https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Offspring__

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Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.”__

Should we DO WANT WANT TO AS IF THERE IS FINAL JUDGE? That would lead to MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!!!!

Let me challenge these PUNK ROCKERS to watch the film CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS by Woody Allen.

Take a minute and read the lyrics from the song “The Meaning of Life” by The Offspring.

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(Notice the nihilistic feeling from the song “Cant Repeat”)

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The Offspring is an American rock band from Garden Grove, California, formed in 1984.^[2]Originally formed under the name Manic Subsidal, the band has consisted of lead vocalist and guitarist Bryan “Dexter” Holland, bassist Greg K., guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman and drummer Pete Parada since 2007. Over the course of their 35-year career, they have released nine studio albums and experienced lineup changes, most noticeably with their drummers. Their longest-serving drummer was Ron Welty, who replaced original drummer James Lilja in 1987, and stayed with the band for 16 years; he was replaced by Atom Willard in 2003, and then four years later by Pete Parada.

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Francis Schaeffer noted:

I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.”

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“They are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one…
The result is a relativistic value system. A lack of a final meaning to life — that’s first. Why does human life have any value at all, if that is all that reality is? Not only are you going to die individually, but the whole human race is going to die, someday. It may not take the falling of the atom bombs, but someday the world will grow too hot, too cold. That’s what we are told on this other final reality, and someday all you people not only will be individually dead, but the whole conscious life on this world will be dead, and nobody will see the birds fly. And there’s no meaning to life.

As you know, I don’t speak academically, shut off in some scholastic cubicle, as it were. I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.” And I must say, that on the basis of what they are being taught in school, that the final reality is only this material thing, they are not wrong. They’re right! On this other basis there is no meaning to life and not only is there no meaning to life, but there is no value system that is fixed, and we find that the law is based then only on a relativistic basis and that law becomes purely arbitrary.

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OUTLINE OF ECCLESIATES BY SCHAEFFER

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William Lane Craig on Man’s predicament if God doesn’t exist

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.

Thus, if there is no God, then life itself becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.

Francis Schaeffer looks at Nihilism of Solomon and the causes of it!!!

Notes on Ecclesiastes by Francis Schaeffer

Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes and he is truly an universal man like Leonardo da Vinci.

Two men of the Renaissance stand above all others – Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and it is in them that one can perhaps grasp a view of the ultimate conclusion of humanism for man. Michelangelo was unequaled as a sculptor in the Renaissance and arguably no one has ever matched his talents.

The other giant of the Renaissance period was Leonardo da Vinci – the perfect Renaissance Man, the man who could do almost anything and does it better than most anyone else. As an inventor, an engineer, an anatomist, an architect, an artist, a chemist, a mathematician, he was almost without equal. It was perhaps his mathematics that lead da Vinci to come to his understanding of the ultimate meaning of Humanism. Leonardo is generally accepted as the first modern mathematician. He not only knew mathematics abstractly but applied it in his Notebooks to all manner of engineering problems. He was one of the unique geniuses of history, and in his brilliance he perceived that beginning humanistically with mathematics one only had particulars. He understood that man beginning from himself would never be able to come to meaning on the basis of mathematics. And he knew that having only individual things, particulars, one never could come to universals or meaning and thus one only ends with mechanics. In this he saw ahead to where our generation has come: everything, including man, is the machine.

Leonardo da Vinci compares well to Solomon and they  both were universal men searching for the meaning in life. Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life. His struggle was to find the meaning of life. Not just plans in life. Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s has been washed away. There is  a difference between finding plans in life and purpose in life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it and it has never found it since. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.

We have here the declaration of Solomon’s universality:

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There is no doubt in my mind that Solomon had the same experience in his life that I had as a younger man. I remember standing by the sea and the moon arose and it was copper and beauty. Then the moon did not look like a flat dish but a globe or a sphere since it was close to the horizon. One could feel the global shape of the earth too. Then it occurred to me that I could contemplate the interplay of the spheres and I was exalted because I thought I can look upon them with all their power, might, and size, but they could contempt nothing and I felt as man as God. Then came upon me a horror of great darkness because it suddenly occurred to me that although I could contemplate them and they could contemplate nothing yet they would continue to turn in ongoing cycles when I saw no more forever and I was crushed.

THIS IS SOLOMON’S FEELING TOO. The universal man, Solomon, beyond our intelligence with an empire at his disposal with the opportunity of observation so he could recite these words here in Ecclesiastes 6:12, “For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?”

Lack of Satisfaction in life

In Ecclesiastes 1:8 he drives this home when he states, “All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing.” Solomon is stating here the fact that there is no final satisfaction because you don’t get to the end of the thing. THERE IS NO FINAL SATISFACTION. This is related to Leonardo da Vinci’s similar search for universals and then meaning in life. 

In Ecclesiastes 5:11 Solomon again pursues this theme, “When good things increase, those who consume them increase. So what is the advantage to their owners except to look on?”  Doesn’t that sound modern? It is as modern as this evening. Solomon here is stating the fact there is no reaching completion in anything and this is the reason there is no final satisfaction. There is simply no place to stop. It is impossible when laying up wealth for oneself when to stop. It is impossible to have the satisfaction of completion. 

Pursuing Learning

Now let us look down the details of his searching.

In Ecclesiastes 1: 13a we have the details of the universal man’s procedure. “And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven.”

So like any sensible man the instrument that is used is INTELLECT, and RAITIONALITY, and LOGIC. It is to be noted that even men who despise these in their theories begin and use them or they could not speak. There is no other way to begin except in the way they which man is and that is rational and intellectual with movements of that is logical within him. As a Christian I must say gently in passing that is the way God made him.

So we find first of all Solomon turned to WISDOM and logic. Wisdom is not to be confused with knowledge. A man may have great knowledge and no wisdom. Wisdom is the use of rationality and logic. A man can be very wise and have limited knowledge. Here he turns to wisdom in all that implies and the total rationality of man.

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 done under 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.”

God has put eternity in our hearts but we can not know the beginning or the end of the thing from a vantage point of UNDER THE SUN

Ecclesiastes 1:16-18

¹⁶ I said to myself, “Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷ And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind.¹⁸ Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.

Solomon points out that you can not know the beginnings or what follows:

Ecclesiastes 3:11

¹¹ He has made everything  appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

Ecclesiastes 1:11

¹¹ There is no remembrance of earlier things; And also of the later things which will occur, There will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.

Ecclesiastes 2:16

¹⁶ For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die!

You bring together here the factor of the beginning and you can’t know what immediately follows after your death and of course you can’t know the final ends. What do you do and the answer is to get drunk and this was not thought of in the RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KAHAYYAM:

Ecclesiastes 2:1-3

I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself.” And behold, it too was futility. ² I said of laughter, “It is madness,” and of pleasure, “What does it accomplish?” ³ I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives.

The Daughter of the Vine:

You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Translation by Edward Fitzgerald)

A perfectly good philosophy coming out of Islam, but Solomon is not the first man that thought of it nor the last. In light of what has been presented by Solomon is the solution just to get intoxicated and black the think out? So many people have taken to alcohol and the dope which so often follows in our day. This approach is incomplete, temporary and immature. Papa Hemingway can find the champagne of Paris sufficient for a time, but one he left his youth he never found it sufficient again. He had a lifetime spent looking back to Paris and that champagne and never finding it enough. It is no solution and Solomon says so too.

Ecclesiastes 2:4-11

⁴ I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself; ⁵ I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; ⁶ I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees. ⁷ I bought male and female slaves and I had homeborn slaves. Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. ⁸ Also, I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself MALE AND  FEMALE SINGERS AND THE PLEASURES OF MEN–MANY CONCUBINES.

⁹ Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. My wisdom also stood by me. ¹⁰ All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor.¹¹ Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.

He doesn’t mean there is no temporary profit but there is no real profit. Nothing that lasts. The walls crumble if they are as old as the Pyramids. You only see a shell of the Pyramids and not the glory that they were. This is what Solomon is saying. Look upon Solomon’s wonder and consider the Cedars of Lebanon which were not in his domain but at his disposal.

Ecclesiastes 6:2

² a man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires; yet God has not empowered him to eat from them, for a foreigner enjoys them. This is vanity and a severe affliction.

Can someone stuff himself with food he can’t digest? Solomon came to this place of strife and confusion when he went on in his search for meaning.

 Oppressed have no comforter

Ecclesiastes 4:1

 Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them.

Between birth and death power rules. Solomon looked over his kingdom and also around the world and proclaimed that right does not rule but power rules.

Ecclesiastes 7:14-15

¹⁵ I have seen everything during my lifetime of futility; there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness.

Ecclesiastes 8:14

¹⁴ There is futility which is done on the earth, that is, there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked. On the other hand, there are evil men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I say that this too is futility.

We could say it in 20th century language, “The books are not balanced in this life.”

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Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.”_______________Let me challenge these PUNK ROCKERS to watch the film CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS by Woody Allen.

DISCUSSING FILMS AND SPIRITUAL MATTERS
By Everette Hatcher III

“Existential subjects to me are still the only subjects worth dealing with. I don’t think that one can aim more deeply than at the so-called existential themes, the spiritual themes.” WOODY ALLENEvangelical Chuck Colson has observed that it used to be true that most Americans knew the Bible. Evangelists could simply call on them to repent and return. But today, most people lack understanding of biblical terms or concepts. Colson recommends that we first attempt to find common ground to engage people’s attention. That then may open a door to discuss spiritual matters.Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS , is an excellent icebreaker concerning the need of God while making decisions in the area of personal morality. In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, “The eyes of God are always upon you.” However, Judah later concludes that God doesn’t exist. He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah ‘s respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair. Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie. He continues to be haunted by his father’s words: “The eyes of God are always upon you.” This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God’s eyes are.Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah ‘s unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt MaySol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”Judah ‘s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah ‘s advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life.The Bible tells us, “{God} has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). The secularist calls this an illusion, but the Bible tells us that the idea that we will survive the grave was planted in everyone’s heart by God Himself. Romans 1:19-21 tells us that God has instilled a conscience in everyone that points each of them to Him and tells them what is right and wrong (also Romans 2:14 -15).It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” THE HUMANIST, May/June 1997, pp. 38-39)Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (THE HUMANIST, September/October 1997, p. 2)The secularist can only give incomplete answers to these questions: How could you have convinced Judah not to kill? On what basis could you convince Judah it was wrong for him to murder?As Christians, we would agree with Judah ‘s father that “The eyes of God are always upon us.” Proverbs 5:21 asserts, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.” Revelation 20:12 states, “…And the dead were judged (sentenced) by what they had done (their whole way of feeling and acting, their aims and endeavors) in accordance with what was recorded in the books” (Amplified Version). The Bible is revealed truth from God. It is the basis for our morality. Judah inherited the Jewish ethical values of the Ten Commandments from his father, but, through years of life as a skeptic, his standards had been lowered. Finally, we discover that Judah ‘s secular version of morality does not resemble his father’s biblically-based morality.Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS forces unbelievers to grapple with the logical conclusions of a purely secular morality. It opens a door for Christians to find common ground with those whom they attempt to share Christ; we all have to deal with personal morality issues. However, the secularist has no basis for asserting that Judah is wrong.Larry King actually mentioned on his show, LARRY KING LIVE, that Chuck Colson had discussed the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with him. Colson asked King if life was just a Darwinian struggle where the ruthless come out on top. Colson continued, “When we do wrong, is that our only choice? Either live tormented by guilt, or else kill our conscience and live like beasts?” (BREAKPOINT COMMENTARY, “Finding Common Ground,” September 14, 1993)Later, Colson noted that discussing the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with King presented the perfect opportunity to tell him about Christ’s atoning work on the cross. Colson believes the Lord is working on Larry King. How about your neighbors? Is there a way you can use a movie to find common ground with your lost friends and then talk to them about spiritual matters?

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In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me thatKerry 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, like Solomon and Coldplay, they 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.”

Both Kerry Livgren and 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 youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.

The movie maker Woody Allen has embraced the nihilistic message of the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. David Segal in his article, “Things are Looking Up for the Director Woody Allen. No?” (Washington Post, July 26, 2006), wrote, “Allen is evangelically passionate about a few subjects. None more so than the chilling emptiness of life…The 70-year-old writer and director has been musing about life, sex, work, death and his generally futile search for hope…the world according to Woody is so bereft of meaning, so godless and absurd, that the only proper response is to curl up on a sofa and howl for your mommy.”

The song “Dust in the Wind” recommends, “Don’t hang on.” Allen himself says, “It’s just an awful thing and in that context you’ve got to find an answer to the question: ‘Why go on?’ ”  It is ironic that Chris Martin the leader of Coldplay regards Woody Allen as his favorite director.

Lets sum up the final conclusions of these gentlemen:  Coldplay is still searching for that “something more.” Woody Allen has concluded the search is futile. Livgren and Hope of Kansas have become Christians and are involved in fulltime ministry. 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.”

You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:

(part 1 ten minutes)

(part 2 ten minutes)

Kansas – Dust In The Wind

Ecclesiastes 1

Published on Sep 4, 2012

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The young generation in the 1960’s was searching for an alternative to the materialism of their parents and they wanted to revolt, but where could they turn? It was an age of Personal Peace and Affluence. Francis Schaeffer had a ministry to college students during this time and he knew what they were dealing with. The Rolling Stones and Beatles were two of the key bands that Schaeffer wrote about often.

How Should We Then Live – Episode 9 – The Age of Personal Peace & Affluence

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The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man

Street Fighting Man. The Rolling Stones Live 1969 (Full Song)

Francis A. Schaeffer  wrote something about the ROLLING STONES:

At about the same time as the Berkeley Free Speech Move- 
ment came a heavy participation in drugs. The beats had not 
been deeply into drugs the way the hippies were. But soon 
after 1964 the drug scene became the hallmark of young 
people.

The philosophic basis for the drug scene came from Aldous 
Huxley's concept that, since, for the rationalist, reason is not 
taking us anywhere, we should look for a final experience, one 
that can be produced "on call," one that we do not need to 
wait for. The drug scene, in other words, was at first an ideol- 
ogy, an ideology that had very practical consequences. Some of 
us at L'Abri have cried over the young people who have blown 
their minds. But many of them thought, like Alan Watts, Gary 
Snyder, Alan Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, that if you could 
simply turn everyone on, there would be an answer to man's 
longings. It wasn't just the far-out freaks who suggested that 
you could put drugs in the drinking water and turn on a whole 
city so that the "pigs" and the kids would all have flowers in 
their hair. In those days it really was an optimistic ideological 
concept. 

So two things have to be said here. FIRST, the young people's 
analysis of culture was right, and, SECOND, they really thought 
they had an answer to the problem. Up through Woodstock 
(1969) the YOUNG PEOPLE WERE OPTIMISTIC CONCERNING DRUGS-- 
BEING THE IDEOLOGICAL ANSWER. The desire for community and 
togetherness that was the impetus for Woodstock was not wrong, of course. God has made us in his own image, and he 
means for us to be in a strong horizontal relationship with each 
other. While Christianity appeals and applies to the individual, 
it is not individualistic. God means for us to have community. 
There are really two orthodoxies: an orthodoxy of doctrine 
and an orthodoxy of community, and both go together. So the 
longing for community in Woodstock was right. But the path 
was wrong. 

AFTER WOODSTOCK TWO EVENTS "ENDED THE AGE OF INNOCENCE," 
to use the expression of Rolling Stone magazine. The FIRST 
occurred at Altamont, California, where the ROLLING STONES put 
on a festival and hired the Hell's Angels (for several barrels of 
beer) to police the grounds. Instead, the Hell's Angels killed 
people without any cause, and it was a bad scene indeed. But 
people thought maybe this was a fluke, maybe it was just 
California! IT TOOK A SECOND EVENT TO BE CONVINCING. 

On the Isle of Wight, 450,000 people assembled, and it was 
totally ugly. A number of people from L'Abri were there, and I 
know a man closely associated with the rock world who knows 
the organizer of this festival. Everyone agrees that the situation 
was just plain hideous. 

THUS, AFTER THESE TWO ROCK FESTIVALS THE PICTURE CHANGED. IT IS  
NOT THAT KIDS HAVE STOPPED TAKING DRUGS, FOR MORE ARE TAKING  
DRUGS ALL THE TIME. And what the eventual outcome will be is 
certainly unpredictable. I know that in many places, California 
for example, drugs are down through the high schools and on 
into the heads of ten- and eleven-year-olds. But drugs are not 
considered a philosophic expression anymore; among the very 
young they are just a peer group thing. It's like permissive 
sexuality. You have to sleep with a certain number of boys or 
you're not in; you have to take a certain kind of drug or you're 
not in. THE OPTIMISTIC IDEOLOGY HAS DIED. 

Street Fighting Man

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the band, see Street Fighting Man (band).

“Street Fighting Man”
Single by The Rolling Stones
from the album Beggars Banquet
B-side	“No Expectations“
Released	August 1968
Format	7-inch single
Recorded	April–May 1968
Genre	Hard rock[1] rock and roll[2] raga rock[3]
Length	3:09
Label	London
Songwriter(s)	Jagger/Richards
Producer(s)	Jimmy Miller
The Rolling Stones singles chronology
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1968) “Street Fighting Man” (1968) “Honky Tonk Women” (1969)
Audio sample
MENU 0:00 file help
Alternative covers
French single picture sleeve

“Street Fighting Man” is a song by English rock band the Rolling Stones featured on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. Called the band’s “most political song”,^[4] Rolling Stone ranked the song number 301 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Contents

 [hide] 

• • 1Inspiration

• • 2Recording

• • 3Musicians

• • 4Release

• • 5Charts

• • 6Legacy

• • 7References

• 8External links

Inspiration[edit]

Originally titled and recorded as “Did Everyone Pay Their Dues?”, containing the same music but very different lyrics, “Street Fighting Man” is known as one of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards‘ most politically inclined works to date. Jagger allegedly wrote it about Tariq Ali after he attended a 1968 anti-war rally at London‘s US embassy, during which mounted police attempted to control a crowd of 25,000.^[5][6] He also found inspiration in the rising violence among student rioters on Paris‘s Left Bank,^[7] the precursor to a period of civil unrest in May 1968.

On the writing, Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone,

Yeah, it was a direct inspiration, because by contrast, London was very quiet…It was a very strange time in France. But not only in France but also in America, because of the Vietnam War and these endless disruptions … I thought it was a very good thing at the time. There was all this violence going on. I mean, they almost toppled the government in France; de Gaulle went into this complete funk, as he had in the past, and he went and sort of locked himself in his house in the country. And so the government was almost inactive. And the French riot police were amazing.^[8]

The song opens with a strummed acoustic riff. In his review, Richie Unterberger says of the song, “…it’s a great track, gripping the listener immediately with its sudden, springy guitar chords and thundering, offbeat drums. That unsettling, urgent guitar rhythm is the mainstay of the verses. Mick Jagger’s typically half-buried lyrics seem at casual listening like a call to revolution.”^[9]

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
‘Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy

Hey! think the time is right for a palace revolution, but where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Hey, said my name is called Disturbance;, I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the King, I’ll rail at all his servants

Well now what can a poor boy do, Except to sing for a rock & roll band?
Cause in sleepy London Town there’s just no place for a street fighting man, no

Unterberger continues, “Perhaps they were saying they wished they could be on the front lines, but were not in the right place at the right time; perhaps they were saying, as John Lennon did in the Beatles‘ “Revolution“, that they didn’t want to be involved in violent confrontation. Or perhaps they were even declaring indifference to the tumult.”^[9] Other writers’ interpretations varied. In 1976, Roy Carr assessed it as a “great summer street-corner rock anthem on the same echelon as ‘Summer in the City‘, ‘Summertime Blues‘, and ‘Dancing in the Street‘.”^[7] In 1979, Dave Marsh wrote that it was the keynote of Beggars Banquet, “with its teasing admonition to do something and its refusal to admit that doing it will make any difference; as usual, the Stones were more correct, if also more faithless, philosophers than any of their peers.”^[10]

Recording[edit]

Recording on “Street Fighting Man” took place at Olympic Sound Studios from April until May 1968. With Jagger on lead vocals and both he and Richards on backing, Brian Jones performs the song’s distinctive sitar and also tamboura. Richards plays the song’s acoustic guitars as well as bass, the latter being the only electric instrument on the track. Charlie Watts performs drums while Nicky Hopkins performs the song’s piano which is most distinctly heard during the outro. Shehnai is performed on the track by Dave Mason. On the earlier, unreleased “Did Everybody Pay Their Dues” version, Rick Grech played a very prominent electric viola.^[11]

Watts said in 2003,

“Street Fighting Man” was recorded on Keith’s cassette with a 1930s toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set, which I bought in an antiques shop, and which I’ve still got at home. It came in a little suitcase, and there were wire brackets you put the drums in; they were like small tambourines with no jangles… The snare drum was fantastic because it had a really thin skin with a snare right underneath, but only two strands of gut… Keith loved playing with the early cassette machines because they would overload, and when they overload they sounded fantastic, although you weren’t meant to do that. We usually played in one of the bedrooms on tour. Keith would be sitting on a cushion playing a guitar and the tiny kit was a way of getting close to him. The drums were really loud compared to the acoustic guitar and the pitch of them would go right through the sound. You’d always have a great backbeat.^[12]

On the recording process itself, Richards remembered,

The basic track of that was done on a mono cassette with very distorted overrecording, on a Phillips with no limiters. Brian is playing sitar, it twangs away. He’s holding notes that wouldn’t come through if you had a board, you wouldn’t be able to fit it in. But on a cassette if you just move the people, it does. Cut in the studio and then put on a tape. Started putting percussion and bass on it. That was really an electronic track, up in the realms.^[13]

Bruce Springsteen would comment in 1985, after including “Street Fighting Man” in the encores of some of his Born in the U.S.A. Tour shows: “That one line, ‘What can a poor boy do but sing in a rock and roll band?’ is one of the greatest rock and roll lines of all time. … [The song] has that edge-of-the-cliff thing when you hit it. And it’s funny; it’s got humour to it.”^[14]

Jagger continues in the Rolling Stone interview when asked about the song’s resonance thirty years on; “I don’t know if it [has any]. I don’t know whether we should really play it. I was persuaded to put it [on Voodoo Lounge Tour] because it seemed to fit in, but I’m not sure if it really has any resonance for the present day. I don’t really like it that much.”^[8] Despite this, the song has been performed on a majority of the Stones’ tours since its introduction to their canon of work.^[11]

On the song, Richards said, only a few years after recording the track in a 1971 Rolling Stone interview with Robert Greenfield, that the song had been “interpreted thousands of different ways”. He mentioned how Jagger went to the Grosvenor Square demonstrations in London and was even charged by the police, yet he ultimately claims, “it really is ambiguous as a song.”^[13]

Musicians[edit]

The Rolling Stones^[15]

• Mick Jagger – vocals, percussion
• Keith Richards – amplified acoustic guitars, bass guitars, slide guitar
• Brian Jones – sitar, tamboura
• Charlie Watts – drum

Additional musicians

• Dave Mason – shehnai, bass drum
• Nicky Hopkins – piano

Release[edit]

Released as Beggars Banquet‘s lead single in August 1968 in the US, “Street Fighting Man” was popular on release but was kept out of the Top 40 (reaching number 48) of the US charts in response to many radio stations’ refusal to play the song based on what were perceived as subversive lyrics.^[16] This attitude would be reinforced as the song was released within a week of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.^[9]

Because of the 1968 National Democratic Convention and the possibility of the song inciting further violence, Chicago radio stations refused to play the song. This was much to the delight of Mick, who stated: “I’m rather pleased to hear they have banned (the song). The last time they banned one of our records in America, it sold a million.”^[17] Mick said he was told they thought the record was subversive, to which he snapped: “Of course it’s subversive! It’s stupid to think you can start a revolution with a record. I wish you could.”^[18]

While many of the US London picture sleeves are rare and collectable, the sleeve for this single is particularly scarce and is considered their most valuable.

Keith weighed into the debate when he said that the fact a couple of radio stations in Chicago banned the record “just goes to show how paranoid they are”. At the same time they were still requested to do live appearances and Keith said: “If you really want us to cause trouble, we could do a few stage appearances. We are more subversive when we go on stage.”^[18]

The single’s B-side was album-mate “No Expectations“. For reasons unknown, the single did not see a release in the United Kingdom until 1971 (backed with “Surprise, Surprise“, previously unreleased in the UK).

The US single’s version of the song, released in mono with an additional vocal overdub on the choruses, is different from the Beggars Banquet album’s stereo version.

The album version of the song has been included on the compilations albums Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2), Hot Rocks 1964-1971, 30 Greatest Hits, Singles Collection: The London Years (album version on 1989 edition; US single version on 2002 remaster), Forty Licks, and GRRR! A staple at Rolling Stones live shows since the band’s American Tour of 1969, concert recordings of the song have been captured and released for the live albums Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! (recorded 1969, released 1970), Stripped (1995; rereleased on Totally Stripped in 2016), Live Licks (recorded 2003, released 2004), and Sweet Summer Sun: Hyde Park Live (2013).

Charts[edit]

Chart (1968)	Peak position
Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40)[19]	7
Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders)[20]	13
Canada Top Singles (RPM)[21]	32
Germany (Official German Charts)[22]	7
Netherlands (Single Top 100)[23]	5
Switzerland (Schweizer Hitparade)[24]	4
US Billboard Hot 100[25]	48
Chart (1971)	Peak position
UK Singles (Official Charts Company)[26]	21

Legacy[edit]

This section indiscriminately collects miscellaneous information. Please compress this material to remove any irrelevant or unimportant information. (May 2017)

“Street Fighting Man” has been covered by many artists. Rod Stewart covered it on the debut solo album An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down. Oasis recorded a version that was released as the B-side to their 1998 single “All Around the World“. The song can be found on the fourth and last studio album by Rage Against the Machine, titled Renegades. It appears on Mötley Crüe‘s Red, White & Crüe album as well as the Ramones‘ 2002 re-release of Too Tough to Die. The band Prima Donna performed a live cover early in their career. The band Lake Trout recorded the song for their album Not Them, You. The band Tesla also covered this song on their covers album Real to Reel which can be found on the rare disk 2 track number 5. (You needed to attend a concert during the Reel to Reel tour to obtain this disk.)^{[citation needed]}

Guitarist Pete Townshend of The Who has claimed that the staccato beat–rhythm structure of “Street Fighting Man” is the inspiration for “I’m Free” on Tommy.^[27]

Dave Perkins & Lynn Nichols covered the song in their side project “Passafist”.

In 2009, the Australian rock band Sick Puppies used the first 15 seconds of Rage Against The Machine’s version for their single “Street Fighter (War)”.

Radio personalities Opie and Anthony use Rage Against the Machine’s version as part of the opening theme for their show.

The song plays over the end credits of the film V for Vendetta (2006).

It appears during the documentary Sicko (2007) and is also used in the film State of Grace (1990).

Wes Anderson used the track in his 2009 stop-motion animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The song is referenced by Chris Farley in the movie Dirty Work (1998).

The Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League have used the song as their unofficial theme song, taking the ice at home games as the song plays in the First Niagara Center.

The title line of the song is sung by fictional character Jack T. Chance in the first issue of Green Lantern Corps Quarterly (1992; DC Comics).^[28]

The song was played on Criminal Minds season 5 episode, “The Fight”.

The song is featured in the 2013 movie White House Down and it was played during the credits.

The song was played during the closing scene of the fourth-season finale of Southland.

References[edit]

1. 1. Jump up^ Milward, John (2013). Crossroads: How the Blues Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll (and Rock Saved the Blues). Northeastern. p. 128. ISBN 978-1555537449.

1. 1. Jump up^ Willis, Ellen (2011). Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music. University of Minnesota Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-0816672837.

1. 1. Jump up^ Schaffner, Nicholas (1982). The British Invasion: From the First Wave to the New Wave. Mcgraw-Hill. p. 77. ISBN 978-0070550896.

1. 1. Jump up^ “News”. Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2016-10-02.

1. 1. Jump up^ Azania, Malcolm. “Tariq Ali: The time is right for a palace revolution”. Vue Weekly. 2008(accessed 14 November 2008).

1. 1. Jump up^ “Street Fighting Man”. Rolling Stone. 2004 (accessed 22 July 2007).

1. 1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b} Roy Carr, The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record, Harmony Books, 1976. ISBN 0-517-52641-7. p. 55.

1. 1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b} Wenner, Jann. “Jagger Remembers”. Rolling Stone. Retrieved 22 July 2007.

1. 1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c} Unterberger, Richie. “Street Fighting Man”. allmusic. Retrieved 22 July 2006.

1. 1. Jump up^ Rolling Stone Record Guide, Rolling Stone Press, 1979. ISBN 0-394-73535-8.

1. 1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b} Ian McPherson. “Street Fighting Man”. Timeisonourside.com. Retrieved 2016-10-02.

1. 1. Jump up^ ISBN 0-8118-4060-3 According to The Rolling Stones. Chronicle Books. 2003.

1. 1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b} Greenfield, Robert. “Keith Richards – Interview”. Rolling Stone (magazine) 19 August 1971.

1. 1. Jump up^ Marsh, Dave. Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s. Pantheon Books, 1987. ISBN 0-394-54668-7. pp. 229-230.

1. 1. Jump up^ Ian McPherson. “Street Fighting Man”. Timeisonourside.com. Retrieved 2016-10-02.

1. 1. Jump up^ Paytress, Mark (2003). The Rolling Stones: Off the Record. Omnibus Press. p. 153. ISBN 0-7119-8869-2.

1. 1. Jump up^ The Rolling Stones – Off The Record by Mark Paytress, Omnibus Press, 2005, page 153. ISBN 1-84449-641-4

1. 1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b} The Rolling Stones – Off The Record by Mark Paytress, Omnibus Press, 2005, page 153. ISBN 1-84449-641-4

1. 1. Jump up^ “Austriancharts.at – The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man” (in German). Ö3 Austria Top 40. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “Ultratop.be – The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man” (in Dutch). Ultratop 50. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “Top RPM Singles: Issue 5863.” RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “Offiziellecharts.de – The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man”. GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “Dutchcharts.nl – The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man”(in Dutch). Single Top 100. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “Swisscharts.com – The Rolling Stones – Street Fighting Man”. Swiss Singles Chart. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “The Rolling Stones – Chart history” Billboard Hot 100 for The Rolling Stones. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “Rolling Stones: Artist Chart History” Official Charts Company. Retrieved 17 June 2016.

1. 1. Jump up^ “I’m Free”. thewho.net. 2001. Retrieved 6 August 2007.

1. Jump up^ “Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1 – Layin’ Down the Law (Issue)”. Comicvine.com. 1992-06-01. Retrieved 2016-10-02.

External links[edit]

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

Categories:

• 1968 songs
• 1968 singles
• The Rolling Stones songs
• Decca Records singles
• London Records singles
• Ramones songs
• Protest songs
• Songs written by Jagger/Richards
• Song recordings produced by Jimmy Miller
• Raga rock songs
• Rage Against the Machine songs
• Music controversies

___

Abigail DeVille Listens to History | Art21 “New York Close Up”

_____

–

INSIGHTS INTO HUMANISM

Robert L. Waggoner^[1]

Humanism is the primary modern philosophical enemy of Christianity. Even so, most Christians know little, if anything about it – what it is, or how it functions. The term “humanism” has been around since the Renaissance, although only recently has the man on the street began to use it. Many who do use the term do not sufficiently understand its ideals and concepts.

To help clarify this lack of understanding, “humanism” and some of its related terms will be defined within their historical and philosophical contexts and some short working philosophical definitions of modern humanism will be given. Humanism will be shown to be a method for making decisions. Major philosophical concepts of humanism will be briefly noted, after which terms that modify humanism will be discussed. Finally the seriousness of humanism will be demonstrated by noting its progress in its opposition to Christianity.

Humanistic Terms Often Need Clarification

Humanism is often confusing to people because the primary meanings of many of its basic words have changed. Humanism is often associated with related words such as “humanist,” “humane,” “humanities,” and “humanitarian.” Words may sometimes have dual meanings. However, their primary meanings are generally consistent with the time period in which they are used. Modern humanism frequently promotes its acceptance by utilizing confusion created by words that have dual meanings. A proper understanding of humanism requires knowledge of how a particular word is used within its historical or philosophical context. The original meanings of words related to humanism are generally best understood within their historical context. The current meanings of these words are generally best understood within their philosophical context.

Humanism

Although “humanism” is a philosophical, religious and moral point of view as old as human civilization itself,”^[2] and although “humanism traces its roots from ancient China, classical Greece and Rome, through the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment to the scientific revolution of the modern world,”^[3] the primary impetus toward the development of modern humanism comes from the Renaissance era, and was strongly re-enforced by the so-called age of Enlightenment.

Petrarch (1304-1374) is considered to be “the father of the new humanism.”^[4] A steady stream of professional humanists came after Petrarch. For Petrarch and his peers, humanism meant veneration for the works of ancient humanity, especially the literature of Greece and Rome. Although the content of humanistic studies at first included early church history, Renaissance humanism clearly emphasized non-Christian literature.

Humanist

Most humanists of the early Renaissance, being Catholic, would have claimed themselves to be Christians. Strictly speaking, a “humanist” then was a scholar who engaged in the study of “humane” literature. It was then called “profane” to distinguish it from biblical literature. The “humane” literature then studied was primarily the classical Greek and Latin languages and the ancient non-Christian literary documents written in those languages. Since these scholars studied primarily the “humane” literary works of humanity, their studies were categorically referred to as the “humanities”.

The word “humanists” during the Renaissance era simply described an individual who was a student of humane literature. Although a “humanist” may still be a student of humane literature, the term today does not necessarily refer to a student of humanities. That’s because as Renaissance humanists studied ancient humane literature, they began to accept the beliefs, values, and concepts they read from non-Christian literature. It was not long until they came to prefer a sort of human autonomy rooted in the belief that man is his own judge – totally independent from God. God was either removed from their portraits of reality, or God was placed in the far distant background, and man was positioned at center stage.

Because humanists rejected God in practical matters, the word “humanist” came to mean not only one who studied ancient works of humanity, but also one who believed ancient non-Christian human ideals and values. Whereas the word “humanist” had originally designated what a person did, it came in time to designate what a person believed. The word “humanist” may now describe one who is not even a student of the humanities, but who nonetheless believes those concepts that have come to public consciousness from “humane” literature.

Humanities

The study of humanities for university students today differs from the study of humanities by Renaissance humanists. University students today generally read modern translations of ancient literary words such as Homer’s Illiad and The Odyssey, and the Latin works by Ovid and Virgil, etc., although they do not generally study these works in their original languages. Moreover humanities as studied by modern university students is not limited to literature. Rather, the study of humanities generally includes many other type works of humanity in such fields as music and the arts, in addition to a historical study of the Renaissance humanists and their works.

Humane

Like the words “humanities” and “humanist,” the word “humane” sometimes undergoes changes in its meaning. Whereas it was once designated non-Christian literature, it is now often used to imply human conduct that is kind, tender, merciful and compassionate. This meaning of “humane” is changed because of its association with a concept of modern humanism about the nature of man, namely, that man is basically good.

The Bible does not teach that mankind is basically good. Rather it declares that by Adam sin entered into the world (Romans 5:12), that everyone sins (Roman 3:23; 3:10), and that therefore all everyone is in need of salvation (Romans 1:16, 17; Titus 2:11; Hebrews 2:1-3; 5:9). This does not mean, however, that all people are basically evil. Rather, the Bible declares that people are free to choose whether they will do good or whether they will do evil (John 5:28-29; 2 Corinthians 5:10).

The humanist portrayal of mankind as basically good reflects the strong influence of modern humanism upon our culture. Moreover, cultural acceptance of humanity as “humane” has now influenced the general concept of humanism, so that many, who do not realize the horrible consequences of modern humanism, mistakenly think that a humanistic lifestyle is one of compassionate concern and caring for humanity.

Humanitarian

Likewise, the word “humanitarian” has also changed its meaning from what it was originally. “Humanitarianism was the term originally applied to the followers of a group of eighteenth-century theologians who affirmed the humanity but denied the deity of Christ. It was later used when speaking of the Religion of Humanity, and it carries the subsidiary meaning of the worship of the human race. It is only recently that humanitarianism has come to imply almost exclusively the doing of good deeds that help people. That recent usage should not be allowed to obscure the origins and motivations of humanitarianism. It is above all a religious term.”^[5]

Just as words related to humanism have had their meanings changed, so also the meaning of “humanism” itself has also changed. Whereas “humanism” once referred to respect for classical writings of antiquity, the term has now come to mean a respect for human (as opposed to Godly) values that are recorded in these non-Christian documents. Modern humanism must therefore be understood within its philosophical context, not its historical origins.

Humanism May Be Defined Philosophically

There is no single philosophical definition of humanism that is a commonly accepted standard for everyone. There are about as many definitions as there are scholars who discuss the subject. Nonetheless, some basic ideals of humanism may be perceived through reviewing some short working philosophical definitions. 

“Simply defined, humanism is man’s attempt to solve his problems independently of God.”^[6]

“Humanism is the religion which deifies man and dethrones God.”^[7]

Humanism is “a pre-occupation with man as the supreme value in the universe and the sole solver of the problems of the universe.”^[8]

“Humanism is a philosophy which affirms the value of what is human, or which holds that humans have value in and of themselves.”^[9]

“Humanism is the viewpoint that men have but one life to live and that human happiness is its own justification and needs no sanction or support from supernatural sources; that, in any case, the supernatural does not exist.”^[10]

“Humanism is the placing of Man at the center of all things and making him the measure of all things.” It “means Man beginning from himself, with no knowledge except what he himself can discover and no standards outside himself.”^[11]

The basic idea of humanism was expressed by the ancient Greek, Protagoras (c. 485-415 BC) when he said, “Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are; and of things that are not, that they are not.”^[12] Humanism sounds positive, being for man. However, to the Christian, humanism is really negative, being against God. “Humanism is a polite term for atheism.”^[13] In practice, humanism is a system of beliefs about humanity that excludes God from reality and makes man the judge of all things.

Humanism Is A Method For Making Decisions

However helpful scholarly definitions may be, humanism cannot really be understood until it’s realized that it is primarily a method to be used in making moral decisions. As Paul Kurtz puts it, “[s]ecular humanism is not so much a specific morality as it is a method for the explanation and discovery of rational principles.”^[14]

This method is best understood when illustrated. Below are three paragraphs of a magazine article designed for teenagers.^[15] As you read these paragraphs, see if you recognize modern humanism. You’ll notice that the word “humanism” (or its related terms) does not appear in these paragraphs. However, some basic concepts of modern humanism are there. Ask yourself whether you agree with the ideas expressed in these paragraphs. Here’s the first one.

“Decisions are an essential part of living. You have to make decisions every day of your life, from deciding what to wear to school to deciding what type work you want to do for the rest of your life. You even have to decide whether or not you want to have a sexual relationship. This is what the decisions section is about.”

That paragraph is primarily introductory. While there may be nothing within it with which we would disagree explicitly, an older generation than ours would have been shocked to read that there are implied alternatives regarding “whether or not you want to have a sexual relationship.”

Godly people understand that a “sexual relationship” outside of marriage is sinful. “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18) “Flee fornication” (I Corinthians 6:18), and “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28), are but a few prohibitions from God on this subject. For all who respect God’s authority, there is no reason to even consider the question of “whether or not you want to have a sexual relationship.”

Now read the second paragraph.

“We’ve asked a doctor, a minister, two parents and three teenagers to tell us how they feel about sex. These are their opinions and not necessarily yours. We only hope that when you read their letters, you will be able to understand why they made the kind of decisions that they did. This will hopefully help you find the why’s behind your decisions.”

Did you notice the implication in that paragraph? What is implicit there is explicit in the next paragraph.

“The decision of whether or not to have sex is not a one-time thing. Each time that you have or do not have sex, when the opportunity arises, a choice is made. It takes careful thought. Think about your feelings, important people’s opinions that you value, your religious beliefs, and any other thing that influences how you think, feel, or behave. You are the only person who knows what is right for you. The final decision is yours.”

Do you agree that you are the only person who knows what is right for you? Did you notice that in these paragraphs appealed to the only human authorities? These paragraphs do not appeal to Divine authority – God, Christ, or the Bible. Nor do they suggest that any human authority is better for you than you are for yourself! In other words, these paragraphs teach that you are sovereign in determining your own conduct!

In contrast, the Bible teaches that God is the only sovereign being (Genesis 1:1; 14:19; Exodus 8:22; 15:18; Deuteronomy 4:39; I Chronicles 19:11-12; Psalms 22:28: 24:1; Acts 17:24-31; Romans 14:11). The Bible teaches that man needs guidance from God because “the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25).

Placing humanity at the center of all things, and making humanity the judge of all things is the primary belief and method of modern humanism. While modern humanism may be considered a type of atheism, it is unlike atheism in that it does not generally argue about the existence of God. Its method is simply to assume that God does not exist. By assuming that God does not exist, humanism dismisses God as irrelevant and makes man his own God. Because humanism rejects God and the Bible, moral decisions can then be based only upon what man learns from nature through natural experiences and observations. While all men may glean from the best of human wisdom in arriving at personal moral decisions, in the final analysis, each man determines for himself what is right and what is wrong.

This belief and process of modern humanism is boldly declared within basic documents of humanism. Humanism affirms that “moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human needs and interest.”^[16] “We reject all religious, ideological, or moral codes that denigrate the individual, suppress freedom, dull intellect, dehumanize personality. We believe in maximum individual autonomy consonant with social responsibility . . . the possibilities of individual freedom of choice exist in human life and should be increased.”^[17] The sixth article of Humanist Manifesto II declares that “individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their life-styles as they desire.” The fourth item of A Secular Humanist Declaration states that “secularists deny that morality needs to be deduced from religious belief or that those who do not espouse a religious doctrine are immoral.” And the conclusion of that document includes the statement that “secular humanism places trust in human intelligence rather than in divine guidance.”

Philosophical Concepts of Humanism 

Modern humanism is a method of thinking that dethrones God and deifies humanity. It is also a philosophical worldview that has certain well-defined major concepts. While all humanists do not necessarily subscribe to every aspect of these concepts, they are generally agreed upon a broad consensus. These concepts are clearly documented by Humanist Manifestos I and II, A Secular Humanist Declaration, and A Declaration of Interdependence: A New Global Ethics.^[18]

Major philosophical concepts of modern humanism can be summarized under three basic categories – God, nature, and man. Concepts regarding the first two categories can be quickly and easily summarized. Regarding God – humanist generally believe either that God does not exist, or that, if he does, he is not relevant to mankind. Humanists therefore believe that theism is unrealistic and detrimental to humanity. Regarding nature – humanists believe that the universe is “self-existing,” that nature is all there is, and that all things within nature, including mankind, evolve by chance.

Humanist concepts regarding mankind are not so briefly summarized. Humanism is essentially a human-centered philosophy. It is concerned primarily with mankind’s physical and moral natures. But these must be understood, according to humanists, by human reasoning, scientific observations, and critical thinking rather than by divine revelation. 

Humanists realize that tensions exist between themselves and theists and that if humanism is to prevail over theism, then God and Divine revelation must be excluded from the process by which people acquire knowledge of all things. They therefore insist upon the right to inquire freely about everything and to act according to their own understandings of humanity and nature without social or legal restrictions imposed upon them by believers in God. If humanists are to achieve their desired freedoms and objectives, they think it essential to their cause that public policies in governmental, professional and social areas of human life not be determined according to Divine revelation, but only from knowledge gleaned by human reasoning, scientific discoveries, and critical intelligence.

Humanists believe that humans have only a physical nature. They deny that mankind is spiritual, or that humans have life after death. Humanists believe that mankind is self-sufficient through the use of reason and critical intelligence. That is, they think that humanity needs no Divine guidance or direction from any source other than humanity. Humanists believe that humanity is basically good. That is, they think people do not sin, and therefore that people have no need of eternal salvation. Since humanity is assumed to be basically good, then whatever mankind does which does not encroach on others’ freedoms is also thought to be good. Thus, the use of pornography, by those who desire it, is sanctioned by humanism.

Humanists believe that man is a moral being. Morality to humanists, however, does not mean the same thing as it does to Christians. Christians believe that moral standard is set by God. It is absolute, constant, and fixed by God in scripture. For humanists, however, moral standards are relative, situational, and autonomous. That is, for humanists, morality is pluralistic, determined by each person for himself. A person is moral, according to humanism, whenever he or she does whatever he of she thinks is right. For Christians, however, a person is moral whenever he or she does whatever God says is right.

Humanists believe there is one moral principle that is universal to all people. That’s the principle of “moral equality.” By that, humanists mean that all people are morally equal. Therefore, all discrimination, whether based on age, sex, religion, race, color, national origin, etc., is considered to be immoral. Humanists apply their principle of moral equality to all people in two major ways. One is related to sex, the other is related to economics.

As applied to sex, the humanistic principle of moral equality means that men and women have equal authority, rights, and functions, in every aspect of life. In other words, there should be no distinguishable differences of authority between men and women in society, and neither should there be distinguishable differences of sexual roles between men and women. In practical terms, this means that husbands should have no more authority over their families than do their wives, that wives should have no more responsibility for house-keeping than do their husbands, and that husbands should have no more responsibility for providing for their families than do their wives. It also means that marriage is but only one legitimate arrangement of convenience for cohabitation between men and women. It means that homosexual and lesbian marriages are just as permissible as are heterosexual marriages. It means that unmarried couples living together are equally as respectable as are married couples and that “short of harming others or compelling them to do likewise, individuals should be permitted to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their lifestyles as they desire.”^[19]

As applied to economics, the humanistic principle of moral equality means that society “should provide means to satisfy basic [individual] economic, health, and cultural needs, including wherever resources make possible, a guaranteed annual income.”^[20] In other words, humanism is generally opposed to an economy based upon capitalism. It usually insists upon an economy based upon socialistic premises. In practical terms, this means that there should be no economic categories of the rich and the poor, but that all individuals should be economically equal. It means that individuals are not necessarily responsible to provide economically for themselves and their families, but that civil governments are responsible for providing economic needs for all their citizens. It also means, whenever this principle is carried to its logical conclusion, that nationalism must eventually be eliminated, and that in its place must be established an international one-world government. Since economic growth and development is worldwide in scope, humanism declares that “it is the moral obligation of the developed nations to provide – through an international authority that safeguards human rights – massive technical, agricultural, medical, and economic assistance, including birth control techniques, to the developing portions of the globe.”^[21]Humanists believe that in order to help less-developed nations become more self-sufficient “we need to work out some equitable form of taxation on a worldwide basis.”^[22]

Modifiers of Humanism: Secular, Religious, and Christian

Any assessment of humanism would not be complete if it did not include an understanding of terms that sometimes are used to modify the word “humanism”. Three major terms often used to modify humanism are “secular,” “religious,” and “Christian.” Confusion often surrounds these terms as modifiers of humanism just as confusion surrounds the word “humanism” itself.

Secular Humanism

The most common term now used to modify humanism is the word “secular,” which comes from the Latin saeculum. It means ‘time’ or ‘age.’ Secular is that which pertains to this world, temporal, related to, or connected with worldly things. Secularism knows nothing of the majesty of a sovereign God who transcends and rules over the universe. 

In contrast to secularism, Christianity promotes belief in God and in heavenly and eternal things. No one doubts that Christianity is a religion. Humanists want people to equate religion with concerns about God, the church, personal salvation, and things heavenly and eternal. Since humanists reject beliefs about God, personal salvation, eternal life, etc., humanists want people to think of humanism as secular, not as religious. 

A major modern popular concept of the secular is that there are certain areas of human life and activity that may be legitimately separated from religion. These areas of life are now generally presumed to include politics, the arts, education, science, commerce, entertainment, economics, foreign affairs, environmental issues, industry, journalism, transportation, business, civil governments, etc. By applying the term “secular” to all these areas, humanism identifies itself with all these areas, and seeks to separate them from the influence of religion. 

Humanists argue that religious people should confine their religion to matters of worship and attending to the spiritual needs of individuals in their private lives. They argue that religion is only a private matter, and that therefore Christians should have nothing to do with these public matters. Many who profess Christianity seem to have accepted this humanistic way of thinking. Humanists have deceived many professed Christians into believing that the categorical distinction between the secular and the religious is a proper distinction. It is not! The Bible never makes a categorical distinction between the secular and the religious. In fact, the modern concept of the secular, as distinguished from the religious, is never found in the Bible. This categorical distinction is a relatively modern concept, unknown to history until after the time of Thomas Acquinas (1225-1274 AD).

Religion touches all areas of life. The Christian religion is just as concerned with life in this world as it is with eternal life. For Christians, there is no area of life that should not be regulated by the word of God. “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17). Any Christian who thinks his religion is only a private matter has too limited an understanding of Christianity. Christians cannot be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, or a leavening influence within the world unless the Christian faith is applied to all public and private sectors of life.

Religious Humanism

Humanists have not always wanted people to think of humanism as secular. They now want people to think of them as secular because that now seems to be to their advantage. There was a time, however, when humanists thought it was to their advantage to be known as a religion. They then used the word “religious” to modify humanism. Although modern humanists do not now generally refer to their philosophy as a religion, and although many of them will object to modern humanism being classified as a religion, it is nonetheless true that modern humanism is indeed a religion. 

Modern humanism claims to be a religion. Claims made by humanists that humanism is a religion date back more than a century. “As early as 1872, Octavius B. Frothingham wrote Religion of Humanity in which he used the doctrine of evolution to establish a humanistic, naturalistic concept of religious and ethical values.”^[23] In 1930, Charles F. Potter, one of the signers of Humanist Manifesto I, wrote a book entitled Humanism: A New Religion. The first sentence in the preface states, “The purpose of this book is to set forth . . . the main outline and principal points of the new religion called humanism.”^[24] Many other statements in that book also claim that humanism is a religion. The signers of Humanist Manifesto I believed that the circumstances of their world had “created a situation which requires a new statement of the means and purposes of religion.”^[25] They believed that “to establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present.”^[26] They declared that in “order that religious humanism may be better understood, we, the undersigned, desire to make certain affirmations which we believe the facts of our contemporary life demonstrate.”^[27] Humanist Manifesto I affirmed fifteen principles. Of these, eight use language that requires recognition that humanism be considered a religion. The last paragraph of that document begins with the words, “So stands the theses of religious humanism.”^[28] Forty years later, Paul Kurtz stated that Humanist Manifesto I “was concerned with expressing a general religious and philosophical outlook”^[29] He also noted that Humanist Manifesto II also addressed itself to “the problems of religion.”^[30]

In addition to claiming to be a religion, humanism has religious characteristics. Among these are faith assumptions, attempts to answer basic and ultimate religious concerns, creedal statements, etc.^[31] Moreover, humanism has been legally declared, on several occasions, to be a religion. The U. S. Supreme Court declared in 1961 that among “religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, secular Humanism and others.”^[32]

Humanists apparently do not now wish for humanism to be considered a religion because – with the prevailing concept of the secular as opposed to the religious, if humanism were generally thought of as a religion – humanism would then have no better standing in the popular mind than is now generally given to Christianity. Moreover, humanism would then not be able to identify itself with the secular. In short, religion was once held in high esteem in this country. Now, however, religion is out, secularism is in!

As religion, humanism is a form of self-worship. Humanism as self-worship in our society manifests itself in two primary ways. One is the quest for things (materialism) and the other is the quest for pleasure (hedonism). The quest for these makes many moderns act like they think humanity is only physical and temporal. Whereas humanism emphasizes self-hood, Christianity emphasizes self-denial (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). For Christians, material things and pleasurable experiences are not evil in themselves, but their singular pursuit causes modern man to forget the spiritual nature and eternal destiny of his soul. Christians should remember that Jesus taught that in order to gain life, one must lose it (Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33; John 12:25).

Christian Humanism

Just as the term “religious” preceded “secular” in modifying humanism, so also did the word “Christian” precede “religious” in modifying humanism. There are two senses in which the word “Christian” has been used as a modifier of humanism. The first sense is of Catholic scholars like Erasmus of Rotterdam and Thomas More in England who studied ancient classical literature, but who professed belief in Christ. The other sense relates to persons of more recently times, like C. S. Lewis and other Christian apologists. For them, humanism meant something different from that indicated by modern humanism. For them, humanism referred to the dignity of man as created by God and made in Cod’s image. Man’s eternal worth, his dominion over nature, his immortality and his creative ability were central concepts of Christian humanism. Even here, however, many who considered themselves Christian humanists had so compromised Christianity with naturalism that they were often more in tune with modern humanism than they were with Christianity.^[33]

The strength of modern humanism is such that, for all practical purposes, the expression “Christian humanism” is now a contradiction in terms inasmuch as genuine Christianity is generally realized to be just the opposite of humanism. Paul Kurtz, a leading spokesman of modern humanism and former editor of The Humanist magazine, says “Humanism cannot in any fair sense of the word apply to one who still believes in God as the source and the creator of the universe. Christian Humanism would be possible only for those who are willing to admit that they are atheistic Humanists. It surely does not apply to God-intoxicated believers.”^[34]

Humanism Is Now The Primary Philosophical Enemy of Christianity

Until the 1960s the word “humanism” was seldom heard by the man on the street. Most Christians seem to find it difficult to believe that in the battle for the mind of modern men, humanism has confronted Christianity and now appears to have greater influence in the Western World than does Christianity. Christians know that biblical morality has severely deteriorated since mid-twentieth century, but Christians have generally not known why.

Now, all of a sudden, Christians are beginning to learn that humanism has ruling control over every discipline of study in all public elementary and secondary schools, and in all state colleges and universities; that humanism is the major ruling philosophy in all major professions such as law, medicine, the media, sociology and psychology; and that it’s values dictate most policies of our federal and state bureaucracies. Humanism rules in industry and commerce, in the arts and in foreign affairs. Humanism has turned the Christian world upside down – a reversal from accomplishments of apostolic Christianity! (See Acts 17:6).

A thought provoking assessment of changes humanism has brought about in modern America is given by William A. Stanmeyer. He writes that . . . 

“in the watershed generation since World War II, secular humanism took an aggressive, intolerant, even imperialistic stance. Through variegated cultural and legal changes, secular humanists have modified the public order so that it no longer reinforces Christian values or supports private religious efforts to transmit traditional standards, norms, and values to one’s children. Society’s public policies and laws are no longer a simple extension of the basic commitments and priorities of the Christian individuals who make up that society. In field after field of human endeavor, an extraordinary transformation has take place, as if a butterfly has reversed the process of metamorphosis and changed from a beautiful winged flutterer back to an ugly crawling caterpillar. A society not long ago Christian is now pagan, and the change took place right before our eyes! At the risk of some over-simplification one could summarize the metamorphosis this way: three decades ago, the secular humanist voice was scarcely heard in public policy; two decades ago, it was one among a few; one decade ago, it became the loudest and most influential; in the decade to come, it will seek to silence all other voices. As they seek to gain control of the organs of public policy, the secular humanists will attack enclaves of Christian communal life, such as schools, hospitals, and other charitable organizations transfused with religious commitment. Their goal will be to reduce Christian influence on public morality to the most token and accidental sort”^[35]

After giving numerous examples of how humanism has changed, and is still changing our society, Stanmeyer then says, “an ominous pattern is developing: a multifaceted campaign is mounting to remove Christian influence from society entirely – from its schools, its medical practice, its social service institutions, its laws.”^[36]

Conclusion

We who claim to be Christians have allowed humanism to make fundamental changes within our culture. Humanism will continue to change our culture until and unless we Christians understand it. We must rise up against modern humanism, “stand in the gap” (Ezekiel 22:30), do battle against it where it is most operative and powerful, and restore the principles of Christianity to the cultural and legal foundations which govern our society.

^[1]Copyright © by Robert L. Waggoner, 1987, Revised, 2001. Permission is granted to reproduce and distribute this document for non-commercial educational purposes when unaltered provided that copyright and authorship is given. All other rights reserved. 

^[2]Paul Kurtz, “Preface,” Humanist Manifestos I and II. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1973), 3.

^[3]Paul Kurtz, Same as above, 15. 

^[4]Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan, N. J.: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1976), 58.

^[5]Herbert Schlossberg. Idols For Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983), 50, with footnote, “See the Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. 5, 445; also Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11^th ed., 1911, Vol. 13, 872.”

^[6]Tim LaHaye. The Battle For the Mind. (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1980), 26.

^[7]Homer Duncan. Secular Humanism: The Most Dangerous Religion in America (Lubbock, TX: Missionary Crusader, 1979), 7.

^[8]John Eidsmoe. The Christian Legal Advisor (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1984), 180.

^[9]Norman Geisler. Is Man the Measure? An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983), 104.

^[10]Corliss Lamont. The Philosophy of Humanism. (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1949).

^[11]Francis Schaeffer. The Christian Manifesto. (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1981), 23-24. 

^[12]Milton C. Nahm, ed. Selections From Early Greek Philosophy. (Crofts, 1934), 239, as cited by A. James Reichley. Religion in American Public Life (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1985), 42.

^[13]James Curry, President of American Humanist Association. Quoted from FAC-Sheet #18-A, “Humanism,” Plymouth Rock Foundation, O. Box 425, Martborough, NH 03455-1425.

^[14]Paul Kurtz. “A Secular Humanist Declaration”, Free Inquiry, Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter, 1980/81, 5.

^[15]The source of this article is unknown to me. I received it as a clipping from a friend.

^[16]Humanist Manifesto II, Third.

^[17]Humanist Manifesto II, Fifth.

^[18]Humanist Manifesto I was drafted by Roy Wood Sellers. It was first published in The New Humanist, (May/June, 1933, Vol. VI, No. 3). It was signed by thirty-four people, including John Dewey. Humanist Manifesto II was first published in The Humanist, (September/October, 1973, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5). It was signed by 114 prominent persons, including Isaac Asimov, Edd Doerr, Anthony Flew, Sidney Hook, Lester Kirkendall, Paul Kurtz, Corless Lamont, Lester Mondale, and B. F. Skinner. A Secular Humanist Declaration was drafted by Paul Kurtz. It first appeared in Free Inquiry, (Winter, 1980/81, Vol. 1, No. 1. 3-6). In that issue it was endorsed by fifty-eight people from eight countries, among which were Isaac Asimov, Joseph Fletcher, Sidney Hook, Floyd Matson, and B. F. Skinner. Twenty-three additional endorsements too late for publication then arrived for listing in the next issue. A Declaration of Interdependence: A New Global Ethics first appeared in Free Inquiry, (Fall, 1988, Vol. 8, No. 4, 4-7). It was endorsed by fourteen Humanist Laureates of the Academy of Humanism. This document was also endorsed by the Board of Directors of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the Tenth World Congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. 

^[19]Humanist Manifesto II, Sixth. 

^[20]Humanist Manifesto II, Eleventh. 

^[21]Humanist Manifesto II, Fifteenth.

^[22]Paul Kurtz, “A Declaration of Interdependence: A New Global Ethics,” Free Inquiry, (Fall, 1988, Vol. 8, No. 4, 6). 

^[23]John Eidsmoe, 189. (See chapter 12, “Humanism as an Establishment of Religion,” 179-199). 

^[24]Charles F. Potter, Humanism: A New Religion, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930). 

^[25]Paul Kurtz, Humanist Manifestos I and II, 8. 

^[26]Same as above. 

^[27]Same source, 7.

^[28]Same source, 10. 

^[29]Same source, 3, opening statement in Preface. 

^[30]Same source.

^[31]For further discussion of humanism as a religion, read Chapter 12, “Humanism as an Establishment of Religion,” of John Eidsmoe, The Christian Legal Advisor, 170-199; and Homer Duncan, The Religion of Secular Humanism and The Public Schools, (Lubbock, TX: Missionary Crusader, 1983) 

^[32]367 U.S. 488 (196), footnote 11.

^[33]For a discussion of “Christian humanism,” read Chapter 8, “Christian Humanism,” of Norman L. Geisler, Is Man The Measure? An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism, (Grand Rapids: Baker book House, 1983), 95-107.

^[34]Cited by James Hitchcock, What Is Secular Humanism? Why Humanism Became Secular and How It Is Changing Our World, (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1982), 15, 17.

^[35]William A. Stanmeyer, Clear and Present Danger: Church and State in Post-Christian America. (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1983), 4-5. 

^[36]Same source, 7.

—

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John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2)

August 1, 2013 – 12:10 am

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)

July 30, 2013 – 1:32 am

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: “Why I believe the Bible is true”

July 9, 2013 – 8:38 am

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)

The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy by Jim Wallace

June 24, 2013 – 9:47 am

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)

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part M “Old Testament prophecy fulfilled?”Part 3(includes film DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE)

April 19, 2013 – 1:52 am

  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)

Evidence for the Bible

March 27, 2013 – 9:43 pm

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 | Edit | Comments (0)

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Let me quote from my former pastor Adrian Rogers:

Skeptics seem to think that the Bible is full of scientific errors. However, before an individual can make that assertion, they had better make sure they know both science and Scripture. You see, I have heard unbelievers state that the Bible is not a book of science, but a book of religion, which is basically true. It is not written to teach us about science, but to teach us about God. But the God of salvation and the God of creation are the same. Science doesn’t take God by surprise. A close look at Scripture reveals that it is scientifically accurate.

Every now and then science may disagree with the Bible, but usually science just needs time to catch up. For example, in 1861 a French scientific academy printed a brochure offering 51 incontrovertible facts that proved the Bible in error. Today there is not a single reputable scientist who would support those supposed “facts,” because modern science has disproved them all!

The ancients believed the earth was held up by Atlas, or resting on pillars, or even seated on the backs of elephants. But today we know the earth is suspended in space, a fact the Word of God records in Job 26:7: “He . . . hangeth the earth upon nothing.” God revealed the facts of cosmology long before man had any idea of the truth.

For centuries man believed the earth was flat, but now we know the earth is a globe. The prophet Isaiah, writing 750 years before the birth of Christ, revealed that “God sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22). The word translated here as “circle” was more commonly translated “sphere.” In other words, Isaiah explained that the earth was a globe centuries before science discovered it.

When Ptolemy charted the heavens, he counted 1026 stars in the sky. But with the invention of the telescope man discovered millions and millions of stars, something that Jeremiah 33:22 revealed nearly three thousand years ago: “The host of heaven cannot be numbered.” How did these men of God know the truth of science long before the rest of the world discovered it? They were moved by the Holy Spirit to write the truth. God’s Word is not filled with errors. It is filled with facts, even scientific facts.

When the black plague was killing one quarter of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century, it was the church, not science, that helped overcome the dread disease. The leaders in the church noticed the instructions given by the Lord to Moses in Leviticus 13:46: “All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.” These early believers did not know microbiology or understand what germs were, but they could understand a clear teaching to quarantine someone who was sick. So they followed the Biblical dictum, quarantined those sick with the plague, and stopped it from spreading. The Bible had its science correct even before man discovered the truth! Don’t accept the charge that the Bible is filled with scientific errors. Modern science seems determined to explain God away, and refuses to acknowledge any evidence of the supernatural. But the science of Scripture is one reason to accept the Bible as God’s word. 

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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 King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I have ever done are posts from John MacArthur. One is on what the Bible has to say about alcohol and then what the Bible says concerning the prophecy of the city of Tyre.

Biblical Inspiration Validated By Science, Part 2 (Selected Scriptures) John MacArthur

We are examining the great doctrine of biblical inspiration. We are looking at the reality that God wrote the Bible and the question always comes up…How do we know God wrote the Bible? There are a number of ways to answer that question. One way to answer it is to look at what the Bible says about the scientific world. To put it simply, whoever designed the universe understands it. Whoever created everything understands His creation, from the microcosm of the minute world of atomic energy, to the macrocosm of limitless space. Whoever created it all understands it because He conceived it and he made it and He sustains it. And whoever is intelligent enough to create this universe with its astonishing and immeasurable complexity is certainly capable of writing a book explaining the way things really are in a simple enough fashion so as to leave His stamp on that book as the divine author. And the fact of the matter is, communication is not something difficult for the creator, He is a communication genius beyond all comprehension. God is the source of all the information that exists and He has appropriately spread it throughout His universe as He deemed necessary to accomplish His purpose.

Post-modernists philosopher Richard Rorty admits that the idea of truth is coherent only in the context of a Christian world view. He said this, “The suggestion that truth is out there, objective and universal, is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language of his own, a non-human language which he wrote into the cosmos.” Now he depreciates that view but that is precisely the biblical view and that is precisely what Christians believe, that God is there…as Francis Schaeffer says…and He is not silent. He has spoken, He has spoken throughout His creation sometimes in the written Word of God and sometimes with a language of His own that is non-human. But the Creator speaks and science is more and more month by month year by year discovering what He has said.

For example, the discovery of DNA, the coded instruction that is in every cell of every living thing means that at the heart of all life is language, a message, information. In other words, the organic world is really a book, it is a repository of complex biological information. And not only the organic world, information has become the key for interpreting the physical universe as well. Everything in creation operates on information that has been transmitted to it in a language from the creator. Scientific American journal said recently, “Ask anybody what the physical world is made of and you are likely to be told matter and energy. Yet if we have learned anything from engineering, biology and physics, information is just as crucial an ingredient. Indeed, some physicists now regard the physical world as made of information with energy and matter as incidentals.” And where does information come from? “In all human experience.” I’ll say that again, “In all human experience, information comes from an intelligent source.” Never is it generated by blind material forces, chance or coincidence. In all human experience information comes only by an intelligent agent, an intelligent agent who can assemble that information and communicate effectively that information to another intelligent agent or to an another receptor of that information that then can function on the basis of that information.

If you look at the microcosm of the world, it is loaded with information. Think of the genetic code. Scientists have now discovered that the genetic code is digital, it’s not analogous to a digital code, it is digital. It is exactly as a digitized computer code. It is not like it, it is in reality a digital code of information. More than a hundred years ago when Darwin came up with his theory, his idea was that a cell was extremely simple, just a bubble of protoplasm, a bubble of jelly. Over the past few decades, however, new technology like electron microscopes have produced a revolution in molecular biology, we now know that the cell is not just simple jelly, simple protoplasm, it is a high-tech molecular machine far more complex than any machine ever built by a human being, and I’m talking about every single cell. Scientists tell us now that every cell is like a miniature factory town. Every single cell hums with power plants, automated factories and recycling centers. In the nucleus is a cellular library of every cell, housing blueprints and plans that are copied and transported to the factories in the cell, each of which is filled with molecular machines that function like computerized motors. These manufacture the immense array of products needed within the cell with the processes all regulated by enzymes that function as stop watches to ensure that everything is perfectly timed. And all things are assembled, gathered, transported and delivered in exactly the required moment. It was Francis Crick of DNA fame who said, “The cell is thus a minute factory bristling with rapid organized chemical activity.” Even the outside of the cell, the surface, the membrane is studded with censors, gates, pumps and identification markers to regulate traffic coming in and out of that cell. Today biologists can not even describe the cell without using the language of machines and engineering.
It was Michael Behe who wrote the blockbuster Darwin’s Black Box in which he posited the obvious truth of intelligent design behind creation, rather than random chance. And Behee describes a cell like this. “Each cell has an automated rapid transit system in which certain molecules function as tiny monorail trains running along tracks to whisk cargo around from one part of the cell to the other. Other molecules act as loading machines, filling up the train cars and attaching address labels. When the train reaches the right address in another part of the cell, it is met by other molecules that act as docking machines, opening them up and removing the supplies. To frame a mental image of the cell, picture it as a large and complex model train layout with tracks crisscrossing everywhere. Its switches and signals perfectly timed so that no trains collide and the cargo reaches its destination precisely when needed.” And Behee goes on to say, and here’s his main point, “This is a level of complexity that Darwin never dreamed of and his theory utterly fails to account for. Why? Because a system of coordinated interlocking parts like this can only operate after all the pieces are in place, which means they must all appear simultaneously, not by any gradual piece by piece process.” Therefore, Behee coined the term “Irreducible complexity.” “To refer to the minimum level of complexity, it must be present before such a highly integrated system can function at all. It cannot evolve piece by piece, it must appear simultaneously in the very same moment. Irreducibly complex systems don’t have any function without this minimum number of parts in place, which means they can’t occur by natural selection.”

As another illustration of this, consider the tiny string-like flagellum attached like a tail to some bacteria. Have you ever seen in a microscope a bacteria with a little tail? As the bacterium swims around in its environment, the flagellum whips around like a propellor and from a diagram if you were to see it, you would consider it to be a kind of motorized machine like you would have in an outboard motor. It is a microscopic rotary motor that comes equipped, scientists tell us, with a hook joint, a drive shaft, o rings, a starter and a bidirectional acid power motor that can hum along at up to…are you ready for this?…one hundred thousand revolutions per minute. Structures like these require dozens of precisely tailored, intricately interacting parts which could not emerge by any gradual process. Instead the coordinated parts must somehow appear on the scene all at the same time, combined and perfectly coordinated in the right patterns for the molecular machine to function at all. And all of this is dependent upon information, operational manuals in every part of the organic world.

This has to come from intelligence. It has to come from the Creator who is communicating this information to His creation. If you go from the micro world to the macro world, it’s the same thing. In fact, I am fascinated, and always have been, by the macro world…stars, space. And science is continuing to discover the complexity of our cosmology. This universe, as we know it, is intricately balanced as if on an edge of a knife. Take, for example, just the force of gravity. If it were only slightly weaker, all stars would be red dwarfs, too cold to support life in the universe. If it were only slightly stronger, all stars would be blue giants burning too briefly for life to develop. The margin of error in the universe expansion rate is only one part in ten to the sixtieth power. Cosmologists speaks of cosmic coincidences, meaning that the fundamental forces of the universe just happen to have the exact numerical value required to make life possible. The slightest change would yield a universe inhospitable to life.
What makes the question so puzzling is that there is no physical cause explaining this fine tuned complexity. George Greenstein(?), writes, “Nothing in all of physics explains why its fundamental principles should conform themselves so precisely to life’s requirement.” In other words, there is no physical explanation for why the universe is the way it is. To make it even more clear, perhaps, imagine that you found a huge universe-creating machine, okay? And it had thousands of dials on this machine representing the gravitational constant and the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force and the ratio of the mass of the protein and the electron and all the rest of the complexity of matter, and imagine that each dial has hundreds of possible settings and you can spin them and twirl them around at your will. Nothing is preset to any particular value. What you discover is, however, that the infinite number of dials just happen to be set exactly at the right value everywhere in the entire complexity of the universe so that it all operates perfectly when even the slightest tweak of one of the cosmic knobs would produce a universe where life was impossible. As a science reporter puts it, “They are like the knobs on God’s console counsel and they seem almost miraculously tuned to allow life.” And so they are. They are not constrained by any natural law, that’s what Einstein couldn’t find, that’s what scientists can’t find today. And yet scientists are reluctant to acknowledge a creator. Astronomer Heinz Oberhummer  says, “I am not a religious person, but I could say this universe is designed very well.” Well you ought to be a religious person if you can say that. How about astronomer Fred Hoyle, he said this, it’s a famous quote, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics.” Who is that super-intellect? Hoyle says, “An alien mind from another universe,” which just moves his problem somewhere else.

All of that to say that the Creator is the master of information, the master of information in the microcosm, the master of information in the macrocosm. So the Creator knows His creation and the Creator knows the complexity of His creation and He knows the simplicity of His creation and He knows what scientists are going to find out. And He has to write a book that when time goes on and centuries go on and millennia goes on and science digs deeper and deeper and deeper into the matter and the organic life of the universe, nothing that He has said is going to be wrong. And so He speaks in His Word and since He is the Creator, what He says in His Word is absolutely accurate, absolutely right. His Word does not speak about the complexity of the atomic world or the world of cellular structure in the organic realm and the world of complex atomic structure in the inorganic world. It doesn’t speak about that which is only observable to a high-tech far-advanced society. It speaks to those things which are observable by everyone and have always been observable to one degree or another, but it speaks also of things that were not discovered at the time that they were basically written in the Word of God. In fact, they were contrary to common belief at that time. And yet as time has gone on, they have proven to be exactly accurate.

Let’s take some simple categories and look at them. First of all, hydrology…hydrology. This deals with the subject of water…of water, the waters of the earth. You can get all the way in to the seventeenth century, the sixteen hundreds, and you will find scientists puzzled about the source of water, talking about subterranean reservoirs where water is held down in the belly of the earth and comes up from there. But in the seventeenth century, scientists such as Edmé Mariotte, Pierre Perrault, and Edmond Halley, all three in the seventeenth century, opened up the modern understanding of hydrological motion, or the hydrological cycle, how there is only an original mass of water. It is always the same, it always has been the same, it always will be the same. This is the first law of thermodynamics. This same mass of water, this same cycle of the combination of H2O moves continually through a process of evaporation, transportation, precipitation and irrigation, and then run off back to start the process all over again. The Bible is absolutely accurate in the way it presents the hydrological cycle.
Listen to the language of Isaiah 55 and verse 10. “For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and furnish seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be which goes forth from My mouth. It shall not return to Me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I said it.” Now the point of that statement by the prophet is to show that the Word of God always accomplishes its purposes as God sends it forth. But the analogy, and the Bible isn’t a book trying to teach you science, but when it uses a scientific analogy it is an accurate one. It’s as the rain comes down from heaven and returns there but only after its watered the earth that you see the hydrological cycle.

If you turn with me for a moment to Ecclesiastes chapter 1, you find again a reference to this. In verse 6 it talks about how the sun rises, the sun sets, hastening to its place. It rises there again, blowing toward the south and turning toward the north. The wind continues swirling along. Talks about wind currents as well. And on its circular courses the wind returns, the wind runs in circles. This is before they knew the earth was a circle. But the wind is running the circle of the earth. You have in verse 7 hydrology, all the rivers flow into the sea yet the sea is not full, or the sea does not overflow. Why? Because when all the water flows into the sea, it evaporates back out of the sea up to the heavens where it is retained in the clouds and then deposited again on the earth and runs the same cycle again and again.

In Job, perhaps the first book ever written, talking about the same time as the Pentateuch would be written, you have this in Job 36 verses 27 and 28, “For He draws up the drops of water, He draws them up, they distill rain from the midst which the clouds pour down. They drip upon man abundantly.” Now it’s starting to put together the rain and the snow come out of the sky, they come down, they irrigate the earth, they go into the rivers and the streams, they flow into the sea, the sea never overflows because the water is drawn up and distilled in the clouds. The clouds move over the land and they drip upon man abundantly and the cycle goes on. Psalm 135:7, “He causes the vapors to ascend to the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain.” There you have all of those elements of evaporation, transportation, precipitation, irrigation and run off and the cycle goes on again.

And Scripture speaks about this not infrequently, but quite frequently. Just a couple of other passages that show this. The twenty-sixth chapter of Job verse 8, “He wraps up the waters in His clouds and the cloud does not burst under them.” God collects the evaporated water in the clouds and the clouds as…as thin as they are, as seemingly weak as they are…hold the water. They hold massive, massive amounts of water as we well know who have lived through severe storms when those clouds bring that water, collecting it off the sea as they go and bursting upon the land even to the degree of hurricanes and their horrific deluges.

There is in Psalm 33:7, and I don’t want to go to every passage, I’ll skip a few. Psalm 33:7, “He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap.” This pictures the great ocean reservoir. “He lays up the deeps in storehouses.” God’s storehouse for the water is the deep, is the ocean.
In Job 38:22 it says, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?” That is to say, have you ever ascended into heaven and gone into a cloud?

Water is an amazing thing. I was reading this week about a mole…m-o-l-e…. It is a collection of molecules and in one mole of water which is 18 grams of water, you have six-hundred-billion-trillion molecules. It is a staggering amount of material in one mole of water. And this massive amount of water moves in this continual cycle that God has designed and simply explained in Scripture not as a scientific explanation but almost in each case either to show the ignorance of man and the inability of man to ascend into the place where God dwells, or to use as an illustration of some spiritual truth.

Going beyond that, let’s talk about astronomy. The most amazing fact of modern astronomy is the essentially infinite size of the universe and the infinite variety of the physical components of that universe, including the stars. And after years and years, there’s universal agreement on the nature of space and all that occupies it.

To show you something of the Scripture’s understanding of this, go to Psalm 103…Psalm 103. Remember now, whoever wrote this book understood this perfectly at a time when no one else did because He is the Creator. In Psalm 103 and verse 11 we read this, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving kindness toward those who fear Him.” Now again we find God making statements that are a true indication of cosmology, a true indication true science and a true understanding of the universe, but not for the sake of the science but for the sake of the illustration. And he is trying to express the infinite nature of His loving kindness and he parallels it to the height of the heavens, as high as the heavens are above the earth, that is how great is the loving kindness of God toward those who fear Him. And just how great is it? It is equal to the distance between the east and the west. Now try to figure that out. How far is east from west? It’s impossible because it’s an infinite line…it’s an infinite line. And there is that point being made. That’s how far He’s removed our transgressions from us. He has removed them infinitely from us as far as east is from west because His loving kindness is infinite, it is as far up as this universe will go. And so we find that God speaks of His infinite loving kindness and His infinite forgiveness by describing the infinity of what we now know is an infinite universe.

In Job 22:12 we read, “Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are.”

And Jeremiah 31 verses 35 to 37 is another very straightforward and accurate statement with regard to astronomy. Jeremiah 31:35, “Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night.” We now know that they all move in a fixed order in orbits, in motions that are fixed and permanently controlled and varying. This is our God and this is His creation and He knows how it operates.

Go down to verse 37, “Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel.” Meaning, you cannot measure the height of the heavens and you cannot discern what holds the earth in its place, anymore than I will cast off the offspring of Israel. Pretty important statement eschatologically, too, isn’t it?

In the third chapter of Jeremiah and verse 22, a very interesting statement. “As the host of heaven cannot be counted and the sand of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David.” Here the Bible says you can’t count the stars and you can’t count the sand on the seashores of the world. That we would agree would be utterly impossible.

However, before the seventeenth century, Hipparchus said there one-thousand and twenty-two stars. Ptolemy said there are one-thousand-fifty-six. Kepler said there are one-thousand and fifty-five. And today scientists tell us there are over one-hundred-billion in our galaxy and billions and billions of uncounted galaxies. Scientists have also discovered in recent centuries that stars are different sizes, different temperatures, various kinds of stars, different varieties. And they are busy cataloging the numerous types of stars.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 15:41, “There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon.” The moon is not like the sun. “Another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory.” This is to illustrate that in the resurrection we will have a different kind of body. And the Bible is right. There are all kinds of stars and they differ one from another. Science has also charted the absolute patterns of orbits which do not vary. The consistency of these bodies in motion, the great astronomer Kepler had predicted mathematically that on December 6, 1631 the planet Venus would pass in front of the sun. He predicted that based upon the fixed orbit of the planet Venus. He didn’t live to see it but a Frenchman, Pierre Gassendi, prepared to see it occur and it did so as predicted. According to Kepler, a transit again would occur over a hundred years later. But there was an English school boy who calculated orbits and found it should occur frankly in two years…to years after the original one calculated by Kepler, it should happen on December 4 in 1639 and it did.

How can you predict that? Because the orbits are fixed and unwavering. And that’s exactly what we’ve just read. The Lord sets things in their place in fixed orbits. Listen to Jeremiah 31:35 and 36, “Thus says the Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night. If this fixed order departs from before Me, then the offspring of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever.”
Look at Psalm 19 for just a moment, in the sixth verse of Psalm 19 a statement is made that science used to laugh at and use it to debunk the accuracy of the Bible. It says in verse 6, speaking of the sun, that the sun is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoices as a strong man to run his course, its rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the other end of them and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” And here the psalmist says that the sun moves from one end of heaven to the other. There were people up until the seventeenth century who thought the sun didn’t move at all. But the psalmist tells us it does move, we now know that the sun is in constant motion, it is in orbit dragging our entire solar system with it and the sun is moving through space at 72 thousand miles per hour in a gigantic orbit that takes two million centuries to complete, based upon that speed. Not many years ago scientists taught that the moon was a great luminous globe like the sun even though 25 centuries ago Job said, “Look to the moon, it does not shine,” Job 25:5. It has no light of its own, it is merely a reflector of the sun.

When you look at the Bible and you look for hydrology and you look for astronomy, the scientific facts are correct. How about geology, the science of the earth? There are a lot of geological things that we could talk about, and I confess that I am not a scientist, but I can read like anybody else and find the things that science is interested in and compare them with the Word of God which is basically what I’ve endeavored to do. But in the realm of geology there is a science called isostasy…isostasy. It is the study of the balance of the earth. It really didn’t come into prominence until around 1959 and it deals with the landmass the mountains, the seas, and how those things all effect the weight of the earth. That is the foundation of what are called geo…what is called geophysics. And the Bible acknowledges this whole matter of isostasy..weight. Isaiah 40 and verse 12, “Behold the Lord God who has measured the waters in the hallow of His hand and marked off the heavens by a span and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales.”

God knows who much everything weight…weighs. It is in perfect harmony. You have all taken a basketball that was not round and have rolled it, right? And seen it go like that….and that’s what we would be doing every so often, bouncing a little if the earth did not move in a balanced fashion. Psalm 104 verses 5 through 8, “He established the earth upon its foundations so that it will not totter. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst establish for them.” The right height of the mountains, the right depth of the valleys, the right weight of the water, the right weight of the dirt and the dust and it all is in perfect balance.

Geology has another sub-science called geodesy, dealing with the shape of the earth. The shape of the earth, we know what it is, it is round. It is spherical. The ancients taught that it was flat, as you well know, and they thought even up to Columbus’ time that if you just kept sailing, you’d fall off the edge. In fact, they used to think that if you sailed through the gates of Pericles, that was the ancient name of Gibralter, if you passed the land mass North Africa and Spain, that was the end and you would fall into nothingness.
But the Bible was crystal-clear about that. Long before that, Isaiah 40 verse 22. “It is He who sits on the circle of the earth.” Circle is a Hebrew word meaning sphere, meaning sphere. The earth is a circle. The Bible says that. And it even goes further than that. In Job 22 verse 14 it talks about the circle of heaven. And in Proverbs 8 and verse 27, that might be a verse just to point to you, Proverbs 8:27, “When He established the heavens, I was there when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep.” What’s that? That’s the one place where you and I can see the circular character of the earth standing on the beach looking at the circle on the horizon across the edge of the deep. The Bible is crystal clear that this is a sphere, that it is a circle and that it is visible on the horizon.

Even more. Job 38, two verses in Job 38, verses 13 and 14. And again remember, these are usually in the context of making a spiritual point or indicating what it is that God knows that we don’t know unless He reveals it to us. But in Job 38 verse 13 it talks about taking hold of the ends of the earth. What in the world does that mean, taking hold of the ends of the earth? If you go to verse 14 you find out. It is turned…the Hebrew says it is turned like clay under the seal, or clay to the seal. You will notice that under is added. It is rotated like clay to the seal. You take a hold of the ends of the earth and you rotate it like clay to the seal.

Here’s what happened. When in ancient times you wanted to write something, you wrote it in clay before paper. In Job’s time you would have written it in soft clay, like God wrote His Law. And then you would have sealed it so everyone had a seal with his name on it. And you took the soft clay and you rolled the seal of your name across the clay which imprinted your signature. That’s how printing is done even today on a cylinder, it’s rolled across. And Job…God is telling Job that the earth, you take the ends of it and you turn it like you turn that clay signature across soft clay to make an imprint. It is rotated on an axis, you take two ends and the earth rotates on the axis around those two ends, one at the north and one at the south. And we saw even in Job, the oldest book, the understanding that the earth is a sphere, that it is a circle and that it rotates on an axis.

It was the seventeenth century when Newton discovered gravity. That was big. Gravity had always been around, he just identified it for what it was. But it was Job chapter 26 verse 7, “He hangs the earth on nothing. He hangs the earth on nothing.” And gravity is even indicated, go to Job 38 for a minute, verses 31 and 32…Job 38:31 and 32. The Lord’s talking again and He’s giving Job a very important lesson about Job’s ignorance. And He says, “You must think you’re something, Job, so let me give you a few things to think about,” verse 31, “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?” What’s He talking about there? He’s talking about gravity. All those stars that move in space in those constellations are held together by divine chains, by divine cords. Who do you think you are? “Do you think you can hold the constellations together? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season? Can you move it through space? Can you guide the bear with her satellites? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens and…or fix their rule over the earth?” Who do you think you are?

There is knowledge…if you go back to the fourteenth chapter of Job of another element of geology…in Job 14 and verse 18, “But the falling mountain crumbles away and the rock moves from its place, water wears away stones. Its torrents wash away the dust of the earth.” This is erosion. This is rock erosion. People didn’t live their life long enough to see it. Post-flood, they…they…they would never have known this. No one is around long enough to see that really take place.

In the thirty-eighth chapter, go back again to Job 38 verses 29 and 30, “From whose womb has come the ice and the frost of heaven? Who has given it birth?” Where does the frost come from? The dew. Where does the ice come from? Water becomes hard like stone and the surface of the deep is imprisoned. What’s that? That’s a glacier. You even have here an understanding of the hardness, the dense hardness of glaciers.

So whether you’re talking about hydrology, whether you’re talking about astronomy, whether you’re talking about geology, the Bible shows the designer and the creator’s understanding of all these things in simple enough expressions for everyone to understand. Let’s talk about meteorology for a minute. This is the circulation of the atmosphere, and I already read you how the wind moves in cycles and in circles because it circles the circle of the earth. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that Galileo discovered that wind had circuits. We read that in Ecclesiastes 1:6. And no scientist before Galileo knew or believed that the air had weight…that it had weight. But Job 28:25 says God imparted weight to the wind…weight to the air.

Let’s talk about physiology briefly…physiology. It wasn’t until 1628 and this was a huge change in the world, that William Harvey discovered the circulation of blood was the key to life. Prior to that, if you got sick, what did they do? Took your blood away. They bled you, stuck leeches on you, cut you open and let you bleed. Not until 1628 did they know what is in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood.” That is scientifically correct. It was about the 1950’s when medicine began to look in psychosomatic illnesses. And there was a book that came out called Personality Manifestations in Psycho…Psychosomatic Illnessand it began for the first time to understand how emotions cause changes in the body, they cause physiology to change. The Bible completely understood this. Psalm 32, David understood it so well, “How blessed,” he starts in Psalm 32, “is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” It’s wonderful…he says…to be forgiven, what a blessing it is to be delivered from guilt.
On the other hand, “When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away.” It had physiological effects. “Through my groaning all day long.” What he means is, I was weakened by my guilt, it affected my strength, it sapped me of my energy. He said, “For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my life juices…literally…my life juices…in the Hebrew…drained away as in the fever heat of summer.” It was like…it was like having…being dehydrated, all my life’s juices disappeared. What are life juices? Well the fluids in your body…blood, secretions of the glands, saliva. The emotional experience of this kind of guilt produced changing amount of blood flow. That’s why when people get angry their face gets red…or when people get frightened their face gets white…or when people lie their mouth gets dry. Excess thyroxin produced by emotion and poured into the blood stream can produce all kinds of things, even fatal heart disease. Also changes muscle tension. In Proverbs 16:24 we read this, “Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Pleasant words make you feel better, right? It’s like Proverbs 17:22, “A merry heart does good like a medicine.” Happiness produces a self of well-being, you feel better. The Bible is accurate about everything, even down to these physiological realities.

Well, that’s only an introduction to the vastness of this wonderful subject. But let’s close by looking at Proverbs 30…Proverbs 30. And this is a good place to bring our thoughts to a conclusion. “The words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, the oracle. The man declares to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal.” Listen to what he says. “Surely I am more stupid than any man and I do not have the understanding of a man, neither have I learned wisdom, nor do I have the knowledge of the Holy One.” On my own I am stupid, I don’t know anything. Verse 4, “Who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, or His Son’s name? Surely you know.” We do? How do we know? Verse 5, “Because every word of God is…what?…is pure, proven, tested.” You know the Holy One, you know that He came from heaven. You know He created the wind and the waters and the ends of the earth and you know His name, and by the way, you know His Son’s name, through His revelation. “And you know that He’s a shield to those who take refuge in Him and do not add to His words, lest He reprove you and you be proved a liar.” What that is saying is simply this, God has spoken and what He said is here. Don’t add to it. And whether it talks about spiritual things, or whether it talks about material things, it is the truth because it is written by the creator who knows. Pray with me.

Father, we are so stunned in one sense to look into the passages of Scripture from ancient books, way back at the beginning, millennia ago, long before man was ever able to develop the skill and the equipment to understand these things, but was all laid out accurately. And herein is the evidence that this book comes from the creator who knows. There is no way that the writers could have known. Moses who wrote the Pentateuch couldn’t have known, apart from revelation all these things, nor could Isaiah the prophet, nor could the writer of Job, or the psalmist or even the Apostles of the New Testament who talked about the differing character of the sun, the moon and the variety of stars. It’s all reflective of one single author who is himself the creator. And how wonderful it is that the one who made all this is none other than the one who came incarnate, for in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. But the Word also became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And as many as received Him, to them He gave the right, the authority and the power to be called the sons of God. We thank You that we can know You, the true and living God. You are the One who made this universe, You are the One who came down to provide spiritual life, eternal life to all who would put their trust in You. And all that You desire to say to us spiritually and to confirm that You indeed are the Creator, you have placed in Your Word. Increase our confidence in it, our love for it, our devotion to it, to know it and thereby to know You, to proclaim it, to defend it to the glory that You deserve as its author and the final object of its purpose which is to redeem sinners for Your eternal glory. We thank You again for the power of the Word in Christ’s name. Amen.

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