 1940s.
Harris was overlooked in the 1970 NFL draft. But Gil Brandt, who headed the legendary scouting operation for the Dallas Cowboys, was well aware of the player at the small school in Arkadelphia. Harris, in fact, won a starting position with the Cowboys as a rookie in 1970. His rookie season was interrupted by a tour of duty in the U.S. Army, but Harris wasted no time regaining his starting position following his military commitment.
During the next decade, the hard-hitting Harris changed the way the position of free safety was played in the NFL. He rarely left the field, often leading the team not only in interceptions but also in yardage on kickoff and punt returns. In just 10 years as a Cowboy, Harris played in five Super Bowls (the Cowboys won two of them), was named to the Pro Bowl six times and was named a first-team All-NFL player for four consecutive seasons by both The Associated Press and the Pro Football Writers Association.
Harris was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2004. He also was named to the Dallas Cowboys Silver Season All-Time Team and was selected by Sports Illustrated as the free safety on the magazine’s All-Time Dream Team. Harris was awarded the NFL Alumni Legends Award. For years, the Cliff Harris Celebrity Golf Tournament has been one of the leading charity events in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
About Willie Roaf
Pine Bluff native Willie Roaf, the son of dentist Clifton Roaf and the late Judge Andree Layton Roaf, is quick to note that his mother would have preferred that he become an attorney or doctor. He drew so little interest from college recruiters coming out of Pine Bluff High School that he considered switching from football to basketball. Finally, he decided to play football at Louisiana Tech University, where his career took off. After a stellar professional career, Roaf was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2012.
Roaf was 6-4 and weighed 220 pounds when he went to Louisiana Tech, small for a college offensive lineman. By his sophomore season, Roaf was 6-5 and weighed 300 pounds. Louisiana Tech played Alabama, Baylor, South Carolina, Ole Miss, West Virginia and Southern Mississippi during his senior season, allowing professional scouts plenty of opportunities to watch Roaf play. He was picked in the first round of the 1993 NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints. Roaf was the eighth selection overall and the first offensive lineman to be drafted.
Roaf spent the first nine years of a 13-year NFL career with the Saints. He started 131 games for New Orleans and helped the franchise to its first playoff win, a 2000 victory over the defending Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams. A torn ligament in his right knee forced Roaf to miss the second half of the 2001 season. He was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs, where he made the Pro Bowl in each of his four seasons.
Roaf was voted to the Pro Bowl 11 times in 13 seasons, tied with Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz for the most Pro Bowl appearances by an offensive tackle. He earned a spot on the NFL All-Decade teams for both the 1990s and the 2000s. Roaf also was inducted into the New Orleans Saints Hall of Fame in 2008 and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
About Dan Hampton
An injury caused by an accident kept Dan Hampton out of organized sports in junior high, but he made up for lost time during his junior and senior years at Jacksonville High School. Playing for Bill Reed’s Red Devils, Hampton caught the eye of the University of Arkansas coaching staff and went on to star on defense for the Razorbacks at the end of the Frank Broyles era and the start of the Lou Holtz era. He was a four-year letterman at Arkansas, a three-year starter and a two-time All-Southwest Conference selection. Hampton was named to the Razorback All-Decade team of the 1970s.
Hampton made his mark as a freshman with 21 tackles in 1975. He had 48 tackles and recovered two fumbles as a sophomore. His tackle total rose to 70 as a junior. Hampton earned All-American honors his senior season with 98 tackles. He was the Southwest Conference Defensive Player of the Year in 1978 and was the Chicago Bears’ No. 1 pick (the fourth pick overall) in the 1979 NFL draft.
Hampton made an immediate impact as a rookie when he had 70 tackles, 48 of which were solo efforts, and recovered two fumbles. Hampton would be a first- or second-team All-Pro choice six times as either a defensive end or tackle. Nicknamed “Danimal” for his ferocious style of play, Hampton played 12 seasons for the Bears despite 10 knee surgeries and numerous other injuries.
Hampton retired in 1990, having become just the second Bear to play in three different decades. He was inducted into the University of Arkansas’ Sports Hall of Honor in 1991, the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002.
About Little Rock Touchdown Club
The Little Rock Touchdown Club, which began in August 2004, has become one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing football clubs. Having started with 17 founding members, the organization has quickly grown to more than 500 members. The club meets every Monday from 11:50 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., with lunch beginning at 11:00 a.m. during the fall at Embassy Suites in west Little Rock. Annually, the club hosts an awards banquet recognizing a Most Valuable Player from every Arkansas college football team. Awards are also presented to a Coach and Player of the Year from every high school classification. A national Collegiate Player of the Year, SEC Defensive and Offensive Players of the Year and SEC Coach of the Year are also named.
Other big Touchdown Club news for the 2013 season:
The Little Rock Touchdown Club will become the host organization for the Arkansas Chapter of the National Foundation Foundation. Club members can join the NFF for a discounted Touchdown Club rate of only $25, which will allow each member to vote on the annual College Football Hall of Fame. The club will also tie in the NFF’s national scholar-athlete program with its own annual awards banquet. For more information go to LRTouchdown.com.
The Touchdown Club has also teamed with the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in offering a special rate for membership in all three organizations: The TD Club, the NFF and the ASHOF for $125. For more information go to LRTouchdown.com
For the first time, all club memberships can be purchased online at LRTouchdown.com.
103.7 The Buzz will be broadcasting from each Touchdown Club meeting. The Zone, hosted by Justin Acri, will be on location at each Touchdown Club meeting from 10:00- 1:00.
A new Touchdown Club Board of Directors was created. Members include: Clint Albright, David Bazzel, Bob Bomar, Renata Jenkins Byler, John Coulter, Nate Coulter, Ronald Davis, Wally Hall, Tommy Harkins, Judy Henry, Bill Jackson, Bruce James, Rob Janes, Anne Jansen, BJ Maack, Andrew Meadors, Scott Miller, Ark Monroe Nancy Monroe, Rex Nelson, Kinney O’Conner, David Parker, John Pierron, Jim Rasco, Wes Sutton, and Gary Underwood.
5:30 am – August 07, 2013 — Updated:5:31 am – August 07, 2013
Football: Bielema, Holtz Bookend Speakers At Little Rock TD Club
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Current Arkansas football coach Bret Bielema and former Razorback coach Lou Holtz will be bookend speakers at the Little Rock Touchdown Club during the upcoming season, club president David Bazzel announced Tuesday.
Bielema will speak Aug. 21 and Holtz will address the club’s awards banquet in January.
Also in the lineup are former college coaches Houston Nutt, Gene Chizik, and Tom Osborne, several former Razorbacks and former NFL greats Cliff Harris, Dan Hampton, and Steve Atwater.
Bazzel also announced four new awards to be presented by the club.
The speaker lineup:
Aug. 21, Bielema.
Aug. 26, Harris.
Sept. 3, Hampton.
Sept. 9, Osborne.
Sept. 16, Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long.
Sept. 23, Nutt.
Sept. 30, Chizik.
Oct 7, UCA coach Clint Conque.
Oct. 14, Mitch Mustain.
Oct. 21, Jonathan Luigs.
Oct. 28, Arkansas State University coach Brian Harsin.
Mangino at a 2007 KU basketball game Eric Mangino is a very good speaker. Here is a portion of an article by Jim Harris: Jim Harris’ Notebook: Mangino Ready To Return; Big Week For Central Arkansas by Jim Harris 11/14/2011 at 3:37pm It’s easy for fans who don’t follow Kansas football closely to forget just […]
Uploaded by TheMemphisSlim on Sep 3, 2010 Johnny Majors from Huntland, TN tried out for the UT Football team weighing 150 pounds. His Father, Shirley Majors his HS Coach,encourage him and then 4 younger brothers all to be Vols. Johnny Majors was the runner-up in 1956 for the Heisman Trophy to Paul Horning, on a loosing Notre Dame […]
Yesterday at the Little Rock Touchdown Club meeting Rex Nelson during his SEC roundup mentioned the popular rumor that got started last week that Houston Nutt had been contacted by Memphis. Of course, at the time Larry Porter had not even been fired. I called someone I knew in Memphis and they told me that […]
I enjoyed the Little Rock Touchdown Club and have posted a lot about it all fall. I have links below to earlier posts. Yesterday Wally Hall and Steve Sullivan had some good insights. Below are some of the thoughts of Jim Harris that he shared at the lunch. BUILDING THE DEFENSE: How nice it would […]
Earlier I wrote about where I think Arkansas could win a national championship with just two more wins. Below is a portion of an article by Jim Harris of the website Arkansas 360: AND ON BOBBY: Schlabach, on Arkansas’ coach: “I said when he was hired that Bobby Petrino would make Arkansas a contender for […]
Below is a picture of Lane Kiffin with Johnny Majors. Today Johnny Majors spoke at the Little Rock Touchdown Club. Majors told several revealing stories about his time at Arkansas from 1964-1968 when he was an assistant coach under Frank Broyles. One of the funniest stories concerned fellow assistant coach Jim MacKenzie who knew how to […]
Former Tennessee Football Coach Johnny Majors is to speak at Little Rock Touchdown Club todayat the Embassy Suites hotel. Majors coached at Iowa State from 1968-1972, Pittsburgh from 1973-1976 and 1993-1996, where he led the Panthers to the 1976 national championship and at Tennessee from 1977-1992, where he won three SEC championships. 1976 Sugar Bowl National Championship […]
I got to ask Pat Summerall a question at the Little Rock Touchdown Club meeting back in October of 2010. Summerall had pointed out that Tom Landry was the defensive coordinator and Vince Lombardi was the offensive backfield coach when he played for the Giants. Summerall had shared how he had recovered from his […]
We have had some great speakers at the Little Rock Touchdown Club and Auburn’s Pat Dye has to be included in that list. Jim Harris: No Little Rock Touchdown Club Speaker Quite Like Former Auburn Coach Pat Dye by Jim Harris 10/3/2011 at 3:22pm The last time former Auburn head football coach Pat Dye addressed […]
Yesterday I got to hear Lloyd Carr speak to the Little Rock Touchdown Club. Below is how the Arkansas Democrat Gazette covered it. LITTLE ROCK — Lloyd Carr coached Tom Brady at the beginning of his 13-year tenure as Michigan’s head coach and Ryan Mallett at the end. Now, Brady and Mallett are New England […]
The Broyles Award Trophy, made out of solid bronze, depicts Broyles (kneeling) and longtime University of Arkansas assistant coach Wilson Matthews (standing), watching over a Razorback football game or practice. Matthews was the coach of Little Rock Central High School before joining Broyles on the Razorback’s staff. ______________ Today at the Little Rock […]
Gene Stallings used to interview the boys that dated his daughters. He asked his future son-in-laws if they played sports. He wanted to know if they had competed at something. Below is an article on what Stallings thinks about Texas A&M joining SEC. Stallings: SEC best fit for A&M By Troy Schulte Wednesday, September 7, […]
Reggie Herring is featured in this video above about the 1980 Florida St victory over Pitt. Mark May did a great job at the first Little Rock Touchdown Club meeting of the year. Jim Harris of Arkansas Sports 360 did a good article on it and I agree with what Wally Hall wrote on his […]
I got to hear Howard Schnellenberger speak on 9-4-12 at the Little Rock Touchdown Club. I enjoyed hearing his stories about Bear Bryant and what he learned from the Bear. Here is a story by Jim Harris that discusses these too things. Jim Harris: Spirit Of Arkansan Bear Bryant Runs Through Schnellenberger’s Veins <!– 23 […]
1972 USC Football Highlights vs. Notre Dame Uploaded by 63utuber on Jun 14, 2011 No description available. I got to hear Coach Robinson speak in Little Rock on August 27, 2012. Little Rock Touchdown Club Week 2: Hall Of Fame Coach John Robinson by Zack Veddern on Aug 28, 2012 9:07 AM CDT robinson […]
John L. Smith is to speak at the Little Rock Touchdown Club on Monday Sept 24, 2011. I am proud of him for showing up. Bill Vickery had some comments on the debacle on Saturday. Vickery said it totally removed the earlier nightmare he had since he was 7 years old when he witnessed his […]
Randy White spoke at the Little Rock Touchdown Club yesterday. He did a great job. I have always been a big Dallas Cowboy fan. Here is a story from Arkansas Sports 360: HOW ‘BOUT THEM COWBOYS: The Touchdown Club welcomed Randy White to town this Monday. The former Dallas Cowboy defensive tackle is one of […]
I have written a lot about the Dallas Cowboys in the past. One of my favorite stories is getting to ask Pat Summerall a question about Tom Landry and his answer was a classic one. I simply asked him if he had a chance to interact with any Christian Coaches like Tony Dungy or Tom […]
I got to see Matt Jones speak on 9-10-12 at the Little Rock Touchdown Club and I was proud of him for opening up concerning what brought his career to an end. Drugs can derail a great career. Take a look at what happened to Matt Jones: Taken in the first round by the Jacksonville […]
Gov. Beebe, Shane Broadway, Steve Sullivan, Jeff Hankins and all the notable ASU grads were in the audience today at the Little Rock Touchdown Club. This was the second time I got to see Gus Malzahn speak at the Little Rock Touchdown Club. Two years ago he was skyped in since tornadoes made it impossible […]
Arkansas is hoping for a top notch recruiter for the next coach. Will we get one? Jim Harris: Recruiting Expert Lemming Says Right Choice For Hogs Can Land Impact Players <!– 23 –> by Jim Harris 10/29/2012 at 3:45pm As much as recruiting seems to excite every college football fan base, including Arkansas’, one would […]
I really enjoyed hearing Mike Slive speak on Monday. The SEC is blessed to have Slive. Take a look below at all of his accomplishments. Home / Sports / LITTLE ROCK TOUCHDOWN CLUB Slive: Nonconference tie-ups tangle scheduling PHOTO BY KAREN E. SEGRAVE Under the leadership of SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, the conference has won 62 […]
Harvey Updyke Interview on The Paul Finebaum Show 4 21 11 Part 3 Bobby Petrino going to Tennessee later this year? I thought he would jump at the chance to do that. However, the Vols have looked pretty good this year and if they go into Miss St’s homefield this week and beat the #17 […]
On Oct 1, 2012 I got to hear Willie Roaf speak at the Little Rock Touchdown Club and he did a great job. One thing he said about Charles McRae and Antone Davis of Tennessee was hard to hear. I think he said that they were his friends and he thought they were very talented […]
The folks at Learn Liberty also have a great video on this topic, explaining how big government creates all sorts of unfair and corrupt advantages for politically connected large corporations.
Max Brantley is wrong about Tom Cotton’s accusation concerning the rise of welfare spending under President Obama. Actually welfare spending has been increasing for the last 12 years and Obama did nothing during his first four years to slow down the rate of increase of welfare spending. Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation has noted: […]
I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. I think Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog was right to point out on 2-6-13 that Hillary […]
I thought it was great when the Republican Congress and Bill Clinton put in welfare reform but now that has been done away with and no one has to work anymore it seems. In fact, over 40% of the USA is now on the government dole. What is going to happen when that figure gets over […]
Again we have another shooting and the gun control bloggers are out again calling for more laws. I have written about this subject below and on May 23, 2012, I even got a letter back from President Obama on the subject. Now some very interesting statistics below and a cartoon follows. (Since this just hit the […]
watch?v=llQUrko0Gqw] The federal government spends about 10% on roads and public goods but with the other money in the budget a lot of harm is done including excessive regulations on business. That makes Obama’s comment the other day look very silly. A Funny Look at Obama’s You-Didn’t-Build-That Comment July 28, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I made […]
I have written a lot about this in the past and sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh. Laughing at Obama’s Bumbling Class Warfare Agenda July 13, 2012 by Dan Mitchell We know that President Obama’s class-warfare agenda is bad economic policy. We know high tax rates undermine competitiveness. And we know tax increases […]
Dan Mitchell Discussing Dishonest Budget Numbers with John Stossel Uploaded by danmitchellcato on Feb 11, 2012 No description available. ______________ Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute has shown before how excessive spending at the federal level has increased in recent years. A Humorous Look at Obama’s Screwy Budget Math May 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell I’ve […]
Sometimes it is so crazy that you just have to laugh a little. The European Mess, Captured by a Cartoon June 22, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The self-inflicted economic crisis in Europe has generated some good humor, as you can see from these cartoons by Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay. But for pure laughter, I don’t […]
Another great cartoon on President Obama’s efforts to create jobs!!! A Simple Lesson about Job Creation for Barack Obama December 7, 2011 by Dan Mitchell Even though leftist economists such as Paul Krugman and Larry Summers have admitted that unemployment insurance benefits are a recipe for more joblessness, the White House is arguing that Congress should […]
Dan Mitchell hits the nail on the head and sometimes it gets so sad that you just have to laugh at it like Conan does. In order to correct this mess we got to get people off of government support and get them in the private market place!!!! Chuck Asay’s New Cartoon Nicely Captures Mentality […]
Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchell is right about Greece and the fate of socialism: Two Pictures that Perfectly Capture the Rise and Fall of the Welfare State July 15, 2011 by Dan Mitchell In my speeches, especially when talking about the fiscal crisis in Europe (or the future fiscal crisis in America), I often warn that […]
John Stossel report “Myth: Gun Control Reduces Crime Sheriff Tommy Robinson tried what he called “Robinson roulette” from 1980 to 1984 in Central Arkansas where he would put some of his men in some stores in the back room with guns and the number of robberies in stores sank. I got this from Dan Mitchell’s […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. Amusing Gun Control Picture – Circa 1999 April 3, 2010 by Dan Mitchell Dug this gem out […]
We got to cut spending and stop raising the debt ceiling!!! When Governments Cut Spending Uploaded on Sep 28, 2011 Do governments ever cut spending? According to Dr. Stephen Davies, there are historical examples of government spending cuts in Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and America. In these cases, despite popular belief, the government spending […]
I have put up lots of cartons and posters from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism, Greece, welfare state or on gun control. On 2-6-13 the Arkansas Times Blogger “Sound Policy” suggested, “All churches that wish to allow concealed […]
Gun Free Zones???? Stalin and gun control On 1-31-13 ”Arkie” on the Arkansas Times Blog the following: “Remember that the biggest gun control advocate was Hitler and every other tyrant that every lived.” Except that under Hitler, Germany liberalized its gun control laws. __________ After reading the link from Wikipedia that Arkie provided then I responded: […]
On 1-31-13 I posted on the Arkansas Times Blog the following: I like the poster of the lady holding the rifle and next to her are these words: I am compensating for being smaller and weaker than more violent criminals. __________ Then I gave a link to this poster below: On 1-31-13 also I posted […]
Now, for tonight, we are going to continue our look at biblical inspiration. This is a little bit more like a classroom than it is a preaching event. I want you to think through with me some of the passages of Scripture that speak to the issue of fulfilled prophecy.
The fact that the Bible contains prophecies that are fulfilled already in history is an indication that God is the author of Scripture. One of the strongest indications, I believe, that Scripture is inspired by God is the fact that it is absolutely accurate and demonstrates divine omniscience with regard to future events. There is nothing more true of all humanity than that we cannot predict the future. We cannot predict the future. We are abysmal at predicting the future. It is impossible for us to predict the future. I remember a few weeks before I came here to be the pastor of Grace Community Church back in February of 1969, not long before that, United States Space Agency was making its efforts to place a man on the moon. And a gentleman was invited to speak here at Grace Church, a pastor who had been preaching for many years, and he came on a Sunday night and he preached on the subject, “Why God will never allow man to reach the moon.” And he had what he thought were all kinds of biblical reasons for that viewpoint. Well obviously he was wrong and shortly after that he made that terrible error in judgment and discernment, he was proven to be wrong and for all that I know that was really the end of people’s confidence in him.
We are unable to declare the future. But God is able because God knows everything and because God writes history and therefore He writes the future. Prophecy really, as we look at it tonight, is going to consider that aspect of God’s omniscience which causes Him to be able to accurately predict the future. This aspect of prophecy we’re going to look at is going to be a declaration of future events. Prophecy is a big word and it can have a lot of meanings. But we’re going to use the word in the sense of predicting the future. Prophecy can be from the Greek verbprophemi, to speak before or to speak on behalf of someone, or to speak of things before they actually happen. And we’re going to be looking at it in that sense.
Prophecy is never just a good guess. It is never conjecture. It is never partially accurate. It is always unknowable, unpredictable. It always has multiple contingencies and features that cannot be controlled and cannot be known so that as you look into the future and hear God say something is going to happen that has manifold elements to it, you have convincing proof of the divine authorship of Scripture. We can probe into the past by means of the science of historiography, if you will, the study of history. We can delve into the past. And we can do a fairly good job of reconstructing the past. But even when we look at the past there’s a lot of disagreement about many, many things and in the world today if you’ve been educated in the more recent years, you have heard often about revisionist history, efforts to rewrite history from a completely different viewpoint. We have a difficult time, we are fairly successful of being scientific about reassembling the elements of the past, and getting a pretty good idea of what happened in the past. But we have no such means to determine what will happen in the future and no faculty of pre-science or pre-knowledge about what has not occurred. I’m not talking about being able to read about a trend in business because you can discern the way the economy is going. I’m not talking about being able to predict a certain election, political election because you can sense or you can read or you can discern and assess the elements that are going to come into play in that event. We’re not talking about those kinds of things. We’re talking about specific prophecies with multiple components that are equally specific.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the Bible can do this. We shouldn’t at all be surprised because it makes so many times the claim of divine omniscience. Hear the words from Isaiah 46 verses 9 and 10, “I am God and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done. There is no one like Me. I can tell you the ending while we’re still at the beginning. And I can tell you from ancient times the things that have not yet happened.” No one had this ability but God…not even those supposed prophets and prognosticators…Nostradomus, others that have come along in history. I think back a few years, the Jean Dixon and Edgar Casey. And then there are even the more modern quasi religious quasi Christian predictors of the future who give their nebulas prophecies and frequently specific prophecies that turn out to be wrong. There is no one who can know the future but the one who controls the future. There is no one who can tell us what will happen before it has happened except God. No man, no demon can predict specific events or persons who will appear on the scene in the future and carry out certain actions, only God knows that.
And it is such an important element of biblical literature because some have estimated about one fourth of the Bible is prophetic, about one fourth of the Bible is prophetic. Some scholars feel that even more than that, moving in the direction of a third of Scripture is prophetic. Now as far as a standard for true prophecy, let me take you in to the Old Testament. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 18…Deuteronomy chapter 18. We have to lay a bit of a foundation and then we’ll look at some of the prophecies. We’ll do that tonight and also next Sunday night, as well. But in Deuteronomy chapter 18…I’m sorry, chapter 18, yes, verse 20, we read this, “But the prophet who shall speak a word presumptiously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.” The death sentence then is pronounced upon a prophet who speaks a word presumptiously as if it comes from God when it does not. Or who speaks a word coming from some other supposed god than the one true and living God. This was to bring about his execution.
Verse 21, “And you may say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about, or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptiously, you shall not be afraid of him.” That is you shouldn’t be intimidated by him because he’s telling you a lie. If it doesn’t come to pass, it doesn’t come from God. If it’s not accurate, the prophet is to be executed.
Turn over in your Bible to the forty-first chapter of Isaiah…Isaiah chapter 41, and we’re going to be bouncing around a little bit to cover this subject tonight. In Isaiah chapter 41 we’ll look down at verse 21. “Present your case…the Lord says,Isaiah 41:21…present your case, the Lord says, bring forward your strong argument the King of Jacob says.” Verse 22, “Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place.” They claim to be prophets, they claim to speak for God. All right, bring your case. “Bring it forth, declare to us what is going to take place. As for the former events, declare what they were. Tell us what has happened in the past just because you’re omniscient and you know it, tell us what will happen in the future. Do this that we may consider them and know their outcome, or announce to us what is coming. Declare the things that are going to come afterward that we may know that You are God’s.
Here’s the test. Tell us all about what has happened because You’re omniscient about the past. And tell us all that will happen because You’re also omniscient about the future. This, by the way, was a challenge to the Babylonian seers, the Babylonian wise men, the Babylonian prophets, the ones who were supposed to be able to discern the future. Tell us and if you can’t, verse 24 says, you are of no account, your work amounts to nothing, he who chooses you is an abomination. And again the test is if you tell us the truth, it comes from God…if you don’t, it does not and you are a false prophet worthy of death.
Chapter 43 of Isaiah and we’ll look at verse 9. “All the nations have gathered together in order that the peoples may be assembled it…assembled. Who among them can declare this and proclaim to us the former things? Let them present their witnesses that they may be justified or let them hear and say it is true.” You test them, first of all, by their knowledge of the past without books, without records. If they know truth beyond what is observable, they should be able to know the past. Verse 10, “You are My witnesses, declares the Lord, My servant whom I have chosen in order that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, there will be none after Me…even I, I am the Lord, there is no Savior besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed and there was no strange God among you so you are My witnesses, declares the Lord, and I am God.” God is saying you know that I speak the truth and therefore you know that I am God. Bring these other people and put them to the test of their knowledge of both the past and the future to see if their claim to speak for me as prophets is legitimate.
Jeremiah also deals with this in the twenty-eighth chapter of Jeremiah. Just briefly looking at these verses, you can look at them in detail later. Verse 9 of Jeremiah 28, “The prophet who prophesies of peace when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then that prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent.” Again when he prophesies and it comes to pass, you know that he was sent by the Lord. So the test for a true prophet was that what he prophesied came to pass, that he knew because God had revealed that knowledge to him.
Now in the Scripture there are many prophecies. The first one appears inGenesis 3:15where we read that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head…the seed of the woman would destroy Satan. The woman does not have the seed, the seed is in the man. But there was one woman in human history who had a seed within her body apart from a man depositing that seed there and that was the virgin Mary and it was she who produced the Son that crushed the head of Satan. Therein lies the first prophecy in the Bible and it is fulfilled specifically in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ through a virgin…a virgin-born man.
Some Bible scholars have said there are as many as a thousand different prophecies in the Scripture, all relating to future history and many of them have already been fulfilled. The Bible lays out prophecies regarding people and kings and cities and nations and even prophecies that touched the wider world. And to just show you how replete the Scripture is with prophetic truth, there are 20 consecutive chapters of prophecy in Isaiah. There are seventeen consecutive chapters of prophecy in Jeremiah, nine in Ezekiel, two in Amos, and it goes that way through all the rest of the prophets. Doom is predicted for Ammon, for Moab, for Edom, for Philistia, for Babylon, for Tyre, for Sidon and for many other places, doom which came to pass already in history. The record is already written.
In the New Testament there are prophecies in the gospels covering cities in the land of Israel, prophecies which have already come to pass regarding those cities. The record of absolute accurate fulfillment without error through all the centuries stands and while it has been assailed by critics, it has suffered not at all. No matter how hard the critics try, they cannot find a biblical prophecy that did not come to pass the way it was said to happen. And the prophets who wrote didn’t really even understand fully what they were writing. That takes us back to that important statement in the first statement in the first chapter of 1 Peter, “As to this salvation…verse 10…the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful search and inquiry seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating.” They were actually studying their own prophecies concerning the Messiah to try to understand what it was that they were writing. For example, Isaiah predicted that a king would come and that that king’s name would be Cyrus. And Isaiah said there would come a king named Cyrus and he will release Israel from its Babylonian captivity. Isaiah gave us his name 150 years before he was even born. And that is found inIsaiah 44:28…Isaiah 44:28.
A passage that is striking for its simplicity and its accuracy, 1 Kings chapter 13 and verse 2. “Came a man of God from Judah…in verse 1…he cried against the altar by the Word of the Lord and said, ‘O altar, altar, thus says the Lord, behold a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you and human bones shall be burned on you.'” This is a prophecy regarding a coming king, Josiah, who would bring about the destruction of false teachers. By the way, the prophecy names him three hundred years before he was born. Prophecy does not prove the Bible is the Word of God, but it certainly could prove that it was not the Word of God if it is wrong. But it is never wrong. And this is God’s absolute test…search the Scripture, see if these things are so. Our Lord says inMark 13:23as He is talking about His Second Coming, “Take heed, behold I have told you all things.” He’s talking there about the future, the events of His Second Coming and He is essentially saying to them there in Mark 13 as in Matthew 24 and in Luke 21, when you see these things begin to happen, you know that the day of the Lord is near because I have told you all things.
So we have prophecies already given and already fulfilled. Prophecies also given and not yet fulfilled. They will be, however, be fulfilled in the future with the same kind of accuracy that they were fulfilled in the past and if I could throw in a little hermeneutical footnote here, all the prophecies in the past fulfilled in the past were fulfilled literally as they were given. We could therefore assume that all the prophecies related to the future will be fulfilled literally as they were given. They are to be understood in the normal sense that we understand language. And so when it says Christ will come, He will come. When He will come in clouds, He will come in clouds. When He shall place His feet on the Mount of Olives, that’s where He’ll place His feet. When He establishes a thousand-year Millennium, that means He will establish a thousand-year Millennium. All of those prophecies are to be understood in the normal way that prophecies have always been understood. All of the curses that were pronounced and promised to Israel and that came on Israel are only part of God’s plan for Israel. He also promised them blessing for obedience. And when they are obedient, they will be blessed and it will be the same national Israel that will be blessed as the same national Israel was once cursed. You cannot have the curses fall literally on Israel and as the amillennialists would suggest, have all of the promises fall on the church. There’s no way to divide that hermeneutic. The prophecies of the Bible in the future will be understood the way the ones in the past have been understood and so at the end of the age as the signs begin to escalate toward the day of the Lord, they will be interpreted the way you would interpret all the rest of the prophecy that Scripture lays out.
Let’s look at some illustrations of this. Ezekiel chapter 26…Ezekiel chapter 26, I’m going to move rapidly so that we can cover a few of these prophecies. A lot of these I have some notes in the footnotes in the MacArthur Study Bible that will help fill out the things that I don’t have time to say. You can check those sources and others in the commentaries written on these various prophetic books. But for us, we’ll get a good idea of the amazing fulfillment of these prophecies. Ezekiel chapter 26 through chapter 28 and even some comments in chapter 9 are prophecies against a city named Tyre…T-y-r-e. These are prophecies against a city named Tyre. It is identified in the second verse, mentioned there Tyre, verse 2. Now the prophecies start in verse 3, “Behold, I am against you, O Tyre. I will bring up many nations against you as the sea brings up its waves, nation after nation after nation hitting against Tyre like waves hitting against the shore.” And here come the details. “They will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock. She will be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea for I have spoken, declares the Lord God, and she will become spoil for the nations.” Go down to verse 8. “He will slay your daughters on the mainland with the sword and He will make siege walls against you, cast up a mound against you and raise up a large shield against you.” Go down to verse 12, “They will make a spoil of your riches, a prey of your merchandise, break down your walls, destroy your pleasant houses, throw your stones and your timbers and your debris into the water.” Verse 14, “I will make you a bare rock. You will be a place for the spreading of nets. You will be built no more for I, the Lord, have spoken declares the Lord God.” Verse 21, “I shall bring terrors on you and you will be no more. Thou you will be sought, you will never be found again, declares the Lord God.”
Now the elements of this prophecy are really very, very detailed. The prophecy says the mainland city of Tyre will be destroyed. The prophecy says many nations will rise against Tyre, they’ll come successively, not all at once collectively together as one force but like waves, one after another. It says that the rubble of that city will be thrown into the water. It says that Tyre will become like a bare flat rock. It says that fishermen shall dry their nets there. It says Tyre will never be rebuilt again. And there are even other details that I read you about casting a siege and breaking down the walls of that place.
Now you have to understand that when Ezekiel makes this prophecy, you’re not talking about some small town here. You’re talking about one of the greatest cities in the ancient world, the great Phoenician seaport of Tyre and the Phoenicians were one of the most advanced civilizations in ancient times and they were the sailors. They were the ones who sailed the Mediterranean. They were the great traders of the world, the greatest sailors in the world history, the greatest navigators in ancient times. They were the foremost explorers of their day and they were therefore great colonizers.
You find a ruler named Hiram I who controlled the Phoenician world, Phoenicia. This city under his reign, this city of Tyre was fortified with a wall, according to history, 150 feet high, fifteen feet thick. It had a very capable fleet. It was flourishing when Joshua led Israel into the promised land. In fact, Hiram began his reign eight years before Solomon, overlapping David’s reign. David sought help from Hiram when David wanted to build his palace and he got artisans and cedars from Hiram to help with the palace. Hiram later aided Solomon when Solomon set out to build the temple by sending cedars down, the cedars of Lebanon.
But this prophecy was given that this great city would be destroyed with all this detail laid out. Three years after the prophecy…three years…Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, laid a siege against the city of Tyre. It lasted from 585 to 573, thirteen years of siege against this city. Finally after thirteen years of being surrounded by the forces of Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar and having their supplies cut off, they finally surrendered to the terms and the first part of the prophecy was fulfilled because Nebuchadnezzar immediately broke down all the walls and broke down all the towers, verse 4, destroying the walls, breaking down all the towers. That made the city indefensible. That was not an unusual thing for conquerors to do, but you can imagine it was a serious enterprise. It doesn’t mean you have to break down the entire wall, but you had to render it ineffective by putting massive holes in it at the appropriate places.
Upon arriving, however, he was shocked to find no spoils which was a great disappointment to a conqueror because the people had used their superb fleet to remove everything of value far away, at least far enough away to an island about a half mile off shore. They had just continually over those years been shuttling everything of value off shore. By the way, in the twenty-ninth chapter of Ezekiel verses 17 to 20, Ezekiel says that the Babylonians would get no plunder and they did not get any plunder. So the mainland city was destroyed, it was flattened, it was nothing but rubble, basically. The island city then flourished a half mile off shore. It remained a powerful city, by the way, for 250 years. That was the new city of Tyre.
While during those 250 years the timbers and the stones remained in ruins on the shore for that whole duration. All the prophecy then was not fulfilled, only a portion of it was fulfilled. In the ordinary course of events, those ruins would have become a tell, t-e-l-l, a mound, such as archaeologists find and dig into as the wind-swept dirts cover over the centuries, they bury the rubble of the city. And surely when parts of the wall fell, eventually all the wall fell and normally would have been buried under a tell to be discovered long time later by archaeologists. No one, no one at all would go to the monumental effort of throwing all that debris into the water, but that is exactly what this Scripture says. Verse 12, “They will break down the walls, destroy the pleasant houses, throw your stones and your timbers and your debris into the water.” Why would anybody do that? Why would you cart down debris and throw it into the water? Well for 250 years nobody did that, it wasn’t fulfilled. Then along came Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great, at this time, is age 24, he is bent on conquering the world. He has come on his way east. He has an infantry we are told that numbers about 33 thousand men and he has about 15 thousand in his calvary and he is on his way to establish his great world empire. He has just defeated the Persians under Darius III at the battle of Isis in the year 333. He is on his march now to the east and toward Egypt. He wants to conquer the great Egyptian society. In order to get to Egypt, he has to make a bend around the eastern part of the Mediterranean and come down the coast. He comes in to Phoenicia which is now the land of Israel, basically. He calls on the Phoenician cities to open their gates to him and to supply him all the supplies that he needs. And, of course, the first place that he stops as he starts south is that northernmost place called Tyre. He sent word to the Tyrenians of what he wanted and they sent word back and said, “We’re not giving you anything.”
And so, Alexander was upset. And you don’t want to get Alexander the Great upset. It’s amazing the lengths that that man would go to achieve the satisfaction of his own agenda. He had no fleet, he had no ships. How in the world was he going to get what he needed from Tyre which was a half mile off shore? Answer? He saw all the debris that had been lying there for 250 years and to make a long story short, he built a causeway all the way to the island…at least two thousand feet long. And we are told by historians and we can see it because it’s still there in part today, at least 200 feet wide across the strait separating the old and the new. Arian, the Greek historian, has written in his book, History of Alexander in India how this was accomplished. And he gives all kinds of fascinating details.
Tyre had become fortified like Alcatraz, surrounded by powerful walls that went right down to the edge of the sea. Really a very impregnable place. So Alexander knew that if he was going to conquer them, he couldn’t just go pull up to the wall in ships, he could build ships relatively…that was a relative possibility, but he could only get up to a wall he couldn’t get across, so he decided that he would need to build a land peninsula and move massive machines that were very tall with flip-down bridges that he could set on the top of the wall to walk right in to the city. The work went well at first, until the water started getting deeper and deeper and as the water got deeper, the project moved slower and all the people in Tyre stood on the wall and threw boulders at his army, trying to build their causeway.
They stopped the work in order to protect their lives, this only made him more angry. And so he decided that he would build a great shield called a tortoise, for obvious reasons, and that he would hold up the shield. You remember in the passage that I just read you, there is reference made that there would be raised up, in verse 8, a large shield against you. You find that in history. They actually tried to shield the workers from the stones that were being thrown on them. Meanwhile, Alexander’s engineers were on the shore building monster towers called Heliopolis…Heliopolis, a hundred and sixty-feet high, twenty stories high. And they held at the top light artillery and men. Highest towers, by the way, ever used in the history of war. High above the city walls, they would just roll them across the causeway when it was finished, drop down the cause…the bridge and march into the city. They were basically resisted and resisted and resisted, raids from the people of Tyre, everything they could do to stop them, it all was for not. In the end, even using some ships that he acquired, he collected the navies from all the local places he could go. He got help from places like Sidon and Biblis(?) and Rhodes and Malous(?) and Lycia and Macedon and Cyprus and he got enough ships to move out into the deep water and continue his building.
Seven months it took him, seven months. At the end of seven months, these monstrous towers rolled across that causeway, flipped down the bridges, went into the city. Eight thousand were slain in the battle, seven thousand were executed military style, thirty thousand were sold as slaves to replenish the treasuries of Alexander. Philip Myer the historian says, “Alexander the Great reduced Tyre to ruins in 332, or 333 B.C. She recovered in a measure but never to the place she previously held in the world. The once great city is now as bare…writes this historian…as the top of a rock and is a place where fishermen dry their nets.”
By the way, that island city was repopulated and later restored…destroyed by the Muslims, 1281. The Muslims came, conquering in the name of Allah. But the main city has never been rebuilt and that is consistent with verse 21, “You will never be found again,” declares the Lord God. There’s a little village out there on that island. It’s in the news in modern times. There’s a place where the Israelis have retaliated against refugee camps in past years. Jerusalem has been rebuilt, just for information sake, seventeen times…seventeen times. Twenty-five centuries ago a Jewish prophet in exile in Babylon was told by God that the city of Tyre would never be rebuilt, and it never has. Today you can’t even find a ruin on that site.
And frankly, that’s astounding to me because the location is staggeringly beautiful, one of the most beautiful spots along the Mediterranean. There’s a fresh water spring there that has been measured some years ago that produces a flow of ten million gallons of water a day, enough for a large city. Never been rebuilt. Some mathematicians got a hold of this prophecy, took all of the little parts of this prophecy, put them all together and said, “The probability that this could all happen by chance is one in seventy-five million.” That’s probably conservative. Amos weighed in on the destruction of Tyre. Turn to Amos chapter 1 verse 9, “Thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Tyre and for four, I will not revoke its punishment because they delivered up an entire population to Edom and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood, so I will send fire upon the wall of Tyre and it will consume her citadels.” And we know historically that Tyre was literally burned by the missiles of Nebuchadnezzar. In the original attack, Tyre was burned by missiles, fiery arrows fired by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar in the thirteen-year siege.
This is an amazing Scripture until you understand that God wrote this and God told the prophet what the prophet never could have known because God knows exactly what’s going to happen because God is in charge of exactly what’s going to happen. In the ninth chapter of Zechariah there is more against Tyre, verse 2, there is a word of the Lord against this land, Tyre and Sidon. And then in verse 3, “Tyre build herself a fortress, piled up silver like dust and gold like the mire of the streets,” and that was because the Phoenicians out of Tyre were doing this trade all over the Mediterranean area. Also they were trading with the east because the goods coming from the east would come through there to go to the Mediterranean. They were trading with the south, people coming up from Egypt and those coming down from the north, so that they were very, very wealthy. “Behold…says verse 4…the Lord will dispossess her, cast her wealth into the sea. She will be consumed with fire.” Again Zechariah noted what was true in the raid or the siege of Nebuchadnezzar that the city was set on fire. Other cities in Phoenicia that became later known as Philistine cities, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, these cities also, including Ashdod in verse 6, would be a part of the prophecy as well.
Going further down the course…the coast, it’s Gaza, Ekron, Ashkelon, Ashdod, they’re all going to be captured. They all were captured. And of the five great cities, the only one left out of the prophecy because it was a little bit inland was the city of Gath…the city of Gath.
Josephus, the great historian, records for us in immense detail, and you can read Josephus’ history how all these components came to pass. The success of Alexander’s evasion of Syria and Palestine in the fourth century is known history in all its detail. He absorbed Syria. Tyre was obliterated. Her commerce destroyed to the amazement of her neighbors. Interestingly enough, not only was Gath spared in all of this, but another city was spared, the city of Sidon…Sidon did not share the same fate as Tyre.
Let’s go back to the twenty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel and look at the city of Sidon. Twin cities, twenty miles north of Tyre is the city in ancient times called Sidon. Now apparently Sidon was the center of Baal worship, the worship of Ashteroth and Tammuz, the capital city, you could say, of idolatry. It had been founded and back in Genesis 10 by one of the sons of Canaan, Genesis chapter 10 verse 15. Now look at 28:22 and let’s just see what the Bible says is going to happen to Sidon. Now it says, “The Lord God, behold, I am against you, O Sidon. I shall be glorified in your midst. Then they will know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments in her and I shall manifest My holiness in her, for I shall send pestilence to her and blood to her streets and the wounded shall fall in her midst by the sword upon her on every side, then they will know that I am the Lord.”
Three things to point out…blood in the streets, swords everywhere and no ultimate destruction. Unlike Tyre, there’s no statement that this city would not survive and today you can go there and find Sidon flourishing as the seaport city of Saida. But you won’t find Tyre.
In 351 B.C. the city was ruled by Persia and it revolted and the Persian army besieged it, 351 B.C. When all hope of saving the city was gone, forty thousand citizens chose rather to die than submit to Persian vengeance. So what they did? They shut themselves up in their houses, set their houses on fire and died in the flames. It was a horrific way to die. But the city was rebuilt again and again and again and re-conquered again and again. Floyd Hamilton says, “Blood has flowed in the streets over and over but the city stayed in existence and stands today as a monument to fulfilled prophecy. It was taken three times by the Crusaders, three times by the Muslims, all by the sword. In 1840 it was bombarded by the combined fleets of England, France and Turkey. No human eye could have seen how in the future this city would be in a bloodbath induced by swords, but would never be extinct when one twenty miles down the coast would be extinct.” But we aren’t surprised because God knows the truth. One writer says, “No well accredited prophecy is found in any other book or even oral tradition now existing or that has ever been existing in the world.” You can’t find in any religious book in the world a well-attested and accurate fulfilled prophecy. The Bible is always exactly correct about everything.
Maybe I have time for one more. Ezekiel chapter 30, since we’re having such a great time doing this. This one, chapter 30, Ezekiel chapter 30, let’s go down to verse 13. And this is Egypt, not Tennessee, just for some of you. “Thus says the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols and make the images cease from Memphis and there will no longer be a prince in the land of Egypt and I will put fear in the land of Egypt, I will make Pathros desolate, set a fire in Zoan, and execute judgments on Thebes and I will pour out My wrath on Sin…with an upper case S, proper name…the stronghold of Egypt and I will also cut off the multitude of Thebes…”now we could stop at that point.
What does this say? It says about Memphis that the idols in Memphis will be destroyed. That’s unmistakable. “I will destroy the idols and make the images cease from Memphis.” It says Thebes will be destroyed, judgments will be executed on Thebes and the multitude will be cut off. That means they will be killed. Thebes destroyed and its population killed. And then that most interesting statement, “That there will no longer be…in verse 13…a prince in the land of Egypt.” No more native ruler in Egypt.
Now let’s start with Memphis. It was a very ancient and a very important place for the origins of religious worship in Egypt. It was regarded as a very sacred place because of its original religious beginning. It was the capital of what was called middle Egypt and it was the stronghold of religion and therefore the stronghold of idols. And God said it would be destroyed and its idols in particular would be destroyed. And that is exactly what happened to Memphis. The historian Herodotus records that Cambyses did that and he did that by first attacking the city called Sin, verse 15, the stronghold of Egypt, verse 15, “I’ll pour out My wrath on Sin, the stronghold of Egypt.” It was called Pelusium, the Greek term for it. It was the key to Egypt. It was the stronghold, and if you could break through at that point, you could conquer. Herodotus says that’s where Cambyses came in and launched his attach which was successful.
Now the Egyptians were hopeless idolaters. In fact, they mummified cats. They mummified cats…you know about the holy cows in India, well they had holy cats and holy dogs and particularly cats were of interest to them because they had a cat goddess, Ugastet…Ugastet, the cat goddess and all the cats and they were all urchin cats, not domesticated cats. They all were basically the protectors of her honor, so they mummified cats when they died.
Well, Cambyses was pretty shrewd. They also worshiped dogs and so when he launched his attack against Pelusium, he launched it with a whole bunch of cats and dogs. And his army came following the cats and following the dogs. And because the animals were held to be so sacred in Egypt so that no Egyptian would use any weapon against those animals, he came in and won his victory. He slew Apis, the sacred cow and he began to destroy the idols and destroyed them all in Memphis. Memphis disappeared. It began at this point to disappear, its idols disappeared with it. Today archaeologists don’t know where Memphis was. Likely it was the second largest city in Egypt and they can’t find it.
I’ve been there, to that site, on one of my trips to Egypt. And I was absolutely fascinated to hear from the guide that there in that region although they do not know exactly where the city was, there in that region they have discovered ancient statutes buried face down in the sand that they date before Moses and after. And they find these statues with the face buried in the sand and the back rotted out. The Bible said that the idols of Memphis would be struck down, history says that’s exactly what happened.
Then there were to be judgments on Thebes, according to verse 14. Cambyses, this Persian, invaded Egypt, brought destruction on Thebes, burning their temples, destroying all their statutes, but Thebes recovered for a while. Second blow came a century before Christ, 89 B.C. A siege was laid on Thebes for three years and when Thebes fell on that time in 89 B.C., it fell into complete oblivion. It was flattened, nothing left, fulfilling prophecy. Its people were killed, never returned. And again it was an amazing city. History says 66 feet was the height of the wall and 24 feet was the width.
When the Bible says something is going to happen, it’s exactly what happens…exactly what happens. God judged that land from the top to the bottom, from Sin all the way to Thebes, top to bottom, and destroyed its idols.
The final prediction was that there would no longer be a prince in the land of Egypt. That would be the son of an Egyptian king. That has been fulfilled. From 350 B.C. and on Egypt has never had an Egyptian as a ruler. The famous rulers that you think about, Sadat, Abdulnasser, familiar names, neither of them was an Egyptian. They’ll never have an Egyptian ruler, Scripture is accurate about that.
Well there are many more such prophecies but I will save them for next time. Fascinating, isn’t it? The Word of God stands. Believe me, the critics would love to dismantle the Scripture on the basis of these things, but they cannot do that. History confirms the truthfulness of the Word of God. Let’s pray.
What a blessing and an encouragement it is to our hearts, Lord, to see the Word of God be vindicated by history. Amazing things to think about, but why would we be surprised, this is Your truth and You are God and You are omniscient and You cannot err. We thank You that Your Word has stood the test of scrutiny through the centuries and it still stands firm, accurate. And if it can be trusted in these things, it can be trusted in all that it affirms and declares and teaches and commands and prophesies. And indeed, what You have said will happen has happened and what You have said is yet to happen will happen, just as surely, just as precisely, just as accurately. Your character is at stake and You are the God of truth who knows all things, even the end from the beginning and You can tell us about the things that have not yet happened. We thank You that Your Word is so trustworthy. We trust it spiritually and believing it place our life and our eternity in Your hands, and we do it with joy and confidence because Your Word is true. And we thank You from the depths of our being for giving us this truth, in Christ’s name. Amen.
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. In today’s lesson John MacArthur talks […]
Larry King – Dr. John MacArthur vs. “father” Manning Uploaded on Sep 26, 2011 GotoThisSite.org ___________ I have seen John MacArthur on Larry King Show many times and I thought you would like to see some of these episodes. I have posted several of John MacArthur’s sermons in the past and my favorite is his […]
Who was Jesus? (Larry King Live with John MacArthur) Published on Jul 17, 2012 http://www.gty.org/video/interviews/I… ___________ I have seen John MacArthur on Larry King Show many times and I thought you would like to see some of these episodes. I have posted several of John MacArthur’s sermons in the past and my favorite is his […]
Pt 1 John MacArthur – Larry King Live – What Happens After We Die.wmv.mp4 Uploaded on Feb 25, 2010 What happens after we die? A short series with John Mac Arthur, along with a Roman Catholic Priest, Muslim, Rabbi, spiritualist and an Atheist.. What do you think? There is no greater thought than this…billions […]
God vs. Science (Larry King Live with John MacArthur) Uploaded on Apr 10, 2012 http://www.gty.org/video/interviews/2… Every year scientists come up with more evidence that seems to support evolution. Whats a six-day, young-earth creationist to do? How can you support biblical claims that so obviously seem to contradict modern science? ___________ I have seen John MacArthur […]
(My pastor growing up was Adrian Rogers and he died 7 years ago today. He would have been 82 if he was still living. ) I love the Book of Proverbs and every day I read one chapter of Proverbs. Since there are 31 chapters, I start the 1st of ever month and read chapter […]
Abortion and the Campaign for Immorality (Selected Scriptures) John MacArthur Published on Sep 30, 2012 by JohnMacArthurGTY http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-448 What a privilege and joy it is to worship the Lord here at Grace Church. Patricia and I miss it when we’re not here. There’s no place like this. Our hearts are full to overflowing to be […]
Homosexuality and the Campaign for Immorality (Selected Scriptures) John MacArthur Published on Oct 4, 2012 by JohnMacArthurGTY http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/90-449 Earlier in the service I read from the first chapter of Romans what is really a very, very shocking portion of Scripture. Just to remind you that Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 32, describes the wrath […]
First is what Romans says: Romans 1:18-32 New American Standard Bible (NASB) Unbelief and Its Consequences 18 For (A)the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who (B)suppress the truth [a]in unrighteousness, 19 because (C)that which is known about God is evident [b]within them; for God made it evident to […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
Same old story it seems. Kentucky pulls out another close victory over the Vols. This is not the only story I am talking about today. Kentucky’s Alex Poythress (22) shoots between Tennessee’s Josh Richardson, left, and Yemi Makanjuola during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., Tuesday, […]
1 John 5:14-17 New American Standard Bible (NASB) 14 This is (A)the confidence which we have [a]before Him, that, (B)if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, (C)we know that we have the requests which we have asked from […]
When I think about Bobby Petrino and what an unbelievable job he did at Arkansas with talent that was not as good as Georgia, Florida, LSU and Alabama then it leads me to believe that he can get the most out of his players. When he was at Arkansas he won 5 games the first year with a victory over a ranked LSU team to finish 2008. Then in 2009 the Hogs won 8 games and then in 2010 they made it to a BCS bowl and that included a victory along the way over a top 10 LSU team and a heartbreaking loss in the fourth quarter to #1 ranked Alabama. Finally in 2011 the Razorbacks won 11 games for the first time since 1977 and finished ranked #5 in last poll of the year.
Who can question Bobby Petrino’s coaching record? However, at Western Kentucky he has inherited another coach’s players and I doubt very seriously he can pull off a miracle against Tennessee in Knoxville. I do predict that if his team has a good year that he will jump ship and go to a big time program like Gus Malzahn did last year!!!! Actually many teams on this level lose coaches like this all the time. Ask Ark State about that.
Posted August 4, 2013 at 5:56 p.m., updated August 4, 2013 at 8:08 p.m.
New Western Kentucky head coach Bobby Petrino smiles during an NCAA college football news conference, Monday, Dec. 10, 2012, in Bowling Green, Ky. The 51-year-old was fired by Arkansas in April for a “pattern of misleading” behavior following an accident in which the coach was injured while riding a motorcycle with his mistress as a passenger but now wants to make the most of his second chance. (AP Photo/The Daily News, Joe Imel)
Poll
Which would be Tennessee’s “worst” loss of the season?
If you asked Tennessee fans which team they would most like to beat this season, the consensus answer would be obvious.
How could they pick anyone else other than Alabama?
Imagine what an upset over the defending national champions would do for UT’s image.
While that’s an obvious choice for the best victory, the worst possible loss would spark more debate.
You might pick Vanderbilt since the Vols haven’t lost back-to-back games to their in-state rival since 1926. Or maybe you would choose Kentucky, which hasn’t won consecutive games against UT in Lexington since 1959.
But my pick for the worst loss would be Western Kentucky.
UT isn’t physically capable of losing its opener to Austin Peay or at the end of September to South Alabama. So I eliminated them from consideration.
Maybe you regard Western Kentucky in Week 2 as a sure thing as well. It’s not.
UT should be a solid favorite against the Hilltoppers. However, the gap between the two programs has narrowed since Tennessee beat them 63-7 four years ago.
The image gap is just as significant, though. It’s still the Sun Belt vs. the SEC.
That’s not the only reason a loss would be devastating to new coach Butch Jones’ program.
Western Kentucky also has a new coach — a more famous new coach, in fact.
If not for an ill-advised motorcycle ride with a questionable blonde passenger, Bobby Petrino would still be the coach at Arkansas.
No one questions Petrino’s coaching ability. He had great success at both Louisville and Arkansas. He’s one of the best offensive coaches in the country.
And he clearly makes Western Kentucky a more dangerous team than it might have been with a lesser coach.
Petrino won’t have nearly as much to work with offensively this season at Western Kentucky as he did with his last Arkansas team in 2011.
But he didn’t have many offensive weapons in 2008 when he took over the Razorbacks. Nonetheless, an offense severely lacking in talent averaged better than 25 points during the last seven games.
His first Western Kentucky team has to find a new quarterback, but returns three starters on the offensive line and has an exceptional all-around running back in Antonio Andrews.
Defensively, the Hilltoppers must replace their front four, but their starting secondary and linebacking corps return intact.
And they will play UT right before the Vols play back-to-back road games against nationally ranked Oregon and Florida.
No matter what looms ahead, the Vols would be foolish to overlook anyone after three consecutive seven-loss seasons. If they compare scores from last season and add the Petrino factor, Western Kentucky should hold their attention.
The Hilltoppers were good enough to beat Kentucky in Lexington in overtime last season. Tennessee downed Kentucky by 20 at Neyland Stadium.
Western Kentucky defeated conference-rival Troy 31-26 on the road. Tennessee topped Troy 55-48 at Neyland Stadium.
Almost losing to a Sun Belt team was bad enough. Losing to one would constitute a new low.
Alabama last year had to play Tennessee and Kentucky from the East and their conference record was 1-15 while LSU had to play Florida and Georgia and their record was 14-2. Doesn’t seem fair does it? In the old days Tennessee would have been a top 10 team almost every year and playing them as […]
SEC has proved how good we are, but it doesn’t mean every team in the SEC could win a national title in 2013. David Climer: Titles can’t erase SEC football’s weaknesses Alabama players celebrates after their 32-28 win in the Southeastern Conference championship NCAA college football game against Georgia, Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012, in Atlanta. (AP […]
ESPN’s final recruiting rankings are not as good as others as I have seen. I do have a hard time with Missouri (38) having such a good ranking when other services had the tigers tanking their class this year compared to other SEC schools. However, Kentucky (36) is almost as bad when there is vast […]
Nick Saban Streeter Lecka We finally found a Top 25 in which the SEC is more dominant than the USA Today Coaches’ Poll: the post-Signing Day recruiting class rankings. ________ I have to say the SEC is really doing well these days. Everyone expects Alabama is going to be on top on most years […]
I am not so mad anymore about Arkansas being ranked number 64 in recruiting this year while Auburn is #20 and Tennessee is #30 and even Kentucky is doing better than us. That is because they racked up lots of players when they had coaches during the year while we had John L. Smith. What […]
It is no surprise that John L. Smith and Derek Dooley may be heading out the door at the end of this season. That was expected by most people that watch SEC football. However, could Gene Chizik of Auburn being out the door too? If that happens then I must admit that I did not […]
I am very happy with the new football schedules that the SEC released for next year. It is a stand alone schedule that will not affect the final decision that make concerning the rotation in the 2014 schedule and beyond. 2013 Georgia Bulldogs Football Schedule Date Opponent Time/TV Tickets Saturday 04/06/13 G-Day Spring Game […]
Arkansas defensive tackle Jared Green (57) and linebackers Alonzo Highsmith (45), and Tenarius Wright (43) attempt to tackle Alabama running back Eddie Lacy (42) as offensive lineman Barrett Jones (75) looks on during second quarter action of an NCAA college football game in Fayetteville, Ark., Saturday, Sept. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/David Quinn) ___________ When you […]
A good friend of our family told us back in the 1990’s that her cousin was part of a new group called Skillet and we had no idea that the group would grow into such a big national hit. The song “monster has about 50 million hits on you tube.
Skillet’s recent lineup included guitarist Ben Kasica, keyboardist/guitarist Korey Cooper, singer/bassist John Cooper and drummer Jen Ledger. Kasica has been replaced by Seth Morrison.
Posted: Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:05 am | Updated: 5:26 pm, Wed Jan 25, 2012.
In a world dominated by Bieber Fever (it’s a DISEASE!), Katy Perry (are all of her songs about … um … adult stuff?), Lady Gaga (I prefer my meat as a steak, not a dress) and too many curse-word-littered artists for me to name, I sometimes wonder if there is any hope whatsoever for the music industry.
“Blah, blah, blah. My heart is broken. This new boy LOVES me! No, he left me. Whatever. I DON’T NEED HIM! Party. Beer. Drinking! A catchy tune for marketing this at 7-year-olds!”
Really! Why is this stuff even popular? Sometimes, I fear that music is slowly dying.
Then I go listen to Skillet, and my iPod becomes my best friend once again.
The band started with a more electronic sound in its early albums, “Invincible” and “Alien Youth,” but it has transitioned and evolved into a solid rock group with awesome tunes and strong messages. Skillet took a leap of faith with “Collide,” which it followed with the unbeatable “Comatose.”
And most recently, the band gave us “Awake” — which only left us wanting more.
From the darker “Sometimes,” “Monster,” “Forsaken” and “Open Wounds” to the meaningful “Believe,” “Those Nights” and “A Little More,” Skillet’s musical history spans a broad range of emotions and styles that are relatable to just about anyone.
Not to mention, its remixes are just plain cool.
That’s why I can hardly wait to see Skillet live at Winter Jam at the Sovereign Center in Reading Thursday.
I’ll be writing about the experience, but for now, I’ll just give you a taste of Skillet’s awesomeness. I had the chance to interview them via email (fan-girl shriek!), and here are the answers provided by lead singer/band founder John Cooper.
Q:As teenagers, did you always know that you wanted to be in a rock band, or did it become a goal later in life?
A: In high school, I loved music. I started out in band. I didn’t know I would be able to do music professionally one day, but I thought it would be cool to do that. I started writing music when I was 16, though it was not until college that I thought I would give it a shot professionally.
Q:How has your music evolved in its message and style since “Invincible” and “Alien Youth” to the more-recent “Awake”?
A: I think the way our music has changed the most is in the lyrics. Our first few records, we were writing songs to a Christian audience, and in my 2003 release of “Collide,” I began writing to a broader audience. I began writing songs that all kinds of people could relate to — songs about love, fear, heartbreak, relationships, etc.
Q:What musical artists have inspired you and/or influenced Skillet?
A: When I was growing up, I listened to Christian music only at my house, bands like Petra and Stryper, but all my friends were listening to metal, so I was more (influenced) by bands like Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and Metallica. As I got older I began to be influenced by U2 and Bono; the way he has used his platform to have a message greatly influences Skillet.
Q:How does your faith in Christianity affect your music?
A: All of my music is written through my Christian worldview; you could not have Skillet without Christianity.
Q:What message and/or messages do you want teenagers to take away from your music?
A: In general, a message of hope in a dark world, and specifically, that their lives matter even when they don’t feel worthy or good enough or like a letdown to their parents, etc. I want teens to know that they are worth something to God, and God loves them anyways.
Q:What are some of your favorite songs that you’ve recorded, whether old or new?
A: My favorite is probably “Rebirthing.” I think that song has all of the best aspects of Skillet, musically and lyrically. I also love “Monster.”
Q:Which of your songs do you think drew the most from your personal experiences — and how?
A: Probably “Hero” because I wrote that song based on a time when I was wondering who my own children would look up to when they get older. Who is left to believe in? I was hit hard by all the Catholic priest accusations during that time, and I thought, “Man, these are supposed to be heroes to kids.” That is why I wrote that song; it’s about all the people who we believe in the past that have let us down. And secondly, the song “One Day Too Late” I wrote in reference to spending more time with my kids and my wife (band mate Korey Cooper) instead of getting busy with natural responsibilities and other things in life.
Q:Where do you intend to take Skillet in the future? Do you have plans to release a new album some time soon?
A: I definitely hope 2012 has a new Skillet release, and in terms of the future, I’d say we are going to stay on the path we are on now. We garnered respect for the current album in the mainstream market, including mainstream rock radio. I’d like to hit pop radio for the first time and keep the same standard Skillet has set about being vocal about our faith, pushing that envelope, if you will.
Q:What are some of the highlights and/or downsides of touring and playing at events like Winter Jam in Reading?
A: The highlights are getting to play in front of a lot of people in general, and out of those people, there are usually a lot of new fans, maybe people who wouldn’t see Skillet play but would come to an event of that size, so we end up winning over new fans. I like the idea of different genres, different ethnicities and different bands coming together for a big event; it’s special. There really is not a downside to it.
Q:Your catchphrase: “I am a peanut!” Is there a story behind this?
A: This is a very dumb story. One night, we were recording, and it was approaching the hours where you are so tired, everything is funny. I was eating some trail mix that was a generic brand called “Peanut Melody,” and I started making up a melody of peanut songs.
Q:You explain on your podcasts that your fans send you all sorts of interesting things in the mail. What is one of the most memorable things that you received from a fan?
A: We get a lot of duct tape items, whether it’s wallets, handbags, etc. One time, someone gave me a big eight-inch duct tape skillet, like a pendant on a duct tape necklace, like something MC Hammer would wear if it were gold. We get a lot of weird stuff! People make artwork, photo albums of themselves wearing Skillet shirts, and so many other weird things that we end up doing a segment on the podcast called “Cool Stuff People Give Us.”
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, […]
I’m In A Rock ‘N’ Roll Band – The Singer (Part 1) Jim Morrison – books on tape – w subtitles Light My Fire – The Doors The Rolling Stones – Satisfaction ________________________ The Rolling Stones – The Breakthrough The Rolling Stones – Brian Jones The Rolling Stones- Paint it Black Nirvana – Smells Like […]
It was so sad to lose these people so soon. The Curse of 27 This page is in response to my most frequently asked questions – is there really a Curse of 27, how many musicians actually died at that age, and who are they. When legendary Blues man, Robert Johnson, was killed at the age […]
Amy Winehouse died last week and she joined the “27 club.” Pete de Freitas of Echo and the Bunnymen is also a member of the “27 Club.” This is group of rockers that have died at age 27. A tribute to the amazing drummer of one of our biggest influences, Echo & The Bunnymen. We […]
cc ‘Janis Joplin’ 2/5 from True Hollywood Story (Janis was having affair with Pigpen) Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (vocals, harmonica), Bob Weir (guitar, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass), Mickey Hart (drums), Bill Kreutzman (drums). Grateful Dead “Don’t Ease Me In” Live @ Canadian National Exhibition Hall Toronto, CA June 27th, 1970 Grateful Dead […]
Amy Winehouse died last week and joined the “27 club” which is a group of rockers that died at age 27. Gary Thain also joined that same group long ago and I wanted to look at his life today. Uriah Heep – Wizard bb By Sean Nelson, Special to MSN Music , July 23, 2011 […]
Recently Amy Winehouse joined the “27 Club” when she died of a drug overdose. The “27 Club” is a group of rockers that died at age 27. Unfortunately Jimi Hendrix died at age 27 in 1970 and Janis Joplin did the same three weeks later. Today we are going to look at her life and […]
JIMI HENDRIX : FINAL INTERVIEW . The other day when Amy Winehouse died she joined the “27 Club” which includes other famous rockers who died at age 27. Most of them died because of drugs. Unfortunately Jimi Hendrix joined the club for the same reason. Something special for all music and Beat Club-Lovers on YouTube: […]
Amy Winehouse died at age 27 and unfornately joined the “27 club” which is made of famous rockers that died at age 27. Pete Ham was a member of Bad Finger which was one of my favorite groups that I followed. “Come and get it” was my favorite song of theirs. ___________________________________ Badfinger perform a […]
Brian’s Blues, Brian Jones on guitar in the early stones years. unreleased track Brian Jones died at age 27 just like Amy Winehouse did. I remember like yesterday when I first heard the song “I can’t get no satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones. I immediately thought about Solomon’s search for satisfaction in the Book of […]
Jim Morrison – Feast Of Friends – (The Doors Documentary) (1969) (Paul Ferrara) 1/4 I was saddened by the recent death of Amy Winehouse and her inclusion into the “27 Club.” This series I am starting today looks at the search that each one of these entertainers were on during their lives. Today I look […]
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider
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Debating with Ark Times Bloggers on “The Meaning of Life” Part 4 “Without God in the picture is there any relief for those who have been oppressed?”
I have enjoyed going back and forth with the Arkansas Times Bloggers on many subjects over the years. Now I have discussed the subject of “The Meaning of Life” with them recently and I wanted to share some of this with you.
I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man can not hope to find a lasting meaning to his life in a closed system without bringing God back into the picture. This is the same exact case with Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
Chris Martin of Coldplay revealed in his interview with Howard Stern that he was raised an evangelical Christian but he has left the church. I believe that many words that he puts in his songs today are generated from the deep seated Christian beliefs from his childhood that find their way out in his songs. The fact Coldplay’s songs deal so much with death and the search for meaning and purpose of life (similar to Solomon’s search in Ecclesiastes), and that our actions are being watched, and Chris describes different ways God tries to reveal himself to us, and many songs deal with trying to find a way to an afterlife and heaven, and he stills uses Christian terms like being “blessed” and “grateful.”
People are looking for a purpose for their lives even if they have millions in the bank and have the world at their finger tips.
Saline–I don’t know what the heck Chris Martin’s religious beliefs have to do with anything but you sure know how to copy and paste. Do you even know who Chris Martin is or anything about his music?
All you have proven again Saline is that you can copy and paste from the “Daily Hatch”. I bet you have never even listened to Coldplay or formed your own ideas of what the lyrics mean. And again I ask, what do Chris Martin’s beliefs and how he got them have to do with anything?
I guess that Chris Martin’s views matter because we can see how closely then compared to Solomon’s 3000 years ago when he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. When Solomon looked at life “under the sun” without God in the picture he concluded in Ecclesiastes 4:1 “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:I saw the tears of the oppressed— and they have no comforter;power was on the side of their oppressors—and they have no comforter.” IN OTHER WORDS WITHOUT GOD IN THE PICTURE THE WICKED GET OF SCOTT FREE!!!!
Chris Martin was raised as an evangelical but he left the faith in his teenage years and he writes all of the songs for the rock band Coldplay and he does write a bunch of lyrics dealing with various subjects that suggest that he is searching for a lasting meaing to his life. It is my belief that he just can’t get away from his deep seated childhood religious beliefs that he keeps coming back to. Let me give you a great example.
Here is the paradox you will find in Chris Martin’s life concerning the issue of hell because he told Howard Stern on November 9, 2011 that he left Christianity because of their belief in hell and then he sends the evil king in his #1 hit song “Viva La Vida” to an everlasting hell.
In this song, Martin is discussing an evil king that has been disposed. “I used to rule the world…Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes…there was never an honest word and that was when I ruled the world, It was the wicked and wild wind, Blew down the doors to let me in, Shattered windows and the sound of drums, People couldn’t believe what I’d become…For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name, Never an honest word, But that was when I ruled the world.”
Q Magazine asked Chris Martin about the lyric in this song “I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.” Martin replied, “It’s about…You’re not on the list. I was a naughty boy. Its always fascinated me that idea of finishing your life and then being analyzed on it…That is the most frightening thing you could possibly say to somebody. Eternal damnation. I know about this stuff because I studied it. I was into it all. I know it. It’s mildly terrifying to me. And this is serious.”
CHRIS MARTIN SEES THAT HE CAN NOT BELIEVE IN A SYSTEM THAT LETS HITLER OFF SCOTT FREE, AND THAT IS WHY HE CAME BACK TO HIS CHILDHOOD CHRISTIAN BELIEFS AND SENT THE EVIL KING TO HELL IN HIS BEST SELLING #1 HIT SONG “VIVA LA VIDA.”
Chris Martin was brought up as an evangelical Christian but he left the faith once he left his childhood home. However, there are been some actions in his life in the last few years that demonstrate that he still is grappling with his childhood Chistian beliefs. This is the third part of a series I am starting on this subject. Today we will look at how the Bible has influenced the lyrics of Viva La Vida. (There are many interpretations of this song on the web.)
On June 23, 2012 my son Wilson and I got to attend a Coldplay Concert in Dallas. It was great. We drove down from our home in Little Rock, Arkansas earlier in the day. Viva La Vida was one of our favorite songs that did that night.
Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it exists:
Belief of Eternal Punishment in Grammy Winning Song
By Everette Hatcher
Chris Martin of the rock group Coldplay wrote the song Viva La Vida, and the song just won both the grammy for the “Song of the Year” and “Best Pop Performance by a duo or Group with Vocals.”
In this song, Martin is discussing an evil king that has been disposed. “I used to rule the world…Feel the fear in my enemy’s eyes…there was never an honest word and that was when I ruled the world, It was the wicked and wild wind, Blew down the doors to let me in, Shattered windows and the sound of drums, People couldn’t believe what I’d become…For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name, Never an honest word, But that was when I ruled the world.”
Q Magazine asked Chris Martin about the lyric in this song “I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.” Martin replied, “It’s about…You’re not on the list. I was a naughty boy. Its always fascinated me that idea of finishing your life and then being analyzed on it…That is the most frightening thing you could possibly say to somebody. Eternal damnation. I know about this stuff because I studied it. I was into it all. I know it. It’s mildly terrifying to me. And this is serious.”
I have been following the career of Chris Martin for the last decade. He grew up in a Christian home that believed in Heaven and Hell, but made it clear several years ago that he actually resents those who hold to those same religious dogmatic views he did as a youth. Yet it seems his view on the possibility of an afterlife has changed again.
Chris Martin is a big Woody Allen movie fan like I am and no other movie better demonstrates the need for an afterlife than Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors. It is about a eye doctor who hires a killer to murder his mistress because she continually threatens to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. Afterward he is haunted by guilt. His Jewish father had taught him that God sees all and will surely punish the evildoer.
But the doctor’s crime is never discovered. Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his father had with Judah’s unbelieving Aunt May during a Jewish Sedar dinner many years ago:
“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazi’s, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says Aunt May.
Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”
Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”
Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”
Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”
Judah’s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”
The basic question Woody Allen is presenting to his own agnostic humanistic worldview is: If you really believe there is no God there to punish you in an afterlife, then why not murder if you can get away with it? The secular humanist worldview that modern man has adopted does not work in the real world that God has created. God “has planted eternity in the human heart…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is a direct result of our God-given conscience. The apostle Paul said it best in Romans 1:19, “For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God has shown it to them” (Amplified Version).
It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” The Humanist, May/June 1997, pp.38-39). Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-givne conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (The Humanist, September/October 1997, p. 2.). Humanists don’t really have an intellectual basis for saying that Hitler was wrong, but their God-given conscience tells them that they are wrong on this issue.
Evidently Chris Martin who said he resented dogmatic religious views a few years ago, has now written a grammy winning song that pictures an evil king being punished in an afterlife. Could it be that his God-given conscience prompted him to put that line in? Or do men like Hitler get off home free as Woody Allen suggested in Crimes and Misdemeanors?
________
Even though Chris Martin says he does not believe in hell in this discussion below with Howard Stern he writes Viva La Vida (seen in clip at beginning of this post) where the bad king goes to hell. Again his childhood biblical views are coming out again.
On the Howard Stern Show Chris Martin was questioned about his religious beliefs on November 9, 2011:
CM: I was raised very religious.
HS: I know that. What religion?
CM: I am not really sure. People kept asking me that.
HS: You were studying religion but you don’t know what it was.
CM: It was Christian, but there are so many branches of that now. I don’t know which branch we were on.
HS: Are you a religious man?
CM: Not any more religious. I believe I am a spiritual guy I guess.
HS: Do you believe there is a heaven and a hell.
CM:There definately is not a hell. That is what made me stop being religious.
HS: Would you take your children to church or do you want them to get religious training?
CM: No. I think it is important to show that there is all these kinds of religions and this person believes that and you can believe whatever you want.
HS: What do you do if you want your children to get religious training and you want them to embrace all religions and get the concept of God? Where would take your kids to learn that?
CM:That is a good question. I have been doing it in the nihilist approach and I haven’t been taking them anywhere.
HS: So they are not going to be raised in any religious way.
CM: Not in any strict religious way, no…. Religion is not the same as having faith is it. Faith is different right. I am not saying I don’t believe in anything. I not saying that it has to be this and if you believe something else then the other person is going to hell and all that crap.
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tampa Bay Rays apologize for Avril Lavigne TMZ reported: According to local reports, Avril’s mic didn’t work at the start of her show … and she responded to the cavalcade of boos by yelling obscenities at crowd. Rays rep Rick Vaughn tells TMZ, “The Rays demand profanity-free performances from all of our concert performers and […]
These are some of the most popular posts in the last 30 days about the spiritual quest of Chris Martin of Coldplay that can be found on http://www.thedailyhatch.org: Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 3 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert, Martin left Christianity because of […]
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider
_____________________
Debating with Ark Times Bloggers on “The Meaning of Life” Part 3 “Is Chris Martin of Coldplay trying to find a lasting meaning to his life?”
I have enjoyed going back and forth with the Arkansas Times Bloggers on many subjects over the years. Now I have discussed the subject of “The Meaning of Life” with them recently and I wanted to share some of this with you.
I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man can not hope to find a lasting meaning to his life in a closed system without bringing God back into the picture. This is the same exact case with Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
Chris Martin of Coldplay revealed in his interview with Howard Stern that he was raised an evangelical Christian but he has left the church. I believe that many words that he puts in his songs today are generated from the deep seated Christian beliefs from his childhood that find their way out in his songs. The fact Coldplay’s songs deal so much with death and the search for meaning and purpose of life (similar to Solomon’s search in Ecclesiastes), and that our actions are being watched, and Chris describes different ways God tries to reveal himself to us, and many songs deal with trying to find a way to an afterlife and heaven, and he stills uses Christian terms like being “blessed” and “grateful.”
People are looking for a purpose for their lives even if they have millions in the bank and have the world at their finger tips.
Saline–I don’t know what the heck Chris Martin’s religious beliefs have to do with anything but you sure know how to copy and paste. Do you even know who Chris Martin is or anything about his music?
Chris Martin was raised as an evangelical but he left the faith in his teenage years and he writes all of the songs for the rock band Coldplay and he does write a bunch of lyrics dealing with various subjects that suggest that he is searching for a lasting meaing to his life. It is my belief that he just can’t get away from his deepseated childhood religious beliefs that he keeps coming back to. Let me give you a few examples.
Coldplay performing “Glass of Water.”
Back in 2008 I wrote a paper on the spiritual themes of Coldplay’s album Viva La Vida and I predicted this spiritual search would continue in the future. Below is the first part of the paper, “Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the Afterlife.”
Coldplay’s latest musical lyrics indicate a Spiritual Search for the Afterlife
In Coldplay’s latest songs you can see that something has changed about the focus of the band’s song writing. What is going on? The internet has been full of speculation concerning the radical lyrical change in the latest Coldplay work compared to the previous 3 albums.
Russ Briemeier of Christianity Today: “What does it all mean? With so many questions posed, a single interpretation of this album is virtually impossible…
Yet taken collectively, there is no ignoring the fact that spiritual themes are prevalent throughout the album. Viva La Vidaseems to be about coping with death in a world corrupted by sin, temptation, and war. Though it never goes deeper than mentioning God or referencing a specific theology, the lyrics often yearn with hope and love for a better world—utopia or heaven, it’s up to your interpretation… Viva La Vida is often provocative, spiritual, and seemingly on the verge of identifying a greater Truth, asking and inspiring many questions without providing the answers.”
The Spiritual Search for the Afterlife
Many of Coldplay’s latest songs mention God and other Biblical themes such as dealing with death, and the afterlife and the shortness of life. It seems to me that Coldplay has focused on spiritual issues in their lyrics but they are still in the process of working out all the answers and still formulating their religious belief systems. Here is a sample of their latest works:
In the song “Glass of Water”:
Oh he said you could see a future,
inside a glass of water,
With riddles and the rhymes
He asked ‘Will I see heaven in mine’
Ooooh, oooh, ooooh …
Possibly searching for the path to Heaven or hoping after death heaven is the destination. It reminds me also of the song “42” that says, “You thought you might be a ghost, You didn’t get to heaven but you made it close.”
(Coldplay performs “42”)
In the song “Now my feet won’t touch the ground”:
Now my head won’t stop
You wait a lifetime to be found
Here someone maybe searching for you instead of you searching for someone else? Could it be a way of saying that God is searching for you in a sense? In the context of the rest of the album that may not be such a bad interpretation.
The song “42” states,
Those who are dead are not dead
They’re just living my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well
Oh…
Time is so short and I’m sure
There must be something more
This is the same question that Solomon asked 3000 years ago in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He knew there was something more. The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
Solomon had all the resources in the world and he found himself searching for meaning in life and trying to come up with answers concerning the afterlife. However, it seems every door he tries to open is locked. Solomon found no lasting satisfaction in riches (Ecclesiastes 2:8-11), pleasure (2:1), education (2:3) and his work (2:4). None of those were able to “fill the God-sized vacuum in his heart” (quote from famous mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). That reminds of the Coldplay’s words in the song “Lost”: “Every river that I tried to cross, Every door I ever tried was locked.”
Moreover, what looms over Solomon’s search for meaningful answers is his upcoming death. It seems that Chris Martin has thought a lot about this point too. Martin said in an interview shortly after the release of the album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends that the title came from the band’s life experiences which included some losses of life of close family members. Martin has also said that his favorite song is about this same subject and it is called “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by the Verve.
Solomon rightly noted, (in Ecclesiastes 7:2-4) “It is better to spend your time at funerals than at festivals. For you are going to die, and you should think about it while there is still time. Sorrow is better than laughter; it may sadden your face, but it sharpens your understanding. A wise person thinks a lot about death, while a fool thinks only about having a good time.” In the song, “The Escapist,” which shares tract 10 with the song “Death and all his Friends,” Coldplay notes:
And in the end
We lie awake
And we dream
We’ll make an escape
Is this an escape from Death? Since this song follows the song “Death and all his Friends,” it seems that would be the case.
Death and all his friends
This is a tribute to Queen…
Coldplay – Death and all his friends from the album Viva la Vida ..
Ecclesiastes 1
Published on Sep 4, 2012
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider
_____________________
Ecclesiastes 2-3
Published on Sep 19, 2012
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tampa Bay Rays apologize for Avril Lavigne TMZ reported: According to local reports, Avril’s mic didn’t work at the start of her show … and she responded to the cavalcade of boos by yelling obscenities at crowd. Rays rep Rick Vaughn tells TMZ, “The Rays demand profanity-free performances from all of our concert performers and […]
These are some of the most popular posts in the last 30 days about the spiritual quest of Chris Martin of Coldplay that can be found on http://www.thedailyhatch.org: Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 3 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert, Martin left Christianity because of […]
The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee marked up the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2014 last week. While the bill still allocates too much funding for activities that are duplicative or inappropriate for the federal government to undertake, the committee did get something right: It eliminated funding for the failed Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
Created in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term, COPS promised to add 100,000 new state and local law enforcement officers on the streets by 2000. Research by The Heritage Foundation has demonstrated that COPS not only failed to add 100,000 additional officers to America’s streets but was ineffective at reducing crime.
State and local officials, not the federal government, are responsible for funding the staffing levels of police departments. By paying for the salaries of police officers, COPS funds the routine, day-to-day functions of police and fire departments. In Federalist No. 45, James Madison wrote:
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
When Congress subsidizes local police departments in this manner, it effectively reassigns to the federal government the powers and responsibilities that fall squarely within the expertise, historical control, and constitutional authority of state and local governments. The responsibility to combat ordinary crime at the local level belongs wholly and exclusively to state and local governments.
The COPS program has an extensive track record of poor performance and should be eliminated. These grants also unnecessarily perform functions that are the responsibility of state and local governments. For this particular program, the House Appropriations Committee made a fiscally wise decision that follows the wisdom of our founders and core principles of our government. When the bill is considered by the entire House, hopefully the majority of Representatives will exercise the same fiscal discipline.
If the increase in food stamps was just because of the recession then why did the spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007? The Facts about Food Stamps Everyone Should Hear Rachel Sheffield and T. Elliot Gaiser May 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm (7) Newscom A recent US News & […]
Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ We got to slow down the growth of Food Stamps. One […]
Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth __________________ We got to cut spending and we must first start with food stamp program and we need some Senators that are willing to make the tough cuts. Food Stamp Republicans Posted by Chris Edwards Newt Gingrich had fun calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” but […]
Milton Friedman’s negative income tax explained by Friedman in 1968: We need to cut back on the Food Stamp program and not try to increase it. What really upsets me is that when the government gets involved in welfare there is a welfare trap created for those who become dependent on the program. Once they […]
Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ If welfare increases as much as it has in the […]
Why can’t we cut the Food Stamp budget? Should Food Stamps Be in Farm Bill? Congressman Seeks to Split Legislation Kelsey Harris June 17, 2013 at 10:38 pm Bill Clark/Roll Call Photos/Newscom Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), a fourth-generation farmer, is asking his House colleagues to separate the food stamp program from the “farm” bill. Stutzman […]
The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]
I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]
Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]
Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]
Where does Senator Mark Pryor stand on gun control? Mark Pryor: Liberal When No One’s Looking Related posts: Gun control can cost lives!!!!! May 22, 2013 – 7:49 am Gun control can cost lives!!!!! Virtue Is Its Own Reward, but Using a Gun to Save a Child’s Life in DC Will Get You a $1,000 Fine […]
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: I have faithfully sent spending cut suggestions to Senator Mark Pryor every Monday for almost a year now and at the same time I have posted all of them on http://www.thedailyhatch.org every monday after they […]
Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 2 (Selected Scriptures) John MacArthur
We are examining the great doctrine of biblical inspiration. We are looking at the reality that God wrote the Bible and the question always comes up…How do we know God wrote the Bible? There are a number of ways to answer that question. One way to answer it is to look at what the Bible says about the scientific world. To put it simply, whoever designed the universe understands it. Whoever created everything understands His creation, from the microcosm of the minute world of atomic energy, to the macrocosm of limitless space. Whoever created it all understands it because He conceived it and he made it and He sustains it. And whoever is intelligent enough to create this universe with its astonishing and immeasurable complexity is certainly capable of writing a book explaining the way things really are in a simple enough fashion so as to leave His stamp on that book as the divine author. And the fact of the matter is, communication is not something difficult for the creator, He is a communication genius beyond all comprehension. God is the source of all the information that exists and He has appropriately spread it throughout His universe as He deemed necessary to accomplish His purpose.
Post-modernists philosopher Richard Rorty admits that the idea of truth is coherent only in the context of a Christian world view. He said this, “The suggestion that truth is out there, objective and universal, is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own, a non-human language which he wrote into the cosmos.” Now he depreciates that view but that is precisely the biblical view and that is precisely what Christians believe, that God is there…as Francis Schaeffer says…and He is not silent. He has spoken, He has spoken throughout His creation sometimes in the written Word of God and sometimes with a language of His own that is non-human. But the Creator speaks and science is more and more month by month year by year discovering what He has said.
For example, the discovery of DNA, the coded instruction that is in every cell of every living thing means that at the heart of all life is language, a message, information. In other words, the organic world is really a book, it is a repository of complex biological information. And not only the organic world, information has become the key for interpreting the physical universe as well. Everything in creation operates on information that has been transmitted to it in a language from the creator. Scientific American journal said recently, “Ask anybody what the physical world is made of and you are likely to be told matter and energy. Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient. Indeed, some physicists now regard the physical world as made of information with energy and matter as incidentals.” And where does information come from? “In all human experience.” I’ll say that again, “In all human experience, information comes from an intelligent source.” Never is it generated by blind material forces, chance or coincidence. In all human experience information comes only by an intelligent agent, an intelligent agent who can assemble that information and communicate effectively that information to another intelligent agent or to an another receptor of that information that then can function on the basis of that information.
If you look at the microcosm of the world, it is loaded with information. Think of the genetic code. Scientists have now discovered that the genetic code is digital, it’s not analogous to a digital code, it is digital. It is exactly as a digitized computer code. It is not like it, it is in reality a digital code of information. More than a hundred years ago when Darwin came up with his theory, his idea was that a cell was extremely simple, just a bubble of protoplasm, a bubble of jelly. Over the past few decades, however, new technology like electron microscopes have produced a revolution in molecular biology, we now know that the cell is not just simple jelly, simple protoplasm, it is a high-tech molecular machine far more complex than any machine ever built by a human being, and I’m talking about every single cell. Scientists tell us now that every cell is like a miniature factory town. Every single cell hums with power plants, automated factories and recycling centers. In the nucleus is a cellular library of every cell, housing blueprints and plans that are copied and transported to the factories in the cell, each of which is filled with molecular machines that function like computerized motors. These manufacture the immense array of products needed within the cell with the processes all regulated by enzymes that function as stop watches to ensure that everything is perfectly timed. And all things are assembled, gathered, transported and delivered in exactly the required moment. It was Francis Crick of DNA fame who said, “The cell is thus a minute factory bristling with rapid organized chemical activity.” Even the outside of the cell, the surface, the membrane is studded with censors, gates, pumps and identification markers to regulate traffic coming in and out of that cell. Today biologists can not even describe the cell without using the language of machines and engineering.
It was Michael Behe who wrote the blockbuster Darwin’s Black Box in which he posited the obvious truth of intelligent design behind creation, rather than random chance. And Behee describes a cell like this. “Each cell has an automated rapid transit system in which certain molecules function as tiny monorail trains running along tracks to whisk cargo around from one part of the cell to the other. Other molecules act as loading machines, filling up the train cars and attaching address labels. When the train reaches the right address in another part of the cell, it is met by other molecules that act as docking machines, opening them up and removing the supplies. To frame a mental image of the cell, picture it as a large and complex model train layout with tracks crisscrossing everywhere. Its switches and signals perfectly timed so that no trains collide and the cargo reaches its destination precisely when needed.” And Behee goes on to say, and here’s his main point, “This is a level of complexity that Darwin never dreamed of and his theory utterly fails to account for. Why? Because a system of coordinated interlocking parts like this can only operate after all the pieces are in place, which means they must all appear simultaneously, not by any gradual piece by piece process.” Therefore, Behee coined the term “Irreducible complexity.” “To refer to the minimum level of complexity, it must be present before such a highly integrated system can function at all. It cannot evolve piece by piece, it must appear simultaneously in the very same moment. Irreducibly complex systems don’t have any function without this minimum number of parts in place, which means they can’t occur by natural selection.”
As another illustration of this, consider the tiny string-like flagellum attached like a tail to some bacteria. Have you ever seen in a microscope a bacteria with a little tail? As the bacterium swims around in its environment, the flagellum whips around like a propellor and from a diagram if you were to see it, you would consider it to be a kind of motorized machine like you would have in an outboard motor. It is a microscopic rotary motor that comes equipped, scientists tell us, with a hook joint, a drive shaft, o rings, a starter and a bidirectional acid power motor that can hum along at up to…are you ready for this?…one hundred thousand revolutions per minute. Structures like these require dozens of precisely tailored, intricately interacting parts which could not emerge by any gradual process. Instead the coordinated parts must somehow appear on the scene all at the same time, combined and perfectly coordinated in the right patterns for the molecular machine to function at all. And all of this is dependent upon information, operational manuals in every part of the organic world.
This has to come from intelligence. It has to come from the Creator who is communicating this information to His creation. If you go from the micro world to the macro world, it’s the same thing. In fact, I am fascinated, and always have been, by the macro world…stars, space. And science is continuing to discover the complexity of our cosmology. This universe, as we know it, is intricately balanced as if on an edge of a knife. Take, for example, just the force of gravity. If it were only slightly weaker, all stars would be red dwarfs, too cold to support life in the universe. If it were only slightly stronger, all stars would be blue giants burning too briefly for life to develop. The margin of error in the universe expansion rate is only one part in ten to the sixtieth power. Cosmologists speaks of cosmic coincidences, meaning that the fundamental forces of the universe just happen to have the exact numerical value required to make life possible. The slightest change would yield a universe inhospitable to life.
What makes the question so puzzling is that there is no physical cause explaining this fine tuned complexity. George Greenstein(?), writes, “Nothing in all of physics explains why its fundamental principles should conform themselves so precisely to life’s requirement.” In other words, there is no physical explanation for why the universe is the way it is. To make it even more clear, perhaps, imagine that you found a huge universe-creating machine, okay? And it had thousands of dials on this machine representing the gravitational constant and the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force and the ratio of the mass of the protein and the electron and all the rest of the complexity of matter, and imagine that each dial has hundreds of possible settings and you can spin them and twirl them around at your will. Nothing is preset to any particular value. What you discover is, however, that the infinite number of dials just happen to be set exactly at the right value everywhere in the entire complexity of the universe so that it all operates perfectly when even the slightest tweak of one of the cosmic knobs would produce a universe where life was impossible. As a science reporter puts it, “They are like the knobs on God’s console counsel and they seem almost miraculously tuned to allow life.” And so they are. They are not constrained by any natural law, that’s what Einstein couldn’t find, that’s what scientists can’t find today. And yet scientists are reluctant to acknowledge a creator. Astronomer Heinz Oberhummer says, “I am not a religious person, but I could say this universe is designed very well.” Well you ought to be a religious person if you can say that. How about astronomer Fred Hoyle, he said this, it’s a famous quote, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics.” Who is that super-intellect? Hoyle says, “An alien mind from another universe,” which just moves his problem somewhere else.
All of that to say that the Creator is the master of information, the master of information in the microcosm, the master of information in the macrocosm. So the Creator knows His creation and the Creator knows the complexity of His creation and He knows the simplicity of His creation and He knows what scientists are going to find out. And He has to write a book that when time goes on and centuries go on and millennia goes on and science digs deeper and deeper and deeper into the matter and the organic life of the universe, nothing that He has said is going to be wrong. And so He speaks in His Word and since He is the Creator, what He says in His Word is absolutely accurate, absolutely right. His Word does not speak about the complexity of the atomic world or the world of cellular structure in the organic realm and the world of complex atomic structure in the inorganic world. It doesn’t speak about that which is only observable to a high-tech far-advanced society. It speaks to those things which are observable by everyone and have always been observable to one degree or another, but it speaks also of things that were not discovered at the time that they were basically written in the Word of God. In fact, they were contrary to common belief at that time. And yet as time has gone on, they have proven to be exactly accurate.
Let’s take some simple categories and look at them. First of all, hydrology…hydrology. This deals with the subject of water…of water, the waters of the earth. You can get all the way in to the seventeenth century, the sixteen hundreds, and you will find scientists puzzled about the source of water, talking about subterranean reservoirs where water is held down in the belly of the earth and comes up from there. But in the seventeenth century, scientists such as Edmé Mariotte, Pierre Perrault, and Edmond Halley, all three in the seventeenth century, opened up the modern understanding of hydrological motion, or the hydrological cycle, how there is only an original mass of water. It is always the same, it always has been the same, it always will be the same. This is the first law of thermodynamics. This same mass of water, this same cycle of the combination of H2O moves continually through a process of evaporation, transportation, precipitation and irrigation, and then run off back to start the process all over again. The Bible is absolutely accurate in the way it presents the hydrological cycle.
Listen to the language of Isaiah 55 and verse 10. “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and furnish seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be which goes forth from My mouth. It shall not return to Me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I said it.” Now the point of that statement by the prophet is to show that the Word of God always accomplishes its purposes as God sends it forth. But the analogy, and the Bible isn’t a book trying to teach you science, but when it uses a scientific analogy it is an accurate one. It’s as the rain comes down from heaven and returns there but only after its watered the earth that you see the hydrological cycle.
If you turn with me for a moment to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, you find again a reference to this. In verse 6 it talks about how the sun rises, the sun sets, hastening to its place. It rises there again, blowing toward the south and turning toward the north. The wind continues swirling along. Talks about wind currents as well. And on its circular courses the wind returns, the wind runs in circles. This is before they knew the earth was a circle. But the wind is running the circle of the earth. You have in verse 7 hydrology, all the rivers flow into the sea yet the sea is not full, or the sea does not overflow. Why? Because when all the water flows into the sea, it evaporates back out of the sea up to the heavens where it is retained in the clouds and then deposited again on the earth and runs the same cycle again and again.
In Job, perhaps the first book ever written, talking about the same time as the Pentateuch would be written, you have this in Job 36 verses 27 and 28, “For He draws up the drops of water, He draws them up, they distill rain from the midst which the clouds pour down. They drip upon man abundantly.” Now it’s starting to put together the rain and the snow come out of the sky, they come down, they irrigate the earth, they go into the rivers and the streams, they flow into the sea, the sea never overflows because the water is drawn up and distilled in the clouds. The clouds move over the land and they drip upon man abundantly and the cycle goes on. Psalm 135:7, “He causes the vapors to ascend to the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain.” There you have all of those elements of evaporation, transportation, precipitation, irrigation and run off and the cycle goes on again.
And Scripture speaks about this not infrequently, but quite frequently. Just a couple of other passages that show this. The twenty-sixth chapter of Job verse 8, “He wraps up the waters in His clouds and the cloud does not burst under them.” God collects the evaporated water in the clouds and the clouds as…as thin as they are, as seemingly weak as they are…hold the water. They hold massive, massive amounts of water as we well know who have lived through severe storms when those clouds bring that water, collecting it off the sea as they go and bursting upon the land even to the degree of hurricanes and their horrific deluges.
There is in Psalm 33:7, and I don’t want to go to every passage, I’ll skip a few. Psalm 33:7, “He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap.” This pictures the great ocean reservoir. “He lays up the deeps in storehouses.” God’s storehouse for the water is the deep, is the ocean.
In Job 38:22 it says, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?” That is to say, have you ever ascended into heaven and gone into a cloud?
Water is an amazing thing. I was reading this week about a mole…m-o-l-e…. It is a collection of molecules and in one mole of water which is 18 grams of water, you have six-hundred-billion-trillion molecules. It is a staggering amount of material in one mole of water. And this massive amount of water moves in this continual cycle that God has designed and simply explained in Scripture not as a scientific explanation but almost in each case either to show the ignorance of man and the inability of man to ascend into the place where God dwells, or to use as an illustration of some spiritual truth.
Going beyond that, let’s talk about astronomy. The most amazing fact of modern astronomy is the essentially infinite size of the universe and the infinite variety of the physical components of that universe, including the stars. And after years and years, there’s universal agreement on the nature of space and all that occupies it.
To show you something of the Scripture’s understanding of this, go to Psalm 103…Psalm 103. Remember now, whoever wrote this book understood this perfectly at a time when no one else did because He is the Creator. In Psalm 103 and verse 11 we read this, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving kindness toward those who fear Him.” Now again we find God making statements that are a true indication of cosmology, a true indication true science and a true understanding of the universe, but not for the sake of the science but for the sake of the illustration. And he is trying to express the infinite nature of His loving kindness and he parallels it to the height of the heavens, as high as the heavens are above the earth, that is how great is the loving kindness of God toward those who fear Him. And just how great is it? It is equal to the distance between the east and the west. Now try to figure that out. How far is east from west? It’s impossible because it’s an infinite line…it’s an infinite line. And there is that point being made. That’s how far He’s removed our transgressions from us. He has removed them infinitely from us as far as east is from west because His loving kindness is infinite, it is as far up as this universe will go. And so we find that God speaks of His infinite loving kindness and His infinite forgiveness by describing the infinity of what we now know is an infinite universe.
In Job 22:12 we read, “Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are.”
And Jeremiah 31 verses 35 to 37 is another very straightforward and accurate statement with regard to astronomy. Jeremiah 31:35, “Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night.” We now know that they all move in a fixed order in orbits, in motions that are fixed and permanently controlled and varying. This is our God and this is His creation and He knows how it operates.
Go down to verse 37, “Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel.” Meaning, you cannot measure the height of the heavens and you cannot discern what holds the earth in its place, anymore than I will cast off the offspring of Israel. Pretty important statement eschatologically, too, isn’t it?
In the third chapter of Jeremiah and verse 22, a very interesting statement. “As the host of heaven cannot be counted and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David.” Here the Bible says you can’t count the stars and you can’t count the sand on the seashores of the world. That we would agree would be utterly impossible.
However, before the seventeenth century, Hipparchus said there one-thousand and twenty-two stars. Ptolemy said there are one-thousand-fifty-six. Kepler said there are one-thousand and fifty-five. And today scientists tell us there are over one-hundred-billion in our galaxy and billions and billions of uncounted galaxies. Scientists have also discovered in recent centuries that stars are different sizes, different temperatures, various kinds of stars, different varieties. And they are busy cataloging the numerous types of stars.
Listen to 1 Corinthians 15:41, “There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon.” The moon is not like the sun. “Another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory.” This is to illustrate that in the resurrection we will have a different kind of body. And the Bible is right. There are all kinds of stars and they differ one from another. Science has also charted the absolute patterns of orbits which do not vary. The consistency of these bodies in motion, the great astronomer Kepler had predicted mathematically that on December 6, 1631 the planet Venus would pass in front of the sun. He predicted that based upon the fixed orbit of the planet Venus. He didn’t live to see it but a Frenchman, Pierre Gassendi, prepared to see it occur and it did so as predicted. According to Kepler, a transit again would occur over a hundred years later. But there was an English school boy who calculated orbits and found it should occur frankly in two years…to years after the original one calculated by Kepler, it should happen on December 4 in 1639 and it did.
How can you predict that? Because the orbits are fixed and unwavering. And that’s exactly what we’ve just read. The Lord sets things in their place in fixed orbits. Listen to Jeremiah 31:35 and 36, “Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night. If this fixed order departs from before Me, then the offspring of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever.”
Look at Psalm 19 for just a moment, in the sixth verse of Psalm 19 a statement is made that science used to laugh at and use it to debunk the accuracy of the Bible. It says in verse 6, speaking of the sun, that the sun is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoices as a strong man to run his course, its rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the other end of them and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” And here the psalmist says that the sun moves from one end of heaven to the other. There were people up until the seventeenth century who thought the sun didn’t move at all. But the psalmist tells us it does move, we now know that the sun is in constant motion, it is in orbit dragging our entire solar system with it and the sun is moving through space at 72 thousand miles per hour in a gigantic orbit that takes two million centuries to complete, based upon that speed. Not many years ago scientists taught that the moon was a great luminous globe like the sun even though 25 centuries ago Job said, “Look to the moon, it does not shine,” Job 25:5. It has no light of its own, it is merely a reflector of the sun.
When you look at the Bible and you look for hydrology and you look for astronomy, the scientific facts are correct. How about geology, the science of the earth? There are a lot of geological things that we could talk about, and I confess that I am not a scientist, but I can read like anybody else and find the things that science is interested in and compare them with the Word of God which is basically what I’ve endeavored to do. But in the realm of geology there is a science called isostasy…isostasy. It is the study of the balance of the earth. It really didn’t come into prominence until around 1959 and it deals with the landmass the mountains, the seas, and how those things all effect the weight of the earth. That is the foundation of what are called geo…what is called geophysics. And the Bible acknowledges this whole matter of isostasy..weight. Isaiah 40 and verse 12, “Behold the Lord God who has measured the waters in the hallow of His hand and marked off the heavens by a span and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales.”
God knows who much everything weight…weighs. It is in perfect harmony. You have all taken a basketball that was not round and have rolled it, right? And seen it go like that….and that’s what we would be doing every so often, bouncing a little if the earth did not move in a balanced fashion. Psalm 104 verses 5 through 8, “He established the earth upon its foundations so that it will not totter. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them.” The right height of the mountains, the right depth of the valleys, the right weight of the water, the right weight of the dirt and the dust and it all is in perfect balance.
Geology has another sub-science called geodesy, dealing with the shape of the earth. The shape of the earth, we know what it is, it is round. It is spherical. The ancients taught that it was flat, as you well know, and they thought even up to Columbus’ time that if you just kept sailing, you’d fall off the edge. In fact, they used to think that if you sailed through the gates of Pericles, that was the ancient name of Gibralter, if you passed the land mass North Africa and Spain, that was the end and you would fall into nothingness. But the Bible was crystal-clear about that. Long before that, Isaiah 40 verse 22. “It is He who sits on the circle of the earth.” Circle is a Hebrew word meaning sphere, meaning sphere. The earth is a circle. The Bible says that. And it even goes further than that. In Job 22 verse 14 it talks about the circle of heaven. And in Proverbs 8 and verse 27, that might be a verse just to point to you, Proverbs 8:27, “When He established the heavens, I was there when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep.” What’s that? That’s the one place where you and I can see the circular character of the earth standing on the beach looking at the circle on the horizon across the edge of the deep. The Bible is crystal clear that this is a sphere, that it is a circle and that it is visible on the horizon.
Even more. Job 38, two verses in Job 38, verses 13 and 14. And again remember, these are usually in the context of making a spiritual point or indicating what it is that God knows that we don’t know unless He reveals it to us. But in Job 38 verse 13 it talks about taking hold of the ends of the earth. What in the world does that mean, taking hold of the ends of the earth? If you go to verse 14 you find out. It is turned…the Hebrew says it is turned like clay under the seal, or clay to the seal. You will notice that under is added. It is rotated like clay to the seal. You take a hold of the ends of the earth and you rotate it like clay to the seal.
Here’s what happened. When in ancient times you wanted to write something, you wrote it in clay before paper. In Job’s time you would have written it in soft clay, like God wrote His Law. And then you would have sealed it so everyone had a seal with his name on it. And you took the soft clay and you rolled the seal of your name across the clay which imprinted your signature. That’s how printing is done even today on a cylinder, it’s rolled across. And Job…God is telling Job that the earth, you take the ends of it and you turn it like you turn that clay signature across soft clay to make an imprint. It is rotated on an axis, you take two ends and the earth rotates on the axis around those two ends, one at the north and one at the south. And we saw even in Job, the oldest book, the understanding that the earth is a sphere, that it is a circle and that it rotates on an axis.
It was the seventeenth century when Newton discovered gravity. That was big. Gravity had always been around, he just identified it for what it was. But it was Job chapter 26 verse 7, “He hangs the earth on nothing. He hangs the earth on nothing.” And gravity is even indicated, go to Job 38 for a minute, verses 31 and 32…Job 38:31 and 32. The Lord’s talking again and He’s giving Job a very important lesson about Job’s ignorance. And He says, “You must think you’re something, Job, so let me give you a few things to think about,” verse 31, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?” What’s He talking about there? He’s talking about gravity. All those stars that move in space in those constellations are held together by divine chains, by divine cords. Who do you think you are? “Do you think you can hold the constellations together? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season? Can you move it through space? Can you guide the bear with her satellites? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens and…or fix their rule over the earth?” Who do you think you are?
There is knowledge…if you go back to the fourteenth chapter of Job of another element of geology…in Job 14 and verse 18, “But the falling mountain crumbles away and the rock moves from its place, water wears away stones. Its torrents wash away the dust of the earth.” This is erosion. This is rock erosion. People didn’t live their life long enough to see it. Post-flood, they…they…they would never have known this. No one is around long enough to see that really take place.
In the thirty-eighth chapter, go back again to Job 38 verses 29 and 30, “From whose womb has come the ice and the frost of heaven? Who has given it birth?” Where does the frost come from? The dew. Where does the ice come from? Water becomes hard like stone and the surface of the deep is imprisoned. What’s that? That’s a glacier. You even have here an understanding of the hardness, the dense hardness of glaciers.
So whether you’re talking about hydrology, whether you’re talking about astronomy, whether you’re talking about geology, the Bible shows the designer and the creator’s understanding of all these things in simple enough expressions for everyone to understand. Let’s talk about meteorology for a minute. This is the circulation of the atmosphere, and I already read you how the wind moves in cycles and in circles because it circles the circle of the earth. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that Galileo discovered that wind had circuits. We read that in Ecclesiastes 1:6. And no scientist before Galileo knew or believed that the air had weight…that it had weight. But Job 28:25 says God imparted weight to the wind…weight to the air.
Let’s talk about physiology briefly…physiology. It wasn’t until 1628 and this was a huge change in the world, that William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood was the key to life. Prior to that, if you got sick, what did they do? Took your blood away. They bled you, stuck leeches on you, cut you open and let you bleed. Not until 1628 did they know what is in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” That is scientifically correct. It was about the 1950’s when medicine began to look in psychosomatic illnesses. And there was a book that came out called Personality Manifestations in Psycho…Psychosomatic Illnessand it began for the first time to understand how emotions cause changes in the body, they cause physiology to change. The Bible completely understood this. Psalm 32, David understood it so well, “How blessed,” he starts in Psalm 32, “is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” It’s wonderful…he says…to be forgiven, what a blessing it is to be delivered from guilt.
On the other hand, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away.” It had physiological effects. “Through my groaning all day long.” What he means is, I was weakened by my guilt, it affected my strength, it sapped me of my energy. He said, “For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my life juices…literally…my life juices…in the Hebrew…drained away as in the fever heat of summer.” It was like…it was like having…being dehydrated, all my life’s juices disappeared. What are life juices? Well the fluids in your body…blood, secretions of the glands, saliva. The emotional experience of this kind of guilt produced changing amount of blood flow. That’s why when people get angry their face gets red…or when people get frightened their face gets white…or when people lie their mouth gets dry. Excess thyroxin produced by emotion and poured into the blood stream can produce all kinds of things, even fatal heart disease. Also changes muscle tension. In Proverbs 16:24 we read this, “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Pleasant words make you feel better, right? It’s like Proverbs 17:22, “A merry heart does good like a medicine.” Happiness produces a self of well-being, you feel better. The Bible is accurate about everything, even down to these physiological realities.
Well, that’s only an introduction to the vastness of this wonderful subject. But let’s close by looking at Proverbs 30…Proverbs 30. And this is a good place to bring our thoughts to a conclusion. “The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the oracle. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal.” Listen to what he says. “Surely I am more stupid than any man and I do not have the understanding of a man, neither have I learned wisdom, nor do I have the knowledge of the Holy One.” On my own I am stupid, I don’t know anything. Verse 4, “Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, or His Son’s name? Surely you know.” We do? How do we know? Verse 5, “Because every word of God is…what?…is pure, proven, tested.” You know the Holy One, you know that He came from heaven. You know He created the wind and the waters and the ends of the earth and you know His name, and by the way, you know His Son’s name, through His revelation. “And you know that He’s a shield to those who take refuge in Him and do not add to His words, lest He reprove you and you be proved a liar.” What that is saying is simply this, God has spoken and what He said is here. Don’t add to it. And whether it talks about spiritual things, or whether it talks about material things, it is the truth because it is written by the creator who knows. Pray with me.
Father, we are so stunned in one sense to look into the passages of Scripture from ancient books, way back at the beginning, millennia ago, long before man was ever able to develop the skill and the equipment to understand these things, but was all laid out accurately. And herein is the evidence that this book comes from the creator who knows. There is no way that the writers could have known. Moses who wrote the Pentateuch couldn’t have known, apart from revelation all these things, nor could Isaiah the prophet, nor could the writer of Job, or the psalmist or even the Apostles of the New Testament who talked about the differing character of the sun, the moon and the variety of stars. It’s all reflective of one single author who is himself the creator. And how wonderful it is that the one who made all this is none other than the one who came incarnate, for in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. But the Word also became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And as many as received Him, to them He gave the right, the authority and the power to be called the sons of God. We thank You that we can know You, the true and living God. You are the One who made this universe, You are the One who came down to provide spiritual life, eternal life to all who would put their trust in You. And all that You desire to say to us spiritually and to confirm that You indeed are the Creator, you have placed in Your Word. Increase our confidence in it, our love for it, our devotion to it, to know it and thereby to know You, to proclaim it, to defend it to the glory that You deserve as its author and the final object of its purpose which is to redeem sinners for Your eternal glory. We thank You again for the power of the Word in Christ’s name. Amen.
RC Sproul Interviews Stephen Meyer, Part 1 of 5 Uploaded by LigonierMinistries on Mar 2, 2010 RC Sproul sits down with Stephen Meyer, author of the book, “Signature in the Cell”, and they discuss philosophy, evolution, education, Intelligent Design, and more. Below is more on the bio of Stephen C. Meyer: Dr. Stephen C. […]
A very interesting discussion of Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” and the issue of evolution. Review by Movie Guide: Content: (BBB, CC, L, V) Very strong Judeo-Christian worldview with positive proof of God and refutation of Darwinism and atheism and the false philosophies of our age, with positive references to God and Jesus Christ, but more […]
The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 1 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 _________ I have debated with Ark Times Bloggers many times in the past on many different subjects. Here are some of the subjects: communism, morality, origin of evil, and the Tea Party. I have always loved to post about evolution […]
Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
And here’s another set of charts showing a big gap between the United States and Europe.
So the obvious question is whether we should copy the statist policies of our cousins across the Atlantic.
This video explores some of the possible consequences.
The video should make us contemplate the importance of cultural attitudes.
Values such as the work ethic, the spirit of self reliance, and personal responsibility are all form of social capital that help an economy prosper.
But if social capital begins to erode, restoring it is a bit like trying to put toothpaste back in a tube.
So while I obviously think tax and spending policy is important, pro-growth fiscal policy may not mean much in a society where dependency and mooching are considered acceptable lifestyles.
Cliff Harris was born in Fayetteville, spent most of his formative years in Hot Springs and graduated from high school at Des Arc. He played multiple sports growing up but received little interest from college recruiters. A family friend convinced second-year Ouachita Baptist University head coach Buddy Benson that Harris deserved a chance to play college football, and Harris made a name for himself in the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference from 1966-69. Harris’ father had starred in football at Ouachita in the 1940s.
Pine Bluff native Willie Roaf, the son of dentist Clifton Roaf and the late Judge Andree Layton Roaf, is quick to note that his mother would have preferred that he become an attorney or doctor. He drew so little interest from college recruiters coming out of Pine Bluff High School that he considered switching from football to basketball. Finally, he decided to play football at Louisiana Tech University, where his career took off. After a stellar professional career, Roaf was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2012.
An injury caused by an accident kept Dan Hampton out of organized sports in junior high, but he made up for lost time during his junior and senior years at Jacksonville High School. Playing for Bill Reed’s Red Devils, Hampton caught the eye of the University of Arkansas coaching staff and went on to star on defense for the Razorbacks at the end of the Frank Broyles era and the start of the Lou Holtz era. He was a four-year letterman at Arkansas, a three-year starter and a two-time All-Southwest Conference selection. Hampton was named to the Razorback All-Decade team of the 1970s.
The Daily Hatch 