(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 29, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 42nd day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I wanted to pass along some evidence that indicates the Bible is historically accurate from Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop Book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?
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Why do Christians such as Ravi Zacharias have funerals that seem like celebrations? This is in contrast to many atheists like Tony Johnson who hate funerals and it probably because they don’t believe in the afterlife.
Let’s take a look at Francis Schaeffer’s comments on ECCLESIASTES and then we will come back to Ray’s funeral and Ravi Zacharias’ funeral.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-12
7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
8 Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.
9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, (DOES IT SOUND OPTIMISTIC? NOW COMES THE BACKLASH) all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
Solomon when at work takes off his hat and he stands by the grave of man and he says, “ALAS. ALAS. ALAS.”
But interestingly enough the story of Ecclesiastes does not end its message here because in two places in the New Testament it is picked up and carried along and put in its proper perspective.
Luke 12:16-21
16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax,eat, drink, be merry.”’ [ALMOST EVERYONE WHO HAS PROCEEDED HERE HAS FELT CERTAINLY THAT JESUS IS DELIBERATELY REFERRING TO SOLOMON’S SOLUTION.]20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Christ here points out the reason for the failure of the logic that is involved. He points out why it fails in logic and then why it fails in reality. This view of Solomon must end in failure philosophically and also in emotional desperation.
We are not made to live in the shortened environment of UNDER THE SUN in this life only!!! Neither are we made to live only in the environment of a bare concept of afterlife [ignoring trying to make this life better]. We are made to live in the environment of a God who exists and who is the judge. This is the difference and that is what Jesus is setting forth here.
I Corinthians 15:32
32 What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
There is no doubt here he is reaching back to Solomon again and he is just saying if there isn’t a resurrection of the dead then let’s just follow Solomon and let’s just eat and drink for tomorrow we die!!!! If there isn’t this full structure [including the resurrection of the dead] then just have the courage to follow Solomon and we can eat and drink because tomorrow we die and that is all we have. If the full structure isn’t there then pick up the cup and drink it dry! You can say it a different way in the 20th century: If the full structure is not there then go ahead and be an EXISTENTIALIST, but don’t cheat. Drink the cup to the end. Drink it dry! That is what Paul says. Paul the educated man. Paul the man who knew his Greek philosophy. Paul the man who understood Solomon and the dilemma. Paul said it one way or the other. There is no room for a middle ground. IF CHRISTIANS AREN’T RAISED FROM THE DEAD THEN SOLOMON IS RIGHT IN ECCLESIASTES, BUT ONLY THEN. But if he is right then you should accept all of Solomon’s despair!
— I wanted to ask you to take a look at the celebration today in Atlanta which was Ravi Zacharias funeral. This is in contrast to Tony Johnson’s attitude while preparing his father’s funeral. The BIG difference was that atheists like Tony have no expectation of ever seeing their relatives again in an AFTERLIFE. That is why the series name is so ironic.
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Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE
In episode 6 of season 2 of AFTER LIFE Tony reports to his brother-in-law Matt that Tony’s father Ray had died the night before:
Tony: It doesn’t matter what he wants. He is dead. I am in charge. I will pick a day that is convenient with me. I might not even turn up. I have paid. He’s dead.
Matt: Nice eulogy. Tony: He was my dad. I will have a drink on him. —
Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer
This article discusses the memorial service for Ravi:
RAVI ZACHARIASPublished May 29, 2020Last Update 5 hrs ago
Ravi Zacharias memorial: Pence, Tebow celebrate Christian apologist’s life and legacy
The popular author, speaker and founder of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) spent the greater part of his life defending Christianity. He revealed he discovered his faith while facing suicide at the age of 17.
The celebration of Zacharias’ life and legacy was held at Passion City Church in Atlanta and watched online by more than 75,000 online at RZIM.org/RaviMemorial.
Ravi Zacharias died May 19, from a rare form of cancer. (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries)
Pence called Zacharias a “gentle giant of the faith” and his death a “personal loss.” When Pence was governor of Indiana, Zacharias spoke at the 2014 state prayer breakfast at his invitation.
“Yesterday President Trump said by making the intellectual case for Christianity, Ravi Zacharias was instrumental in helping millions of people around the world come to know the love and mercy of Jesus Christ,” Pence said.
The vice president, who visited the Zacharias family at RZIM’s headquarters in Alpharetta on May 22, added: “In the late Billy Grahm, it’s been observed that God gave us the greatest evangelist of the 20th century. In Ravi Zacharias, God gave us the greatest Christian apologist of this century.”
Tebow called Zacharias his “mentor, teacher, pastor, friend, and hero” reminiscing about the first time they met and most recently when he knelt by his bedside.
“If Ravi touched your life, then let’s honor him by honoring the one that he honored more than anything else, Jesus Christ,” Tebow urged those watching.
In addition to Pence and Tebow, tributes came from family and friends – including RZIM president Michael Ramsden, Brooklyn Tabernacle senior pastor Jim Cymbala, Passion Movement founder Louie Giglio, Christian music artist Matt Redman, and rapper Lecrae.
“We are here today to give honor to the life and ministry of Ravi Zacharias, but we are also here today to give honor to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Giglio told those gathered in person and to the thousands tuning in online.
“He was a man of character, who answered questions with poise and grace, but the thing that impacted me most, every time I was around Ravi, I just wanted to know Christ more,” Louis Phillips, RZIM speaker, said of Zacharias’ impact prior to the service starting.
Ravi Zacharias died on May 19 from a rare form of cancer. (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries)
Pulse, the evangelism movement founded by Nick Hall, will host Make Jesus Known, a two-hour online apologetics event on May 30 to equip the global church to preach the gospel in partnership with RZIM to honor Zacharias.
“To millions of Christian around the world, Ravi Zacharias was the most famous and influential Christian apologist of the past century. But to me, he was a mentor and friend,” Hall told Fox News.
“He showed me what it really means to pour into people and share the message of Christ with a hurting world,” he added. “I can think of no better way to honor his life than continuing his legacy of love, leadership and evangelism.”
Zacharias was a frequent guest on Fox News Channel and grew RZIM, which he founded in 1984, into a global team of nearly 100 Christian scholars and authors who continue his legacy around the world today.
Ravi Zacharias died Tuesday, May 19, 2020, from a rare form of cancer. (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries)
In a private graveside service, Zacharias was buried May 21 in a casket built by Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola Prison, inmates, a request the Christian apologist had years ago, according to RZIM.
“These prisoners know that this world is not their home and that no coffin could ever be their final destination. Jesus assured us of that. Such is the gospel story,” he wrote in his latest book, “Seeing Jesus from the East.”
He is survived by his wife, Margaret Reynolds Zacharias; two daughters, Sarah Zacharias Davis and Naomi Zacharias; a son, Nathan; and five grandchildren.Caleb Parke is an associate editor for FoxNews.com. You can follow him on Twitter @calebparke
Let me share a portion of an article by William Lane Craig with you.
Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.
The Absurdity of Life without God and Immortality
If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose. Let’s look at each of these.
No Ultimate Meaning without Immortality and God
If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate meaning of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.
Look at it from another perspective: Scientists say that the universe originated in an explosion called the “Big Bang” about 13 billion years ago. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred. Suppose the universe had never existed. What ultimate difference would it make? The universe is doomed to die anyway. In the end it makes no difference whether the universe ever existed or not. Therefore, it is without ultimate significance.
The same is true of the human race. Mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will eventually cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist. Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitos or a barnyard of pigs, for their end is all the same. The same blind cosmic process that coughed them up in the first place will eventually swallow them all again.
And the same is true of each individual person. The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good men everywhere to better the lot of the human race–all these come to nothing. This is the horror of modern man: because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.
But it is important to see that it is not just immortality that man needs if life is to be meaningful. Mere duration of existence does not make that existence meaningful. If man and the universe could exist forever, but if there were no God, their existence would still have no ultimate significance. To illustrate: I once read a science-fiction story in which an astronaut was marooned on a barren chunk of rock lost in outer space. He had with him two vials: one containing poison and the other a potion that would make him live forever. Realizing his predicament, he gulped down the poison. But then to his horror, he discovered he had swallowed the wrong vial—he had drunk the potion for immortality. And that meant that he was cursed to exist forever—a meaningless, unending life. Now if God does not exist, our lives are just like that. They could go on and on and still be utterly without meaning. We could still ask of life, “So what?” So it is not just immortality man needs if life is to be ultimately significant; he needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist, then he has neither.
Twentieth-century man came to understand this. Read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. During this entire play two men carry on trivial conversation while waiting for a third man to arrive, who never does. Our lives are like that, Beckett is saying; we just kill time waiting—for what, we don’t know. In a tragic portrayal of man, Beckett wrote another play in which the curtain opens revealing a stage littered with junk. For thirty long seconds, the audience sits and stares in silence at that junk. Then the curtain closes. That’s all.
French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus understood this, too. Sartre portrayed life in his play No Exit as hell—the final line of the play are the words of resignation, “Well, let’s get on with it.” Hence, Sartre writes elsewhere of the “nausea” of existence. Camus, too, saw life as absurd. At the end of his brief novel The Stranger, Camus’s hero discovers in a flash of insight that the universe has no meaning and there is no God to give it one.
Thus, if there is no God, then life itself becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.
The Success of Biblical Christianity
But if atheism fails in this regard, what about biblical Christianity? According to the Christian world view, God does exist, and man’s life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality. Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.
Conclusion
Now I want to make it clear that I have not yet shown biblical Christianity to be true. But what I have done is clearly spell out the alternatives. If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity. It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain.
[1]Kai Nielsen, “Why Should I Be Moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 90.
[3]H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (New York: Berkeley, 1957), chap. 11.
[4]W.E. Hocking, Types of Philosophy (New York: Scribner’s, 1959), 27.
[5]Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Gay Science,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Viking, 1954), 95.
[6]Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian, ed. P. Edwards (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), 107.
[7]Bertrand Russell, Letter to the Observer, 6 October, 1957.
[8]Jean Paul Sartre, “Portrait of the Antisemite,” in Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Satre, rev. ed., ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: New Meridian Library, 1975), p. 330.
[10]Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1959), 2:360-1.
[11]Loyal D. Rue, “The Saving Grace of Noble Lies,” address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, February, 1991.
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Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:
The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there.
Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?)
In the previous chapter we saw that the Bible gives us the explanation for the existence of the universe and its form and for the mannishness of man. Or, to reverse this, we came to see that the universe and its form and the mannishness of man are a testimony to the truth of the Bible. In this chapter we will consider a third testimony: the Bible’s openness to verification by historical study.
Christianity involves history. To say only that is already to have said something remarkable, because it separates the Judeo-Christian world-view from almost all other religious thought. It is rooted in history.
The Bible tells us how God communicated with man in history. For example, God revealed Himself to Abraham at a point in time and at a particular geographical place. He did likewise with Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel and so on. The implications of this are extremely important to us. Because the truth God communicated in the Bible is so tied up with the flow of human events, it is possible by historical study to confirm some of the historical details.
It is remarkable that this possibility exists. Compare the information we have from other continents of that period. We know comparatively little about what happened in Africa or South America or China or Russia or even Europe. We see beautiful remains of temples and burial places, cult figures, utensils, and so forth, but there is not much actual “history” that can be reconstructed, at least not much when compared to that which is possible in the Middle East.
When we look at the material which has been discovered from the Nile to the Euphrates that derives from the 2500-year span before Christ, we are in a completely different situation from that in regard to South America or Asia. The kings of Egypt and Assyria built thousands of monuments commemorating their victories and recounting their different exploits. Whole libraries have been discovered from places like Nuzu and Mari and most recently at Elba, which give hundreds of thousands of texts relating to the historical details of their time. It is within this geographical area that the Bible is set. So it is possible to find material which bears upon what the Bible tells us.
The Bible purports to give us information on history. Is the history accurate? The more we understand about the Middle East between 2500 B.C. and A.D. 100, the more confident we can be that the information in the Bible is reliable, even when it speaks about the simple things of time and place.
Part A
The site of the biblical city called Lachish is about thirty miles southwest of Jerusalem. This city is referred to on a number of occasions in the Old Testament. Imagine a busy city with high walls surrounding it, and a gate in front that is the only entrance to the city. We know so much about Lachish from archaeological studies that a reconstruction of the whole city has been made in detail. This can be seen at the British Museum in the Lachish Room in the Assyrian section.
There is also a picture made by artists in the eighth century before Christ, the Lachish Relief, which was discovered in the city of Nineveh in the ancient Assyria. In this picture we can see the Jewish inhabitants of Lachish surrendering to Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. The details in the picture and the Assyrian writing on it give the Assyrian side of what the Bible tells us in Second Kings:
2 Kings 18:13-16
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
13 Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. 14 Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong. Withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” So the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. 16 At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
________
We should notice two things about this. First, this is a real-life situation–a real siege of a real city with real people on both sides of the war–and it happened at a particular date in history, near the turn of the eighth century B.C. Second, the two accounts of this incident in 701 B.C. (the account from the Bible and the Assyrian account from Nineveh) do not contradict, but rather confirm each other. The history of Lachish itself is not so important for us, but some of its smaller historical details.
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
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After Life #1 Trailer
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I listened tothis question and answer session at Harvard in 1992 on cassette tapes and was captivated with Ravi Zacharias. His responses were so much better than Kath’s responses to Tony in AFTER LIFE. I have referenced work by Ravi many times in the past and Especially moving was Ravi’s own spiritual search which started in a hospital bed after a failed suicide attempt.I also want you to check out his talk at Princeton and the question and answer time afterwards which are both on YOU TUBEat these two links: Link for talk, Link for Q/A.
After Life 2 Trailer
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On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
I listened tothis question and answer session at Harvard in 1992 on cassette tapes and was captivated with Ravi Zacharias. His responses were so much better than Kath’s responses to Tony in AFTER LIFE. I have referenced work by Ravi many times in the past and Especially moving was Ravi’s own spiritual search which started in a hospital bed after a failed suicide attempt.I also want you to check out his talk at Princeton and the question and answer time afterwards which are both on YOU TUBEat these two links: Link for talk, Link for Q/A.
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After Life 2 Trailer
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On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 28, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 41st day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I wanted to pass along some evidence that indicates the Bible is historically accurate.
— In AFTER LIFE Tony is dealing with depression stemming from the loss of his wife Lisa to cancer six months earlier and his brother-in-law Matt has taken as his responsibility to help Tony overcome his depression. His first suggestion is for Tony to throw himself into his job to take his mind off his problems. This seems like a logical solution that has been tried through the centuries. It doesn’t work and Tony rejects it as a possible solution. The funny thing is that Solomon tries the same solution 3,000 years ago. Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I have seen all the works which have been doneunder the sun, and behold, all is [p]vanity and striving after wind.”
Francis Schaeffer takes a look at the Book of ECCLESIASTES and the effort of Solomon to throw himself into his job and the results of that.
Works of Men done Under the Sun
After wisdom Solomon comes to the great WORKS of men. Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I have seen all the works which have been doneunder the sun, and behold, all is [p]vanity and striving after wind.” Solomon is the man with an empire at this disposal that speaks. This is the man who has the copper refineries in Ezion-geber. This is the man who made the stables across his empire. This is the man who built the temple in Jerusalem. This is the man who stands on the world trade routes. He is not a provincial. He knew what was happening on the Phonetician coast and he knew what was happening in Egypt. There is no doubt he already knew something of building. This is Solomon and he pursues the greatness of his own construction and his conclusion is VANITY AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-20
18 Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. 19 And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity. 20 Therefore I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun.
He looked at the works of his hands, great and multiplied by his wealth and his position and he shrugged his shoulders.
Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
22 For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun? 23 Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is vanity.
Man can not rest and yet he is never done and yet the things which he builds will out live him. If one wants an ironical three phrases these are they. There is a Dutch saying, “The tailor makes many suits but one day he will make a suit that will outlast the tailor.” —
I remember a professor in college saying that he remembers the Beatles performing the song “Money (That’s What I Want)” and then following that song later with The song “Can’t Buy Me Love” which included the lyrics:
I’ll buy you a diamond ring, my friend If it makes you feel all right I’ll get you anything, my friend If it makes you feel all right ‘Cause I don’t care too much for money Money can’t buy me love
It didn’t take take too long to become weary of the fame and fortune and the Beatles returned to the subject of money trying but failing to buy happiness.
In the 1960’s we saw many rallies and demonstrations at college campuses across the world as students arose to rebel against their parents values of personal peace and affluence. Notice the lyrics from the Beatles song ‘She’s Leaving Home.’
…Stepping outside she is free. She (We gave her most of our lives) is leaving (Sacraficed most of our lives) home (We gave her everything money could buy)… She (We never thought of ourselves) Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves) home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by) She’s leaving home after living alone
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Obviously the parents think the answers to life’s tough questions can be answered by money, but the truth is that they require spiritual answers.
Melanie Coe ran away from home in 1967 when she was 15. Paul McCartney read about her in the papers and wrote ‘She’s Leaving Home’ for Sgt.Pepper’s. Melanie didn’t know Paul’s song was about her, but actually, the two did meet earlier, when Paul was the judge and Melanie a contestant in Ready Steady Go!
The subtitles are produced live for The One Show, so some seconds late and with a few mistakes.
Melanie’s first moment of fame, receiving a prize from Paul McCartney for miming to Brenda Lee on Ready Steady Go! in 1963
Melanie in 2008
Why is she leaving home? Francis Schaeffer noted on pages 15-17 in volume 4 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF FRANCIS SCHAEFFER from the original book “The Church at the end of the 20th Century” the reason she left and it was because of the bankruptcy of the materialistic views of her parents. Schaeffer points that for many years there was one message that the media was promoting and that was since we now believe in the “UNIFORMITY OF NATURAL CAUSES IN A CLOSED SYSTEM we are left with only the impersonal plus time plus chance.” Schaeffer continued:What is taught is that there is no final truth, no meaning, no absolutes, that it is only that we have not found truth and meaning, but that they do not exist. The student and the common man may not be able to analyze it, but day after day, day after day, they are being battered by this concept. We have now had several generations exposed to this and we must not be blind to the fact that it is being excepted increasingly.In contrast, this way of thinking has not had as much influence on the middle class. Many of these keep thinking in the old way as a memory of the time before the Christian base was lost in this post-Christian world. However, the majority in the middle-class have no real basis for their values since so many have given up the Christian viewpoint. They just function on the “memory.” This is why so many young people have felt that the middle class is ugly.They feel middle-class people are plastic, ugly and plastic because they try to tell others what to do on the basis of their own values but with no ground for those values. They have no base and they have no clear categories for their choices of right and wrong. Their choices tend to turn on what is for their material benefit. Take for example the fact faculty members who cheered when the student revolt struck against the administration and who immediately began to howl when the students started to burn up faculty manuscripts. They have no categories to say this is right and that is wrong. Many such people still hang on to their old values by memory but they have no base for them at all. A few years ago John Gardner head of the urban coalition spoke in Washington to a group of student leaders. His topic was on restoring values in our culture. When he finished there was a dead silence then finally one man from Harvard stood up and in a moment of brilliance asked, “Sir upon what base do you build your values?” I have never felt more sorry for anybody in my life. He simply looked down and said, “I do not know.” I had spoken that same day about what I was writing in the first part of this book. It was almost too good an illustration of my lecture. Here was a man appealing to the young people for a return to values but he is offering nothing to build on. man who was trying to tell his hearers not to drop out and yet giving no reason why they should not. Functioning only on a dim memory, these are the parents who have turned off their children when their children ask why and how. When their children crying out, “Yours is a plastic culture.” They are silent. We had the response so beautifully stated in the 1960s in the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s song “She is leaving home.” “We gave her everything money could buy.” This is the only answer many parents can give.They are bothered about what they read in the newspapers concerning the way the country and the culture are going. When they read of the pornographic plays, see pornographic films on TV, they are distressed. They have a vague unhappiness about it, feel threatened by all of it and yet have no base upon which to found their judgments. And tragically such people are everywhere. They constitute the largest body in our culture-northern Europe, Britain, and also in America and other countries as well. They are a majority-what is called for a time the “silent majority”–but they are weak as water. They are people who like the old ways because they are pleasant memories, because they give what to them is a comfortable way to live but they have no basis for their values. Education for example is excepted and pressed upon their children as the only thinkable thing to pursue. Success is starting the child at the earliest possible age and then within the least possible years he is obtaining a Masters or PhD degree. Yet if the child asks why?, the only answers are first because it gives social status and then because statistics show that if you have a university or college education you will make more money. There is no base for real values are even the why of a real education.
In the late summer, early fall of 1966, The Beatles were tired of being The Beatles. The Fab Four couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed, they had grown to hate touring because the wild screams of young girls drowned out their primitive amplifiers to the point that they couldn’t hear themselves play! They took a break and stewed in jealousy over the recently released Beach Boys album Pet Sounds that critics were proclaiming to be the most innovative material since the rise of rock & roll itself.
On the return from an African vacation, Paul McCartney had an epiphany–create an altar image and release a groundbreaking concept record that would be a show in and of itself. The result was Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney hoped to create an album that captured the essence of childhood and everyday life. A number of songs effectively do just that (even the controversial “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,’ which most took to be a reference to LSD was in fact an ode to a picture drawn by John Lennon’s son Julian) but the concept proved too difficult even for the infamously disciplined Beatles to pull off and, ultimately, many of the songs were simply the best the four had to offer at the time.
The effect was still stunning. Rolling Stone has twice proclaimed the album to be the best rock & roll record ever made. Every song on Sgt. Pepper’s is a masterpiece, from the the title track which serves as an introduction to the somber but brilliant “A Day in the Life.”
When I first listened to Sgt. Pepper’s from beginning to finish, I was only 17 and failed to see why it was so influential but, after working for rock & roll icons Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, I came to see that from the perspective of 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s changed pop music forever. To appreciate today, one must still listen to it in context and listen to it you must without distraction and from beginning to end.
While many “Beatlemaniacs” identify “With A Little Help From My Friends” or the catchy “When I’m Sixty-Four” as their favorite tracks, I always believed “She’s Leaving Home” was the most thoughtful track. McCartney was inspired to write the song after reading a newspaper article about a young girl who had disappeared. The tune captures a moment where a girl leaves the home of her parents who tried to give her “everything money could buy” but still left her feeling as if she were alone.
As a Christian listening to Sgt. Pepper’sit is hard not to think of Francis Schaeffer who reportedly cried when the Free Speech movement died despite his conservatism. Schaeffer did not agree with the far left but was pleased to see a generation who, like the girl in “She’s Leaving Home,” was looking for more than just material comfort. Then and now, there is a myth born in the depths of hell that the meaning of life is a comfortable existence with a lot of money and the toys. In fact, life is about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
When you think about the song SHE’S LEAVING HOME, you must come to the conclusion that the Beatles knew exactly what was going through the young person’s mind in the 1960’s. No wonder in the video THE AGE OF NON-REASON Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
Adrian Rogers on Evolution
—- Ravi Zacharias (March 26, 1946 – May 19, 2020)
Francis Schaeffer (January 30, 1912 – May 15, 1984[1])
I enjoyed your latest book Outgrowing God which is one of my favorite books that you have written. However, there are some some weak parts of the book. For instance, on page 49:
There’s some beautiful English writing in the King James Bible. Ecclesiastes is at least as good as the Song of Songs, although it’s poetry is bleak and world-weary. If you read nothing else in the Bible, I recommend those two books, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs.
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Richard, today in the world of atheists you have “ great and surpassed all who were before me” But like Solomon I wonder if you would conclude “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”
Solomon had it all and especially gold but he said all the fame and fortune is vanity and a chasing of the wind because it will NOT bring satisfaction or even last.
Back in 2001 our friend David Hodges was in a struggling rock band named EVANESCENCE in Little Rock but then they hit it big. Not only did Evanescence sell 20 million records but afterwards David wrote #1 smash singles: Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You,” Daughtry’s “What About Now,” Carrie Underwood’s “See You Again” and many others. My personal favorite is A THOUSAND YEARS sung by Christina Perri.
In October of 2016 David Hodges spoke to a meeting I attended in Little Rock. He said the 15 years he lived in Los Angeles had taught him a lot of lessons and the MOST IMPORTANT is the lesson from the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES that TRUE JOY and HAPPINESS does not come from MONEY and POSSESSIONS.
I have been writing you the last few times on Solomon. He was searching for meaning in life in what I call the 6 big L words in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). After searching in area of luxuries Solomon found them to be “vanity and a striving after the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 2:7-11 English Standard Version (ESV)
7I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. 9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem…10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them.11 Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36 (Christ’s words)
God put Solomon’s story in Ecclesiastes in the Bible with the sole purpose of telling people like you that without God in the picture you will find out the emptiness one feels when possessions are trying to fill the void that God can only fill.
Then in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes Solomon returns to looking above the sun and he says that obeying the Lord is the proper way to live your life. The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted. If you need more evidence then go to You Tube and watch the short videos “Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1),“(3 min, 5 sec) and “Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2),” (10 min, 46 sec).
Frida Kahlo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈfɾiða ˈkalo]; born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïvefolk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society.[1] Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist.[2]
Born to a German father and a mestiza mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family home in Coyoacán, now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school until a traffic accident at age eighteen, which caused her lifelong pain and medical problems. During her recovery, she returned to her childhood hobby of art with the idea of becoming an artist.
Kahlo’s interests in politics and art led to her joining the Mexican Communist Party in 1927, through which she met fellow Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The couple married in 1928, and spent the late 1920s and early 1930s travelling in Mexico and the United States together. During this time, she developed her artistic style, drew her main inspiration from Mexican folk culture, and painted mostly small self-portraits which mixed elements from pre-Columbian and Catholic beliefs. Her paintings raised the interest of Surrealist artist André Breton, who arranged for Kahlo’s first solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938.
The exhibition was a success and was followed by another in Paris in 1939. While the French exhibition was less successful, the Louvre purchased a painting from Kahlo, The Frame, making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo participated in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States, and also worked as an art teacher. She taught at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” and was a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. Kahlo’s always fragile health began to decline in the same decade. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death in 1954 at the age of 47.
Kahlo’s work as an artist remained relatively unknown until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the early 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, the feminism movement and the LGBTQ+ movement. Kahlo’s work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.[3]
Kahlo enjoyed art from an early age, receiving drawing instruction from her father’s friend, printmaker Fernando Fernández[4] and filling notebooks with sketches.[5] In 1925, she began to work outside of school to help her family.[6] After briefly working as a stenographer, she became a paid engraving apprentice for Fernández.[7] He was impressed by her talent,[8] although she did not consider art as a career at this time.[5]
After a bus accident in 1925 left Kahlo unable to walk for three months, she started to consider a career as a medical illustrator, which would combine her interests in science and art. She had a specially-made easel that enabled her to paint in bed, and a mirror placed above it so she could see herself.[9] Painting became a way for Kahlo to explore questions of identity and existence,[10] and she later stated that the accident and the isolating recovery period made her desire “to begin again, painting things just as [she] saw them with [her] own eyes and nothing more.”[11]
Most of the paintings Kahlo made during this time were portraits of herself, her sisters, and school friends.[12] Her early paintings and correspondence show that she drew inspiration especially from European artists, in particular Renaissance masters such as Sandro Botticelli and Bronzino[13] and from avant-garde movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit and Cubism.[14]
On moving to Morelos in 1929 with her husband Rivera, Kahlo was inspired by the Spanish-style Cuernavaca where they were living.[15] She changed her artistic style and increasingly drew inspiration from Mexican folk art.[16] Art historian Andrea Kettenmann states that she may have been influenced by Adolfo Best Maugard‘s treatise on the subject, as she incorporated many of the characteristics that he outlined – for example, the lack of perspective and the combining of elements from pre-Columbian and colonial periods of Mexican art.[17] Her identification with La Raza, the people of Mexico, and her profound interest in its culture remained important facets of her art throughout the rest of her life.[18]
When Kahlo and Rivera moved to San Francisco in 1930, Kahlo was introduced to American artists such as Edward Weston, Ralph Stackpole, Timothy Pflueger, and Nickolas Muray.[19] The six months spent in San Francisco were a productive period for Kahlo,[20] who further developed the folk art style she had adopted in Cuernavaca.[21] In addition to painting portraits of several new acquaintances,[22] she made Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931), a double portrait based on their wedding photograph,[23] and The Portrait of Luther Burbank (1931), which depicted the eponymous horticulturist as a hybrid between a human and a plant.[24] Although she still publicly presented herself as simply Rivera’s spouse rather than as an artist,[25] she participated for the first time in an exhibition, when Frieda and Diego Rivera was included in the Sixth Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists in the Palace of the Legion of Honor.[26][27]
On moving to Detroit with Rivera, Kahlo experienced numerous health problems related to a failed pregnancy.[28] Despite these health problems, as well as her dislike for the capitalist culture of the United States,[29] Kahlo’s time in the city was beneficial for her artistic expression. She experimented with different techniques, such as etching and frescos,[30] and her paintings began to show a stronger narrative style.[31] She also began placing emphasis on the themes of “terror, suffering, wounds, and pain”.[30] Despite the popularity of the mural in Mexican art at the time, she adopted a diametrically opposed medium, votive images or retablos, religious paintings made on small metal sheets by amateur artists to thank saints for their blessings during a calamity.[32] Amongst the works she made in the retablo manner in Detroit are Henry Ford Hospital (1932), My Birth (1932), and Self-Portrait on the Border of Mexico and the United States (1932).[30] While none of Kahlo’s works were featured in exhibitions in Detroit, she gave an interview to the Detroit News on her art; the article was condescendingly titled “Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art”.[33]
Return to Mexico City and international recognition[edit]
Upon returning to Mexico City in 1934, Kahlo made no new paintings and only two in the following year due to health complications.[34] In 1937 and 1938, however, Kahlo’s artistic career was extremely productive, following her divorce and then reconciliation with Rivera. She painted more “than she had done in all her eight previous years of marriage”, creating such works as My Nurse and I (1937), Memory, the Heart (1937), Four Inhabitants of Mexico (1938), and What the Water Gave Me (1938).[35] Although she was still unsure about her work, the National Autonomous University of Mexico exhibited some of her paintings in early 1938.[36] She made her first significant sale in the summer of 1938 when film star and art collector Edward G. Robinson purchased four paintings at $200 each.[36] Even greater recognition followed when French Surrealist André Breton visited Rivera in April 1938. He was impressed by Kahlo, immediately claiming her as a surrealist and describing her work as “a ribbon around a bomb”.[37] He not only promised to arrange for her paintings to be exhibited in Paris but also wrote to his friend and art dealer, Julien Levy, who invited her to hold her first solo exhibition at his gallery on the East 57th Street in Manhattan.[38]Rivera, Kahlo and Anson Goodyear
In October, Kahlo traveled alone to New York, where her colorful Mexican dress “caused a sensation” and made her seen as “the height of exotica”.[37] The exhibition opening in November was attended by famous figures such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Clare Boothe Luce and received much positive attention in the press, although many critics adopted a condescending tone in their reviews.[39] For example, Time wrote that “Little Frida’s pictures … had the daintiness of miniatures, the vivid reds, and yellows of Mexican tradition and the playfully bloody fancy of an unsentimental child”.[40] Despite the Great Depression, Kahlo sold half of the twenty-five paintings presented in the exhibition.[41] She also received commissions from A. Conger Goodyear, then the president of the MoMA, and Clare Boothe Luce, for whom she painted a portrait of Luce’s friend, socialite Dorothy Hale, who had committed suicide by jumping from her apartment building.[42] During the three months she spent in New York, Kahlo painted very little, instead focusing on enjoying the city to the extent that her fragile health allowed.[43] She also had several affairs, continuing the one with Nickolas Muray and engaging in ones with Levy and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.[44]
In January 1939, Kahlo sailed to Paris to follow up on André Breton‘s invitation to stage an exhibition of her work.[45] When she arrived, she found that he had not cleared her paintings from the customs and no longer even owned a gallery.[46] With the aid of Marcel Duchamp, she was able to arrange for an exhibition at the Renou et Colle Gallery.[46] Further problems arose when the gallery refused to show all but two of Kahlo’s paintings, considering them too shocking for audiences,[47] and Breton insisted that they be shown alongside photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, pre-Columbian sculptures, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mexican portraits, and what she considered “junk”: sugar skulls, toys, and other items he had bought from Mexican markets.[48]
The exhibition opened in March, but received much less attention than she had received in the United States, partly due to the looming Second World War, and made a loss financially, which led Kahlo to cancel a planned exhibition in London.[49] Regardless, the Louvre purchased The Frame, making her the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection.[50] She was also warmly received by other Parisian artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró,[48] as well as the fashion world, with designer Elsa Schiaparelli designing a dress inspired by her and Vogue Paris featuring her on its pages.[49] However, her overall opinion of Paris and the Surrealists remained negative; in a letter to Muray, she called them “this bunch of coocoo lunatics and very stupid surrealists”[48] who “are so crazy ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t even stand them anymore.”[51]
In the United States, Kahlo’s paintings continued to raise interest. In 1941, her works were featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and in the following year she participated in two high-profile exhibitions in New York, the Twentieth-Century Portraits exhibition at the MoMA and the Surrealists’ First Papers of Surrealism exhibition.[52] In 1943, she was included in the Mexican Art Today exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Women Artists at Peggy Guggenheim‘s The Art of This Century gallery in New York.[53]
Kahlo gained more appreciation for her art in Mexico as well. She became a founding member of the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, a group of twenty-five artists commissioned by the Ministry of Public Education in 1942 to spread public knowledge of Mexican culture.[54] As a member, she took part in planning exhibitions and attended a conference on art.[55] In Mexico City, her paintings were featured in two exhibitions on Mexican art that were staged at the English-language Benjamin Franklin Library in 1943 and 1944. She was invited to participate in “Salon de la Flor”, an exhibition presented at the annual flower exposition.[56] An article by Rivera on Kahlo’s art was also published in the journal published by the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana.[57]
In 1943, Kahlo accepted a teaching position at the recently reformed, nationalistic Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda.”[58] She encouraged her students to treat her in an informal and non-hierarchical way and taught them to appreciate Mexican popular culture and folk art and to derive their subjects from the street.[59] When her health problems made it difficult for her to commute to the school in Mexico City, she began to hold her lessons at La Casa Azul.[60] Four of her students – Fanny Rabel, Arturo García Bustos, Guillermo Monroy, and Arturo Estrada – became devotees, and were referred to as “Los Fridos” for their enthusiasm.[61] Kahlo secured three mural commissions for herself and her students.[62] In 1944, they painted La Rosita, a pulqueria in Coyoacán. In 1945, the government commissioned them to paint murals for a Coyoacán launderette as part of a national scheme to help poor women who made their living as laundresses. The same year, the group created murals for Posada del Sol, a hotel in Mexico City. However, it was destroyed soon after completion as the owner did not like it.
Kahlo struggled to make a living from her art until the mid to late 1940s, as she refused to adapt her style to suit her clients’ wishes.[63] She received two commissions from the Mexican government in the early 1940s. She did not complete the first one, possibly due to her dislike of the subject, and the second commission was rejected by the commissioning body.[63] Nevertheless, she had regular private clients, such as engineer Eduardo Morillo Safa, who ordered more than thirty portraits of family members over the decade.[63] Her financial situation improved when she received a 5000-peso national prize for her painting Moses (1945) in 1946 and when The Two Fridas was purchased by the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1947.[64] According to art historian Andrea Kettenmann, by the mid-1940s, her paintings were “featured in the majority of group exhibitions in Mexico.” Further, Martha Zamora wrote that she could “sell whatever she was currently painting; sometimes incomplete pictures were purchased right off the easel.”[65]
Even as Kahlo was gaining recognition in Mexico, her health was declining rapidly and an attempted surgery to support her spine failed.[66] Her paintings from this period include Broken Column (1944), Without Hope (1945), Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946), and The Wounded Deer (1946), reflecting her poor physical state.[66] During her last years, Kahlo was mostly confined to the Casa Azul.[67] She painted mostly still lifes, portraying fruit and flowers with political symbols such as flags or doves.[68] She was concerned about being able to portray her political convictions, stating that “I have a great restlessness about my paintings. Mainly because I want to make it useful to the revolutionary communist movement… until now I have managed simply an honest expression of my own self … I must struggle with all my strength to ensure that the little positive my health allows me to do also benefits the Revolution, the only real reason to live.”[69][70] She also altered her painting style: her brushstrokes, previously delicate and careful, were now hastier, her use of color more brash, and the overall style more intense and feverish.[71]
Photographer Lola Alvarez Bravo understood that Kahlo did not have much longer to live and thus staged her first solo exhibition in Mexico at the Galería Arte Contemporaneo in April 1953.[72] Though Kahlo was initially not due to attend the opening, as her doctors had put her on bed rest, she ordered her four-poster bed to be moved from her home to the gallery. To the surprise of the guests, she arrived in an ambulance and was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the party.[72] The exhibition was a notable cultural event in Mexico and also received attention in mainstream press around the world.[73] The same year, the Tate‘s exhibition on Mexican art in London featured five of her paintings.[74]
In 1954, Kahlo was again hospitalized in April and May.[75] That spring, she resumed painting after a one-year interval.[76] Her last paintings include the political Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (c. 1954) and Frida and Stalin (c. 1954) and the still-life Viva La Vida (1954).[77]
Estimates vary on how many paintings Kahlo made during her life, with figures ranging from fewer than 150[78] to around 200.[79][80] Her earliest paintings, which she made in the mid-1920s, show influence from Renaissance masters and European avant-garde artists such as Amedeo Modigliani.[81] Towards the end of the decade, Kahlo derived more inspiration from Mexican folk art,[82] drawn to its elements of “fantasy, naivety, and fascination with violence and death”.[80] The style she developed mixed reality with surrealistic elements and often depicted pain and death.[83]
One of Kahlo’s earliest champions was Surrealist artist André Breton, who claimed her as part of the movement as an artist who had supposedly developed her style “in total ignorance of the ideas that motivated the activities of my friends and myself”.[84] This was echoed by Bertram D. Wolfe, who wrote that Kahlo’s was a “sort of ‘naïve’ Surrealism, which she invented for herself”.[85] Although Breton regarded her as mostly a feminine force within the Surrealist movement, Kahlo brought postcolonial questions and themes to the forefront of her brand of Surrealism.[86] Breton also described Kahlo’s work as “wonderfully situated at the point of intersection between the political (philosophical) line and the artistic line.”[87] While she subsequently participated in Surrealist exhibitions, she stated that she “detest[ed] Surrealism”, which to her was “bourgeois art” and not “true art that the people hope from the artist”.[88] Some art historians have disagreed whether her work should be classified as belonging to the movement at all. According to Andrea Kettenmann, Kahlo was a symbolist concerned more in portraying her inner experiences.[89] Emma Dexter has argued that, as Kahlo derived her mix of fantasy and reality mainly from Aztec mythology and Mexican culture instead of Surrealism, it is more appropriate to consider her paintings as having more in common with magical realism, also known as New Objectivity. It combined reality and fantasy and employed similar style to Kahlo’s, such as flattened perspective, clearly outlined characters and bright colours.[90]
Similarly to many other contemporary Mexican artists, Kahlo was heavily influenced by Mexicanidad, a romantic nationalism that had developed in the aftermath of the revolution.[91][80] The Mexicanidad movement claimed to resist the “mindset of cultural inferiority” created by colonialism, and placed special importance on indigenous cultures.[92] Before the revolution, Mexican folk culture – a mixture of indigenous and European elements – was disparaged by the elite, who claimed to have purely European ancestry and regarded Europe as the definition of civilization which Mexico should imitate.[93] Kahlo’s artistic ambition was to paint for the Mexican people, and she stated that she wished “to be worthy, with my paintings, of the people to whom I belong and to the ideas which strengthen me”.[88] To enforce this image, she preferred to conceal the education she had received in art from her father and Ferdinand Fernandez and at the preparatory school. Instead, she cultivated an image of herself as a “self-taught and naive artist”.[94]
When Kahlo began her career as an artist in the 1920s, muralists dominated the Mexican art scene. They created large public pieces in the vein of Renaissance masters and Russian socialist realists: they usually depicted masses of people, and their political messages were easy to decipher.[95] Although she was close to muralists such as Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros and shared their commitment to socialism and Mexican nationalism, the majority of Kahlo’s paintings were self-portraits of relatively small size.[96][80] Particularly in the 1930s, her style was especially indebted to votive paintings or retablos, which were postcard-sized religious images made by amateur artists.[97] Their purpose was to thank saints for their protection during a calamity, and they normally depicted an event, such as an illness or an accident, from which its commissioner had been saved.[98] The focus was on the figures depicted, and they seldom featured a realistic perspective or detailed background, thus distilling the event to its essentials.[99] Kahlo had an extensive collection of approximately 2,000 retablos, which she displayed on the walls of La Casa Azul.[100] According to Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, the retablo format enabled Kahlo to “develop the limits of the purely iconic and allowed her to use narrative and allegory.”[101]
Many of Kahlo’s self-portraits mimic the classic bust-length portraits that were fashionable during the colonial era, but they subverted the format by depicting their subject as less attractive than in reality.[102] She concentrated more frequently on this format towards the end of the 1930s, thus reflecting changes in Mexican society. Increasingly disillusioned by the legacy of the revolution and struggling to cope with the effects of the Great Depression, Mexicans were abandoning the ethos of socialism for individualism.[103] This was reflected by the “personality cults”, which developed around Mexican film stars such as Dolores del Rio.[103] According to Schaefer, Kahlo’s “mask-like self-portraits echo the contemporaneous fascination with the cinematic close-up of feminine beauty, as well as the mystique of female otherness expressed in film noir.”[103] By always repeating the same facial features, Kahlo drew from the depiction of goddesses and saints in indigenous and Catholic cultures.[104]
Out of specific Mexican folk artists, Kahlo was especially influenced by Hermenegildo Bustos, whose works portrayed Mexican culture and peasant life, and José Guadalupe Posada, who depicted accidents and crime in satiric manner.[105] She also derived inspiration from the works of Hieronymus Bosch, whom she called a “man of genius”, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose focus on peasant life was similar to her own interest in the Mexican people.[106] Another influence was the poet Rosario Castellanos, whose poems often chronicle a woman’s lot in the patriarchal Mexican society, a concern with the female body, and tell stories of immense physical and emotional pain.[82]
Kahlo’s paintings often feature root imagery with roots growing out of her body to tie her to the ground, reflecting in a positive sense the theme of personal growth; in a negative sense of being trapped in a particular place, time and situation; and finally in an ambiguous sense of how memories of the past influence the present for either good and/or ill.[107] In My Grandparents and I, Kahlo painted herself as a ten-year holding a ribbon that grows from an ancient tree that bears the portraits of her grandparents and other ancestors while her left foot is a tree trunk growing out of the ground, reflecting Kahlo’s view of humanity’s unity with the earth and her own sense of unity with Mexico.[108] In Kahlo’s paintings, trees serve as symbols of hope, of strength and of a continuity that transcends generations.[109] Additionally, hair features as a symbol of growth and of the feminine in Kahlo’s paintings and in Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, Kahlo painted herself wearing a man’s suit and shorn of her long hair, which she had just cut off.[110] Kahlo holds the scissors with one hand menacingly close to her genitals, which can be interpreted as a threat to Rivera whose frequent unfaithfulness infuriated her and/or a threat to harm her own body like she has attacked her own hair, a sign of the way that women often project their fury against others onto themselves.[111] Moreover, the picture reflects Kahlo’s frustration not only with Rivera, but also her unease with the patriarchal values of Mexico as the scissors symbolize a malevolent sense of masculinity that threatens to “cut up” women, both metaphorically and literally.[111] In Mexico, the traditional Spanish values of machismo were widely embraced, and as a woman, Kahlo was always uncomfortable with machismo.[111]
As she suffered for the rest of her life from the bus accident in her youth, Kahlo spent much of her life in hospitals and undergoing surgery, much of it performed by quacks who Kahlo believed could restore her back to where she had been before the accident.[108] Many of Kahlo’s paintings are concerned with medical imagery, which is presented in terms of pain and hurt, featuring Kahlo bleeding and displaying her open wounds.[108] Many of Kahlo’s medical paintings, especially dealing with childbirth and miscarriage, have a strong sense of guilt, of a sense of living one’s life at the expense of another who has died so one might live.[109]
Although Kahlo featured herself and events from her life in her paintings, they were often ambiguous in meaning.[112] She did not use them only to show her subjective experience but to raise questions about Mexican society and the construction of identity within it, particularly gender, race, and social class.[113] Historian Liza Bakewell has stated that Kahlo “recognized the conflicts brought on by revolutionary ideology”:
What was it to be a Mexican? – modern, yet pre-Columbian; young, yet old; anti-Catholic yet Catholic; Western, yet New World; developing, yet underdeveloped; independent, yet colonized; mestizo, yet not Spanish nor Indian.[114]
To explore these questions through her art, Kahlo developed a complex iconography, extensively employing pre-Columbian and Christian symbols and mythology in her paintings.[115] In most of her self-portraits, she depicts her face as mask-like, but surrounded by visual cues which allow the viewer to decipher deeper meanings for it. Aztec mythology features heavily in Kahlo’s paintings in symbols like monkeys, skeletons, skulls, blood, and hearts; often, these symbols referred to the myths of Coatlicue, Quetzalcoatl, and Xolotl.[116] Other central elements that Kahlo derived from Aztec mythology were hybridity and dualism.[117] Many of her paintings depict opposites: life and death, pre-modernity and modernity, Mexican and European, male and female.[118]
In addition to Aztec legends, Kahlo frequently depicted two central female figures from Mexican folklore in her paintings: La Llorona and La Malinche[119] as interlinked to the hard situations, the suffering, misfortune or judgement, as being calamitous, wretched or being “de la chingada.”[120] For example, when she painted herself following her miscarriage in Detroit in Henry Ford Hospital (1932), she shows herself as weeping, with dishevelled hair and an exposed heart, which are all considered part of the appearance of La Llorona, a woman who murdered her children.[121] The painting was traditionally interpreted as simply a depiction of Kahlo’s grief and pain over her failed pregnancies. But with the interpretation of the symbols in the painting and the information of Kahlo’s actual views towards motherhood from her correspondence, the painting has been seen as depicting the unconventional and taboo choice of a woman remaining childless in Mexican society.
Kahlo often featured her own body in her paintings, presenting it in varying states and disguises: as wounded, broken, as a child, or clothed in different outfits, such as the Tehuana costume, a man’s suit, or a European dress.[122] She used her body as a metaphor to explore questions on societal roles.[123] Her paintings often depicted the female body in an unconventional manner, such as during miscarriages, and childbirth or cross-dressing.[124] In depicting the female body in graphic manner, Kahlo positioned the viewer in the role of the voyeur, “making it virtually impossible for a viewer not to assume a consciously held position in response”.[125]
According to Nancy Cooey, Kahlo made herself through her paintings into “the main character of her own mythology, as a woman, as a Mexican, and as a suffering person … She knew how to convert each into a symbol or sign capable of expressing the enormous spiritual resistance of humanity and its splendid sexuality”.[126] Similarly, Nancy Deffebach has stated that Kahlo “created herself as a subject who was female, Mexican, modern, and powerful”, and who diverged from the usual dichotomy of roles of mother/whore allowed to women in Mexican society.[127] Due to her gender and divergence from the muralist tradition, Kahlo’s paintings were treated as less political and more naïve and subjective than those of her male counterparts up until the late 1980s.[128] According to art historian Joan Borsa, “the critical reception of her exploration of subjectivity and personal history has all too frequently denied or de-emphasized the politics involved in examining one’s own location, inheritances and social conditions […] Critical responses continue to gloss over Kahlo’s reworking of the personal, ignoring or minimizing her interrogation of sexuality, sexual difference, marginality, cultural identity, female subjectivity, politics and power.”[78]
Kahlo (on the right) and her sisters Cristina, Matilde, and Adriana, photographed by their father, 1916
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón[a] was born on 6 July 1907 in Coyoacán, a village on the outskirts of Mexico City.[130] Kahlo stated that she was born at the family home, La Casa Azul (The Blue House), but according to the official birth registry, the birth took place at the nearby home of her maternal grandmother.[131] Kahlo’s parents were photographer Guillermo Kahlo (1871–1941) and Matilde Calderón y González (1876–1932), and they were thirty-six and thirty, respectively, when they had her.[132] Originally from Germany, Guillermo had immigrated to Mexico in 1891, after epilepsy caused by an accident ended his university studies.[133] Although Kahlo claimed that her father was Jewish, he was in fact a Lutheran.[134][135] Matilde was born in Oaxaca to an Indigenous father and a mother of Spanish descent.[136] In addition to Kahlo, the marriage produced daughters Matilde (c. 1898–1951), Adriana (c. 1902–1968), and Cristina (c. 1908–1964).[137] She had two half-sisters from Guillermo’s first marriage, María Luisa and Margarita, but they were raised in a convent.[138]
Kahlo later described the atmosphere in her childhood home as often “very, very sad”.[139] Both parents were often sick,[140] and their marriage was devoid of love.[141] Her relationship with her mother, Matilde, was extremely tense.[142] Kahlo described her mother as “kind, active and intelligent, but also calculating, cruel and fanatically religious”.[142] Her father Guillermo’s photography business suffered greatly during the Mexican Revolution, as the overthrown government had commissioned works from him, and the long civil war limited the number of private clients.[140]
When Kahlo was six years old she contracted polio, which made her right leg shorter and thinner than the left.[143][b] The illness forced her to be isolated from her peers for months, and she was bullied.[146] While the experience made her reclusive,[139] it made her Guillermo’s favorite due to their shared experience of living with disability.[147] Kahlo credited him for making her childhood “marvelous… he was an immense example to me of tenderness, of work (photographer and also painter), and above all in understanding for all my problems”.[148] He taught her about literature, nature, and philosophy, and encouraged her to play sports to regain her strength, despite the fact that most physical exercise was seen as unsuitable for girls.[149] He also taught her photography, and she began to help him retouch, develop, and color photographs.[150]
Due to polio, Kahlo began school later than her peers.[151] Along with her younger sister Cristina, she attended the local kindergarten and primary school in Coyoacán and was homeschooled for the fifth and sixth grades.[152] While Cristina followed their sisters into a convent school, Kahlo was enrolled in a German school due to their father’s wishes.[153] She was soon expelled for disobedience and was sent to a vocational teachers school.[152] Her stay at the school was brief, as she was sexually abused by a female teacher.[152]
In 1922, Kahlo was accepted to the elite National Preparatory School, where she focused on natural sciences with the aim of becoming a doctor.[154] The institution had only recently begun admitting women, with only 35 girls out of 2,000 students.[155] She performed well academically,[7] was a voracious reader, and became “deeply immersed and seriously committed to Mexican culture, political activism and issues of social justice”.[156] The school promoted indigenismo, a new sense of Mexican identity that took pride in the country’s indigenous heritage and sought to rid itself of the colonial mindset of Europe as superior to Mexico.[157] Particularly influential to Kahlo at this time were nine of her schoolmates, with whom she formed an informal group called the “Cachuchas” – many of them would become leading figures of the Mexican intellectual elite.[158] They were rebellious and against everything conservative and pulled pranks, staged plays, and debated philosophy and Russian classics.[158] To mask the fact that she was older and to declare herself a “daughter of the revolution”, she began saying that she had been born on 7 July 1910, the year the Mexican Revolution began, which she continued throughout her life.[159]
1925–1930: Bus accident and marriage to Diego Rivera[edit]
Kahlo photographed by her father in 1926
On 17 September 1925, Kahlo and her boyfriend, Alejandro Gómez Arias, were on their way home from school when the wooden bus they were riding collided with a streetcar. The accident killed several people and fractured Kahlo’s ribs, both her legs and her collarbone. An iron handrail impaled her through her pelvis, fracturing the pelvic bone.[160][c] She spent a month in the hospital and two months recovering at home before being able to return to work.[162][163] As she continued to experience fatigue and back pain, her doctors ordered x-rays, which revealed that the accident had also displaced three vertebrae.[164] As treatment she had to wear a plaster corset which confined her to bed rest for the better part of three months.[164]
The accident ended Kahlo’s dreams of becoming a doctor and caused her pain and illness for the rest of her life; her friend Andrés Henestrosa stated that Kahlo “lived dying”.[165] Kahlo’s bed rest was over by late 1927, and she began socializing with her old school friends, who were now at university and involved in student politics. She joined the Mexican Communist Party (PCM) and was introduced to a circle of political activists and artists, including the exiled Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella and the Italian-American photographer Tina Modotti.[166]
At one of Modotti’s parties in June 1928, Kahlo was introduced to Diego Rivera.[167] They had met briefly in 1922 when he was painting a mural at her school.[168] Shortly after their introduction in 1928, Kahlo asked him to judge whether her paintings showed enough talent for her to pursue a career as an artist.[169] Rivera recalled being impressed by her works, stating that they showed, “an unusual energy of expression, precise delineation of character, and true severity … They had a fundamental plastic honesty, and an artistic personality of their own … It was obvious to me that this girl was an authentic artist”.[170]Kahlo with husband Diego Rivera in 1932
Kahlo soon began a relationship with Rivera, who was 20 years her senior, and had two common-law wives.[171] Kahlo and Rivera were married in a civil ceremony at the town hall of Coyoacán on 21 August 1929.[172] Her mother opposed the marriage, and both parents referred to it as a “marriage between an elephant and a dove”, referring to the couple’s differences in size; Rivera was tall and overweight while Kahlo was petite and fragile.[173] Regardless, her father approved of Rivera, who was wealthy and therefore able to support Kahlo, who could not work and had to receive expensive medical treatment.[174] The wedding was reported by the Mexican and international press,[175] and the marriage was subject to constant media attention in Mexico in the following years, with articles referring to the couple as simply “Diego and Frida”.[176]
Soon after the marriage, in late 1929, Kahlo and Rivera moved to Cuernavaca in the rural state of Morelos, where he had been commissioned to paint murals for the Palace of Cortés.[177] Around the same time, she resigned her membership of the PCM in support of Rivera, who had been expelled shortly before the marriage for his support of the leftist opposition movement within the Third International.[178]
During the civil war, Morelos had seen some of the heaviest fighting, and living in the Spanish-style Cuernavaca sharpened Kahlo’s sense of a Mexican identity and history.[15] Similar to many other Mexican women artists and intellectuals at the time,[179] Kahlo began wearing traditional indigenous Mexican peasant clothing to emphasize her mestiza ancestry: long and colorful skirts, huipils and rebozos, elaborate headdresses and masses of jewelry.[180] She especially favored the dress of women from the allegedly matriarchal society of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, who had come to represent “an authentic and indigenous Mexican cultural heritage” in post-revolutionary Mexico.[181] The Tehuana outfit allowed Kahlo to express her feminist and anti-colonialist ideals.[182]
Frida photographed in 1932 by her father, Guillermo
After Rivera had completed the commission in Cuernavaca in late 1930, he and Kahlo moved to San Francisco, where he painted murals for the Luncheon Club of the San Francisco Stock Exchange and the California School of Fine Arts.[183] The couple was “feted, lionized, [and] spoiled” by influential collectors and clients during their stay in the city.[19] Her long love affair with Muray most likely began around this time.[184]
Kahlo and Rivera returned to Mexico for the summer of 1931, and in the fall, traveled to New York City for the opening of Rivera’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). In April 1932, they headed to Detroit, where Rivera had been commissioned to paint murals for the Detroit Institute of Arts.[185] By this time, Kahlo had become bolder in her interactions with the press, impressing journalists with her fluency in English and stating on her arrival to the city that she was the greater artist of the two of them.[186]“Of course he [Rivera] does well for a little boy, but it is I who am the big artist” – Frida Kahlo in interview with the Detroit News, February 2nd 1933.[187]
The year spent in Detroit was a difficult time for Kahlo. Although she had enjoyed visiting San Francisco and New York City, she disliked aspects of American society, which she regarded as colonialist, as well as most Americans, whom she found “boring”.[188] She disliked having to socialize with capitalists such as Henry and Edsel Ford, and was angered that many of the hotels in Detroit refused to accept Jewish guests.[189] In a letter to a friend, she wrote that “although I am very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States”, she felt “a bit of a rage against all the rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most terrible misery without anything to eat and with no place to sleep, that is what has most impressed me here, it is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night whiles thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger.”[29] Kahlo’s time in Detroit was also complicated by a pregnancy. Her doctor agreed to perform an abortion, but the medication used was ineffective.[190] Kahlo was deeply ambivalent about having a child and had already undergone an abortion earlier in her marriage to Rivera.[190] Following the failed abortion, she reluctantly agreed to continue with the pregnancy, but miscarried in July, which caused a serious hemorrhage that required her being hospitalized for two weeks.[28] Less than three months later, her mother died from complications of surgery in Mexico.[191]
Kahlo and Rivera returned to New York in March 1933, as he had been commissioned to paint a mural for the Rockefeller Center.[192] During this time, she only worked on one painting, My Dress Hangs There (1934).[192] She also gave further interviews to the American press.[192] In May, Rivera was fired from the Rockefeller Center project and was instead hired to paint a mural for the New Workers School.[193][192] Although Rivera wished to continue their stay in the United States, Kahlo was homesick, and they returned to Mexico soon after the mural’s unveiling in December 1933.[194]
1934–1949: La Casa Azul and declining health[edit]
Kahlo and Rivera’s houses in San Ángel; they lived there from 1934 to until their divorce in 1939, after which it became his studio
Back in Mexico City, Kahlo and Rivera moved into a new house in the wealthy neighborhood of San Ángel.[195] Commissioned from Le Corbusier‘s student Juan O’Gorman, it consisted of two sections joined together by a bridge; Kahlo’s was painted blue and Rivera’s pink and white.[196] The bohemian residence became an important meeting place for artists and political activists from Mexico and abroad.[197]
She was again experiencing health problems – undergoing an appendectomy, two abortions, and the amputation of gangrenous toes[198][145] – and her marriage to Rivera had become strained. He was not happy to be back in Mexico and blamed Kahlo for their return.[199] While he had been unfaithful to her before, he now embarked on an affair with her younger sister Cristina, which deeply hurt Kahlo’s feelings.[200] After discovering it in early 1935, she moved to an apartment in central Mexico City and considered divorcing him.[201] She also had an affair of her own with American artist Isamu Noguchi.[202]
Kahlo reconciled with Rivera and Cristina later in 1935 and moved back to San Ángel.[203] She became a loving aunt to Cristina’s children, Isolda and Antonio.[204] Despite the reconciliation, both Rivera and Kahlo continued their infidelities.[205] She also resumed her political activities in 1936, joining the Fourth International and becoming a founding member of a solidarity committee to provide aid to the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.[206] She and Rivera successfully petitioned the Mexican government to grant asylum to former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky and offered La Casa Azul for him and his wife Natalia Sedova as a residence.[207] The couple lived there from January 1937 until April 1939, with Kahlo and Trotsky not only becoming good friends but also having a brief affair.[208]
After opening an exhibition in Paris, Kahlo sailed back to New York.[209] She was eager to be reunited with Muray, but he decided to end their affair, as he had met another woman whom he was planning to marry.[210] Kahlo traveled back to Mexico City, where Rivera requested a divorce from her. The exact reasons for his decision are unknown, but he stated publicly that it was merely a “matter of legal convenience in the style of modern times … there are no sentimental, artistic, or economic reasons.”[211] According to their friends, the divorce was mainly caused by their mutual infidelities.[212] Kahlo and Rivera were granted a divorce in November 1939 but remained friendly; she continued to manage his finances and correspondence.[213]
La Casa Azul, Kahlo’s childhood home and residence from 1939 until her death in 1954
The garden at La Casa Azul
Following her separation from Rivera, Kahlo moved back to La Casa Azul and, determined to earn her own living, began another productive period as an artist, inspired by her experiences abroad.[214] Encouraged by the recognition she was gaining, she moved from using the small and more intimate tin sheets she had used since 1932 to large canvases, as they were easier to exhibit.[215] She also adopted a more sophisticated technique, limited the graphic details, and began to produce more quarter-length portraits, which were easier to sell.[216] She painted several of her most famous pieces during this period, such as The Two Fridas (1939), Self-portrait with Cropped Hair (1940), The Wounded Table (1940), and Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). Three exhibitions featured her works in 1940: the fourth International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City, the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, and Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art in MoMA in New York.[217][218]
On 21 August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Coyoacán, where he had continued to live after leaving La Casa Azul.[219] Kahlo was briefly suspected of being involved, as she knew the murderer, and was arrested and held for two days with her sister Cristina.[220] The following month, Kahlo traveled to San Francisco for medical treatment for back pain and a fungal infection on her hand.[221] Her continuously fragile health had increasingly declined since her divorce and was exacerbated by her heavy consumption of alcohol.[222]
Rivera was also in San Francisco after he fled Mexico City following Trotsky’s murder and accepted a commission.[223] Although Kahlo had a relationship with art dealer Heinz Berggruen during her visit to San Francisco,[224] she and Rivera reconciled.[225] They remarried in a simple civil ceremony on 8 December 1940.[226] Kahlo and Rivera returned to Mexico soon after their wedding. The union was less turbulent than before for its first five years.[227] Both were more independent,[228] and while La Casa Azul was their primary residence, Rivera retained the San Ángel house for use as his studio and second apartment.[229] Both continued having extramarital affairs.[228]
Despite the medical treatment she had received in San Francisco, Kahlo’s health problems continued throughout the 1940s. Due to her spinal problems, she wore twenty-eight separate supportive corsets, varying from steel and leather to plaster, between 1940 and 1954.[230] She experienced pain in her legs, the infection on her hand had become chronic, and she was also treated for syphilis.[231] The death of her father in April 1941 plunged her into a depression.[227] Her ill health made her increasingly confined to La Casa Azul, which became the center of her world. She enjoyed taking care of the house and its garden, and was kept company by friends, servants, and various pets, including spider monkeys, Xoloitzcuintlis, and parrots.[232]Kahlo (centre), Nayantara Sahgal and Rita Dar at Casa Azul in 1947
While Kahlo was gaining recognition in her home country, her health continued to decline. By the mid-1940s, her back had worsened to the point that she could no longer sit or stand continuously.[233] In June 1945, she traveled to New York for an operation which fused a bone graft and a steel support to her spine to straighten it.[234] The difficult operation was a failure.[66] According to Herrera, Kahlo also sabotaged her recovery by not resting as required and by once physically re-opening her wounds in a fit of anger.[66] Her paintings from this period, such as Broken Column (1944), Without Hope (1945), Tree of Hope, Stand Fast (1946), and The Wounded Deer (1946), reflect her declining health.[66]
Kahlo’s wheelchair and adjustable easel in La Casa Azul, with one of her still lifes from her final years
In 1950, Kahlo spent most of the year in Hospital ABC in Mexico City, where she underwent a new bone graft surgery on her spine.[235] It caused a difficult infection and necessitated several follow-up surgeries.[67] After being discharged, she was mostly confined to La Casa Azul, using a wheelchair and crutches to be ambulatory.[67] During these final years of her life, Kahlo dedicated her time to political causes to the extent that her health allowed. She had rejoined the Mexican Communist Party in 1948[69] and campaigned for peace, for example, by collecting signatures for the Stockholm Appeal.[236]
Kahlo’s right leg was amputated at the knee due to gangrene in August 1953.[76] She became severely depressed and anxious, and her dependency on painkillers escalated.[76] When Rivera began yet another affair, she attempted suicide by overdose.[76] She wrote in her diary in February 1954 that “they have given me centuries of torture and at moments I almost lost my reason. I keep on wanting to kill myself. Diego is what keeps me from it, through my vain idea that he would miss me. … But never in my life have I suffered more. I will wait a while…”[237]Kahlo’s death mask on her bed in La Casa Azul
In her last days, Kahlo was mostly bedridden with bronchopneumonia, though she made a public appearance on 2 July 1954, participating with Rivera in a demonstration against the CIA invasion of Guatemala.[238] She seemed to anticipate her death, as she spoke about it to visitors and drew skeletons and angels in her diary.[239] The last drawing was a black angel, which biographer Hayden Herrera interprets as the Angel of Death.[239] It was accompanied by the last words she wrote, “I joyfully await the exit – and I hope never to return – Frida” (“Espero Alegre la Salida – y Espero no Volver jamás”).[239]
The demonstration worsened her illness, and on the night of 12 July 1954, Kahlo had a high fever and was in extreme pain.[239] At approximately 6 a.m. on 13 July 1954, her nurse found her dead in her bed.[240] Kahlo was 47 years old. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, although no autopsy was performed.[239] Herrera has argued that Kahlo, in fact, committed suicide.[80][239] The nurse, who counted Kahlo’s painkillers to monitor her drug use, stated that Kahlo had taken an overdose the night she died. She had been prescribed a maximum dose of seven pills but had taken eleven.[241] She had also given Rivera a wedding anniversary present that evening, over a month in advance.[241]
On the evening of 13 July, Kahlo’s body was taken to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where it lay in a state under a Communist flag.[242] The following day, it was carried to the Panteón Civil de Dolores, where friends and family attended an informal funeral ceremony. Hundreds of admirers stood outside.[242] In accordance with her wishes, Kahlo was cremated.[242] Rivera, who stated that her death was “the most tragic day of my life”, died three years later, in 1957.[242] Kahlo’s ashes are displayed in a pre-Columbian urn at La Casa Azul, which opened as a museum in 1958.[242]
“The twenty-first-century Frida is both a star –a commercial property complete with fan clubs and merchandising – and an embodiment of the hopes and aspirations of a near-religious group of followers. This wild, hybrid Frida, a mixture of tragic bohemian, Virgin of Guadalupe, revolutionary heroine and Salma Hayek, has taken such great hold on the public imagination that it tends to obscure the historically retrievable Kahlo.”[243]
—Art historian Oriana Baddeley on Kahlo
The Tate Modern considers Kahlo “one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century”,[244] while according to art historian Elizabeth Bakewell, she is “one of Mexico’s most important twentieth-century figures”.[245] Kahlo’s reputation as an artist developed late in her life and grew even further posthumously, as during her lifetime she was primarily known as the wife of Diego Rivera and as an eccentric personality among the international cultural elite.[246] She gradually gained more recognition in the late 1970s when feminist scholars began to question the exclusion of female and non-Western artists from the art historical canon and the Chicano Movement lifted her as one of their icons.[247][248] The first two books about Kahlo were published in Mexico by Teresa del Conde and Raquel Tibol in 1976 and 1977, respectively,[249] and in 1977, The Tree of Hope Stands Firm (1944) became the first Kahlo painting to be sold in an auction, netting $19,000 at Sotheby’s.[250] These milestones were followed by the first two retrospectives staged on Kahlo’s oeuvre in 1978, one at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and another at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.[249]
Two events were instrumental in raising interest in her life and art for the general public outside Mexico. The first was a joint retrospective of her paintings and Tina Modotti’s photographs at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, which was curated and organized by Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey.[251] It opened in May 1982, and later traveled to Sweden, Germany, the United States, and Mexico.[252] The second was the publication of art historian Hayden Herrera’s international bestseller Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo in 1983.[253][254]
By 1984, Kahlo’s reputation as an artist had grown to such extent that Mexico declared her works national cultural heritage, prohibiting their export from the country.[250][255] As a result, her paintings seldom appear in international auctions and comprehensive retrospectives are rare.[255] Regardless, her paintings have still broken records for Latin American art in the 1990s and 2000s. In 1990, she became the first Latin American artist to break the one-million-dollar threshold when Diego and I was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $1,430,000.[250] In 2006, Roots (1943) reached US$5.6 million,[256] and in 2016, Two Lovers in a Forest (1939) sold for $8 million.[257]
Kahlo has attracted popular interest to the extent that the term “Fridamania” has been coined to describe the phenomenon.[258] She is considered “one of the most instantly recognizable artists”,[252] whose face has been “used with the same regularity, and often with a shared symbolism, as images of Che Guevara or Bob Marley“.[259] Her life and art have inspired a variety of merchandise, and her distinctive look has been appropriated by the fashion world.[258][260][261] A Hollywood biopic, Julie Taymor‘s Frida, was released in 2002.[262] Based on Herrera’s biography and starring Salma Hayek (who co-produced the film) as Kahlo, it grossed US$56 million worldwide and earned six Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Makeup and Best Original Score.[263] The 2017 Disney–Pixar animation Coco also features Kahlo in a supporting role, voiced by Natalia Cordova-Buckley.[264]Effigy of Kahlo for Day of the Dead at the Museo Frida Kahlo
Kahlo’s popular appeal is seen to stem first and foremost from a fascination with her life story, especially its painful and tragic aspects. She has become an icon for several minority groups and political movements, such as feminists, the LGBTQ community, and Chicanos. Oriana Baddeley has written that Kahlo has become a signifier of non-conformity and “the archetype of a cultural minority,” who is regarded simultaneously as “a victim, crippled and abused” and as “a survivor who fights back.”[265] Edward Sullivan stated that Kahlo is hailed as a hero by so many because she is “someone to validate their own struggle to find their own voice and their own public personalities”.[266] According to John Berger, Kahlo’s popularity is partly due to the fact that “the sharing of pain is one of the essential preconditions for a refinding of dignity and hope” in twenty-first century society.[267]Kirk Varnedoe, the former chief curator of MoMA, has stated that Kahlo’s posthumous success is linked to the way in which “she clicks with today’s sensibilities – her psycho-obsessive concern with herself, her creation of a personal alternative world carries a voltage. Her constant remaking of her identity, her construction of a theater of the self are exactly what preoccupy such contemporary artists as Cindy Sherman or Kiki Smith and, on a more popular level, Madonna… She fits well with the odd, androgynous hormonal chemistry of our particular epoch.”[145]
Kahlo’s posthumous popularity and the commercialization of her image have drawn criticism from many scholars and cultural commenters, who think that, not only have many facets of her life been mythologized, but the dramatic aspects of her biography have also overshadowed her art, producing a simplistic reading of her works in which they are reduced to literal descriptions of events in her life.[268] According to journalist Stephanie Mencimer, Kahlo “has been embraced as a poster child for every possible politically correct cause” and
like a game of telephone, the more Kahlo’s story has been told, the more it has been distorted, omitting uncomfortable details that show her to be a far more complex and flawed figure than the movies and cookbooks suggest. This elevation of the artist over the art diminishes the public understanding of Kahlo’s place in history and overshadows the deeper and more disturbing truths in her work. Even more troubling, though, is that by airbrushing her biography, Kahlo’s promoters have set her up for the inevitable fall so typical of women artists, that time when the contrarians will band together and take sport in shooting down her inflated image, and with it, her art.”[261]
Baddeley has compared the interest in Kahlo’s life to the interest in the troubled life of Vincent van Gogh but has also stated that a crucial difference between the two is that most people associate Van Gogh with his paintings, whereas Kahlo is usually signified by an image of herself – an intriguing commentary on the way male and female artists are regarded.[269] Similarly, Peter Wollen has compared Kahlo’s cult-like following to that of Sylvia Plath, whose “unusually complex and contradictory art” has been overshadowed by simplified focus on her life.[270]
La Casa Azul, which has been open to the public since 1958 as a museum dedicated to Frida Kahlo.
Kahlo’s legacy has been commemorated in several ways. La Casa Azul, her home in Coyoacán, was opened as a museum in 1958, and has become one of the most popular museums in Mexico City, with approximately 25,000 visitors monthly.[271] The city dedicated a park, Parque Frida Kahlo, to her in Coyoacán in 1985.[272] The park features a bronze statue of Kahlo.[272] In the United States, she became the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a U.S. postage stamp in 2001,[273] and was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago that celebrates LGBT history and people, in 2012.[274]
Kahlo received several commemorations on the centenary of her birth in 2007, and some on the centenary of the birthyear she attested to, 2010. These included the Bank of Mexico releasing a new MXN$ 500-peso note, featuring Kahlo’s painting titled Love’s Embrace of the Universe, Earth, (Mexico), I, Diego, and Mr. Xólotl (1949) on the reverse of the note and Diego Rivera on the front.[275] The largest retrospective of her works at Mexico City’s Palacio des Bellas Artes broke its previous attendance record.[276]
In addition to other tributes, Kahlo’s life and art have inspired artists in various fields. In 1984, Paul Leduc released a biopic titled Frida, naturaleza viva, starring Ofelia Medina as Kahlo. She is the protagonist of three fictional novels, Barbara Mujica’s Frida (2001),[277]Slavenka Drakulic‘s Frida’s Bed (2008), and Barbara Kingsolver‘s The Lacuna (2009).[278] In 1994, American jazz flautist and composer James Newton released an album titled Suite for Frida Kahlo.[279] In 2017, author Monica Brown and illustrator John Parra published a children’s book on Kahlo, Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos, which focuses primarily on the animals and pets in Kahlo’s life and art.[280]
In 2018, San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to rename Phelan Avenue to Frida Kahlo Way. Frida Kahlo Way is the home of City College of San Francisco and Archbishop Riordan High School.[292]
8 February – 12 May 2019 – Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving at the Brooklyn Museum. This was the largest U.S. exhibition in a decade devoted solely to the painter and the only U.S. show to feature her Tehuana clothing, hand-painted corsets and other never-before-seen items that had been locked away after the artist’s death and rediscovered in 2004.
16 June – 18 November 2018 – Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.[293] The basis for the later Brooklyn Museum exhibit.
3 February – 30 April 2016 – Frida Kahlo: Paintings and Graphic Art From Mexican Collections at the Faberge Museum, St. Petersburg. Russia’s first retrospective of Kahlo’s work.
1–15 November 1938 – Frida’s first solo exhibit and New York debut at the Museum of Modern Art. Georgia O’Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi, and other prominent American artists attended the opening; approximately half of the paintings were so
William Kentridge
William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1955. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1973–76), Johannesburg Art Foundation (1976–78), and studied mime and theater at L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, Paris (1981–82). Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal experience to public subjects that are most often framed in narrowly defined terms.
Using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he transmutes sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories. In a now-signature technique, Kentridge photographs his charcoal drawings and paper collages over time, recording scenes as they evolve. Working without a script or storyboard, he plots out each animated film, preserving every addition and erasure. Aware of myriad ways in which we construct the world by looking, Kentridge uses stereoscopic viewers and creates optical illusions with anamorphic projection, to extend his drawings-in-time into three dimensions.
Kentridge has had major exhibitions at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2008); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, (2007); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2004); among others. He has also participated in Prospect.1 New Orleans (2008); the Sydney Biennale (1996, 2008); and Documenta (1997, 2002). His opera and theater works, often produced in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, have appeared at Brooklyn Academy of Music (2007); Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa (1992, 1996, 1998); and Festival d’Avignon, France (1995, 1996).
His production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose, premiered in 2010 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in conjunction with a retrospective organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. William Kentridge lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner […]
The Beatles were “inspired by the musique concrète of German composer and early electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen…” as SCOTT THILL has asserted. Francis Schaeffer noted that ideas of “Non-resolution” and “Fragmentation” came down German and French streams with the influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets and then the influence of Debussy and later Schoenberg’s non-resolution which is in total contrast […]
_______ On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto ____________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
I listened to this question and answer session at Harvard in 1992 on cassette tapes and was captivated with Ravi Zacharias. His responses were so much better than Kath’s responses to Tony in AFTER LIFE.
After Life 2 Trailer
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On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
Adrian Rogers (September 12, 1931 – November 15, 2005)
Charles Darwin Autobiography
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Francis Schaeffer “The Age of NONREASON”
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Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE
Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 27, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 40th day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I want to share with you the testimony of Josh McDowell. I commend his book “Evidence that Demands the Verdict.” This Book was very influential to me when I was a teenager looking for evidence that dealt with the historical events discussed in the Bible. In fact, I went to about 100 rooms at the University I graduated from every morning for two weeks and wrote announcements on the chalkboards telling of Josh’s impending talks coming to our campus.
Some people do not interpret the Book of ECCLESIASTES the way I do but I think it is obvious that the words UNDER THE SUN are key and Solomon used this 29 times in this short book.
AFTER LIFE starts in episode 1 and we learn that Matt’s sister Lisa died of cancer six months earlier and he has taken it upon himself to try and drag his brother-in-law Tony Johnson out of Tony’s nihilism and help him to see that there is a reason to live. Some people may wonder where Matt should start.
As you know I am writing you a series of letters on Solomon’s efforts to find a meaning and purpose to life. Solomon tried to find a meaning and purpose to life UNDER THE SUN in the Book of Ecclesiastes in all of the 6 “L” words and looked into learning(1:16-18),laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).
I don’t know if Matt took time to read Ecclesiastes but he did look in the same areas. He first suggests that Tony throw himself into his work, and Tony blows off that suggestion. Next Matt sets him up on a blind date and that turns out to not work at all. Matt next turns to inviting Tony to a comedy club and the comedian tells a joke about suicide and Tony ruins the whole evening for everybody.
In season two Matt invites Tony to a meditation class which includes some philosophy that he knows appeals to Tony and he tells Tony he may learn something. Unfortunately Tony has a horrible time. Finally Matt invites Tony to the pub for a drink and to visit some women with the goal of “banging some beaver” and that is a disaster too.
In the Book of Ecclesiastes basically Solomon looked into the same 5 areas of learning(1:16-18),laughter, ladies,and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). The area Solomon would add is luxuries which is really just a byproduct of a person’s labor usually. Now you can see why Solomon and Tony are really on the same pursuit.
Ecclesiastes is about the meaningless of LIFE UNDER THE SUN.
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.”
This fall I’ve decided to depart from my usual approach in the pulpit—which is expositional—to bring a series of topical messages on how Christians are to relate to the popular culture. How can we be in the world, but not of the world, as the Bible commands? And this morning, I’d like to talk about the philosophical underpinnings of our age. Our text is from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 1:
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of Vanities, all is vanity.” What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labor; man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. That which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”
This rather dismal passage was written by a man who had turned away from God, and, as a result, had lost all sense of meaning and purpose in life. He had lost the philosophical and theological underpinnings of life, and now nothing made sense to him. Everything was empty. He saw generations born and he saw them die. He was the repetitious cycles of nature. And he no longer understood what life was all about. He found himself empty, and in his emptiness were the silent screams of despair.
One of the big stories in the news this week has been the revelations being published about Princess Diana by her former butler. The London newspaper, the Telegraph, said this week in a column: “The sheer emptiness of Princess Diana’s life also rings achingly true. When Burrell sees her for the last time, it is on a trip to the Kensington Waterstone’s (book store) to pick up half a dozen books on spirituality, psychology and healing to pass the long hours on her mini-break with Dodi Fayed.” Princess Diana was arguably the most famous woman in the world, admired by people in every nation. But at the end of her life she was sending out for books on spirituality, psychology, and healing to try to make sense of what life is all about.
Recently I read something that a popular writer named Kathe Koja said. She claimed that the inner despair and emptiness of the human heart is at the core of every novel she has ever written. She spoke of “a black hole” (that) is at the heart of every novel… the emptiness we each carry close to our hearts, the emptiness of being alive in a world that doesn’t care. And the way we fill that Freudian hole, well, that’s the novel.”
When asked about that statement in an interview recently, she said, “Everyone is cored by that existential void, the deep hole in the heart that cries for radiance; our entire consumer culture is predicated on the belief that, if you stuff enough things down that hole, you can finally satisfy it into silence. That has never been the case. Nor does creativity, sex, art, or even love fill that hole.”
Several years ago while traveling in Brazil, I saw graffiti scrawled across a building, written in Portuguese. I asked my guide what it said, and these were the words: “We are beautiful drunkards, comets wandering alone, looking at the stars, waiting for a future that doesn’t come.”
It reminds me of the words of the philosopher Bertrand Russellwho wrote in his autobiography, “What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and the emptiness; sometimes a voice answers out of the darkness. But it is the voice of one drowning; and in a moment the silence returns.”
Well, here in Ecclesiastes, the writer, Solomon, has turned away from God and is searching in other places for answers for the meaning of life. But he was disappointed and disillusioned at every point. In chapter 1, he tries education, but he finds that it’s a chasing after the wind. In chapter 2, he tries pleasure but that also proves meaningless. He turns to alcohol, then to materialism, building a palatial home for himself. He institutes great public works, achieving fame and renown. But nothing filled his heart, because he had rejected the God of the Bible.
The French physicist Blaise Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator made known through Jesus Christ.”
I don’t think anyone illustrates this better than the German philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. He was born in Saxony, in Germany in 1844. His father and his grandfather were both German Lutheran ministers. His father suffered a mental collapse and died when Nietzsche was young, about five years old. As a result, he was raised by a house full of “holy” women, as they have been called by biographers: his mother and grandmother, two aunts, and a younger sister.
At age 13, Nietzsche was sent off to boarding school, and by the age of 18, he was doubting his faith. At 19, he went to the University of Bonn to study theology and to prepare himself, despite his doubts, to follow in his father’s footsteps into the Lutheran ministry. While at Bonn, he joined a fraternity and began drinking with his fellows. It was also about that time that Nietzsche visited a brothel in Germany, in Cologne, and became infected with syphilis.
During those days, too, Nietzsche was tremendously influenced by the philosophy of pessimism articulated by Arthur Schopenhauer. When he enrolled in Leipzig University, Nietzsche was physically frail and sick, mentally alert and brilliant, and philosophically moving further and further from Christianity.
During these years, he also became acquainted with the composer Richard Wagner, who was one of the most twisted ego-maniacs who has ever lived. Nietzsche was drawn into his world. And at age 24, Friedrich Nietzsche was invited to teach at the University of Basel in Switzerland, not all that far from Wagner’s home on the shores of Lake Lucerne. There he began taking long walks during which he formulated his philosophy. He articulated his “Will to Power,” and his philosophy about a coming “superman,” and especially his thoughts about the death of God. Perhaps his most famous parable along those lines is called The Madman.
Nietzsche said that a madman appeared in the marketplace one morning, holding a lighted lantern in the bright daylight. He startled everyone by crying, “I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!” The people made fun of him. They said, “Do you think God got lost? Do you think he’s hiding?” But the madman jumped into the middle of the people, his eyes wild with alarm. He said, “Where is God? I’ll tell you where he is. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. We have cut ourselves off from God as though we had unchained the earth from the sun, and we are wobbling out of control, plunging backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. We’re becoming cold and dark and empty. Don’t you feel it?”
And then Nietzsche asked a profound question: How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? Nietzsche was saying that in removing God from our civilization, our life, and our philosophy, we were removing our source of comfort. We were stripping ourselves of hope and peace. We were crossing what another philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, would later call the line of despair.
Nietzsche understood that when you abandon Christianity, you lose all basis for moral absolutes. You lose all basis for eternal life. You lose all basis for inner peace. But he thought that after an initial time of chaos and despair, his God-is-dead philosophy would pave the way for a great superman to come and take charge of the human race, someone who could lead humanity to its zenith.
What happened to Nietzsche? The insanity he predicted for the world eventually came upon himself. His health deteriorated so much that he had to resign from teaching, and he wandered here and there through southern Europe, seeking emotional and physical healing. He was unknown and unread at that time, a virtual homeless philosopher, wandering around, writing brilliant philosophy, living a sick and sad life.
In January 1889, while walking down a street in Turin, Italy, he collapsed and flung his arms around the neck of a horse that had just been whipped by its driver. Nietzsche was helped to his room, and rapidly went insane. No one knows for certain the reason. Most biographers attribute it to his syphilis. But perhaps it was nudged on by a philosophy that rejected God and Christianity, and which, of followed to its logical conclusions, led to absolute and utter despair.
Most historians say that Nietzsche’s philosophy not only contributed to his personal insanity; it contributed to the insanity of the Nazi Holocaust; and the superman he predicted for the world was personified in the person of one of his greatest disciples—Adolf Hitler.
Ravi Zacharias in his book Can Man Live Without God? wrote, “There is nothing in history to match the dire ends to which humanity can be led by following a political and social philosophy that consciously and absolutely excludes God.”
He adds, “I, for one, see Nietzsche’s life and death as a blueprint for where we are headed inexorably as a nation.”
William Lane Craig, a brilliant Christian philosopher and apologist, put it this way: “Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself.”
The reason is because only Christianity provides a comprehensive explanation for the reality of death and a satisfying answer for the problem of death; and only Christianity has authenticated its message about death by providing a leader who actually rose from the tomb. The world has never found another answer to death; and therefore death is the death of philosophy. All non-Christian belief systems crash and burn when they come to the subject of death.
I’ve never read a better summation of this than Craig’s. He states with terrible eloquence the logical implications of rejecting Christianity. He wrote:
I realize I am going to die, and forever cease to exist. My life is just a momentary transition out of oblivion into oblivion. And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space — a universe in ruins. The entire universe marches irreversibly toward its grave. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. The universe is plunging toward inevitable extinction — death is written throughout its structure. There is no escape. There is no hope.
Look at it from another perspective: Scientists say that the universe originated in an explosion called the “Big Bang” about 15 billion years ago. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred. Suppose the universe had never existed. What ultimate difference would it make? The universe is doomed to die anyway. In the end it makes no difference whether the universe ever existed or not. Therefore, it is without ultimate significance.
The same is true for the human race. Mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will eventually cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist. Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs, for their end is all the same. The same blind cosmic process that coughed them up in the first place will eventually swallow them all again.
And the same is true for each individual person. The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good men everywhere to better the lot of the human race — all these come to nothing. In the end they don’t make one bit of difference, not one bit. Each person’s life is therefore without ultimate significance. And because our lives are ultimately meaningless, the activities we fill our lives with are also meaningless. The long hours spent in study at the university, our jobs, our interests, our friendships — all these are, in the final analysis, utterly meaningless. This is the horror of modern man; because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.
Francis Schaeffer
One of the great Christian minds of the 20th century wasFrancis Schaeffer. As a young man he grew up in a liberal church and was heading toward agnosticism or atheism. But then he discovered the Word of God, and as he read the Bible he compared the answers he found there with the questions he was reading in his philosophy books. He became a Christian and years later wrote a book entitled He Is There and He Is Not Silent. In that book, he said:
There is no other sufficient philosophical answer. You can search through university philosophy, underground philosophy, filling station philosophy —it does not matter which—there is no other sufficient philosophical answer to existence. There is only one philosophy, one religion, that fills this need in all the world’s thought, whether the East, the West, the ancient, the modern, the new, the old. Only one fills the philosophical need of existence, of being, and it is the Judaeo-Christian God—not just an abstract concept, but rather that this God is really there. He really exists. It is not that this is the best answer to existence; it is the only answer. That is why we may hold our Christianity with intellectual integrity.
Schaeffer goes on to say that what when you abandon God and Jesus Christ, you cross a frightening and ultimate line of despair. That, he says, is where our post-modern world is now living—below the line of despair. If there is no God, there is nothing but despair. If there is no Christ, we are of all men most miserable. Perhaps that is why there is so much alcoholism in our society today, and such rampant drug dependence. That’s why we flooded by sexual images, and why the entertainment industry is such a global phenomenon. That’s why the movie box-office is such a symbol of our weekends, and why we want 500 channels on our television cable. Modern humanity can live with neither itself nor its despair, so it drowns itself in diversions.
But the diversions don’t provide real, spiritual satisfaction, and that’s why non-Christian world views make it impossible to live both consistently and happily. Bertrand Russell, for example, admitted that life without God is absurd; but he said we have no choice but to put a good face to it. He claimed we must build our lives on the firm foundation of unyielding despair. We must recognize life’s absurdity, and then love one another.
If you really live a life consistent with that philosophy, happiness is impossible. If you live happily, it is because you are inconsistent. The anti-theistic worldview has build-in logical contradictions and existential inadequacies that ultimately make it philosophically unlivable. Without Christ, “a philosophy of meaninglessness is an unavoidable consequence.” The Apostle Paul said that if Christ hasn’t risen from the dead, we are to be pitied, we are of all men most miserable.
“But,” the Apostle Paul continued, “Christ has risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who sleep.” There is a philosophy that satisfies the soul. There is a theology that strengthens the heart. There is a Gospel! There is Good News!
Solomon ended Ecclesiastes by declaring there is an answer to meaninglessness and despair. After searching all the philosophies and speculations and pursuits of mankind, he came to this conclusion: “Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.”
One of the reasons we believe Christianity is true is because, in the final analysis, all other philosophies, if followed to their logical ends, lead to chaos and irrationality. Only Christianity gives meaning to life. Only with theism in general and Christianity in particular can one be both consistent and happy. As the Psalmist said 3000 years ago, “My soul finds rest in God alone” (Psalm 62:1).
Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
He said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).
He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even if he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25).
He said, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19).
If you’ve never had a personal experience with Jesus Christ, why not follow the evidence where it leads—to the foot of Calvary’s Cross. Commit your life to Jesus Christ. Place your faith in his shed blood and glorious resurrection. For these things are written, said John, “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:31).
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JOSH MCDOWELL There is a principle of law that says that a witness may give testimony only about matters for which he or she has had personal experience. “I saw that the light was red” is competent and admissible testimony; “I heard him say the light was red,” with some exceptions, is not. The law favors and values eyewitnesses, people who give their own accounts of what they have actually seen and experienced. Moreover, there is something about the report of a personal experience that is difficult to challenge or deny. One may attempt on cross-examination to prove the witness who saw the red light was color blind or perhaps biased, but a healthy and disinterested witness who says the light was red is a significant obstacle to proving it was green. This principle holds true out of court as well. Personal testimony of personal experience is both compelling and difficult to challenge. If Tom were to tell you that he caught a ten-pound largemouth bass yesterday, you would probably judge the veracity of his story based on what you knew of his reputation for truthfulness. On the other hand, if he said he was walking on water at the time he caught the fish, you might question his sanity. But what if you knew Tom to be a perfectly sane and scrupulously honest person? And what if several other honest and sane people told you they had witnessed the event? This is not unlike the predicament faced by skeptics who hear the accounts of people who have found Jesus. Billions of sane and honest people have reported a truly incredible
story, the story of passing from death to life, of being lost and then found, of being blind and then seeing. There are billions of eyewitnesses to the life-changing power of the gospel. And many were once skeptics themselves. One such former skeptic is Josh McDowell, a man whose personal testimony is both compelling and difficult to challenge. This successful author and international speaker, who is clearly a sane and honest man, reports that a miracle occurred in his life and that he is now a new creature because of Jesus Christ. The good news is that you too can share in this miracle. Having considered the evidence in support of the Christian faith, we invite you now to consider these closing words of our final eyewitness to the life-changing power of Jesus Christ. A SKEPTIC’S QUEST: JOSH MCDOWELL’S TESTIMONY Thomas Aquinas wrote, “There is within every soul a thirst for happiness and meaning.” As a teenager, I exemplified that statement. I wanted to be happy and to find meaning for my life. I wanted the answers to three basic questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? I would estimate that 90 percent of people age forty and younger cannot answer those three questions. But I was thirsty to know what life was about. So as a young student, I started looking for answers. Where I was brought up, everyone seemed to be into religion. I thought maybe I would find my answers in being religious, so I started attending church. I went to church morning, afternoon, and evening. But I felt worse inside church than I did outside. I was brought up on a farm in Michigan, and most farmers are very practical. My dad, who was a farmer, taught me, “If something doesn’t work, chuck it.” So I chucked religion. Then I thought that education might have the answers to my quest for happiness and meaning, so I enrolled in a university. What a disappointment! You can find a lot of things at a university, but enrolling there to find truth and meaning in life is virtually a lost cause. I was by far the most unpopular student among the faculty of the first university I attended. I used to buttonhole professors in their offices, seeking the answers to my questions. When they saw me coming, they would turn out the lights, pull down the shades, and lock the door so they wouldn’t have to talk to me. I soon realized that the university didn’t have the answers I was seeking. Faculty members and my fellow students had just as many problems, frustrations, and unanswered questions about life as I did. A few years ago I saw a student walking around campus with a sign on his back: “Don’t follow me. I’m lost.” That is how everyone in the university seemed to me. Education was not the answer. Prestige must be the way to go, I decided. It just seemed right to find a noble cause, give yourself to it, and become well known. The people with the most prestige in the university were the student leaders, who also controlled the purse strings. So I ran for various student offices and got elected. It was great to know everyone on campus, make
important decisions, and spend the university’s money doing what I wanted to do. But the thrill soon wore off as with everything else I had tried. Every Monday morning I woke with a headache because of the night before. My attitude was, Here we go again, another five boring days . Happiness for me revolved around my three party nights a week: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then the whole boring cycle started over again. I felt so frustrated, even desperate. My goal was to find my identity and purpose in life, but everything I tried left me empty, without answers. About that time I noticed a small group of people on campus—eight students and two faculty—and there was something different about them. They seemed to know where they were going in life. And they had a quality I deeply admire in people: conviction. But there was something more about this group that caught my attention. Love. These students and professors not only loved each other, they loved and cared for people outside their group. They didn’t just talk about love; they got involved in loving others. It was something totally foreign to me, and I wanted it. So I decided to make friends with this group of people. About two weeks later, I was sitting at a table in the student union talking with some members of this group. Soon the conversation turned to the topic of God. I was pretty insecure about this subject, so I put on a big front to cover it up. I leaned back in my chair acting like I couldn’t care less. “Christianity, ha!” I blustered. “That’s for the weaklings, not the intellectuals.” Down deep, I really wanted what they had. But with my pride and my position in the university, I didn’t want them to know that I wanted what they had. Then I turned to one of the girls in the group and said, “Tell me, what changed your lives? Why are you so different from the other students and faculty?” She looked me straight in the eye and said two words I never expected to hear in an intelligent discussion on a university campus: “Jesus Christ.” “Jesus Christ?” I snapped. “Don’t give me that kind of garbage. I’m fed up with religion, the Bible, and the church.” She quickly shot back, “I didn’t say ‘religion.’ I said ‘Jesus Christ.’ ” Taken aback by the girl’s courage and conviction, I apologized for my attitude. “But I’m sick and tired of religion and religious people,” I added. “I don’t want anything to do with it.” Then my new friends issued a challenge I couldn’t believe. They challenged me, a pre-law student, to examine intellectually the claim that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. I thought it was a joke. These Christians were so dumb. How could something as flimsy as Christianity stand up to an intellectual examination? So I scoffed at their challenge.
But they didn’t let up. They kept challenging me day after day, and finally they backed me into the corner. I became so irritated at their insistence that I finally accepted their challenge, not to prove anything but to refute them. I decided to write a book that would make an intellectual joke of Christianity. So I left the university and traveled throughout the United States and Europe to seek the evidence that Christianity was a sham. One day I was sitting in a library in London, England, and I sensed a voice within me say, “Josh, you don’t have a leg to stand on.” I immediately suppressed it. But just about every day after that I heard that inner voice. The more I researched, the more I heard that voice. I returned to the United States and to the university, but I couldn’t sleep at night. I would go to bed at ten o’clock and lie awake until four in the morning trying to refute the overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. I began to realize that I was being intellectually dishonest. My mind told me that the claims of Christ were indeed true, but my will was being pulled in another direction. I had placed so much emphasis on finding the truth, but I wasn’t willing to follow it once I saw it. I had sensed Christ’s personal challenge to me in Revelation 3:20 : “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” But becoming a Christian seemed so ego shattering to me. I couldn’t think of a faster way to ruin my good times. I knew I had to resolve this inner conflict because it was driving me crazy. I had always considered myself an open-minded person, so I decided to put Christ’s claims to the supreme test. One night at home in Union City, Michigan, at the end of my second year at the university, I became a Christian. Someone may say, “How do you know you became a Christian?” I was there! I got alone with a Christian friend, and I prayed four things that established my relationship with God. First, I said, “Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for me.” I realized that if I were the only person on earth, Christ would have still died for me. You may think the irrefutable intellectual evidence brought me to Christ, but the evidence was only God’s way of getting his foot in the door of my life. What brought me to Christ was the realization that he loved me enough to die for me. Second, I said, “I confess that I am a sinner.” No one had to tell me that. I knew there were things in my life that were incompatible with a holy, just, righteous God. The Bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” ( 1 John 1:9 ). So I said, “Lord, forgive me.” Third, I said, “Right now, in the best way I know how, I open the door of my life and I place my trust in you as Savior and Lord. Take over the control of my life. Change me from the inside out. Make me the type of person you created me to be.” The last thing I prayed was, “Thank you for coming into my life.”
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE
Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 26, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 39th day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I wanted to pass along some evidence that indicates the Bible is historically accurate.
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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 and Tony both are guilty of following their own fleshly desires and it has led them to deadends in their lives. However, without God in the picture how can human behavior be altered without spiritual help?
In the 2nd episode of the second season of AFTER LIFE Tony tells Anne about his meltdown at the Zen Meditation workout which he went to as a favor to Matt but it turned out badly. Anne responds by telling this story:
Anne: Do you know the fable of the frog and the scorpion?
Tony: No.
Anne: Well this scorpion wants to get across the River so he asks the frog to give him a lift on the frog’s back and the frog declines because he said the scorpion would sting me. The scorpion says why would I do that because we both would drown. So the frog said that is true so okay. Then halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog and the frog says that we both are going to die. Why did you sting me? The scorpion says because I am a scorpion.
Tony: Yes I guess I can’t change my nature.
Anne: No you are the frog.
Tony: Oh really. Why?
Anne: You knew you wouldn’t enjoy that meditation thing but you went anyway to please someone else. Then you got angry and you even feel bad about that.You are the frog, sensitive and caring.
Notice that Anne is basically telling Tony not to go out on a limb and try to help someone if you think it will aggravate you. This comes back to what I have said in previous posts about atheists tackling tough issues that require spiritual answers. It reminds me of the shrink who tells Matt to just “Stop felling bad.” Spiritual conversions in the case of Christianity has had major impacts on the world. There are millions of powerful Christian conversions that have impacted the world. __What if Jesus Had Never Been Bornby D. James Kennedy This book documents the positive impact Jesus Christ and the Christian Church has made on the world in nearly every conceivable area – morality, health, sex, hospitals, art, music, charity, economics, government, science, education and the founding of America.
— I remember the day in the early 1970’s when my father got home from hearing that John “The Bull” Bramlett had come to Christ and his life had radically changed. My father had several classes with him in college and he was shocked at how mean he was. However, when Christ got a hold of he changed dramatically. His life was put into a film.
Ricky here is letter I wrote to your good friend Richard Dawkins that discusses this more in depth.
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Richard Dawkins c/o Richard Dawkins Foundation,
Dear Mr. Dawkins,
I know that you are good friends with Daniel Dennett and I have noticed how many times he quotes you in his books. He was kind enough to send me a very thoughtful response on January 12, 2017, and it just so happens that I am in the middle of reading his book DARWIN’S DANGEROUS IDEA. Of course, I have read several of your books such as The God Delusion, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, and Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.
I also recently enjoyed watching both you and Dr. Dennett on Jonathan Miller’s BBC program Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief. Francis Schaeffer used to quote Jonathan Miller back in the 1960’s during his teachings at L ‘Abri.
I once was the guest of the week on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the eight records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was ‘Mache dich mein Herze rein’ from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed?
But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I have no reason to doubt that Raphael and Michelangelo were Christians – it was pretty much the only option in their time – but the fact is almost incidental. Its enormous wealth had made the Church the dominant patron of the arts. If history had worked out differently, and Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn’t he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven’s Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart’s opera The Expanding Universe.
I thought of that quote from you today when I was in church. Our teaching pastor Mark Henry of FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock, Arkansas, pointed out that the Holy Spirit has empowered many Christians over the centuries to empty their hearts of their own worldly desires and to serve God through their actions.
2 RESPONSES TO YOUR ASSERTION THAT AN EARLIER ACCEPTANCE OF EVOLUTION WOULD HAVE ENRICHED MUSIC AND THE ARTS.
First, we have the testimony of Charles Darwin himself concerning this.
Second, we have the actual result of what Christianity’s impact on the world was.
I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did…
Charles Darwin photograph by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1881
This curious and lamentable loss of the higher æsthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
Francis Schaeffer commented:
This is the old man Darwin writing at the end of his life. What he is saying here is the further he has gone on with his studies the more he has seen himself reduced to a machine as far as aesthetic things are concerned. I think this is crucial because as we go through this we find that his struggles and my sincere conviction is that he never came to the logical conclusion of his own position, but he nevertheless in the death of the higher qualities as he calls them, art, music, poetry, and so on, what he had happen to him was his own theory was producing this in his own self just as his theories a hundred years later have produced this in our culture. I don’t think you can hold the evolutionary position as he held it without becoming a machine. What has happened to Darwin personally is merely a forerunner to what occurred to the whole culture as it has fallen in this world of pure material, pure chance and later determinism. Here he is in a situation where his mannishness has suffered in the midst of his own position.
Let’s take a closer look at the music by Bach that you call your favorite.
From Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live? (p. 92):
Richard Dawkins & Daniel Dennett vs. Francis Collins & Benjamin Carson – Evolution Debate
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Bach
Francis Schaeffer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) was certainly the zenith of the composers coming out of the Reformation. His music was a direct result of the Reformation culture and the biblical Christianity of the time, which was so much a part of Bach himself. There would have been no Bach had there been no Luther. Bach wrote on his score initials representing such phrases as: “With the help of Jesus” – “To God alone be the glory” – “In the name of Jesus.” It was appropriate that the last thing Bach the Christian wrote was “Before Thy Throne I Now Appear.” Bach consciously related both the form and the words of his music to biblical truth. Out of the biblical context came a rich combination of music and words and a diversity of unity. This rested on the fact that the Bible gives unity to the universal and the particulars, and therefore the particulars have meaning. Expressed musically, there can be endless variety and diversity without chaos. There is variety yet resolution.
And this is why I love Bach.
IF JESUS WAS IN FACT A REAL MAN AND THE HOLY SPIRIT DID UPON HIS DISCIPLES THEN YOU WOULD EXPECT THE WORLD TO BE CHANGED.
D. James Kennedy
___What if Jesus Had Never Been Bornby D. James Kennedy This book documents the positive impact Jesus Christ and the Christian Church has made on the world in nearly every conceivable area – morality, health, sex, hospitals, art, music, charity, economics, government, science, education and the founding of America. Some critics believe that all these advances would have happened sooner or later, but there is little evidence to support this other then hopeful conjecture. Despite excesses by self proclaimed Christians over the ages, the problems have not been due to Jesus’ teachings, rather the failure to follow those teachings. Even with imperfect people, Christianity has had a much more positive impact on the world than any other religion. This book is desperately needed to counter the constant attacks on the Christian faith.We need to understand that the changes made by Christianity did not happen overnight. Many people – most couldn’t read or write – became Christian without examining or having the ability to examine current belief systems. At a time when books were only available to a select group of people – and then in limited number, it took decades for changes in morality to take hold of society as a whole. It certainly is true that Christianity has had shortcomings. However, the sins of the Church were no worse then the pagan world. Christianity at its worst was far better then Paganism at its best. Whereas the pagan world could never advance morally, the shortcomings of the Christian church were an aberration that were corrected by itself over time. Excerpts from the book: “Jesus Christ, the greatest man who ever lived, has changed virtually every aspect of human life – and most people don’t know it.” “Despite its humble origins, the Church has made more changes on earth for the good than any other movement or force in history. To get an overview of some of the positive contributions Christianity has made through the centuries, here are a fewhighlights:• Hospitals, which essentially began during the Middle Ages.• Universities, which also began during the Middle Ages. In addition, most of the world’s greatest universities were started by Christians for Christian purposes.• Literacy and education for the masses.• Capitalism and free-enterprise.• Representative government, particularly as it has been seen in the American experiment.• The separation of political powers.• Civil liberties.• The abolition of slavery, both in antiquity and in more modern times.• Modem science.• The discovery of the New World by Columbus.• The elevation of women.• Benevolence and charity; the good Samaritan ethic.• Higher standards of justice.• The elevation of the common man.• The condemnation of adultery, homosexuality, and other sexual perversions. This has helped to preserve the human race, and it has spared many from heartache.• High regard for human life.• The civilizing of many barbarian and primitive cultures.• The codifying and setting to writing of many of the world’s languages.• Greater development of art and music. The inspiration for the greatest works of art.• The countless changed lives transformed from liabilities into assets to society because of the gospel. • The eternal salvation of countless souls! The last one mentioned, the salvation of souls, is the primary goal of the spread of Christianity. All the other benefits listed are basically just by-products of what Christianity has often brought when applied to daily living. When Jesus Christ took upon Himself the form of man, He imbued mankind with a dignity and inherent value that had never been dreamed of before. Whatever Jesus touched or whatever He did transformed that aspect of human life. Many people will read about the innumerable small incidents in the life of Christ while never dreaming that those casually mentioned “little” things were to transform the history of humankind. Christ’s influence on the world is immeasurable. The purpose of this book is to glimpse what we can measure, to see those numerous areas of life where Christ’s influence can be concretely traced. Not all have been happy about Jesus Christ’s coming into the world. Friederich Nietzsche, the nineteenth-century atheist philosopher who coined the phrase “God is dead,” likened Christianity to poison that has infected the whole world. Nietzsche said that history is the battle between Rome (the pagans) and Israel (the Jews and the Christians); and he be-moaned the fact that Israel (through Christianity) was winning and that the cross “has by now triumphed over all other, nobler virtues.” In his book,The Antichrist, Nietzsche wrote: I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruption; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Nietzsche held up as heroes a “herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters.” According to Nietzsche, and later Hitler, by whom or what were these Teutonic warriors corrupted? Answer: Christianity. “This splendid ruling stock was corrupted, first by the Catholic laudation of feminine virtues, secondly by the Puritan and plebeian ideals of the Reformation, and thirdly by intermarriage with inferior stock.” Had Jesus never come, wailed Nietzsche, we would never have had the corruption of “slave morals” into the human race. Many of the ideas of Nietzsche were put into practice by his philosophical disciple, Hitler, and about 16 million died as a result. In Mein Kampf, Hitler blamed the Church for perpetuating the ideas and laws of the Jews. Hitler wanted to completely uproot Christianity once he had finished uprooting the Jews. In a private conversation “shortly after the National Socialists’ rise to power,” recorded by Herman Rauschning, Hitler said: Historically speaking, the Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect…. After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically… . I shall know the moment when to confront, for the sake of the German people and the world, their Asiatic slave morals with our picture of the free man, the godlike man…. It is not merely a question of Christianity and Judaism. We are fighting against the most ancient curse that humanity has brought upon itself. We are fighting against the perversion of our soundest instincts. Ah, the God of the deserts, that crazed, stupid, vengeful Asiatic despot with his powers to make laws! … That poison with which both Jews and Christians have spoiled and soiled the free, wonderful instincts of man and lowered them to the level of doglike fright. Both Nietzsche and Hitler wished that Christ had never been born. Others share this sentiment. For example, Charles Lam Markmann, who wrote a favorable book on the history of the ACLU, entitled The Noblest Cry, said: “If the otherwise admirably civilized pagans of Greece and their Roman successors had had the wit to laugh Judaism into desuetude, the world would have been spared the 2000-year sickness of Christendom.”… the point of this book is to say to Nietzsche, Freud, Hitler, Robert Ingersoll, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Madalyn Murray O’Hare, Phil Donahue, the ACLU, and other leading anti-Christians of the past and present, that the overwhelming impact of Christ’s life on Planet Earth has been positive, not negative. What these people refuse to acknowledge is that civil liberties have been bequeathed by Christianity and not by atheism or humanism. Prior to the coming of Christ, human life on this planet was exceedingly cheap. Life was expendable prior to Christianity’s influence. Even today, in parts of the world where the gospel of Christ or Christianity has not penetrated, life is exceedingly cheap. But Jesus Christ … gave mankind a new perspective on the value of human life. Furthermore, Christianity bridged the gap between the Jews – who first received the divine revelation that man was made in God’s image – and the pagans, who attributed little value to human life. Meanwhile, as we in the post-Christian West abandon our Judeo-Christian heritage, life is becoming cheap once again. Children:In the ancient world, child sacrifice was a common phenomenon. Only about half of the children born lived beyond the age of eight, in part because of widespread infanticide, with famine and illness also being factors. Infanticide was not only legal, it was applauded…it was commonly held in Rome that killing one’s own children could be an act of beauty. But then Jesus came. Since that time, Christians have cherished life as sacred, even the life of the unborn. In ancient Rome, Christians saved many of these babies and brought them up in the faith. Abortion disappeared in the early church. Infanticide and abandonment disappeared. Foundling homes, orphanages, and nursery homes were started to house the children. These new practices, based on this higher view of life, helped to create a foundation in western civilization for an ethic of human life that persists to this day – although it is currently under severe attack. And it all goes back to Jesus Christ. If He had never been born, we would never have seen this change in the value of human life. Women:Prior to Christian influence, a woman’s life was also very cheap. In ancient cultures, the wife was the property of her husband. Prior to the Christian influences in India, widows were voluntarily or involuntarily burned on the husbands funeral pyres – a grisly practice known as suttee. Furthermore, infanticide – particularly for girls – was common in India, prior to the great missionary William Carey. These centuries-old practices, suttee and infanticide, were finally stopped only in the early nineteenth century… In other areas of the globe where the gospel of Christ has not penetrated, the value of woman’s lives is cheap. How ironic that feminists today do not give any credit to Christ or Christianity. Slavery:Half of the population of the Roman Empire was slaves. Three fourths of the population of Athens was slaves. The life of a slave could be taken at the whim of the master. Over the centuries, Christianity abolished slavery, first in the ancient world and then later in the nineteenth century, largely through the efforts of the strong evangelical William Wilberforce. It didn’t happen over night, and certainly there have been dedicated Christians who were slaveowners. Nonetheless, the end of slavery, which has plagued mankind for thousands of years, has come primarily through the efforts of Christians. “Once the gospel did spread, the seeds were sown for the eventual dissolution of slavery. Thus by reforming the heart, Christianity, in time, reformed the social order! “Robert E. Lee, who freed the slaves he had inherited by marriage, once wrote that the War between the States was needless bloodshed in terms of ending slavery, for he believed the evil institution would have eventually withered away because of Christianity.” Compassion and Mercy:The world before Christianity was like the Russian tundra – quite cold and inhospitable. One scholar, Dr. Martineau, exhaustively searched through historical documents and concluded that antiquity has left no trace of any organized charitable effort. Disinterested benevolence was unknown. When Christ and the Bible became known, charity and benevolence flourished. While poverty has always been a part of life on earth, the Church of Jesus Christ has done more – and often still does more – than any other institution in history to alleviate poverty. Furthermore, it has set the pattern for relief that is copied worldwide. All charity points back to Jesus Christ, whether people recognize it or not. Capitalism:“If Jesus had never been born, it is unlikely that capitalism and the free enterprise system – which has brought unparalleled prosperity to billions of people – would ever have developed. In this chapter, I will trace the links between the Christian faith and the prosperity enjoyed in the West, particularly in the United States.” Science:“Hasn’t religion always been the enemy of science? No! Furthermore, many scholars agree that the scientific revolution that gained great momentum in the seventeenth century was birthed for the most part by Reformed Christianity.” Here is a list of some of the outstanding bible-believing scientists who founded the following branches of science:Antiseptic surgery, Joseph ListerBacteriology, Louis PasteurCalculus, Isaac NewtonCelestial Mechanics, Johannes keplerChemistry, Robert BoyleComparative Anatomy, Georges CuvierComputer Science, Charles BabbageDimensional Analysis, Lord RayleighDynamics, Isaac NewtonElectronics, John flemingElectrodynamics, James MaxwellElectromagnetics, Michael FaradayEnergetics, Lord kelvinEntomology of Living Insects, Henri FabreFluid Mechanics, George StokesGas Dynamics, Robert BoyleGenetics, Gregor mendelGynecology, James SimpsonHydrostatics, Blaise PascalNatural History, John Ray.When Christian Morals are removed from society:
Isaac Newton
Louis Pasteur below
Michael Faraday
Henri Fabre
Blaise Pascal
“During one of the darkest periods of World War II, after the collapse of France and before American involvement, Churchill wrote that the question in the minds of friends and foes was: ‘Will Britain surrender too?’ At that time he made a speech that contained this sentence: ‘I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization’ The great statesman recognized the link between Christianity and civility, in contrast with new-paganism and tyranny. Providentially, Christian civilization won. But where it has lost, all manner of terrors have been unleashed.” “No century has been like ours in terms of man killing his fellow man. About 130 million . . . died because of atheistic ideology” – Hitler, Stalin and Mao of China. When a person denies the existence of God, you only have the material world. You’ve killed the spiritual world. “The frightening thing about a humanist and atheistic state is that there is nothing beyond man to which one can make an appeal. The founders of this country said that men have been created equal and have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. We have an appeal beyond man, beyond the State, to God Himself, whereas in the humanist state there is nothing but man. The humanist state inevitably leads to tyranny and despotism. As Dostoevsky said, ‘If God is dead, then all things are permissible.’” “With atheism there are no objective moral standards. This is not to say that all atheists are immoral people. In reality, there are many nice people who are atheists, but their niceness isborrowed capital from Christianity; it is not because of their atheism, but despite it.” If the atheist had been raised in an atheistic society, they would be very different people, while the Christian would be the same. The Christian who is unloving, is unloving despite of his professed Christianity, not because of it. Historian Will Durant, who is a humanist, said in the February 1977 issue of the Humanist Magazine: There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion. Boston College professor William Kilpatrick has written a book on the subject of morality in public schools. In Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong (1992) he writes: “Youngsters are forced to question values and virtues they’ve never acquired in the first place or upon which they have only a tenuous hold.” “When you devalue God, you devalue human life. How could Hitler ruthlessly exterminate six million Jews and millions of other? How could the Communists kill and torture over a hundred million people? How could they do that to other human beings?” “The answer you give to the question ‘What is a human being?’ will determine precisely what you can do to one.” “. . .when the restraining influence of Christianity is removed from a country or culture, unmitigated disaster will naturally follow.” “One of our Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes said: ‘I see no reason for attributing to man a significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a grain of sand.’” “And yet we sometimes hear the statement that ‘more people have been killed in the name of Christ than in any other name.’” This is simply a lie. Where do we go from here?Is secularism inevitable? From Harvard University to the YMCA, so many of the institutions we discussed in this book were started by Christians for Christian purposes, often at great sacrifice and expense; and then eventually they drifted away from their original [intent]. Is this trend unavoidable? “Religion begat prosperity, but the daughter hath consumed the mother.” Cotton Mather made this observation toward the end of the seventeenth century after the Christianity of the Pilgrims and Puritans had begun to wane. They had only been in the New World for three or four generations, and they were already beginning to allow the prosperity they enjoyed to crowd out the cause of that prosperity; Christianity. “Many of the good things we enjoy today grew out of the religion of Jesus Christ, but He is often denied the credit” The proof of this denial is in nearly every history book in public schools in America. Source:1. http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/farewell/sd106-21.pdf
Is the Bible the Word of God?God and the Bible go together and you can not separate the two. God through men wrote the Bible. The Bible was written over a period of 1500 years in 3 different languages and by 40 different authors in about 20 different countries. The only way that the Bible could make sense and have one central theme is if it was written by God. The individual authors did have some input as far as style and rhythm goes, but they did not write the Bible. Look at this way. If there are two books written on a subject such as psychology there is vast differences in opinion. Now consider the wonder of the Bible and also the facts that support that not only did the people of the Bible exist but the prophecy that was made about Christ as far a 500 to 600 years before He was born came true to the last detail then you have to believe that the rest of the Bible is true and must be from God. The most important belief that you need to have is that Jesus died for your sins and that if you believe in Him then you can be saved. I hope this helps you and if you have any further questions then please ask.
Our English word for Bible comes from a Greek word “biblia,” the plural of “biblion,” meaning book, writing, or scroll. Therefore the word, Bible, means books. It is a collection of 66 books of various sizes, making one book.
The Bible is different from any other book because it is God’s Holy Book, written by holy men of God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1: 19-21).
The first five books are said to have been written by Moses, who lived about 3,500 years ago. Parts of those books record history from about 2,500 years before Moses, such as the creation, history from Adam, the first man to Noah at the time of the great flood, histories of 9 or 10 generations to Abraham, and then from Abraham to Moses, a period of 500 to 600 years.
The last part of the New Testament was written about 1900 years ago, within the first century after Christ.
Therefore, the Bible was written over a period of about 1,600 years, by about 40 different writers. It was written in a number of different countries, like, Israel, Babylon (now Iraq), Persia (now Iran), Italy, and Greece.
The writers were of many different occupations: shepherd, military leader, king priest, farmer, tax collector, fishermen, tent maker, physician, prophets and apostles.
Can you imagine what a miracle of God it was for that many people, in that many countries, from that many occupations, over that long period of time, writing a book without previous planning or without being able to consult with each other, that is not contradictory, that is scientifically accurate before many of those facts of science were known. Only God could be the real author behind the writers.
The Bible contains history, law, poetry, prophecy, prayers, praises, wisdom, important instructions for success and living. IT IS GOD’S MESSAGE TO MANKIND.
It is divided into two parts — the Old Testament contains 39 books and was written before the birth of Jesus Christ. The New Testament contains 27 books and was written after the birth of Christ.
If you asked each state in the union to send a rock of the type found in their state, there would be different shapes and sizes and for it to look like a beautiful monument it would have to have designer.
What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word?Adrian Rogers
I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God.
First, I believe the Bible is the Word of God because of its scientific accuracy. The Truth of the Word of God tells us that God “hangeth the earth upon nothing” (Job 26:7). How did Job know that the earth hung in space before the age of modern astronomy and space travel? The Holy Spirit told him. The scientists of Isaiah’s day didn’t know the topography of the earth, but Isaiah said, “It is [God] that sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The word for “circle” here means a globe or sphere. How did Isaiah know that God say upon the circle of the earth? By divine inspiration.
Secondly, the Bible is affirmed through historical accuracy. Do you remember the story about the handwriting on the wall that is found in the fifth chapter of Daniel? Belshazzar hosted a feast with a thousand of his lords and ladies. Suddenly, a gruesome hand appeared out of nowhere and began to write on a wall. The king was disturbed and asked for someone to interpret the writing. Daniel was found and gave the interpretation. After the interpretation, “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Daniel 5:29). Basing their opinion on Babylonian records, the historians claim this never happened. According to the records, the last king of Babylon was not Belshazzar, but a man named Nabonidas. And so, they said, the Bible is in error. There wasn’t a record of a king named Belshazzar. Well, the spades of archeologists continued to do their work. In 1853, an inscription was found on a cornerstone of a temple built by Nabonidas, to the god Ur, which read: “May I, Nabonidas, king of Babylon, not sin against thee. And may reverence for thee dwell in the heart of Belshazzar, my first-born favorite son.” From other inscriptions, it was learned that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents. Nabonidas traveled while Belshazzar stayed home to run the kingdom. Now that we know that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents, it makes sense that Belshazzar would say that Daniel would be the third ruler. What a marvelous nugget of truth tucked away in the Word of God!
Third, from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible reads as one book. And there is incredible unity to the Bible. The Bible is one book, and yet it is made up of 66 books, was written by at least 40 different authors over a period of about 1600 years, in 13 different countries and on three different continents. It was written in at least three different languages by people in all professions. The Bible forms one beautiful temple of truth that does not contradict itself theologically, morally, ethically, doctrinally, scientifically, historically, or in any other way.
Fourth, did you know the Bible is the only book in the world that has accurate prophecy? When you read the prophecies of the Bible, you simply have to stand back in awe. There are over 300 precise prophecies that deal with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the New Testament. To say that these are fulfilled by chance is an astronomical impossibility.
Finally, the Bible is not a book of the month, but the Book of the ages.First Peter 1:25 says: “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the Word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” No book has ever had as much opposition as the Bible. Men have laughed at it, scorned it, burned it, ridiculed it, and made laws against it. But the Word of God has survived. And it is applicable today as much as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow.
It’s so majestically deep that scholars could swim and never touch the bottom. Yet so wonderfully shallow that a little child could come and get a drink of water without fear of drowning. That is God’s precious, holy Word. The Word of God. Know it. Believe it. It is True.
Authentic And DependableThe Bible is the best selling book of all time by a very wide margin with approximately 6 Billion copies in print. What is it that brings people to depend on this book? If the Bible is merely a book of helpful moral guidance and philosophy written by humans, then we can pick and choose what we want to believe. If it is actually God’s word to us, then we should let it transform our lives. The evidence is overwhelming that the Bible is totally authentic in what it claims to be–the actual Word of God.
One Unified BookThe Bible is an incredibly unified piece of literature. It was written over a 1,500 year time period by over 40 different authors from various backgrounds and cultures, in 13 different countries, in 3 different languages, and in many different literary styles. Despite all of that, it contains one consistent theme from cover to cover, which is God’s plan for the salvation of mankind.
Inspired By GodIt is appropriate to call the Bible the Word of God because that is what the Bible itself claims. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right.” (2 Timothy 3:16) The Bible was physically written by men by the inspiration of God (Hebrews 1:1). In other words, God used men to write exactly what He wanted to say. The writers are clearly claiming to be speaking from God as hundreds of times they use expressions like “says the Lord”, “declares the Lord”, “God said”, and “The word of the Lord came to me”. The ways in which God spoke to the writers included dreams (Genesis 37:1-11), visions (Daniel 7), audible voice (1 Samuel 3), inner voice (Hosea 1), and through angels (Genesis 19:1-29).
Writers Were EyewitnessesMost of the writers in the Old Testament and all of the writers in the New Testament were eyewitnesses to the events written about and their written accounts have been supported by hundreds of archeological finds. The writers were compelled to write only what came from God– “Do not add to His words, or He will rebuke you and prove you a liar.” (Proverbs 30:6). In fact, most of the writers felt so strongly that what they were writing about was from God that they died for what they believed.
Historical Events ConfirmedThe Bible is also historically accurate. The events that took place, the places that are involved, and the people who are written about are confirmed by the majority of historians from thousands of years ago until today. Skeptics even agree that the New Testament is an outstanding account of history. The reason being is that the eyewitnesses were careful to record all the details accurately. For example, in Luke 1:1-3, it is noted that they “carefully investigated everything”.
Importantly, the writers of the New Testament affirmed the unique history presented In the Old Testament. For example, Jesus confirms historical events such as the creation of man and women (Matthew 19:4), Jonah being swallowed by a giant fish (Matthew 12:40), and the flood in Noah’s day (Matthew 24:37-39).
Archaeology Supports ClaimsArchaeology consistently supports even the smallest details to confirm the reliability of the Bible. Trained archeologists have previously set out to try and prove biblical facts to be wrong only to uncover more proof that supports the Bible’s claims. Through many hundreds of years of discoveries, evidence consistently supports the authenticity of the Bible.
Scientific Facts AccurateThe Bible is completely accurate in all scientific facts. The amazing part is that all these facts were written many hundred years before human discovery. Only an all-knowing God could inspire these things to be written. Here are some examples:
The first verse of the Bible — “In the beginning,” (Genesis 1:1) — Is a claim that the universe had a beginning, and that there was a time before which the universe didn’t exist. Today, the vast majority of scientists also believe that the available evidence points to a universe that had a beginning
In Job 26:7, the Bible says that “God stretches the northern sky over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing.” Today we know from indirect evidence and direct observation from space that the earth is indeed “suspended” in space “by nothing”
“The stars cannot be counted” (Jeremiah 33:22) — written before scientists proved this fact after the telescope was invented
“Earth is a circle” (Isaiah 40:22) — It was widely accepted that the Earth was flat rather the round until Magellan sailed around the world in the early 1,500’s
“Blood sustains life” (Leviticus 17:14) — written before man realized this fact in the 1800’s
Thousands Of Accurate Predictions Without ErrorAnother thing that separates the Bible from any other book is the fulfilled prophecies (predictions) of future events. It contains over 2000 prophecies (300 about Jesus) that have come true without even one error. It is virtually statistically impossible that the Bible’s specific, detailed predictions could have happened by chance. It has been historically proven that the predictions were documented long before these events occurred. For example, the book of Daniel contains many specific prophecies that have been fulfilled in history, including:
The fall of Babylon to the Persian Empire
The fall of the Persian Empire to the Greek Empire
Details of the political intrigue and wars that plagued the Greek empire as it crumbled
The fall of the Greek Empire to the Roman Empire
The date when the Messiah would arrive in Jerusalem and be put to death
Predictions About Jesus Have Come TrueMicah predicted that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Daniel predicted when the Jesus would appear and be put to death (Daniel 9:24-26). Isaiah predicted over 500 years before Jesus was born that the Messiah would be virgin born (Isaiah 7:14) and He would be crucified with criminals (Isaiah 53:12). Some other prophecies include: The exact words Jesus spoke on the cross were predicted (Psalm 22:1), the piercing of His hands and feet on the cross (Psalm 22:16), and the soldiers’ gambling for His clothes. (Psalm 22:18) These things were predicted about 400 years before crucifixion was even invented. Jesus even predicted His own death and resurrection (John 2:19-22). These are not general predictions, but incredibly specific. For any of them to come true would be almost impossible, never mind all of them. The Bible says “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).
Contains Transforming PowerMost critics of the Bible are people who haven’t taken the time to read it or study it. In fact, many critics who tried to disprove the Bible are now some if it’s biggest supporters. If this book is truly the Word of God and we read it with an open mind, then we will experience the life changing power it promises. “For the Word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are.” (Hebrews 4:12) This same book has the power to help people who are suffering, save people from their sin, give us direction in life, and satisfy our intellect. The Word of God has healed marriages, rescued people from addictions, given people reason to live, mended hearts and changed countless of other seemingly hopeless situations. See for yourself some examples of radicallychanged lives.
Worth Believing Due To Overwhelming EvidenceUpon close examination, it is clear that the Bible claims and proves to be the Word of God. Every scientific, historical, and prophetic word written reveals the accuracy and uniqueness of the Bible. That is reason enough to believe and follow God’s Word at all times and with all of our heart. Jesus said “People need more than bread for their life; they must feed on every word of God.” (Matthew 4:4)
Your Eternal DestinyIf you agree that the Bible is reliable and true, please know what it says about your eternal destiny. The Bible says that your sin has separated you from God (Isaiah 59:2) and that you will die in your sins (John 8:21) and be sent to Hell (Luke 5:12) unless you repent (turn from your sins) (Luke 13:3) and place your trust in Jesus (John 1:12) as the One who died on the cross to pay for your sins (1 Peter 2:24) and allow you to enter Heaven when you die. Life is short and you never know how many days you have left to live. Please consider receiving the greatest gift you can ever hope for in Jesus Christ.
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
Taxpayer-funded broadcast station PBS is airing a documentary this Labor Day weekend highlighting the lives of the last four remaining late-term abortion doctors in America.
PBS describes the film, “After Tiller,” as a “deeply humanizing and probing portrait” of late-term abortionists who remain “absolutely dedicated to their work” in the wake of the 2009 assassination of Dr. George Tiller.
Tiller was the nation’s pre-eminent abortion practitioner. He was known for his willingness to perform late-term abortions, doing so hundreds of times each year. At 67 years old, he was shot in the head in Wichita, Kans., by abortion opponent Scott Roeder, who was eventually convicted of first-degree murder.
“After Tiller” focuses on the “intense protest” from pro-life supporters that the four remaining doctors who abort babies after the 24-month mark face.
The film’s producers, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, openly admit the feature documentary is focused on the doctors’ experience, stating in a press release, “We decided to represent the anti-abortion movement as it is experienced by the doctors themselves.”
They added:
“It is a given, of course, that mainstream news coverage related to abortion must allot equal time to both sides of the issue, but as independent filmmakers, we chose to limit the scope of our film primarily to the point-of-view of the doctors because it allowed us to tell much deeper and more intimate stories.”
“After Tiller” will have its national broadcast premiere on Monday, Sept. 1 at 10p.m on PBS’s “Point of View” series. POV is television’s longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films and is funded by PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In 2013, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting received $445 million in federal appropriations, with PBS receiving about $300 million of that.
Sarah Torre, a policy analyst in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, is concerned about themes inside the PBS-endorsed documentary.
“Large majorities of Americans generally oppose abortions in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy — and for good reason,” she said. “Gruesome late-term abortions endanger the health and safety of women and brutally take the lives of children capable of feeling pain.”
Torre also addressed another one of the filmmakers’ goals: Helping audiences to understand the “desperate” situation that leads to women choosing a late-term abortion. Torre refuted the notion that they’re left with no other choice, stating:
Women facing difficult situations should be given compassionate care and empowered with life-affirming options — the kind they can find at thousands of pregnancy centers across the nation. We should protect the lives and health of women. And we should not deny the most fundamental human right to life to the most vulnerable children in our society merely because they are small, dependent, disabled or simply inconvenient.
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
In the second video below in the 67th clip in this series are Richard Dawkins’ words that Harry Kroto wanted me to see. Since then I have read several of Richard Dawkins books and have attempted to respond to the contents of these books directly to Richard Dawkins by mail. In fact, I have been writing Richard Dawkins letters since May 15, 1994 which was the 10th anniversary of the passing of one of my heroes, Francis Schaeffer. Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time responding to many of Richard Dawkins’ heroes such as Carl Sagan, Jacques Monod, H.J. Blackham, Isaac Newton, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Planck, Johann Sebastian Bach, Francis Bacon, Samuel Beckett, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, Gerald Horton, Edmund Leach, Louis Pasteur, George Wald, Jacob Bronowski, Steven Weinberg, Charles Darwin, Paul Kurtz, Peter Singer, Jonathan Miller, William B. Provine, Woody Allen, Noam Chomsky, James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Michael Polanyi, The Huxley family, Antony Flew, and Edward O. Wilson (Dawkins has since revised his opinion of Flew and Wilson, but he earlier regarded them very highly).
Francis Schaeffer 1911-1984
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Both Francis Schaeffer and Richard Dawkins have talked extensively about the life of Charles Darwin.
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Sir Harry Kroto with his high school friend Sir Ian McKellan at the FSU National High Field Magnetic Lab on Tuesday, October 27, 2009.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
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Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
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Edit Post ‹ The Daily Hatch — WordPress
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
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Richard Dawkins Photos Photos – Professor Stephen Hawking Unveils Medal For Science Communication – Zimbio
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner […]
The Beatles were “inspired by the musique concrète of German composer and early electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen…” as SCOTT THILL has asserted. Francis Schaeffer noted that ideas of “Non-resolution” and “Fragmentation” came down German and French streams with the influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets and then the influence of Debussy and later Schoenberg’s non-resolution which is in total contrast […]
_______ On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto _________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize […]
On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said: …Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975 and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them. Harry Kroto ____________________ Below you have picture of 1996 Chemistry Nobel Prize Winner Dr. […]
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 25, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 38th day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I wanted to pass along some evidence that indicates the Bible is historically accurate.
In episode 2 of season 2 we learn that Lenny is a ladies man:
Sandy: You seem happy having a family. Lenny: Yeah with one woman.
Sandy: Were you a bit of a ladies man?
Lenny: Big time. Oh yeah. I was a late starter so I had a lot of catching up to do. I didn’t really start playing the field till my twenties.
Sandy: Oh, Okay. Lenny: I was quite shy in my teens. Wasn’t always this cool I guess.
Sandy: No?
Lenny: I used to be sort of odd looking. Tony: [Shoot] me!
Lenny: I don’t know but I remember the ugly duckling being quite inspirational. Tony: That is the one who is a weird little duckling and all the other ducks are taking a piss out of it and when it grows up it is not a duck at all, but a big 200 lb human slug that works in a local free newspaper?
Lenny: Yeah that is the one. Tony: Play the field $&@$ hell!
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.”
HERE BELOW IS SOLOMON’S SEARCH IN THE AREA OF THE 6 “L” WORDS. He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). TODAY WE WANT TO LOOK AT SOLOMON’S SEARCH INTO THE WORD “LADIES.”
Ecclesiastes 2:8-10The Message (MSG)
I piled up silver and gold, loot from kings and kingdoms. I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song, and—most exquisite of all pleasures— voluptuous maidens for my bed.
9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!
1 Kings 11:1-3 English Standard Version (ESV)
11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. 3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.
King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:11 sums up his search for meaning in the area of the Sexual Revolution with these words, “…behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman but knowing 1000 women.”
How about America’s most well known playboy the late Hugh Hefner? Schaeffer said that Hefner’s goal with the “playboy mentality is just to smash the puritanical ethnic.” About 30 years ago my pastor, Adrian Rogers of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee noticed an article where Hugh Hefner said he would be willing to trade all of his riches for the experience of just falling in love with one girl of his dreams and getting married. Rogers went on to say that the playboy lifestyle was bankrupt of lasting satisfaction and that God’s plan of marriage was best. In fact, the Book of Ecclesiastes shows that Solomon came to the conclusion that nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20). You can only find a lasting meaning to your life by looking above the sun and bring God back into the picture. 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.
Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #94)
So the story goes on. We have stopped at only a few incidents in the sweep back to the year 1000 B.C. What we hope has emerged from this is a sense of the historical reliability of the Bible’s text. When the Bible refers to historical incidents, it is speaking about the same sort of “history” that historians examine elsewhere in other cultures and periods. This borne out by the fact that some of the incidents, some of the individuals, and some of the places have been confirmed by archaeological discoveries in the past hundred years has swept away the possibility of a naive skepticism about the Bible’s history. And what is particularly striking is that the tide has built up concerning the time before the year 1000 B.C. Our knowledge about the years 2500 B.C. to 1000 B.C. has vastly increased through discoveries sometimes of whole libraries and even of hitherto unknown people and languages.
There was a time, for example, when the Hittite people, referred to in the early parts of the Bible, were treated as fictitious by critical scholars. Then came the discoveries after 1906 at Boghaz Koi (Boghaz-koy) which not only gave us the certainty of their existence but stacks of details from their own archives!
Christianity is a historical faith based on actual events recorded in the Bible. Archaeology has therefore played a key role in biblical studies and Christian apologetics in several ways.
First, archaeology has confirmed the historical accuracy of the Bible. It has verified many ancient sites, civilizations, and biblical characters whose existence was questioned by the academic world and often dismissed as myths. Biblical archaeology has silenced many critics as new discoveries supported the facts of the Bible.
Second, archaeology helps us improve our understanding of the Bible. Although we do not have the original writings of the authors, thousands of ancient manuscripts affirm that we have an accurate transmission of the original texts.1 Archaeology can also help us to understand more accurately the nuances and uses of biblical words as they were used in their day.
Third, archaeology helps illustrate and explain Bible passages. The events of the Bible occurred at a certain time, in a particular culture, influenced by a particular social and political structure. Archaeology gives us insights into these areas. Archaeology also helps to supplement topics not covered in the Bible. Much of what we know of the pagan religions and the intertestamental period comes from archaeological research.
As we approach this study we must keep in mind the limits of archaeology. First, it does not prove the divine inspiration of the Bible. It can only confirm the accuracy of the events. Second, unlike other fields of science, archaeology cannot re-create the process under study. Archaeologists must study and interpret the evidence left behind. All conclusions must allow for revision and reinterpretation based on new discoveries. Third, how archaeological evidence is understood depends on the interpreter’s presuppositions and worldview. It is important to understand that many researchers are skeptics of the Bible and hostile to its world view.
Fourth, thousands of archives have been discovered, but an enormous amount of material has been lost. For example, the library in Alexandria held over one million volumes, but all were lost in a seventh century fire.
Fifth, only a fraction of available archaeological sites have been surveyed, and only a fraction of surveyed sites have been excavated. In fact, it is estimated that less than two percent of surveyed sites have been worked on. Once work begins, only a fraction of an excavation site is actually examined, and only a small part of what is examined is published. For example, the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls were withheld from the public for forty years after they were uncovered.
It is important to understand that the Scriptures remain the primary source of authority. We must not elevate archaeology to the point that it becomes the judge for the validity of Scripture. Randall Price states, “There are indeed instances where the information needed to resolve a historical or chronological question is lacking from both archaeology and the Bible, but it is unwarranted to assume the material evidence taken from the more limited content of archaeological excavations can be used to dispute the literary evidence from the more complete content of the canonical scriptures.”2 The Bible has proven to be an accurate and trustworthy source of history.
Noted archaeologist Nelson Glueck writes, “As a matter of fact, however, it may be clearly stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a single biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.”3
The Discovery of the Hittites
The Hittites played a prominent role in Old Testament history. They interacted with biblical figures as early as Abraham and as late as Solomon. They are mentioned in Genesis 15:20 as people who inhabited the land of Canaan. 1 Kings 10:29 records that they purchased chariots and horses from King Solomon. The most prominent Hittite is Uriah the husband of Bathsheba. The Hittites were a powerful force in the Middle East from 1750 B.C. until 1200 B.C. Prior to the late 19th century, nothing was known of the Hittites outside the Bible, and many critics alleged that they were an invention of the biblical authors.
In 1876 a dramatic discovery changed this perception. A British scholar named A. H. Sayce found inscriptions carved on rocks in Turkey. He suspected that they might be evidence of the Hittite nation. Ten years later, more clay tablets were found in Turkey at a place called Boghaz-koy. German cuneiform expert Hugo Winckler investigated the tablets and began his own expedition at the site in 1906.
Winckler’s excavations uncovered five temples, a fortified citadel and several massive sculptures. In one storeroom he found over ten thousand clay tablets. One of the documents proved to be a record of a treaty between Ramesses II and the Hittite king. Other tablets showed that Boghaz-koy was the capital of the Hittite kingdom. Its original name was Hattusha and the city covered an area of 300 acres. The Hittite nation had been discovered!
Less than a decade after Winckler’s find, Czech scholar Bedrich Hronzny proved the Hittite language is an early relative of the Indo-European languages of Greek, Latin, French, German, and English. The Hittite language now has a central place in the study of the history of the Indo-European languages.
The discovery also confirmed other biblical facts. Five temples were found containing many tablets with details of the rites and ceremonies that priests performed. These ceremonies described rites for purification from sin and purification of a new temple. The instructions proved to be very elaborate and lengthy. Critics once criticized the laws and instructions found in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy as too complicated for the time it was written (1400 B.C.). The Boghaz-koy texts along with others from Egyptian sites and a site along the Euphrates called Emar have proven that the ceremonies described in the Jewish Pentateuch are consistent with the ceremonies of the cultures of this time period.
The Hittite Empire made treaties with civilizations they conquered. Two dozen of these have been translated and provide a better understanding of treaties in the Old Testament. The discovery of the Hittite Empire at Boghaz-koy has significantly advanced our understanding of the patriarchal period. Dr. Fred Wright summarizes the importance of this find in regard to biblical historicity:
Now the Bible picture of this people fits in perfectly with what we know of the Hittite nation from the monuments. As an empire they never conquered the land of Canaan itself, although the Hittite local tribes did settle there at an early date. Nothing discovered by the excavators has in any way discredited the Biblical account. Scripture accuracy has once more been proved by the archaeologist.4
The discovery of the Hittites has proven to be one of the great archaeological finds of all time. It has helped to confirm the biblical narrative and had a great impact on Middle East archaeological study. Because of it, we have come to a greater understanding of the history of our language, as well as the religious, social, and political practices of the ancient Middle East.
Sodom and Gomorrah
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah has long been viewed as a legend. Critics assume that it was created to communicate moral principles. However, throughout the Bible this story is treated as a historical event. The Old Testament prophets refer to the destruction of Sodom on several occasions (Deut. 29:23, Isa. 13:19, Jer. 49:18), and these cities play a key role in the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles (Matt. 10:15, 2Pet. 2:6 and Jude 1:7). What has archaeology found to establish the existence of these cities?
Archaeologists have searched the Dead Sea region for many years in search of Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 14:3 gives their location as the Valley of Siddim known as the Salt Sea, another name for the Dead Sea. On the east side six wadies, or river valleys, flow into the Dead Sea. Along five of these wadies, ancient cities were discovered. The northern most is named Bab edh-Drha. In 1924, renowned archaeologist Dr. William Albright excavated at this site, searching for Sodom and Gomorrah. He discovered it to be a heavily fortified city. Although he connected this city with one of the biblical “Cities of the Plains,” he could not find conclusive evidence to justify this assumption.
More digging was done in 1965, 1967, and 1973. The archaeologists discovered a 23-inch thick wall around the city, along with numerous houses and a large temple. Outside the city were huge grave sites where thousands of skeletons were unearthed. This revealed that the city had been well populated during the early Bronze Age, about the time Abraham would have lived.
Most intriguing was evidence that a massive fire had destroyed the city. It lay buried under a coating of ash several feet thick. A cemetery one kilometer outside the city contained charred remains of roofs, posts, and bricks turned red from heat.
Dr. Bryant Wood, in describing these charnel houses, stated that a fire began on the roofs of these buildings. Eventually the burning roof collapsed into the interior and spread inside the building. This was the case in every house they excavated. Such a massive fiery destruction would match the biblical account that the city was destroyed by fire that rained down from heaven. Wood states, “The evidence would suggest that this site of Bab edh-Drha is the biblical city of Sodom.”5
Five cities of the plain are mentioned in Genesis 14: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zoar, and Zeboiim. Remnants of these other four cities are also found along the Dead Sea. Following a southward path from Bab edh-Drha there is the city called Numeria. Continuing south is the city called es-Safi. Further south are the ancient cities of Feifa and Khanazir. Studies at these cities revealed that they had been abandoned at the same time about 24502350 B.C. Many archaeologists believe if Bab ed-Drha is Sodom, Numeria is Gomorrah, and es-Safi is Zoar.
What fascinated the archaeologists is that these cities were covered in the same ash as Bab ed-Drha. Numeria, believed to be Gomorrah, had seven feet of ash in some places. In every one of the destroyed cities ash deposits made the soil a spongy charcoal, making it impossible to rebuild. According to the Bible, four of the five cities were destroyed, leaving Lot to flee to Zoar. Zoar was not destroyed by fire, but was abandoned during this period.
Although archaeologists are still disputing these findings, this is one discovery we will be hearing more about in years to come.
The Walls of Jericho
According to the Bible, the conquest of Jericho occurred in approximately 1440 B.C. The miraculous nature of the conquest has caused some scholars to dismiss the story as folklore. Does archaeology support the biblical account? Over the past century four prominent archaeologists have excavated the site: Carl Watzinger from 1907-1909, John Garstang in the 1930’s, Kathleen Kenyon from 1952-1958, and currently Bryant Wood. The result of their work has been remarkable.
First, they discovered that Jericho had an impressive system of fortifications. Surrounding the city was a retaining wall fifteen feet high. At its top was an eight-foot brick wall strengthened from behind by an earthen rampart. Domestic structures were found behind this first wall. Another brick wall enclosed the rest of the city. The domestic structures found between the two walls is consistent with Joshua’s description of Rahab’s quarters (Josh. 2:15). Archeologists also found that in one part of the city, large piles of bricks were found at the base of both the inner and outer walls, indicating a sudden collapse of the fortifications. Scholars feel that an earthquake, which may also explain the damming of the Jordan in the biblical account, caused this collapse. The collapsed bricks formed a ramp by which an invader might easily enter the city (Josh. 6:20).
Of this amazing discovery Garstang states, “As to the main fact, then, there remains no doubt: the walls fell outwards so completely, the attackers would be able to clamber up and over the ruins of the city.”6 This is remarkable because when attacked city walls fall inward, not outward.
A thick layer of soot indicates that the city was destroyed by fire as described in Joshua 6:24. Kenyon describes it this way. “The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire and every room was filled with fallen bricks.”7Archaeologists also discovered large amounts of grain at the site. This is again consistent with the biblical account that the city was captured quickly. If it had fallen as a result of a siege, the grain would have been used up. According to Joshua 6:17, the Israelites were forbidden to plunder the city, but had to destroy it totally.
Although the archaeologists agreed Jericho was violently destroyed, they disagreed on the date of the conquest. Garstang held to the biblical date of 1400 B.C. while Watzinger and Kenyon believed the destruction occurred in 1550 B.C. In other words, if the later date is accurate, Joshua arrived at a previously destroyed Jericho. This earlier date would pose a serious challenge to the historicity of the Old Testament.
Dr. Bryant Wood, who is currently excavating the site, found that Kenyon’s early date was based on faulty assumptions about pottery found at the site. His later date is also based on the discovery of Egyptian amulets in the tombs northwest of Jericho. Inscribed under these amulets were the names of Egyptian Pharaohs dating from 1500-1386 B.C., showing that the cemetery was in use up to the end of the late Bronze Age (1550-1400 B.C.). Finally, a piece of charcoal found in the debris was carbon-14 dated to be 1410 B.C. The evidence leads Wood to this conclusion. “The pottery, stratigraphic considerations, scarab data and a carbon-14 date all point to a destruction of the city around the end of the Late Bronze Age, about 1400 BCE.”8
Thus, current archeological evidence supports the Bible’s account of when and how Jericho fell.
House of David
One of the most beloved characters in the Bible is King David. Scripture says that he was a man after God’s own heart. He is revered as the greatest of all Israelite kings and the messianic covenant is established through his lineage. Despite his key role in Israel’s history, until recently no evidence outside the Bible attested to his existence. For this reason critics questioned the existence of a King David.
In the summer of 1993, an archaeologist made what has been labeled as a phenomenal and stunning discovery. Dr. Avraham Biran and his team were excavating a site labeled Tell Dan, located in northern Galilee at the foot of Mt. Hermon. Evidence indicates that this is the site of the Old Testament land of Dan.
The team had discovered an impressive royal plaza. As they were clearing the debris, they discovered in the ruins the remains of a black basalt stele, or stone slab, containing Aramaic inscriptions. The stele contained thirteen lines of writing but none of the sentences were complete. Some of the lines contained only three letters while the widest contained fourteen. The letters that remained were clearly engraved and easy to read. Two of the lines included the phrases “The King of Israel” and “House of David.”
This is the first reference to King David found outside of the Bible. This discovery has caused many critics to reconsider their view of the historicity of the Davidic kingdom. Pottery found in the vicinity, along with the construction and style of writing, lead Dr. Biran to argue that the stele was erected in the first quarter of the ninth century B.C., about a century after the death of King David.
The translation team discovered that the inscription told of warfare between the Israelites and the Arameans, which the Bible refers to during this period. In this find, a ruler of the Arameans probably Hazael is victorious over Israel and Judah. The stele was erected to celebrate the defeat of the two kings. In 1994 two more pieces were found with inscriptions which refer to Jehoram, the son of Ahab, ruler over Israel, and Ahaziah, who was the ruler over the “House of David” or Judah. These names and facts correspond to the account given in chapters 8 and 9 of 2 Kings. Dr. Hershel Shanks of Biblical Archaeological Reviewstates, “The stele brings to life the biblical text in a very dramatic way. It also gives us more confidence in the historical reality of the biblical text.”9
The find has confirmed a number of facts. First, the use of the term “House of David” implies that there was a Davidic dynasty that ruled Israel. We can conclude, then, that a historic King David existed. Second, the kingdoms of Judah and Israel were prominent political entities as the Bible describes. Critics long viewed the two nations as simply insignificant states.
Dr. Bryant Wood summarizes the importance of this find this way. “In our day, most scholars, archaeologist and biblical scholars would take a very critical view of the historical accuracy of many of the accounts in the Bible. . . . Many scholars have said there never was a David or a Solomon, and now we have a stele that actually mentions David.”10
Although many archeologists remain skeptical of the biblical record, the evidence for the historical accuracy of the Bible continues to build.
Egyptian temple complex of Abu Simbel, Southern Egypt. (Photograph by David S. Boyer, Courtesy – National Geographic). Click for larger photograph.
Ramesses-II goes to war
1301 BC. An Egyptian land army, numbering more than 20,000, (divided in 4 divisions), set out on a campaign, lead by Pharoah Ramesses-II of the XIX Dynasty.
Ramesses-II is known in history for the construction during his reign. Most notably, the Temple Of Abu Simbel, Temple Of Nefertari. How would Abu Simbel read in Sanskrit – ‘abu’ is elephant, ‘simba’ is sinh i.e. lion and ‘bal’ is strength.
Cause of War Of Kadesh
Of the two warring sides, one was the Egyptian Pharoah RamessesII (1279-1212 BCE). With a land army of 20,000, and a naval Egyptian force set sail, in ships, to reach Byblos and squeeze the Hittites in the world’s first pincer movement. Ramesses-II set out to punish a small kingdom. Of Hittites, for trying to lure the Amurrus, Egyptian vassals, to the Hittite side.
Bedouin Slaves Being Beaten – Battle Of Kadesh
A lesser known (to modern history) element, were the Hittites led by Muwutalli-II, who had cobbled an alliance of small kingdoms.
Both these kingdoms were interested in the Syria and Palestine areas through which trade was carried out with India. Syriac and Palestinian lands were controlled by theAmurru – who were Egyptian vassals. The Hittites were a liberalising element in the Middle East /West Asia and possibly the Amurrus had defected to protect their political identity.
The campaign
During the march, leading to the Kadesh battle, the Egyptian army captured two Bedouin “spies”. These “spies”, after being sufficiently beaten, “revealed” to the Pharoah important information – giving confidence to the Pharoah that the Hittites feared the approaching Egyptian army. The truth was the opposite.
The awaiting Hittites ambushed the Egyptian army. These spies, in fact, were Hittites – sent to misinform the Egyptians!! An estimated 2500 Hittite (Ramesses’ estimate) chariots saw action. For two days the battle of Kadesh raged. Fought on the banks of the Orontes River in Syria.
The Egyptian king was saved at the last minute by the appearance of his reserve troops.
The Historic Treaty
After this battle, the Egyptians and the Hittites sat down and wrote their versions of this battle – which makes it rather unique. One of the few times in ancient history, where we get both versions of the battle. Two copies of the treaty were made. One, in Egyptian hieroglyphics and the other, in Hittite-Akaddian, and both survived. Only one difference in both the copies – the Egyptian version (recorded on a silver plaque) states that the Hittite king who wanted peace. In the Hittite copy, it was Ramesses-II who sent emissaries.
Queen Nefertari (Photograph by Kenneth Garrett 1997, NGM, From Treasures of Egypt, 2003.).
The two queens – critical factor
Peace broke when the queens of Hatti and Egypt, Puduhepa and Nefertari, sent one another congratulatory gifts and letters. Over the next 15 years, they arrived at modus vivendi and drafted a peace treaty. Puduhepa continued to be an active diplomat, co-signatory to the treaty of Ulmi-Teshub treaty.
This peace treaty is the first in recorded history. A replica of this peace pact, in cuneiform tablet, found at Hattusas, Boghazkoi, hangs above the Security Council Chamber, United Nations, in New York, – a demonstration to modern nations the power of peace through international treaties. At Boghazkoi otherHiitite treaties have been found.
Another Treaty
The second discovery in the West Asian history, is the Treaty between the Mitannis and Hittites. In 1450 BC, Suppiluliuma I of the Hittites entered into a treaty with the Mitannis. The Mittanis of the Amarna Tablets fame were linked to the significant power in the region – Egypt. As already outlined, the Mittanis were the closely associated with the Egyptian Pharaohs by marriage. And the Mittanis were also Indo-Aryans.
What Is Special About This Treaty
In this treaty, Vedic Gods like Indra, Varuna, The Ashwini twins were invoked to bless and witness the treaty. The Hittites who had become past masters at treaties did not invoke these Gods with any other kingdom – except the Mitannis. Hittites and Mitannis were Indo- Aryan kingdoms – in full presence, with their Vedic Gods and culture.
The Zannanzas Puzzle
The 3rd interesting link between the Mitannis and the Hittites was the Zannanzas affair. After the death of Tutankhamen, (The Boy King) the XVIIIth Dynasty of Egypt was without a ruler. Tutankhamen’s queen,Ankhesenamun, a princess of Mitanni descent, needed a husband to continue the dynasty and protect the throne. She sent some urgent missives to the Hittite King, Suppiluliuma – asking him to send his son, to her as a husband, and become the King Of Egypt. The suspicious Hittite king ignored the missive. A second missive followed – and then a young prince was sent to Thebes (the capital was moved from Amarna back to Thebes).
REPORT THIS AD
The young prince never reached Egypt. He was possibly killed en route. And Tutankhamen’s Queen? Never been heard of since then.
How Do We Know All This
In 1906-07, an Turkish archeologist , Theodore Makridi-Bey, started excavations at Boghazkoi, (now identified as the ancient city of Hattusas) in Cappadocia, 150-200 kms from Ankara, Turkey. The name of the Hittite city, Hattusas, is possibly derived from the Sanskrit word, hutashan, हुताशन meaning ‘”sacred sacrificial fire.”
He was joined by Hugo Winckler, a German archaeologist, specialising in Assyria. They unearthed more than 10,000 clay tablets which proved to be of tremendous interest. A Czech cryptographer, born in Poland, working in Germany,Friedrich (or Bedrich) Hrozny, working in Germany cracked this code over the next 15 years – and that set off a furore amongst archaeologists.
What do the Boghaz koi tablets show
Deciphered cuneiform tablets show Hittite worship of Varuna, Mitra and Indra – Gods worshipped by Indo-Aryans. Rulers and Kings had names likes Shutruk (Shatrughna), Tushrutta meaning “of splendid chariots” (similar to Dashratha; Master of Ten Chariots) Rama-Sin (Assyrian Moon Good was Sin; in Hindi Ramachandra), Warad (Bharat). One of the Hittite allies against Ramesses II was Rimisharrinaa, रामशरण the King of Aleppo. (One of my grand uncles is also named as रामशरण – a common Indian name 4000 years later, 4000 kilometers apart).
These Hittites ruled immediately before and after Hammurabi – the much proclaimed western world’s first law giver. Hammurabi’s legal concepts of vengeful laws and retributive justice are the basis of laws in the 3 ‘desert religions.’
Some archaeologists await the discovery of tombs to establishthe identity of kings. They may never find them. In Vedic cultures, there are no tombs – like the Pyramids, or the Catacombs, or Mausoluems. Vedic Indo Aryans cremate their dead. They do not build memorials or mausoluems.
Religious freedom
The Hittite kingdom came to be known as the “kingdom of thousands of gods.” Like the Mittani, the Hittites too, added the gods of the conquered people to their own list of gods – instead of imposing the Hittite religion on the conquered peoples.
REPORT THIS AD
Why does this sound familiar?
This is significant as the Western concept of slavery was to deprive the captured of their religions (for instance, The Wends and their religion). This is another display of slave reform by Indics 3000 years ago.
Valued 3000 years later
These inscriptions were held sacred by the locals, 3000 years later and William Wright, an European investigator, had difficulty in noting these inscriptions. In 1870 The Hittites were named, by William Wright and Oxford University linguist A. H. Saycebased on Biblical short references, as one of the tribes of Palestine in the first millennium BC. It was a “son of Heth—a Hittite—who sold the Prophet Abraham the land to bury his much-loved wife, Sarah”. Modern view is Hattusas-Hittites (Yazilikaya/Boghazkoi/Carchemish) have nothing to do with the Biblical Hittites.
The Boghazkoi tablets changed modern history. From a completely Greco-Roman (read Euro-centric) history, the pendulum had swung to the other end. Boghazkoi showed Indian presence in the thick of West Asia in the year 2000BC with their culture and technology. This has pushed Indian history back by at least by 2000 years – to 4000 BC.
The Amarna letters and the Boghazkoi tablets have given archaeological proof of the Indo Aryan spread. Earlier, theories were retro-fitted, based on Biblical dates (Max Mueller’s, (specialist in “Compartive Theology”); main aim – “save” Indian pagans; make them see “the light” of Christian belief), colonial propaganda (Max Mueller, though a German, was a British employee) and racism. Hazy systems like philology, linguistics, comparative linguistics were used to define history. Now hard archaeological proof shows something else. Written texts, deciphered and decrpyted give us a new theory.
These discoveries and their implications have been buried under a mound of silence. Although well known in academic circles, these discoveries have not been used to update popular history. In the next (and last instalment of this series) I will trace how DNA testing is the third major tool used to reveal history!
PS – One of the big hits in Japan is the manga comic series “Red River” by Chie Shinohara. The entire series is based on this interaction between the Hittites and The Egyptians. The Red River is a work of fiction – so it cannot be taken as history – but the intrigue, silence, drama obviously inspired the author.
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
After Life 2 Trailer
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On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
The album contained seven tracks from their second UK album The Rolling Stones No. 2, the recent US Top 20 hit “Heart of Stone“, the recent UK No. 1 hit single “Little Red Rooster“, “Surprise, Surprise”, from The Lord’s Taverners Charity Album, “Mona (I Need You Baby)” from The Rolling Stones and “Oh Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin’)” which would appear on the UK edition of the Stones’ next album Out of Our Heads later in 1965. The album contains a different, and shorter, version of “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” than the recording on The Rolling Stones No. 2, although the latter version was accidentally used on the 1986 CD of The Rolling Stones, Now!. The 2002 CD includes the shorter version, as heard on the original LP. Four of the songs on The Rolling Stones, Now! were penned by the songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (who dropped the “s” from his surname until 1978).
For the back cover, London Records simply took the back cover of The Rolling Stones No. 2 and amended the track listing and label information. Where the UK liner cover said “No. 2” after ‘THE ROLLING STONES’ was simply whited out for the American cover. One thing that was overlooked, however, was a mention of Ian Stewart playing organ on “Time Is on My Side,” which made no sense on The Rolling Stones, Now! as the song was not on that album. This credit was deleted from the 1986 and 2002 reissues.
The liner notes on initial pressings contained Andrew Loog Oldham’s advice to the record buying public, which was quickly temporarily removed from some subsequent pressings:
“(This is THE STONES new disc within. Cast deep in your pockets for the loot to buy this disc of groovies and fancy words. If you don’t have the bread, see that blind man knock him on the head, steal his wallet and low and behold you have the loot, if you put in the boot, good, another one sold!)”
The Rolling Stones, Now! is generally considered a very strong album and a highlight of their early American releases. Upon its February issuing, The Rolling Stones, Now! reached No. 5 in the US and became another gold seller for The Rolling Stones. In 2003, the album was ranked number 180 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.[2]
In August 2002 The Rolling Stones, Now! was reissued in a new remastered CD and SACDdigipak by ABKCO Records. This version included stereo mixes of “Heart of Stone”, “What a Shame”, and “Down the Road Apiece”.[3]
__________ __ The Rolling Stones ~ Jumpin’ Jack Flash. (1968) The Dirty Mac Band (John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards & Mitch Mitchell) | FeelNumb.com John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix ____
News/ Katy Perry Sings With Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Concert—Watch Now by Rebecca Macatee Today 5:45 AM PDT The Rolling Stones & Katy Perry – Beast Of Burden – Live – By Request Published on May 12, 2013 The Rolling Stones and special guest Katy Perry perform ‘Beast Of Burden’ at the Las Vegas […]
News/ Katy Perry Sings With Mick Jagger at Rolling Stones Concert—Watch Now by Rebecca Macatee Today 5:45 AM PDT The Rolling Stones & Katy Perry – Beast Of Burden – Live – By Request Published on May 12, 2013 The Rolling Stones and special guest Katy Perry perform ‘Beast Of Burden’ at the Las Vegas […]
Jimi Hendrix & Cream – Sunshine Of Your Love Jimi Hendrix & Eric Clapton Jimi Hendrix & Mick Jagger Jimi Hendrix & Keith Richards Jimi Hendrix & Brian Jones Jimi Hendrix & Janis Joplin Jimi Hendrix with Cream & Pink Floyd Even “Legends” want to meet a “Legend” Jimi Hendrix: ‘You never told me he […]
Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were good friends!! Jimi Hendrix & Cream – Sunshine Of Your Love Uploaded on Feb 5, 2012 Hey Joe JIMI HENDRIX live images in 1969, in London! BBC! dedicated to cream”Sunshine of Your Love”. High quality and superior sound. ¡¡¡¡¡full screen!!!!! Everyone wanted to meet or take a picture with […]
RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Michael Mann, UCLA Anthropologist, “My mother was a very loving, warm person who I remember her getting extremely unhappy when I told her at the age of 13 I was an atheist but she was the core of the family”
The following was emailed to George F. Will on 6-27-16: Scott Ableman / Wikimedia Dear Mr. Will, I really enjoyed your You Tube cllip “George Will Keynotes 2010 Milton Friedman Prize Dinner:” If you google ARKANSAS MILTON FRIEDMAN you will be brought to my website http://www.thedailyhatch.org since I have written so many posts on my economic hero […]
Christian Rock Pioneer Larry Norman’s Songs Part 14 I posted a lot in the past about my favorite Christian musicians such as Keith Green (I enjoyed reading Green’s monthly publications too), and 2nd Chapter of Acts and others. Today I wanted to talk about one of Larry Norman’s songs. David Rogers introduced me to Larry […]
On the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Album there were many individuals that were historical figures that changed history. Many of these individuals had died before the release June 1, 1967 of the album. Aldous Huxley was a major figure in the drug culture and he had died on November 22, 1963. Aleister […]
On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE
Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 24, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 37th day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE, and then I wanted to pass along some evidence that indicates the Bible is historically accurate. You close your series AFTERLIFE with these words being sung, “The only thing that keeps me from driving this car, Half-light, jack knife into the canyon at night Signs and wonder.” Why not take the time to look at a spiritual answer in the Bible and you may discover that the Bible is historically accurate and contains many prophecies that have already been fulfilled in history!
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This song THE ONLY THING is played as the 6th episode of the 2nd season is concluding and Tony has by chance avoided his own suicide attempt when Emma comes to his door and announces she will accept Ground Hog Day. Ground Hog Day is the film with Bill Murray where he repeats the same day over and over and seems to not make in progress. The song is placed perfectly because describes a person that struggles with thoughts of suicide like Tony does. On my blog I have written about several songs that deal with suicide such as Adam’s song by Blink 182, and I have also discussed the unfortunate high profile cases of suicides such as Bob Welch.
The only thing that keeps me from driving this car Half-light, jack knife into the canyon at night Signs and wonders, Perseus aligned with the skull Slain Medusa, Pegasus alight from us all
Do I care if I survive this, bury the dead where they’re found In a veil of great surprises I wonder did you love me at all?
The only thing that keeps me from cutting my arm Cross hatch, warm bath, Holiday Inn after dark Signs and wonders, water stain writing the wall Daniel’s message, blood of the moon on us all
Do I care if I despise this, nothing else matters, I know In a veil of great disguises, how do I live with your ghost?
Should I tear my eyes out now? Everything I see returns to you somehow Should I tear my heart out now? Everything I feel returns to you somehow I want to save you from your sorrow
The only reason why I continue at all Faith in reason, I wasted my life playing dumb Signs and wonders, sea lion caves in the dark Blind faith, God’s grace, nothing else left to impart
Do I care if I survive this, bury the dead where they’re found In a veil of great surprises, hold to my head till I drown Should I tear my eyes out now, before I see too much? Should I tear my arms out now, I wanna feel your touch
Should I tear my eyes out now? Everything I see returns to you somehow Should I tear my heart out now? Everything I feel returns to you somehow
In AFTER LIFE are all of Tony’s problems stemming from not having a spouse to share life with? Can the same be said about Kath and Sandy? Take a look at the song Eleanor Rigby and the loneliness she experienced. Evidently she had been married for a long time and the natural course of events happened and her husband died first and she died later. We all will end up dead before or after our spouse dies and ultimately we must turn to spiritual answers and the problem that AFTER LIFE has is it is written by an atheist who is trying to answer questions that can be best answered with spiritual answers. The key to overcoming loneliness is getting your spiritual questions answered so that you know what your destiny is and why you were put on this planet.
No one remembered Eleanor Rigby (of the Beatles song fame)enough to come to her funeral. It is sad but Francis Schaeffer points out King Solomon’s words on death from 3000 years ago and they seem similar to the song’s conclusion.
Here the Beatles take on the subject of death and they point out that no one came to the funeral of Eleanor Rigby. It reminds us of the words of Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes (1:11):
No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. — Steve Jobs, speaking at Stanford University’s commencement, June 2005.
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.”
(Pictured below: Tolerance Under Fire – Ravi Zacharias at Dartmouth College)
Ravi Zacharias in his article “Are you Lonely?” notes, Writer Thomas Wolfe…articulated one of the deepest aches within the human heart:
“All this hideous doubt, despair, and dark confusion of the soul a lonely person must know, for he is united to no image save that which he creates himself. He has no faith in him except his own and often that faith deserts him leaving him shaken and filled with impotence. Then it seems to him that his life has come to nothing. That he is ruined, lost, and broken, past redemption, and that morning, that bright and shining morning with its promise of new beginnings, will never come upon the earth again as it did once.”
May I suggest that you bring your lonely heart to God and allow Him to do His work in your life by putting you back together, in your affections and pursuits?
(End of Ravi Zacharias article)
Eleanor Rigby Lyrics
Ah, look at all the lonely people Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for?
All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear No one comes near Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there What does he care?
All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name Nobody came Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave No one was saved
All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people) Where do they all come from? All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people) Where do they all belong?
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Eleanor Rigby’s despair reminds me of another song called DUST IN THE WIND by Kerry Livgren of the group KANSAS which was a hit song in 1978 when it rose to #6 on the charts because so many people connected with the message of the song.
I close my eyes Only for a moment and the moment’s gone All my dreams Pass before my eyes with curiosity
Dust in the wind All they are is dust in the wind
Same old song Just a drop of water in an endless sea All we do Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Now don’t hang on Nothin’ last forever but the earth and sky It slips away And all your money won’t another minute buy
Dust in the wind All we are is dust in the wind (All we are is dust in the wind)
Kerry Livgren himself said that he wrote the song because he saw where man was without a personal God in the picture. Solomon pointed out in the Book of Ecclesiastes that those who believe that God doesn’t exist must accept three things. FIRST, death is the end and SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life. FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. The Christian can face death and also confront the world knowing that it is not determined by chance and time alone and finally there is a judge who will balance the scales.
(Kerry Livgren)
Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on You Tube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
(Dave Hope)
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Owen Jarus reports in The Independent the discovery of a massive statue of Pharaoh Taharqa [English Bible: Tirhakah] deep in Sudan.
No statue of a pharaoh has ever been found further south of Egypt than this one. At the height of his reign, King Taharqa controlled an empire stretching from Sudan to the Levant.
A massive, one ton, statue of Taharqa that was found deep in Sudan. Taharqa was a pharaoh of the 25th dynasty of Egypt and came to power ca. 690 BC, controlling an empire stretching from Sudan to the Levant. The pharaohs of this dynasty were from Nubia – a territory located in modern day Sudan and southern Egypt.
The Nubian pharaohs tried to incorporate Egyptian culture into their own. They built pyramids in Sudan – even though pyramid building in Egypt hadn’t been practised in nearly 800 years. Taharqa’s rule was a high water mark for the 25th dynasty. By the end of his reign a conflict with the Assyrians had forced him to retreat south, back into Nubia – where he died in 664 BC. Egypt became an Assyrian vassal – eventually gaining independence during the 26th dynasty. Taharqa’s successors were never able to retake Egypt.
In addition to Taharqa’s statue, those of two of his successors – Senkamanisken and Aspelta – were found alongside. These two rulers controlled territory in Sudan, but not Egypt.
. . .
While this is the furthest south that a pharaoh’s statue has been found, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Dangeil is the southern border of Taharqa’s empire. It’s possible that he controlled territory further up the Nile.
The statue of Taharqa is truly monumental. “It’s a symbol of royal power,” said Dr. Anderson, an indicator that Dangeil was an “important royal city.”
It’s made of granite and weighs more than one ton. It stood about 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) when it had its head. In ancient times it was smashed into several pieces on purpose. This was also done to the two other statues. It’s not known who did this or why. It happened “a long time after Taharqa,” said Anderson.
. . .
The largest piece of Taharqa’s statue is the torso and base. This part of the statue is so heavy that the archaeological team had to use 18 men to move it onto a truck.
“We had trouble moving him a couple hundred meters,” said Anderson. The move was “extremely well planned,” with the team spending eight to nine days figuring out how to accomplish it without the statue (or the movers) getting damaged.
The full account from The Independent may be read here. A longer article by Jarus, with several photos, may be found in Heritage Key.
After the Assyrian king Sennacherib captured Lachish, he headed for Jerusalem. On the way he heard that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia (Cush) had come out to fight against him.
The king heard that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was marching out to fight him. He again sent messengers to Hezekiah, ordering them: “Tell King Hezekiah of Judah this: ‘Don’t let your God in whom you trust mislead you when he says, “Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.” Certainly you have heard how the kings of Assyria have annihilated all lands. Do you really think you will be rescued? (2 Kings 19:9-11 NET; cf. Isaiah 37:9)
Hezekiah was king of Judah from 716/15 – 687/86 B.C. (Thiele). The events recorded in the Bible took place shortly before 700 B.C. Tirhakah evidently came to power before 690 B.C., was already a leading commander of the army, or there may be another solution to the problem.
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
I listened to this question and answer session at Harvard in 1992 on cassette tapes and was captivated with Ravi Zacharias. His responses were so much better than Kath’s responses to Tony in AFTER LIFE.
After Life 2 Trailer
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On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
–
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Ricky Gervais plays bereaved husband Tony Johnson in AFTER LIFE
Tony and his wife Lisa who died 6 months ago of cancer
(Above) Tony and Anne on the bench at the graveyard where their spouses are buried.
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May 23, 2020 Ricky Gervais
Dear Ricky,
This is the 36th day in a row that I have written another open letter to you to comment on some of your episodes of AFTER LIFE.
In the 6th episode of season one of AFTER LIFE Tony has a tense relationship with Emma the nurse that takes care of his father. However, after admitting that he had earlier considered suicide and basically had no reason to live after losing his wife to cancer, Tony has expressed his desire to improve his attitude and this conversation occurs when he asks Emma out on a date:
Emma: I will think about it. Tony: I will take that. There is hope. Hope is everything.
The reason that I started this series of posts comparing Solomon to Tony is because they both embraced the nihilistic point of view of life UNDER THE SUN. Everything is pessimistic with this viewpoint. Then you see Tony slip in this word hope and it doesn’t fit in the stream of logical thought with secular mankind.
Ravi Zacharias in his talk “Why I am not an atheist” at Princeton gave 3 reasons:
1) There is no moral framework;
2) There is no ultimate meaning, therefore no hope;
3) There is no recovery (or redemption).
Hope is such an important word and politicians know that too. Since I have lived and worked in Little Rock many years, I used to run into Bill Clinton quite a lot in downtown Little Rock. It was quite remarkable to me when he chose to emphasize that the small town of Hope was his home town even though he had only lived there 3 or 4 years. Of course, he did so because of the power of the word “HOPE.” I wanted to talk to you about three men and the subject of nihilism: Comedian DOUG STANHOPE, Bass player DAVE HOPE of the 1970’s rock band Kansas and King Solomon of Israel who wrote Richard Dawkins’ favorite book of the Bible which is Ecclesiastes. There is a thread of nihilism that can be compared in these three men’s stories, and nihilism is the opposite of HOPE.
From sex to religion, nothing’s off-topic for the fearless comedian. Posted December 12th, 2012, 1:12 PM by Andy Hunsaker
Last year, on Louis C.K.’s breakout hit series “Louie,” Doug Stanhope played Eddie, an old friend and peer of Louie’s who hadn’t found any success in comedy, nor any happiness in life. Sharing Louie’s low tolerance for bull$#!@, Eddie confided in him that he was just passing through town on his way to Boston, where he would do his final show before killing himself. Every argument Louie tries to muster to convince him otherwise is quickly and brutally shot down, and eventually, he has to just acquiesce to Eddie’s intentions and bid him farewell. With a strong performance from both men, they destroyed the common wisdom that suicide should never be a viable option.
The more viscerally affecting part of that episode is that Eddie doesn’t seem all that far removed from Stanhope himself, aside from the quality of his comedy. Stanhope’s stage persona is a nihilistic man who has to blind himself on alcohol and drugs to enjoy any small part of the bleak, unending hellscape of existence, but as he often says, he’s funnier when he’s drunk, which means he’s not blinding himself at all.
________________________________________________Obviously the atheist comedian DOUG STANHOPE has already arrived at the nihilistic conclusion that many other atheists have reached in the past.The late Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer sums up where the secular worldview has brought modern man:
So some humanists act as if they have a great advantage over Christians. They act as if the advance of science and technology and a better understanding of history (through such concepts as the evolutionary theory) have all made the idea of God and Creation quite ridiculous. This superior attitude, however, is strange because one of the most striking developments in the last half-century is the growth of a profound pessimism among both the well-educated and less-educated people. The thinkers in our society have been admitting for a long time that they have no final answers at all. Take Woody Allen, for example. Most people know his as a comedian, but he has thought through where mankind stands after the “religious answers” have been abandoned. In an article in Esquire (May 1977), he says that man is left with: … alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness…. The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It’s absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless. As Camus wrote, it’s not only that he (the individual) dies, or that man (as a whole) dies, but that you struggle to do a work of art that will last and then you realize that the universe itself is not going to exist after a period of time. Until those issues are resolved within each person – religiously or psychologically or existentially – the social and political issues will never be resolved, except in a slapdash way. Allen sums up his view in his film Annie Hall with these words: “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.” Many would like to dismiss this sort of statement as coming from one who is merely a pessimist by temperament, one who sees life without the benefit of a sense of humor. Woody Allen does not allow us that luxury. He speaks as a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees. If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying. As the famous artist Paul Gauguin wrote on his last painting shortly before he tried to commit suicide: “Whence come we? What are we? Whither do we go?” The answers are nowhere, nothing, and nowhere. The humanist H. J. Blackham has expressed this with a dramatic illustration:
On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit.79
One does not have to be highly educated to understand this. It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists’ position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has existed forever and ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form.__________________To sum up Schaeffer is saying, “If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.” (Francis Schaeffer in THE GOD WHO IS THERE)HAS COMEDY PROVIDED DOUG STANHOPE ANY ANSWERS? 3000 years ago Solomon pursued five “L” words in his search for the meaning of life and probing the area of LAUGHTER was one of his first places to start. In Ecclesiastes 2:2 he starts this quest but he concludes it is not productive to be laughing the whole time and not considering the serious issues of life. Then Solomon also asserted the nihilistic statement in Ecclesiastes 2:17: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
In the Book of Ecclesiastes what are all of the 5 “L” words that Solomon looked into? He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). IRONICALLY, DOUG STANHOPE HAS MADE ALL FIVE OF THESE BUTTS OF HIS NIHILISTIC JOKES!!!
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.” This puts him in the same place that DOUG STANHOPE finds himself.
Since you are an atheist you have a naturalistic materialistic worldview, and this short book of Ecclesiastes should interest you because the wisest man who ever lived in the position of King of Israel came to THREE CONCLUSIONS that will affect you.
FIRST, chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)
These two verses below take the 3 elements mentioned in a naturalistic materialistic worldview (time, chance and matter) and so that is all the unbeliever can find “under the sun” without God in the picture. You will notice that these are the three elements that evolutionists point to also.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 is following: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.
SECOND, Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
THIRD, Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1, 8:15)
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2: “Next I turned my attention to all the outrageous violence that takes place on this planet—the tears of the victims, no one to comfort them; the iron grip of oppressors, no one to rescue the victims from them.” Ecclesiastes 8:14; “Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.”
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. Today men try to find satisfaction in learning, liquor, ladies, luxuries, laughter, and labor and that is exactly what Solomon tried to do too. None of those were able to “fill the God-sized vacuum in his heart” (quote from famous mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). You have to wait to the last chapter in Ecclesiastes to find what Solomon’s final conclusion is.
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Take a minute and compare Kerry Livgren’s words to that of the late British humanist H.J. Blackham:
“On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).
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Kerry Livgren Testimony
Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player DAVE HOPE of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and DAVE HOPE had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on You Tube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
Seen below is the third episode of AFTERLIFE (season 1) when Matt takes Tony to a comedy club with front row seats to cheer him up but it turns into disaster!!!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
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 […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
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If Death is the end then what is the point Kath asks below:
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