_

Francis Schaeffer noted:

let us think of the sex relationship. What is man’s attitude towards  the girl? It is possible, and common in the  modern setting, to have a “playboy” attitude, or  rather a “plaything” attitude, where the “play-  mate” becomes the “plaything.” Here, the girl is  no more than a sex object.  

But what is the Christian view? Somebody  may offer at this point the rather romantic no-  tion, “You shouldn’t look for any pleasure for  yourself; you should just look for the other per-  son’s pleasure.” But that is not what the Bible  says. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We have a right to pleasure, too. But what we  do not have a right to do is to forget that the  girl is a person and not an animal, or a plant, or  a machine. We have the right to have our plea-  sure in a sexual relationship, but we have no  right whatsoever to exploit a partner as a sex  object. 

There should be a conscious limitation upon  our pleasure. We impose a limit—a self-imposed  limit—in order to treat the wife fairly as a per-  son. So although a husband could do more, he  does not do everything he could do, because he  must treat her also as a person and not just as  a thing with no value. And if he does so treat  her, eventually he loses, because love is gone,  and all that is left is just a mechanical, chemical  sexuality; humanity is lost as he treats her as  less than human. Eventually not only her  humanity is diminished, but his as well. In con-  trast, if he does less than he could do, even-  tually he has more, for he has a human rela-  tionship; he has love and not just a physical  act. It is like the principle of the boomerang—it  can come full circle and destroy the destroyer. 

Proverbs 5 New Living Translation
https://youtu.be/djsxMznYjOo

Proverbs 5New International Version

Warning Against Adultery

5 My son,^(A) pay attention to my wisdom,
    turn your ear to my words^(B) of insight,
² that you may maintain discretion
    and your lips may preserve knowledge.
³ For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey,
    and her speech is smoother than oil;^(C)
4 but in the end she is bitter as gall,^(D)
    sharp as a double-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death;
    her steps lead straight to the grave.^(E)
6 She gives no thought to the way of life;
    her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.^(F)

⁷ Now then, my sons, listen^(G) to me;
    do not turn aside from what I say.
⁸ Keep to a path far from her,^(H)
    do not go near the door of her house,
⁹ lest you lose your honor to others
    and your dignity^[a] to one who is cruel,
¹⁰ lest strangers feast on your wealth
    and your toil enrich the house of another.^(I)
11 At the end of your life you will groan,
    when your flesh and body are spent.
¹² You will say, “How I hated discipline!
    How my heart spurned correction!^(J)
13 I would not obey my teachers
    or turn my ear to my instructors.
¹⁴ And I was soon in serious trouble^(K)
    in the assembly of God’s people.”^(L)

¹⁵ Drink water from your own cistern,
    running water from your own well.
¹⁶ Should your springs overflow in the streets,
    your streams of water in the public squares?
¹⁷ Let them be yours alone,
    never to be shared with strangers.
¹⁸ May your fountain^(M) be blessed,
    and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.^(N)
19 A loving doe, a graceful deer^(O)—
    may her breasts satisfy you always,
    may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
²⁰ Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
    Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?

²¹ For your ways are in full view^(P) of the Lord,
    and he examines^(Q) all your paths.^(R)
22 The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them;^(S)
    the cords of their sins hold them fast.^(T)
23 For lack of discipline they will die,^(U)
    led astray by their own great folly.^(V)

Adrian Rogers noted:

You don’t put all this garbage and this filth and this immorality and this nudity in your mind! Don’t go to those movies! Don’t read those magazines! Don’t watch that program! Don’t do it! Don’t do it.  “Can a man take a fire in his bosom and be not burned?  You’re not smarter than God! You’re not going to outsmart God.  And you put it in your mind, it’s going to come out in your life, “for out of the heart are the issues of life,” and we’re going to talk about that, and I’m going to be bringing a message on the poison of pornography before we get out of this series in the Book of Proverbs because the Proverbs have a lot to say about that.  God willing, I will do that. But notice here the distance that we should keep!

——

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

THE AMERICAN DREAM IS MEANINGLESS WITHOUT JESUS
ECCLESIASTES 2:1-26
FAIRVIEW CHURCH
February 8, 2015

*Wouldn’t all of this be great and make you happy?
*Achievements: I built houses (his 13 yrs & bigger than temple-1Kgs 7:1ff. & for his wives;7:8!)
-I could have a lake house, a beach house, etc. then I’d be happy
-He built whole cities (2 Chron 8:1-6), planted vineyards (Song of Songs), gardens, etc.
-The best of architecture and agriculture and engineering
-Your gardening hobby or Minecrafting pales in comparison to THIS!
-Literally he’s trying to create a new Garden of Eden/Paradise (Longman 90)
-He’s trying to get back to Eden, but doesn’t work in a fallen world
-Waited on hand and food by slaves (wouldn’t that be nice? Baker, maid, etc.)
-Lots of HERDS & FLOCKS more than any person in Jer before him
-Much $ from vassals (military fame) & his people (Silver common as stone; 2 Chr9:27)
-Loved the arts: had his own choir (Garrett 292)- like guy on Psych w/ Curt Smith
-A harem w/ Concubines – simply for purpose of sexual pleasure (meet his urges)
-So many on endless search for sexual pleasure/constant newness (Porn/50shades)
-Solomon could out locker room boast Wilt Chamberlain & Hugh Hefner
*He denied himself nothing. He had most success, best houses, possessions, lifestyle,
sophistication, finest wines/foods, nicest lawns, waited on hand & foot, more $ than we could
possibly imagine, military success, fame, popularity, entertainment, and as much sexual
pleasure as 1 could want – empty (all of it a violation of Deut 17)
-Point: he outdid anything we could ever do
-Wasn’t 1 fantasy he didn’t play out
-We think I just need more, and he says NO (what’s gonna make diff? 1001 women)
-Nothing brought meaning…if that’s true for him what hope do we have!
*So I did more than anyone before me…indulged in every desire & reward of my toil
-It was all of it was meaningless, chasing wind, nothing gained!
-When will you be happy? What would you put in the blank? Won’t work!
3
-Always need for more, bigger high, longer lasting pleasure
-I thought if I could just have the American Dream and have as much fun as possible
everything would be different, I’d be happy, but I’m not!
-It’s all fleeting (state championships fade, money goes, etc.)

__

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, Alistair Begg, 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, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis,    Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell,  Ken Whitten, Ed Young ,  Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.

In the next few weeks I will be posting some letters that I sent to Hugh Hefner that were based primarily on the sermon series BETTER THAN which is a study in the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES done by our pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 2016.  Our teaching pastors here are Mark Henry,

Ben Parkinson

and Brandon Barnard.

Today’s letter is based on a sermon by Mark Henry.

_

January 24, 2016

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

Dear Mr. Hefner,

Last week I talked about you admitting that you were a workaholic during the formative years of building your magazine and that I got that quote from the article,  “Playboy at 60: Hugh Hefner Looks Back,” You noted, “I had been really consumed the first few years on the magazine.” 

Then I went on  to quote from our sermon last Sunday from Mark Henry who is one of the teaching pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH.

(Pictured below Pastor Mark Henry with his family)

Here is the 2nd part of that sermon below:

WORK BEGAN WITH GOD. GOD IS A WORKER. Jesus was a carpenter. He had a job too. 

GOD CREATED ADAM AND EVE TO WORK AND BUILD A CULTURE THAT WOULD GLORIFY HIM. WE ARE WORKERS. Being made in God’s image also includes being designed to work, and we have that desire is in us. But in Genesis 3 because of our sin God’s beautiful design for accomplishing and doing comes to a bitter and untimely end. God cursed the ground so that creation continually wars against itself making all of our labor a frustrating toil. 

THERE IS NO WORK IN OUR LIVES THAT HAS NOT BEEN KISSED BY THE CURSE OF THE FALL. 

Ecclesiastes 2:18 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Vanity of Toil

¹⁸ I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me,WHAT MAKES OUR WORK TOIL IS THAT EVER SINCE THE FALL WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING TO OUR WORK TO GIVE US A SENSE OF IDENTITY. We believe we are what we do. Our work is a toil because we try and find our identity in our work rather than find our identity in Jesus. Why do you think there are so many workaholics? Workaholics have this obsessive desire to succeed and this comes out of the hope that maybe that some amount of work and accomplishment will bring meaning to their life. However, no amount of work can bring true satisfaction to our souls. No matter how much money we make there is always this sense that something is missing and there has to be more to life.Solomon says if you think you can cheat this because you are saying that you are doing all this hard work for your kids, well that is vanity too!!!!!Remember SOLOMON IS OLDER AND HE SEES THAT FINISH LINE OF DEATH QUICKLY APPROACHING and he has worked to build this massive empire and the question that haunts him is this: WHAT IF THE KID WHO INHERITS ALL MY STUFF IS AN IDIOT?”Ecclesiastes 2:21 English Standard Version (ESV)

²¹ because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

Our works and achievements don’t truly last. In time what we have accomplished and gotten will be lost by the next generation because they didn’t earn it themselves. They don’t value it the same way. 

___

There are two points that my pastor made that I want to directly personalize to you HUGH!!!!

1st point: HUGH, YOU LIKE SOLOMON ARE IN THE FINAL DAYS OF YOUR LIFE (YOU SEE THE FINISH LINE APPROACHING) AND YOU NEED TO LOOK AT SOLOMON’S FINAL CONCLUSION IN THE LAST TWO VERSES OF ECCLESIASTES:

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

2nd point: HUGH, DON’T ATTEMPT TO CONTINUE YOUR BUSINESS LEGACY BY PASSING IT ON TO YOUR SON COOPER HEFNER!!!!!

Solomon points out that is like CHASING THE WIND to try and pass on your legacy to your son because he may be an idiot. (Someone like Cooper who is entering a marriage soon is certainly an idiot if he hopes to sustain a successful marriage in the Playboy environment).  A much wiser move would be to pass on these wise words of Solomon from Proverbs 5 to all our of your sons.

My son, give attention to my wisdom,
Incline your ear to my understanding;
² That you may observe discretion
And your lips may reserve knowledge.
³ For the lips of an adulteress drip honey
And smoother than oil is her speech;
⁴ But in the end she is bitter as wormwood,
Sharp as a two-edged sword.
⁵ Her feet go down to death,
Her steps take hold of Sheol.
⁶ She does not ponder the path of life;
Her ways are unstable, she does not know it.

Again, your business is built on the PLAYBOY PHILOSOPHY and that is hurtful to marriages such as your son Cooper will be entering into soon.

Why are these words in Proverbs 5 so wise? Adrian Rogers explains in his sermon“THE PLAYBOY’S PAYDAY,” :

Go back to chapter 5 and look if you will in verse 7 and 8: “Hear me now therefore, 0 ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth.  Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh to the door of her house.”  Are you listening to me? 

This sin of immorality is not a sin we’re told to fight in the Bible.  It is a sin that we’re told to flee.  The Bible says, “Flee fornication.”  The Bible says, “Flee youthful lusts.” You just get out of that compromising situation.  If there is a person that works in the office where you work, and that person is flirting with you, and you feel that lust and that attraction, if you find something happening that’s ugly and impure in your heart, it would be better for you to quit than to stay in that office.  Just resign. You say, But my job!  Your purity! If you’re walking down the street, just go all the way around the block just to miss it.   That’s exactly what he’s saying here. 

Listen.  Listen.  “Remove thy way from her and come not nigh the door of her house.” Just get away! Don’t see how close you can come to the edge without falling over.  See how far that you can stay away. Flee fornication!  Flee fornication! I know what you young men feel.  I felt it.  When I was in college, well, know they say that what a man thinks about, he becomes.   I almost turned into a girl.  Man! It’s real! But I’ll tell you what, I had a motto on my desk.  And this is what it said.  I put it right on my desk where I studied.  “He who would not fall down, ought not to walk in slippery places.” Amen.   He who would not fall down, ought not to walk in slippery places.  The distance that we should keep! 

You don’t put all this garbage and this filth and this immorality and this nudity in your mind! Don’t go to those movies! Don’t read those magazines! Don’t watch that program! Don’t do it! Don’t do it.  “Can a man take a fire in his bosom and be not burned?  You’re not smarter than God! You’re not going to outsmart God.  And you put it in your mind, it’s going to come out in your life, “for out of the heart are the issues of life,” and we’re going to talk about that, and I’m going to be bringing a message on the poison of pornography before we get out of this series in the Book of Proverbs because the Proverbs have a lot to say about that.  God willing, I will do that. But notice here the distance that we should keep!

Now, the message is over, but let me just tell you one or two or three things.   Number one, if you’re not saved, you get saved.  Listen to me now.  Don’t put things off.  Just listen.  If you’re not saved, you get saved.  You’re not going to make it without Jesus in this sex-saturated society.   If you’re not saved, you get saved!

Francis Schaeffer rightly observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.” Even though wrote this wise words in Proverbs 5 he also fell into the trap of sleeping with many women. Don’t let your sons make the same mistakes that you have HUGH!!!

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 15th letter I have written to you and again I have taken an aspect of your life and responded with what the Bible has to say on that subject.

Hugh Hefner’s Son, Cooper Hefner, Engaged to Actress Scarlett Byrne

______________

Like father, like son: Playboy founder Hugh poses with his sons Cooper and Marston

_

The featured artist today is Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, DC, in 1941. In his youth, he studied crafts and learned how to build guitars, furniture, and canoes through practical training and instruction. After earning his BA from Catholic University in Washington DC, Puryear joined the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and later attended the Swedish Royal Academy of Art. He received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1971. Puryear’s objects and public installations—in wood, stone, tar, wire, and various metals—are a marriage of minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. Puryear’s evocative, dreamlike explorations in abstract forms retain vestigial elements of utility from everyday objects found in the world.

In Ladder for Booker T. Washington, Puryear built a spindly, meandering ladder out of jointed ash wood. More than thirty-five-feet tall, the ladder narrows toward the top, creating a distorted sense of perspective that evokes an unattainable or illusionary goal. In the massive stone piece, Untitled, Puryear enlisted a local stonemason to help him construct a building-like structure on a ranch in northern California. On one side of the work is an eighteen-foot-high wall—on the other side, an inexplicable stone bulge. A favorite form that occurs in Puryear’s work, the thick-looking stone bulge is surprisingly hollow, coloring the otherwise sturdy shape with qualities of uncertainty, emptiness, and loss.

Martin Puryear represented the United States at the Bienal de São Paulo in 1989, where his exhibition won the Grand Prize. Puryear is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. Puryear was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1992 and received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1994. Martin Puryear lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York.

_

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_

–

May 4, 2022

Dear Woody,

You really did try to make Philippe sound stupid in your latest film and it was hilarious!!

Philippe: Well in my next film
I’m taking on the turmoil in the Middle East,and…hopefully…offer some solution for the reconciliation
between the Arabs and Israel.

Woody you should know that the Bible predicts some things about the Jews and also the descendants of Ismael and that is they will continue to fight!!!

GENESIS 16:

¹⁰ The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

¹¹ The angel of the Lord also said to her:

“You are now pregnant
    and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,^[a]
    for the Lord has heard of your misery.
¹² He will be a wild donkey of a man;
    his hand will be against everyone
    and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
    toward^[b] all his brothers.”

4 Miracle Prophecies Christians Should Know about Israel

• Adrian RogersLove Worth Finding Ministries
• 20203 Aug

“Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord and all of the kings of the earth Thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory.” Psalm 102:13-16

People sometimes ask me, “Pastor, why do you keep going back to the land of Israel?” Because I love the land and I love her people.They are God’s chosen people, a people of destiny. I go to Israel for two reasons.

One, I love her past. I love to look back and see the land where my Savior lived and walked and talked. I love to study the Bible on location. It causes the Bible to burst aflame in your hands.

Two, I want help in understanding the present and the future, because there is Bible prophecy yet to be fulfilled. Keep your eyes on Zion, God’s holy land. As the Jew goes, so goes the world. The Jews are God’s yardstick, God’s outline, God’s blueprint, for what He’s up to in the rest of the world.

The land of Israel, I believe, is the most important spot on earth. The most important city is not Washington or Moscow, but Jerusalem. The most important land, believe it or not, is not America but tiny Israel, about the size of New Jersey.

Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages/silverjohn

What Does the Bible Have to Say about Israel?

Israel: the geographic center. “See, I have set thee in the midst of the nations (Ezekiel 5:5). Israel, called “the navel of the earth,” is strategically located at the hub of three continents.

Israel: the revelation center. From this land, the land of Moses, the prophets and the apostles, came the Word of God.

Israel: the spiritual center. In Bethlehem Jesus was born. In Nazareth He grew to maturity. In Galilee He walked and taught on the mountainsides and beside the Sea. In Jerusalem our Lord was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. From the Mount of Olives He ascended. And to the Mount of Olives He will return; His feet will first touch down upon the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4).

Israel: the prophecy center. Prophecy is “pre-written history.” The land of Israel is the only land belonging to God’s people. The details of their future are minutely recorded in the Bible. If you want to know what God is doing, study Israel and her people.

Israel: the storm center. The Middle East, specifically Israel, is the world’s greatest trouble spot. The Bible says “Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone for all people” of the world[CAP1] [CA2] – (Zechariah 12:3), and indeed we see in the daily news the gathering storm clouds of Armageddon.

Israel: also the peace center. We’re told to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). There will never be peace on earth until there’s peace in Jerusalem, until Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, rules and reigns from Jerusalem. When we’re praying for the peace of Jerusalem, we’re praying, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” We want our Lord to reign from Zion, to sit upon the throne of his father David.

Israel: one day will be the glory center. When our Lord returns, all nations of the world will come to Jerusalem to worship (Micah 2:3). Jerusalem will be the capital city not only of Israel but of the entire world, and the Word of the Lord shall go forth from Zion (Isaiah 2:3). Jesus will reign from Jerusalem (Luke 1:32). Israel is at the center of God’s plan.

As we look at Israel, I want you to see four miracle prophecies about this land.

The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Generation (How Israel Came to Be a Nation)

In Genesis 18:18 God gave Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, the promise of a son—and descendants. He said, “Abraham, through your son all the nations of the world are going to be blessed” (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). When Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, God gave them a miracle child. Every Jew alive today is the direct result of a miracle birth. Therefore, our precious Jewish friends should have no difficulty believing in the virgin birth because every one of them is here because of a miracle birth. That’s the miracle of the generation of the Jewish people.

Then God promised Abraham a land for His people. God Himself gave Abraham the land we call Israel. And He gave it irrevocably. (Genesis 12:1, 15:16, 15:18-21, Deuteronomy 9:4)

Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/Matthew Brosseau

The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Preservation – Part 1

Not only did God bring Israel into being as a miracle nation, but God keeps Israel as a miracle nation. Psalm 89 shows God’s heart on this.

18 For the Lord is our defense; and the Holy One of Israel is our king…. 20 I have found David My servant; with My holy oil have I anointed him: 21 With whom My hand shall be established: Mine arm also shall strengthen him. 22 The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness afflict him. 23 And I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him. 24 But My faithfulness and My mercy shall be with him: and in My name shall his horn be exalted…. 27 “Also I will make him My first born, higher than the kings of the earth. 28 My mercy will I keep for him forevermore and My covenant [an unbreakable promise] shall stand fast with him. 29 His seed also will I make to endure forever and his throne as the days of heaven.”

God declares the descendants of David shall endure. Looking down through the tunnel of time, He foresaw (v. 30) that if David’s descendants 30 “forsake My law and walk not in My judgments [and by the way, they have forsaken God’s law and not walked in His judgments] 31”If they break My statutes and keep not My commandments,” [they have broken His statutes, they have not kept His commandments], then God says, “32 Then will I visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. 33 Nevertheless,” [highlight the word “nevertheless] “My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness to fail, 34 My covenant will I not break nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips, 35 Once have I sworn by My holiness that I will not lie unto David. 36 His seed shall endure forever and his throne as the sun before Me. 37 It shall be established forever as the moon, even like the faithful witness in the sky. Selah.” [Selah means “pause and think about that.”]

God has said:

the Jews would be disobedient—and they were,

the Jews would be dispersed—and they were,

the Jew would be discredited—and they were,

but you could no more destroy the Jewish race than you could destroy the sun, the moon and stars. They may be chastised, they may suffer, but God said, “I will keep My word to David, his seed shall endure” (v. 29).

Jeremiah 31:35-37 confirms this.

35 Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, And its waves roar (The Lord of hosts is His name): 36 “If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever.” 37 Thus says the Lord: “If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done,” says the Lord.

The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Preservation – Part 2

If you want to get rid of the nation Israel, you will first have to get rid of the sun, moon, and stars. In other words, God is saying, “I’ll tell you when I’ll cast off Israel: the same day you can tell Me how high is ‘up.’ I’ll cast off Israel the same day you can show Me what this earth suspended in space is resting upon. You’ll have to pluck the sun, moon, stars from My heaven before you can annihilate this nation.”

They exist as a miracle nation. They stand beside the graves of their persecutors.  They live on. When they returned, the land was a rock-filled desert. Zion now is blooming as a rose.

Every Jew is here today because of God’s keeping, preserving power upon His chosen people.

Throughout history, Satan, Israel’s ancient foe, has tried to eradicate this nation and obliterate this promise, but he could not do it.

Egypt’s pharaoh could not diminish God’s chosen people.

The Red Sea could not drown them.

Jonah’s whale could not digest them.

Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace could not burn them.

The gallows of horrible Haman could not execute them.

The dictators of this world have not been able to annihilate them.

The nations of this world have not been able to assimilate them.

When other peoples have been taken from their homelands, when they have been scattered, soon they’ve been absorbed, assimilated—swallowed up, so to speak—into the culture of their new location and cannot be traced.

But for nineteen centuries the Jewish people, wherever they were found, kept themselves together, maintaining their traditions, laws, statutes and even language. God preserved them as a nation, an identifiable people.

God said He would “visit their iniquity with stripes” and indeed He has. They suffered unmentionable atrocities under Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great and the Greeks, Nero and the Romans, under the Turks, and Hitler. Under Russia they have and are now suffering. Under the Arab nations they have and are suffering. But they have endured because God’s Word prophesied they would endure.

Photo courtesy: ©GettyImagesfotofrankyat

The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Restoration – Part 1

After centuries in exile, God once again brought His people back into their land. In my estimation the most amazing thing that has happened in recent history has not been the end of World War II or placing a man on the moon, but the day when Israel was reborn, reconstituted as a nation.

Through the prophet Amos, God said,

“And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the way cities, and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof; and they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.” (Amos 9:14-15)

God says, “I’ll bring them back and plant them there, and no one will uproot them.” God has brought them back to stay, regardless of what anyone says about it.

Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages/Xantana

The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Restoration – Part 2

May 14, 1948, Israel’s declaration day of independence, I was playing high school football. Little did I realize the impact of that moment—God’s fulfillment of Bible prophecy. At that moment, 650,000 Jews were surrounded by six Arab states and 40 million enemies who had sworn by Allah that they would exterminate Israel, drench the soil with Israeli blood, and drive them into the sea. With a fury, immediately five Arab armies swept down from the east toward the west and on to Tel-Aviv.  But God miraculously preserved this little nation. Before that time, a Jew was subject to arrest for even carrying a gun. But by the time the UN called for an armistice, these people who were supposed to be “pushed off into the sea” were 150 miles into Egyptian territory. How did that happen?

The Israelis secretly took old automobiles and buses to sheds, where they welded boiler plates to the sides to make tanks. They took hoe handles and broomsticks and painted them to look like guns to appear better armed.

As Arab legions advanced through some groves, they encountered thousands of beehives.  The Israelis are beekeepers.  After all, you can’t have a land flowing with milk and honey without bees.  And it just so happened in the attack, these hives were overturned. Millions of bees swarmed out and began stinging. They dropped their modern weapons in consternation and fled. Later, when the bees went back into their hives, the Israelis went out and picked up the much-needed weapons.

At the same time, coming from the north, others from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq attacked across the Jezreel Valley.  When they got to the middle of that valley, a strange sickness like dysentery disabled them.  They were so weak they couldn’t fight.  At that same moment, here came the Israelis with the weapons they had picked up from the battle of the bees.  An American newspaper ran this headline, “The Bees Fight for Israel.”  They captured those who were sick in the valley of Jezreel. The record reports that on one occasion, 20,000 Arabs were captured by 400 Israelis.

Don’t give Israel credit for that.  God said, “I will bring them again into their own land.”  I don’t think the Israeli cause has always been just.  I don’t think the American cause has always been just. I don’t think the Arab cause has always been just. I don’t think you can say any cause is always just if man has to do with it.  But God is over the affairs of men. God rules in the affairs of men. And God said, “I will bring them back.” God brought them back.

Similar things happened in the Six Day War in 1967. Again it seems God wasn’t neutral. Jordan, Egypt and Syria united with one stated goal: “Wipe Israel off the map.”  But it was over in six days. Outnumbered 80 to one, God gave His ancient people victory.

The same was true in 1973, the Yom Kippur War. Israel’s enemies invaded on Israel’s holiest day, when no one would expect it. God again seemed to intervene when both Israeli and Syrian forces reported strange events that caused Israel’s enemies to surrender.

The Bible predicts that in the last days the same will happen when Russia invades the Middle East. Russia will be brought to her knees on the mountains of Israel. Ezekiel 38 and 39 relate this amazing prophecy.

When the battle of Armageddon is fought, when the forces of anti-Christ gather once more against Jerusalem, God will again come to the rescue of His people in that great, final war for Israel and her survival. What we see today is a foretaste of that.

“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about when they shall be in siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.”  Zechariah 12:2-3

When that battle comes, Zechariah says the LORD will fight for Israel.

In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. (12:8-9)

Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages

The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Regeneration

Look what happens in their hearts after all this occurs.

“And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” Zechariah 12:10

What a day that will be! The eyes of God’s people will be opened. With deep mourning, they will recognize their Messiah as the one their forefathers pierced.

…there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.  (13:1)

God will remove the idols from Israel once and for all (v. 2). Then He will bring those remaining through the fire,

 …and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on My name, and I will hear them: I will say, “It is my people,” and they shall say, “The Lord is my God.” (13:9)

One of the signs that Jesus Christ is coming soon is the sign that Zion is being built up.

We long for this day! This is Israel’s glorious future—and you may be sure, God is going to bring it to pass.

Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages/Jacek_sopotnicki

How Israel and the Jews Have Shaped History

As you study history, you learn that the indestructible Jew has left his indelible mark upon history. The Jewish people are not great in number. Of the world’s population, they are only 0.2%. That’s not two percent.  That’s less than one-fourth of one percent. Yet did you know that 22% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jews? In 2013, six of the 12 laureates were Jewish. Think of that.

Abraham’s descendants consistently win high percentages not just of Nobel Prizes but other awards in medicine, health, music, and public life. What a mark they’ve made upon our world.

Did you know it was a Jew who financed Christopher Columbus when he set sail for the west? Of his crew members, the first to set foot on American soil was a Jew. Did you know that a Jew, Haym Salomon, financed General George Washington in our Revolutionary War?

Have you ever taken an aspirin? Friedrich Bayer, whose company developed aspirin, was a Jew. Were you vaccinated for polio as a child? The injectable and oral polio vaccines of Salk and Sabin were so effective, the disease has been all but eradicated.

Has the dentist ever deadened your tooth before he started to drill? Alfred Einhorn, who developed Novocain, was a Jew. If you’re an anti-Semite, the next time you go to the dentist, why don’t you say, “Just drill away, don’t deaden my pain.” Have you ever had local anesthesia? Its inventor, Carl Koller, was a Jew.

When you developed an infection, the doctor prescribed streptomycin, developed by Waksman, a Jew. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew. Are you a student of philosophy? Spinoza was a Jew. Do you appreciate the Salvation Army? Its founder, William Booth, had a Jewish mother.

It’s amazing to study the mark God’s chosen people have made on the world. Jews can be thanked for the discovery of electromagnetic waves, the transistor, the first laser, oral contraceptives, antihistamines, anti-leukemia drugs, the electron microscope, vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague, the camera phone, nuclear fission reactor, sound-on-film technology, the discovery of neurotransmitters, the process by which we do MRIs, the Hepatitis-B vaccine, the first exact map of the moon—and do you like American music? Thank George and Ira Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner and Lowe, and Stephen Sondheim, to name only a few.

All history has been dramatically impacted by six Jews:  Moses, Paul, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and above them all, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Photo courtesy: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/ Pontuse

Based on the articles Israel and Bible Prophecy What Does the Future Hold? Part 1 and Part 2, orginially published on OnePlace.com. Used with permission

Publication date: March 22, 2018

The answer to finding 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.

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002

PS: When I watched RIFKIN’S FILM FESTIVAL I noticed how many times you talked about writing a great novel and reminded me of Gil in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. I wrote 34 posts on my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org on the historical characters mentioned in that movie. In fact, if you google CHARACTERS REFERENCED IN MIDNIGHT IN PARIS then it will bring you to my blog! 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.

https://bidding-test.devops.iponweb.net/automattic/dio-passback.html

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-fourth, twenty-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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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 […]

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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 Wednesday

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Q    Mr. President, should the Senate do away with the filibuster to codify Roe?

THE PRESIDENT:  I’m not — I’m not prepared to make those judgments now about — but, you know, I think the codification of Roe makes a lot of sense.

Look, think what Roe says.  Roe says what all basic mainstream religions have historically concluded — that the right — that the existence of a human life and being is a question.  Is it at the moment of conception?  Is it six months?  Is it six weeks?  Is it — is it quickening, like Aquinas argued? 

I mean, so the idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think, goes way overboard.

Carl Sagan asked:

Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?… it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth…?

Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop asserted:

Our question to a proabortion doctor who would not kill a newborn baby is this: “Would you then kill this infant a minute before he was born, or a minute before that, or a minute before that?” At what point in time can one consider life to be worthless and the next minute precious and worth saving?

Francis Schaeffer went on to say:

A much more serious example of this schizophrenic mentality is that we will transport a newborn baby, who is premature and has a congenital defect incompatible with life, to a hospital a considerable distance away–so that a sophisticated team of doctors and nurses can correct that defect and plan for the rehabilitation of the youngster. Meanwhile,  in a number of other hospitals within gunshot distance of that center, other medical personnel are destroying perfectly normal infants in the womb.

THE GROWTH OF HUMAN LIFE

Our reasons against abortion are logical as well as moral. It is impossible for anyone to say when a developing fetus becomes viable, that is, has the ability to exist on its own. Smaller and smaller premature infants are being saved each year! There was a day when a  1000-gram  preemie has no chance; now 50 percent of preemies under 1000 grams are being saved. Theoretically, there  once was a point beyond which technology could not be expected to go in salvaging premature infants—but with further technological advances, who knows what the limits may be! The eventual possibilities are staggering. 

The logical approach is to go back to the sperm and the egg. A sperm has twenty-three chromosomes; even though it is alive and can fertilize an egg, it can never make another sperm. An egg also has twenty-three chromosomes, and it can never make another egg. Thus, we have sperm that cannot reproduce and eggs that cannot reproduce unless they get together. Once the union of a sperm and an egg occurs and the twenty-three chromosomes of each are brought together into one cell that has forty-six chromosomes, that one cell has all the DNA (the whole genetic code) that will, if not interrupted, make a human being. 

Our question to a proabortion doctor who would not kill a newborn baby is this: “Would you then kill this infant a minute before he was born, or a minute before that, or a minute before that?” At what point in time can one consider life to be worthless and the next minute precious and worth saving?

(Page 297)

Having already mentioned the union of sperm and egg to give forty-six chromosomes, let us briefly review the development of a baby. At twenty-one days, the first irregular beats occur in the developing heart, long before the mother is sure she is pregnant. Forty-five days after conception, electroencephalographic waves can be picked up from the baby’s developing brain. 

By the ninth and tenth weeks, the thyroid and the adrenal glands are functioning. The baby can squint, swallow, and move his tongue. The sex hormones are already present. By twelve or thirteen weeks, he has fingernails; he sucks his thumb and will recoil from pain. His fingerprints, on the hands which have already formed, will never change throughout his lifetime except for size. Legally, it is understood that an individual’s fingerprints distinguish him as a separate identity and are the most difficult characteristic to falsify. 

In the fourth month the growing baby is eight to ten inches long. The fifth month is a time of lengthening and strengthening. Skin, hair, and nails grow. Sweat glands come into being, oil glands excrete. This is the month in which the mother feels the infant’s movements. 

In the sixth month the developing baby responds to light and sound. He can sleep and awaken. He gets hiccups and can hear the beat of his mother’s heart. Survival outside the womb is now possible. In the seventh month the nervous system becomes much more complex. The infant is about sixteen inches long and weighs about three pounds. The eighth and ninth months see a fattening of the baby. 

We do not know how anyone who has seen the remarkable films of the intrauterine development of the human embryo can still maintain that the product of an abortion consists of just some membranes or a part of the woman’s body over which she has complete control–or indeed anything other than a human life within the confines of a tiny body. At the very least we must admit that an embryo is not simply an extension of another person’s body; it is something separate and uniquely irreplaceable. Another good reason we should not view the unborn baby as an extension of the woman’s body is that it did not originate only from the woman. The baby would not exist without the man’s seed.

(Page 298)

We are convinced that the reason the Supreme Court decision for abortion-on-demand never came to grips with the issue of the viability of the human fetus is that its viability (this is, ability to live outside of the womb on its own) is really not the important point. 

Viable or not, the single-celled fertilized egg will develop into a human being unless some force destroys its life. We should add that biologists take the uniform position that life begins at conception; there is no logical reason why the proabortionist should try to arrive at a different definition when he is talking about people, the highest form of all biological creatures. After conception, no additional factor is necessary at a later time. All that makes up the adult is present as the ovum and the sperm are united–the whole genetic code is present. 

I am taking time over the next few weeks to take time to look at the work of Francis Schaeffer who died almost exactly 35 years ago today. Francis Schaeffer lived from January 30, 1912 to May 15, 1984 and on May 15, 1994 the 10th anniversary of his passing, I wrote 250 skeptics in academia and sent them a lengthy letter filled with his quotes from various intellectuals on the meaning of life if God was not in the picture. I also included the message by Francis Schaeffer on Ecclesiastes which were conclusions of King Solomon on the same subject and I also told about the musings of three men on the world around them, Carl Sagan in his film Cosmos, Francis Schaeffer in his experience in the 1930’s while on the beach observing an eclipse, and King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Then I posed to these academics the question, “Is there a lasting meaning to our lives without God in the picture?”
Many of these scholars have taken the time to respond back to me in the last 20 years and some of the names  included are  Ernest Mayr (1904-2005), George Wald (1906-1997), Carl Sagan (1934-1996),  Robert Shapiro (1935-2011), Nicolaas Bloembergen (1920-),  Brian Charlesworth (1945-),  Francisco J. Ayala (1934-) Elliott Sober (1948-), Kevin Padian (1951-), Matt Cartmill (1943-) , Milton Fingerman (1928-), John J. Shea (1969-), , Michael A. Crawford (1938-), (Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), Sol Gordon (1923-2008), Albert Ellis (1913-2007), Barbara Marie Tabler (1915-1996), Renate Vambery (1916-2005), Archie J. Bahm (1907-1996), Aron S “Gil” Martin ( 1910-1997), Matthew I. Spetter (1921-2012), H. J. Eysenck (1916-1997), Robert L. Erdmann (1929-2006), Mary Morain (1911-1999), Lloyd Morain (1917-2010),  Warren Allen Smith (1921-), Bette Chambers (1930-),  Gordon Stein (1941-1996) , Milton Friedman (1912-2006), John Hospers (1918-2011), and Michael Martin (1932-).

Francis Schaeffer talked quite a lot about the works of Carl Sagan and that is why I think Carl Sagan took the time to write me back.

Carl Sagan pictured below

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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Francis Schaeffer when he was a young pastor in St. Louis pictured above.

Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers

(both Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer mentioned Carl Sagan in their books and that prompted me to write Sagan and expose him to their views.

Carl Sagan pictured below:

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Francis Schaeffer

I mentioned earlier that I was blessed with the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Sagan. In his December 5, 1995 letter Dr. Sagan went on to tell me that he was enclosing his article “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I am going to respond to several points made in that article. Here is a portion of Sagan’s article (here is a link to the whole article):

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan pictured above

 “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”

by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You’d think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

 

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us–we’re trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what’s behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held–especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions–that there are only two: “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that’s what we’ll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names–pro-choice and pro-life–were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let’s consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There ‘s good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound–including music, but especially its mother’s voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It’s hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn’t very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman’s “innate right to control her own body” encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth … ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn’t it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

Abortion and the slippery slope argument above

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government’s business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn’t that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn’t those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

(Adrian Rogers pictured above)

Adrian Rogers’ sermon on animal rights refutes Sagan here

There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

Genesis 3 defines being human

And even with that protection, casual murder is an urban commonplace, and we wage “conventional” wars with tolls so terrible that we are, most of us, afraid to consider them very deeply… That protection, that right to life, eludes the 40,000 children under five who die on our planet each day from preventable starvation, dehydration, disease, and neglect.

Those who assert a “right to life” are for (at most) not just any kind of life, but for–particularly and uniquely—human life. So they too, like pro-choicers, must decide what distinguishes a human being from other animals and when, during gestation, the uniquely human qualities–whatever they are–emerge.

The Bible talks about the differences between humans and animals

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

In some animals, an egg develops into a healthy adult without benefit of a sperm cell. But not, so far as we know, among humans. A sperm and an unfertilized egg jointly comprise the full genetic blueprint for a human being. Under certain circumstances, after fertilization, they can develop into a baby. But most fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried. Development into a baby is by no means guaranteed. Neither a sperm and egg separately, nor a fertilized egg, is more than a potential baby or a potential adult. So if a sperm and egg are as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg–despite the fact that it’s only potentially a baby–why isn’t it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?

Hundreds of millions of sperm cells (top speed with tails lashing: five inches per hour) are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died? Should we mourn all those spontaneous miscarriages? Many lower animals can be grown in a laboratory from a single body cell. Human cells can be cloned… In light of such cloning technology, would we be committing mass murder by destroying any potentially clonable cells? By shedding a drop of blood?

 

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of “potential” human beings. Should heroic efforts be made to save and preserve all of them, everywhere, because of this “potential”? Is failure to do so immoral or criminal? Of course, there’s a difference between taking a life and failing to save it. And there’s a big difference between the probability of survival of a sperm cell and that of a fertilized egg. But the absurdity of a corps of high-minded semen-preservers moves us to wonder whether a fertilized egg’s mere “potential” to become a baby really does make destroying it murder.

Opponents of abortion worry that, once abortion is permissible immediately after conception, no argument will restrict it at any later time in the pregnancy. Then, they fear, one day it will be permissible to murder a fetus that is unambiguously a human being. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers (at least some of them) are pushed toward absolutist positions by parallel fears of the slippery slope.

 

Another slippery slope is reached by those pro-lifers who are willing to make an exception in the agonizing case of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. But why should the right to live depend on the circumstances of conception? If the same child were to result, can the state ordain life for the offspring of a lawful union but death for one conceived by force or coercion? How can this be just? And if exceptions are extended to such a fetus, why should they be withheld from any other fetus? This is part of the reason some pro-lifers adopt what many others consider the outrageous posture of opposing abortions under any and all circumstances–only excepting, perhaps, when the life of the mother is in danger.

By far the most common reason for abortion worldwide is birth control. So shouldn’t opponents of abortion be handing out contraceptives and teaching school children how to use them? That would be an effective way to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, the United States is far behind other nations in the development of safe and effective methods of birth control–and, in many cases, opposition to such research (and to sex education) has come from the same people who oppose abortions.continue on to Part 3

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions.

The attempt to find an ethically sound and unambiguous judgment on when, if ever, abortion is permissible has deep historical roots. Often, especially in Christian tradition, such attempts were connected with the question of when the soul enters the body–a matter not readily amenable to scientific investigation and an issue of controversy even among learned theologians. Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of “quickening” (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.

Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments–rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words–contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that’s remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decrees that if there’s a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn’t look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church’s first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church’s teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already “formed”–roughly, the end of the first trimester.

But when sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated–in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.

From colonial times to the nineteenth century, the choice in the United States was the woman’s until “quickening.” An abortion in the first or even second trimester was at worst a misdemeanor. Convictions were rarely sought and almost impossible to obtain, because they depended entirely on the woman’s own testimony of whether she had felt quickening, and because of the jury’s distaste for prosecuting a woman for exercising her right to choose. In 1800 there was not, so far as is known, a single statute in the United States concerning abortion. Advertisements for drugs to induce abortion could be found in virtually every newspaper and even in many church publications–although the language used was suitably euphemistic, if widely understood.

But by 1900, abortion had been banned at any time in pregnancy by every state in the Union, except when necessary to save the woman’s life. What happened to bring about so striking a reversal? Religion had little to do with it.Drastic economic and social conversions were turning this country from an agrarian to an urban-industrial society. America was in the process of changing from having one of the highest birthrates in the world to one of the lowest. Abortion certainly played a role and stimulated forces to suppress it.

One of the most significant of these forces was the medical profession. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, medicine was an uncertified, unsupervised business. Anyone could hang up a shingle and call himself (or herself) a doctor. With the rise of a new, university-educated medical elite, anxious to enhance the status and influence of physicians, the American Medical Association was formed. In its first decade, the AMA began lobbying against abortions performed by anyone except licensed physicians. New knowledge of embryology, the physicians said, had shown the fetus to be human even before quickening.

Their assault on abortion was motivated not by concern for the health of the woman but, they claimed, for the welfare of the fetus. You had to be a physician to know when abortion was morally justified, because the question depended on scientific and medical facts understood only by physicians. At the same time, women were effectively excluded from the medical schools, where such arcane knowledge could be acquired. So, as things worked out, women had almost nothing to say about terminating their own pregnancies. It was also up to the physician to decide if the pregnancy posed a threat to the woman, and it was entirely at his discretion to determine what was and was not a threat. For the rich woman, the threat might be a threat to her emotional tranquillity or even to her lifestyle. The poor woman was often forced to resort to the back alley or the coat hanger.

This was the law until the 1960s, when a coalition of individuals and organizations, the AMA now among them, sought to overturn it and to reinstate the more traditional values that were to be embodied in Roe v. Wade.continue on to Part 4

If you deliberately kill a human being, it’s called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee–biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes–whatever else it is, it’s not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?

Section 8 Sperm journey to becoming Human 

We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively–that is, on the early side. There are people who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to effect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.By the end of the fourth week, it’s about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It’s recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.

So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli–again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they’re arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely humancharacteristics–apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn’t stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Sagan’s conclusion based on arbitrary choice of the presence of thought by unborn baby

Other animals have advantages over us–in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought–characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That’s how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain–principally in the top layers of the convoluted “gray matter” called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn’t begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy–the sixth month.

By placing harmless electrodes on a subject’s head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy–near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this–however alive and active they may be–lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we’ve rejected the extremes of “always” and “never,” and this puts us–like it or not–on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973–although for completely different reasons.

Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there’s a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.

What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman’s right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman’s guarantee of privacy and the fetus’s right to life must be weighed–and when the court did the weighing’ priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…–not when “ensoulment” occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called “viability” and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe–no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It’s a very pragmatic criterion.

If the fetus at a certain stage of gestation would be viable outside the womb, the argument goes, then the right of the fetus to life overrides the right of the woman to privacy. But just what does “viable” mean? Even a full-term newborn is not viable without a great deal of care and love. There was a time before incubators, only a few decades ago, when babies in their seventh month were unlikely to be viable. Would aborting in the seventh month have been permissible then? After the invention of incubators, did aborting pregnancies in the seventh month suddenly become immoral? What happens if, in the future, a new technology develops so that an artificial womb can sustain a fetus even before the sixth month by delivering oxygen and nutrients through the blood–as the mother does through the placenta and into the fetal blood system? We grant that this technology is unlikely to be developed soon or become available to many. But if it were available, does it then become immoral to abort earlier than the sixth month, when previously it was moral? A morality that depends on, and changes with, technology is a fragile morality; for some, it is also an unacceptable morality.

And why, exactly, should breathing (or kidney function, or the ability to resist disease) justify legal protection? If a fetus can be shown to think and feel but not be able to breathe, would it be all right to kill it? Do we value breathing more than thinking and feeling? Viability arguments cannot, it seems to us, coherently determine when abortions are permissible. Some other criterion is needed. Again, we offer for consideration the earliest onset of human thinking as that criterion.

Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester–except in cases of grave medical necessity–it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.What do you think? What have others said about Carl Sagan’s thoughts on 

END OF SAGAN’S ARTICLE

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Proverbs 3New Living Translation

Trusting in the Lord

3 My child,^[a] never forget the things I have taught you.
    Store my commands in your heart.
² If you do this, you will live many years,
    and your life will be satisfying.
³ Never let loyalty and kindness leave you!
    Tie them around your neck as a reminder.
    Write them deep within your heart.
⁴ Then you will find favor with both God and people,
    and you will earn a good reputation.

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart;
    do not depend on your own understanding.
⁶ Seek his will in all you do,
    and he will show you which path to take.

⁷ Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom.
    Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
⁸ Then you will have healing for your body
    and strength for your bones.

⁹ Honor the Lord with your wealth
    and with the best part of everything you produce.
¹⁰ Then he will fill your barns with grain,
    and your vats will overflow with good wine.

¹¹ My child, don’t reject the Lord’s discipline,
    and don’t be upset when he corrects you.
¹² For the Lord corrects those he loves,
    just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.^[b]

¹³ Joyful is the person who finds wisdom,
    the one who gains understanding.
¹⁴ For wisdom is more profitable than silver,
    and her wages are better than gold.
¹⁵ Wisdom is more precious than rubies;
    nothing you desire can compare with her.
¹⁶ She offers you long life in her right hand,
    and riches and honor in her left.
¹⁷ She will guide you down delightful paths;
    all her ways are satisfying.
¹⁸ Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her;
    happy are those who hold her tightly.

¹⁹ By wisdom the Lord founded the earth;
    by understanding he created the heavens.
²⁰ By his knowledge the deep fountains of the earth burst forth,
    and the dew settles beneath the night sky.

²¹ My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and discernment.
    Hang on to them,
²² for they will refresh your soul.
    They are like jewels on a necklace.
²³ They keep you safe on your way,
    and your feet will not stumble.
²⁴ You can go to bed without fear;
    you will lie down and sleep soundly.
²⁵ You need not be afraid of sudden disaster
    or the destruction that comes upon the wicked,
²⁶ for the Lord is your security.
    He will keep your foot from being caught in a trap.

²⁷ Do not withhold good from those who deserve it
    when it’s in your power to help them.
²⁸ If you can help your neighbor now, don’t say,
    “Come back tomorrow, and then I’ll help you.”

²⁹ Don’t plot harm against your neighbor,
    for those who live nearby trust you.
³⁰ Don’t pick a fight without reason,
    when no one has done you harm.

³¹ Don’t envy violent people
    or copy their ways.
³² Such wicked people are detestable to the Lord,
    but he offers his friendship to the godly.

³³ The Lord curses the house of the wicked,
    but he blesses the home of the upright.

³⁴ The Lord mocks the mockers
    but is gracious to the humble.^[c]

³⁵ The wise inherit honor,
    but fools are put to shame!

Would you like to illumine the path you are on with the word of God hears Adrian Rogers with people as counselors and Bible teachers a Bible question what is number one question how can I know the will of God for my life and that is a great question. That is a wonderful question and it applies to all of us. Welcome to find featuring the profound truth of the gospel through the practical messages of Adrian Rogers man is a clever creature but he has lost his way in the dark. We live in a day of guided missiles and misguided men. 

Which is a shame because God is cultivated wonderful plans for each of our lives. 

If you have your Bible turnout of Proverbs chapter 3 will begin in verse five is Adrian Rogers begins part one of lighting the future figured out what question is asked more than any other question. 

When people ask counselors and Bible teachers a Bible question, what is the number one question one question is how can I know the will of God for my life. That question more than any other question is asked how I know the will of God for my life and that is a great question. That is a wonderful question and it applies they bring. 

It applies to you. It applies to all of us now man is a clever creature but he has lost his way in the darkness, the atom has been split in man is now able to destroy himself and the environment with him. We had the exploration of space. We put those first major satellites and now we have the space stations orbiting the earth and we sent probes to Venus and Mars and Jupiter and beyond all that, I mean that’s just in our lifetime we now in our lifetime, that of instant communication by radio and television and we can watch news as it happens across the ocean just in our lifetime and amazing thing and now we have the Internet than the. The information superhighway and some of our kids are becoming roadkill all that information superhighway, but we have instant communication, I was speaking in Maven stadium in the promise keepers rally in Knoxville. I was on the platform came from the platform went right up to the speakers place where the speakers were sitting by the time I got back to my place. I had received an email from Australia person who just heard me speak and was responding to my speaking while I was speaking there on the platform. This man was listing and responded by email. That’s the information age in which we live and in our lifetime we seen a cashless society that is coming and it is coming own very strong is just around the corner of the automobile began in 1903, but we have and how automobiles they can travel 600 miles an hour. We have airplanes that travel 2000 miles an hour spaceships 24,000 miles an hour and we get there quicker but we still don’t know where were going. We have all this that is happening in our lifetime and the Bible says in the last days knowledge shall increase and that has happened, but we live in a day of guided missiles and misguided men. We have lost our way in the darkness and that is a pity that is a shame for God has promised to guide us how to use them versus and I want you to listen to these before we get into our text that I want to read in a moment. This is just to set the stage for the text, Proverbs 3 verses five and six we read that in the moment but listen to the Scriptures that tell us that God wants to guide us in Isaiah chapter 58 in verse 11 and the Lord shall guide the continuing is not a great promise. 

How would you like to say, day by day, moment by moment Almighty God is guiding me that is what he says the Lord shall guide the continually either. 

That is true, it is not limited in others. Psalm 32 and verse eight I will instruct the and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go, I will guide the with my dear, what guiding with the ideas that’s the most intimate guidance and irritability, wife in a restaurant, start a conversation. She looked at you and you shut your mouth to don’t go in before I can guide my kids are my when they were little baby sitting on the front row not be preaching why nobody also note that I look at him, so you will get it when you get home and it is right on that is guidance with the eye that is that is the most intimate kind of knowledge that God wants to guide us that way that he can guide us with his eyes. 

I Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 10 of the Bible says therefore we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which he had before ordained that we should walk in that is that God created us for plan the good works that he has before ordained that is, he laid out a plan for us. He wants to guide us and we are so blessed. There is a father of Bubba’s controlling all things. 

There is a Savior before so we can walk in his footsteps and there is a Holy Spirit within us, impressing our hearts so that we can find a way in a dark dark day. 

I was a something else that God has a special plan just for you that God doesn’t be with us in mass. He deals with us as individuals. God makes no duplicates. Everything that God makes is an original, just like every snowflake has its own specific pattern. God made you as an individual and God has a plan just for you and the Bible says in Psalm 37 verse 23 the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord is not incredible. 

This is of a good man are ordered by the Lord every step you take is to be in his plan and in his purpose and use it will that’s true for those like you pastor Rogers that God is called into the service. No, listen to me. It is true for you. 

The same plan that is true for the preachers true for the plumber the same plan that is true for missionaries proof the secretary. God has a plan for every individual life that God called me to preach but you see a plumber as being a plumber in the name of Jesus is more pleasing to God than a preacher who not been called yet understand this is not that some things are higher than others belies place the will of God will of God with us in business. Whether you are a homemaker you know whatever you all the will of God is the highest place now to preach when you been called to do something else would be to take second mass, but on the other hand, if you have been called breach and I have you to have to step down to be the president of United States because that is God’s plan for you. God has a plan for your life believe that statement may now want to leave its mad. 

Don’t let this just blow past God loves you. God has a plan for you. God says I will guide you continually. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord about God is with us as individuals. Dr. Steven over at said that God’s great plan is for us to find the follow and the finish the will of God for our lives is what it is. So let’s talk a little bit about how to light the future. Now go to the text that you turn to their in Proverbs chapter 3 verses five and six it says this trust in the Lord with all your heart, with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. 

In all thy ways acknowledge him, Melissa and all thy ways acknowledge him and he direct God’s now that’s God’s word. I submit use either true or false, I believe is true. You may distribute trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he really, really, really well. 

I promise it will direct by past. Now let’s just break that down and look at it in the three basic things I want you to see that text that you and I are to do. First of all, we must let God choose the way. Now we do that to ways. How do we let God choose the way weather must be a full confidence in God. Many of us don’t trust the Lord enough to lead and guide us. Notice in verse five trust in the Lord with all thine heart that I’m not asking you to trust in a proposition. Trust the person trust in the Lord with all my heart. You cannot trust somebody you do not know and you cannot know someone that you will spend time with you see when you trust somebody is because you spent time with them and if they trustworthy you come to love them, and if you come to love them and you can trust. Trust in the Lord that you know him intimately enough to trust in him denies my wife will save me something like this. Adrian will you do something for me was my first question what is now access a legitimate question was about. She’s a labor leader something for me and I say what is it she said nevermind. Just trust I go but I say okay why because I love a girl and I know her love for me and I don’t have to work and hear anybody say, close your eyes and open your mouth well now you got to know a person for you close your eyes and open your mouth. Is that not right, but if you if you them and you know they love you, then you can trust them because you know them and the reason many of us don’t trust the Lord that intimately is that we really don’t know him that intimately there is no story of a man who walking by seaside cliff fell over the cliff grabbed the scraggly limb and hanging there with hundreds of feet beneath him and waves crashing on the rocks and he is screaming for help and in the darkness. He hears a voice say you need help. Yes I need help in the voices trust me said I trust you voices let go of the limb. He says, is there anybody else out there why play there. I mean you going to trust no human cannot trust in the Lord with all of your heart and in order to trust him with all your heart, you have got to know him intimately and don’t trust your own understanding. 

Look at it in trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not under your own understanding and always his weight is over here is God, and over here is our understanding. Our reason and were torn between those two things we say well we take the word of God and we paraded past the judgment bar of human reason our understanding and we try to wait out and see that is really best brother in this trust. Frankly, that’s three people five people don’t. They don’t trust me look Malachi 310 bring all the time to storehouse of brewing either with a flood post volatile for you the windows of heaven for you, bless, especially not be room enough to receive it? If you believe that you guys would go she would she would if you believe that you can let your insane God says you bring that to mean although it is inevitably a blessing when the room received the resume and would do that is as it went away the minute that I get to God about it out of is my own understanding over here is the Lord what most of us do this kind of lean to our own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on the line own under standing that you can’t trust God that way until you know him. That way we want to trust our own understanding of the Bible says there is a way that seems right unto a man within thereof are the ways of been our minds sometimes don’t lead us directly and again Jeremiah chapter 10 verse 23 and 24 I know that the way of man is not in himself is not in man that will direct his steps. Most of us. 

We want lean. 

However, to our own. Under standing. That is not that we are not to have understanding the understanding is to come from the Lord, not your own understanding. Go back Proverbs chapter 2 we not just about flying blind. God gives you understanding look at you with verses one through six. My son, if thou wilt receive my words and high my commandments with the so that thou inclined I hear on the wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding EA without Christ after knowledge and lift us up by voice for understanding, if thou see kissed her as silver, and searches for her as for your treasures then you shall thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God, for the Lord giveth wisdom out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. God is not saying that you not have understanding. He just say don’t lean on your own understanding getting the word of God. Search for God’s way, just as you would silver and gold. And God says that you will find that what were talking about is letting God choose your way with a personal there must be full confidence in God, trust in the Lord be having confidence in him, not not not only must they be full confidence in the Lord, but they must be faithful compliance faithful compliance man. Notice again. Look, if you will. In this passage of Scripture in all thy ways acknowledge him in all thy ways acknowledge him in every situation, mouth, you know, surrender to plan. Most people want somebody give them a plan for their lives. God’s plan for your life is not a roadmap. It is a relationship. I’m glad that God that just write out a plan to seal it, and handed to us as a this is what you go to do next 50 years. Next 20 years. How boring. 

Or maybe how frightening will know we are to trust in the Lord with all of our hardly not into our own understanding. 

And then in all of our ways acknowledge him every time you come into the situation. Just acknowledge God in that situation say Lord what you want me to do here Lord what you want me to do here. Now most of us want to acknowledge God in certain areas of our lives. But what is this verse say in all thy ways acknowledge him? Do you want God to have control of all the allies did what some people think they have really arrived when they say this I give attempt of my money to God I give the seventh of my time to God I am a viable Christian yes three 110 is God’s and 1/7 of my time is God’s. I found in the house of God is every Lord’s day, every seventh day are given to God in every 10th part of my income. 

I’ve given to God. You think that’s good Bible Christianity own day. 

It is not listen to me one 10th of your income that belong to God. 10 tenths Colombia 1/7 of your time doesn’t belong to God. It all belongs to God. Don’t get the idea that life is like a pie you can take out seven pieces and take 1/7 and given to God when you eat the rest the idea that you take 1/10 to give to God and the rest is yours know the 1/7 in the 1/10 is only an indication that it all belongs to him, saying, God doesn’t want to buy groceries. I must say, God, God knows that you have a car payments. 

God knows all of these things, God knows that you should lay by for retirement. God knows all of that but frantic when it comes to finding God’s will for your life, you must take every red cent that you have and every moment that you have and in all thy ways acknowledge him in all thy ways acknowledge him, don’t segment your life that no say this won’t work if you try there must be a full confidence and a faithful compliance 20 saying, let God choose your way. Are you really ready for God to do whatever he wants to do in your life. I mean have you sign the contract at the bottom. Stephen oh Fred I mentioned in a little while back for the greatest preachers in the world and recognize that was a young man started out, his father was a faithful missionary Stephen Holford as a young man having been a proclivity toward engineering. 

He loved automobiles, you would know this about Steve over Billy love motorcycles and to drive one race them and take them apart and put them back together. He had planned this in his life. Steve over said I am going to be an engineer. 

I make a lot of money and then I’m going to use my money to support missions and the things of God that would been fine with us what God called them to do, but God and not called them to do that down in his heart he knew he was running from God. He got deathly ill. His father missionary in Africa not really even knowing that Stephen Holford was deathly ill and according to Dr. Holford two weeks from death received a letter from his father and his father had written to him these words to his but one life will soon be passed only what’s done for Christ will last God and use that to pierce the heart of young Stephen Holford and he bowed his head, then at hostility prayer. Prayer three short phrases in that prayer. Listen to it anywhere, anytime any cost. Now was just receiving over, close, that is for you or me for all of us to say have you said that I could ask if you will anyway. Can I do that, you know why you’re having difficulty with that because you don’t trust the Lord with all your heart, please us for a few close your eyes open your mouth you put something in there. 

You don’t want. 

Huge Israeli don’t trust in some way this is going to work his way through trust. Hardly not into thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy path. Point number one let God choose the way. Point number two. Let God confirm the way because you see is one thing for God to choose the way. But it’s another thing for God to confirm that this is the way he’s chosen that is there a lot of folks here in this building that say well yeah sure I’ll do God’s will, but I don’t know what it is. Yes say anytime, anywhere, any calls, but what is the time where is the place. What is the cost I know now all right now the Bible says he will direct your path. 

If you do this he will direct your paths. Now how does God confirm the way. 

Once God’s chosen. 

The way how does God confirm the way God direct your way by his word by the Bible to give you some Scripture met with him about lighting your path lighting in future Psalm 119 verse 105 byword is a lamp to my feet and a light to my pad word of God. 

God gave you his word coming up tomorrow will you part two of this important message. In the meantime, here, love, word finding, we love hearing how this ministry and the messages of Pastor Rogers have inspired you in your faith journey. If you can go on

Global were fighting studios in Memphis Tennessee. Byron Tyler here with the CEO of lobar fighting. Born Gary today. Adrian Rogers part two in a message lighting the future and you know we live in a day of guided missiles and misguided men. That’s exactly right. Nothing God wants us to live in a way he wants us to thrive, not just survive, Adrian Rogers says God will go before you, like a bulldozer. He will clear the way right and look we believe that this John 14 six I am the way the truth and the life. 

No one comes to the father except through me. If God is the way Byron he will make away. 

Well, God has cultivated carry wonderful plans for each of our lives and I love it. Proverbs 3, five and six is trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. If you think for a moment that God has created us, he is saved us. 

He has equipped us. 

He is providentially placed us where we are not to keep us idled, but to give us purpose. 

We need to learn to walk in purpose yes and Kerry think the question two is to ask ourselves if we are really serious about knowing God’s will for our lives. We’ve got to depend fully on him and obey his trusting and obeying. There is no other way to be happy in Jesus right a great song, etc. so God will call us to himself first and then he will call us to a specific task. You know what God’s will for your life. It’s God and I think as we learn to rest in him. Then his will will happen automatically. I like what Adrian Rogers says the word of God will show you the will of God. And that’s what lobar fighting is about getting the word of God into people’s hearts so they can discover the will of God for their lives in the will of God is the highest place you can be and more. This is beautifully the week we heard from a listener through Facebook to said hearing sermons from Adrian Rogers makes me feel good inside. He gets right to the point in his sermons and his messages are so right for this time as things are so unsettled all over the world. We thank God for Adrian Rogers so she could work when it is just that, you know, again, a reminder that he was an ambassador of the word of God, and that’s what lobar fund that’s our call. 

That’s what we do right. We we introduce people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and then we walked beside them trying to disciple and mentor and try to move them in their faith and move them in ministry. The world is trying to determine is there truth. How can I know truth LW has a special resource during the month of September and are LWF online store. Nothing but the truth DVD nothing but the truth. 

It’s a 87 minute documentary film showcasing the teaching, preaching of Adrian Rogers everybody from Dr. Tony Evans to Johnny Hunt, Ken Whitten, Dave Ramsey, Jennifer Rothchild, and much much more talking about what is truth what is truth to the unbeliever right what is truth in your marriage. What is truth in your finances. We know that the truth of God is the word of God and so this is a wonderful documentary. I’ve seen it about 10 times it seems like it’s it’s new every time I watch it but go to the online store and obtain this copy of nothing but the truth. 

Use it in your neighborhood. Use it at church on a Sunday night, but bring people together and just be a part of this discipleship series. Nothing but the truth DVD go to LWF.org will with part two in a message lighting the future. 

Here’s Adrian Rogers and Proverbs 3 verses five and six it says this trust in the Lord will all your heart, with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him� In all thy ways acknowledge him and he direct God’s now that’s God’s word. I submit use either true or false, I believe is true, elitist, or trust the Lord with all the way not under thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he really, really, really well. I promise it will direct thy paths. Now let’s just write that down and look at it and the three basic things I want you to see in that text that you and I are to do. First of all, we must let God choose the way. Now we do that to ways. How do we let God choose the way weather must be a full confidence in God. Many of us don’t trust the Lord enough to lead and guide us. 

Sometimes my wife will save me something like this. Adrian will you do something for me was my first question what is possible. 

She says I do something for me and I say what is it she said nevermind. Just trust. I go up and I say okay why because I love a girl and I know her love for me and I don’t have to work and to say, close your eyes and open your mouth that you got to know a person for you close your eyes and open your mouth. Is that not right, but if you if you and you know that I love you, then you can trust them because you know and the reason many of us don’t trust the Lord that intimately is that we really don’t know him that intimately and don’t trust your own understanding. Look at it in trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to your own understanding and always his weight is over here is God, and over here is our understanding. Our reason and were torn between those two things we say well we take the word of God and we paraded past the judgment bar of human reason our understanding and we try to wait it out and see that is really best. Rather than this trust God is not saying that you not have understanding. He just say don’t lean on your own understanding getting the word of God. Search for God’s way, just as you would silver and gold. And God says that you will find that what were talking about is letting God choose your way with a personal there must be full confidence in God’s in the Lord be having confidence in him must be full confidence in the Lord, but they must be faithful compliance. Now notice again. Look, if you will. In this passage of Scripture in all thy ways acknowledge him in every situation now you know surrender to plan most people what’s about to give them a plan for their lives. God’s plan for your life is not a roadmap. It is a relationship there must be a full confidence and a faithful compliance 20 saying, let God choose your way. 

Are you really ready for God to do whatever he wants to do in your life. 

I mean have you sign the contract at the bottom anywhere any time any cost. 

Now if you said that I might pass to you anyway. 

Can I do that, you know why you’re having difficulty with that because you don’t trust the Lord with all your heart, please just pray for you close your eyes open your mouth you put something in that you don’t want. Just really don’t trust work is always written trust and lean not standing in all ways and knowledge him and he direct thy paths. 

Point number one let God choose the way. Point number two. 

Let God confirm the way because you see is one thing for God to choose the way. But it’s another thing for God to confirm that this is the way he’s chosen that is there a lot of folks here in this building that say well yeah sure I’ll do God’s will know what it is. Yes, I’ll say anytime, anywhere, any calls, but what is the time where is the place. What is the cost I go now. All right now the Bible says he will direct your path. If you do this you will direct your path. 

Now how does God confirm the way. Once God’s chosen. 

The way how does God confirm the way I will mention full ways that God will confirm his will to you for your life and how godlike your future number 1 God Direct Your Way by his word by the Bible to give you some Scripture met with him about lighting your path lighting in future Psalm 119 verse 105 byword is a lamp to my feet and a light my path. The word of God. 

God gave you his word that many people are wanting the will of God for their lives when they are not obeying the revealed will of God in the written Scripture and they want God to show them something else. When it is as plain as day. 

What God does want in some areas and they’ve not done that. 

For example, let me mention three times in the Bible where the Bible specifically says this is the will of God. This is a little bit. 

First of all, concerning your salvation. Listen this second Peter three verse nine the Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance as the will of God for you. Have you repented of your sin. Have you given your heart to Jesus Christ. 

What don’t quibble with me about wanting to know with Scott for your life. 

Where the Bible clearly, plainly black print white papers and God is not willing that you should perish but that you should have eternal life, not willing that any shipping God wants everybody say.believe that. I hope you believe that some theologians believe God wants everybody say probably he was every mother’s child safe is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 

All right, that’s one place adjustment to the will of God, which is not about finding God’s will in the work place where he mentions the will of God. Ephesians chapter 5 verses 17 and 18 wherefore be you not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is be not drunk with wine, where the success could be filled with despair. Not only is God’s will to be saved. God’s will to be spirit filled. That’s what he said in that passage of Scripture. Don’t be unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is don’t be drunk with wine, but be filled with the spirit now. Are you now sitting there listening to Adrian, are you filled with the spirit, if not you or I would’ve got because he says clearly and plainly that is the will not make me a rocket scientist to understand that God says it is my will that you be saved and scared. Know that if you are not saved, and spirit why your company sell. I wish I knew the will of God for my life’s find that in the Scripture, let me mention the third time the Scripture when he uses the specific phrase the will of God first Thessalonians chapter 4 verse three for this is the will of God. 

Even your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication. This is a little got even your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication. What is will of God save spirit filled and sanctified, and in the Scriptures. He absolutely says this is the will of God by way of you just do those three steps to find rest of the almost axiomatic that you if you just do that and it’s amazing. So there’s a little got even your safe patient that you should abstain from fornication what is fornication. It is sex apart from the marriage sacred bonds of marriage, sometimes in counseling if your counselor pastor you had a man come to you or sometimes a woman with this proposition. Here I am married and my wife and I not getting along. We really should never got married. We don’t really love one another and our marriage is a disaster and I have discovered through love. I have discovered a God given love, there is a woman that I love a lot of my heart and she loves me and pastor I prayed about it and I really feel it’s God’s will that I marry this other woman because God does want me to be in bondage� God wants me to be happy. 

This is where happiness is pastor. 

Would you give me some advice. Somehow, I will give you advice your out of the will of God. You think God is a liar you I mean you think that God is just not take his word and set his word aside and say now I know this is what I said this is not well, but since you prayed. I change my mind. So is LOL Hadrian you’re so narrowminded. Some people are so broad-minded the mind is then in the middle. I’m just I’m just simply saying folks God is his will is all I got to do the will of God bring God’s will is best for you. God’s will is what you want for yourself. 

You have enough sense to want God as a good God, the Lord thy God is a something to share the Lord will give grace and glory no good thing will he withhold from them that walk upright. I’m just talking to you about how to Let God Confirm His Way, #1 is the Scripture you find so much of the will of God in Scripture, but not everything is found in his word. I mean, some you guys and gals. They know where you go to go to college. Oh are. Who should you marry whatever you find that in the Bible go to this is that university. The second way that God guide you is through prayer and God will guide you through prayer, beyond the shadow of any doubt. Let me give you some scriptures that teach that. 

For example, in the early church in acts chapter 1, they were wanting an apostle to take the place of Judas, who fell and listen to what it says here and they prayed and said, thou, Lord, which you noticed the hearts of all men show whether of these two. Thou hast chosen. They prayed and said, Lord, show my prayers a two-way street. So many of us want to say listen Lord to serve the speaking brother to speak, Lord, your servant, listen they have a quiet time in your prayer. This is a lost art of listening to God. God will speak directly to your heart. Director Scripture accept prayed in verse 29 Philip was a deacon that you holding an evangelistic crusade, and the Holy Spirit spoke to him. 

Listen to this I say verse 29 then the Spirit said to fill go near, and join thyself to this chariot. Philip is out there in the wilderness now being led of the spirit here comes the Ethiopian eunuch riding by the chariot in the spirit says that’s the one doing something now. 

The point I’m making is this that God will impress your spirit with the Holy Spirit that’s very mystic, but I can tell you time and time again when I have felt God speak to my heart and that sweet communion is almost again. Like I say, guiding you with his I win the first missionaries, which shows that acts 13 verse two and they ministered to the Lord and faster. The Holy Ghost said separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where Drive called the Holy Spirit speaks God God through his word. God guides when we pray, and the Holy Spirit of God speaks to us 1/3 way the government� Enough always. Now to confirm God’s will. Bible through prayer. 

Number three through the wisdom that God gives one of the great great great promises in the word of God is James chapter 1 verse five in the says this, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that gives liberally to all men and abrade is not and it shall be given him is not a one of us that doesn’t want and need wisdom, but here is an unqualified promise. If any of you that applies to all of us lack wisdom that apostle let us ask of God, that giveth to all men, not some in how liberally, and it shall be given him by submitting that is true, that is not for now. What is wisdom. Wisdom is not reading something in the Scripture all that’s valid. Wisdom is not praying and letting the Holy Spirit impress our hearts so that is valid wisdom is sanctified, common sense many of us are afraid to use on my when it comes to knowing the will of God. We think that if we use our mind that we are leaning to our own understanding. Now, know when your mind is filled with the spirit of God. Don’t be afraid to trust get your heart clean get your motive clear search the Scriptures pray and then do what you think you ought to do. Donald Ray Barnhouse said 90% of the will of God is found between your ears. God gives wisdom what is wisdom. Wisdom is not emotionalism is not getting wet around the lashes and warm around the heart, liver shivers, wisdom is sanctified, since it is seeing life from God’s point of view that certain things that you have to pray about. I’m not against prayer. 

How many of you prayed about the necktie you would wear this morning and some of you should have but I’m afraid about that know me you got enough sense to know when I get up I shave I wash my face. I do this I do that God gives you. 

I’m I mean why would God renew your mind and then not use it, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy temple in the God which is your reasonable service now. The fourth way that God is going to guide you and that is not only through the Scripture not only through prayer and Holy Spirit impress in your heart, not only through the sanctified wisdom that God gives to you, but by Provident to find out that God will providentially guide you when you get in the stream of his mercy, put down the Scripture Revelation chapter 3 verse eight I know thy works, behold, I’ve sent before the open door. 

I’ve even opened with an old man shot at time he that shot and no man open here to find out that God will open doors and God will shut doors and God will open doors and God will shut the door. 

Now here’s the third and final thing this is very important. Number one let God choose away never to let God confirm the weight and number three let God clear the way most of us think well I just knew the will of God made it all, and serenity will of God then would all be final. God’s got to make a way for you is got to clear the way. 

Now look in verse six and it says that and he will direct your paths that the word there is yeah sure is Hebrew word which literally means to clear the way. As a matter fact, the new American Standard translates it this way make your paths straight is what some of you may be looking at right now. I looked it up in another translation mate translates it this way, and he will clear the road for you. Now the word direct that he is that he will direct your path. It is a word that has the idea of clearing obstacles. Let me show you another place where it is used in the Bible. This make it crystal clear is found in Isaiah chapter 40 verses three and four and a speaks of the ministry of John the Baptist, clearing away from the side account and it says the voice of him across in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted in every mountain shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain about the idea. 

It’s like John the Baptist was a bulldozer making a way for the Messiah. Here is a mountain he moves it out of the way, here’s a bold removes the way, here’s a crooked road. He straightens that road. Here is a depression. 

He fills it with dirt. 

Do you have a smooth highway for Messiah, prepare ye the way of the Lord now, the same phrase that is used, prepare ye the way the Lord is the same way same phrase is used for director Pat Seymore what he is saying is this lesson God would choose the way God will confirm the way and hallelujah God will clear the way. When you get in the will of God, God will go before you, God, my company does will clear the way God will open and no man was shot and God was shot and no man will open and God himself will take away the obstacles that keep you from his will for your life. Are you telling me that there is a God in the glory that has something he wants you to do, but it can’t be done because God’s not able to make it happen for you on God. 

I promise you will clear the way. 

That’s what our Lord. 

This is what our Lord does God gives us a burden. I God will take us up and he is the one who carries us and he’s the one who clears the way when we get in the stream of his will. God has a plan for you. God wants to light your path, if at all of your ways you will acknowledging only to your own understanding. 

Trust him with all of your heart. Given not just one tent given to intense given not one seventh given the whole we give it to Jesus and trust not tell you he will choose the one from the way in my God you he has a plan for you. What an encouraging message for each of us today, God has a plan for your life. Do you trust him with all your heart. If you have questions regarding your faith in Jesus Christ. We loved offering insightful resource. It’s on our website to discover Jesus page. There you’ll find answers, you may need about your faith, we have a response section. You can share how this message or others have made a difference in your life. Simply click discover Jesus when you go to LWF.org/radio. We can’t wait to hear from you serious about knowing God’s will for your life. Express your full dependence on him and receive his faith. Begin by knowing and trusting them by open will join us next time more timeless truth from Adrian Rogers right online worth

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Cancelling Student Loans: More Poor-to-Rich Redistribution from the Left

It is very common for politicians to cause a problem with government intervention and then use the problem as an excuse for even bigger government.

I call this the lather-rinse-repeat cycle of government failure.

And the current controversy over student loan forgiveness is a perfect example.

• Politicians decided to subsidize student loans.
• Colleges and universities predictably responded by increasing tuition so they could grab this additional money.
• Politicians are now responding to the government-created crisis by pushing loan forgiveness.

I could write a column about how this will make a bad situation worse. Heck, I already have written that column. Several times.

But I want to focus today on a different aspect of this issue.

Biden on his allies in Congress are pushing a policy that will redistribute money from lower-income people to higher-income people.

Let’s look at some of the findings of a new study by Professor Sylvain Catherine at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor Constantine Yannelis at the University of Chicago.

…on average, those who graduate with a post-secondary degree earn more than those who do not, so student debt forgiveness plans, by definition, are geared toward higher-wage earners. Further, many holders of high loan balances completed graduate and professional degrees and thus earn even higher incomes. …universal debt forgiveness policies would disproportionately benefit high earners. …universal and capped forgiveness policies are highly regressive, with the vast majority of benefits accruing to high-income individuals.

Peter Suderman of Reason is unimpressed by this backwards form of redistribution.

The single largest source of student loan debt is MBA programs, as Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Adam Looney has noted, and MBA grads average more than $73,000 in earnings their first year out of school. “The five degrees responsible for the most student debt are: MBA, JD, BA in business, BS in nursing, and MD,” Looney wrote in 2020.“That’s one reason why the top 20 percent of earners owe 35 percent of the debt, and why most debt is owed by well-educated individuals.” Technically, it’s true that well-paid professional school graduates fall into the category of “working people.” But..what Biden appears to be considering, is a massive program of government aid that would disproportionately benefit doctors, lawyers, well-paid medical specialists, and comfortably salaried individuals with advanced business degrees. …a trillion-dollar bailout for the upper-middle class.

This is disgusting and reprehensible.

I don’t think it is a proper role of the federal government to redistribute money. But it is especially grotesque and misguided when politicians use the coercive power of government to shift resources from lower-income Americans to higher-income Americans.

For what it is worth, there already are many policies and programs in Washingtonthat – on net – shift money from the poor to the rich.

• Export-Import Bank
• Agriculture subsidies
• National Endowment for the Arts
• Deduction for mortgage interest
• Tax exemption for municipal bonds

I will close by observing that there has also been a vigorous effort from our friends on the left to restore an unlimited deduction for state and local taxes.

It’s almost as if it is okay to have policies that benefit rich people, so long as they mostly live in blue states.

P.S. It is possible to design loan forgiveness to reduce the level of poor-to-rich redistribution. The aforementioned study by Professors Catherine and Yannelis includes data showing how various income deciles will (or will not) benefit depending on different types of forgiveness rules.

P.P.S. However, any type of loan forgiveness exacerbates the original problem, which is how politicians have enabled and subsidized ever-higher tuition rates.

Georgia Democrats who won Senate in 2021 should remember Dan Mitchell’s words, “Politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders would like us to believe the answer involves never-ending tax increases. But such an approach is a recipe for more debt because the economy will weaken and governments will spend more money (look at what’s been happening in Europe, for instance)”

 Sadly last night the Democrats won control of Senate!

Historical Evidence on Reducing Large Debt Burdens

The long-run fiscal outlook for most developed nations is very grim thanks to demographic change and poorly designed entitlement programs.

For all intents and purposes, we’re all destined to become Greece according to long-run projections from the International Monetary Fund, Bank for International Settlements, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Are there any solutions to this “most predictable crisis“?

Politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders would like us to believe the answer involves never-ending tax increases. But such an approach is a recipe for more debt because the economy will weaken and governments will spend more money (look at what’s been happening in Europe, for instance).

A more sensible approach is a spending cap. I’ve pointed out, for instance, how Swiss government debt has plummeted ever since voters imposed annual limits on budgetary growth.

We also can learn lessons from history according to new research from the International Monetary Fund.

The report contains some very interesting economic history and the evolution of government finance, including the Bank of England being created and given a monopoly so the government would have a vehicle for borrowing money (as I observed in my video on central banking).

But it mostly tells the story of how governments and public finance simultaneously evolved.

Although the written record points to instances of public borrowing as long as two thousand years ago, recent scholarship points to 1000-1400 A.D. as when borrowing agreements with states were concluded with regularity and debt contracts entered into by sovereigns were standardized.…The supply of loans from city-states and territorial monarchies was driven by the need to finance military campaigns and secure borders. …From the 16th century, Europe’s political geography coalesced into the nation states recognized at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In parallel, many European states evolved from absolutist regimes to more limited government. …Fiscal states thus evolved in response to the efforts of rulers to secure borders, expand territory and survive. After 1650, larger, more centralized states increasingly possessed the fiscal machinery to raise revenue in uniform ways and had a veto player, such as a parliament, to monitor and discipline public expenditure.

There’s also lots of information in the report about how some governments, primarily outside of Europe, began to borrow money.

In many cases, this produced bad results, with defaults and economic crisis. As the authors wrote, “Debasement and restructuring also have a long history.”

But the part of the report that caught my eye was the description of how three advanced nations – the United Kingdom, the United States, and France – successfully dealt with large debt burdens before World War I.

…we describe three notable debt consolidation episodes before World War I: Great Britain after the Napoleonic Wars, the United States in the last third of the 19th century, and France in the decades leading up to 1913. While the colorful debt crises and defaults of the first era of globalization have been much discussed, less attention has been paid to these successful consolidation episodes. We focus on these three cases because they involved three of the largest economies of the period, but also because their debt burdens were among the heaviest. British public debt as a share of GDP was higher in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, for example, than Greek public debt in 2018. But in all three cases, high public debts were successfully reduced relative to GDP.

In each case, war-time spending was the cause of the debt buildup.

The Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War and U.S. Civil War were the three most expensive conflicts of the 19th century. …debt accounted for the single largest share of wartime financing.

Here’s a table showing that these nations dramatically reduced their debt burdens.

To be sure, there were differences in the three nations.

The reduction in the British debt-GDP ratio was by far the largest and longest: the debt ratio fell from 194 percent in 1822 to 28 percent nine decades later. …The French public-debt-GDP ratio fell from 96 percent in 1896 to 51 percent in 1913… This case ranks second in size but first in pace. U.S. (federal or union) government debt was not as high at the end of the Civil War, and the subsequent consolidation was more leisurely; however, the process is notable for having reduced the debt-GDP ratio to virtually zero by World War I.

When the authors investigated how these nations reduced their debt burdens, they found that limited government was a common answer.

This was true in the United Kingdom.

Britain achieved the impressive feat of maintaining an average primary surplus of 1.6 percent of GDP for nearly a century (the only deficit in Figure 2 is at the time of the Boer War). One of the political legacies of Peel and Gladstone was a fiscal theory or philosophy of “sound finance” emphasizing budget surpluses, low taxes and minimal government expenditure. …demands for spending on welfare relief from the disenfranchised masses were kept in check. In exchange, the self-taxing class of income-tax-paying electors relieved the non-electors from the burden of direct taxation… Budget surpluses then made feasible further reductions in tariffs and taxes, which reduced the cost of living for the working class

It was true in the United States.

In the U.S., primary surpluses were consistently achieved… Southern states opposed an expansive role for the federal government, while entitlements limited to Civil War pensions contained pressure for public spending.

And it was true even in France.

In France, debt reduction was entirely accounted for by primary surpluses. Those surpluses exceeded British levels, reaching 2.5 percent of GDP on average, albeit over a shorter period.

Remember, this was a period when total government spending only consumed about 10 percent of economic output.

And this was a period when there was no welfare state. Redistribution was virtually nonexistent. Not even in France.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that debt quickly fell in all three countries.

The common thread was small government.

…in all three of these large-scale debt consolidations, governments and societies went to great lengths to service and repay heavy debts. …it reflected prevailing conceptions of the limited functions of government, and limited popular pressure for public programs, entitlements and transfers.

What’s equally important is to note what didn’t happen.

No default. No inflation. No indirect confiscation.

…there was no restructuring or renegotiation of official or privately-held debts in these cases. Nor was there financial repression, i.e., measures artificially depressing interest rates. …Governments for their part did little to bottle up savings at home or to otherwise use regulation and legislation to artificially depress yields. …None of these three governments undertook involuntary restructurings despite the inheritance of heavy debt.

Now let’s shift from the past to the future

The authors point out how debt is rising today because of the welfare state rather than war.

The end of the last century also saw, for the first time, a secular increase in public-debt-to-GDP ratios in a variety of countries in conjunction not with wars and crises but in response to popular demands on governments for pensions, health care, and other often unfunded social services.

Given the demographic changes I mentioned at the beginning of the column, this does not bode well.

So what are the likely implications? As the authors note, there are two ways of dealing with high debt levels.

Countries have pursued two broad approaches to debt reduction. The orthodox approach relies on growth, primary surpluses, and the privatization of government assets. In turn this encourages long debt duration and non-resident holdings. Heterodox approaches, in contrast, include restructuring debt contracts, generating inflation, taxing wealth and repressing private finance.

At the risk of understatement, I fear Robert Higgs is right and that today’s politicians (and today’s voters!) will choose the latter approach.

Given that those policies will make a bad situation even worse, I’m not overflowing with confidence about the future.

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Joe Biden: An Incrementalist Version of Bernie Sanders

Hardly anybody noticed because the nation has been focused on protests about police misbehavior, but Joe Biden officially clinched the Democratic nomination this past week.

And he’s now comfortably ahead in the political betting marketsas well as public polling.

If Biden wins in November, what does that mean for the nation’s economic policy?

According to folks on the left, a Biden presidency means bigger government and more statism.

For instance, opining for the New York Times, Jamelle Bouie applauds Biden’s leftist agenda.

…if the goal is to move America to the left…then a Biden candidacy…represents an opportunity. …If Biden goes on to win the White House, there’s real space for the pro-Sanders left to work its will on policy. …It can fulfill some of its goals under the cover of Biden’s moderation, from raising the minimum wage nationally to pushing the American health care system closer to single-payer. …Biden…is a creature of the party. He doesn’t buck the mainstream, he accommodates it. He doesn’t reject the center, he tries to claim it. …the center of the Democratic Party as far left as it’s been since before Ronald Reagan, then Biden is likely to hew to that center, not challenge it.

His colleague at the NYT, Michelle Goldberg, is similarly enthused about the prospects for bigger government under a Biden Administration.

Biden’s proposals go far beyond his call for a $15 federal minimum wage — a demand some saw as radical when Sanders pushed it four years ago. While it’s illegal for companies to fire employees for trying to organize a union, the penalties are toothless. Biden proposes to make those penalties bite and to hold executives personally liable. …should Biden become president, progressives have the opportunity to make generational gains. …To try to unite the party around him, he’s making serious progressive commitments. …he’s moving leftward. Biden recently came out for tuition-free college for students whose families earn less than $125,000. He endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan…His climate plan already went beyond any of Barack Obama’s initiatives, and he’s pledged to make it even more robust.

According to (supposedly) neutral analysts, a Biden presidency means bigger government and more statism.

In an article for Newsweek, Steve Friess discusses Biden’s shift to the left.

Being stuck running for the presidency from the basement of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, had given the former vice president a lot of time to think, he told them, and he wanted bigger ideas. Go forth, he urged his financial brain trust, and bring back the boldest, most ambitious proposals they’d ever dreamed of to reshape the U.S. economy…Biden began issuing a raft of new proposals that move his positions closer to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, with a promise to unveil an even more transformative economic plan this summer. …It’s a yes to adding $200 a month to Social Security benefits and lowering the qualifying age for Medicare from 65 to 60. Yes to trillions in new spending, yes to new regulations on banks and industry, yes to devil-may-care deficits. …the leader he most often invokes—in interviews, in public addresses, on his podcast—is no longer Barack Obama but Franklin Delano Roosevelt. …Biden has already made a series of significant leftward policy shifts since effectively sewing up the nomination in March.

Perry Bacon, in a piece for fivethirtyeight, analyzes Biden’s statist agenda.

…if Biden is elected in November, the left may get a presidency it likes after all…if American politics is moving left, expect Biden to do the same. …Biden’s long record in public office suggests that he is fairly flexible on policy — shifting his positions to whatever is in the mainstream of the Democratic Party at a given moment. …Biden is likely to be a fairly liberal president, no matter how moderate he sounded in the primaries. …Biden’s 2020 primary platform…adopted fairly liberal policies…more liberal than his pre-campaign record suggested. The Democratic Party is more liberal now than it was when Bill Clinton took office, or even when Obama was inaugurated, and Biden’s platform reflects that shift. …Biden and his advisers are now…rolling out more liberal policy plans, speaking in increasingly populist terms and joining forces with the most progressive voices in the party. …“Joe Biden is running on the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in recent history. But given the pandemic, he has to look at the New Deal and Great Society traditions in the Democratic Party and go bigger,” said Waleed Shahid, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a left-wing group aligned with Ocasio-Cortez.

Writing for the Washington Post, Sean Sullivan documentsBiden’s leftward drift.

Joe Biden sought to appeal to liberal supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday with a pair of new proposals to expand access to health care and curtail student loan debt. Biden proposed lowering the eligibility age for Medicare coverage from 65 to 60. He also came out in favor of forgiving student loan debt for people who attended public colleges and universities and some private schools and make up to $125,000 a year. …In another peace offering to liberals, Biden proposed paying for his student debt plan by repealing a provision in the recent coronavirus legislation that Congress passed and President Trump enacted. “That tax cut overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans and is unnecessary for addressing the current COVID-19 economic relief efforts,” he wrote… Biden endorsed a bankruptcy plan put forth by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another rival who ran to his left.

And, according to more market-friendly sources, a Biden presidency means bigger government and more statism.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about Biden’s leftist agenda.

Already Medicare is scheduled to be insolvent by 2026. …In 1970, life expectancy in the U.S. was 70.8. Now it’s about eight years longer. By lowering the age of eligibility instead, Mr. Biden would begin shifting Medicare’s focus from seniors to everybody else.Don’t worry about the funding, he insists, since the extra costs would be “financed out of general revenues.” …Mr. Biden’s new left turn on student loans is equally sharp. …Cancel all federal undergraduate tuition debt for many borrowers who went to public schools, including four-year universities. This forgiveness would be given to anyone who earns $125,000 a year or less. …How much would it cost? There’s no explanation.

Jeff Jacoby analyzed Biden in a column for the Boston Globe.

Biden…is running on a platform far more progressive — i.e., far less moderate — than any Democratic presidential nominee in history. …on issue after issue, Biden has veered sharply from Obama’s path. On health insurance, for example, Obama rejected a public option as part of the Affordable Care Act and repeatedly stressed the importance of maintaining private coverage. But Biden favors a public option open to everyone… Biden supports government-funded health care even for unauthoritzed immigrants, something Obama never came close to proposing. …No Democratic presidential nominee ever endorsed anything like the radical Green New Deal, with its price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars and its goal of eliminating the use of all fossil fuels. But Biden does. No Democratic nominee ever called for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. But Biden does. …Sanders may not end up on the November ballot, but it will unmistakably reflect his influence. For he and his band of progressives have pushed their party to the left with such success that even the “moderate” in the race would be the most liberal Democrat ever nominated for president.

Here’s some of what Peter Suderman wrote for Reason.

Biden is a moderate compared to Sanders, but he is notably to the left of previous Democratic standard-bearers. …Biden has proposed a significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act that his campaign estimates would cost $750 billion over a decade… Biden has proposed a $1.7 trillion climate planthat is similar in scope to many candidates on his left and a $750 billion education plan… He favors an assault weapons ban and other gun control measures, a national $15 minimum wage, and a raft of subsidies, loans, and other government-granted nudges designed to promote rural economies. Has proposed $3.4 trillion worth of tax hikes—more than double what former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed when she ran in 2016. …Biden’s leftward drift is thus the party’s leftward shift…, a big-government liberal, a candidate whose current incarnation was shaped and informed by progressive politics, if not wholly captured by them.

The Tax Foundation examined the former Vice President’s tax plan and the results are not encouraging.

Former Vice President Joe Biden would enact a number of policies that would raise taxes, including individual income taxes and payroll taxes, on high-income individuals with income above $400,000. …According to the Tax Foundation’s General Equilibrium Model, the Biden tax planwould reduce GDP by 1.51 percent over the long term. …The plan would shrink the capital stock by 3.23 percent and reduce the overall wage rate by 0.98 percent, leading to 585,000 fewer full-time equivalent jobs. …On a dynamic basis, we estimate that Biden’s tax plan would raise about 15 percent less revenue than on a conventional basis over the next decade. …That is because the relatively smaller economy would shrink the tax base for payroll, individual income, and business income taxes. …The plan would lead to lower after-tax income for all income levels.

Here’s a table summarizing the findings.

So what does all this mean?

At the risk of oversimplifying, Biden unquestionably would move tax policy to the left (he actually said higher taxes are patriotic, even though he engages in aggressive tax avoidance), and the same thing would happen on regulatory issues.

His spending agenda is terrible, though it’s worth noting that Democrat presidents usually don’t spend as much as Republicans (with the admirable exception of Reagan).

And, to be fair, there’s no way he could be as bad on trade as Trump.

Let’s close by looking at some hard data. Back in January, I sifted through the vote ratings prepared by the National Taxpayers Union and the Club for Growth and showed that Biden was not a Bill Clinton-style moderate.

I went back to those same sources an put together this comparison of Biden and some other well-known Democrats (scores on a 0-100 scale, with zero being statism and 100 being libertarian).

In both measures, he’s worse than Crazy Bernie!

Moreover, a lifetime average of zero from the Club for Growth is rather horrifying. His average from the National Taxpayers Union isn’t quite so bad, but the trend is in the wrong direction. Biden’s post-2000 average was less than 10, while his score for the preceding years averaged more than 23.

That being said, my two cents on this topic is that Biden is a statist, but not overly ideological.

His support for bigger government is largely a strategy of catering to the various interest groups that dominate the Democratic Party.

The good news is that he’s an incrementalist and won’t aggressively push for a horrifying FDR-style agenda if he gets to the White House.

The bad news is that he will probably allow Nancy Pelosi and other statist ideologues to dictate that kind of agenda if he wins the presidency.

P.S. My collection of Biden-oriented humor is rather sparse (see here, here, here, and here), an oversight that I’ll have to address in the near future.

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A Victory for Biden, a Defeat for the Left

The day after the election, I wrote that “left-wing goals are now very unlikely” because Republicans almost certainly will retain control of the Senate.

But perhaps I should have been ever bolder and argued that the election was a rejection of the left-wing agenda.

An editorial from the Wall Street Journal points out that voters did not vote for bigger government or more statism.

…the closer we inspect the nationwide election returns, the more the result looks like a defeat…for the progressive agenda. …Democrats lost seats in the House, giving up some of the suburban gains they made in 2018 while continuing to struggle in rural areas. …A GOP Senate may compromise with Mr. Biden around centrist ideas, but the aggressive House agenda of the last two years would die again.This result is all the more remarkable given that Democrats had nearly all of the media, Silicon Valley billionaires, and all of the leading cultural figures and institutions helping them. …The lack of coattails was also evident in the states, where Democrats spent heavily to flip legislatures. …The GOP flipped both legislative bodies in New Hampshire, despite Mr. Trump’s loss in the Granite State, and Republicans protected their advantage nearly everywhere else. …There was no blue wave, and certainly no mandate for progressive change. …in their considerable wisdom, the voters may have elected Mr. Biden but they left his party and its radical ideas behind.

Some readers may think that the Wall Street Journal‘s editors are engaging in spin. In other words, because of their pro-market views, they’re trying to make it seem like a defeat wasn’t really a defeat.

But what about Helaine Olen, a reliably left-wing columnist for the Washington Post, who reached the same conclusion when opining about election results from California.

Proposition 22 — which would allow gig-economy companies such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash to continue treating drivers as independent contractors — passed handily. On the other hand, Proposition 16, which would have restored affirmative action to California’s public college and university admissions, has gone down in defeat. …Let’s take Proposition 22. Activists have been unhappy with the tech giants of the sharing economy for years, pointing out repeatedly that they are using venture capital to subsidize an unprofitable industry and that, moreover, they offer almost nothing in either the way of labor or consumer protection. The entire business model is designed to get around government regulations. …Voters did not appear particularly concerned that allowing a major employer to override state regulationand effectively set its own working conditions is a terrible precedent — not when a few extra dollars per ride was at stake. When it came down to worker welfare vs. short-term convenience and financial gain, it wasn’t even a contest. …Proposition 16…supporters roundly outspent opponents and hoped the increased attention to issues of systemic racial inequities in the wake of the killing of George Floyd would help them garner support. …The biggest obstacle might have been the traditional antipathy toward affirmative action reasserting itself — a survey last year found that 3 out of 4 Americans opposed using race or ethnicity as a factor in college admissions.

And the New York Times isn’t exactly a bastion of right-wing thinking, yet an article by Thomas Fuller, Shawn Hubler, Tim Arango and Conor Dougherty also acknowledges that the election results were not great for the left.

…the nation’s most populous state put up mammoth numbers for the Democrats. But dig a little deeper into the results and a more complex picture of the Golden State voter emerges, of strong libertarian impulses and resistance to some quintessentially liberal ideas. In a series of referendums, voters in California rejected affirmative action, decisively shot down an expansion of rent control and eviscerated a law that gives greater labor protections for ride-share and delivery drivers, a measure that had the strong backing of labor unions. A measure that would have raised taxes on commercial landlords to raise billions for a state that sorely needs revenue also seemed on track for defeat. …said Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist…“California is a very liberal state that is now resistant to higher taxes.” …For all their liberal leanings on issues like the environment, California voters have long been less welcoming to new taxes… Proposition 15, would have removed the Proposition 13 tax limits on commercial properties like office buildings and industrial parks, continuing to shield homeowners while raising an estimated $6.5 billion to $11.5 billion a year for public schools and local governments. The measure was trailing on Thursday.. More than $100 million was also spent on another hot-button measure, rent control. Polls showed that the housing crisis was the No. 1 concern for state voters… And yet voters up and down the state resoundingly rejected efforts to expand tenants’ rights and rent control. …What do voters think about voting for Democrats and at the same time not supporting Democratic-led initiatives? José Legaspi, a Los Angeles resident…voted for Mr. Biden and did not think twice about opposing the measure that would raise taxes on commercial properties. “I truly believe in paying taxes,” he said. “However there is a point at which one should limit how much more in taxes one should personally pay.”

The bottom line is that Joe Biden won the White House (barring some dramatic and unexpected developments), but not because of his statist agenda.

It’s more accurate to say that voters wanted to end the sturm and drang of Trump, but without embracing bigger government.

P.S. I’m not going to pretend that voters are rabid libertarians who are clamoring for my preferred policies (such as shutting down departments, genuine entitlement reform, etc). But I also think that it’s safe to say that they don’t want the left’s agenda (class warfare, Medicare for all, green new deal, etc) of bigger government and more dependency

Daniel Mitchell quotes Milton Friedman on minimum wage and contrasts Trump a d Biden approach!

Trump vs. Biden on the Minimum Wage

In another display of selfless masochism, I watched the Trump–Biden debate last night.

The candidates behaved better, for whatever that’s worth, but I was disappointed that there so little time (and even less substance) devoted to economic issues.

One of the few exceptions was the brief tussle regarding the minimum wage. Trump waffled on the issue, so I don’t give him any points, but Biden fully embraced the Bernie Sanders policyof basically doubling the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

This is very bad news for low-skilled workers and very bad news to low-margin businesses.

The economic of this issue are very simple. If a worker generates, say, $9 of revenue per hour, and politicians say that worker can’t be employed for less than $15 per hour, that’s a recipe for unemployment.

Earlier this month, Professor Steven Landsburg on the University of Rochester opined for the Wall Street Journal on Biden’s minimum-wage policy.

It isn’t only that I think Mr. Biden is frequently wrong. It’s that he tends to be wrong in ways that suggest he never cared about being right. He makes no attempt to defend many of his policies with logic or evidence, and he deals with objections by ignoring or misrepresenting them. …Take Mr. Biden’s stance on the federal minimum wage, which he wants to increase to $15 an hour from $7.25. …So why does Mr. Biden want to raise the minimum wage…?He hasn’t said, so I have two guesses, neither of which reflects well on him. Guess No. 1: He’s dissembling about the cost. …The minimum wage…comes directly from employers but indirectly (after firms shrink and prices rise) from consumers. A minimum wage is a stealth tax on eating at McDonald’s or shopping at Walmart. …Mr. Biden should acknowledge the cost of wage hikes and argue for accepting it. Instead he’s silent about the cost, hoping he can foist it on people who won’t realize they’re footing this bill. Guess No. 2: He’s rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. New York is going to vote for Mr. Biden. The state also has a high cost of living and high wages—so New Yorkers would be largely unaffected by the minimum-wage hike. Alabama is going to vote against Mr. Biden. Alabama has a low cost of living and relatively low wages—so under the Biden plan Alabama firms would shrink, to the benefit of competitors in New York. Alabama workers and consumers would pay a greater price than New Yorkers.

And Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute recently highlighted some of the adverse effects for unskilled workers.

It’s an economic reality that workers compete against other workers, not against employers, for jobs, and higher wages in the labor market. And it’s also true that lower-skilled, limited-experience, less-educated workers compete against higher-skilled, more experienced, more educated workers for jobs. …If the minimum wage is increased…, that will…take away from unskilled workers the one advantage they currently have to compete against skilled workers – the ability to offer to work for a significantly lower wage than what skilled workers can command. …Result of a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour? Demand for skilled workers goes up, demand for unskilled workers goes down, and employment opportunities for unskilled workers are reduced.

Since I recently shared videos with Milton Friedman’s wisdom on both taxes and spending, here’s what he said about the minimum wage.

Let’s share one last bit of evidence. Mark Perry’s article referenced some new research by Jeffrey Clemens, Lisa Kahn, and Jonathan Meer.

Here’s what those scholars found in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

We investigate whether changes in firms’ skill requirements are channels through which labor markets respond to minimum wage increases. …Data from the American Community Survey show that recent minimum wage changes resulted in increases in the average age and education of the individuals employed in low-wage jobs. Data on job vacancy postings show that the prevalence of a high school diploma requirement increases at the same time. The shift in skill requirements begins within the first quarter of a minimum wage hike. Further, it results from both within-firm shifts in postings and across-firms shifts towards firms that sought more-skilled workers at baseline. Given the poor labor market outcomes of individuals without high school diplomas, these findings have substantial policy relevance. This possibility was recognized well over a century ago by Smith (1907), who noted that the “enactment of a minimum wage involves the possibility of creating a class prevented by the State from obtaining employment.” Further, negative effects may be exacerbated for minority groups in the presence of labor market discrimination.

So why do politicians push for higher minimum wages, when all the evidence suggests that vulnerable workers bear the heaviest cost?

Part of the answer is that they don’t understand economics and don’t care about evidence.

But there’s also a more reprehensible answer, which is that they do understand, but they want to curry favor with union bosses, and those union bosses push for higher minimum wages as a way of reducing competition from lower-skilled workers.

P.S. Here’s my CNBC debate with Joe Biden’s top economic advisor on this issue.

P.P.S. Here’s a rather frustrating discussion I had on the minimum wage with Yahoo Finance.

P.P.P.S. But if you’re pressed for time, don’t listen to me pontificate. Instead, watch this video.

—-

Milton Friedman on Taxation

October 4, 2020 by Dan Mitchell

Yesterday’s column featured some of Milton Friedman’s wisdom from 50 years ago on how a high level of societal capital (work ethic, spirit of self-reliance, etc) is needed if we want to limit government.

Today, let’s look at what he said back then about that era’s high tax rates.

His core argument is that high marginal tax rates are self-defeating because the affected taxpayers (like Trump and Biden) will change their behavior to protect themselves from being pillaged.

This was in the pre-Reagan era, when the top federal tax rate was 70 percent, and notice that Friedman made a Laffer Curve-type prediction that a flat tax of 19 percent would collect more revenue than the so-called progressive system.

We actually don’t know if that specific prediction would have been accurate, but we do know that Reagan successfully lowered the top tax rate on the rich from 70 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 1988.

So, by looking at what happened to tax revenues from these taxpayers, we can get a pretty good idea whether Friedman’s prediction was correct.

Well, here’s the IRS data from 1980 and 1988 for taxpayers impacted by the highest tax rate. I’ve circled (in red) the relevant data showing how we got more rich people, more taxable income, and more tax revenue.

The bottom line is that Friedman was right.

Good tax policy (i.e., lower rates on productive behavior) can be a win-win situation. Taxpayers earn more and keep more, while politicians also wind up with more because the economic pie expands.

Something to keep in mind since some politicians in Washington want a return to confiscatory taxes on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

—-

Why Milton Friedman Saw School Choice as a First Step, Not a Final One

On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Kerry McDonald

EducationMilton FriedmanSchool ChoiceSchooling

Libertarians and others are often torn about school choice. They may wish to see the government schooling monopoly weakened, but they may resist supporting choice mechanisms, like vouchers and education savings accounts, because they don’t go far enough. Indeed, most current choice programs continue to rely on taxpayer funding of education and don’t address the underlying compulsory nature of elementary and secondary schooling.

Skeptics may also have legitimate fears that taxpayer-funded education choice programs will lead to over-regulation of previously independent and parochial schooling options, making all schooling mirror compulsory mass schooling, with no substantive variation.

Friedman Challenged Compulsory Schooling Laws

Milton Friedman had these same concerns. The Nobel prize-winning economist is widely considered to be the one to popularize the idea of vouchers and school choice beginning with his 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education.” His vision continues to be realized through the important work of EdChoice, formerly the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice, that Friedman and his economist wife, Rose, founded in 1996.

July 31 is Milton Friedman’s birthday. He died in 2006 at the age of 94, but his ideas continue to have an impact, particularly in education policy.

Friedman saw vouchers and other choice programs as half-measures. He recognized the larger problems of taxpayer funding and compulsion, but saw vouchers as an important starting point in allowing parents to regain control of their children’s education. In their popular book, Free To Choose, first published in 1980, the Friedmans wrote:

We regard the voucher plan as a partial solution because it affects neither the financing of schooling nor the compulsory attendance laws. We favor going much farther. (p.161)

They continued:

The compulsory attendance laws are the justification for government control over the standards of private schools. But it is far from clear that there is any justification for the compulsory attendance laws themselves. (p. 162)

The Friedmans admitted that their “own views on this have changed over time,” as they realized that “compulsory attendance at schools is not necessary to achieve that minimum standard of literacy and knowledge,” and that “schooling was well-nigh universal in the United States before either compulsory attendance or government financing of schooling existed. Like most laws, compulsory attendance laws have costs as well as benefits. We no longer believe the benefits justify the costs.” (pp. 162-3)

Still, they felt that vouchers would be the essential starting point toward chipping away at monopoly mass schooling by putting parents back in charge. School choice, in other words, would be a necessary but not sufficient policy approach toward addressing the underlying issue of government control of education.

Vouchers as a First Step

In their book, the Friedmans presented the potential outcomes of their proposed voucher plan, which would give parents access to some or all of the average per-pupil expenditures of a child enrolled in public school. They believed that vouchers would help create a more competitive education market, encouraging education entrepreneurship. They felt that parents would be more empowered with greater control over their children’s education and have a stronger desire to contribute some of their own money toward education. They asserted that in many places “the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location” and suggested that voucher programs would lead to increased integration and heterogeneity. (pp. 166-7)

To the critics who said, and still say, that school choice programs would destroy the public schools, the Friedmans replied that these critics fail to

explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if it isn’t, why anyone should object to its “destruction.” (p. 170)

What I appreciate most about the Friedmans discussion of vouchers and the promise of school choice is their unrelenting support of parents. They believed that parents, not government bureaucrats and intellectuals, know what is best for their children’s education and well-being and are fully capable of choosing wisely for their children—when they have the opportunity to do so.

They wrote:

Parents generally have both greater interest in their children’s schooling and more intimate knowledge of their capacities and needs than anyone else. Social reformers, and educational reformers in particular, often self-righteously take for granted that parents, especially those who are poor and have little education themselves, have little interest in their children’s education and no competence to choose for them. That is a gratuitous insult. Such parents have frequently had limited opportunity to choose. However, U.S. history has demonstrated that, given the opportunity, they have often been willing to sacrifice a great deal, and have done so wisely, for their children’s welfare. (p. 160).

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Voucher Programs Today

Today, school voucher programs exist in 15 states plus the District of Columbia. These programs have consistently shown that when parents are given the choice to opt-out of an assigned district school, many will take advantage of the opportunity. In Washington, D.C., low-income parents who win a voucher lottery send their children to private schools.

The most recent three-year federal evaluationof voucher program participants found that while student academic achievement was comparable to achievement for non-voucher students remaining in public schools, there were statistically significant improvements in other important areas. For instance, voucher participants had lower rates of chronic absenteeism than the control groups, as well as higher student satisfaction scores. There were also tremendous cost-savings.

In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has served over 28,000 low-income students attending 129 participating private schools.

According to Corey DeAngelis, Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation and a prolific researcher on the topic, the recent analysis of the D.C. voucher program “reveals that private schools produce the same academic outcomes for only a third of the cost of the public schools. In other words, school choice is a great investment.”

In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was created in 1990 and is the nation’s oldest voucher program. It currently serves over 28,000 low-income students attending 129 participating private schools. Like the D.C. voucher program, data on test scores of Milwaukee voucher students show similar results to public school students, but non-academic results are promising.

Increased Access and Decreased Crime

Recent research found voucher recipients had lower crime rates and lower incidences of unplanned pregnancies in young adulthood. On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.

According to Howard Fuller, an education professor at Marquette University, founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and one of the developers of the Milwaukee voucher program, the key is parent empowerment—particularly for low-income minority families.

In an interview with NPR, Fuller said: “What I’m saying to you is that there are thousands of black children whose lives are much better today because of the Milwaukee parental choice program,” he says. 
“They were able to access better schools than they would have without a voucher.”

Putting parents back in charge of their child’s education through school choice measures was Milton Friedman’s goal. It was not his ultimate goal, as it would not fully address the funding and compulsion components of government schooling; but it was, and remains, an important first step. As the Friedmans wrote in Free To Choose:

The strong American tradition of voluntary action has provided many excellent examples that demonstrate what can be done when parents have greater choice. (p. 159).

On his birthday, let’s celebrate Milton Friedman’s vision of enabling parents, not government, to be in control of a child’s education.

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Defending Milton Friedman

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