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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 271 My May 16, 2016 Letter to Hugh Hefner based on message by pastor Ken Whitten of Idlewild Baptist of Tampa (Featured artist is Nicholas Hlobo )

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Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.

Rankin Wilbourne noted: 

Imagine a man more brilliant that Albert Einstein, more wealthy than Bill Gates, more powerful than Barack Obama, the spiritual pedigree of Billy Graham, but more of a hedonist that Hugh Hefner. That’s King Solomon, who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes – who chased  “if only” in terms of power, money, sex, fame and learning – but who concluded, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen:  Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard,Matt Chandler, George Critchley,  Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee,  Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis,    Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell,  Ken Whitten, Ed Young ,  Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.

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Today I have quoted in my letter to Hugh Hefner extensively from sermons from Ken Whitten of Idlewild Baptist of Tampa, Florida, and Brandon Barnard of Fellowship Bible Church of Little Rock, Arkansas. Plus I quoted Francis Schaeffer concerning some Biblical Archaeology that indicates the Bible is accurate concerning historical details.

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 May 16, 2016 Hugh Hefner
Playboy Mansion  
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815   Dear Mr. Hefner,  

Just a few weeks ago I congratulated you on your 90th birthday and today I am turning 55 years old today and many people call that middle age but how many 110 year old people you see walking around?    I also  have started to think about the end of my life in recent days since it is fast approaching all of us. King Solomon in his book of ECCLESIASTES talks about death quite a lot and he wrote a passage in chapter 2 that I wanted to quote and then I wanted to include some comments from the preacher Ken Whitten in his sermon HAUNTED BY DEATH:Ken Whitten pastor of Tampa’s Idlewild Baptist Church

King Solomon gives us a little key to his heart in the Book of Ecclesiastes when he said he looked for everything imaginable to find satisfaction UNDER THE SUN.  Now folks anytime you look for satisfaction UNDER THE SUN it means you have an earthly view of life and if all you have is an earthly view of life you are going to be discouraged. You can tell Solomon is cynical. In Ecclesiastes 2 it says Solomon has tried LEARNING, LABOR, LEISURE, LUST, LAUGHTER, and LIQUOR but it is just like chasing the wind. It was like a little bubble that a kid would blow and then he catches it and there is nothing left there.

12 So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly; for what will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? 13 And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. 14 The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both. 15 Then I said [j]to myself, “As is the fate of the fool, it will also befall me. Why then have I been extremely wise?” So [k]I said to myself, “This too is vanity.” 16 For there is no [l]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! 17 So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was [m]grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.

Solomon is saying no matter if you are a fool or a wise-man it has nothing to do with removing the reality of death. It is an universal experience and it is going to happen to everyone. The Bible says it “befalls” or overtakes them all. Death overtakes us all.

Solomon looks at life like a race. At the beginning of life and when you are younger you look over your shoulder and in the far distance you see that someone is chasing you and he is in the race with you but you don’t pay much attention to him and there is no sense looking back since you are so far ahead. You think he will never catch you. Then you get a little older and guess what you notice. He seems to be going a little faster and you seem to be going a little slower. And you notice that while you continue to move you are starting to hear the footsteps and you starting failing.

Something is happening to us and we are deteriorating physically. In verse 14 Solomon says one fate  befalls both the fool and the wise and that is they both die. The rich is gonna die and the poor is gonna die. The actors, athletes, entertainers and the movie stars are gonna die.

Solomon doesn’t like this very much and he says in verses 16-17:

16 For there is no [l]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! 17 So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was [m]grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.

Solomon is saying that he doesn’t like this. It doesn’t matter how famous you get because there will be very little remembrance of you. Regardless of how famous you become there are people behind you who are going to be famous and they need your space in the history books and they will take it.

The rich and poor are gonna die. It doesn’t matter what is in your pocketbook but only what is in your heart. If you died tonight where would you spend eternity?

(End of sermon by Ken Whitten)

Below Ken is pictured with his wife Ginny

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You might said that this letter is a real downer but I have some good news to share with you. On Easter morning March 27, 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH our teaching pastor Brandon Barnard delivered the message THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING based on I Corinthians chapter 15 and I wanted to share a portion of that sermon with you today.

Teaching pastor at my church, Brandon Barnard, Fellowship Bible Church

This day is the day that changes everything. The resurrection changes everything and that is why we are gathered here today to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ because it changes everything.

Some of you are going to be blown away by the opportunity before you this Easter morning because the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands at the very heart of Christianity. If what we we are gathered here to celebrate did not happen then people need to pity us as believers.  They need to feel sorry for you and me more than anyone on earth because we have set our hopes firmly on a lie.

But if the resurrection really did happen, then we need to repent and we need to believe in Jesus and we need to rejoice that we have hope in this life and the life to come. 

Paul wrote this to the believers in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 15:3-6, 13-21 English Standard Version (ESV)

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.19 If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

If Christ hasn’t been raised then these facts are true:

  1. PREACHING AND FAITH ARE IN VAIN.
  2. WE ARE FALSE WITNESSES
  3. WE ARE STILL IN OUR SINS.
  4. THOSE WHO DIED IN FAITH ARE STILL DEAD
  5. WE ARE TO BE PITIED MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD.

Verse 20 says, “but Christ has been raised!!! Therefore, these things are true:

  1. Our faith is significant, valuable and eternal.
  2. we are truth tellers!!
  3. we are forgiven of our sins.
  4. death is not our final stop.
  5. don’t pity us but join us in believing in Jesus Christ.

(End of Sermon from Brandon)

A lot of people say they do not believe in an afterlife. However, would you agree that if the Bible is correct in regards to history then Jesus did rise from the grave? Let’s take a closer look at evidence concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

I know that you highly respected Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and he co-authored with Francis Schaeffer the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? Below is a piece of evidence from that book:

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop

Francis Schaeffer

We should take one last step back into the history of the Old Testament. In the previous note we looked first at the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to around 100 B.C. Then we went back to the period of the Late Monarchy and looked first at the siege of Hezekiah in Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 B.C. and also at the last years of Judah down to about 600 B.C. Then we went further back to about 850 B.C., to Ahab and Jezebel, the ivory house, the Black Obelisk, the Moabite Stone and so on–then back again to about 950 B.C., to the time of Solomon and his son Rehoboam and the campaign by Shishak, the Egyptian pharaoh.

This should have built up in our minds a vivid impression of the historic reliability of the biblical text, including even the seemingly obscure details such as the ration tablets in Babylon. We saw, in other words, not only that the Bible gives us a marvelous world view that ties in with the nature of reality and answers the basic problems which philosophers have asked down through the centuries, but also that the Bible is completely reliable, EVEN ON THE HISTORICAL LEVEL.

The previous notes looked back to the time of Moses and Joshua, the escape from Egypt, and the settlement in Canaan. Now we will go back further–back as far as Genesis 12, near the beginning of the Bible.

Do we find that the narrative fades away to a never-never land of myths and legends? By no means. For we have to remind ourselves that although Genesis 12 deals with events a long time ago from our moment of history (about 2000 B.C. or a bit later), the civilized world was already not just old but ancient when Abram/Abraham left “Ur of the Chaldeans” (see Genesis 11:31).

Ur itself was excavated some fifty years ago. In the British Museum, for example, one can see the magnificent contents of a royal burial chamber from Ur. This includes a gold headdress still in position about the head of a queen who died in Ur about 2500 B.C. It has also been possible to reconstruct from archaeological remains what the streets and buildings must have been like at the time.

Like Ur, the rest of the world of the patriarchs (that is, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) was firm reality. Such places as Haran, where Abraham went first, have been discovered. So has Shechem from this time, with its Canaanite stone walls, which are still standing, and its temple.

Genesis 12:5-9New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the [a]persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they [b]set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, to the[c]oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your [d]descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord andcalled upon the name of the Lord. Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the[e]Negev.

Haran and Shechem may be unfamiliar names to us but the Negrev (or Negeb) is a name we have all read frequently in the news accounts of our own day. 

The spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be  found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

PS: HUGH I have written you 36 TIMES and many of those letters have been from the sermons at my church in Little Rock. HUGH you may not think the  Bible is correct about the existence of an afterlife. However, are you willing to take a look at some evidence that demonstrates the Bible is historically accurate and trustworthy?

Haran pictured below

UR of the Chaldees was the port of CHALDEA (Babylonia), a major trade and commerce post.

Headdress of Queen Puabi of Ur, Mesopotamia, 2550 BCE:

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Featured artist is Nicholas Hlobo

Preview: Nicholas Hlobo in Season 9 of Art21 “Art in the Twenty-First Century” (2018)

Nicholas Hlobo

Nicholas Hlobo was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1975 and grew up in Transkei, South Africa. His works on paper, sculptures, installations, and performances utilize rubber, ribbon, leather, and a variety of domestic objects to explore both his identity as a gay Xhosa man and issues of masculinity, sexuality, and ethnicity in South African culture.

Subtly and subversively weaving together bodily innuendos and historical references, Hlobo uses raw materials to represent female and male forms and question gender roles. Interested in the history of colonization in South Africa and the broad and subtle ways that colonization occurs in contemporary life, Hlobo cuts and stitches materials back together, to represent the idea of the healing that follows a tearing apart.

Nicholas Hlobo received a fine-art degree from the Technikon Witwatersrand (2002). His awards and residencies include the Rolex Visual Arts Protégé (2010–11); Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2009); and Tollman Award for Visual Art (2006). He has had major exhibitions at Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden (2017); Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2016); Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC (2015); Savannah College of Art and Design (2014, 2010, 2007); Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2014); Locust Project, Miami (2013); Biennale of Sydney (2012); La Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Venice Biennale (2011); National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (2011); Liverpool Biennial (2010); Tate Modern, London (2008); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2008); Guangzhou Triennial, China (2008); and Studio Museum in Harlem (2008). Hlobo lives and works in Johannesburg.

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RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Part 154e My April 15, 2016 letter to Stephen Hawking

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STARMUS panel announces ground-breaking Stephen Hawking Medals for Science Communication at the The Royal Society Featuring: Professor Sir Harry Kroto, Alexei Leonov, Dr Richard Dawkins, Dr Brian May, Professor Stephen Hawking, Professor Garik Israelian 

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Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy Hawking.

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On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Sir David AttenboroughMark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael BatePatricia ChurchlandAaron CiechanoverNoam Chomsky,Alan DershowitzHubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan FeuchtwangDavid Friend,  Riccardo GiacconiIvar Giaever , Roy GlauberRebecca GoldsteinDavid J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan GreenfieldStephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan HaidtTheodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Hermann HauserRoald Hoffmann,  Bruce HoodHerbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve JonesShelly KaganMichio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman,  Lawrence KraussHarry Kroto, George LakoffElizabeth Loftus,  Alan MacfarlanePeter MillicanMarvin MinskyLeonard Mlodinow,  Yujin NagasawaAlva NoeDouglas Osheroff,  Jonathan Parry,  Saul PerlmutterHerman PhilipseCarolyn PorcoRobert M. PriceLisa RandallLord Martin Rees,  Oliver Sacks, John SearleMarcus du SautoySimon SchafferJ. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-ArmstrongRonald de Sousa, Victor StengerBarry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond TallisNeil deGrasse Tyson,  .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John WalkerFrank WilczekSteven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the first video below in the 15th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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In the popular You Tube video “Renowned Academics Speaking About God” you made the following statement:

“M-Theory doesn’t disprove God, but it does make him unnecessary. It predicts that the universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing without the need for a creator.” –Stephen Hawking, Cambridge theoretical physicist

Earlier I responded to Dr. Hawking’s assertion.

Letter on April 15, 2016

John Martin, Belshazzar’s Feast, c.1821; half-size sketch held by the Yale Center for British Art

RembrandtBelshazzar’s Feast, 1635, (National Gallery, London). The message is written in vertical lines starting at the top right corner, with “upharsin” taking two lines.

In 1976 Adrian Rogers led a group from our church Bellevue Baptist to Israel on a tour and I was privileged to be a part of that tour and we saw some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Dead Sea Scrolls

Francis Schaeffer pictured below

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop pictured below:

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April 15, 2016

Dr. Stephen Hawking, c/o Centre for Theoretical Cosmology
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
Wilberforce Road, Cambridge
CB3 0WA, UK

Dear Dr. Hawking,

Today is April 15, 2016 or tax day as you know. The government always comes to get the balance of their taxes on this day every year and many people hate it. There is coming another day for every person when  their works will be weighed and you don’t want the judge to say, “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting” just like the writing on the wall said about King Belshazzar. Here is portion of Daniel chapter 5:

 King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand.

Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver… of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. The king called loudly to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers. The king declared[b] to the wise men of Babylon, “Whoever reads this writing, and shows me its interpretation, shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold around his neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.”

24 “Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. 25 And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. 26 This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered[g] the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; 27 Tekel, YOU HAVE BEEN WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES AND FOUND WANTING28 Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”[i]

29 Then Belshazzar gave the command, and Daniel was clothed with purple, a chain of gold was put around his neck, and a proclamation was made about him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

30 That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. 31 [j]And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.

On You Tube you can watch the short sermon “Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God,” and you will hear these words:

Do you remember the story about the handwriting on the wall that is found in the fifth chapter of Daniel? Belshazzar hosted a feast with a thousand of his lords and ladies. Suddenly, a gruesome hand appeared out of nowhere and began to write on a wall. The king was disturbed and asked for someone to interpret the writing. Daniel was found and gave the interpretation. After the interpretation, “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Daniel 5:29). Basing their opinion on Babylonian records, the historians claim this never happened. According to the records, the last king of Babylon was not Belshazzar, but a man named Nabonidas. And so, they said, the Bible is in error. There wasn’t a record of a king named Belshazzar. Well, the spades of archaeologists continued to do their work.In 1853, an inscription was found on a cornerstone of a temple built by Nabonidas, to the god Ur, which read: “May I, Nabonidas, king of Babylon, not sin against thee. And may reverence for thee dwell in the heart of Belshazzar, my first-born favorite son.” From other inscriptions, it was learned that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents. Nabonidas traveled while Belshazzar stayed home to run the kingdom. Now that we know that Belshazzar and Nabonidas were co-regents, it makes sense that Belshazzar would say that Daniel would be the third ruler.

Over and over again in these letters I have compared you to King Solomon because of your lifestyle and your vain pursuit of satisfaction in the 6 “L” words. According to the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon looked into  learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries,  and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20) in his pursuit of satisfaction UNDER THE SUN and then in the final chapter he looks ABOVE THE SUN and brings God back into the picture.

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.[c] 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with[d] every secret thing, whether good or evil.

On Easter morning March 27, 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH our teaching pastor Brandon Barnard delivered the message THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING based on I Corinthians chapter 15 and I wanted to share a portion of that sermon with you today.

This day is the day that changes everything. The resurrection changes everything and that is why we are gathered here today to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ because it changes everything.

Some of you are going to be blown away by the opportunity before you this Easter morning because the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands at the very heart of Christianity. If what we we are gathered here to celebrate did not happen then people need to pity us as believers.  They need to feel sorry for you and me more than anyone on earth because we have set our hopes firmly on a lie.

But if the resurrection really did happen, then we need to repent and we need to believe in Jesus and we need to rejoice that we have hope in this life and the life to come. 

The first Adam messed it up for all of us, but the second Adam, Jesus Christ, he made everything right. The scripture says, “As in the first Adam everyone dies, but in the second Adam (Jesus Christ) we all can be made alive.

The latest statistic is one out of one people die. No one escapes death, but there is one who defeated it, and what you and I believe about this one determines our eternal destiny. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus changes everything.

Jesus predicted this would happen in John 2:18-22:

 18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three daysI will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple,[a] and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Paul wrote this to the believers in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 15:3-6, 13-21 English Standard Version (ESV)

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.19 If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

_____

STEPHEN you said above that you do not believe in an afterlife. However, would you agree that if the Bible is correct in regards to history then Jesus did rise from the grave? Let’s take a closer look at evidence concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

I know that you highly respected Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and he co-authored with Francis Schaeffer the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? Below is a piece of evidence from that book.

A much more dramatic story surrounds the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the present century. The Dead Sea Scrolls, some of which relate to the text of the Bible, were found at Qumran, about fifteen miles from Jerusalem.

Most of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek. Many people have been troubled  by the length of time that has elapsed between the original writing of the documents and the present translations. How could the originals be copied from generation to generation and not be grossly distorted in the process? There is, however, much to reassure confidence in the text we have.

In the case of the New Testament, there are codes of the whole New Testament (that is, manuscripts in book form, like the Codes Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus, dated around the fourth and fifth centuries respectively) and also thousands of fragments, some of them dating back to the second century. The earliest known so far is kept in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. It is only a small fragment, containing on one side John 18:31-33 and on the reverse, verses 37 and 38. It is important, however, both for its early date (about A.D.125) and for the place where it was discovered, namely Egypt. This shows that John’s Gospel was known and read in Egypt at that early time. There are thousands of such New Testament texts in Greek from the early centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection.

In the case of the Old Testament, however, there was once a problem. There were no copies of the Hebrew Old Testament in existence which dated from before the ninth century after Christ. This did not mean that there was no way to check the Old Testament, for there were other translations in existence, such as the Syriac and the Septuagint (a translation into Greek from several centuries before Christ). However, there was no Hebrew version of the Old Testament from earlier than the ninth century after Christ–because to the Jews the Scripture was so holy it was the common practice to destroy the copies of the Old Testament when they wore out, so that they would not fall into disrespectful use.

Then in 1947, a Bedouin Arab made a discovery not far from Qumran, which changed everything. While looking for sheep, he came across a cave in which he discovered some earthenware jars containing a number of scrolls. (There jars are now in the Israeli Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.) Since that time at least ten other caves in the same vicinity have yielded up other scrolls and fragments. Copies of all the Old Testament books except Esther have been discovered (in part or complete) among these remains. One of the most dramatic single pieces was a copy of the Book of Isaiah dated approximately a hundred years before Christ. What was particularly striking about this is the great closeness of the discovered text tothe Hebrew text, whicch we previously had, a text written about a thousand years later!

On the issue of text, the Bible is unique as ancient documents go. No other book from that long ago exists in even a small percentage of the copies we have of the Greek and Hebrew texts which make up the Bible. We can be satisfied that we have a copy in our hands which closely approximates the original. Of course, there have been some mistakes in copying, and all translation lose something of the original language. That is inevitable. But the fact that most of us use translations into French, German, Chinise, English, and so on does not mean that we have an inadequate idea of what was written originally. We lose some of the nuances of the language, even when the translation is good, but we do not lose the essential content and communication.

The spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be  found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.comhttp://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

________

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The meaning of Lord of the Rings can be summed up by one 2 min scene and below is the scene and the transcript and then some commentary.

—-The meaning of Lord of the Rings can be summed up by one 2 min scene and below is the scene and the transcript and then some commentary. 
https://youtu.be/k6C8SX0mWP0

Transcript:
Frodo Baggins: I can’t do this Sam.

Samwise Gamgee: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.

Frodo Baggins: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Samwise Gamgee: That there’s some good in this world, Mr Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

——-

COMMENTARY 
There is still some good in this world and its worth fighting for. No matter how dark and desperate the world appears, Christians must never lose hope. Relentless hope should be ingrained in our DNA. Our faith and trust cannot be ultimately in the government, or in any leader, but only in God Himself. Scripture shows that God often does his best redemptive work in dark and desperate times. Christ’s brutal torture and death on the cross is “Exhibit A” that God can use even the darkest moments in world history for His Glory and for our ultimate good; even when we don’t understand why. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Sam urges Frodo to not to give up on his mission — though the journey will be dark and desperate. He pleads, “There is some good in this world Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!” When we see a man and a woman commit themselves for life unconditionally in marriage; when we hold and look into the eyes of a baby who has been rescued from abortion; when we place that same newborn into the loving hands of a family; when our families are able to teach, guide and protect children from the many dangers and deceptions of this world; when we are free to exercise and live out our faith without governmental interference; when we see the tears of others who have come to faith — these things are examples of the good in this world that is always worth fighting for. Looking forward, we need to develop a kind of spiritual resilience that shields us from discouragement, cynicism and the temptation to give up when the path is difficult. As long as God gives us breath, we must be willing to run the race and fight the good fight
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/85-years-ago-today-j-r-r-tolkien-convinces-c-s-lewis-that-christ-is-the-true-myth/%3famp

85 Years Ago Today: J. R. R. Tolkien Convinces C. S. Lewis That Christ Is the True Myth

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016  | Justin Taylor

On an early Sunday morning, September 20, 1931, three 30-something English professors took a stroll together on Addison’s Walk in the grounds of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford:

  • 32-year-old C. S. Lewis (Fellow and Tutor of English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford),
  • 39-year-old J. R. R. Tolkien (Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford), and
  • 35-year-old Hugo Dyson (Tutor and Lecturer at Reading University).

Their time together had begun the evening before at dinner, but their conversation went late into the night.

After Tolkien left around 3 a.m., Lewis and Dyson continued talking until they retired at  4 a.m.

The following Tuesday (September 22), Lewis recounted the scene to his longtime friend and correspondent, Arthur Greeves:

We began on metaphor and myth—interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We all held our breath, the other two appreciating the ecstasy of such a thing almost as you would.

We continued (in my room) on Christianity: a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot: then discussed the difference between love and friendship—then finally drifted back to poetry and books.

Later in the letter, discussing the writings of William Morris (a 19th-century English novelist and poet who had greatly influenced Lewis from his youth), Lewis notes:

These hauntingly beautiful lands which somehow never satisfy,—this passion to escape from death plus the certainty that life owes all its charm to mortality—these push you on to the real thing because they fill you with desire and yet prove absolutely clearly that in Morris’s world that desire cannot be satisfied.

The [George] MacDonald conception of death—or, to speak more correctly, St Paul’s—is really the answer to Morris: but I don’t think I should have understood it without going through Morris. He is an unwilling witness to the truth. He shows you just how far you can go without knowing God, and that is far enough to force you . . . to go further.

The following month (October 18), Lewis wrote to Greeves again about their conversation:

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself . . . I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.

Years later Lewis wrote a poem entitled “What the Bird Said Early in the Year,” which not coincidentally is set in Addison’s Walk, and has to do with a spell becoming undone.

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear: This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you, Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell, We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart, Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear.

Postscript

Some readers might wonder about the relationship between this event and Lewis’s conversion to theism, and then his actual conversion to Christianity.

Conversion to Theism

In his 1955 memoir, Surprised by Joy, Lewis famously tells his readers that he finally abandoned his resistance to God, becoming “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England,” in the Trinity Term (the eight weeks from late April to late June) in 1929.

That dating would seem to settle the matter. And it did for virtually all Lewis scholars, until Alister McGrath was researching the question for his 2013 biography, C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet. In short, McGrath believes that Lewis was off by one year in his recollection, and that it was actually Trinity Term of 1930 (possibly in mid–June). If McGrath is correct, then the conversation with Tolkien (September 1931) was a little more than a year after Lewis began to believe in God (June 1930).

McGrath came to this conclusion for four reasons:

First, . . . a close and continuous reading of his works—especially his correspondence—reveals no sign of a significant change in tone or mood throughout 1929, and even in early 1930. Between September 1925 and January 1930, Lewis’s writings disclose no hint of any radical change of heart or mind, or even a pending change. If Lewis was converted in 1929, this supposedly pivotal event seems to have made no impact on his writings—including his letters to his closest friends at that time, Owen Barfield and Arthur Greeves.

Second, Lewis’s widowed father died in September 1929. If Lewis’s chronology of his own conversion is accepted, Lewis had come to believe in God at the time of his father’s death. Yet Lewis’s correspondence makes no reference at all to any impact of a belief in God, however emergent, upon his final days spent with his father, his subsequent funeral, and its emotional aftermath. Might, I wondered, the death of Lewis’s father have been a stimulus to him to think about God, rather than something he approached from an existing theistic perspective? If Lewis discovered God in the summer of 1930, his father’s death the previous year might well have marked a turning point in his thinking.

Third, Lewis’s account of the dynamics of his conversion in Surprised by Joy speaks of God closing in on him, taking the initiative, and ultimately overwhelming him. We find echoes of this language in a short letter from Lewis to Owen Barfield, written hastily on 3 February 1930, which speaks of the “spirit” becoming “much more personal,” “taking the offensive” and “behaving just like God.” Lewis asked Barfield to come and see him soon, before he made a rash decision to “enter a monastery.” Barfield was later unequivocal about the significance of this letter for Lewis’s spiritual development: it marked “the beginning of his conversion.” The letter reflects Lewis’s language about the pressures he experienced immediately before his conversion. Yet this conversion is clearly ahead of him, not behind him.

Fourth, Lewis makes it clear that his behaviour changed as a result of his new belief in God. Although still not committed to Christianity, he now began to attend both his local parish church on Sundays, and college chapel on weekdays. Yet Lewis’s correspondence makes no reference to regular attendance at any Oxford church or Magdalen College chapel in 1929, or the first half of 1930.

Yet things change decisively in October 1930. In a letter to his close friend and confidant Arthur Greeves, dated 29 October 1930, Lewis mentions that he now goes to bed earlier than he used, to, as he has now “started going to morning chapel at 8.” This is presented as a new development, a significant change in his routine, dating from the beginning of the academic year 1930–1. The date of this change of habit makes sense if Lewis discovered God in the summer of 1930—perhaps in June 1930, right at the end of the academic year. This would explain Lewis starting to attend college chapel in October 1930. The Oxford academic year resumes in October, thus giving Lewis the opportunity to begin attending college chapel regularly.

McGrath further notes that Lewis was “unreliable when it comes to relating his internal and external world.” 

When it comes to dates, months, and days, Lewis gets things muddled. Lewis himself remarked on this failing in 1957, shortly after the publication of Surprised by Joy: he could now, he confessed, “never remember dates.” His older brother Warnie declared that Lewis had a “life-long inability to keep track of dates.” When Lewis became Vice-President of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1941—a fixed-term appointment with essentially administrative responsibilities, which rotated around the fellowship—he was soon found to be incapable of carrying out one of the chief responsibilities of this role: arranging for the booking of rooms for college meetings or private engagements. Lewis simply could not remember dates. Rooms were double-booked—if they were booked at all.

Conversion to Christianity

On September 28, 1931—just nine days after Lewis’s conversation with Tolkien on Christ being the true myth—Lewis took the final step in embracing the divinity of Christ while riding in his older brother’s motorcycle sidecar on the way to the newly opened Whipsnade Park Zoo in Bedfordshire. He recounts:

I know very well when, but not how, the final step was taken.

I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.

Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought

Sent from my iPhone

FRIEDMAN FRIDAY Meet the Press Date:03/21/1982 NBC Length:00:03:37


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Economist Milton Friedman Defends President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Plan

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General Information

Source:Meet the PressCreator:Bill Monroe/Marvin Kalb/Irving R. LevineEvent Date:03/21/1982Air/Publish Date:03/21/1982Resource Type:Video News ReportCopyright:NBCUniversal Media, LLC.Copyright Date:1982Clip Length:00:03:37

Description

Economist Milton Friedman says the country’s fiscal policy has been too loose and its monetary policy too erratic.

Keywords

economyeconomic policyeconomic theoriesThe White HouseReaganomicsMilton Friedman,Nobel Prize winnereconomistSenior Research FellowHoover InstitutionPresident Reagan’s Economic Advisory BoardRonald Reaganfiscal policymonetary policygovernment spending,state and local spendingCongressRepublicans and Democratsmilitary spendingdefense spendingtax risestax increasestax cutsconstitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget,spending cutsdeficit forecastsdeficitseconomic predictionstrimming the budgetfiscal policy.

Citation

MLA

“Economist Milton Friedman Defends President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Plan.” Marvin Kalb, Irving R. Levine, correspondent. Meet the Press. NBCUniversal Media. 21 Mar. 1982. NBC Learn. Web. 4 February 2015.

APA

Kalb, M. (Reporter), & R. Levine, I. (Reporter), & Monroe, B. (Anchor). (1982, March 21). Economist Milton Friedman Defends President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Plan. [Television series episode]. Meet the Press. Retrieved from https://preview-archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=41358

CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE

“Economist Milton Friedman Defends President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Plan” Meet the Press, New York, NY: NBC Universal, 03/21/1982. Accessed Wed Feb 4 2015 from NBC Learn: https://preview-archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=41358

Transcript

Economist Milton Friedman Defends President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Plan

BILL MONROE, anchor: Our guest today on MEET THE PRESS is economist Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner, senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a member of President Reagan’s economic policy advisory board. Dr. Friedman there is a stalemate between Congress and President Reagan over the budget. The Congress says that $100 billion deficits, which the President is planning for the next several years, are too high. The President says that he doesn’t like them either but he does not wish to trim the growth of military spending or to consider tax increases for next year to lower the deficits, as most in Congress seem to want. Are you recommending to the President that he not compromise?

Dr. MILTON FRIEDMAN: I don’t know what compromise means. I am strongly opposed to any retreat on the subject of taxes. I think raising taxes will not in fact reduce the deficit, it will simply increase spending. I too agree that the deficit is too large but I think there is only one way that is appropriate to reduce it, and that is to cut spending. There are a lot of areas where spending can be cut and needs to be cut. Governmental spending in this country is much too high. If we take federal state and local spending together, it amounts to over 40 percent of our national income. I wonder how many people who are listening to this program think that they are getting their money’s worth, for the 40 percent of their income, which is being spent supposedly on their behalf by governments.

MONROE: Compromise in this case, Dr. Friedman, according to the voices we are hearing from Congress, Republican and Democratic, would mean either considering tax increases or deferring tax cuts in 1983 or reducing the growth in military spending. Now you have not indicated that you are opposed to the reduction of growth in military spending.

Dr. FRIEDMAN: I am not opposed to the reduction of growth in military spending on strictly military grounds. I am opposed to the reduction of growth in military spending on budgetary grounds. This nation can afford to have a strong defense. Military spending is scheduled to be something like 5 or 6 percent of our GNP. Fifteen years ago, it was 8 or 9 percent. We can afford that. On the other hand, I have no doubt that there is waste in the military area. I have no doubt that we ought to be able to get the same amount of strength for less so if you can find ways in which we can achieve the same military defense for less money, of course we need to do that. There are lots of other places where we can cut spending. I am strongly opposed to any postponement of the tax cuts or any rise in taxes.

MONROE: Is there a contradiction between advocating a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget as you do and supporting President Reagan in a policy that would produce hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits in the next several years.

Dr. FRIEDMAN: I do not believe that that policy would in fact produce hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits. Contrary to common opinion, I believe the President has achieved a great triumph. I believe he has forced Congress to consider the issue on the right terms. The easiest way out for Congress is to raise taxes, but the right way out for Congress is to cut spending, and what President Reagan has achieved has been to put Congress in the position where it is going to have to face up to that hard choice. My prediction is that the actual deficits over coming years will be far smaller than is now forecast. You know, as a matter of fact, one of the things that I think is most absurd about this whole business is the seriousness with which these estimates are taken. If you go back and look at future forecasts of deficits, they are very unreliable. There’s no reason to suppose that these are more than numbers on papers. Moreover, they are numbers that are subject to the control of Congress by its actions on spending.

MONROE: Thank you Dr. Friedman.

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 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 5 of 7 MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having […] By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 4 of 7)

September 30, 2011 – 12:12 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 4 of 7 The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 3 of 7)

September 23, 2011 – 12:11 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]

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Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 2 of 7)

September 16, 2011 – 12:10 am

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […] By Everette Hatcher III | Edit | Comments (0)

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7)

September 9, 2011 – 12:09 am

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]

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My Jan 10, 1996 Response Letter to Carl Sagan Part 3 (The struggle both Carl Sagan and Charles Darwin had because they couldn’t accept deep down that we were the products of chance!)

This post is the third in a series and the first and second deal with my response letter of January 10, 1996 to Carl Sagan and this post quotes from the letter and makes some conclusions about both Carl Sagan and Charles Darwin’s common views.

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:

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Lynn Alexander married Carl Sagan when she was 19 years old. The happy couple at their wedding. Dorion Sagan, their first son, was born two years later

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Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

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Charles Darwin and Carl Sagan both could not accept that humans are not special and just a product of chance. They philosophically believed that we are the result of chance but Charles Darwin and Carl Sagan had to live  in the world that God made with the conscience that God gave them. This created a tension. As you know the movie CONTACT was written by Carl Sagan and it was about Dr. Arroway’s SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI) program and her desire to make contact with aliens and ask them questions. It is my view that Sagan should have examined more closely  the accuracy of the Bible and it’s fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament in particular before chasing after aliens from other planets for answers. Sagan himself had written,”Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death…If some good evidence for life after death was announced, I’d be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere antedote”(pp 203-204, The DemonHaunted World, 1995).

Sagan said he had taken a look at Old Testament prophecy and it did not impress him because it was too vague. He had taken a look at Christ’s life in the gospels, but said it was unrealistic for God to send a man to communicate for God. Instead, Sagan suggested that God could have written a mathematical formula in the Bible or put a cross in the sky. However, what happens at the conclusion of the movie CONTACT?  This is Sagan’s last message to the world in the form of the movie that appeared shortly after his death. Dr Arroway (Jodie Foster) who is a young atheistic scientist who meets with an alien and this alien takes the form of Dr. Arroway’s father. The alien tells her that they thought this would make it easier for her. In fact, he meets her on a beach that resembles a beach that she grew up near so she would also be comfortable with the surroundings. Carl Sagan when writing this script chose to put the alien in human form so Dr. Arroway could relate to the alien. Christ chose to take our form and come into our world too and still many make up excuses for not believing.

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Lastly, Carl Sagan could not rid himself of the “mannishness of man.” Those who have read Francis Schaeffer’s many books know exactly what I am talking about. We are made in God’s image and we are living in God’s world. Therefore, we can not totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity. In my letter of Jan 10, 1996 to Dr. Sagan, I really camped out on this point a long time because I had read Sagan’s  book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTON ANCESTORS  and in it  Sagan attempts to  totally debunk the idea that we are any way special. However, what does Dr. Sagan have Dr. Arroway say at the end of the movie CONTACT when she is testifying before Congress about the alien that  communicated with her? See if you can pick out the one illogical word in her statement: “I was given a vision how tiny, insignificant, rare and precious we all are. We belong to something that is greater than ourselves and none of us are alone.”

Dr Sagan deep down knows that we are special so he could not avoid putting the word “precious” in there. Francis Schaeffer said unbelievers are put in a place of tension when they have to live in the world that God has made because deep down they know they are special because God has put that knowledge in their hearts.We are not the result of survival of the fittest and headed back to the dirt forevermore. This is what Schaeffer calls “taking the roof off” of the unbeliever’s worldview and showing the inconsistency that exists.

Now let us look at Charles Darwin, and let me start by quoting Francis Schaeffer from his talk In the spring of 1968 which centered on Charles Darwin’s autobiography:

Darwin in his autobiography  Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters[abridged edition]. London: John Murray, and in his letters showed that all through his life he NEVER really came to a QUIETNESS concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem. Darwin never came to a place of satisfaction. You have philosophically ONLY TWO possible beginnings. The first would be a PERSONAL beginning and the other would be an IMPERSONEL beginning plus time plus CHANCE. There is no other possible alternative except the alternative that everything comes out of nothing and that has to be a total nothing and that has to be a total nothing without mass, energy or motion existing. No one holds this last view because it is unthinkable. Darwin understood this and therefore until his death he was uncomfortable with the idea of CHANCE producing the biological variation. 

Darwin, C. R. to Graham, William 3 July 1881 (letter written less than a year before Darwin’s death and less than 40 years before your birth, Dr Barlow):

Nevertheless you have EXPRESSED MY INWARD CONVICTION, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is NOT THE RESULT OF CHANCE.* But THEN with me the HORRID DOUBT ALWAYS ARISES whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Francis Schaeffer comments:

Can you feel this man? He is in real agony. You can feel the whole of modern man in this tension with Darwin. My mind can’t accept that ultimate of chance, that the universe is a result of chance. He has said 3 or 4 times now that he can’t accept that it all happened by chance and then he will write someone else and say something different. How does he say this (about the mind of a monkey) and then put forth this grand theory? Wrong theory I feel but great just the same. Grand in the same way as when I look at many of the paintings today and I differ with their message but you must say the mark of the mannishness of man are one those paintings titanic-ally even though the message is wrong and this is the same with Darwin.  But how can he say you can’t think, you come from a monkey’s mind, and you can’t trust a monkey’s mind, and you can’t trust a monkey’s conviction, so how can you trust me? Trust me here, but not there is what Darwin is saying. In other words it is very selective. 

Evidently Darwin was telling his friends that he was an agnostic and that he did not think that God had anything to do with it but it was all left to the hands of chance. Is that the way you are reading this?

What two pieces of evidence did Darwin wrestle with?

(Charles Darwin)

If you want evidence then you will only be given the same evidence that Charles Darwin had. I am going to quote 2 passages, and they both have a common message. That message has 3 points: 1) The conscience tells us of God’s existence. 2) Creatioon tells us the same. 3) If we reject both of those then God will eventually remove conviction from our hearts. 

Don’t hold this against me, but I got this first passage out of the current issue of CREATION MAGAZINE:

At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep [#1] inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons...Formerly I was led by feelings such as those…to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that [#2] whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. [#3] But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind…(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. a, page 29).

Romans 1:18-21 Amplified Bible:

18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is [#1] evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them. 20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, [#2] being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense. 21 For even though [a]they knew God [as the Creator], they did not [b]honor Him as God or give thanks [for His wondrous creation]. On the contrary, they became worthless in their thinking [godless, with pointless reasonings, and silly speculations], and their [#3] foolish heart was darkened.

Charles Darwin became an agnostic because he chose to reject the two pieces of evidence God gave him. Take a minute and read the enclosed letter to the editor of THE HUMANIST MAGAZINE. Where did our conscience come from if not from God? In your book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS you quote Darwin’s wife warning him of the dangers of scientism on page 47. Wouldn’t it be wise to heed her advice????

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Darwin and Sagan both realized just like modern man that humanism leads to meaningless. Francis Schaeffer in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? makes these points below concerning this:

Section 3 The humanist base leads to meaningless

An overwhelming number of modern thinkers agree that seeing the universe and man from a humanist base leads to meaningless, both for the universe and for man—not just mankind in general but for each of us as individuals. Professor Steven Weinberg wrote these words in his book THE FIRST 3 MINUTES: A MODERN VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE while he was looking down from an airplane:

  • It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. … It is very hard to realize that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
    • (1993), Epilogue, p. 154

When Weinberg says that the universe seems more “comprehensible,” he is, of course, referring to our greater understanding of the physical universe through the advance of science. But it is an understanding, notice, within a materialistic framework, which considers the universe solely in terms of physics and chemistry—-simply machinery.

If everything “faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat,” all things are meaningless.

Section 4 Tension results when you have an inadequate worldview

The greatest dilemma for those who hold an inadequate worldview is that it is impossible to live consistently within it. The playwright Samuel Beckett can “say” that words do not communicate anything—and that everything, including language, is absurd—yet he must use words to write his plays, even plays about meaninglessness. The list of contradictions can be extended endlessly. The truth is that everyone who rejects the Biblical worldview must live in a state of tension between ideas about reality and reality itself. If a person believes that everything is only matter or energy and carries this through consistently, meaning dies, morality dies, love dies, hope dies. Yet! The individual does love, does hope, does act on the basis of right and wrong. This is what we mean when we say that everyone is caught , regardless of his worldview, simply by the way things are.

Section 5 The Bible is God’s revealed truth and it tells us about our origin.

The scriptures tell us that the universe exists and has form and meaning because it was created purposefully by a personal creator. This being the case, we see that, as we are personal, we are not something strange and out of line with an otherwise impersonal universe. Since we are made in the image of God, we are in line with God. There is a continuity, in other words, between ourselves, though finite, and the infinite creator who stands behind the universe as its final source of meaning. Unlike the evolutionary concept of an impersonal beginning plus time plus chance, the Bible shows how man has personality and dignity and value. Our uniqueness is guaranteed, something which is impossible in the materialistic system!!!!!!

(Francis Schaeffer pictured)

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FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 270 My May 14, 2016 Letter to Hugh Hefner concerning Francis Schaeffer’s 3 conclusions of Ecclesiastes (Featured artist is Thomas Hirschhorn )

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This letter of May 14, 2016 was based on 3 conclusions of Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes according to a study of Ecclesiastes that I heard from Francis Schaeffer.

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Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.  Tremper Longman noted

Well, the readers of the book would remember the story of King Solomon, the king who had it all. He had more wisdom than anyone, more wealth, more pleasure (remember he had hundreds of wives and concubines). He was, speaking anachronistically and a bit flippantly, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Hugh Hefner all rolled up into one. But all that wealth, wisdom, and pleasure was not enough for Solomon, who ended his life a sad apostate. The message for the reader of Ecclesiastes, then, is a warning not to live with the illusion that “if I only had more” (money, wisdom, pleasure), then I would be satisfied with life.

Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen:  Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard,Matt Chandler, George Critchley,  Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee,  Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis,    Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell,  Ken Whitten, Ed Young ,  Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.

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In this letter I tell the story of Kerry Livgren who had the world at his feet when he was writing hit songs for KANSAS in the 1970’s but he found that there was an emptiness in his heart. As a result, he wrote the song DUST IN THE WIND which reached #6 in the pop music charts in 1978. I later saw him on THE 700 CLUB give his testimony how he found peace in Christ. I can think of no other song that ties in better with Ecclesiastes than the song DUST IN THE WIND.

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In this letter below I quoted the sermon outline from Adrian Rogers when I wrote, “Hugh you remind me of Solomon because you are looking for  lasting meaning in your life and you are looking in the same  6 areas that King Solomon did in what I call the 6 big L words. He looked into  learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies,luxuries,  and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).” I also quoted Ravi Zacharias when I wrote, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”

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Plus I quoted Francis Schaeffer’s discussion of what Woody Allen said concerning the meaning of life. Allen says that man is left with:
“… alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness….” 

This ties in with Ecclesiastes perfectly. 

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May 14, 2016

Hugh Hefner
Playboy Mansion  
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815

Dear Mr. Hefner,

Last week when I wrote you I mentioned that I got to attend the Paul McCartney concert on April 30, 2016 in Little Rock and I really enjoyed the song BLACKBIRD that Paul played.  My family and I really appreciated that  stand that Paul took back in the 1960’s by writing that song. I wanted to tell you something that I really appreciate about both your life and also Paul’s.  YOU BOTH HAVE ALWAYS STOOD FOR RACIAL EQUALITY!!!!

This week I wanted to talk to you about COMEDY and your personal friend LENNY BRUCE. Lenny Bruce took shots at racists. “Annabelle’s gone off and married a New York actor fellow.” Governor Faubus at his home would respond, “What is his name?” HARRY BELAFONTE!!! “Italian fellow, huh?” What laughs, and such a wonderful guy to nail, you know. I mean I am in for cruelty when you are making jokes about a guy like that.

I’ve been accused of bad taste, and I’ll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people, the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

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Lenny Bruce in 1959 on TV with Hugh Hefner

Gov Faubus in 1957 in Little Rock

HUGH, there was a dark side to Lenny’s comedy too. Lenny said, “All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.”

Bob Dylan in his song LENNY BRUCE wrote, “He’s on some other shore, he didn’t wanna live anymore, Lenny Bruce is dead but he didn’t commit any crime, He just had the insight to rip off the lid before its time.”    HUGH, do you have the guts to take a long hard look at the big questions before it is your time to pass on and I hope you come up with a positive solution instead of the nihilistic viewpoint that so many others in the secular world embrace. 

Francis Schaeffer quoted your good friend Woody Allen in his book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? (co-authored by Dr. C. Everett Koop who I know you respected):

So some humanists act as if they have a great advantage over Christians. They act as if the advance of science and technology and a better understanding of history (through such concepts as the evolutionary theory) have all made the idea of God and Creation quite ridiculous.
This superior attitude, however, is strange because one of the most striking developments in the last half-century is the growth of a profound pessimism among both the well-educated and less-educated people. The thinkers in our society have been admitting for a long time that they have no final answers at all.
Take Woody Allen, for example. Most people know his as a comedian, but he has thought through where mankind stands after the “religious answers” have been abandoned. In an article in Esquire (May 1977), he says that man is left with:
… alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness…. The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It’s absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless. As Camus wrote, it’s not only that he (the individual) dies, or that man (as a whole) dies, but that you struggle to do a work of art that will last and then you realize that the universe itself is not going to exist after a period of time. Until those issues are resolved within each person – religiously or psychologically or existentially – the social and political issues will never be resolved, except in a slapdash way.
Allen sums up his view in his film Annie Hall with these words: “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
Many would like to dismiss this sort of statement as coming from one who is merely a pessimist by temperament, one who sees life without the benefit of a sense of humor. Woody Allen does not allow us that luxury. He speaks as a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees. If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying. As the famous artist Paul Gauguin wrote on his last painting shortly before he tried to commit suicide: “Whence come we? What are we? Whither do we go?” The answers are nowhere, nothing, and nowhere.

Woody Allen and Hugh Hefner in London

To sum up Schaeffer is saying, “If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.” (Francis Schaeffer in THE GOD WHO IS THERE)

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  HUGH, you have been around the best comics in the world but HAS COMEDY PROVIDED YOU ANY ANSWERS? 3000 years ago Solomon pursued six “L” words in his search for the meaning of life and probing the area of LAUGHTER was one of his first places to start. In Ecclesiastes 2:2 he starts this quest but he concludes it is not productive to be laughing the whole time and not considering the serious issues of life. “I said of laughter, “It is foolishness;” and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” (2:2).   Then Solomon  asserted the nihilistic statement in Ecclesiastes 2:17: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

In the Book of Ecclesiastes what are all of the 6 “L” words that Solomon looked into? He looked into  learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries,  and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).

Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.” This puts him in the same place that you find yourself. 

You are an atheist and you have a naturalistic materialistic worldview, and this short book of Ecclesiastes should interest you because the wisest man who ever lived in the position of King of Israel came to THREE CONCLUSIONS that will affect you.

FIRST, chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future.  (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)

These two verses below  take the 3 elements mentioned in a naturalistic materialistic worldview (time, chance and matter) and so that is all the unbeliever can find “under the sun” without God in the picture. You will notice that these are the three elements that evolutionists point to also.

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 is following: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.

SECOND, Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)

THIRD, Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1, 8:15)

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Ecclesiastes 4:1-2: “Next I turned my attention to all the outrageous violence that takes place on this planet—the tears of the victims, no one to comfort them; the iron grip of oppressors, no one to rescue the victims from them.” Ecclesiastes 8:14; “Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.”

Solomon had all the resources in the world and he found himself searching for meaning in life and trying to come up with answers concerning the afterlife. However, it seems every door he tries to open is locked. Today men try to find satisfaction in learning, liquor, ladies, luxuries, laughter, and labor and that is exactly what Solomon tried to do too.  None of those were able to “fill the God-sized vacuum in his heart” (quote from famous mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). You have to wait to the last chapter in Ecclesiastes to find what Solomon’s final conclusion is.

In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.

Livgren wrote:

All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”

Take a minute and compare Kerry Livgren’s words to that of the late British humanist H.J. Blackham:

On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).

_____________________________________

The rock group KANSAS

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Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player DAVE HOPE of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and DAVE HOPE had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same  interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible ChurchDAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.

YOU believe  three things. FIRST, death is the end and SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life.  FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. In contrast, DAVE HOPE believes death is not the end and the Christian can  face death and also confront the world knowing that it is not determined by chance and time alone and finally there is a judge who will balance the scales.

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.”

The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

PS: This is the 35th letter I have written to you and I hope you enjoyed your 90th birthday. However, I was sad when I read about the passing of your brother Keith. I know what a close friend he was of yours.

Featured artist is Thomas Hirschhorn

Thomas Hirschhorn: “Gramsci Monument” | ART21 “Exclusive”

Thomas Hirschhorn

Thomas Hirschhorn was born in 1957 in Bern, Switzerland. Originally trained as a graphic designer, Thomas Hirschhorn shapes public discourse that relates to political discontent, and offers alternative models for thinking and being. Believing that every person has an innate understanding of art, Hirschhorn resists exclusionary and elitist aesthetic criteria—for example, quality—in favor of dynamic principles of energy and coexistence.

He creates sprawling installations from mundane materials (packing tape, cardboard, foil) that engage the senses. Using collage as a form of interpretation and critique, Hirschhorn presents intellectual history and philosophical theory much as he does everyday objects and images, and poses questions about aesthetic value, moral responsibility, political agency, consumerism, and media spectacle. He has produced a series of monuments to great philosophers—Spinoza, Bataille, Deleuze, Gramsci—that while physically ephemeral are intended to live on in the collective memory of those who have experienced them. In the process of creating such work, Hirschhorn has enlisted individuals living near the monument sites, paying them to assist him (though not to collaborate, per se, in the artwork). “To me,” he says, “it seems much more honest to say coexistence than collaboration.”

Thomas Hirschhorn attended the Schule für Gestaltung in Zürich, Switzerland. His many honors include the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2011); Dutch Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art Award (2007); Joseph Beuys Preis für Forschung (2004); and the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2000). Major exhibitions have appeared at Dia Art Foundation (2013); ICP Triennial (2013); Istanbul Biennial (2013); Musée du Quai Branly (2012); Palais de Tokyo Triennial (2012); Venice Biennale (2011, 1999); Power Plant (2011); Secession, Vienna (2008); Museo Tamayo (2008); Carnegie International (2008); Musee d’Art contemporain de Montreal (2007); São Paulo Bienal (2006); ICA Boston (2005); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (2005); Palais de Tokyo (2004); Documenta (2002); Centre Georges Pompidou (2001); Kunsthaus Zürich (2001); the Renaissance Society (2000); Art Institute of Chicago (2000); and the Biennale de Lyon (2000). Thomas Hirschhorn lives and works in Paris, France.

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My Jan 10, 1996 Response Letter to Carl Sagan Part 2

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:

Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

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In my January 10, 1996 Response letter to Carl Sagan (which I posted earlier) I also included the following insert based on the words of Francis Schaeffer in 1978:

Is man special or not?

Douglas Futuyma has said “Whether people are explicitly religious or not they tend to imagine that humans are in some sense the center of the universe. We are just one product of a very long historical process that has given to an enormous amount of organisms, and we are just one of them. So in some sense there is nothing special about us.”

The following comments were taken from the chapter called “”The Basis for Human Dignity which is in the book and film series co-aurthored by Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop called “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”

Section 1 Materialistic Humanism: The Worldview of our Age

The West has adopted a worldview which says that all reality is made up only of matter. In this view the universe did not get here because it was created by a “supernatural “ God. 

Rather, the universe has existed forever in some form, and it’s present form just happened as a result of chance events way back in time. 

Section 2 The search for an adequate worldview 

Any worldview must answer 2 basic questions satisfactorily if it is to provide a real base for life and morals. The first is what we will call “the universe and it’s form,” and the second is the “mannishness of man.” The first draws attention to the fact that the universe around us is like an amazing jigsaw puzzle. We see many details, and we want to know how they fit together. That is what science is all about. Scientists look at the details and try to find out how they all cohere. So the first question that has to be answered is: Hiw did the universe get this way? How did it get this form, this pattern, this jigsawlike quality it now has?

Second, “The mannishness of man” draws attention to the fact that human beings are different from all other things in the world. Think, for example, of creativity. People in all cultures of all ages have created many kinds of all things, from “high art” to flower arrangements, from silver ornaments to high-technology supersonic aircraft. This is in contrast to the animals about us. People also fear death, and they remember the past and make projections into the future. One could name other factors, but these are enough to differentiate people from the other things in the world. 

What worldview adequately explains the remarkable phenomenon of the distinctiveness of human beings? There is one worldview which explains the existence of the universe, it’s form, and the uniqueness of people— the worldview given to us in the Bible. 

Section 3 The humanist base leads to meaningless 

An overwhelming number of modern thinkers agree that seeing the universe and man from a humanist base leads to meaningless, both for the universe and for man—not just mankind in general but for each of us as individuals. Professor Steven Weinberg wrote these words in his book THE FIRST 3 MINUTES: A MODERN VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE while he was looking down from an airplane: 

  • It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. … It is very hard to realize that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
    • (1993), Epilogue, p. 154

When Weinberg says that the universe seems more “comprehensible,” he is, of course, referring to our greater understanding of the physical universe through the advance of science. But it is an understanding, notice, within a materialistic framework, which considers the universe solely in terms of physics and chemistry—-simply machinery.

If everything “faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat,” all things are meaningless.

Section 4 Tension results when you have an inadequate worldview 

The greatest dilemma for those who hold an inadequate worldview is that it is impossible to live consistently within it. The playwright Samuel Beckett can “say” that words do not communicate anything—and that everything, including language, is absurd—yet he must use words to write his plays, even plays about meaninglessness. The list of contradictions can be extended endlessly. The truth is that everyone who rejects the Biblical worldview must live in a state of tension between ideas about reality and reality itself. If a person believes that everything is only matter or energy and carries this through consistently, meaning dies, morality dies, love dies, hope dies. Yet! The individual does love, does hope, does act on the basis of right and wrong. This is what we mean when we say that everyone is caught , regardless of his worldview, simply by the way things are. 

Section 5 The Bible is God’s revealed truth and it tells us about our origin.

The scriptures tell us that the universe exists and has form and meaning because it was created purposefully by a personal creator. This being the case, we see that, as we are personal, we are not something strange and out of line with an otherwise impersonal universe. Since we are made in the image of God, we are in line with God. There is a continuity, in other words, between ourselves, though finite, and the infinite creator who stands behind the universe as its final source of meaning. Unlike the evolutionary concept of an impersonal beginning plus time plus chance, the Bible shows how man has personality and dignity and value. Our uniqueness is guaranteed, something which is impossible in the materialistic system!!!!!!

LETTER TO HUMANIST MAGAZINE IN 1994: 

Francis Schaeffer once said, “If a man takes a certain non-christian set of presuppositions he will be forced eventually to be in a place of tension. The more consistent he is to his non-christian presuppositions the further he is away from the real world.” In “Ape and Essence,” (July/ August 1994) Edd Doerr is consistent with his humanistic presuppositions when he says “The bottom line is that the great apes are so much like us that there is no logical reason not to treat them as ‘persons’.”

Because Mr. Doerr has embraced evolution, he has been forced to ask himself this logical question: “When in the course of evolution did our ancestors qualify as persons?” But does this type of logic square with what we know to be true in the real world?

Genesis chapter one tells us that man is to rule over all animals because man is made in the image of God. Can animals make moral choices, enjoy poetry, appreciate music, worship God or recognize the beauty of the world around them? Humanism reduces man to a machine, but man’s conscience causes him to fell a tension.

As a young man Charles Darwin believed that the world was created by God, and at that time he was an enthusiastic admirer of fine paintings, classic music and Shakespeare. Furthermore, during a trip to Brazil he was do captivated by the beauty of nature that he later recalled how sure he was at the time that God had to be the designer of this grand and wondrous universe. However, later his presuppositions changed and he said, “My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

We are not cousins of apes, and anyone who embraces evolution will be forced eventually to be in a place of tension with the real world if they are consistent. 

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My Jan 10, 1996 Response Letter to Carl Sagan Part 1

Recently I have been revisiting my correspondence in 1995 with the famous astronomer Carl Sagan who I had the privilege to correspond with in 1994, 1995 and 1996. In 1996 I had a chance to respond to his December 5, 1995letter on January 10, 1996 and I never heard back from him again since his cancer returned and he passed away later in 1996. Below is what Carl Sagan wrote to me in his December 5, 1995 letter:

Thanks for your recent letter about evolution and abortion. The correlation is hardly one to one; there are evolutionists who are anti-abortion and anti-evolutionists who are pro-abortion.You argue that God exists because otherwise we could not understand the world in our consciousness. But if you think God is necessary to understand the world, then why do you not ask the next question of where God came from? And if you say “God was always here,” why not say that the universe was always here? On abortion, my views are contained in the enclosed article (Sagan, Carl and Ann Druyan {1990}, “The Question of Abortion,” Parade Magazine, April 22.)

I was introduced to when reading a book by Francis Schaeffer called HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT written in 1968. 

Here is the letter I wrote to Dr. Sagan in response to the letter he wrote to me:

Dr. Carl Sagan, Cornell University, Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Space Sciences Building, Ithaca, New York, 14853-6801

January 10, 1996

Dear Mr. Sagan,

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to write me back on 12-5-95. My response comes in five parts. I imagine you will find part four the most intriguing. 

Are we so different from Animals? Or are we?

In my 8-30-95 letter I used Douglas Futuyma’s quote: “Whether people are explicitly religious or not they tend to imagine that humans are in some sense the center of the universe. And what evolution does is to remove humans from the center of the universe. We are just one product of a very long historical process that has given rise to an enormous amount of organisms, and we are just one of them. So in some sense there is nothing special about us.” This seems to dovetail nicely with your quote from SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS : “Why are we so different from animals? Or are we? Most of the philosophers conventionally judged great thought that humans are fundamentally different from other animals because of an immaterial ‘something’ for which no scientific evidence has been produced, that resides somewhere in the body of humans and in no one else on earth. Only a few argue, as Charles Darwin did, that the differences between our species and others are only differences of degree.”

(Charles Darwin)

Earlier in Darwin’s life he did not argue against the existence of an immortal soul. In fact, he held the Biblical view, but later he became an agnostic because he rejected 2 pieces of evidence I will talk about later. What is the Biblical view? Moreover, if science never comes up with evidence to back up the existence of the soul we can not rule out the possibility it exists. ††

(Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan pictured)

Image result for carl sagan ann druyan
Image result for carl sagan humanist of the year

Are you proclaiming too much prematurely?

On April 18, 1981 in your speech to the AHA you made it clear that you rejected the atheistic position. You thought it was unwise to proclaim too much before enough data are in. You mentioned as cases in point “those committed atheists who believe there is compelling evidence that no god exists” (July/August 1981 issue of The Humanist, page 6).

That same point could be made concerning the existence of the soul. Do you have compelling evidence that the soul does not exist?

Will Scientism work with metaphysical questions?

I reject the view that only that which can be proved by science is true. God can not be proven by science. Is that why you are an agnostic? In your 12-5-95 letter you commented, “if you say ‘God was always here,’ why not say that the universe was always here?”

I am under the impression that the second Law of Thermodynamics pushes us to the conclusion that our universe had a beginning. But I did not want to spend time on that point. Instead, it should be emphasized that “God is a Spirit (a spiritual Being) and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (reality)” (John 4:24, Amplified Bible). In other words, scientism will not work when it comes to metaphysical questions. 

What two pieces of evidence did Darwin wrestle with?

(Charles Darwin)

If you want evidence then you will only be given the same evidence that Charles Darwin had. I am going to quote 2 passages, and they both have a common message. That message has 3 points: 1) The conscience tells us of God’s existence. 2) Creatioon tells us the same. 3) If we reject both of those then God will eventually remove conviction from our hearts. 

Don’t hold this against me, but I got this first passage out of the current issue of CREATION MAGAZINE:

At the present day the most usual argument for the existence of an intelligent God is drawn from the deep [#1] inward conviction and feelings which are experienced by most persons...Formerly I was led by feelings such as those…to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of the immortality of the soul. In my Journal I wrote that [#2] whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. [#3] But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind…(Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1911, Vol. a, page 29).

Romans 1:18-21 Amplified Bible:

18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is [#1] evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them. 20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, [#2] being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense. 21 For even though [a]they knew God [as the Creator], they did not [b]honor Him as God or give thanks [for His wondrous creation]. On the contrary, they became worthless in their thinking [godless, with pointless reasonings, and silly speculations], and their [#3] foolish heart was darkened.

Charles Darwin became an agnostic because he chose to reject the two pieces of evidence God gave him. Take a minute and read the enclosed letter to the editor of THE HUMANIST MAGAZINE. Where did our conscience come from if not from God? In your book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS you quote Darwin’s wife warning him of the dangers of scientism on page 47. Wouldn’t it be wise to heed her advice????

Since Scientism will not work with metaphysics then what alternative does the skeptic have?

You have chosen to be known as a skeptic. Did you know that the word “skepticism” is derived from the Latin “scepticus (inquiring, reflective, doubting). A skeptic has an inquiring mind. It intrigues me that Christ spoke of those who were honest inquirers. Some can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman. They are unwilling to surrender their will to God. In fact, I read some amazing comments by some unbelievers to the effect that they would not be willing to serve God because they would not want to give up their independence. They would rather reign in hell. In John 7:16-17 Christ spoke to the doubters of His day: “My teaching is not My own, but His Who sent Me. If any man desires to do His will (God’s pleasure), he will know–have the needed illumination to recognize, can tell for himself–whether the teaching is from God, or whether I am speaking from Myself and of My own accord and on My own authority,” ((Amplified Bible). Adrian Rogers comments on this verse: “In plain English, this says that if a mansurrenders his will completely, God will reveal Himself to that man.” This is a recipe to get a revelation: #1 ingredient — an open Bible (best to read a chapter a day in the Gospel of John). #2 ingredient — an open heart (take 2 minutes before reading every day and pray “God, I don’t know whether You exist or not, but I want to know. And because I want to know, I will make an honest investigation, I will follow the results of that investigation wherever they lead me, regardless of the cost.” 

Professor Peter Kreeft of the philosophy Department at Boston College wrote on page 291 in the book DOES GOD EXIST? published by Prometheus Books the following comments concerning the “prayer of the skeptic”: “Who could quarrel with that experiment? It’s like fairly testing the hypothesis that someone is in the closet, tied up, by knocking on the door. If the hypothesis is true, you may hear a reply. Why hesitate to knock?

The analogy is not perfect because I’m the case of the closet you can open the door and look with your eyes, while in the case of the invisible God you cannot. But you can still speak and listen with your mind and heart, and this constitutes a fair test, because the hypothesis maintains not only that God wants to reveal Himself to you, to set up a relationship of love and faith for a lifetime and beyond. 

The hypothesis claims that ‘all who seek, find.’ So test it. Seek. I can only think of two reasons for hesitating: the fear that you will find nothing, and the fear that you will find something. Honestly, like love, casts out fear.” 

Maybe you are at the point in your life where you are willing to try this. What do you have to lose? In 100 years everything we have now will be gone anyway. 

It has been an honor to correspond with you. I know somewhat about the physical and spiritual challenges you face, and I will continue to pray for you. Best wishes. 

Everette Hatcher III

P.O. Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221

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Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part F “Carl Sagan’s views on how God should try and contact us” includes film “The Basis for Human Dignity”

April 8, 2013 – 7:07 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 Saline […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis SchaefferProlife | Edit | Comments (0)

Carl Sagan v. Nancy Pearcey

March 18, 2013 – 9:11 am

On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian RogersAtheists ConfrontedCurrent Events | TaggedBen ParkinsonCarl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution)

May 24, 2012 – 1:47 am

Review of Carl Sagan book (Part 4 of series on Evolution) The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 5 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 http://www.icr.org/ http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWA2http://store.icr.org/prodinfo.asp?number=BLOWASGhttp://www.fliptheworldupsidedown.com/blog _______________________ I got this from a blogger in April of 2008 concerning candidate Obama’s view on evolution: Q: York County was recently in the news […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists ConfrontedCurrent EventsPresident Obama | EditComments (0)

WOODY WEDNESDAY Open Letter to Woody Allen on Cafe Society Part 5

August 28, 2016

Letty Aronson, c/o Perdido Productions,New York, New York 10001

Dear Mrs. Aronson,

The last time I wrote you about the film IRRATIONAL MAN and today I want to give my thoughts on the film CAFE SOCIETY.

I was able to catch it in Chicago in July and again I caught it in Vegas where it is presently running.  Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), Marty (Ken Stott), and his mother, Rose (Jeannie Berlin), Phil Stern (Steve Carell), and  Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), are all splendid in their roles.

Bobby and Vonnie both turn out to be the same kind of superficial people they earlier ridiculed. Ironically, a song in the movie,  I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, which according to Billboard magazine, was a #2 hit for Ben Selvin in 1934, is really the story of both Bobby and Vonnie’s lives. Though they marry other people they keep longing for one another.

Now for the more serious themes in the movie which surround Bobby’s Uncle Ben who kills several people and the discussion of an afterlife. As a result of the murders Ben is caught and executed, but one of Ben’s last victims was  Leonard’s neighbor because he was rude to Leonard and Ben’s sister. The atheist Leonard says, “BLOOD SIN IS ON OUR HANDS!” This reminds me of the agnostic Judah in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS who also exclaims, “I believe in God because the world would be a cesspool without God.” Judah is haunted by his father’s words, “God will punish the wicked and God sees everything.”

Here we see Romans 1:18-20 (Amplified Bible) playing out:

18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense.

In other words both Judah in the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and Leonard from CAFE SOCIETY  deep down know when the sin of murder has been committed and that is actually a sin before the eyes of a holy God. WHY DO THESE SAME PLOT TWISTS KEEP COMING UP IN WOODY ALLEN FILMS?

Let me provide a suggestion from Greg Koukl’s chapter “Taking the Roof Off” from the book TACTICS:

When I was a young Christian, I read Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There. Schaeffer argues that Christians have a powerful ally in the war of ideas: reality. Whenever someone tries to deny the truth, reality ultimately betrays him… Although culture shifts, human nature remains the same. Ideas change, but reality does not….

Every person who rejects the truth of “the God who is there” is caught between the way he says the world is and the way the world actually is. This dissonance, what Schaeffer called the “point of tension,” is what makes Taking the Roof Off so effective. Any person who denies the truth of God’s world lives in contradiction. He says one thing, yet deep down he knows the truth….

Regardless of our ideological impulses [e.g., postmodernism], deep inside each of us is a common-sense realist. Those who are not are either dead, in an institution, or sleeping in cardboard boxes under the freeway. Knowing this gives us a tremendous advantage. The key to dealing with moral relativism, for example, is realizing that for all the adamant affirmations, no one really believes it, and for a good reason: If you start with relativism, reality does not make sense.

In other words, Leonard and Judah both are firmly committed to the idea of moral relativism, but as Romans 1 tells us that God has revealed to every created person  they know they are guilty of murder when they commit it. They will have to face a holy God. Why else would these atheists admit they have sinned? WE ARE NOT JUST MACHINES RESULTING FROM CHANCE AND THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
At the end of CAFE SOCIETY a  twist in the film occurs when Ben converts from Judaism to Christianity because Christians believe in an afterlife and the Jewish religion does not. This troubles Ben’s mother Rose tremendously and she comments, “Too bad the Jewish religion doesn’t have an afterlife because they would get more customers.” Actually at the time of Christ the liberal Jews did deny the afterlife and their leaders were called Sadducees. That was the main difference between  them and the Pharisees and that is why they were so SAD YOU SEE!!!!

Rose did not know what the Bible said about the afterlife and evidently she did not take the Bible seriously when it said the 10 plagues hit Egypt or the other assertions that are made.  These guys really existed and these are true historical events. Take for instanceCaiaphas who is the most famous Jewish High Priest who served from 18 A.D. to 36 A.D and here is an excerpt from the website CREATION MOMENTS: 

John 11:49-50 “And one of them, [named] Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” A remarkable discovery in Israel is shedding new light on life on Bible times. The discovery is also allowing scientists and the rest of us to get to know an important New Testament character.

Israeli archaeologists believe they may have discovered the bones of the high priest Caiaphas. If these bones do indeed belong to Caiaphas, it would be the first discovery of the remains of any major figure mentioned in the New Testament. The discovery was made accidentally in 1990 as workers were widening the road through the Peace Forest.

Researchers didn’t want to release their announcement until they had satisfied themselves that such a momentous announcement was justified. The burial cave has three mentions of the name “Caiaphas.” An ossuary, or bone box, within the cave was inscribed, “Joseph, son of Caiaphas.” Other records identify the “Caiaphas” who condemned Jesus as Joseph, son of Caiaphas. A coin found in the cave was minted between 37 and 44 A.D. The ossuary contained the bones of six people. There were two infants, a child, a youth, an adult female and a male about 60 years old, believed to have been Caiaphas himself.

It was from political expediency that Caiaphas said it would be better for one man to die for the people than for the entire nation to perish. He was unknowingly prophetic. Jesus Christ did die to save us from the eternal consequences of our sin.

One day I hope the Woody Allen movie watcher  will discover the  answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.comhttp://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221, United State

Woody Allen On Bergman

Woody Allen On Bergman

Woody Allen Show

Essay on Woody Allen films

Match point Trailer

Match point

Crimes and misdemeanors

Part 2

Part 3

Woody commenting on Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris trailer

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The mass media turned Picasso into a celebrity, and the public deprived him of privacy and wanted to know his every step, but his later art was given very little attention and was regarded as no more than the hobby of an aging genius who could do nothing but talk about himself in his pictures. Picasso’s late works are an expression of his final refusal to fit into categories. He did whatever he wanted in art and did not arouse a word of criticism.

With his adaptation of “Las Meninas” by Velászquez and his experiments with Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, was Picasso still trying to discover something new, or was he just laughing at the public, its stupidity and its inability to see the obvious.

A number of elements had become characteristic in his art of this period: Picasso’s use of simplified imagery, the way he let the unpainted canvas shine through, his emphatic use of lines, and the vagueness of the subject. In 1956, the artist would comment, referring to some schoolchildren: “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.”

In the last years of his life, painting became an obsession with Picasso, and he would date each picture with absolute precision, thus creating a vast amount of similar paintings — as if attempting to crystallize individual moments of time, but knowing that, in the end, everything would be in vain.

The movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS offers many of the same themes we see in Ecclesiastes. The second post looked at the question: WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT?

In the third post in this series we discover in Ecclesiastes that man UNDER THE SUN finds himself caught in the never ending cycle of birth and death. The SURREALISTS make a leap into the area of nonreason in order to get out of this cycle and that is why the scene in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel works so well!!!! These surrealists look to the area of their dreams to find a meaning for their lives and their break with reality is  only because they know that they can’t find a rational meaning in life without God in the picture.

The fourth post looks at the solution of WINE, WOMEN AND SONG and the fifth and sixth posts look at the solution T.S.Eliotfound in the Christian Faith and how he left his fragmented message of pessimism behind. In the seventh post the SURREALISTS say that time and chance is all we have but how can that explain love or art and the hunger for God? The eighth  post looks at the subject of DEATH both in Ecclesiastes and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. In the ninth post we look at the nihilistic worldview of Woody Allen and why he keeps putting suicides into his films.

In the tenth post I show how Woody Allen pokes fun at the brilliant thinkers of this world and how King Solomon did the same thing 3000 years ago. In the eleventh post I point out how many of Woody Allen’s liberal political views come a lack of understanding of the sinful nature of man and where it originated. In the twelfth post I look at the mannishness of man and vacuum in his heart that can only be satisfied by a relationship with God.

In the thirteenth post we look at the life of Ernest Hemingway as pictured in MIDNIGHT AND PARIS and relate it to the change of outlook he had on life as the years passed. In the fourteenth post we look at Hemingway’s idea of Paris being a movable  feast. The fifteenth and sixteenth posts both compare Hemingway’s statement, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know…”  with Ecclesiastes 2:18 “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” The seventeenth post looks at these words Woody Allen put into Hemingway’s mouth,  “We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all.”

In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Hemingway and Gil Pender talk about their literary idol Mark Twain and the eighteenth post is summed up nicely by Kris Hemphill‘swords, “Both Twain and [King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes] voice questions our souls long to have answered: Where does one find enduring meaning, life purpose, and sustainable joy, and why do so few seem to find it? The nineteenth post looks at the tension felt both in the life of Gil Pender (written by Woody Allen) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and in Mark Twain’s life and that is when an atheist says he wants to scoff at the idea THAT WE WERE PUT HERE FOR A PURPOSE but he must stay face the reality of  Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” and  THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING! Therefore, the secular view that there is no such thing as love or purpose looks implausible. The twentieth post examines how Mark Twain discovered just like King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes that there is no explanation  for the suffering and injustice that occurs in life UNDER THE SUN. Solomon actually brought God back into the picture in the last chapter and he looked  ABOVE THE SUN for the books to be balanced and for the tears to be wiped away.

The twenty-first post looks at the words of King Solomon, Woody Allen and Mark Twain that without God in the picture our lives UNDER THE SUN will accomplish nothing that lasts. Thetwenty-second post looks at King Solomon’s experiment 3000 years that proved that luxuries can’t bring satisfaction to one’s life but we have seen this proven over and over through the ages. Mark Twain lampooned the rich in his book “The Gilded Age” and he discussed  get rich quick fever, but Sam Clemens loved money and the comfort and luxuries it could buy. Likewise Scott Fitzgerald  was very successful in the 1920’s after his publication of THE GREAT GATSBY and lived a lavish lifestyle until his death in 1940 as a result of alcoholism.

In the twenty-third post we look at Mark Twain’s statement that people should either commit suicide or stay drunk if they are “demonstrably wise” and want to “keep their reasoning faculties.” We actually see this play out in the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with the character Zelda Fitzgerald. In the twenty-fourthtwenty-fifth and twenty-sixth posts I look at Mark Twain and the issue of racism. In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS we see the difference between the attitudes concerning race in 1925 Paris and the rest of the world.

The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth posts are summing up Mark Twain. In the 29th post we ask did MIDNIGHT IN PARIS accurately portray Hemingway’s personality and outlook on life? and in the 30th post the life and views of Hemingway are summed up.

In the 31st post we will observe that just like Solomon Picasso slept with many women. Solomon actually slept with  over 1000 women ( Eccl 2:8, I Kings 11:3), and both men ended their lives bitter against all women and in the 32nd post we look at what happened to these former lovers of Picasso. In the 33rd post we see that Picasso  deliberately painted his secular  worldview of fragmentation on his canvas but he could not live with the loss of humanness and he reverted back at crucial points and painted those he loved with all his genius and with all their humanness!!! In the 34th post  we notice that both Solomon in Ecclesiastes and Picasso in his painting had an obsession with the issue of their impending death!!!

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Related posts:

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 7 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part F, SURREALISTS AND THE IDEA OF ABSURDITY AND CHANCE)

December 23, 2015 – 4:15 am

Woody Allen believes that we live in a cold, violent and meaningless universe and it seems that his main character (Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS shares that view. Pender’s meeting with the Surrealists is by far the best scene in the movie because they are ones who can […]

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 6 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part E, A FURTHER LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 16, 2015 – 4:56 am

In the last post I pointed out how King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and that Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot and  other modern writers had agreed with Solomon’s view. However, T.S. Eliot had found a solution to this problem and put his faith in […]

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 5 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part D, A LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 9, 2015 – 4:41 am

In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his  house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]

“Woody Wednesda

RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Part 154d My May 16, 2016 letter to Stephen Hawking

Image result for stephen hawking movie

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Image result for stephen hawking

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Image result for stephen hawking harry kroto

STARMUS panel announces ground-breaking Stephen Hawking Medals for Science Communication at the The Royal Society Featuring: Professor Sir Harry Kroto, Alexei Leonov, Dr Richard Dawkins, Dr Brian May, Professor Stephen Hawking, Professor Garik Israelian 

On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto

I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:

Arif Ahmed, Sir David AttenboroughMark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael BatePatricia ChurchlandAaron CiechanoverNoam Chomsky,Alan DershowitzHubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan FeuchtwangDavid Friend,  Riccardo GiacconiIvar Giaever , Roy GlauberRebecca GoldsteinDavid J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan GreenfieldStephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan HaidtTheodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Hermann HauserRoald Hoffmann,  Bruce HoodHerbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve JonesShelly KaganMichio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman,  Lawrence KraussHarry Kroto, George LakoffElizabeth Loftus,  Alan MacfarlanePeter MillicanMarvin MinskyLeonard Mlodinow,  Yujin NagasawaAlva NoeDouglas Osheroff,  Jonathan Parry,  Saul PerlmutterHerman PhilipseCarolyn PorcoRobert M. PriceLisa RandallLord Martin Rees,  Oliver Sacks, John SearleMarcus du SautoySimon SchafferJ. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-ArmstrongRonald de Sousa, Victor StengerBarry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond TallisNeil deGrasse Tyson,  .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John WalkerFrank WilczekSteven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

In  the first video below in the 15th clip in this series are his words and  my response is below them. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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In the popular You Tube video “Renowned Academics Speaking About God” you made the following statement:

“M-Theory doesn’t disprove God, but it does make him unnecessary. It predicts that the universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing without the need for a creator.” –Stephen Hawking, Cambridge theoretical physicist

Earlier I responded to Dr. Hawking’s assertion.


My May 16, 2016 to Stephen Hawking

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May 16, 2016

Dr. Stephen Hawking, c/o Centre for Theoretical Cosmology
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
Wilberforce Road, Cambridge
CB3 0WA, UK

Dear Dr. Hawking,

I went to see your movie THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING and I enjoyed it so much that I went back and saw it again and again. It was inspiring. I also had the opportunity to read the article, “Morning MixHow Stephen Hawking, diagnosed with ALS decades ago, is still aliveBy Terrence McCoy February 24, 2015,” and this article pointed out how amazing your life has been in that you have survived ALS so long. I wonder if this Bible verse may indicate why you have made it so long:

2 Peter 3:9King James Version (KJV)

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Back in January I saw that you were having your 74th birthday,  and today I am turning 55 years old today and many people call that middle age but how many 110 year people you see walking around?    I also  have started to think about the end of my life in recent days since it is fast approaching all of us. King Solomon in his book of ECCLESIASTES talks about death quite a lot and he wrote a passage in chapter 2 that I wanted to quote and then I wanted to include some comments from the preacher Ken Whitten in his sermon HAUNTED BY DEATH:

King Solomon gives us a little key to his heart in the Book of Ecclesiastes when he said he looked for everything imaginable to find satisfaction UNDER THE SUN.  Now folks anytime you look for satisfaction UNDER THE SUN it means you have an earthly view of life and if all you have is an earthly view of life you are going to be discouraged. You can tell Solomon is cynical. In Ecclesiastes 2 it says Solomon has tried LEARNING, LABOR, LEISURE, LUST, LAUGHTER, and LIQUOR but it is just like chasing the wind. It was like a little bubble that a kid would blow and then he catches it and there is nothing left there.

12 So I turned to consider wisdom, madness and folly; for what will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? 13 And I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. 14 The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both. 15 Then I said [j]to myself, “As is the fate of the fool, it will also befall me. Why then have I been extremely wise?” So [k]I said to myself, “This too is vanity.” 16 For there is no [l]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! 17 So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was [m]grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.

Solomon is saying no matter if you are a fool or a wise-man it has nothing to do with removing the reality of death. It is an universal experience and it is going to happen to everyone. The Bible says it “befalls” or overtakes them all. Death overtakes us all.

Solomon looks at life like a race. At the beginning of life and when you are younger you look over your shoulder and in the far distance you see that someone is chasing you and he is in the race with you but you don’t pay much attention to him and there is no sense looking back since you are so far ahead. You think he will never catch you. Then you get a little older and guess what you notice. He seems to be going a little faster and you seem to be going a little slower. And you notice that while you continue to move you are starting to hear the footsteps and you starting failing. Something is happening to us and we are deteriorating physically. In verse 14 Solomon says one fate  befalls both the fool and the wise and that is they both die. The rich is gonna die and the poor is gonna die. The actors, athletes, entertainers and the movie stars are gonna die.

Solomon doesn’t like this very much and he says in verses 16-17:

16 For there is no [l]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! 17 So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was [m]grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.

Solomon is saying that he doesn’t like this. It doesn’t matter how famous you get because there will be very little remembrance of you. Regardless of how famous you become there are people behind you who are going to be famous and they need your space in the history books and they will take it.

The rich and poor are gonna die. It doesn’t matter what is in your pocketbook but only what is in your heart. If you died tonight where would you spend eternity?

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You might have said that this letter is a real downer but I have some good news to share with you. On Easter morning March 27, 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH our teaching pastor Brandon Barnard delivered the message THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING based on I Corinthians chapter 15 and I wanted to share a portion of that sermon with you today.

This day is the day that changes everything. The resurrection changes everything and that is why we are gathered here today to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ because it changes everything.

Some of you are going to be blown away by the opportunity before you this Easter morning because the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands at the very heart of Christianity. If what we we are gathered here to celebrate did not happen then people need to pity us as believers.  They need to feel sorry for you and me more than anyone on earth because we have set our hopes firmly on a lie.

But if the resurrection really did happen, then we need to repent and we need to believe in Jesus and we need to rejoice that we have hope in this life and the life to come. 

Paul wrote this to the believers in Corinth.

1 Corinthians 15:3-6, 13-21 English Standard Version (ESV)

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.19 If in Christ we have hope[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

If Christ hasn’t been raised then these facts are true:

  1. PREACHING AND FAITH ARE IN VAIN.
  2. WE ARE FALSE WITNESSES
  3. WE ARE STILL IN OUR SINS.
  4. THOSE WHO DIED IN FAITH ARE STILL DEAD
  5. WE ARE TO BE PITIED MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD.

Verse 20 says, “but Christ has been raised!!! Therefore, these things are true:

  1. Our faith is significant, valuable and eternal.
  2. we are truth tellers!!
  3. we are forgiven of our sins.
  4. death is not our final stop.
  5. don’t pity us but join us in believing in Jesus Christ.

A lot of people say they do not believe in an afterlife. However, would you agree that if the Bible is correct in regards to history then Jesus did rise from the grave? Let’s take a closer look at evidence concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

I know that you highly respected Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and he co-authored with Francis Schaeffer the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? Below is a piece of evidence from that book:

We should take one last step back into the history of the Old Testament. In the previous note we looked first at the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to around 100 B.C. Then we went back to the period of the Late Monarchy and looked first at the siege of Hezekiah in Jerusalem by Sennacherib in 701 B.C. and also at the last years of Judah down to about 600 B.C. Then we went further back to about 850 B.C., to Ahab and Jezebel, the ivory house, the Black Obelisk, the Moabite Stone and so on–then back again to about 950 B.C., to the time of Solomon and his son Rehoboam and the campaign by Shishak, the Egyptian pharaoh.

This should have built up in our minds a vivid impression of the historic reliability of the biblical text, including even the seemingly obscure details such as the ration tablets in Babylon. We saw, in other words, not only that the Bible gives us a marvelous world view that ties in with the nature of reality and answers the basic problems which philosophers have asked down through the centuries, but also that the Bible is completely reliable, EVEN ON THE HISTORICAL LEVEL.

The previous notes looked back to the time of Moses and Joshua, the escape from Egypt, and the settlement in Canaan. Now we will go back further–back as far as Genesis 12, near the beginning of the Bible.

Do we find that the narrative fades away to a never-never land of myths and legends? By no means. For we have to remind ourselves that although Genesis 12 deals with events a long time ago from our moment of history (about 2000 B.C. or a bit later), the civilized world was already not just old but ancient when Abram/Abraham left “Ur of the Chaldeans” (see Genesis 11:31).

Ur itself was excavated some fifty years ago. In the British Museum, for example, one can see the magnificent contents of a royal burial chamber from Ur. This includes a gold headdressstill in position about the head of a queen who died in Ur about 2500 B.C. It has also been possible to reconstruct from archaeological remains what the streets and buildings must have been like at the time.

Like Ur, the rest of the world of the patriarchs (that is, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) was firm reality. Such places asHaran, where Abraham went first, have been discovered. So has Shechem from this time, with its Canaanite stone walls, which are still standing, and its temple.

Genesis 12:5-9New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the [a]persons which they had acquired in Haran, and they [b]set out for the land of Canaan; thus they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem, to the[c]oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your [d]descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord andcalled upon the name of the Lord. Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the[e]Negev.

Haran and Shechem may be unfamiliar names to us but the Negrev (or Negeb) is a name we have all read frequently in the news accounts of our own day. 

The spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be  found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.comhttp://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

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