Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
I want you to play a game with me today. Here is how it works. You raise your hand if my question relates to you – humor me, okay? Let’s begin. First, raise your hand if you hate audience participation games where you have to raise your hand. Doesn’t matter because we are going to play the game anyway. Raise your hand if you are not totally SATISFIED with your cell phone coverage. Raise your hand if you are not totally SATISFIED with your current financial picture. Raise your hand if you are not SATISFIED with your body and the way you look. Let’s get a little more serious. Raise your hand if you are not SATISFIED with the job you are doing as a parent. I want you to raise your hand if you are not SATISFIED with the way you have been living your life and the way your life is going. Some of you cannot get any SATISFACTION, can you?
This is interesting. In 1965, there was a person who felt a lot like you do and he wrote a song called “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Who knows who this person is? Mick Jagger. It was over 40 years ago and you would think over a 40-year period he would get some satisfaction, but Mick is in his 60’s now and he is still looking for satisfaction. He is still wearing his tight jeans, dressing like a teen, wearing his hair long, and trying to jump around on a rock stage. I heard him on a talk show not long ago and he still “can’t get no satisfaction.” Here is what we are going to do so we can get into what I want to talk about. We are going to actually sing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” We can do this in this church, maybe we couldn’t in some, but we will here. I cannot sing well, so if you do not participate, this could be really bad. Okay, on the count of three, One, Two, Three. “I can’t get no satisfaction. I can’t get no satisfaction. But I try and I try and I try and I try… I can’t get no….” Oh man, you are feeling it.
The reason I did this is we did not only sing a rock song by the Rolling Stones, we also sang the theme song to the lives of many people – some of you. Biblically, we also sang the soundtrack to the Book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is the private journal in the Bible of King Solomon who was King David’s son and successor. Solomon also went on a 40-year journey searching for satisfaction.
Let me tell you a little bit about King Solomon. When he started out as king, he had a very intimate, close relationship with God and God blessed him. God deposited leadership gifts and wisdom into his life. God gave him resources to build the kingdom. You name it and God gave it to Solomon. You probably remember the story when the Lord asked Solomon what he wanted.
1 Kings 3:5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
1 Kings 3:9 …give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
1Kings 3:11-13 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked… Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for – both riches and honor – so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.
It was amazing. No one in the Bible did, or had, what Solomon did and had. He began very well and climbed quickly to success. Not long into it, something began to happen internally to Solomon. Internal erosion began eroding at the heart of Solomon. It seemed King Solomon hopped in his car/chariot and took a long trip away from God. For the next 40 years of his life, he wandered through life. King Solomon could not get any satisfaction and he wrote about it in the journal of his 40-year trip.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! EVERYTHING is meaningless.”
Solomon thought life was MEANINGLESS. We have a person who initially was full of excitement, purpose, and extremely willing to do anything God asked. Something happened. He moved away from God and wandered through a 40-year taste test/smorgasbord/buffet life searching for satisfaction.
Before you get too down on Solomon, how many remember how it was when you first came to the Lord? You were excited, purposed, extremely willing to do anything God asked. “Mission field? Sure, I’ll go.” You were excited about God, played praise tapes/cd, read your Bible, prayed, etc. However, it’s not like this today. Something happened. You got in your chariot and, for years now, you have been searching for satisfaction. Maybe you have been to several churches looking for a good word (I trust you found one). You tried some freedom and liberty and maybe changed your emphasis from God to work and money. Amazingly, this is exactly the roads Solomon traveled and he wrote about it in his journal. His first stop was searching for education.
Ecclesiastes 1:13-14 I devoted myself to search for UNDERSTANDING and to explore by wisdom EVERYTHINGbeing done in the world. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. EverythingUNDER THE SUN is meaningless, like CHASING THE WIND.
Amazing! God gave Solomon so much, yet Solomon felt he had a tragic existence. How about you? Solomon searched out EVERYTHING for understanding. He studied art, architecture, built magnificent buildings, studied music, composed 1,005 songs, studied astronomy, biology, etc. You name it, Solomon knew about it. He was so educated and knew so much people came from the entire world to hear Solomon speak.
1Kings 4:30-34 Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than any other man… He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He described plant life… He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom…
Solomon knew all there was to know about everything, but with all his education, Solomon said, “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.” So, he did what we all do. He continued searching. His next taste test was pleasure.
Ecclesiastes 2:1 I said to myself, “Come now, let’s give PLEASURE a try. Let’s look for the ‘good things’ in life.” But I found that this, too, was meaningless. “It is silly to be laughing all the time,” I said. “What good does it do to seek only pleasure?” After much thought, I decided to cheer myself with wine…
It was all about the women and the wine. It was the “HUGH HEFNER” lifestyle – Playboy mansion. He had wine and women night after night after night.
1 Kings 11:3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.
Solomon slept with more women than he could remember. He drank the finest wines and said, “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.”
Solomon took another taste test from the smorgasbord. This time it would be possessions, money, and wealth.
Ecclesiastes 2:4-10 I also tried to find meaning by building huge homes for myself and by planting beautiful vineyards. I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees. I built reservoirs to collect the water to irrigate my many flourishing groves. I bought slaves, both men and women, and others were born into my household. I also owned great herds and flocks, more than any of the kings who lived in Jerusalem before me. I collected great sums of silver and gold, the treasure of many kings and provinces. I hired wonderful singers, both men and women, and had many beautiful concubines. I HAD EVERYTHING A MAN COULD DESIRE! So I became greater than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. And with it all, I remained clear-eyed so that I could evaluate all these things. Anything I wanted, I took. I did not restrain myself from any joy. I even found great pleasure in hard work, an additional reward for all my labors.
Solomon found pleasure, but not satisfaction – big difference. Solomon built a huge life for himself. He had any possession a person could want. He could snap his fingers and people came running to provide his desires. He had more money than Bill Gates and Donald Trump added together. He was the most powerful person in the world. Nevertheless, do you know what? He said, “I can’t get NO SATISFACTION.”
Solomon did everything and tried everything including checking out religions. He married women from other religions only to find they took him even farther from satisfaction. Solomon tasted the education thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He tasted the pleasure/sex/party thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He tasted the possession, wealth, power thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He tasted the religion thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
I will make certain we balance here. DOES GOD WANT YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL AND ENJOY LIFE? OF COURSE HE DOES, BUT IF THIS IS WHERE AND HOW YOU DETERMINE YOUR SATISFACTIONIN LIFE, YOUR LIFE WILL BE MEANINGLESS. Solomon was wealthy enough, wise enough, and powerful enough to search higher, deeper, and farther than anyone has ever searched and he said here is the conclusion.
Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:13 Here is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is the duty of every person.
The wisest man who ever lived who did it all, saw it all, tasted it all, felt it all, said this is it. THE CONCLUSION IS TO FIND GOD BEFORE DEATH FINDS YOU.
Fear God and obey his commands. Does God actually want us to ‘fear’ him as in be afraid of him? I thought God was like a wonderful father who loves and takes care of me. I don’t know I ‘fear’ or ‘feared’ my natural father. What’s up with this? Most people think the fear of God is thinking God has a holster full of lightening bolts just waiting for you to screw up and as soon as you do, bam, he zaps you. This is not the thought here or the context of the passage. Fearing God is not a fear of his “lightening bolts.” It is knowing not doing what he commands will not work well for our lives and the farther we distance ourselves from his commands, the worse our life goes. It is like, why would you fear jumping off a cliff? It is because the outcome would be bad. Injury is the least that will happen. The fear is I will severely mess up my life, not God zapping me with lightening bolts. Yet, I watch people jump off cliffs every day by not fearing if they disobey God’s ways they injure their own lives.
Solomon used the term “under the sun” in 27 different verses. Solomon did everything under the sun. His conclusion is to spend your days under the sun finding the God who lives above the sun.
Solomon uses the term meaningless 38 times. Solomon talked about the wind and chasing after the wind 14 times. Life goes by like the wind and people chase after nothing and reach for something emptiness. Do not do this. Spend time finding God. In your time under the sun, did you find the God who dwells above the sun?
What have you tasted? Maybe you have not tried it in the huge proportions Solomon tried, but in reality, you and I take sips every single day. For example, what do people do when a relationship does not satisfy them? They go out and taste test another. What do people do if their job does not satisfy them? They taste test a different job. Maybe you say if you had a great friend who would treat you great and be the kind of friend you really need then it would SATISFY you. Maybe you feel like if your kids would just obey you it would SATISFY you. Or, if they would turn out to be the kind of children you want them to be this would SATISFY you. If you can get your degree, or make the perfect grade then it would SATISFY you. If your husband would come to church with you, it would SATISFY you. Maybe for you it is money. You think if I could just get this much money it will SATISFY me. Maybe you are not happy with the way you look. Maybe a plastic surgery will SATISFY you or a new fad diet that works and the list goes on and on and on. One day you will pull over on the side of the road just like Solomon. You will look at your life and see you taste tested and it was all meaningless and none of it SATISFIED. You will say, “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.”
Did you see the movie “Meet Joe Black” staring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt? Bard Pitt played the role of death (Joe Black) who came to take Anthony Hopkins (Bill Parrish). Bill is very successful, wealthy, powerful man, but one day Bill meets death face to face. (Let’s watch the clip.)
A day comes when we will all ask “the question.” It is, “Am I going to die?” WHEN YOU MEET DEATH FACE TO FACE AND EYE TO EYE, HOW WILL YOU REACT? Have you spent the necessary time, money, possessions, and wisdom searching for God, or have you merely searched for money, possessions, and earthly wisdom? What will be the outcome? Have you been truly successful? Have you found the God who dwells above the sun?
In the movie, it came time for Bill to go. Should he be afraid? Should you? One more clip… (watch the clip).
So, do you need to be afraid? Only you know. It depends on what you do under the sun concerning the God who dwells above the sun. It’s all meaningless, meaningless, meaningless – without Jesus.
Let’s pray.
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.
The 87-year-old millionaire has an estimated net worth of $45 million. He amassed a huge wealth when he founded the Playboy Magazine.
Like father, like son, Hugh and Cooper pose in purple silk pyjamas at last
Mark Henry, teaching pastor at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH Little Rock
February 29, 2016
Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion 10236 Charing Cross Road Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
Back in 1980 Keith Green wrote and performed the song I PLEDGE MY HEAD TO HEAVEN and it summed up the Book Ecclesiastes well with these words:
Well I’ve had the chance to gain the world, and to live just like a king, But without your love, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Without God in the picture all is vanity in life UNDER THE SUN and nothing means a thing!!! You would enjoy the music of this song and I want you to take 3 minutes to go to YOU TUBE and check out the performance on harmonica by Bob Dylan.
Keith Green (October 21, 1953 – July 28, 1982) Keith and Bob Dylan recorded together in 1979-1980
Bob Dylan’s record GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY
The reason I have written you this long series of letters comparing you to King Solomon is because you both have slept with over 1000 women and you both lived like Kings.
On the website Lifetime.com under the heading: HUGH HEFNER, BIOGRAPHY are these words:
Epitomizing the lifestyle promoted by his magazine, Hefner has also had a long line of mistresses. His girlfriends have included several Playboy Playmates of the Year, such as Marilyn Cole, Lillian Muller and Patty MacGuire.
I thought of you HUGH when I looked up the words the other day to the song GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY by Bob Dylan. It talks about mistresses, socialites, money, TV stars, business men, liquor, silk clothes, caviar, king-sized beds and living in a mansion and this all reminded me of your lifestyle.
In Bob Dylan’s song GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY are these lines:
You may be an ambassador to England or France You may like to gamble, you might like to dance You may be the heavyweight champion of the world You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.
Might be a rock’n’ roll adict prancing on the stage Might have money and drugs at your commands, women in a cage You may be a business man or some high degree thief They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief.
You may be a state trooper, you might be an young turk You may be the head of some big TV network You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame You may be living in another country under another name.
You may be a construction worker working on a home You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome You might own guns and you might even own tanks You might be somebody’s landlord you might even own banks.
You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side You may be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir.
Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed.
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody, It may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
This Sunday February 28, 2016 our teaching pastor Mark Henry preached a sermon from Ecclesiastes 8 called THINKING OF YOURSELF LESS. In this sermon he talks about this Bob Dylan song GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY and below here is portion from that sermon:
Ecclesiastes chapter 7 is all about foolishness versus Wisdom. What is a fool as pictured in the Bible? A fool is not someone who lacks intellect. Foolishness is not a mind problem, but it is a will problem, and a heart problem.Foolishness is a lack of submission to God. It is resistant to character formation in your life. A fool desires to live an independent and autonomous life apart from God where the world centers around he or she.
Wisdom is about being the right kind of person who is following Jesus and making the right kinds of decisions.
PRIDE IS SELF-SUFFICIENCY. Self-sufficiency is depending on our own resources and strength instead of depending on God. Self-sufficiency is you depending on your own goodness rather than depending on the goodness of Christ. It is making ourselves the center and not God and it is really self-worship. PRIDE IS SELF-PROMOTION.
HUMILITY IS NOT THINKING LESS OF YOURSELF. IT’S THINKING OF YOURSELF LESS. (Quote by C.S.Lewis)
C.S. Lewis
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The realities of Humility are:
WE HAVE TO SUBMIT TO SOMEONE.
Ecclesiastes 8:2-5
2 I say: Keep the king’s command, because of God’s oath to him. 3 Be not hasty to go from his presence. Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. 4 For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, “What are you doing?” 5 Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.
This idea of human autonomy is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Bob Dylan wrote a song a long time ago and the lyrics said, “You got to serve somebody.” That is what Solomon is saying. We all have to answer to someone. If the police turns on their lights and you don’t pull over then you are going to jail. God has put authority in our life to humble us. Now here Solomon is talking about our need to submit to the king…The most important person we submit to is Jesus who is the eternal king and the KING OF KINGS which means there is no such thing as human autonomy.
We will never be the ultimate authority in our lives because Jesus is. Our sin fights against Christ’s authority in every way. It makes us want to make up our own moral rules…It takes God’s grace for us to acknowledge that there is a king and we are not him. It takes grace for us to forsake the purpose of our kingdom of our kingdom so we can take up the purpose of his kingdom.
2. WE DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING.
Ecclesiastes 8:6-9
6 For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble lies heavy on him. 7For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be?8 No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. 9 All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.
3. WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL.
Ecclesiastes 8:10-14
10 Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. 11 Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.12 Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. 13 But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.
Francis Schaeffer pictured below:
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Francis Schaeffer talked about this same issue in Ecclesiastes:
Between birth and death power rules. Solomon looked over his kingdom and also around the world and proclaimed that right does not rule but power rules.
Ecclesiastes 4:1 1 Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them.
Ecclesiastes 8:14 The Message (MSG) 14 Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.
We could say it in 20th century language, “The books are not balanced in this life.”
However, the books are balanced by God in the afterlife. Ecclesiastes last two verses state: The last and final word is this: Fear God. Do what he tells you. 14 And that’s it. Eventually God will bring everything that we do out into the open and judge it according to its hidden intent, whether it’s good or evil.
PS: This is the 21st letter I have written to you and again I have responded to an aspect of your life with what the Bible has to say about it. SELF-PROMOTION is pride and living like King Solomon and sleeping with 1000 women is just being selfish and in the end it does not bring satisfaction. SATISFACTION will only come when you put your trust in Christ alone for your salvation and you repent of your sins.
Featured artist is Mary Mattingly
Mary Mattingly Owns Up | “New York Close Up” | Art21
Published on Jul 19, 2013
Do objects come with responsibility? In this film, Mary Mattingly transforms personal belongings into sculptural forms that she later incorporates into photographs and performative actions. Experimenting with living in her Greenpoint studio space, Mattingly is determined to live with just the bare essentials. Over several months, she undertakes a process of recording every object she owns and tracing the history of each of her belongings—how it came into her life, its distribution via complex global supply chains, as well as where the raw materials for its manufacture was sourced—before uploading a digital version of each object to her website OWN-IT.US for others to access. Throughout this process, she takes stock of the environmental and societal impact of her personal consumption, wondering if “maybe we need art more today because we’re in a world with so many mass produced things.” Mattingly aggregates all of her personal belongings into boulder-like sculptural bundles, held together with rope, so that she is able to roll and drag them. She’s photographed walking the sculpture “Fill (Obstruct)” (2013) across the Bayonne Bridge, from Staten Island to New Jersey, and to the Port of New York New Jersey—symbolically returning her personal belongings to the place where they entered the East Coast. “It’s kind of really incredibly Sisyphean in a way,” says Mattingly about her actions, eventually attracting the attention of the Port Authority Police and Homeland Security who surveil the port. Also featuring the works “Kart” (2008); “Floating a Boulder” (2012); “Pile-High” (2012); “The Furies (Titian, again)” (2013); “The Damned (Titian, again)” (2013); and “Life of Objects” (2013).
Mary Mattingly (b. 1978, Rockville, Connecticut, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Learn more about the artist at: http://www.art21.org/newyorkcloseup/a…
“New York Close Up” is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Lambent Foundation; Toby Devan Lewis; the Dedalus Foundation, Inc., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and by individual contributors.
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I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)
Episode 4 of After Life Season 3 begins with Tony arriving at the Tambury Gazette with an air-horn. It’s the same air-horn he used with Lisa and this time he uses it to prank Matthew. And this rivalry with Matthew that’s been bubbling all season long is only exacerbated when he beats Matthew at tennis. This sets up a nice series of games between the pair, with Tony refusing to let his brother-in-law win.
At the Tambury Gazette, Tony encourages Brian to talk to Pat, especially as his existence is so awful it could encourage Pat to brighten up a bit about his relationship woes involving Roxie.
In the midst of this, there’s a really nice moment involving Tony and Lenny. Lenny reminds Tony that he’s got a good heart, especially when it comes to Lisa. According to Lenny, he’s never seen a more devoted husband. This is enough to spark Tony into action, going for a walk with Emma and trying to move forward with his life.
Meanwhile, Ken starts organizing for the Tambury Fair. Colleen is going to be doing a big feature and is also covering the behind the scenes organizing. Their first meeting is pretty funny too, as the gang all start to hash out different ideas.
Elsewhere, Kath heads out for another date. This time with an obnoxious, horrible teacher. Things go from bad to worse when her date shows off how pompous, arrogant and awful he is. He even constantly tells Kath to take her elbows off the table.
That night, Lenny heads over to Tony’s place, asking him to be his best man. Tony is obviously flattered but the chat constantly reels around to death and getting drunk. Tony admits that he’s no longer angry at the world, he’s more indifferent about it and even admits he’s sitting on £150,000. However, he hasn’t bothered to cash it in yet.
Kath soon shows up and after the early quip about her never using the word c*nt, she does just that to describe her date. Lenny immediately sorts her out a drink as the trio sit together and reflect on what’s happened.
The Episode Review
This episode does a great job capturing Tony’s mood across this season and the peace he’s made for himself following Lisa’s death. It’s a beautiful moment in truth, and you can tell Tony is genuinely trying to find something that will help bring meaning and purpose back to his life following Lisa’s passing.
The lemon, the air horn and the moments with Emma; it all feeds into the larger story of trying to move past grief and make sense of one’s purpose.
This is something After Life has always done really well with, balancing out that poignant, reflective drama with dark comedy. For the most part, this series achieves that beautifully, with the ending helping to reinforce that really, we’re all just drifting through life trying to find our way
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World Exclusive: After Life Season 3: The First few Minutes
After Life | Season 3 Official Trailer | Netflix
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episodes will be released on January 14th.
Just Three Things. Written for #Afterlife by Ricky Gervais and Andy Burrows
February 15, 2022
Ricky Gervais
London, W1F 0LE UK
Dear Ricky,
If a person lives life UNDER THE SUN (phrase used 29 times in Book of Ecclesiastes) as if there is no God then it makes sense that the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest is the rule of the day and there is no afterlife where people will be judged by God.
Ecclesiastes 4:1
Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them.
Francis Schaeffer: Between birth and death power rules. Solomon looked over his kingdom and also around the world and proclaimed that right does not rule but power rules.
woman: Well, he came to the door and said he was doing security checks on vulnerable people like myself.
Tony: And did you ask for ID?
Woman: No! Well, he was in uniform. Helmet and everything. Oh, am I stupid?
Tony:,No, no, not at all.
Woman: Then he came in, and I made him a cup of tea. And he was asking about burglar alarms, but I said I didn’t have one. Locks on doors. He was very convincing, and he really knew his stuff. Then he asked me where I kept my jewelry and valuables. I said I didn’t really have anything of value, but I had been saving up out of my pension for a couple of years, and I had about £500 in the biscuit barrel. And he asked me to show him, so I did. And he said, “That’s good. They probably wouldn’t look in there.” We went back in the living room, and he asked to use the toilet, and he must have come in here and… [stole money].
Tony: Yeah. And, uh, are you insured?
Woman: No. I won’t get it back even if they catch him. He’s probably spent it on drugs.
Tony: Probably. Um, you reported it to the police though?
Woman: Yes, and they confirmed he wasn’t a real policeman, because they said there is no officer with a “Made in Britain” tattoo across his forehead.
Lenny: A “Made in Britain” tattoo on his head?
Tony: Yes. Take a picture.
Woman: Yeah. Oh, I’m so stupid.
Tony: You’re not stupid. The world’s a [messed up] place.
Lenny: Smile. ( camera clicks )
Tony: Life really is unfair, isn’t it? Old people shouldn’t feel ashamed ’cause they get conned
Francis Schaeffer looks at Nihilism of Solomon in Book of Ecclesiastes and the causes of it!!!
Notes on Ecclesiastes by Francis Schaeffer
Leonardo da Vinci compares well to Solomon and they both were universal men searching for the meaning in life. Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life.His struggle was to find the meaning of life. Not just plans in life.Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s has been washed away. There is a difference between finding plans in life and purpose in life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it and it has never found it since. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.
We have here the declaration of Solomon’s universality:
1 Kings 4:30-34
English Standard Version (ESV)
30 so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. 32 He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005. 33 He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish.34 And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.
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Here is the universal man and his genius. Solomon is the universal man with a empire at his disposal. Solomon had it all.
Ecclesiastes 1:3
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes.
“The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
Oppressed have no comforter
Ecclesiastes 4:1
Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them.
Francis Schaeffer: Between birth and death power rules. Solomon looked over his kingdom and also around the world and proclaimed that right does not rule but power rules.
Ecclesiastes 7:14-15
14 In the day of prosperity be happy, but in the day of adversity consider—God has made the one as well as the other so that man will not discover anything that will be after him.
15 I have seen everything during my lifetime of futility; there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness.
Ecclesiastes 8:14
14 There is futility which is done on the earth, that is, there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked. On the other hand, there are evil men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I say that this too is futility.
Francis Schaeffer: We could say it in 20th century language, “The books are not balanced in this life.”
Episode #1 of Afterlife:
Tony : There’s no advantage to being nice and thoughtful and caring and having integrity. It’s a disadvantage, if anything.
Today I want to take another approach to the issue of the afterlife and that is the pure and simple fact that without an enforcement factor people can do what they want in this life and get away with it. This is a big glaring weakness in the Humanist Manifestos that have been published so far. All three of them do not recognize the existence of God who is our final judge. (I am not claiming that this is evidence that points to an afterlife, but this post will demonstrate that atheists many times have not thought through the full ramifications of their philosophy of life.)
I had the unique opportunity to discuss this very issue with Robert Lester Mondale and his wife Rosemary on April 14, 1996 at his cabin in Fredricktown, Missouri , and my visit was very enjoyable and informative. Mr. Mondale had the distinction of being the only person to sign all three of the Humanist Manifestos in 1933, 1973 and 2003. I asked him which signers of Humanist Manifesto Number One did he know well and he said that Raymond B. Bragg, and Edwin H. Wilson and him were known as “the three young radicals of the group.” Harold P. Marley used to have a cabin near his and they used to take long walks together, but Marley’s wife got a job in Hot Springs, Arkansas and they moved down there.
Roy Wood Sellars was a popular professor of philosophy that he knew. I asked if he knew John Dewey and he said he did not, but Dewey did contact him one time to ask him some questions about an article he had written, but Mondale could not recall anything else about that.
Mondale told me some stories about his neighbors and we got to talking about some of his church members when he was an Unitarian pastor. Once during the 1930’s he was told by one of his wealthier Jewish members that he shouldn’t continue to be critical of the Nazis. This member had just come back from Germany and according to him Hitler had done a great job of getting the economy moving and things were good.
Of course, just a few years later after World War II was over Mondale discovered on a second hand basis what exactly had happened over there when he visited with a Lutheran pastor friend who had just returned from Germany. This Lutheran preacher was one of the first to be allowed in after the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, and he told Mondale what level of devastation and destruction of innocent lives went on inside these camps. As Mondale listened to his friend he could feel his own face turning pale.
I asked, “If those Nazis escaped to Brazil or Argentina and lived out their lives in peace would they face judgment after they died?”
Mondale responded, “I don’t think there is anything after death.”
I told Mr. Mondale that there is sense in me that says justice will be given eventually and God will judge those Nazis even if they evade punishment here on earth. I did point out that in Ecclesiastes 4:1 Solomon did note that without God in the picture the scales may not be balanced in this life and power could reign, but at the same time the Bible teaches that all must face the ultimate Judge.
Then I asked him if he got to watch the O.J. Simpson trial and he said that he did and he thought that the prosecution had plenty of evidence too. Again I asked Mr. Mondale the same question concerning O.J. and he responded, “I don’t think there is a God that will intervene and I don’t believe in the afterlife.”
Dan Guinn posted on his blog at http://www.francisschaefferstudies.org concerning the Nazis and evolution: As Schaeffer points out, “…these ideas helped produce an even more far-reaching yet logical conclusion: the Nazi movement in Germany. Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), leader of the Gestapo, stated that the law of nature must take its course in the survival of the fittest. The result was the gas chambers. Hitler stated numerous times that Christianity and its notion of charity should be “replaced by the ethic of strength over weakness.” Surely many factors were involved in the rise of National Socialism in Germany. For example, the Christian consensus had largely been lost by the undermining from a rationalistic philosophy and a romantic pantheism on the secular side, and a liberal theology (which was an adoption of rationalism in theological terminology) in the universities and many of the churches. Thus biblical Christianity was no longer giving the consensus for German society. After World War I came political and economic chaos and a flood of moral permissiveness in Germany. Thus, many factors created the situation. But in that setting the theory of the survival of the fittest sanctioned what occurred. ”
Francis Schaeffer notes that this idea ties into today when we are actually talking about making infanticide legal in some academic settings. Look at what these three humanist scholars have written:
Peter Singer, who recently was seated in an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
In January 1978, Francis Crick, also a Nobel laureate, was quoted in the Pacific News Service as saying “… no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.”
Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, was onthis very subject of the Nazis that Lester Mondale and I discussed on that day in 1996 at Mondale’s cabin in Missouri. In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, “The eyes of God are always upon you.” However, Judah later concludes that God doesn’t exist. He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah’s respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair. Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie and continues to be haunted by his father’s words: “The eyes of God are always upon you.” This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God’s eyes are.
Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah ‘s unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:
“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt May
Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”
Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”
Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”
Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”
Judah ‘s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”
Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah ‘s advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life. CAN A MATERIALIST OR A HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN AN AFTERLIFE GIVE JUDAH ONE REASON WHY HE SHOULDN’T HAVE HIS MISTRESS KILLED?
The Bible tells us, “{God} has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). The secularist calls this an illusion, but the Bible tells us that the idea that we will survive the grave was planted in everyone’s heart by God Himself. Romans 1:19-21 tells us that God has instilled a conscience in everyone that points each of them to Him and tells them what is right and wrong (also Romans 2:14 -15).
It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” THE HUMANIST, May/June 1997, pp. 38-39)
Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (THE HUMANIST, September/October 1997, p. 2)
On the April 13, 2014 episode of THE GOOD WIFE called “The Materialist,” Alicia in a custody case asks the father Professor Mercer some questions about his own academic publications. She reads from his book that he is a “materialist and he believes that “free-will is just an illusion,” and we are all just products of the physical world and that includes our thoughts and emotions and there is no basis for calling anything right or wrong. Sounds like to me the good professor would agree wholeheartedly with the humanist Abigail Ann Martin’s assertion concerning Hitler’s morality too! Jean-Paul Sartre noted, “No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.”
Christians agree with Judah ‘s father that “The eyes of God are always upon us.” Proverbs 5:21 asserts, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.” Revelation 20:12 states, “…And the dead were judged (sentenced) by what they had done (their whole way of feeling and acting, their aims and endeavors) in accordance with what was recorded in the books” (Amplified Version). The Bible is revealed truth from God. It is the basis for our morality. Judah inherited the Jewish ethical values of the Ten Commandments from his father, but, through years of life as a skeptic, his standards had been lowered. Finally, we discover that Judah ‘s secular version of morality does not resemble his father’s biblically-based morality.
Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS forces unbelievers to grapple with the logical conclusions of a purely secular morality, and the secularist has no basis for asserting that Judah is wrong.
Larry King actually mentioned on his show, LARRY KING LIVE, that Chuck Colson had discussed the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with him. Colson asked King if life was just a Darwinian struggle where the ruthless come out on top. Colson continued, “When we do wrong, is that our only choice? Either live tormented by guilt, or else kill our conscience and live like beasts?” (BREAKPOINT COMMENTARY, “Finding Common Ground,” September 14, 1993)
Josef Mengele tortured and murdered many Jews and then lived the rest of his long life out in South America in peace. Will he ever face judgment for his actions?
The ironic thing is that at the end of our visit I that pointed out to Mr. Mondale that Paul Kurtz had said in light of the horrible events in World War II that Kurtz witnessed himself in the death camps (Kurtz entered a death camp as an U.S. Soldier to liberate it) that it was obvious that Humanist Manifesto I was way too optimistic and it was necessary to come up with another one. I thought that might encourage Mr. Mondale to comment further on our earlier conversion concerning evil deeds, but he just said, “That doesn’t surprise me that Kurtz would say something like that.”
The second Humanist Manifesto was written in 1973 by Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson, and was intended to update the previous one. It begins with a statement that the excesses of Nazism and world war had made the first seem “far too optimistic”, and indicated a more hardheaded and realistic approach in its seventeen-point statement, which was much longer and more elaborate than the previous version. Nevertheless, much of the unbridled optimism of the first remained, with hopes stated that war would become obsolete and poverty would be eliminated.
R. Lester Mondale of Fredricktown, Missouri died on August 19, 2003, he was ninety-nine years old. Mondale was the last living signer of Humanist Manifesto I (he was the youngest to sign in 1933). He was also the only person to sign all three manifestos.
An AHA member perhaps since the organization’s founding, he received the AHA’s Humanist Pioneer award in 1973 and the Humanist Founder award in 2001. Mondale became a Unitarian minister after being raised a Methodist.
He was very active with the American Humanist Association, the American Ethical Union and served as president of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists in the 60’s and 70’s. Humanists Vice President Sarah Oelberg says that Mondale’s death marks “truly the end of an era” and AHA Director of Planned Giving Bette Chambers calls him “a great man, a great Humanist.”
Lester is survived by his wife, Rosemary, and four daughters: Karen Mondale of St. Louis, Missouri; Julia Jensen of St. Cloud, Minnesota; Tarrie Swenstad of Odin, Minnesota; and Ellen Mondale of Bethesda, Maryland. Also surviving him are his three brothers: Walter Mondale, former vice president of the United States, Pete Mondale, and Morton Mondale. Lester Mondale was also a proud grandparent of seven and a great-grandparent.
The Mondale siblings: Lester, Walter, Mort, Pete, and Clifford and Eleanor Archer (adopted sister); credit: University of Minnesota Law Library Archives
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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Ricky Gervais 25/07/2021 Facebook Live at 28:29 mark Ricky answers my question about Sam Harris
Did you know that when a violin string is not tight enough, the music will be flat and dull? And if the string is too tight, the music will be shrill and high-pitched. But if it is tightened even more, that string can snap!
It’s the same with tension in the home. Stress and strife raise tension in our homes. The string can get mighty tight, and sometimes, it can snap.
However, not all stress is bad. It takes a certain tension just to make the violin play at all. But I’m telling you that too much stress is dangerous to our happiness, our health, and our homes. I want to give you four instructions taken from this passage in Proverbs to help relieve stress in your home. Learn to Laugh “A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken” (Proverbs 15:13). When it says “the spirit is broken,” that means the string has snapped. Have you ever noticed you don’t have to teach children to laugh; you have to teach them when not to laugh? You see, laughter comes innately. And if you have the joy of the Lord in your heart, it’s going to show on your face! In Luke 6:21, Jesus is looking at people who are down-trodden and sorrowful; and He says, “Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.” He tells us to laugh!
Oh, there’s a time to weep, but you better put some laughter in your home — especially when times get tough. Laughter is God’s way to break the tension when the string gets too tight. Cultivate Contentment “Better is little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble therewith. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith” (Proverbs 15:16-17). Many of us are uptight because our value system is all wrong. We think if we have more, then these things will bring us happiness. But many times the striving for things is what brings tension into the home. 1 Timothy 6:6-8 says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.”
That doesn’t mean that you can’t strive for more or that God doesn’t want you to prosper. The Bible says God takes pleasure in the prosperity of His servants (Psalm 35:27). But you must learn to be content with whatever you have and praise God. If you don’t, before long, the string is going to snap. And that big house, or whatever you’ve been working for, won’t mean anything to you, not a thing. Alleviate Anger “A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife” (Proverbs 15:18). This Scripture shows us that anger brings stress and strife. We need to be peacemakers in our homes. We also see in Proverbs 15:1 that “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” The way to control your anger is to control your words — your speech. Perhaps, you might say, “I just can’t control it.” Oh yes you can! You know, sometimes in a home the husband and wife are just snarling, fighting, snapping, down one another’s throat, and their voices are full of hostility. Then, right in the middle, the phone rings. They go to the phone and say, “Hello,” so sweet and nice. You can control it! And you’d better learn to because if you don’t, you’ll be out of control — and the string will snap.
Walk in Wisdom “Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom: but a man of understanding walketh uprightly. Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established” (Proverbs 15:21-22). Stress in the home is just simply a sign that you have forsaken the wisdom of God. God is not the author of confusion. He gives wisdom.
Now, in order for your family to have wisdom, I would suggest that you come together in a family counsel. Notice in verse twenty-two, “in the multitude of counsellors” this wisdom is established. You need, as a family, to come together. The reason there is strife is not because you have problems. Every family has problems. But you see, families that deal with problems the right way, learn to attack the problem and not one another. Now, that’s wisdom!
When all else has failed, shouldn’t we just read the instructions? God, through His Word, instructs us to laugh, to be content, and to be happy and wise. If we don’t, the string is going to snap, and the music will be over.
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
I was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. John Raymond Smythies on January 28, 2019 in La Jolla, CA, and I wanted to spend time on several posts concentrating on him. I have several tributes, but the best I read can be found at this link.
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May 27, 2018
John Raymond Smythies, Center for Brain and Cognition, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109
Dear Dr. Smythies,
I wanted to send you a copy of this article that appeared in Time Magazine. I also wanted to send you this article on Stephen Hawking. An article on Joseph Lister also appeared in the same issue and I wanted to point out that the Bible has more advanced medical understanding in it than 19th century scientists did!! Finally, I wanted to ask you this question, “Has the Multiverse Replaced God?”.
This week I bought this magazine at a Wal-Mart store “Time Magazine Great Scientists the Geniuses, Eccentrics and Visionaries Who Transformed Our World,” and I thought you may be interested in obtaining a copy since it will be out in stores just until the end of July.
The issue features a cover picture of Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) and it looks at the scientists that have shaped our world by impacting the fields of physics, mathematics, paleontology, astronomy, chemistry, earth sciences, archaeology, social sciences, genetics, and medicine.
Some of the scientists included would be described today as ardent creationists who believe in a personal Creator and that list would include Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Francis Collins, Louis Pasteur, William Herschel, Gregor Mendel, Georges Cuvier, and Louis Agassiz.
I hope you get a copy, but if you don’t have a chance to then please enjoy this small portion I have sent to you.
Respectfully,
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
P.O.Box 23416, Little Rock, AR 72221, United States, everettehatcher@gmail.com, cell phone 501-920-5733
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James D. Watson and Craig Venter below
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James D. Watson and Francis Crick picture in Time Magazine
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HOW STEPHEN HAWKING HELPED REDEFINE THE RULES OF REALITY
During the fall of my sophomore year at Harvard, a group of my fellow physics majors were excitedly discussing a rumor they’d just heard: Stephen Hawking was coming to give the prestigious Loeb Lectures. I played along with their excitement, but truth be told, I didn’t know who Stephen Hawking was. This was the early 1980s, well before A Brief History of Time, so to all but the most physics-savvy of people, Hawking had yet to become Hawking. The rumor was true, and a few weeks later the physics-savvy crowd turned out in force, packing the largest hall to hear Hawking discuss relativity and the origin of the universe.
Although his movements had been reduced to flicking a finger or squinting an eye, Hawking could still speak — a soft, monotone murmur that was barely audible. One of Hawking’s graduate students, trained to decipher his speech, sat inches from the wheelchair, attentively listening and relaying Hawking’s remarks to an audience that hung on every word. The reduced pace allowed me to follow a lecture that otherwise would have left me baffled, making the experience all the more remarkable. I was riding to the edge of space and time on a mind soaring free of a body that had been mandated to sit as still as stone.
As the world would come to know, Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that ravages the neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, but leaves cognitive functioning intact. By shifting from the tactile tools of a typical theoretical physicist — pen, paper, chalkboards, computers — to diagrams and imagery he could manipulate solely with the mind’s eye, Hawking was able to continue his research and, in time, see further than anyone previously had. Among much else, that vision would illuminate the darkness of black holes.
Hawking didn’t discover black holes. But he sparked a revolution, still ongoing, in our understanding of them. In the early decades of the 20th century, we learned from Einstein’s theory of gravity, known as the general theory of relativity, that if you cram enough matter into a small enough region, the gravitational pull will be so strong that nothing can escape its forceful grip. Included in that “nothing” is light, and so the gravity-infused mass will go dark — it will fade to black. In the early 1970s, Hawking updated this conclusion by including quantum mechanics, the hard-won mathematical description of the behavior of particles like electrons and photons, developed in the first half of the 20th century. What Hawking found was so surprising that at first even he didn’t believe it. Through quantum processes, particles can leak through the surface of a black hole, creating an outward streaming swarm causing a black hole to glow — or even explode. Black holes, in other words, are not fully black. They radiate. Although such “Hawking radiation” has yet to be observed (for typical black holes, the effect is minuscule) there is now universal consensus that Hawking’s analysis is correct.
The result transcends black holes. It reveals strange properties of space, time and gravity in a quantum universe that have thrilled, fascinated and frustrated physicists for more than 40 years. One stunning outgrowth of Hawking’s insight, at the forefront of current thinking, is that the three-dimensional reality we inhabit may be akin to a hologram — we may be a three-dimensional projection of comings and goings that take place on a thin two-dimensional surface that surrounds us. Called the holographic principle, it’s one of the strangest ideas of modern physics, and one that emerged from physicists carefully thinking about Hawking’s radiation and its implications for the information carried by anything that falls over a black hole’s edge. Many now believe that the holographic insight is essential to realizing Einstein’s dream of a unified theory of all of nature’s forces.
Some years back, Hawking was the honored guest at the World Science Festival’s annual gala in New York. As we accompanied Stephen through the throngs of invited guests and swarms of press and photographers — all pushing in, straining to catch a glimpse — it became beyond intense. For brief moments, it felt atavistic. Yet, Stephen seemed to take it all in stride. I remembering wondering: Is he off in another world, undertaking some mental calculation that lets him rise above the tumult? Is he parking his mind near the edge of a black hole, reducing the time he’ll experience before it’s safe to come back to Earth? I will never know. But as I think about it now, I like to imagine he was mulling over a remark he’d made some years earlier, in which he reflected on our bestial past and captured in the simplest and starkest terms what it means to be human: “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.” And how special for us to have been on this minor planet while this major mind rewrote the rules of reality.
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Has the Multiverse Replaced God?
William Lane Craig
Several years ago I spoke with Robin Collins, a Christian philosopher who specializes in cosmology, just after his return from a conference on science and theology sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. “Bill,” he said to me, “When these scientists talk about the multiverse, that’s actually their way of talking about theology! It’s their way of doing metaphysics without using the G– word!”
Indeed, I suspect for many in our contemporary culture the multiverse serves as a sort of God surrogate. The multiverse serves the role of a creator and designer of the universe. It explains why the universe came into being and why the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life. It is thus a sort of substitute deity……..
In 1994…Arvind Borde and Alexander Vilenkin showed that any spacetime eternally inflating toward the future cannot be “geodesically complete” in the past, that is to say, there must have existed at some point in the indefinite past an initial singularity. Hence, the multiverse scenario cannot be past eternal. They write,
A model in which the inflationary phase has no end . . . naturally leads to this question: Can this model also be extended to the infinite past, avoiding in this way the problem of the initial singularity?
. . . this is in fact not possible in future-eternal inflationary spacetimes as long as they obey some reasonable physical conditions: such models must necessarily possess initial singularities.
. . . the fact that inflationary spacetimes are past incomplete forces one to address the question of what, if anything, came before. [11]
In response, Linde concurred with the conclusion of Borde and Vilenkin: there must have been a Big Bang singularity at some point in the past. [12]
……Roger Penrose calculates that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:1010(123), an inconceivable number. [25] The probability that our solar system should suddenly form by the random collision of particles is 1:1010(60). (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison.)
Conclusion
In conclusion the multiverse hypothesis does nothing to eliminate the need for a creator and designer of the universe. Whether or not a multiverse exists, one needs a transcendent, personal creator and designer of the cosmos.
[11]A. Borde and A. Vilenkin, “Eternal Inflation and the Initial Singularity,” Physical Review Letters 72 (1994): 3305, 3307.
[12]Andrei Linde, Dmitri Linde, and Arthur Mezhlumian, “From the Big Bang Theory to the Theory of a Stationary Universe,”Physical Review D 49 (1994): 1783-1826. Linde has since tried to suggest a way to escape the conclusion of a beginning (“Inflation and String Cosmology,” arXiv:hep-th/0503195v1 (24 Mar 2005), p. 13. But he does not succeed in extending past spacetime paths to infinity, which is a necessary condition of the universe’s having no beginning.
[15]Audrey Mithani and Alexander Vilenkin, “Did the universe have a beginning?” ArXiv 1204.4658v1 [hep-th] 20 April 2012. Cf. his statement “There are no models at this time that provide a satisfactory model for a universe without a beginning” (A. Vilenkin, “Did the Universe Have a Beginning?” lecture at Cambridge University, 2012). Specifically, Vilenkin closed the door on three models attempting to avert the implication of his theorem: eternal inflation, a cyclic universe, and an “emergent” universe which exists for eternity as a static seed before expanding.
[16]Lisa Grossman, “Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event,” New Scientist 11 January 2012.
[22]See Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (New York: Little, Brown, & Co., 2006). Susskind apparently believes that the discovery of the cosmic landscape undercuts the argument for design, when in fact precisely the opposite is true. Susskind doesn’t seem to appreciate that the 10500 worlds in the cosmic landscape are not real but merely possible universes consistent with M-Theory. To find purchase for the anthropic principle mentioned by Hawking as the third alternative, one needs a plurality of real universes, which string theory alone does not provide.
[25]Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5. Penrose concludes that anthropic explanations are so “impotent” that it is actually “misconceived” to appeal to them to explain the special features of the universe
On page 103 there is praise for Joseph Lister, but why is Ignaz Semmelweis ignored?
Semmelweis’s professional timing could not have been worse. He made his landmark discovery between 1846 and 1861, long before the medical profession was ready to accept it.
Although Louis Pasteur began exploring the role of bacteria and fermentation in spoiling wine during the late 1850s, much of his most important work initiating the germ theory of disease occurred between 1860 and 1865. A few years later, in 1867, the Scottish surgeon Joseph Lister, who apparently had never heard of Semmelweis, elaborated the theory and practice of antiseptic surgery, which included washing the hands with carbolic acid to prevent infection. And in 1876, the German physician Robert Koch successfully linked a germ, Bacillus anthracis, to a specific infectious disease, anthrax.
Numbers 19:18 A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in water, sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who where there, or on the one who touched a bone, the slain, the dead, or a grave. “The Bible is not a book of science.” We hear and read that statement a lot these days but there is a deceptive lie hidden with this claim.
In 1844 in Austria, it was a fearful thing when a woman went into the great Vienna Hospital to have her baby. One mother out of every five died of child-bed fever. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, set out to find out why. In those days no one knew about bacteria and while the existence of “germs” was suspected it was merely a theory and many did not believe in the existence of “germs.” Semmelweis noticed that after examining the dead patients the young doctors would then examine the living and never considered washing their hands between examinations. With great opposition Dr. Semmelweis insisted they wash their hands and the death rate dropped almost to zero. Sadly, Dr. Semmelweis was dismissed and the old practice continued with the awful death rate.
However, Dr. Semmelweis’s discovery was not new knowledge. Thousands of years earlier God had given Moses this knowledge and the Israelites knew they were unclean after touching the dead. By Mosaic Law they had to wash and use hyssop branches. Today, we know that hyssop contains a powerful antibacterial and antifungal agent.
So when the Bible touches upon an area of science it is still completely accurate. After all, the Author of the Bible is also the Author of everything that science studies!
Notes: Thompson, Bert. 1990. Dr. Semmelweis and the Bible. Reasoning from Revelation, June. p. 3.Thanks
MEDICINE
I do not want anyone to think that the Bible is like a recent medical textbook. The purpose of the Bible is far from that. However, I invite you, the reader, to explore some passages in the Bible that hopefully will surprise and fascinate you about the possibility of there being Scientific Foreknowledge in the Bible.
THE ABSENCE OF CONTEMPORARY HARMFUL TREATMENTS
My own opinion is that there certainly appears to be statements in the Old Testament that clearly exceed the knowledge of that time. As a physician, I am amazed at the advanced health regulations given in the Mosaic Law, especially since Moses and the Israelites had just come out of Egypt. Now the time of the Exodus was about 1446 BC, and this was also the time when the Bible says God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and over 600 other laws. Contemporary practices from the great knowledge and wisdom of the Egyptians was clearly known by Moses (Act 7:22), which very likely included the famous medical treatments such as are found in the Papyrus Ebers, which is dated about 1552 BC. Dr. S. I. McMillen quotes a summary of some of the hundreds of remedies for diseases based on Massengill’s (1943) assessment:
These drugs include “lizards’ blood, swines’ teeth, putrid meat, stinking fat, moisture from pigs’ ears, milk goose grease, asses’ hoofs, animal fats from various sources, excreta from animals, including human beings, donkeys, antelopes, dogs, cats, and even flies.”1
It is clear that these treatments would not have been effective in eradicating illness, and in fact, the sewage treatments would have caused tetanus (including neonatal), wound infections, sepsis and death. Yet, this was the greatest medical wisdom in the world at that time. However, we find none of these things being commanded in the health regulations in the Law of Moses. Now this would have been a major departure, not only for Moses, but also for the Israelites. There must have been a substantial trust in God by Moses and the Israelites for them to have abandoned these harmful, though highly touted Egyptian medical practices as found in the Papyrus Ebers.
HYGIENE ISSUES
Instead we find in the Mosaic Law solid principles of public health that still apply today. For example, major policies include the following:
Isolating infected people (Lev 13:45-46). Washing after handling a dead body (Num 19:11-19). Burying excrement away from the camp (Deut 23:12-13).2
McMillen points out that the first policy was the only thing that stopped the Leprosy and the Black Death during the Dark Ages.3 The second policy was the only thing that stopped the obstetrical deaths in Vienna in the 1840’s.4 The third policy was absolutely needed to stop the epidemics of typhoid, cholera and dysentery.5
Even today these simple public health principles, if properly used, would stop the spread of killer infections in hospitals. Wash your hands under running water! How simple does it get! Yet, it is a constant battle to get physicians and nurses to wash their hands before treating the next patient. The same thing applies to everyone who has an infectious illness such as influenza or diarrhea. Wash your hands! At this time there is a considerable concern about the spread of H1N1 (swine influenza). Again, the recommendation is to “wash your hands!”
What is the point? Moses was 3500 years ahead of his time. Moses could not have known, based on his own education as a prince in Egypt, the simple and effective public heath principles that are revealed in the Mosaic Law. The only way he could have learned these principles 3500 years ahead of their time was by receiving revelation from the all-knowing God.
FOOD RESTRICTIONS
The medical marvels in the Law of Moses are not confined to hygiene issues. Food rules are impressive. For example, swine are notorious for carrying trichinosis because of what they eat (i.e., raw garbage and infected rodents), and this disease can easily be passed to humans eating inadequately cooked pork. Pork must be raised in a controlled environment and their meat cooked well-done in order to be safe for consumption. Of course, Moses didn’t know that, but God did and told the Israelites not to eat pork.
Another very interesting finding is that God commanded the Israelites through Moses not to eat fat (Lev 3:16-17). It was only just a few years ago that the cholesterol hypothesis was proven: High fat diets are not good for humans as these predispose people to higher rates of cholesterol plaques with all their complications such as heart attacks and strokes. How could Moses have known on his own 3500 years ago that fat should be excluded from the diet of his people? He didn’t learn that from his Egyptian education! Where did it come from? It came from God.
.CONCLUSION
Therefore, there seems to be compelling evidence that the Bible contains sound medical principles that clearly predate their more recent discovery by thousands of years. Dear friends, this is real Scientific Foreknowledge. It reveals the finger of God, the breath of God. He was there, and revealed these things to the ancients.
As an aside for my profession, I think it unfortunate for our patients that we as physicians and nurses and health care workers have been so slow to see the very basic principles of hygiene that were established so long ago. If we had, we wouldn’t be fighting a plague of infections like MRSA, multiply resistant enterococci, and multiply resistant flesh-eating bacteria, and multiply resistant EVERYTHING caused by poor hand washing and inadequate containment procedures. My colleagues, we have been slow to learn, slow to believe, and slow to respond. Our patients deserve better, and we all know it.
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto
I have attempted to respond to all of Dr. Kroto’s friends arguments and I have posted my responses one per week for over a year now. Here are some of my earlier posts:
In the second video below in the 95th clip in this series are his words but today I just wanted to pause and look at this life.
Quote from Dr. John Raymond Smythies
I would like to describe how mescaline works. These hallucination drugs have a very specific action in two ways. Number 1 they produce fantastic visual hallucinations. These are described by the people who have them (most of them are down to earth scientists such as MacDonald Critchley) as being more beautiful than anything they have ever seen in normal art. Some of these people have the sort of experience as union with God, mystical experiences and so on.
50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)
Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)
A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)
The John Lennon and the Beatles really were on a long search for meaning and fulfillment in their lives just like King Solomon did in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looked into learning (1:12-18, 2:12-17), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-2, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). He fount that without God in the picture all […]
______________ George Harrison Swears & Insults Paul and Yoko Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds- The Beatles The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking […]
The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA Uploaded on Nov 29, 2010 The Beatles in a press conference after their Return from the USA. The Beatles: I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis […]
__________________ Beatles 1966 Last interview I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this […]
_______________ The Beatles documentary || A Long and Winding Road || Episode 5 (This video discusses Stg. Pepper’s creation I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about […]
_______________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: _____________________ I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” How Should […]
Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1 ___________________________________ Today I will answer the simple question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE AN OPTIMISTIC SECULAR HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GOD OR AN AFTERLIFE? This question has been around for a long time and you can go back to the 19th century and read this same […]
____________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: __________ Francis Schaeffer has written extensively on art and culture spanning the last 2000years and here are some posts I have done on this subject before : Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 10 “Final Choices” , episode 9 “The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence”, episode 8 […]
Love and Death [Woody Allen] – What if there is no God? [PL] ___________ _______________ How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason) #02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer 10 Worldview and Truth Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100 Francis Schaeffer […]
___________________________________ Francis Schaeffer pictured below: ____________________________ Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?) Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro) Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1) Dr. Francis Schaeffer […]
President Biden c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view.
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? which can be found on You Tube. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.
Today I want to respond to your letter to me on July 9, 2021. Here it is below:
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
July 9, 2021
Mr. Everette Hatcher III
Alexander, AR
Dear Mr. Hatcher,
Thank you for taking your time to share your thoughts on abortion. Hearing from passionate individuals like me inspires me every day, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to your letter
Our country faces many challenges, and the road we will travel together will be one of the most difficult in our history. Despite these tough times, I have never been more optimistic for the future of America. I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
As we move forward to address the complex issues of our time, I encourage you to remain an active participant in helping write the next great chapter of the American story. We need your courage and dedication at this critical time, and we must meet this moment together as the United States of America. If we do that, I believe that our best days still lie ahead.
Sincerely
Joe Biden
—
You said you are optimistic about pulling together and getting things done and that may have been true in July when you wrote this letter but on VALENTINE’S DAY IN 2022 our country is feeling a lot of division and with all this printing of money Joe Manchin is right that BUILD BACK BETTER would have increased the 7.5% of inflation we have now!!!!
You asserted “I believe we are better positioned than any country in the world to lead in the 21st century not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example.” ARE YOU SPEAKING OF OUR MORAL EXAMPLE? DON’T YOU REJECT YOUR OWN CHURCH’S VIEW THAT ABORTION IS WRONG?
They Had Bloody Hands They Had Lying Lips They Had Wicked Hearts A Diet of Deception A Web of Wickedness The Web of Pornography The Web of Drugs and Alcohol The Web of Sexual Immorality
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith. I respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,
“But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”
Isaiah 59:2
Outline
Introduction
They Had Bloody Hands
They Had Lying Lips
They Had Wicked Hearts
A Diet of Deception
A Web of Wickedness
The Web of Pornography
The Web of Drugs and Alcohol
The Web of Sexual Immorality
III. A Trashing of Truth
Conclusion
Introduction
Be finding in your Bibles the book of Isaiah chapter 59; and when you’ve found it, would you look up here, and may I tell you as you’re finding it that our beloved United States of America is in a crisis. And the title of the message today: “A Nation in Crisis.” One by one, the lights of decency and the lights of hope are being blown out in America. And it seems that Americans are content to have scoundrels in leadership so long as they give us prosperity. But one day, calamity will come. One day, we will face perhaps international terrorism, perhaps unparalleled economic reversal, perhaps natural disasters over which we have no control whatsoever. And then we will fill our churches, and we will turn our eyes upward. And we will dial 911, but there will be no answer: the line will be dead. First Samuel chapter 8, verse 18, says, “And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:18) You’ll cry out; you’ll say, “O God, have mercy.” You’ll pray, and your prayers won’t be answered. Why is that?
Well, look in Isaiah chapter 59, verse 1: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:”—God is not palsied, and God is not deaf—“but”—verse 2—“your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.” (Isaiah 59:1–4) Now, what is Isaiah saying to a sinful nation of that day? God is well able to hear your prayers. It’s not that He cannot hear your prayers; it is that He will not hear your prayers because your sin has created a barrier between you and a holy God. And Isaiah tells us what the sin of that day was and how it tracks and parallels the sin of our day.
They Had Bloody Hands
First of all, look in verse 2. They had bloody hands. America is swimming in an ocean of blood. A modern holocaust has stained and flooded America. The blood of some thirty million preborn babies cries out from the ground against us since 1972, that horrendous Roe v. Wade ruling when nine men dressed in black robes said that a little preborn babies can be treated as a piece of protoplasm. And we in America are now killing babies at the rate of four thousand a day. Notice what Isaiah said: “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you.” (Isaiah 59:2) Verse 3: “Your hands are defiled with blood.” (Isaiah 59:3)
When you ask a politician about abortion, he’ll dodge the issue. He’ll tell you, “That’s a moral decision. It is a religious decision. That’s not a proper subject for politics, and that needs to be studied in the church between the priest, the rabbi, and the pastor. It is a personal decision, not a political decision.” But if the priest, the rabbi, or the pastor speaks about it, they’ll rise up and say, “Why doesn’t he stay out of politics?” And meanwhile, the babies die. And we are swimming in an ocean of blood, and the violence of our day has surpassed the days of Noah, the days of Lot. King Herod is in the background today. One man has wisely said, “Today we’re living in the day where twelve-year-olds are having babies, fifteen-year-olds are killing each other, seventeen-year-olds are dying of AIDS, and eighteen-year-olds are graduating from high school with a diploma they can’t read.” That’s where we are in America today: bloody hands.
They Had Lying Lips
But then he goes on to say not only bloody hands, but lying lips. Again, look, if you will, in verse 3: “Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.” (Isaiah 59:3) I’ve been watching the news programs lately, and we’ve been talking about lies in high places and low places. And the going merchandise among those news programs is, “Well, everybody lies. What’s so rare about lies? Everybody lies.” U. S. News & World Report in a report said this: “Governmental officials dissemble; scientists falsify research; workers alter career credentials to get jobs.” And then the magazine asks, “What’s going on here? The answer, a growing number of social critics fear, is an alarming decline in basic honesty.”
They Had Wicked Hearts
Bloody hands. Lying lips. Number three: wicked hearts. Look, if you will, in verse 4: “None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.” (Isaiah 59:4) It’s terrible to raise teenagers today, because we have a day of moral ambivalence; we have a day of ethical fogginess. What are we being told today? We’re being told that adultery is really no big deal: everybody does that. Friend, I want to tell you, if a man will not keep a sacred vow before Almighty God to his wife, I wouldn’t trust him to keep any promise anywhere anytime. We’re being told today that private morality can be disconnected from public service. That’s not what God’s Word says. Ecclesiastes chapter 10, verse 1 says this: “Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.” (Ecclesiastes 10:1) Dead flies in the ointment, friend; something stinks in America.
Theodore Roosevelt, a man of yesteryear, won his first major election back in 1898. He was elected governor of New York. About that time, Theodore Roosevelt wrote something that’s so pertinent to our day and our age. I want you to listen to it. It sounds like it was written for today, but listen to it. He says, “No community is healthy where it is ever necessary to distinguish one politician among his fellows because ‘he is honest.’ Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest we have no right to keep him in public life, it matters not how brilliant his capacity, it hardly matters how great his powers of doing good service on certain lines may be.” Now what Teddy Roosevelt said was, “If he’s not honest, then he’s just simply disqualified.”
Again, Teddy Roosevelt said this: “If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law. Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty if, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump; and in all probability the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more wide-spread and more pernicious. The difference between perjury and mendacity is not in the least one of morals or ethics. It is simply one of legal forms.” Now what he is saying is the same thing that Jesus said when He said, “[When you speak] let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay.” (James 5:12) It doesn’t matter whether you’re under oath or whether you’re not under oath.
We’re being told today that somehow public approval validates wrong behavior. This same Isaiah, whose book we’re reading, said in Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”(Isaiah 5:20) We’re being told that if a man is approved by society, that that is good. It is not good, no matter how many times we take a poll. We’re being told that a lie about adultery is permissible and that a lie while under oath is not acceptable. And Jesus said, “Let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay.” (James 5:12)
Now, what has brought about this condition? Why is it that Isaiah’s people came to a place where they would look up to God and say, “God have mercy on us,” and God said, “No, I’m not going to hear your prayer”? What brought about bloody hands, lying lips, and wicked hearts? Three things—I want you to see them right here in this text.
A Diet of Deception
Number one: The people had been feeding on a diet of deception. Look in verse 5: “They hatch [viper’s] eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” (Isaiah 59:5) Now if you’ll look at verse 5, and link verse 5 to verse 4, you’re going to find out that those viper’s eggs, those snake eggs that he’s talking about that are hatched in hell’s incubators, they are devilish lies and philosophies that are being hatched—were hatched in Isaiah’s day and also being hatched in our day—lying, poisonous philosophies that are being swallowed down by adults and by youth alike. Our world, our nation, is on a snake egg diet—a diet of deception. The incubators that hatch those eggs are materialism, humanism, New Ageism, liberalism. They’ve hatched these out. The old granddaddy serpent who has spawned and fertilized these eggs is Satan himself because he is a liar, and the father of all lies. (John 8:44) There are certain philosophical underpinnings that are so incipient in American life today that are poisoning our educational, our philosophical, our religious, and political outlook.
And our young people are going to public schools, and each morning they’re served a snake egg omelet. They swallow these things down. You see, dramatic changes have taken place in America, and in twenty years—twenty years that most of us have lived through—there has been a complete reversal. From 1962 to 1982, let me tell you what has happened in twenty years. In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that voluntary prayer in public schools is unconstitutional. Now they tell us that our children must be in the public schools, but they say, “You cannot have voluntary prayer. We’ll put you there, but you cannot pray.” That’s 1962. Then, in 1963, the same court dismantled classroom Bible reading: no room for the Bible in our halls of education. Then, in 1980, the posting of the Ten Commandments was declared unconstitutional. Now when kids are bringing guns to school, we cannot post on the walls of our schoolrooms, “Thou shalt not kill.” (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17) In 1982, the court prohibited the teaching of biblical creation. In twenty years, God has been expelled from our public schools and been told not to return. Now abortion, infanticide, euthanasia all become possible in a world where you believe that man is the creation of some blind, evolutionary force; that he is not created in the image of God, but he has evolved from some primordial ooze.
So, what do we have today? What is it like? Well, today, children, if they go to school, must receive parental permission before a school-based clinic can prescribe an aspirin. But yet in America a little teenage girl can be given an abortion—abortion guidance counsel, and the abortion itself—without the parents even knowing that this is taking place. That is in America. School-based clinics dispense birth control devices and parental counseling without notification or approval. What is happening in America is that our kids are being served snake eggs everyday. Prayer is out; policemen are in. Bibles are out; values clarification is in. The Ten Commandments, yes, they’re out; but rape and armed robbery, gang warfare, murder, and cheating are in. Creation instruction is out; evolution and blind chance is in. Corporal punishment is out; disrespect and rebellion are in. Traditional values are out; unwed motherhood is in. Abstinence is out; condoms and abortion are in. Learning is out; social engineering is in. History is out; revisionism is in. Is it any wonder that the suicide rate of our teenagers is soaring, runaway statistics are soaring, promiscuity problems, violent crime? Our kids are not being raised in a society, in a school, that says that they have rights that are given to them, unalienable rights given by Almighty God, but they are told that the universe itself exists—not that it was created—and the wisdom that built this great nation is being laughed at.
But here’s the sad thing. Look, if you will, in verse 5: “They hatch [viper’s] eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth,”—now, watch that—“and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” (Isaiah 59:5) When you come against these things and try to stamp them out, all you do is create more snakes. To stamp out these snake eggs is not the answer.
A Web of Wickedness
Now not only is there a diet of deception, but that is compounded by a second thing in America that makes our nation a nation in crisis: not only a diet of deception, but a web of wickedness. Look again in verse 5, if you will. He says here in verse 5, “They … weave the spider’s web.” I got down my encyclopedia and read something about spiders. I don’t know whether you have a love affair with spiders or not. I don’t. But spiders weave a web—almost invisible, very sticky. And the purpose of that web is to catch an unsuspecting insect who will fly into that web and become entangled in that web where the spider can come out and wrap him out in more strands of that web. Then the spider injects poison into the body of that insect, and the spider sucks that insect dry.
Now Satan has woven some webs, and he is poisoning and sucking dry the generation of young people today. Satan has a network—are you listening to me?—a web of evil that is absolutely terrifying, and our young people can hardly see the web. They don’t understand it.
The Web of Pornography
There’s pornography, for example: the web of pornography. “Pastor Rogers, does pornography lead to degeneracy?” Pornography is degeneracy. That’s what it is. Our kids today can get on the Internet and watch unspeakable, unmentionable things, even in school, as they can access these things. At home they can pick up the phone, dial-a-porn, and listen to lesbian sexual activities, sodomy, rape, incest, bestiality, or sex with other children. There are more adult bookstores in America today than there are McDonald’s restaurants. Pornography is a multibillion-dollar industry. That is a web, and so many kids and adults alike are being caught in it.
The Web of Drugs and Alcohol
Satan has his web of drugs and alcohol—a deadly trap. America is filled today with walking dead, whose lives have been sucked dry by the spiders of alcohol and drug abuse. I read recently where students spend 5.5 billion dollars on alcohol: more than they spend on nonalcoholic drinks like Pepsi or Coke or 7 Up and books put together—on alcoholic beverages! Now these Madison Avenue people come into the living room through their beer ads, and through their sports ads, and they’ll have these boys, as I’ve said before, out there on the bass boat somewhere hoisting a six-pack, and one of them smiles and says to the other one, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Boy, they’re right: it always gets worse. “It doesn’t get any better than this.” And we have a generation of walking dead, who have been sucked dry, embalmed, by alcohol.
The Web of Sexual Immorality
There’s a sticky web of immorality. Young people are being told today there are no fixed standards of right or wrong, and the media, or entertainment, has created the myth that premarital sex, extramarital sex, and homosexuality are on the same level as chastity, monogamy, and heterosexuality. And in our so-called sex education classes in many of our schools they have a threefold goal—and that is to teach children how to fornicate without guilt, without catching a disease, and without conceiving a baby. That’s called “sex education” today.
How would you like your child to go to school and hear what some are being taught? Here’s what they’re being taught. Here’s the textbook. Quote: “Premarital sexual intercourse is both acceptable for men and women if they are involved in a stable, loving relationship. It has been suggested by some marriage counseling authorities that all couples should live together before they’re married.” How would you like that for education? Or listen to this: “Often, promiscuity is labeled as bad by persons who do not accept this type of behavior. As with other patterns of sexual behavior, one should not pin ‘good’ or ‘bad’ on a practice.” Here’s another: “Morality is individual; it’s what you think it is. Your conception of what is right or wrong morally is an individual decision.”
May God have mercy upon us when these tell us we cannot pray, we cannot read God’s Word, we cannot post the Ten Commandments, but we can denigrate God’s Word and God’s law. And kids today talk about “going all the way.” My God, that’s the one thing they don’t do. They haven’t gone all the way. They go a little further when they catch a disease along the way; a little further when a baby is conceived and they have to tell their father or mother; a little further if they decide to murder that baby. But they really haven’t gone all the way until they stand before a holy God who says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”; (Exodus 20:14) a holy God who says, “Flee fornication.” (1 Corinthians 6:18)
III.A Trashing of Truth
Friend, we are in a terrible situation. What has brought about this crisis in America? Number one: a diet of deception. Number two: a web of wickedness. Number three: the trashing of truth. Fast-forward to verse 12: “For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us: for our transgressions are with us; and as for our iniquities, we know them; In transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.” Now, watch this: “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off:”—why has judgment been turned away backward? Why does justice wait in the wings? Here it is—“for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey.” (Isaiah 59:12–15) That is, when you stand up and speak against it, you become the bad guy.
Listen. I have been preaching too many years for me not to know that I am the heavy today; I am the bad guy today; I’m making myself a prey when I say “This is wrong” when I speak against these things. When you call for justice, when you call for truth, you become the guy in the black hat. That’s the state to which we have come today. But notice what he says. He says there’s a traffic jam. Justice, equity, cannot come through the streets, because “truth is fallen.”And all of the traffic is backed up, because “truth is fallen in the street.” (Isaiah 59:14)
Well, what caused truth to fall? Notice truth is not dead. There is a traffic jam. Judgment, justice, and equity cannot enter. It’s not that truth is nonexistent. You can’t ever murder truth. It is not that truth is dead. Truth will not die. But truth has stumbled. Truth is lying prostrate on the ground. Why? Well, she has been knocked down in America by doctors of philosophy. She has been tripped up in America by dishonest politicians. And she has been chloroformed by liberal preachers. And she’s lying there in the street. May I say with all of the unction, function, and emotion of my soul; God help me to say it: The job in America today is to put truth back on her feet. That is the job in America: to put truth back on her feet. And I really believe there is not a lot wrong in America that could not be put right quickly, dramatically, if across America, in the pulpits of America, from sea to shining sea, this Sunday and every Sunday, a generation of preachers would open the book of truth and preach “Thus saith the Lord God Almighty” without fear or failure.
We’re in a situation today that’s in a crisis. Why did God write a Bible? He calls that Bible “the Word of truth.” Why did God send the Holy Spirit? He calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth.” How does God describe Himself? He describes Himself as “the Truth.” Who is Jesus? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) What is the church? The church is called “the pillar and ground of the truth.” (1 Timothy 3:15) The Apostle John said, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” (3 John 1:4) We can get facts from the Internet. There’s a difference between facts and truth. Knowledge may double; truth will never double. There is eternal truth. Truth is what food is to your body, light is to your eyes, and melody is to your ears.
Now, do you know what most of us want to do? Most of us want to be stamping out snake eggs. Most of us want to be sweeping down spider’s webs. But, friend, you stamp out a snake egg: just more snakes. You sweep down a spider’s web—you’ve done it before: it’s back the next morning, is it not? We need something that will slay the snake and destroy the spider—and that is truth. Only truth can keep this daddy serpent from spawning those eggs. Only truth can keep that spider from weaving those sticky webs. We need to lift up truth in America today, to put truth on her feet. And I want to call upon you and every believer to rededicate himself to the truth. Parents, teach your children to live the truth, to love the truth, to tell the truth, to know the truth, and to believe the truth. Jesus said, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” (John 17:17)
Conclusion
Let me give you a proverb here, and I’m almost finished—Proverbs 23, verse 23: “Buy the truth, and sell it not.” (Proverbs 23:23) There is a prize to possess: it is truth. There is a price to pay: you must buy the truth. You must study it, pore over it, live it, know it. And you must preserve the truth. Don’t let anybody take the truth from you. That truth is in God’s Word. The early Christians did not argue over the Bible. They loved it. They believed it. They expounded it. They poured it forth as white-hot lava.
Now, one by one, person by person, family by family, city by city, church by church, we’ve go to take America back. My heart is broken over snake eggs, spider webs, and traffic jams. What about you? I’m not talking about the person sitting next to you. What about you? Are you right with God? Do you think it’s somebody else’s problem? What about your home? What about your business relationships? Have you been feeding on snake eggs? Some right now are wrapped up in spider’s webs. There’s only one thing that will set you free. Jesus said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
I want to tell you, the truth is today that God loves you. The truth is today that Jesus Christ died for you. He carried your sins to the cross, and with His blood, He paid your sin debt. The truth is that He walked out of that grave, and He has ascended to high hills of glory. The truth is that one day—soon and very soon, I hope—He’s coming again. And the truth is, if you will believe on Him and trust Him, He will save you. I promise you on the authority of the Word of God not only will have save you, but—praise His holy name—He will satisfy you. What you’re longing for, you’ll never find, until you find it in the Lord Jesus. And not only will He save you, and satisfy you; He will sanctify you. He’ll begin to make you more and more and more and more and more like Him. Now when you come to Jesus, you’re not going to sprout wings and get a halo right away; you’ll have to grow. But this saving Jesus is the satisfying, sanctifying Jesus. And I’ll tell you something else: He will secure you. He will keep you. It’s not a matter of your holding on to Him; He’ll hold you—if you truly give Him your heart and your life.•[1]
[1] Rogers, A. (2017). A Nation in Crisis. In Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Is 59:1–15). Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust.
The Long War against God-Henry Morris, part 1 of 6 Uploaded by FLIPWORLDUPSIDEDOWN3 on Aug 30, 2010 _________ Do you think the theory of evolution is true? Check out this short article by Adrian Rogers: “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which […]
Same old story it seems. Kentucky pulls out another close victory over the Vols. This is not the only story I am talking about today. Kentucky’s Alex Poythress (22) shoots between Tennessee’s Josh Richardson, left, and Yemi Makanjuola during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., Tuesday, […]
7 years ago on November 15, 2005 Adrian Rogers passed away. This is a series of posts about the life and ministry of Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers Memorial – Come To Jesus Uploaded by jonwhisner on Jan 20, 2011 This video is from Adrian Roger’s Memorial Service held at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN in […]
It pays to remember history. Today I am going to go through some of it and give an outline and quotes from the great Southern Baptist leader Adrian Rogers (1931-2005). Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times started this morning off with some comedy: From pro golfer John Daly’s Twitter account following last night’s Republican debate, […]
Adrian Rogers – [1/2] How to Come Back When You’re Down Adrian Rogers – [2/2] How to Come Back When You’re Down Here are 5 thoughts by Adrian Rogers: Many have asked how should Christians respond to what happened in America on September 11. And after much prayer and reading through God’s Word, I’d […]
In a friendly game of keep away, Barrett Jones demonstrates why he is a formidable opponent on the football field. The mission team he led in Nicaragua visited several schools to share the love of Christ with the children. Special to the Courier ______________ I have written about Barrett Jones several times before in 2011 […]
Dr Rogers was fond of this quote he got from Robert G. Lee: ”Sin will take you farther than you want to go, Sin will keep you longer than you want to stay, Sin will cost you more than you want to pay.“ _________________ Pay Day – Someday by Dr. R. G. Lee Uploaded by BereanBeacon on […]
Ricky Gervais is a churlish turd. Or at least that’s the way he comes across onscreen. The British actor, director, comedian, and writer is a master at creating and playing unpleasant characters who are self-centered, sarcastic, socially awkward, or a combination of all three. From The Office to Extras to Ghost Town, Gervais knows exactly how to make viewers cringe or roll their eyes.
While he often exudes a prickly persona, Gervais’ characters have also, somewhat ironically, maintained a thoughtful, kind, and humorous quality. The most recent and best example of Gervais’ gift for making unlikable characters lovable is his portrayal of Tony in the Netflix series After Life, which has returned for its third and final season.
After Life follows the thought-provoking story of Tony, a journalist for a small-town newspaper, shortly after his wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman) has died. Despondent and suicidal, Tony believes there’s no longer any advantage to being kind. He feels that doing and saying whatever he wants is his “superpower.” Tony is rude to friends and strangers, drinks like a fish, and finds humans to be generally annoying. At the office for the Tambury Gazette, Tony mocks his co-workers: he makes fun of a photographer named Lenny (Tony Way) for being fat and eating too much, and advertising executive Kath (Diane Morgan) for believing in conspiracy theories. He’s perturbed by his pushy postman and the kind-hearted sex worker who often arrives at his home uninvited. Tony’s job is also a source of frustration. Of course, covering stories about a teen who can play two recorders through his nostrils, or a man who has a wallpaper stain that looks like Sir Kenneth Branagh would probably make any journalist question their career choice.
While miserable, Tony does have a few things in life that keep him tethered. There’s relationship potential with a nurse named Emma (Ashley Jensen). He meets a fellow widower named Anne (Penelope Wilson), and they bond over their shared sense of loss. Tony also takes care of his beloved dog Brandy and often uses her as an excuse to continue living.
Tony may be a curmudgeon, but like most other Gervais productions, there’s more to this character than being a stereotypical jerk. The series is a study in existentialism, addressing what makes life worth living (hint: it’s love) while also pointing out that with love can also come the pain of losing the people closest to you. Grief, depression, and guilt are felt by everyone and can derail your life. That said, it’s important to appreciate what we have while we have it.
“One day, you’ll eat your last meal, smell your last flower, hug your friend for the very last time,” says Tony in the final episode of Season 1. “You might not know it’s the last time, so that’s why you should do everything you love with passion, you know? Treasure the few years you’ve got because that’s all there is.”
After Life’s mercurial blend of humor and sadness doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does. One minute you’ll be laughing at the crazy antics of Tony’s therapist, making a fool of himself and his two mates as they come up with the most inappropriate and lewd comments you’ve ever heard (the name Michael Parkinbum will ALWAYS make me giggle). Then you’ll be crying as Tony watches a home video of his wife in happier times that perfectly exemplifies their love. This is a series that will have you alternately crying from laughter and sadness.
The first two seasons of After Life show Tony’s gradual evolution; this continues in Season 3, in which his outlook on life has improved. But he still mourns Lisa, which makes pursuing a relationship with Emma complicated.
While Tony remains the main focus, Season 3 gives the series’ colorful cast of characters a chance to shine. Kath goes on a number of disastrous dates before finding an unexpected match. Community theater director Ken (Colin Hoult) gets a hilarious multi-episode arc, and Tony’s brother-in-law Matt (Tom Basden) shows his competitive side in a series of silly sports challenges.
Every character in After Life is growing as a person, but Tony is still looking for a reason to live. Some might find his despair off-putting after so many episodes; most TV viewers are used to a cycle in which characters deal with pain, then move on. But the fact that Tony doesn’t gives him authenticity. Some people take years, while others never even get over heartbreak, and it makes Tony incredibly relatable.
(Editor’s Note: Light spoilers for the finale episode below).
Just when it appears Tony will never be the person he was before his wife’s death, he sees a reason for hope. A visit to a hospice stops his descent, and Tony realizes he was lucky to have the time with Lisa that he had. It also provides him with purpose. “I thought not caring was a superpower. I was wrong,” says Tony to Matt. “Caring about stuff, that’s what really matters. Kindness. Making other people feel good. That’s the real superpower, and we’ve all got it.”
At the end of the series finale, my wife and I were a bundle of tears. Being reflective is a natural consequence when watching this series. For us, it made us think of the people in our lives who are struggling and the people we’ve lost this past year. There are always a lot of texts and phone calls after an After Life binge. The show serves as a reminder to cherish those around you because everyone’s time is finite.
If Ted Lasso’s consistent optimism serves as an inspiration, Tony’s more realistic outlook serves as a catharsis. You may need a box of tissues after watching this odd collection of characters, but you’ll also feel more closely connected to humanity, an impressive feat for a TV show. After Life’s emotional impact resonates long after you’ve watched it and perfectly captures why there’s always been more to Ricky Gervais than meets the eye.
Season 3 of After Life premieres Friday, January 14. The first two seasons are currently streaming on Netflix.
Terry Terrones is a Television Critics Association and Critics Choice Association member, licensed drone pilot and aspiring hand model. When he’s not ugly crying after an After Life episode you can find him hiking in the mountains of Colorado. You can follow him on Twitter @terryterrones.
For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.
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World Exclusive: After Life Season 3: The First few Minutes
After Life | Season 3 Official Trailer | Netflix
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episodes will be released on January 14th.
Just Three Things. Written for #Afterlife by Ricky Gervais and Andy Burrows
February 13, 2022
Ricky Gervais
London, W1F 0LE UK
Dear Ricky,
James: Hmm. Mum. Hello, darling. What are you doing here? I’m here for a business meeting.
June: Aw, bless ya.
James: What are you doing here?
Ken: She’s doing my highlights.
June: Yeah, helping out.
Ken: Never mind that. What are we gonna do with you? Still delivering local newspapers? What’s he like?
James: Well, I’ve got to earn money. Mum says I’m old enough now to pay rent.
June: It’s only fair, isn’t it, Ken?
Ken: Oh, hanging round with losers though? No offense.
Brian: None taken.
James: Me and Brian are a team. He wants representation too.
Ken: For what? To pursue his stand-up.
Brian: Big time. I’m ready. I wanna go for it. I’m tired of having my confidence destroyed and being useless.
Ken: You are useless though. You’ve got absolutely no chance of getting anywhere in comedy.
Brian: I can feel my bravado ebbing away.
James: You said you could make anyone a star.
Ken: I’m not bloody magic!
James: He’s not bloody magic, mate.
Ken: I’d be wasting my time on that. Pointless, innit?
James: That’s not the attitude!
Ken: Oh, is it not?
James: No, it isn’t!
Ken: You do it, then.
James: I will! Good!
Ken: Keep you busy, ’cause I can’t get you any work at all. Brilliant.
June: Don’t matter though.
James: What doesn’t?
June: Being a loser. I still love ya.
Brian: That’s nice.
James: Oh, all right?
I am reading a biography of the life of R.C. Sproul. I have read several of his books and I had a chance to meet him at his church in Orlando about 10 years ago. Like any sinner willing to admit that he is a loser and a sinner there is redemption available through Christ. Ironically, Ricky I have written you over a hundred letters since 2016 all dealing with the Book of Ecclesiastes and R.C. Sproul’s testimony involves a single verse from Ecclesiastes that points out that his life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture is like a tree that falls in the forest and rots. No better description of Brian Gittins life is there!!!!!!
Transcript
I’m coming up on the 60th anniversary of my conversion to the Christian faith. It was in September of 1957. And I will never forget, I think I’m the only person in the history of the church to be converted by a particular verse that God used to open up my heart and my eyes to the truth of Christ. It came from the book of Ecclesiastes, where the author of Ecclesiastes describes, in metaphorical terms, a tree that falls in the forest and where it falls there it stays. And God awakened my soul by considering that passage, as I saw myself as a tree falling, and rotting, and decaying. And that was the description of my life. That’s where I was. Nobody had to tell me that I was a sinner, I knew that. It was abundantly clear to me.
But as I went to my bedroom that night and got on my knees, my experience was one of transcendent forgiveness. And I was overwhelmed by the tender mercy of God, the sweetness of His grace, and the awakening He gave me for my life. And I pray that any of you who have not yet experienced an awakening to the reality of Christ would have that experience in your life. That you would look carefully at the Scriptures and the Word of God, and that that Word may be used in power to quicken your soul and your spirit that you too may be awakened to the fullness of glory, and peace, and joy that is ours in Christ.
According to the Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” In fact, this verse is a key part of what is called THE ROMAN ROAD TO SALVATION.
The Roman Road: A Well-engineered Path to Salvation The Roman Road is a collection of verses in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans that offers a clear and structured path to Jesus Christ. Although many people believe they will go to heaven because they have lived a good life, done charity work, been baptized as a child, attended church, or treated others fairly, the Bible declares that none of us can live up to God’s standards of righteousness. Therefore, we need a road to God that doesn’t rely on anything we do, but rather, relies on the gift of His grace alone.
The Roman Road: Follow this Map The Roman Road provides a detailed map for our salvation and eternal fellowship with God. Just follow these steps:
1. We must acknowledge God as the Creator of everything, accepting our humble position in God’s created order and purpose. Romans 1:20-21
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
2. We must realize that we are sinners and that we need forgiveness. None of us are worthy under God’s standards. Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.”
3. God gave us the way to be forgiven of our sins. He showed us His love by giving us the potential for life through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. Romans 5:8
“But God demonstrates His love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
4. If we remain sinners, we will die. However, if we repent of our sins, and accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we will have eternal life. Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
5. Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and you are saved. Romans 10:9-10
“That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
6. There are no other religious formulas or rituals. Just call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved! Romans 10:13
“For whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.”
7. Determine in your heart to make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life today. Romans 11:36
“For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.”
The Roman Road: Are You Ready? The Roman Road shows you the path – are you ready to accept God’s gift of Salvation now? If so, believe in what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross, repent of your sins, and commit the rest of your life to Him. This is not a ritual, just a prayerful guideline for your sincere step of faith:
“Father, I know that I have broken your laws and my sins have separated me from you. I am truly sorry, and now I want to turn away from my past sinful life toward you. Please forgive me, and help me avoid sinning again. I believe that your son, Jesus Christ died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead, is alive, and hears my prayer. I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward. Please send your Holy Spirit to help me obey You, and to do Your will for the rest of my life. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”
“Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)
If you decided to receive Jesus today, welcome to God’s family. Now, as a way to grow closer to Him, the Bible tells us to follow up on our commitment.
Spend time with God each day. It does not have to be a long period of time. Just develop the daily habit of praying to Him and reading His Word. Ask God to increase your faith and your understanding of the Bible.
Seek fellowship with other followers of Jesus. Develop a group of believing friends to answer your questions and support you.
Find a local church where you can worship God.
I have listened to your Bollocks Twitter Live podcasts over 200 times since the pandemic and I noticed that you describe yourself as an atheist. I have to disagree with your definitions here because it sounds to me like you are an agnostic (a doubter) and not an atheist. My only question is are you a dishonest or honest doubter. Let me explain by telling this story from Adrian Rogers. Here is how the story goes:
Years ago Adrian Rogers counseled with a NASA scientist and his severely depressed wife. The wife pointed to her husband and said, “My problem is him.” She went on to explain that her husband was a drinker, a liar, and an adulterer. Dr. Rogers asked the man if he were a Christian. “No!” the man laughed. “I’m an atheist.”
Adrian Rogers pictured below
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Adrian Rogers pictured below
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“Really?” Dr. Rogers replied. “That means you’re someone who knows that God does not exist.”
“That’s right,” said the man.
“Would it be fair to say that you don’t know all there is to know in the universe?”
“Of course.”
“Would it be generous to say you know half of all there is to know?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it be possible that God’s existence might be in the half you don’t know?”
“Okay, but I don’t think He exists.”
“Well then, you’re not an atheist; you’re an agnostic. You’re a doubter.”
“Yes, and I’m a big one.”
“It doesn’t matter what size you are. I want to know what kind you are.”
“What kinds are there?”
“There are honest doubters and dishonest doubters. An honest doubter is willing to search out the truth and live by the results; a dishonest doubter doesn’t want to know the truth. He can’t find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman.”
“I want to know the truth.”
“Would you like to prove that God exists?”
“It can’t be done.”
“It can be done. You’ve just been in the wrong laboratory. Jesus said, ‘If any man’s will is to do His will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority’ (John 7:17). I suggest you read one chapter of the book of John each day, but before you do, pray something like this,‘God, I don’t know if You’re there, I don’t know if the Bible is true, I don’t know if Jesus is Your Son. But if You show me that You are there, that the Bible is true, and that Jesus is Your Son, then I will follow You. My will is to do your will.”
The man agreed. About three weeks later he returned to Dr. Rogers’s office and invited Jesus Christ to be his Savior and Lord.
RICKY ARE YOU LIKE THAT ROBBER WHO CAN’T FIND A POLICE? Let me give a you a couple of challenges.FIRST, take a few minutes and read the evidence contained in the remainder of this letter which is evidence for the historical reliability of the Bible and it also shows the accuracy of the Old Testament prophecy. . SECOND, then take the gospel of John and read one chapter a day and read it and pray and ask God to reveal its truth to you everyday.
Below are Francis Schaeffer’s comments in ECCLESIASTES followed by some evidence that the Bi le is true and I doubt there is any for Liberace coming back as a ghost and raping someone.
Solomon when at work takes off his hat and he stands by the grave of man and he says, “ALAS. ALAS. ALAS.”
But interestingly enough the story of Ecclesiastes does not end its message here because in two places in the New Testament it is picked up and carried along and put in its proper perspective.
Luke 12:16-21
16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax,eat, drink, be merry.”’ [ALMOST EVERYONE WHO HAS PROCEEDED HERE HAS FELT CERTAINLY THAT JESUS IS DELIBERATELY REFERRING TO SOLOMON’S SOLUTION.]20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Christ here points out the reason for the failure of the logic that is involved. He points out why it fails in logic and then why it fails in reality. This view of Solomon must end in failure philosophically and also in emotional desperation.
We are not made to live in the shortened environment of UNDER THE SUN in this life only!!! Neither are we made to live only in the environment of a bare concept of afterlife [ignoring trying to make this life better]. We are made to live in the environment of a God who exists and who is the judge. This is the difference and that is what Jesus is setting forth here.
I Corinthians 15:32
32 What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
There is no doubt here he is reaching back to Solomon again and he is just saying if there isn’t a resurrection of the dead then let’s just follow Solomon and let’s just eat and drink for tomorrow we die!!!! If there isn’t this full structure [including the resurrection of the dead] then just have the courage to follow Solomon and we can eat and drink because tomorrow we die and that is all we have. If the full structure isn’t there then pick up the cup and drink it dry! You can say it a different way in the 20th century: If the full structure is not there then go ahead and be an EXISTENTIALIST, but don’t cheat. Drink the cup to the end. Drink it dry! That is what Paul says. Paul the educated man. Paul the man who knew his Greek philosophy. Paul the man who understood Solomon and the dilemma. Paul said it one way or the other. There is no room for a middle ground. IF CHRISTIANS AREN’T RAISED FROM THE DEAD THEN SOLOMON IS RIGHT IN ECCLESIASTES, BUT ONLY THEN. But if he is right then you should accept all of Solomon’s despair and his conclusions.
WANT SOME EVIDENCE? Take a look at this article below from Walter Kaiser, Jr.
In his “Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy,” J. Barton Payne itemized 127 Messianic predictions involving more than 3,000 Bible verses, with a remarkable 574 verses referring directly to a personal Messiah! My book “The Messiah in the Old Testament” examined 65 direct prophecies about the Messiah. These incredible promises formed one of the most central themes of the Old Testament: the coming Messiah.
The word Messiah or Anointed One (or in Greek, Christ), is taken from Psalm 2:2 and Daniel 9:25-26. The term took its meaning from the Jewish practice of anointing their priests and kings. But this term was applied in a special sense to the future Ruler who would be sent from God to sit on the throne of David forever. He is the One that God distinctly identified many years ahead of His arrival on earth, as Acts 3:18 affirms: “But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ [Messiah] would suffer” (NIV).
Likewise, according to 1 Peter 1:11, the Old Testament prophets predicted “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow” (NIV). The Messiah’s coming was not a secret left in a corner, but the repeated revelation of God to His people in the Old Testament.
Here are some of the definite clues about this coming that God gave in the Old Testament:
The Messiah would be the seed/offspring of a woman and would crush the head of Satan (Genesis 3:15).
He would come from the seed/offspring of Abraham and would bless all the nations on earth (Genesis 12:3).
He would be a “prophet like Moses” to whom God said we must listen (Deuteronomy 18:15).
He would be born in Bethlehem of Judah (Micah 5:2).
He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14).
He would have a throne, a kingdom and a dynasty, or house, starting with King David, that will last forever (2 Samuel 7:16).
He would be called “Wonderful Counselor,” “Mighty God,” “Everlasting Father,” “Prince of Peace,” and would possess an everlasting kingdom (Isaiah 9:6-7).
He would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, righteous and having salvation, coming with gentleness (Zechariah 9:9-10).
He would be pierced for our transgression and crushed for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5).
He would die among the wicked ones but be buried with the rich (Isaiah 53:9).
He would be resurrected from the grave, for God would not allow His Holy One to suffer decay (Psalm 16:10).
He would come again from the clouds of heaven as the Son of Man (Daniel 7:13-14).
He would be the “Sun of Righteousness” for all who revere Him and look for His coming again (Malachi 4:2).
He is the One whom Israel will one day recognize as the One they pierced, causing bitter grief (Zechariah 12:10).
The prophesies about the Messiah were not a bunch of scattered predictions randomly placed throughout the Old Testament, but they form a unified promise-plan of God, where each promise is interrelated and connected into a grand series comprising one continuous plan of God. Thus, a unity builds as the story of God’s call on Israel, and then on the house of David, progresses in each part of the Old Testament.
However, this eternal plan of God also had multiple fulfillments as it continued to unfold in the life and times of Israel. For example, every successive Davidic king was at once both a fulfillment in that day as well as a promise of what was to come when Christ, the final One in the Davidic line, arrived. Each of these successive fulfillments gave confidence that what was in the distant future would certainly happen, because God was working in the fabric of history as well. And although the promise was made to specific persons, such as Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David, it was cosmopolitan in its inclusiveness. What God was doing through Israel and these individuals was to be a source of blessing to all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3).
Some insist that the Messiah whom Christians revere is not the same one that Jewish people also look forward to meeting. Some years ago, I had an opportunity to be part of a televised debate with a rabbi who is a Jewish New Testament scholar around the question, “Is Jesus the Messiah?” The rabbi explained the Jewish point of view: “Evangelicals believe the Messiah has two comings: one at Christmas and one at His second coming. We Jews believe He will only come once, at a time of peace on earth just as the prophet Zechariah declared in Zechariah 12-14. Since we still experience wars, Messiah has not yet come.”
I responded, “It says in Zechariah 12:10 that ‘They will look on me.’ Who is the one speaking here?”
He replied: “The Almighty, of course.”
I responded, “It says, ‘They will look on me, the one they have pierced.’ How did He get pierced?” He answered that he did not know. I said, “I have an idea. It was at Calvary.” He did not counter with any further argument.
The Bible is saying that on that future day of His Second Coming, Jews and Gentiles will personally see the One who was pierced for the sins of the world. In other words, that “future day” will not be the first time they have seen Him. So even the Old Testament, it turns out, anticipated two comings of the Messiah: one at His birth and another when He comes as triumphant king at His Second Coming.
What would this world be like without the Messiah? What would Christmas be like without the fulfillment of all those ancient promises and the prospect of Messiah’s coming yet once more as King of kings and Lord of lords? His arrival has made the difference between light and darkness itself. Think what His triumphal appearance once more will mean to this world. Everyone, including all of nature itself (Romans 8:20-21), will let out a burst of praise such as has never been heard: Here comes the King Himself, our Lord and our Savior! Joy to the World!
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events |Tagged Bible Prophecy, john macarthur | Edit|Comments (0)
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (1)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Biblical Archaeology | Edit|Comments (0)
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology, Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit|Comments (0)
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Biblical Archaeology | E
On Saturday April 18, 2020 at 6pm in London and noon in Arkansas, I had a chance to ask Ricky Gervais a question on his Twitter Live broadcast which was “Is Tony a Nihilist?” At the 20:51 mark Ricky answers my question. Below is the video:
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Ricky Gervais 25/07/2021 Facebook Live at 28:29 mark Ricky answers my question about Sam Harris
The subject of spanking is baffling to many parents. Part of the problem is the confusion of the times in which we live. It has been popular for more than half a century to decry corporal punishment as inherently inappropriate, counterproductive, and detrimental to the child. Psychologist, mother, and well-known anti-spanking activist Penelope Leach distills the typical humanist perspective on corporal punishment: “I believe that spanking—or tapping, or slapping, or cuffing, or shaking, or beating, or whipping—children is actually wrong. I also believe . . . that far from producing better disciplined people, spanking makes it much more difficult to teach children how to behave” (Online Source). Notice how she equates spanking with slapping, cuffing, shaking, beating, whipping, and “tapping.” But those are not all the same thing, and they should not be likened to the rod of discipline administered in love.
Opponents of corporal punishment will often cite surveys and statistics that seem to support their findings, but precisely because they begin by equating brutal acts of violence against children with properly administered corporal discipline, their results are skewed. Of course cruel punishment and brute violence against children is wrong, counterproductive, and unbiblical.
But, Scripture does nonetheless prescribe the rod of discipline as a necessary aspect of parenting. In fact, Scripture flatly contradicts modern opponents of corporal punishment: “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly” (Proverbs 13:24). “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15). “You shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from hell” (Proverbs 23:14; see also 10:13; 19:18).
Moreover, according to a 1998 article in U.S. News and World Report, “parenting experts” have based all their findings against corporal punishment “on a body of research that is at best inconclusive and at worst badly flawed” ( Online Source ). According to the article, some recent studies indicate that spanking, when used appropriately, does indeed make children “less likely to fight with others and more likely to obey their parents.” In fact, in one very thorough study, Psychologist Robert E. Larzelere, director of residential research at Boys Town in Nebraska, found that no other discipline technique, including timeout and withdrawal of privileges, had more beneficial results for children under thirteen than non-abusive spanking, in terms of getting children to comply with their parents’ wishes.
Many who oppose corporal punishment simply are not willing to look at the facts and statistics rationally. One critic of spanking bluntly states that as far as he is concerned, “Hitting children is not a subject to which rational debate applies. It is another manifestation of American’s unique exploitation of children as models for absolutist behavior standards and austere punishments that grown adults would not impose on themselves” (Mike A. Males, The Scapegoat Generation, 116).
Christian parents should not be duped by such “experts.” Scripture itself prescribes corporal discipline and cautions parents not to abandon the use of the rod. In the end, the facts will be found to agree with the Word of God. And in that vein, the U.S. Newsarticle actually offers some tidbits of very sound advice: “One lesson of the spanking controversy is that whether parents spank or not matters less than howthey spank. . . . A single disapproving word can bring a sensitive child to tears, while a more spirited youngster might need stronger measures. Finally, spankings should be done in private to spare children humiliation and without anger” (Online Source).
It might be worthwhile to reiterate the fact that parental discipline should never injure the child. It is never necessary to bruise your children in order to spank them hard enough to make your point. Spanking should always be administered with love and never when the parent is in a fit of rage. That sort of discipline is indeed abusive, wrong, and detrimental to the child, because it shatters the environment of loving nurture and instruction Ephesians 6:4 describes.
Furthermore, spanking is by no means the only kind of discipline parents should administer. There are many other viable forms of punishing children that, on occasion, can be used in addition to the rod. If the child responds immediately to a verbal rebuke in a given situation, a spanking is probably not necessary. Other punishments, such as withdrawing privileges, can also be used as occasional alternatives to spanking if the situation warrants it.
Much of our parental discipline should be totally positive. Parents can and should provide guidance for their children by rewarding them for positive behavior, as well as by punishing them for wrong behavior. Both sides of the equation are important. Positive motivation is entirely legitimate and can often be an effective means of getting children to obey. Notice, in fact, that the promise God Himself attached to the Fifth Commandment is a positive motivation. The commandment was reinforced with a promise, not a threat. It is often appropriate to say to your child, “If you do this, I will reward you in this way.”
Balanced discipline involves both negative and positive reinforcements. In fact, we might sum up all discipline by saying it means giving the appropriate reward for the conduct. When the conduct (including both attitudes and actions) is good, a positive reward is warranted. When the conduct is bad, a negative reward is in order. It’s really that simple.
Yet parents seem incurably confused about these issues. Even many Christian parents I know are practically paralyzed with fear about whether, when, how, and how much to discipline their children. But what Scripture says is straightforward: You have a depraved and foolish child, and if you want him not to be so foolish, spank him (Proverbs 22:15). You have a
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
A heavy heart is the beginning of misery, and we were never meant to carry the load.
A burdened soul breaks the spirit. A broken spirit thins the immunity of the body. The body then begins to wither, and we get ill. In fact, studies have shown that emotions largely contribute to one’s overall state of health. Doctors call it Emotionally Induced Illness (E.I.I.), and it is the idea that physical sickness can be a result of emotional illness.
The entire body is affected by a heavy heart. But God has given us a remedy for the soul, the spirit, and the body. And it is good medicine…Joy!
Not mere laughter, not mere joking, not mere fun and games, but deep, abiding joy is our strongest medicine and greatest weapon. Joy doesn’t depend upon material things or circumstances. It doesn’t depend upon thrills. It comes straight from the heart.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus spoke of the joy in His own heart, and He promised to give us a dose of it; not just some cheap imitation… He wants to give us the real thing. “My joy have I given unto you.” Jesus said, “I want that joy to remain in you.”
We don’t root our happiness in circumstances, because those can change in an instant and leave us emotionally stranded. We root our joy in Christ alone, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)
“Without joy, life is meaningless!” Acclaimed pastor and teacher, Adrian Rogers says, “That joy is found only in Jesus. And we ought to share the secret, the source of our joy —the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Apply it to your life
Joy is something freely given, but it must be received, day by day. Today, seek it out through prayer and in Scripture. Let it be seen in your countenance as you go about your day, and share it with someone else.
Proverbs 12 New Living Translation
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Proverbs 12New Living Translation
12 To learn, you must love discipline; it is stupid to hate correction.
2 The Lord approves of those who are good, but he condemns those who plan wickedness.
3 Wickedness never brings stability, but the godly have deep roots.
4 A worthy wife is a crown for her husband, but a disgraceful woman is like cancer in his bones.
5 The plans of the godly are just; the advice of the wicked is treacherous.
6 The words of the wicked are like a murderous ambush, but the words of the godly save lives.
7 The wicked die and disappear, but the family of the godly stands firm.
8 A sensible person wins admiration, but a warped mind is despised.
9 Better to be an ordinary person with a servant than to be self-important but have no food.
10 The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel.
11 A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies has no sense.
12 Thieves are jealous of each other’s loot, but the godly are well rooted and bear their own fruit.
13 The wicked are trapped by their own words, but the godly escape such trouble.
14 Wise words bring many benefits, and hard work brings rewards.
15 Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.
16 A fool is quick-tempered, but a wise person stays calm when insulted.
17 An honest witness tells the truth; a false witness tells lies.
18 Some people make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing.
19 Truthful words stand the test of time, but lies are soon exposed.
20 Deceit fills hearts that are plotting evil; joy fills hearts that are planning peace!
21 No harm comes to the godly, but the wicked have their fill of trouble.
22 The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth.
23 The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge, but fools broadcast their foolishness.
24 Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave.
25 Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up.
26 The godly give good advice to their friends;[a] the wicked lead them astray.
27 Lazy people don’t even cook the game they catch, but the diligent make use of everything they find.
28 The way of the godly leads to life; that path does not lead to death.
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. (I have posted John MacArthur’s amazing […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. It is tough to guard your […]
Over and over in Proverbs you hear the words “fear the Lord.” In fact, some of he references are Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10;14:26,27; 15:16 and many more. Below is a sermon by John MacArthur from the Book of Luke on 3 reasons we should fear the Lord. What does it mean to fear […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 6-8 | Solomon Turns Over a New Leaf Published on Oct 2, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 30, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series […]
Ecclesiastes 4-6 | Solomon’s Dissatisfaction Published on Sep 24, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 23, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider ___________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years Published on Oct 9, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 7, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _______________________ Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way Published on Oct 30, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | October 28, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. _______________________ Tom Brady ESPN Interview Tom Brady has famous wife earned over 76 million dollars last year. However, has Brady found lasting satifaction in his life? It does not […]
Adrian Rogers: How to Be a Child of a Happy Mother Published on Nov 13, 2012 Series: Fortifying Your Family (To read along turn on the annotations.) Adrian Rogers looks at the 5th commandment and the relationship of motherhood in the commandment to honor your father and mother, because the faith that doesn’t begin at home, […]
Ecclesiastes 1 Published on Sep 4, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider _____________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man […]
Adrian Rogers – How to Cultivate a Marriage Another great article from Adrian Rogers. Are fathers necessary? “Artificial insemination is the ideal method of producing a pregnancy, and a lesbian partner should have the same parenting rights accorded historically to biological fathers.” Quoted from the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, summer of 1995. […]
Tom Brady “More than this…” Uploaded by EdenWorshipCenter on Jan 22, 2008 EWC sermon illustration showing a clip from the 2005 Tom Brady 60 minutes interview. To Download this video copy the URL to http://www.vixy.net ________________ Obviously from the video clip above, Tom Brady has realized that even though he has won many Super Bowls […]
The Daily Hatch 