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RESPONDING TO HARRY KROTO’S BRILLIANT RENOWNED ACADEMICS!! Part 148 I , PAUSING to look at the life of Nicolaas “Nico” Bloembergen, Physicist, Harvard, 3-11-20 to 9-5-17 “Muslims get too much blame.”

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In this post I am going to talk about radical Muslim terrorists. On a personal note the recent terrorist attack on October 31, 2017 happened as I had one relative in New York about to fly out at the end of the week and another relative on a plane about to arrive in. In fact, many of the 8 victims of the terrorist were not from New York.

Bloembergen pictured far right

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Nobel Prize winner Nicolaas Bloembergen (97) has passed away

06 September 2017

We learned of the passing away of Nicolaas Bloembergen, Nobel Prize winner in Physics (1981) at the age of 97.

Nico, as he was known in the community, graduated in Leiden in 1948 with Cor Gorter as promotor. His graduate research, performed with Ed Purcell and Bob Pound at Harvard on Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation was one of the first in the field of NMR. Nico did a postdoc in Leiden with Gorter in 1949 to return to the USA where he continued his career. He became one of the founding fathers of the fields of laser spectroscopy and nonlinear optics. In 1973 Nico returned to Leiden as Lorentz Professor. We honor Nico as a great scientist.

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I was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen on September 5, 2017, and I wanted to spend time on several posts concentrating on him. I always enjoyed corresponding with him during the last three decades. He brought up the issue of Religious wars to me in 1995 which I responded to back then, and also he discussed the issue of abortion with me. I also took time to write him back concerning that issue too.  Then on July 1, 2016, I was honored to get a call from Dr. Bloembergen, and we discussed several issues such as his abandonment of his childhood faith that he was brought up in, and I mentioned that Charles Darwin had gone through a similar situation. He seemed to know a lot about Darwin’s background.

On July 3, 2016, I responded to our phone call with an email that basically recapped several things that Dr. Bloembergen and I had discussed in our phone discussion 2 days before. I pointed out to him on the phone that day that each religion was different and that in recent history it was Islam fanatics that were guilty of so much killing, and Dr Bloembergen seemed to resist that by saying that Muslims are not getting treated very well. I addressed this in my email of July 3rd that is posted below. So far in 2017 there are have been 1,049 attacks and 6,571 fatalities by Muslim radicals. In fact, on October 31, 2017, Eight people are killed and almost a dozen injured when a 29-year-old man in a rented pickup truck drives down a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center in New York. The suspect has been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. Authorities found a note near the truck used in the incident, claiming the attack was made in the name of ISIS, a senior law enforcement official said.

Also CNN Reported: 

Terrorist Attacks by Vehicle Fast Facts

Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch encouraged its Western recruits to use trucks as weapons. A 2010 webzine article, “The Ultimate Mowing Machine” called for deploying a pickup truck as a“mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.”
In September 2014, ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani called for lone wolf attacks using improvised weaponry, “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman or any of their allies. Smash his head with a rock or slaughter him with a knife or run him over with your car or throw him down from a high place or choke him or poison him.”
Timeline:
March 3, 2006 – 
Mohammed Taheri-azar, an Iranian-American, drives an SUV into an area crowded with students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Nine people sustain minor injuries during the attack, which Teheri-azar later says is retribution for the killing of Muslims overseas. He is convicted of attempted murder in 2008 and is sentenced to 33 years in prison.
October 22, 2014 – A three-month old girl and an Ecuadorian tourist are killed when a driver swerves into a crowd at a light rail station in Jerusalem. The driver, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi is shot and killed by police. Israeli media reported he published militant writing on Facebook and supported Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group that has conducted attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, but his family denied he supported Hamas or any terror organization.
July 14, 2016 – After a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, France, a man drives a 20-ton rental truck into the crowd, striking and killing 86 people. The attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, a Tunisian national, drives nearly a mile on the beachfront promenade before he is shot and killed by authorities. French officials say Bouhlel seemed to become radicalized “very quickly” by ISIS propaganda before the attack. He also suffered from mental illness, according to his father.
November 28, 2016 – At Ohio State University, 11 people are injured when a student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, carries out a car and knife attack. A campus police officer shoots and kills Artan, whom police believe inspired by ISIS and the radical cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki
December 19, 2016 – A Tunisian man drives a tractor trailer into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people. In the wake of the attack, authorities conduct a manhunt for Anis Amri, 24, throughout Europe. He is shot and killed by police in Milan, Italy, four days after the attack. Hours after Amri dies, ISIS releases a video of him pledging allegiance to the terrorist group.
March 22, 2017 – A man drives an SUV into a crowd on the sidewalk along the Westminster Bridge in London, killing at least four. After ramming the car into a barrier outside the House of Parliament, the driver exits the vehicle and stabs a police officer to death. The attacker is then gunned down by a police officer. The assailant, Khalid Masood, 52, of West Midlands, reportedly had a criminal record and may have had connections to violent extremism, British Prime Minister Theresa May says.
April 7, 2017 – At least four people are killed when a truck drives into pedestrians on a busy street in the center of Stockholm, Sweden, before crashing into a department store. The attacker, Rakhmat Akilov, a 39-year-old from Uzbekistan, admitted to carrying out a “terrorist crime,” his lawyer says.
June 3, 2017 – Seven people are killed in two terror attacks in central London before police shoot three suspects dead, the Metropolitan police say. The violence begins when a van swerves into throngs of pedestrians on London Bridge. The suspects then jump out the van and proceed on foot to nearby Borough Market, a popular nightlife spot, where witnesses say they produce knives and slash indiscriminately at people in restaurants and bars. At least 48 people are taken to hospitals, according to the London Ambulance Service. Authorities announce 12 arrests the next day.
June 19, 2017 – Just after midnight, a van plows into a group of pedestrians who had attended late-night prayers at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, killing one man and injuring 11 people. The driver is arrested at the scene for attempted murder and further held on suspicion of terrorism offenses. The suspect is later identified as Darren Osborne, 47, a resident of Cardiff in Wales, according to multiple UK media outlets.
August 16-18, 2017 – At least 13 people are killed and about 100 are injured on August 17th after a van plows through a crowd of people in a popular tourist district in Barcelona, Spain. Two suspects are arrested, but the driver gets away, according to police. ISIS’ media wing, Amaq, issues a statement claiming responsibility, saying that the attackers are “soldiers of the Islamic State.” On August 18th, in Cambrils, a coastal city around 100 kilometers from Barcelona, five attackers drive an Audi A3 into several pedestrians, killing one. The attackers are shot and killed by police. A house explosion on August 16th, in Alcanar, south of Barcelona, is also believed to be connected to the attacks.
September 30-October 1, 2017 – On September 30 in Edmonton, Canada, a man purposely strikes a police officer with a white Chevrolet Malibu before jumping out of the vehicle, stabbing the officer several times with a knife and fleeing on foot. There is an ISIS flag in the car, which is later seized as evidence. Just before midnight that same day, a police officer stops a U-Haul truck at a checkpoint and recognizes the driver’s name as similar to that of the Chevrolet’s registered owner. The U-Haul truck then speeds off towards downtown Edmonton. During the chase, the truck deliberately attempts to hit pedestrians in crosswalks and alleys, injuring at least four pedestrians. Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 30, a Somali refugee, is later charged with five counts of attempted murder, dangerous driving, criminal flight causing bodily harm and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
October 31, 2017 – Eight people are killed and almost a dozen injured when a 29-year-old man in a rented pickup truck drives down a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center in New York. The suspect has been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. Authorities found a note near the truck used in the incident, claiming the attack was made in the name of ISIS, a senior law enforcement official said.

 

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

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

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

Harry Kroto

Nick Gathergood, David-Birkett, Harry-Kroto

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

Arif Ahmed, Sir David Attenborough, Mark Balaguer, Horace Barlow, Michael Bate, Patricia Churchland, Aaron Ciechanover, Noam Chomsky,Alan Dershowitz, Hubert Dreyfus, Bart Ehrman, Stephan Feuchtwang, David Friend,  Riccardo Giacconi, Ivar Giaever , Roy Glauber, Rebecca Goldstein, David J. Gross,  Brian Greene, Susan Greenfield, Stephen F Gudeman,  Alan Guth, Jonathan Haidt, Theodor W. Hänsch, Brian Harrison,  Hermann Hauser, Roald Hoffmann,  Bruce Hood, Herbert Huppert,  Gareth Stedman Jones, Steve Jones, Shelly Kagan, Michio Kaku,  Stuart Kauffman,  Lawrence Krauss, Harry Kroto, George Lakoff, Elizabeth Loftus,  Alan Macfarlane, Peter Millican, Marvin Minsky, Leonard Mlodinow,  Yujin Nagasawa, Alva Noe, Douglas Osheroff,  Jonathan Parry,  Saul Perlmutter, Herman Philipse,  Carolyn Porco, Robert M. Price, Lisa Randall, Lord Martin Rees,  Oliver Sacks, John Searle, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schaffer, J. L. Schellenberg,   Lee Silver,  Peter Singer,  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Ronald de Sousa, Victor Stenger, Barry Supple,   Leonard Susskind, Raymond Tallis, Neil deGrasse Tyson,  .Alexander Vilenkin, Sir John Walker, Frank Wilczek, Steven Weinberg, and  Lewis Wolpert,

Nicolaas “Nico” Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch–American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy.[1] During his career, he was a professor at both Harvard University and later at the University of Arizona.

In  the first video below in the 9th clip in this series are his words and will be responding to them in the next few weeks, but today I just wanted to pause and look at this life. I was privileged to be able to correspond with him since the 1990’s and he even called me on the phone. 

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)

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

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Video interview with Nicolaas Bloembergen

Published on Aug 26, 2010

Nicolaas Bloembergen celebrated his 90th birthday in March 2010 with a scientific symposium and reception at the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences, attended by three other Nobel laureates: Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall, and Charles H. Townes.

Bloembergen received the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his contributions to the field of nonlinear optics and to the development of laser spectroscopy. He was a corecipient with Arthur Schawlow of the United States and Kai Manne Borje Siegbahn of Sweden of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics for their revolutionary spectroscopic studies of the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter. Bloembergen made a pioneering use of lasers in these investigations. His research has included nuclear and electronic magnetic resonance, solid state masers and lasers, and nonlinear optics and spectroscopy. His work on proton spin relaxation times in water and aqueous solutions, carried out in 1946 and 1947 under the guidance of his PhD thesis advisor, Edward M. Purcell, later became the basis for the medical diagnostic technique of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

In his autobiography on the Nobel Prize website, Bloembergen stated, “I held the opinion — even after Schawlow and Townes published their proposal for an optical maser in 1958 — that it would be impossible for a small academic laboratory, without previous expertise in optics, to compete successfully in the realization of lasers. This may have been a self-fulfilling prophesy, but it is a matter of record that nearly all types of lasers were first reduced to practice in industrial laboratories, predominantly in the U.S.A.”

Bloembergen first came to the United States in 1945, after spending World War II “hiding indoors from the Nazis, eating tulip bulbs to fill the stomach and reading Kramers’ book Quantum Theorie des Elektrons und der Strahlung by the light of a storm lamp.” He received his PhD at the University of Leiden in 1948, after doing research at Harvard, then finally emigrated to the U.S. (and returned to Harvard) in 1949. He and his wife Deli moved to Arizona, and he has been on the UA College of Optical Sciences faculty since 2001.

He was interviewed at his birthday celebration by Daniel Stolte of the UA University Communications office, and this video is courtesy of the University of Arizona.

 

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Science & Technology2017-09-12

 

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This was emailed on July 3, 2016 in response to our phone conversation 2 days earlier and I address his statement that “Muslims get too much blame.”:

July 3, 2016

Dr. Nicolaas Bloembergen, c/o College of Optical Sciences

The University of Arizona
1630 E. University Blvd.
P.O. Box 210094
Tucson, AZ 85721-0094

Dear Dr. Bloembergen,

It was such a privilege to get a telephone call from you on July 1, 2016 because I know your time is very valuable. Since you said writing letters and mailing them was difficult for you I have chosen to email you this time around.

I told you on the phone that the last time we corresponded was way back on September 6, 1995  and at that time you responded in a letter to me with these words, “Less zealotry and more compassion for those who have different concepts of the world from yours would help make this world more livable.” On the phone you commented, “Yes the religious people are fighting among themselves often.” At that point I kidded you that it is the Muslims and not the Christians who seem to be on the warpath these days and you responded, “I think the Muslims get too much blame. Today’s political situation is all [messed up.]”

Let me agree with you that the majority of Muslims in the USA are lovers of freedom. Here in Arkansas we have family friends who are Muslims and they were personally troubled by the recent attacks by Muslims on unarmed civilians.

That brings me to another point. Christianity is different than every other religion for two reasons according to Francis Schaeffer:

In every other religion we have to do something–everything from burning a joss stick to sacrificing our firstborn child to dropping a coin the collection plate–the whole spectrum. But with Christianity we do not do anything; God has done it all: He has created us and He has sent His Son; His Son died and because the Son is infinite, therefore He bears out total guilt. We do not need to bear our guilt, nor do we even have to merit the merit of Christ. He does it all. So in one way it is the easiest religion in the world….

In the book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, and especially in the extensive notes of fifth chapter [shows] the way the Bible measures up to history. Once we say that, this is very exciting. It is very exciting because other religions are not founded in history, they are “out there” somewhere, or you can think of them as inside your own head–whichever way you are looking at it. On the other hand, the Bible claims to rooted in history. 

Taking a look at the holy books of Islam and Mormonism and  you find many historical inaccuracies.  For instance, the Book of Mormon was wrong about horses, cows, steel, honey bees and barley existing in North America 2000 years ago. Furthermore, in 2012 during the Presidential Race Harry Kroto also asked why no one seemed to ask Mitt Romney if he actually believed that Christ visited North America 2000 years ago as the Book of Mormon claimed.

Blaise Pascal asserted, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”  In other words, the spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be  found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Let me close by talking to you about the ROMAN ROAD TO CHRIST.

  1. Rom. 3:10, “As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one . . . “
  2. Rom. 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
  3. Rom. 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
  4. Rom. 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
  5. Rom. 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
  6. Rom. 10:9-10, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
  7. Rom. 10:13, “For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Thanks for your time. Again it was such an honor to get to talk to you. I hope you enjoy the CD’s on Michael Polanyi. He was a very wise man and his son John is a very outstanding man too.

Sincerely,

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

(END OF EMAIL)

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Are all religions the same in the area of historical accuracy? I would say that the evidence says NO. For instance, compare the historical accuracy of the BOOK OF MORMON versus the Bible.

Horses are mentioned eleven times in the Book of Mormon in the context of its New World setting.[33] There is no evidence that horses existed on the American continent during the 2500-3000 year history of the Book of Mormon (2500 BC – 400 AD) The only evidence of horses on the American continent dates to pre-historic times,[34](between 12,500 and 10,000 BC.[35]). It is widely accepted that horses were extinct in the Western Hemisphere over 10,000 years ago and did not reappear there until the Spaniards brought them from Europe.[36] Horses were re-introduced to the Americas (Caribbean) by Christopher Columbus in 1493[37] and to the American continent by Cortés in 1519.[38]

Rick Deem wrote the article, “Archaeology/Anthropolocical Problems in the Book of Mormon,” and in it he asserted:

The Book of Mormon claims to be a record of the inhabitants of the Americas during the period from 2000 B.C. to 400 A.D. It makes many claims about the history and anthropology of pre-Columbian American cultures. Unfortunately, the author of the book, Joseph Smith, had little or no knowledge of pre-Columbian American civilizations. Borrowing and adapting many stories from the Old and New Testaments, Joseph Smith was unaware that the earlier Native American people were part of stone-age civilizations that were significantly less advanced than Hebrew and other Middle Eastern cultures of biblical times.

Weapons of war

The Book of Mormon describes the presence of chariots in the New World.However, archeologists have found neither evidence of chariots or even evidence of wheeled vehicle usage during the period described in the Book of Mormon. Scimitar (“cimiter”) – not found in the New World Scimitars (spelled “cimeters” by Joseph Smith), were Old-World weapons of war that were mentioned throughout the Book of Mormon.However, they have not been found to have existed in the New World. LDS apologists cite the Mesoamerican maccuahuitl as a possible “cimiter”.However, the maccuahuitl was a hardwood club with obsidian blades, which is quite different from the heavy, two-handed curved steel blade of the “cimeter.” The Book of Mormon expressly states that the American peoples of the period used weapons of war made of metals,although none of these weapons have ever been found. The Hill Cumorah in New York is described as the location of two major wars that involved the deaths of millions of people. However, no remains or even weapons of war have been found there.

In contrast look at some of the archaeological evidence concerning the Bible. The Old and New Testaments present a rich description of biblical peoples, places and cultures. Archeology of the Middle East has revealed the cities, weapons, crops, animals, coins, writings, and references to biblical characters found in the Bible. However, none of the cities mentioned in the Book of Mormon have ever been identified by qualified archeologists. In addition, many Book of Mormon references to metals, weapons, crops, animals, articles of clothing are known to have not been present in the Americas during the time period claimed in the Book of Mormon.

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Archaeological Evidence verifying biblical cities

by Matt Slick

There is very little doubt in anyone’s mind about the reality of so many of the Old and New Testament cities mentioned in the Bible. Therefore, it is hardly necessary to document their existence. Nevertheless, following is a partial list of some of the cities mentioned in the Bible that have been found and excavated by archaeologists. This is simply more evidence that the Bible describes actual locations that can be verified. This means that at the very least, the Bible accurately reflects the locations and cities of ancient times.

Remember, this is only a partial list. There are hundreds of biblical cities that have been verified in archaeological digs.

  • Chorazin
    1. Matt. 11:21, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”
      1. “Excavations of the now deserted town indicate that it once covered an area of twelve acres and was built on a series of terraces with the basalt stone local to this mountainous region.”6
  • Dan
    1. Judges 18:29, “And they called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father who was born in Israel; however, the name of the city formerly was Laish.”
      1. “The excavation of Dan began in 1966 under the direction fo Avraham Biran.”7
      2. “Formerly called Laish, it is mentioned in the execration texts, the eighteenth-century b.c. Mari tablets, and the records of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III. It is identified with Tel Dan (modern Tell el-Qadi) covering about 50 acres in the center of a fertile valley near one of the principal springs feeding the Jordan River…Tel Dan has been excavated by A. Biran since 1966. The earliest occupation, probably the full extent of the tell, goes back to about the middle of the third millennium B.C.”8
  • Ephesus
    1. Eph. 1:1, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are at Ephesus, and who are faithful in Christ Jesus.”
      1. “Austrian archaeologists in this century [2oth] have excavated the 24,000-seat theater and the commercial agora, as well as many other public buildings and streets of the first and second centuries a.d., so that the modern visitor can gain some impression of the city as known by Paul.9

Over the years there have been many criticisms leveled against the Bible concerning its historical reliability. These criticisms are usually based on a lack of evidence from outside sources to confirm the Biblical record. Since the Bible is a religious book, many scholars take the position that it is biased and cannot be trusted unless we have corroborating evidence from extra-Biblical sources. In other words, the Bible is guilty until proven innocent, and a lack of outside evidence places the Biblical account in doubt.

This standard is far different from that applied to other ancient documents, even though many, if not most, have a religious element. They are considered to be accurate, unless there is evidence to show that they are not. Although it is not possible to verify every incident in the Bible, the discoveries of archaeology since the mid-1800s have demonstrated the reliability and plausibility of the Bible narrative.

Here are some examples:

  • Many thought the Biblical references to Solomon’s wealth were greatly exaggerated. Recovered records from the past show that wealth in antiquity was concentrated with the king and Solomon’s prosperity was entirely feasible.
  • It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20:1, because this name was not known in any other record. Then, Sargon’s palace was discovered in Khorsabad, Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded on the palace walls. What is more, fragments of a stela memorializing the victory were found at Ashdod itself.
  • Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, king of Babylon, named in Daniel 5. The last king of Babylon was Nabonidus according to recorded history. Tablets were found showing that Belshazzar was Nabonidus’ son who served as coregent in Babylon. Thus, Belshazzar could offer to make Daniel “third highest ruler in the kingdom” (Dan. 5:16) for reading the handwriting on the wall, the highest available position. Here we see the “eye-witness” nature of the Biblical record, as is so often brought out by the discoveries of archaeology.

How does archaeology conclusively demonstrate the Bible to be reliable and unique among all the holy books of world religions? Answers

For many more archaeological evidences in support of the Bible, see Archaeology and the Bible


[ If this information has been helpful, please prayerfully consider a donation to help pay the expenses for making this faith-building service available to you and your family! Donations are tax-deductible. ]

Author: Bryant Wood of Associates for Biblical ResearchThe Bible maintains several characteristics that prove it is from God. One of those is the fact that the Bible is accurate in every one of its details. The field of archaeology brings to light this amazing accuracy.

(Part 5 of 5 film series on archaeology)

Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject:


1. 
The Babylonian Chronicle
of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem

This clay tablet is a Babylonian chronicle recording events from 605-594BC. It was first translated in 1956 and is now in the British Museum. The cuneiform text on this clay tablet tells, among other things, 3 main events: 1. The Battle of Carchemish (famous battle for world supremacy where Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated Pharoah Necho of Egypt, 605 BC.), 2. The accession to the throne of Nebuchadnezzar II, the Chaldean, and 3. The capture of Jerusalem on the 16th of March, 598 BC.

2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription.

King Hezekiah of Judah ruled from 721 to 686 BC. Fearing a siege by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, Hezekiah preserved Jerusalem’s water supply by cutting a tunnel through 1,750 feet of solid rock from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam inside the city walls (2 Kings 20; 2 Chron. 32). At the Siloam end of the tunnel, an inscription, presently in the archaeological museum at Istanbul, Turkey, celebrates this remarkable accomplishment.

3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism)

It contains the victories of Sennacherib himself, the Assyrian king who had besieged Jerusalem in 701 BC during the reign of king Hezekiah, it never mentions any defeats. On the prism Sennacherib boasts that he shut up “Hezekiah the Judahite” within Jerusalem his own royal city “like a caged bird.” This prism is among the three accounts discovered so far which have been left by the Assyrian king Sennacherib of his campaign against Israel and Judah.

4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically.

In addition to Jericho, places such as Haran, Hazor, Dan, Megiddo, Shechem, Samaria, Shiloh, Gezer, Gibeah, Beth Shemesh, Beth Shean, Beersheba, Lachish, and many other urban sites have been excavated, quite apart from such larger and obvious locations as Jerusalem or Babylon. Such geographical markers are extremely significant in demonstrating that fact, not fantasy, is intended in the Old Testament historical narratives;

5. The Discovery of the Hittites

Most doubting scholars back then said that the Hittites were just a “mythical people that are only mentioned in the Bible.” Some skeptics pointed to the fact that the Bible pictures the Hittites as a very big nation that was worthy of being coalition partners with Egypt (II Kings 7:6), and these bible critics would assert that surely we would have found records of this great nation of Hittites.  The ironic thing is that when the Hittite nation was discovered, a vast amount of Hittite documents were found. Among those documents was the treaty between Ramesses II and the Hittite King.

6.Shishak Smiting His Captives

The Bible mentions that Shishak marched his troops into the land of Judah and plundered a host of cities including Jerusalem,  this has been confirmed by archaeologists. Shishak’s own record of his campaign is inscribed on the south wall of the Great Temple of Amon at Karnak in Egypt. In his campaign he presents 156 cities of Judea to his god Amon.

7. Moabite Stone

The Moabite Stone also known as the Mesha Stele is an interesting story. The Bible says in 2 Kings 3:5 that Mesha the king of Moab stopped paying tribute to Israel and rebelled and fought against Israel and later he recorded this event. This record from Mesha has been discovered.

8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III

The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri, silver, gold, bowls of gold, chalices of gold, cups of gold, vases of gold, lead, a sceptre for the king, and spear-shafts, I have received.”

View from the dome of the Capitol!9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts.

Sir William Ramsay, famed archaeologist, began a study of Asia Minor with little regard for the book of Acts. He later wrote:

I found myself brought into contact with the Book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvelous truth.

9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. When I think of discoveries like the Ebla Tablets that verify  names like Adam, Eve, Ishmael, David and Saul were in common usage when the Bible said they were, it makes me think of what amazing confirmation that is of the historical accuracy of the Bible.

10. Cyrus Cylinder

There is a well preserved cylinder seal in the Yale University Library from Cyrus which contains his commands to resettle the captive nations.

11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E.

This cube is inscribed with the name and titles of Yahali and a prayer: “In his year assigned to him by lot (puru) may the harvest of the land of Assyria prosper and thrive, in front of the gods Assur and Adad may his lot (puru) fall.”  It provides a prototype (the only one ever recovered) for the lots (purim) cast by Haman to fix a date for the destruction of the Jews of the Persian Empire, ostensibly in the fifth century B.C.E. (Esther 3:7; cf. 9:26).

12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription

The Bible mentions Uzziah or Azariah as the king of the southern kingdom of Judah in 2 Kings 15. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription is a stone tablet (35 cm high x 34 cm wide x 6 cm deep) with letters inscribed in ancient Hebrew text with an Aramaic style of writing, which dates to around 30-70 AD. The text reveals the burial site of Uzziah of Judah, who died in 747 BC.

13. The Pilate Inscription

The Pilate Inscription is the only known occurrence of the name Pontius Pilate in any ancient inscription. Visitors to the Caesarea theater today see a replica, the original is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. There have been a few bronze coins found that were struck form 29-32 AD by Pontius Pilate

14. Caiaphas Ossuary

This beautifully decorated ossuary found in the ruins of Jerusalem, contained the bones of Caiaphas, the first century AD. high priest during the time of Jesus.

14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2      

In June 1961 Italian archaeologists led by Dr. Frova were excavating an ancient Roman amphitheatre near Caesarea-on-the-Sea (Maritima) and uncovered this interesting limestone block. On the face is a monumental inscription which is part of a larger dedication to Tiberius Caesar which clearly says that it was from “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.”

14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.

Despite their liberal training, it was archaeological research that bolstered their confidence in the biblical text:Albright said of himself, “I must admit that I tried to be rational and empirical in my approach [but] we all have presuppositions of a philosophical order.” The same statement could be applied as easily to Gleuck and Wright, for all three were deeply imbued with the theological perceptions which infused their work.

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US Muslims Must Have Same Religious Freedoms As Christians, Say Evangelical Leaders

harry-farley Harry Farley JOURNALIST 01 March 2017 | 4:15 PM

Prominent evangelical leaders are backing religious freedoms for Muslims and other faiths as well as Christianity after a poll highlighted few Americans back civil liberties for Islam.

A 2015 survey from the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found the vast majority of US citizens backed freedom of religion for various groups.

But it also highlighted that ‘while 82 per cent of Americans say it is very or extremely important that Christians are allowed to practise their religion freely in the United States, just 61 per cent say the same about protecting religious freedom for Muslims’.

Just 61 per cent of Americans thought Muslims should be protected by religious freedomsReuters

The report adds: ‘Another 80 per cent of Americans say it is very or extremely important for people like them to be able to practise their religion freely, 72 per cent say it is important to protect the religious freedoms of Jews, and 67 percent say it is important to protect the religious freedoms of Mormons.’

In response to the findings the National Association of Evangelicals held its own survey and found church leaders unanimously supported the ‘same religious freedom protection for people of non-Christian faiths as for Christians’.

The January 2017 evangelical leaders survey found 100 per cent of respondents agreed the same liberties should apply to non-Christians as to Christians.

‘Evangelical leaders believe religious freedom is a basic human right for all people, and that protecting the religious freedom for people of other faiths is protecting their own freedom,’ said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).

‘Supporting religious freedom for all does not mean we endorse other religions, but we recognise that our government should protect its people’s ability to choose and practise their religious faith.’

President of Wheaton College, Philip Ryken, agreed. ‘The freedom to practise any religion — or no religion at all — is basic to religious liberty. When Christians advocate for religious liberty, we are not seeking a special privilege for Christians, but promoting a basic human right for all people,’ he said.

William Bohline, founding pastor of Hosanna! Lutheran Church, added: ‘If religious freedom is not extended to other religions, then it is simply “Christian freedom”, a narrow and exclusive “freedom” which is not freedom at all.’

Steve Moore, president of nexleader, said: ‘How could we ask Muslim countries to grant freedom of religion to Jesus-followers in their country if we don’t grant it for all religions in the United States?’

The monthly poll of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals includes the CEOs of denominations and representatives of a wide range of evangelical organisations including missions groups, Christian universities, publishers and churches. It is not a representative sample of all evangelical leaders. The sample size was not reported.

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HUGH HEFNER WAS A MODERN DAY KING SOLOMON AND I TOLD HIM THAT OVER AND OVER (PART 15)Letter from 1-24-16 (Letters were inspired by the sermon series on ECCLESIASTES in 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock)

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Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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.

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

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

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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,

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

Ben Parkinson

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

and Brandon Barnard.

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

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

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January 24, 2016

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

Dear Mr. Hefner,

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

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

(Pictured below Pastor Mark Henry with his family)

Here is the 2nd part of that sermon below:

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

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

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

Ecclesiastes 2:18 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Vanity of Toil

18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

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

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

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

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

_

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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

The last 3 letters I wrote to Hugh Hefner compared him to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and his search for the meaning of it all!!! (Part 3)

September 29, 2017 – 10:30 am

|I saw this on the internet on  June 20, 2017   _   Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer | Edit |Comments (0)

The last 3 letters I wrote to Hugh Hefner compared him to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and his search for the meaning of it all!!! (Part 2)

September 28, 2017 – 7:33 pm

I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___   Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion   During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer, Milton Friedman | Edit| Comments (0)
November 13, 2017 – 5:02 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Tagged Adrian Rogers, Alistair Begg, Ben Parkinson, Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, Billy Graham, Brandon Barnard, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Dan Jarrell, Daniel Akin, Darryl Dash, Ed Young, Ethan Renoe, francis schaeffer, George Critchley, Greg Gillbert, Jr., Ken Whitten, kerry livgren, Kirk Wetsell, Lee Strobel, Mark Henry, Matt Chandler, Nelson Price, Norman L. Geisler, Philip Graham Ryken, R.G.Lee, ravi zacharias, Richard Zowie., Robert Lewis, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Tom Zobrist, Vance Pitman, Walter C. Kaiser |

Music Monday THE LOVIN’ SPOONFUL Part 1

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The Lovin Spoonful – Daydream (HQ)

 

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John Sebastian

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the classical harmonica player and composer, see John Sebastian (classical harmonica player). For the similarly named Mexican pop singer, see Joan Sebastian.
John Sebastian
John Sebastian playing in East Lansing MI in 1970.jpg

Sebastian performing in concert in East Lansing, Michigan, August 1970
Background information
Birth name John Benson Sebastian
Also known as G. Pugliese
Born March 17, 1944 (age 73)
Greenwich Village, New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres Rock, pop, folk, blues
Occupation(s) musician, songwriter
Instruments Vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, autoharp
Years active 1964–present
Labels Kama Sutra, Reprise
Associated acts The Lovin’ Spoonful
Even Dozen Jug Band
The Mugwumps
NRBQ
Crosby, Stills & Nash
The Doors
Website johnbsebastian.com

John Benson Sebastian (born March 17, 1944) is an American-born singer-songwriter, guitarist, harmonicist, and autoharpist, who is best known as a founder of The Lovin’ Spoonful, a band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000; for his impromptu appearance at the Woodstock festival in 1969;[1] and for his No. 1 hit in 1976, “Welcome Back“.

Contents

 [hide] 

  • 1Early life
  • 2Early career
  • 3The Lovin’ Spoonful
  • 4Solo career 1960s–1970s
    • 4.1Broadway musical composer
    • 4.2Woodstock appearance
    • 4.3Major-label solo recordings
    • 4.4Session work
  • 5Later career
    • 5.1Live performances
    • 5.2Record releases
    • 5.3Soundtrack work
    • 5.4Television presenter
    • 5.5Children’s book author
    • 5.6Instructor at Homespun Tapes
    • 5.7Other appearances and activities
  • 6Influence and legacy
  • 7Awards and honors
  • 8Personal life
  • 9Solo discography
    • 9.1Original U.S. singles
    • 9.2Original U.S. albums and selected reissues and compilations
    • 9.3Contributions to “various artists” albums
  • 10References
  • 11External links

Early life[edit]

Sebastian was born in New York City and grew up in Italy and Greenwich Village. His father, John Sebastian, was a noted classical harmonica player and his mother, Jane, was a radio script writer.[2] His godmother was Vivian Vance(“Ethel Mertz” of I Love Lucy), who was a close friend of his mother.[3] His godfather and first babysitter was children’s book illustrator Garth Williams, a friend of his father.[4]

Sebastian grew up surrounded by music and musicians, including Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie, and hearing such players as Lead Belly and Mississippi John Hurt in his own neighborhood.[5][6] He graduated from Blair Academy, a private boarding school in Blairstown, New Jersey, in 1962.[7] He next attended New York University for just over a year, but dropped out as he became more interested in musical pursuits.[2][8]

Early career[edit]

In the early 1960s, Sebastian developed an interest in blues music and in playing harmonica in a blues style, rather than the classical style used by his father. Through his father’s connections, he met and was influenced by blues musicians Sonny Terry and Lightnin’ Hopkins (for whom Sebastian served as “unofficial tour guide and valet” when Hopkins was in New York City).[9][10] Sebastian became part of the folk and blues scene that was developing in Greenwich Village and later gave rise to folk rock.[11]

In addition to harmonica, Sebastian played guitar and occasionally autoharp. One of Sebastian’s first recording gigs was playing guitar and harmonica for Billy Faier‘s 1964 album The Beast of Billy Faier.[12] He also played on Fred Neil‘s album Bleecker & MacDougal and Tom Rush‘s self-titled album in 1965. He played in the Even Dozen Jug Band and in The Mugwumps, which split to form the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Mamas & the Papas. Bob Dylan invited him to play bass on his Bringing It All Back Home sessions (though Sebastian’s parts probably did not appear on the album)[13] and to join Dylan’s new electric touring band, but Sebastian declined in order to concentrate on his own project, The Lovin’ Spoonful.[14]

The Lovin’ Spoonful[edit]

Main article: The Lovin’ Spoonful

Sebastian was joined by Zal Yanovsky, Steve Boone, and Joe Butler in the Spoonful, which was named after “The Coffee Blues,” a Mississippi John Hurt song. The Lovin’ Spoonful, which blended folk-rock and pop with elements of blues, country, and jug band music, became part of the American response to the British Invasion, and was noted for such hits as “Do You Believe in Magic“, “Summer in the City“, “Daydream“, “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?“, “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice“, “Darling Be Home Soon“, “Jug Band Music”, “Rain on the Roof”, “Nashville Cats”, and “Six O’Clock”.[1][15]

The band, however, began to implode after a 1967 marijuana bust in San Francisco involving Yanovsky, a Canadian citizen. Facing deportation, he revealed the name of his dealer to police, which caused a fan backlash and added to the internal tension already created by the band members’ diverging interests. Neither Sebastian nor Butler was involved in the matter, both being away from San Francisco at the time. Yanovsky subsequently left the band and was replaced by Jerry Yester, after which the band’s musical style veered away from its previous eclectic blend and became more pop-oriented.[16][17][18]

Performing at the Woodstock Reunion 1979 at Parr Meadows in Ridge, New York

Sebastian left the Lovin’ Spoonful in 1968 and did not play with any later versions of the band, except for a brief reunion with the other three original members to appear in Paul Simon‘s 1980 film One-Trick Pony, and again for a single performance at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2000.[1]

Solo career 1960s–1970s[edit]

Broadway musical composer[edit]

One of Sebastian’s first projects after leaving the Spoonful was composing the music and lyrics for a play with music, Jimmy Shine, written by Murray Schisgal. It opened on Broadway in December 1968, with Dustin Hoffman in the title role, and ran until April 1969, for a total of over 150 performances.[19][20][21][22][23] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sebastian himself wrote a stage musical adaptation of E.B. White‘s Charlotte’s Web in consultation with his godfather Garth Williams, who illustrated White’s original book. The proposed musical included 20 songs, some of which Sebastian performed in concert, but the musical was never produced.[24][25][26]

Woodstock appearance[edit]

In August 1969, Sebastian made a memorable, albeit unscheduled appearance at Woodstock. He was not on the performance bill and traveled to the festival as a spectator, but he was asked to appear when the organizers suddenly needed an acoustic performer after a rain break because “they couldn’t set up amps on stage for Santana until the water was swept off.”[27] Sources that have tried to reconstruct the Woodstock running order differ on the exact time and position of Sebastian’s unplanned set, with some stating that he played on Saturday, August 16, immediately after Country Joe McDonald‘s set;[28][29] others saying that on that Saturday, Santana followed McDonald and Sebastian appeared after Santana;[30][31][32] and still others, including McDonald, recalling that Sebastian actually played on Friday, August 15, at some point after Richie Havens opened the festival.[33][34][35][36]

Sebastian’s Woodstock set consisted of three songs from his recorded but not yet released John B. Sebastian album (“How Have You Been”, “I Had a Dream”, and “Rainbows All Over Your Blues”) and two Lovin’ Spoonful songs (“Darling Be Home Soon” and “Younger Generation”, which he dedicated to a newborn baby at the festival). Documentary remarks by festival organizers indicated that Sebastian was under the influence of marijuana or other psychedelic drugs[37][38] at the time, hence his spontaneity and casual, unplanned set.[39] Sebastian has confirmed in later interviews that he was a regular marijuana user at the time and had taken acid at Woodstock because he was originally not scheduled to perform.[18][40][41][42] However, he has also noted that “there was a natural high there [at Woodstock],” and that “[i]n an interview it is the easy thing to say ‘yeah, I was really high,’ but it was actually a very small part of the event. In fact, I had a small part of some pill that someone gave me before I went onstage, but it wasn’t a real acid feeling.”[40] Sebastian appeared on the original Woodstock album and in the documentary film. Twenty-five years later, he returned for Woodstock ’94, playing harmonica for Crosby, Stills and Nash and appearing with his own band, the J-Band.

In September 1969, a month after Woodstock, Sebastian performed a similar set of solo and Spoonful material at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival and was featured in the subsequent documentary Celebration at Big Sur (1971).[43][44]

Major-label solo recordings[edit]

In January 1970, Sebastian released the first in a series of solo LPs on Reprise Records (a label owned by Warner Bros. Records), his eponymous solo debut, John B. Sebastian, on which he was accompanied by various L.A.musicians including Crosby, Stills & Nash. It was Sebastian’s highest-charting solo album, reaching No. 20 in the Billboard album charts. In a contract dispute with MGM Records, MGM, without authorization from Sebastian or his management, also released the John B. Sebastian album, under a different cover, and a live album, John Sebastian Live; both were later withdrawn from the market.[18] Sebastian’s second Reprise album, Cheapo Cheapo Productions Presents Real Live John Sebastian, was hastily recorded in an effort to provide an authorized live album.[45][46]

For his third Reprise album, The Four of Us (1971), Sebastian used a core backing band consisting of keyboardist Paul Harris, drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Kenny Altman. He considered forming a permanent band with them, but Harris and Taylor chose to join Stephen Stills’ band Manassas.[47] In 1972, Sebastian also released a non-LP single, “Give Us a Break” b/w “Music for People Who Don’t Speak English”, which did not chart. On his next album, Tarzana Kid (1974), Sebastian returned to using a rotating group of well-known recording artists and session musicians, including Lowell George (who also co-wrote, with Sebastian, the album track “Face of Appalachia”), Phil Everly, Emmylou Harris, the Pointer Sisters, David Grisman, and Buddy Emmons. Sebastian, George and Everly also briefly considered forming a supergroup but abandoned the idea.[48][49]

Sebastian has stated that his musical career suffered in the early 1970s from being out of step with the trends set by emerging artists such as Alice Cooper, and that he made more money by buying and selling real estate than he did from his music. After Tarzana Kid failed to chart, Sebastian sought a release from his Reprise contract, which required him to make one more album. However, in 1976, Sebastian had an unexpected No. 1 single with “Welcome Back“, the theme song to the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter,[5] causing the label to rush the production of an album, also titled Welcome Back.[2] Despite the “monster hit” status of the song “Welcome Back”, Sebastian expressed frustration that Reprise did not do more to promote the associated album, his last for Reprise.[18][50] His later albums have been released primarily on independent record labels. The song, Sebastian’s only top 40 solo hit, found new life 28 years later when a sample from it became the hook for rapper Mase‘s 2004 hit “Welcome Back“.

“Welcome Back”
MENU
0:00
by John Sebastian, Welcome Back, Reprise Records 1976. Sample from The Best of John Sebastian, Rhino Entertainment/WEA Corp., 1989, 1990 format=Ogg

Problems playing this file? See media help.

In 2001, Rhino Entertainment re-released all five of Sebastian’s Reprise albums, plus the non-LP “Give Us a Break” single, on CD in a limited-edition box set entitled Faithful Virtue: The Reprise Recordings. The box set also included live recordings of Sebastian’s entire Woodstock performance and six previously unreleased songs recorded in mono from a performance at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on October 4, 1969.[51] In 2006, Sebastian’s five Reprise albums were reissued as individual CDs by Collectors’ Choice Music, with new liner notes by Richie Unterberger.[45][46][47][48][50][52]

Session work[edit]

During the 1960s and 1970s, Sebastian guested on a number of recordings by other artists. He played harmonica with the Doors on the song “Roadhouse Blues” (from the album Morrison Hotel), under the pseudonym G. Pugliese to avoid problems with his contract[53] and to avoid association with Jim Morrison, who was then facing trial on charges of lewd behavior after the Miami concert incident. He also appeared on two Doors live albums, playing on “Little Red Rooster” on Alive, She Cried and on seven songs on Live in Detroit.[54][55] Both albums were later re-released, remastered, and repackaged into one single album, In Concert, and included Morrison’s introduction of Sebastian to the stage on the “Little Red Rooster” track.

Sebastian is credited with playing three instruments on the 1970 Gordon Lightfoot album, “Sit Down Young Stranger” (Reprise RS 6392). He played autoharp on “Saturday Clothes”, electric guitar on “Baby It’s Allright”, and harmonica on “The Pony Man”. The album was later re-titled “If You Could Read My Mind” when the song of that name unexpectedly became a major hit.[56]

Sebastian is credited with playing harmonica on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young‘s song “Déjà Vu” from the album of the same name.[57] He had previously been asked by Crosby, Stills & Nash to join their group as a fourth member, but turned them down, leading to their association with Neil Young.[58] In 1977 he recorded as part of Artie and Happy Traum‘s Woodstock Mountain Revue (aka Woodstock Mountains) folk collaboration for the album More Music From Mud Acres.[59][60] Other records on which Sebastian appeared include the album Stephen Stills (1970),[61] Timothy Leary‘s album You Can Be Anyone This Time Around (1970) (on which Sebastian jammed with Jimi Hendrix),[62][63]and Keith Moon‘s only solo album, Two Sides of the Moon (1975).[64]

Later career[edit]

Sebastian (right) with David Grisman, 2009

Since the 1980s, Sebastian has been active in several music-related areas, not only writing and performing his own material but also performing roots music, developing soundtrack and instructional material, hosting and appearing on television programs, and writing a children’s book about a harmonica-playing bear.

Live performances[edit]

Sebastian has continued to tour and play live, both solo and with a variety of backing bands. He had a long association with the eclectic rock band NRBQ, dating back to the early 1980s, when he played on NRBQ’s album Grooves in Orbit (1983). He has said that NRBQ “to a large extent, picked up where The Lovin’ Spoonful left off” because of NRBQ’s “wide range of musical styles that they’re not only able but accurate at playing,” and he expressed appreciation for NRBQ’s support during a low point in his career.[65] In turn, Sebastian helped NRBQ by using them on his own Nelvana and Disney Channel soundtrack projects during a period when litigation prevented them from recording.[66] Sebastian has used NRBQ as his own backing band,[17] appeared regularly at their concerts,[67][68] and recorded frequently with the band members,[69] and NRBQ founding member Terry Adams refers to Sebastian as an “honorary member” of the band.[70] Although he performed Lovin’ Spoonful songs solo and with NRBQ (who were themselves promoted in the 1980s as “the new Lovin’ Spoonful”[17]), he declined to reunite with several former Spoonful members in 1991.[71]

Throughout the 1990s, Sebastian frequently appeared with the J-Band, a jug band including Fritz Richmond from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, jug band pioneer Yank Rachell, Jimmy Vivino, and Geoff Muldaur.[5] Sebastian and the J-Band were featured in Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost (2007), a documentary about the roots and influence of jug band music.[72][73] The film screened in August 2007 at the San Francisco Jug Band Festival (where Sebastian performed with other musicians featured in the film, including Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin and David Grisman) and made its film festival debut in October 2007 at the Woodstock Film Festival. In the film Sebastian humorously explains (with musical accompaniment) how his song, “Younger Girl”, was inspired by Gus Cannon‘s “Prison Wall Blues.”

Sebastian’s live performances in the 2000s have included performing as a trio with country blues duo Paul Rishell and Annie Raines in 2002; touring with Maria Muldaur and her Garden of Joy jug band in 2009; and occasional appearances with mandolinist David Grisman, with whom Sebastian played in the Even Dozen Jug Band in the 1960s and more recently collaborated on a CD album release, Satisfied.

Sebastian performing at the Katharine Hepburn Theater in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, November 27, 2011

Record releases[edit]

After leaving Reprise, Sebastian continued to occasionally release CD albums through a variety of small labels. Although a number of these releases consisted of compilations or live performances of his older material from the 1960s and 1970s, some, such as Tar Beach (Shanachie, 1993) and Satisfied (with David Grisman) (Acoustic Disc, 2007) have contained significant new recordings. Tar Beach in particular contained eleven previously unreleased songs written or co-written by Sebastian; four songs were composed by the team of Sebastian and songwriter Phil Galdston,[74] with whom Sebastian also collaborated on the score for the Sig Shore-directed feature film The Act (1984). According to Colin Larkin, Sebastian had written many of the songs that appeared on Tar Beach more than a decade prior to the album’s release.[71] Two later releases, I Want My Roots (Music Masters, 1996) and Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost(Hollywood, 2000), focused on Sebastian’s work with the J-Band.

Soundtrack work[edit]

Sebastian is a frequent contributor to film and TV soundtracks. In particular, he has written and performed music for a number of children’s films and TV productions. He wrote the music and provided the singing voice of “Daniel Mouse” for the Canada-based Nelvana animated television special The Devil and Daniel Mouse (1978) about two mice attempting to succeed in the music business. He supplied music for several more Nelvana productions, including Strawberry Shortcake: Housewarming Surprise (1983), Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Berrykins (1985), The Care Bears Movie (1985), The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland (1987), and “Care Bear Countdown”, the theme song for Nelvana’s Care Bears TV series. He also wrote and sang the theme song/narration for Nelvana’s TV pilot The Get Along Gang; however, none of it was kept when DIC Entertainment took over the project. He wrote and performed the theme song of the KNBC syndicated children’s program That’s Cat (1976–1979), and hosted a 1986 Disney Channel family special entitled What a Day for a Daydream.[75]

Television presenter[edit]

Since the 1980s, Sebastian has hosted several television programs about 1960s and 1970s music, including paid programs for compilation sets, a syndicated live music and interview program called Deja View,[4] and a half-hour program called The Golden Age of Rock and Roll, which featured video footage of 1960s bands performing on variety shows. He also hosted a Lovin’ Spoonful retrospective broadcast on PBS in March 2007, talking about various Spoonful numbers in between vintage video clips of the band up to the time he left.

Children’s book author[edit]

In 1993, Sebastian authored a children’s book, JB’s Harmonica, illustrated by his godfather Garth Williams, about a young bear whose musical aspirations are overshadowed by the talents of his famous musician father.[4]

Instructor at Homespun Tapes[edit]

Sebastian has released a series of instructional DVDs, CDs, downloads, booklets, and (prior to the use of digital media) analog tapes for learning to play guitar, harmonica, and autoharp, or for learning specific styles or songs. These instructional materials are distributed by Homespun Tapes, a company founded and operated by folk musician Happy Traum.[40] Materials offered with Sebastian as instructor have included An Easy Guide to Tuning Your Guitar, John Sebastian Teaches Eight Lovin’ Spoonful Hits (and “Welcome Back”), John Sebastian Teaches Blues Harmonica, Learn to Play Autoharp, and The Fingerpicking Blues of Mississippi John Hurt: A Spoonful of Classic Songs.[76]

Other appearances and activities[edit]

In November 1992, Sebastian made a cameo appearance on the sitcom Married… with Children (Season 7, Episode 9, “Rock of Ages”) as himself, along with other 1960s rock stars Spencer Davis, Richie Havens, Robby Krieger, Mark Lindsay, and Peter Noone.

Sebastian appeared on Eels‘ 2005 release, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.[77]

On January 12, 2014, Sebastian appeared on CBS Sunday Morning to talk about his career with and without The Lovin’ Spoonful, Eric Clapton, and the Martin guitar.[78]

Sebastian appears on Richard Barone‘s Sorrows & Promises: Greenwich Village in the 1960s (2016) album, playing harmonica, autoharp and making a vocal cameo on his song “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?”.

Influence and legacy[edit]

Sebastian is a notable songwriter whose work has been covered by many artists, including Elvis Costello (“The Room Nobody Lives In”), Johnny Cash (“Darlin’ Companion”), and Del McCoury (“Nashville Cats”). Several songs have also spawned multiple covers, including:

  • “Lovin’ You” – covered by Dolly Parton, Helen Reddy, and Bobby Darin;
  • “Stories We Could Tell” – covered by The Everly Brothers, Tom Petty, and Jimmy Buffett;
  • “Darlin’ Be Home Soon” – covered by Joe Cocker, The Association, Slade, Cass Elliot, Bruce Hornsby, Allison Crowe, and others.

Sebastian is also credited with helping to popularize the art of tie-dyeing clothing among music fans and festival goers in the late 1960s, by publicly appearing in outfits that he tie-dyed himself after learning the process from Ann Thomas of Water Baby Dye Works.[36][79] His tie-dyed yellow patterned denim jacket, which he dyed himself and wore at Woodstock, has been prominently displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[80]

Stories We Could Tell, the title of a novel by British writer Tony Parsons, comes from the Sebastian song of the same name.

Awards and honors[edit]

As an original member of The Lovin’ Spoonful, Sebastian was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008.[5]

Personal life[edit]

Sebastian has been married three times. His first wife was Jean “Butchie” Webber (later known as Butchie Denver after she married actor Bob Denver).[81][82] According to Steve Boone, Butchie was an early supporter and friend of The Lovin’ Spoonful who secretly married Sebastian in the early 1960s to reduce his chances of being drafted for service in the Vietnam War. The couple divorced in 1966. That same year, Sebastian married Loretta “Lorey” Kaye, a waitress at Steve Paul‘s The Scene who later worked for Hit Parader magazine; they divorced in 1968.[2][17][18][83]

In 1972, Sebastian married his third wife, Catherine Barnett, a photographer and artist who has designed numerous album covers. They have been married for over 40 years and have two children.[2][18][84][85]

Since the early 1990s, Sebastian has struggled with throat problems that eventually affected and changed his singing voice. But he has continued to perform and tour.[71][86]

Solo discography[edit]

Original U.S. singles[edit]

Release year Label/catalog # Titles (A-side / B-side) Billboard Top Singles Cashbox
1968[87] Kama Sutra KA-254 “She’s a Lady/The Room Nobody Lives In” 84 62
1970 Reprise 0902 “Magical Connection/Fa-Fana-Fa” – –
1970 Reprise 0918 “What She Thinks About/Red Eye Express” – –
1970 MGM 14122 “Rainbows All Over Your Blues/You’re a Big Boy Now” – –
1971 Reprise 1026 “I Don’t Want Nobody Else/Sweet Muse” – –
1971 Reprise 1050 “Well, Well, Well/We’ll See” – –
1972 Reprise 1074 “Give Us a Break/Music for People Who Don’t Speak English” – –
1976 Reprise 1349 “Welcome Back/Warm Baby” 1 1
1976 Reprise 1355 “Hideaway/One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” 95 –

Original U.S. albums and selected reissues and compilations[edit]

Much of Sebastian’s material, especially his 1970s Reprise albums and the 1996 King Biscuit Flower Hour live recording, has been reissued and/or repackaged many times; therefore, this table is selective. Sebastian has also released various formats and packages of long-playing instructional materials for Homespun Tapes, which are not included in this table.

Release year Label/catalog # Album title Billboard Album Chart Format Notes
1970 Reprise
RS 6379
John B. Sebastian 20 Vinyl (original)
CD (reissue)
Early copies of vinyl album contained “tie-dyed” liner notes. Reissued in USA by Collectors’ Choice COLC 720 (2006).
1970 MGM
SE-4654
John B. Sebastian – Vinyl Exact same album as Reprise RS 6379, with different cover art. Withdrawn from market in 1970.
1970 MGM
SE-4720
John Sebastian Live 129 Vinyl Recording of a live outdoor concert in Woodstock, NY in July 1970. Withdrawn from market in 1970, two months after release; at least one bootleg version circulated.
1971 Reprise
MS 2036
Cheapo Cheapo Productions Presents Real Live John Sebastian 75 Vinyl (original)
CD (reissue)
Recorded live at four California shows. Reissued in USA by Collectors’ Choice COLC 724 (2006).
1971 Reprise
MS 2041
The Four of Us 93 Vinyl (original)
CD (reissue)
Reissued in USA by Collectors’ Choice COLC 721 (2006).
1974 Reprise
MS 2187
Tarzana Kid – Vinyl (original)
CD (reissue)
Reissued in USA by Collectors’ Choice COLC 722 (2006).
1976 Reprise
MS 2249
Welcome Back 79 Vinyl (original)
CD (reissue)
Reissued in USA by Vivid Sound RATCD-4235 (2004), Collectors’ Choice COLC 724 (2006), and Rhino Entertainment (2008).
1978 Nelvana
NEL 7802
The Devil and Daniel Mouse: A Nelvana Story Album – Vinyl Contains soundtrack from children’s animated TV special, featuring songs written by Sebastian and sung by Sebastian (as “Daniel Mouse”) and Laurel Runn (as “Jan Mouse”), with additional narration by Sebastian.
1989 Rhino
RI-70170
The Best of John Sebastian – Vinyl, cassette and CD “Best-of” compilation of selected tracks from Reprise albums John B. Sebastian, The Four of Us, Tarzana Kid, and Welcome Back, plus the non-LP song “Give Us a Break”.
1992 Shanachie
8006
Tar Beach – CD Studio album consisting of previously unreleased original tracks by Sebastian. Four songs were co-written with Phil Galdston, and the traditional “Mornin’ Blues” was arranged by Sebastian.
1996 King Biscuit Flower Hour
KBFHCD016
John Sebastian Live on the King Biscuit Flower Hour – CD (original and reissue)
DVD Audio (reissue)
Recording of a live concert in Brookhaven, NY, Sept. 9. 1979. Reissued several times with different running order and/or some tracks omitted as:
From the Front Row … Live! (DVD Audio, Silverline, 2003)
John Sebastian Live (CD, EMI-Capitol Special Markets, 2006; not the same as the 1970 MGM vinyl LP of the same name)
Nashville Cats (CD, Disky (Netherlands), 2001).
1996 Music Masters
MMD 65137
John Sebastian and the J-Band:
I Want My Roots
– CD The J-Band consists of Jimmy Vivino, Fritz Richmond, and James Wormworth, with guests Yank Rachell, Paul Rishell, Annie Raines, Rory Block, John Simon, and Richard Crooks.
1999 Hollywood
HR-62227-2
John Sebastian and the J-Band:
Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost
– CD The J-Band consists of Paul Rishell, Annie Raines, Fritz Richmond, and James Wormworth, with guests Jimmy Vivino, Geoff Muldaur, Yank Rachell, John Simon, Jerry Marotta, and Benson Sebastian.
2001 Hux
HUX024
One Guy, One Guitar [88] – CD Two live sets at Cambridge Folk Festival recorded for BBC Radio 1 on August 2, 1981 and July 29, 1984, featuring Sebastian accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. Includes 12-page booklet.
2001 Rhino Handmade
RHM2 7758
Faithful Virtue: The Reprise Recordings – CD Box set containing reissues of all five Reprise albums; bonus tracks consisting of Sebastian’s entire 1969 Woodstock set and six tracks recorded live at Winterland in San Francisco on October 4, 1969; 48-page liner notes booklet; and poster. Limited numbered edition of 3000. The box set was reissued in 2014 by Wounded Bird Records without the bonus tracks, booklet and poster.
2007 Raven (Australia)
RAEN 249
John Sebastian: Life and Times 1964–1999 – CD Compilation mostly containing Lovin’ Spoonful material from the band’s Kama Sutra releases, but also a few tracks selected from early 1960s Even Dozen Jug Band, Lovin’ Spoonful Elektra tracks, Sebastian solo Reprise recordings, and J-Band recordings.
2007 Acoustic Disc
ACD-67
John Sebastian & David Grisman: Satisfied – CD With David Grisman; collection of traditional folk songs and some original songs.
2014 Edsel
EDSG 8039
John B. Sebastian/ The Four of Us/ Tarzana Kid/ Welcome Back – CD + DVD Re-release of the four studio Reprise albums, bundled with DVD of a previously unreleased concert recorded for the BBC on October 16, 1970. Includes 36-page booklet.

Contributions to “various artists” albums[edit]

This table lists songs written or performed by Sebastian that were originally released on — and in many cases, are only available on — compilations or collaborations of various artists, including but not limited to soundtrack albums. Contributions as a guest on albums released under the name of a specific artist or group are not included.

Release year Label/catalog # Album title Format Contributions
(All songs written by Sebastian unless otherwise noted)
1969 Cotillion/Atlantic
SD 3-500
Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More(festival film soundtrack) Vinyl (original)
CD (1994 reissue)
Live versions from Woodstock Festival:
“I Had a Dream”
“Rainbows All Over Your Blues”
1977 Rounder
3018
Woodstock Mountains: More Music From Mud Acres
(collaborative folk project featuring musicians from Woodstock, New York area)
Vinyl Plays on the following songs:
“Bluegrass Boy” (John Herald), “Waiting for a Train” (Jimmie Rodgers), “Morning Blues” (traditional), “Mason Dixon’s on the Line” (Pat Alger), “Amazing Grace” (traditional)
1979 Columbia
JC 36292
Skatetown, U.S.A.
(soundtrack to film of the same name)
Vinyl “Roller Girl”
1985 Kid Stuff
DAR-3901 (Vinyl LP)
DT 4901 (Cassette)
The Care Bears Movie: Original Soundtrack Album Vinyl, Cassette “Nobody Cares Like a Bear”
“When You Care, You’re Not Afraid to Try”
“In a Care Bear Family”
1994 Atlantic
7567-82618-2 XY
The Best of Woodstock CD Live version from Woodstock Festival:
“I Had a Dream”
1994 Atlantic
82636-2
Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music CD (box set) Live versions from Woodstock Festival:
“Rainbows All Over Your Blues”
“I Had a Dream”
1999 Shanachie
6041
(re-released 2002 as St. Clair Entertainment Group 6788)
Song of the Hills: Instrumental Impressions of Appalachian Classics
(re-release title: Man of Constant Sorrow: Instrumental Impressions of the American Heartland)
CD Plays on the following traditional folk songs: “Tom Bigbee Waltz”, “When First Unto This Country”, “Wagoner’s Lad”
2004 Lovenotes
—
Tails of the City: Dog Tunes by Murray Weinstock CD Performs “Dog Day Afternoon” with Joey Spampinato
(song written by Murray Weinstock)
2009 Rhino
7567-82618-2 XY
Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur’s Farm CD (box set) Live versions from Woodstock Festival:
“How Have You Been”
“Rainbows All Over Your Blues”
“I Had a Dream”
Categories:

  • 1944 births
  • 20th-century American singers
  • 21st-century American singers
  • American country harmonica players
  • American folk singers
  • American folk guitarists
  • American male guitarists
  • American blues harmonica players
  • American harmonica players
  • American blues guitarists
  • American male singers
  • American male singer-songwriters
  • American musical theatre composers
  • American musical theatre lyricists
  • American rock guitarists
  • American singer-songwriters
  • American rock songwriters
  • American rock singers
  • Eels (band) members
  • Folk musicians from New York (state)
  • Living people
  • People from Greenwich Village
  • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
  • Rock harmonica players
  • Singers from New York City
  • Songwriters from New York (state)
  • The Lovin’ Spoonful members
  • Autoharp players
  • Blair Academy alumni
  • Reprise Records artists
  • Guitarists from New York City

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HUGH HEFNER WAS A MODERN DAY KING SOLOMON AND I TOLD HIM THAT OVER AND OVER (PART 14) Letter from 1-17-16 (Letters were inspired by the sermon series on ECCLESIASTES in 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock)

_

Image result for hugh hefner younger days

_

Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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.

REMEMBERING GOD:THE KEY TO A PROFITABLE LIFE

The Futility of Pleasure Seeking

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11

Jerry A Collins

SCC

6/16/02

 

¨ Can anything on the earth really satisfy us?

Is there a difference between satisfaction and fulfillment?

Does God expect us to enjoy ourselves?

This may be hard to swallow but if you have set your heart on getting and enjoying the good life, it’s not worth it! Don’t waste your time dreaming about it or pursuing it. The beer commercials have got it all wrong. The endless commentary about investing on wall street is exhausting. John Gotti just died this week in prison of throat cancer. Princess Di lost her life very young. Hugh Hefner is an old man. Mick Jaggar is now Sir Mick. Brittany Speers has another record. Scotty Bowman just retired. Tiger Woods is playing in another major golf tournament. All of these people and many others are people we would define as living the good life. We idolize drunkenness, investing, power, glamour, sex, popularity, sensuality, success or prestige as evidence of the good life. King Solomon tried to find fulfillment from the good life too. He conducted an experiment to discover if there is anything of this world, to satisfy and fulfill the heart of a person. Before you take another step in this direction, consider the lessons Solomon learned from his experiment and search into personal and pleasure and the good life! He announces the goal and conclusion of his experiment in vss 1-2. Then he describes the means by which he sought and found pleasure himself in vss 3-10. Finally he relates this pursuit to the ultimate value of his accomplishments in vs 11. He begins with his conclusion.

1. PLEASURE HAS LITTLE VALUE 1-2

That it, while it may have some temporary, immediate value like relieving boredom and grief, it does not produce anything permanently or ultimately worthwhile. First, he states in vs 1 that in his quest to find something worthwhile in life he experimented with pleasure. What can I do that will make me happy all of my life? So he said to himself enjoy yourself. And that is what he did. He spent weeks, months and years on this quest. He went after laughter, pleasure, possessions, prosperity, power, prestige and sex. The palace halls were denied nothing, his courtiers and guests had the time of their lives and bountiful feasts according to 1 Kings 4:22-23 each day included 30 measures of fine flour, 60 measures of meal, 10 fat oxen, 20 oxen from pastures, 100 sheep, in addition harts, roebucks, gazelles and fattened fowl. This daily menu is estimated to have been able to feed at least 10 thousand people. Second, he states the result of this expansive search is that it was futile and meaningless. (1) All the laughter he enjoyed in this pursuit he calls madness. Laughter associated with pleasure and the good life is empty. Frivolity is foolish because the laughter deals only with the peripherals of life. there is not solid content to it (Ecc 7:6). It’s useless and a waste of time. (2) Of pleasure he asks What does it accomplish vs 2? What does it contribute to life? It only consumes resources we have worked hard for. The question implies a negative answer. This is the conclusion. It is not the conclusion of our world. Satan wants us to believe that it is better to mortgage our future for the present. How did he pursue pleasure and what did he learn?

2. PURSUING PLEASURE ONLY DELIVERS TEMPORARY SATISFACTION 3-10

First we learn that this experiment was exhaustive. He explored, enlarged, built, planted, made, possessed, collected, provided, did not refuse and exerted himself. No stone was left unturned in this experiment.

Second, it was not a mindless drive into hedonism. Wisdom he says guided him in vss 3 & 9 throughout the endeavor. With deliberateness, not blindly or in uncontrolled excess, he indulged himself. He is testing the effects of pleasure seeking and frivolity to see if it is worthwhile. This is a calculated experiment. with a purpose. He wanted to find out for himself if the things of this world can fill and empty heart vs 3. Life is short and how can we find satisfaction in that short span?

Third, he indulged himself in a variety of things. (1) He stimulated his body with wine v 3. He cheered himself with wine and he embraced folly or a foolish and frivolous lifestyle possibly associated with his wine drinking. Every Coors beer commercial is an example of this. It provides momentary satisfaction until the next weekend. (2) The good life included projects, parks and pools vss4-6. He tried his hand at architecture. His own house took 14 years to build and the Temple 7 years. He built houses for his wives. he engaged in agriculture developing luxuriant gardens and parks planted with orchards, filled with trees. He developed irrigation to provide for all of the landscaping. Building and landscaping provide momentary pleasure but then there are always things to fix, weeds to pull and new endeavors to grab our attention. (3) The good life included ownership and wealth 7-8. He had servants to wait on his every whim. He had ranches to provide diversion and investment in the raising of herds, flocks and livestock. He had bank accounts that provided him with all the money he would ever need. So great was Solomon’s fortune that silver and gold were regarded in Jerusalem as stones 1 Kings 10:27; 2 Chr 1:15. His annual income was over one million dollars in purchasing power. In fact he owned whatever he looked on and his look went everywhere. If it promised a fleeting moment of pleasure he tried it and he bought it. (4) The good life included entertainment and sex 8b-10. He hired his own private orchestra to soothe and entertain him on demand vs 8b. He also accumulated numbers of concubines, playmates all over the palace and in his harem to satisfy his sexual desires. Whatever caught his eye vs 10 he indulged in. If he saw a beautiful woman he added her to his harem. A fine thorobred to his stables. A newer model chariot he bought it. He indulged himself in every way and in everything. And he found pleasure in all of this and that alone was his reward. A momentary enjoyment that faded and passed until the next pleasure fix.

3. THE PURSUIT OF PLEASURE IS FUTILE 11

After a close evaluation of this lifestyle and pursuit, though some satisfaction was gained, the real value of what was accomplished was (1) vanity (empty) (2) striving after wind (meaningless) (3) no profit in life (ultimately profitless). We may never have the opportunity fame like this. we may never be a king or have stardom or offered a million dollar signing bonus. But there are lessons here for us.

(1) We can learn from the failure of others while we listen to the wisdom of God’s Word. The good life is really not so good. There is no ultimate profit in it. God says you had your reward I have none to give you. We have to take this by faith.

(2) Achieving, having, experiencing will not deliver significance and worth. That is only find in Christ ritely related to God.

(3) Absolutely nothing this side of grave can fill emptiness deliver full satisfaction.

__________

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,

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

Ben Parkinson

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

and Brandon Barnard.

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

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

 

January 17, 2016

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

Dear Mr. Hefner,

I recently read the article, “Playboy at 60: Hugh Hefner Looks Back,” The legendary publisher looks back on the first 25 years of his culture-changing creation by Scott Huver, and it started off with these words:

Looking back over his 87 years – 60 of which have been defined by his creation, Playboy – Hugh Hefner admits it took being a workaholic during his media empire’s formative years to transform him into an icon of sexual liberation and sophisticated indulgence.

“I had been really consumed the first few years on the magazine – I had this phenomenal success on my hands,” Hefner remembers. “And I didn’t want to miss the party that I had created.”

You probably remember that last Sunday I wrote you about the sermon I heard at church from our series on the Book of Ecclesiastes. Today’s letter basically comes from this same sermon series because this week’s message from FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH dealt with the issue of work and what King Solomon had to say about it.

(Mark Henry pictured below)

Our teaching pastor Mark Henry in his sermon THE MIRROR OF WORK observed:

When you stare into the mirror of your work then you may ask “I AM SUCCESSFUL THEN WHY AM NOT HAPPY?” Many at the worship service today are very successful but do they still have this gnawing sense of emptiness and lack of satisfaction?  

The main character in the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES is King Solomon who is outside of Jesus the wisest man in the Bible. This is a guy who amassed an incredible amount of wealth and power throughout his life and that set him on a journey in search of pleasure and happiness in the maze of life. What he discovered as he went down all of these different paths in search of pleasure and happiness in the maze of life, what he realized is THERE ALL ARE DEAD ENDS {IN LIFE UNDER THE SUN.} They just simply can not satisfy.

The simple message Solomon keeps bringing us back to is “JESUS IS BETTER THAN…”   Anything else we try to fill our lives up with is just going to be less than and that includes our work. 

Ecclesiastes 2:18-26English Standard Version (ESV) 

The Vanity of Toil

18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22 What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23 For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment[a] in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him[b] who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Solomon is not just talking about our jobs. He is also talking about everything we do in life which includes building a family, parenting kids, pursuing relationships, working on our communities and his  conclusion is that it is all vain toil. What Solomon is doing here is giving us a view of work UNDER THE SUN. It is a view where you see work as frustrating, hard and aggravating.  

Solomon is sitting back and looking at his whole life’s work UNDER THE SUN and he is saying it is just vanity. Ecclesiastes 2:23 “For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.” In other words, our hearts can’t rest because we still haven’t found what we are looking for. We got a six figure salary and it is still not enough. A hundred promotions later we still will be hungry for more. We never achieve a lasting identity.

Your accomplishments will never answer your deepest questions. WHO AM I? WHY AM I HERE? DO I MATTER? AM I SIGNIFICANT?  Solomon is saying you will not find those answers on the back of your paycheck.

Madonna in an interview with VOGUE noted: 

“And all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I’m always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting. And I find a way to get myself out of that. Again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I’ve become Somebody. I still have to prove that Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”

The need to achieve that Madonna talks about is very common unfortunately in our hearts but in Jesus there is a way out of this performance driven cycle. In Jesus you are here because a loving God created you with his own hands for his glory and your joy. The point of life is knowing God and resting in his perfect love for you. The more we see life from ABOVE THE SUN the more we see that we don’t have to try and get our identity from our work because we already have one [in Christ.]

___

HUGH you have tried looking at life UNDER THE SUN but shouldn’t you now take time to take a long look at the possibility of life ABOVE THE SUN?

Image result for francis schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

Instead of making a leap into the area of non-reason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #95)

Two things should be mentioned about the time of Moses in Old Testament history.

The form of the covenant made at Sinai has remarkable parallels with the covenant forms of other people at that time. (On covenants and parties to a treaty, the Louvre; and Treaty Tablet from Boghaz Koi (i.e., Hittite) in Turkey, Museum of Archaeology in Istanbul.) The covenant form at Sinai resembles just as the forms of letter writings of the first century after Christ (the types of introductions and greetings) are reflected in the letters of the apostles in the New Testament, it is not surprising to find the covenant form of the second millennium before Christ reflected in what occurred at Mount Sinai. God has always spoken to people within the culture of their time, which does not mean that God’s communication is limited by that culture. It is God’s communication but within the forms appropriate to the time.

The Pentateuch tells us that Moses led the Israelites up the east side of the Dead Sea after their long stay in the desert. There they encountered the hostile kingdom of Moab. We have firsthand evidence for the existence of this kingdom of Moab–contrary to what has been said by critical scholars who have denied the existence of Moab at this time. It can be found in a war scene from a temple at Luxor (Al Uqsor). This commemorates a victory by Ramses II over the Moabite nation at Batora (Luxor Temple, Egypt).

Also the definite presence of the Israelites in west Palestine (Canaan) no later than the end of the thirteenth century B.C. is attested by a victory stela of Pharaoh Merenptah (son and successor of Ramses II) to commemorate his victory over Libya (Israel Stela, Cairo Museum, no. 34025). In it he mentions his previous success in Canaan against Aschalon, Gize, Yenom, and Israel; hence there can be no doubt the nation of Israel was in existence at the latest by this time of approximately 1220 B.C. This is not to say it could not have been earlier, but it cannot be later than this date.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

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

PS: This is the 14th letter I have written to you and again I have taken an aspect of your life and responded with what the Bible has to say on that subject. In this letter I also quoted your good friend Madonna. A little tidbit about Madonna and her former husband Guy Ritchie. They ran around with Prince William and Prince Harry quite often. Just recently in my old hometown of Memphis a girl by the name of Lizzy Wilson was married to the royals’ good friend Guy Pelly and they all came to Memphis for the wedding. Back in the 1980’s I used to get to visit at Hardware Shows with Lizzy’s grandfather Kemmons Wilson who was a founder of HOLIDAY INNS. Actually a relative of mine still works for the Wilson family trust and could have attended the wedding if he had chose to but he was not into royal watching.

Hugh Hefner getting to grips with Madonna at the launch party for the Music album in 2000.

Britain's Prince William, and Prince Harry, follow groom Thomas van Straubenzee

Big day: Prince William and Harry and Guy Pelly attending friend Thomas-van-Straubenzee’s wedding

Royals down South! Prince William and Prince Harry traveled to Memphis, Tenn. the weekend of May 2 for friend Guy Pelly‘s wedding to Lizzy Wilson.

Guy Pelly and Elizabeth Wilson arrive for their wedding rehearsal dinner at the Rendezvous BBQ restaurant

Wearing a country-style checkered shirt, William arrives for dinner with his entourage
 

Wearing a country-style checkered shirt, William arrives for dinner with his entourage in Memphis

__

(Below: The handsome prince arrived at Rendezvous restaurant for a rehearsal dinner)

Wild about Harry: The handsome prince arrived at Rendezvous restaurant for a rehearsal dinner after flying into town from Miami, where he hung our in South Beach

 

_________

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MY 8 POSTCARDS IN 2017 FROM NEW ORLEANS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 2)

October 16, 2017 – 4:08 am

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)

MY 8 POSTCARDS IN 2017 FROM NEW ORLEANS  TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 1)

October 13, 2017 – 4:07 am

  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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 4)

October 12, 2017 – 1:05 am

_   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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 3)

October 11, 2017 – 4:54 am

_____ 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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 2)

October 10, 2017 – 4:48 am

_____ 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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 1)

October 9, 2017 – 3:29 am

_____ 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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

The last 3 letters I wrote to Hugh Hefner compared him to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and his search for the meaning of it all!!! (Part 3)

September 29, 2017 – 10:30 am

|I saw this on the internet on  June 20, 2017   _   Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer | Edit |Comments (0)

The last 3 letters I wrote to Hugh Hefner compared him to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and his search for the meaning of it all!!! (Part 2)

September 28, 2017 – 7:33 pm

I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___   Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion   During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer, Milton Friedman | Edit| Comments (0)

November 10, 2017 – 5:54 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Tagged Adrian Rogers, Alistair Begg, Ben Parkinson, Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, Billy Graham, Brandon Barnard, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Dan Jarrell, Daniel Akin, Darryl Dash, Ed Young, Ethan Renoe, francis schaeffer, George Critchley, Greg Gillbert, Jr., Ken Whitten, kerry livgren, Kirk Wetsell, Lee Strobel, Mark Henry, Matt Chandler, Nelson Price, Norman L. Geisler, Philip Graham Ryken, R.G.Lee, ravi zacharias, Richard Zowie., Robert Lewis, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Tom Zobrist, Vance Pitman, Walter C. Kaiser |

FRIEDMAN FRIDAY Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994

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Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 1 of 2

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 2 of 2

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“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

April 19, 2013 – 1:14 am

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What were the main proposals of Milton Friedman?

February 21, 2013 – 1:01 am

Stearns Speaks on House Floor in Support of Balanced Budget Amendment Uploaded by RepCliffStearns on Nov 18, 2011 Speaking on House floor in support of Balanced Budget Resolution, 11/18/2011 ___________ Below are some of the main proposals of Milton Friedman. I highly respected his work. David J. Theroux said this about Milton Friedman’s view concerning […]

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“Friedman Friday,” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

December 7, 2012 – 5:55 am

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Defending Milton Friedman

July 31, 2012 – 6:45 am

What a great defense of Milton Friedman!!!!   Defaming Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg This article appeared in Reason Online on September 26, 2008  PRINT PAGE  CITE THIS      Sans Serif      Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is […]

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Milton and Rose Friedman “Two Lucky People”

July 31, 2012 – 6:43 am

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 2 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 26, 2011 2nd half of 1994 interview. ________________ I have a lot of respect for the Friedmans.Two Lucky People by Milton and Rose Friedman reviewed by David Frum — October 1998. However, I liked this review below better. It […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

Video clip:Milton Friedman discusses his view of numerous political figures and policy issues in (Part 2)

July 25, 2012 – 2:16 am

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 1 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 25, 2011 Says Federal Reserve should be abolished, criticizes Keynes. One of Friedman’s best interviews, discussion spans Friedman’s career and his view of numerous political figures and public policy issues. ___________________ Here is a review of “Two Lucky People.” […]

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Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

July 24, 2012 – 10:01 am

Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty  by V. Sundaram   Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Edit | Comments (0)

“The Failure of Socialism” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

June 4, 2012 – 1:59 pm

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax

Volume 1: Power of the Market Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Anatomy of a Crisis
Volume 4: From Cradle to Grave
Volume 5: Created Equal
Volume 6: What’s Wrong With Our Schools?
Volume 7: Who Protects the Consumer?
Volume 8: Who Protects the Worker?
Volume 9: How to Cure Inflation
Volume 10: How to Stay Free

Updated 1990 Series:
Volume 1: The Power of the Market
Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Freedom & Prosperity
Volume 4: The Failure of Socialism
Volume 5: Created Equal

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November 10, 2017 – 12:01 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

HUGH HEFNER WAS A MODERN DAY KING SOLOMON AND I TOLD HIM THAT OVER AND OVER (PART 13) Letter from 1-10-16 (Letters were inspired by the sermon series on ECCLESIASTES in 2016 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock)

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Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences, and you can see that said again in the article, “Godliness is Soul-Satisfying.”

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,

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

Ben Parkinson

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

and Brandon Barnard.

Image result for fellowship bible church mark henry

Today’s letter is based on a sermon by Ben Parkinson.

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January 10, 2016

Dear Mr. Hefner,

I THOUGHT OF YOU TODAY HUGH WHEN OUR TEACHING PASTOR Ben Parkinson delivered his message  on ECCLESIASTES on the subject of WISDOM at our church FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH.

HUGH, You are an intellectual person who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949 with a degree in Psychology. I read on CNN’S website that you also attended the ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO in 1946. My niece is now in her third year at Columbia College in Chicago finishing up an art degree.

CNN also said:

The Playboy message appears in the 1953 premiere issue: “We like our apartment. We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex…”

You have always tried to emphasize the intellectual aspect of your life. In your discussion with William F. Buckley on FIRING LINE you demonstrated your intellectual abilities and I am glad that you do not shy away from doing so. Today I want to ask you to match your wit with King Solomon’s words from 3000 years ago. Here are some of the points that Ben made in his sermon this morning:

SEEING EARTHLY WISDOM AS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING ULTIMATELY LETS US DOWN.

  1. Wisdom can’t give us eternal life. 

 Ecclesiastes 2:14-16

14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them.  16 B How the wise dies just like the fool!

Ecclesiastes 9:1-6

Death Comes to All

9 But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil,[a] to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, andmadness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.

2. Wisdom can’t guarantee us a better life.

Ecclesiastes 2:15

15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For mandoes not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

3. Wisdom can’t secure us a lasting legacy.

Ecclesiastes 2:16 A

16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten.

4. Wisdom can’t be mastered.

Ecclesiastes 12:11-12

11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

Pursue wisdom and knowledge, because it’s better than living without it. 

Submit your wisdom to God because heavenly wisdom is greater then earthly wisdom. 

Ecclesiastes 12:11-12

11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Let wisdom point us to the ultimate wisdom….JESUS! (Solomon points to God and life ABOVE THE SUN in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Christ the Wisdom and Power of God

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
    and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach[a] to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1 Corinthians 2:6-9

Wisdom from the Spirit

6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
    nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

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Francis Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.” THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MODERN DAY EVOLUTIONISTS TELL US WHAT HAS DETERMINED THE PAST AND WILL DETERMINE THE FUTURE AND THAT IS “Time plus Chance plus Matter.”

As you know Solomon was searching for  for meaning in life in what I call the 6 big L words in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He 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).

Here is his final conclusion concerning LEARNING:

ECCLESIASTES 1:12-18, 2:12-17 LEARNING

12 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done UNDER THE SUN, and behold, all is vanity[g] and a striving after wind.[h]

15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,
    and what is lacking cannot be counted.

16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,
    and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

12 So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. 13 Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done UNDER THE SUN was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

HUGH why not take a few minutes and just read the short chapter of Psalms 22 that was written hundreds of years before the Romans even invented the practice of Crucifixion. 1000 years BC the Jews had the practice of stoning people but we read in this chapter a graphic description of Christ dying on the cross. How do you explain that without looking ABOVE THE SUN to God. Ecclesiastes was written to those who wanted to examine life UNDER THE SUN without God in the picture and Solomon’s conclusion in the final chapter was found in Ecclesiastes 12 when he looked at life ABOVE THE SUN:

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

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

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

PS: This is the 13th letter I have written to you and again I have taken an aspect of your life and responded with what the Bible has to say on that subject. Your intellectual side is obviously very important to you and the sermon I heard today was on that subject so I thought I would pass it on to you. If you go to http://www.fellowshiponline.com you can click on resources and watch the actual sermon preached by Ben Parkinson on Ecclesiastes. Our pastors will be in this series on Ecclesiastes for several Sundays. Watching our church services may remind you of your childhood when you grew up in the church!!!

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MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2017 FROM NEW ORLEANS  TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 4)

October 18, 2017 – 4:16 am

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 […]

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MY 8 POSTCARDS IN 2017 FROM NEW ORLEANS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 3)

October 17, 2017 – 4:15 am

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)

MY 8 POSTCARDS IN 2017 FROM NEW ORLEANS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 2)

October 16, 2017 – 4:08 am

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 […]

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MY 8 POSTCARDS IN 2017 FROM NEW ORLEANS  TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 1)

October 13, 2017 – 4:07 am

  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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 4)

October 12, 2017 – 1:05 am

_   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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 3)

October 11, 2017 – 4:54 am

_____ 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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 2)

October 10, 2017 – 4:48 am

_____ 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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

MY 4 POSTCARDS IN 2016 FROM VEGAS TO HUGH HEFNER (PART 1)

October 9, 2017 – 3:29 am

_____ 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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted | Edit | Comments (0)

The last 3 letters I wrote to Hugh Hefner compared him to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and his search for the meaning of it all!!! (Part 3)

September 29, 2017 – 10:30 am

|I saw this on the internet on  June 20, 2017   _   Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer | Edit |Comments (0)

The last 3 letters I wrote to Hugh Hefner compared him to King Solomon in Ecclesiastes and his search for the meaning of it all!!! (Part 2)

September 28, 2017 – 7:33 pm

I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___   Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion   During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer, Milton Friedman | Edit| Comments (0)
November 9, 2017 – 5:52 am Categories: Adrian Rogers, Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Post a comment

Tagged Adrian Rogers, Alistair Begg, Ben Parkinson, Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, Billy Graham, Brandon Barnard, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Dan Jarrell, Daniel Akin, Darryl Dash, Ed Young, Ethan Renoe, francis schaeffer, George Critchley, Greg Gillbert, Jr., Ken Whitten, kerry livgren, Kirk Wetsell, Lee Strobel, Mark Henry, Matt Chandler, Nelson Price, Norman L. Geisler, Philip Graham Ryken, R.G.Lee, ravi zacharias, Richard Zowie., Robert Lewis, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Tom Zobrist, Vance Pitman, Walter C. Kaiser |

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 189 Nancy Pearcey book SAVING LEONARDO Part B Featured artist is M.C. Escher

Francis Schaeffer in 1955 opened up L’Abri in Switzerland where he interact with students about what the Bible had to say about modern day culture and the arts. Nancy Pearcey was one of those unbelieving students who spent time there and later put her faith in Christ. She has written a book called Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning and it she quotes Schaeffer a great bit. Below are two episodes from Francis Schaeffer’s film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? that are referenced in her book and then an interview with her about the book. 

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HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 3

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HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 4

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Saving Leonardo: An Interview with Nancy Pearcey

Neocalvinism — By Matthew Lee Anderson on September 1, 2010 at 7:03 am

Nancy Pearcey is perhaps the most famous heir of Francis Schaeffer’s legacy.  Her book Total Truth was both a bestseller and award-winner, which can be a rare combination.  

I was delighted to sit down with her to discuss her latest offering, Saving Leonardo, which is just as unique, thoughtful, and important as her last.

The book is Saving Leonardo. Is he in danger?

I wrote the book to be a survival guide to the varieties of secularism that are undercutting freedom and dignity within our culture today.  The reference to Leonardo functions as a metaphor for the way the arts and popular culture channel worldviews deeply into people’s minds and emotions.

The substance of the book is an exploration of the two major “brands” of secularism today.  It’s a little like Ford and Chevy.  We often think of secularism as a single phenomenon, but there are really two strands:  modernism and postmodernism.

Modernism still reigns in the natural sciences, in fields like biology, chemistry, physics, where the dominant worldview is scientific materialism, which treats humans as little more than biochemical machines.  At the same time, postmodernism is rampant in literature, theology, the arts, and similar disciplines.  It is just as dehumanizing because it tends to treat humans as simply the product of social forces, such as race, gender, and ethnic group.  These two streams have created a pincer movement that is crushing human dignity and liberty.

Is there an intellectual connection between modernism and postmodernism, or is it simply historical?

Modernism has its roots in the Enlightenment, and worldviews that aspire to be scientific all cluster under that brand—empiricism, rationalism, logical positivism, analytic philosophy and so on.  These all lead to forms of reductionism that suggest the only world that is real is the world we can see, touch, taste, or measure.  These worldviews deny the spiritual, the moral, and even the emotional, which they reduce to chemical reactions in the brain.

This is where the subtitle of my book comes from.  Modernism assaults “Mind, Morals, and Meaning” by reducing the mind to the brain, reducing morals to our personal preferences, and reducing the universe to a product of blind, material forces, which implies that it has no ultimate purpose or meaning,

This assault lead to a counter-reaction in the Romantic movement.  The Romantics wanted to preserve a sense of the spiritual, but they moved away from orthodox Christianity and toward pantheism.  This stream of thought has given rise to philosophies like existentialism, postmodernism, and deconstructionism.  Saving Leonardo traces the trajectory of these two strands of modern thought.

How does Saving Leonardo relate to Total Truth?

Total Truth is about how truth itself was divided between facts and values.  As I probed this, though, I realized that the division between facts and values was just the tip of the iceberg.  The Enlightenment tradition focuses on the fact realm: what is empirically verifiable and rationally justifiable.  The Romantic stream tended to care about the values realm:  about morality, justice, and the human spirit.  The fact-value dichotomy functions as a sort of hermeneutical key to nearly all of western thought since the Enlightenment.

A lot of people think that modernism came first and postmodernism came later—that the two are sequential.  But in reality they are two types of thinking that exist side-by-side.  People tend to be modernist in many realms of their lives, like in their finances or their business lives, or in dealing with doctors and their health.  But they are postmodern in their theology, ethics, and the arts.  So we’re really dealing with a split mind.

What makes Saving Leonard unique?

Saving Leonardo asks, Who’s writing the script to your life?  Most people are not reading philosophy books; they’re picking up ideas about life from the books they read, the movies they watch, art, literature, and other cultural forms.  That’s where we are most likely to pick up secular ideas—often without realizing it.  So the second half of the book is filled with illustrations and pictures as a way of helping people understand how ideas are communicated through culture.

Let me give you an example.  During the last presidential campaign, ABC news interviewed several teens at a Christian youth rally.  Many of the teens held biblical convictions on current issues—for example most were pro-life.   But the same teens also supported candidates who are in favor abortion.  To the reporter, that sounded like a contradiction.  So he asked the teens, doesn’t that bother you?

Well, one of them said, “it’s all a matter of personal preference.”

Where did they pick up such a relativistic concept of morality?  These teens are channeling David Hume, the arch-empiricist who said that if all knowledge is a matter of sensation, then even moral truths are really just sensations—what feels good to you.  Personal preference.

Plato said philosophers should rule the world, and they do—hundreds of years after they die.  Eventually their ideas filter down into the culture, and a major conduit is the arts.

You’re pretty critical of the Enlightenment.  Do you think there’s anything in the period that is worth holding on to?

Certainly.  The best parts of the Enlightenment were rooted in a Christian worldview.  The Enlightenment was based on the scientific revolution, but that came out of a Christian understanding of nature and the world. Historians of science have pointed out that no other culture, east or west, ancient or modern, ever talked about law in relation to nature.  The Enlightenment understanding of the “laws of nature” came from the medieval notion that if God is both Creator and Lawgiver, then the creation must be lawful.

These were deeply Christian themes that the Enlightenment took and ran with.  They wanted God’s good gifts, but didn’t want God.  If you go back and read some of the founders of the scientific revolution, most were devout Christians.

Sociologist Rodney Stark did a wonderful study of the scientific revolution and identified the 52 most significant scientists who were not just theorists but did ground-breaking work at the origin of modern science—the “stars” of science. Then he examined their biographical information, and all but two were clearly Christians (and historians actually disagree about one of them).  The only clear skeptic was Edmund Halley.  Most of the founders of modern science held a Christian worldview, and it inspired their scientific work.

How should Christians respond to living in an increasingly post-Christian world?

In any culture, Christians have an obligation to live out a Biblical worldview in every area of life.  This is not a Christian problem, it’s a human problem—because everyone aspires to live an integrated, consistent life.  The universe as a whole is an integrated unity, and that means truth must also be an integrated unity, and should be expressed in everything we do.

How that is fleshed out politically is primarily in being faithful in your own sphere of influence.  It’s like happiness—you don’t find happiness by pursuing it directly.  You find happiness indirectly through building relationships, meeting your obligations, engaging in meaningful work, and so on.  For Christians who aspire to have an impact on their society, the same principle holds.  It’s often the byproduct of simply having a Christian mindset in whatever your calling is, living and acting consistently with your convictions.

There have been a lot of popular critiques of worldview-centered approaches to culture, most notably James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World. How would you respond?

I had written nearly all of Saving Leonardo before Hunter’s book came out, but in the first chapter I actually quote Hunter saying that the reason Christians have failed to have the social impact they hoped for was that they put all their eggs into the basket of politics.  They overlooked the fact that America’s secular elites had already reached an intellectual consensus on contentious social issues like abortion long before any kind of legal or political measures were taken.  In other words, Hunter himself notes that what came first was shift in worldview.  Ideas are born, nurtured, and developed in the universities long before they step out onto the political stage.

The way I put it in Total Truth is that politics is “downstream” from culture.  And the implication is that it’s time to go “upstream” in order to get a handle on the forces that are shaping politics.

In Saving Leonardo I give the famous quote from Todd Gitlin, former president of the radical SDS.  After the student unrest of the 1960s, he said, the Left “marched on the English department, while the Right took the White House.”  Today we must ask:  Which was the more effective strategy?  The English department is now in the White House.

The implication is that the university is the main shaper of culture today.  The intelligentsia holds the reins of power.  This has not always been the case.  America has historically had a reputation for being non-ideological and pragmatic.  As Calvin Coolidge put it, “The business of America is business.”  And what is America’s only home-grown philosophy?  Philosophical pragmatism.  But we are increasingly a knowledge-based society, and that means whoever is in a position to define what counts as “knowledge” will wield social and political power.

Nancy R. Pearcey is professor of worldview studies at Philadelphia Biblical University. Previously she was the Francis A. Schaeffer Scholar at the World Journal-ism Institute, where she taught a worldview course based on her book Total Truth, winner of the 2005 ECPA Gold Medallion Award for best book on Christianity and Society.

_________________________________________________________________

Francis Schaeffer

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Today’s feature is on the artist is M.C.Escher

1/2 The Art of the Impossible: MC Escher and Me – Secret Knowledge

2/2 The Art of the Impossible: MC Escher and Me – Secret Knowledge

M.C. Escher Documentary (by CINEMEDIA-NPS-RNTV) [1999]

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M. C. Escher

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
M. C. Escher
Escher.jpg

M. C. Escher in 1971
Born Maurits Cornelis Escher
17 June 1898
Leeuwarden, Netherlands
Died 27 March 1972 (aged 73)
Laren, Netherlands
Nationality Dutch
Education Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts
Known for Drawing, printmaking
Notable work Relativity, Waterfall, Hand with Reflecting Sphere
Awards Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪts kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər] (About this sound listen);[1] 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972), or commonly M. C. Escher, was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints.

His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, Harold Coxeter and crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation.

Early in his career, he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants such as lichens, all of which he used as details in his artworks. He traveled in Italy and Spain, sketching buildings, townscapes, architecture and the tilings of the Alhambra and the Mezquita of Cordoba, and became steadily more interested in their mathematical structure.

Escher’s art became well known among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture, especially after it was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Apart from being used in a variety of technical papers, his work has appeared on the covers of many books and albums. He was one of the major inspirations of Douglas Hofstadter‘s 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Contents

 [hide] 

  • 1Early life
  • 2Study journeys
  • 3Later life
  • 4Mathematically-inspired work
    • 4.1Tessellation
    • 4.2Geometries
    • 4.3Platonic and other solids
    • 4.4Levels of reality
    • 4.5Infinity and hyperbolic geometry
  • 5Legacy
    • 5.1In art collections
    • 5.2Exhibitions
    • 5.3In mathematics and science
    • 5.4In popular culture
  • 6Selected works
  • 7See also
  • 8Notes
  • 9References
  • 10Further reading
    • 10.1Books
    • 10.2Media
  • 11External links

Early life

Escher’s birth house, now part of the Princessehof Ceramics Museum, in Leeuwarden, Netherlands

Maurits Cornelis[a] Escher was born on 17 June 1898 in Leeuwarden, Friesland, the Netherlands, in a house that forms part of the Princessehof Ceramics Museum today. He was the youngest son of the civil engineer George Arnold Escher and his second wife, Sara Gleichman. In 1903, the family moved to Arnhem, where he attended primary and secondary school until 1918.[2][3] Known to his friends and family as “Mauk”, he was a sickly child, and was placed in a special school at the age of seven; he failed the second grade.[4] Although he excelled at drawing, his grades were generally poor. He took carpentry and piano lessons until he was thirteen years old.[2][3]

In 1918, he went to the Technical College of Delft.[2][3] From 1919 to 1922, Escher attended the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts, learning drawing and the art of making woodcuts.[2] He briefly studied architecture, but he failed a number of subjects (partly due to a persistent skin infection) and switched to decorative arts,[4] studying under the graphic artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita.[5]

Study journeys

Moorish tessellations at the Alhambra inspired Escher’s work with tilings of the plane. He made sketches of this and other Alhambra patterns in 1936.[6]

In 1922, an important year of his life, Escher traveled through Italy, visiting Florence, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena, and Ravello. In the same year he traveled through Spain, visiting Madrid, Toledo, and Granada.[2] He was impressed by the Italian countryside, and in Granada by the Moorish architecture of the fourteenth-century Alhambra. The intricate decorative designs of the Alhambra, based on geometrical symmetries featuring interlocking repetitive patterns in the coloured tiles or sculpted into the walls and ceilings, triggered his interest in the mathematics of tessellation, and became a powerful influence on his work.[7][8]

Escher’s painstaking[b][9] study of the same Moorish tiling in the Alhambra, 1936, demonstrates his growing interest in tessellation.

Escher returned to Italy, and lived in Rome from 1923 to 1935. While in Italy, Escher met Jetta Umiker – a Swiss woman, like himself attracted to Italy – whom he married in 1924. The couple settled in Rome where their first son, Giorgio (George) Arnaldo Escher, named after his grandfather, was born. Escher and Jetta later had two more sons: Arthur and Jan.[2][3]

He travelled frequently, visiting (among other places) Viterbo in 1926, the Abruzzi in 1927 and 1929, Corsica in 1928 and 1933, Calabria in 1930, the Amalfi coast in 1931 and 1934, Cargano and Sicily in 1932 and 1935. The townscapes and landscapes of these places feature prominently in his artworks. In May and June 1936, Escher travelled back to Spain, revisiting the Alhambra and spending days at a time making detailed drawings of its mosaic patterns. It was here that he became fascinated to the point of obsession with tessellation, explaining:[5][9]

It remains an extremely absorbing activity, a real mania to which I have become addicted, and from which I sometimes find it hard to tear myself away.[9]

The sketches he made in the Alhambra formed a major source for his work from that time on.[9] He also studied the architecture of the Mezquita, the Moorish mosque of Cordoba. This turned out to be the last of his long study journeys; after 1937, his artworks were created in his studio rather than in the field. His art correspondingly changed sharply from being mainly observational, with a strong emphasis on the realistic details of things seen in nature and architecture, to being the product of his geometric analysis and his visual imagination. All the same, even his early work already shows his interest in the nature of space, the unusual, perspective, and multiple points of view.[5][9]

Later life

In 1935, the political climate in Italy (under Mussolini) became unacceptable to Escher. He had no interest in politics, finding it impossible to involve himself with any ideals other than the expressions of his own concepts through his own particular medium, but he was averse to fanaticism and hypocrisy. When his eldest son, George, was forced at the age of nine to wear a Ballila uniform in school, the family left Italy and moved to Château-d’Œx, Switzerland, where they remained for two years.[10]

The Netherlands post office had Escher design a semi-postal stamp for the “Air Fund” in 1935[11] and again in 1949 he designed Netherlands stamps. These were for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Postal Union; a different design was used by Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles for the same commemoration.[12][13]

Escher’s last work, Snakes, 1969

Escher, who had been very fond of and inspired by the landscapes in Italy, was decidedly unhappy in Switzerland. In 1937, the family moved again, to Uccle (Ukkel), a suburb of Brussels, Belgium.[2][3] World War II forced them to move in January 1941, this time to Baarn, Netherlands, where Escher lived until 1970.[2] Most of Escher’s best-known works date from this period. The sometimes cloudy, cold and wet weather of the Netherlands allowed him to focus intently on his work.[2] After 1953, Escher lectured widely. A planned series of lectures in North America in 1962 was cancelled after an illness, and he stopped creating artworks for a time,[2] but the illustrations and text for the lectures were later published as part of the book Escher on Escher.[14] He was awarded the Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1955.[2]

In July 1969 he finished his last work, a large woodcut with threefold rotational symmetry called Snakes, in which snakes wind through a pattern of linked rings. These shrink to infinity toward both the center and the edge of a circle. It was exceptionally elaborate, being printed using three blocks, each rotated three times about the center of the image and precisely aligned to avoid gaps and overlaps, for a total of nine print operations for each finished print. The image encapsulates Escher’s love of symmetry, of interlocking patterns, and at the end of his life, of his approach to infinity.[15][16][17] The care Escher took in creating and printing this woodcut can be seen in a video recording.[18]

Escher moved to the Rosa Spier Huis in Laren in 1970, an artists’ retirement home in which he had his own studio. He died there on 27 March 1972, aged 73.[2][3] He is buried at the New Cemetery in Baarn.[19][20]

Mathematically-inspired work

Further information: Mathematics and art

Escher’s work is inescapably mathematical. This has caused a disconnect between his full-on popular fame and the lack of esteem with which he has been viewed in the art world. His originality and mastery of graphic techniques is respected, but his works have been thought too intellectual and insufficiently lyrical. Movements such as conceptual art have to a degree reversed the art world’s attitude to intellectuality and lyricism, but this did not rehabilitate Escher because traditional critics still disliked his narrative themes and his use of perspective. However, these same qualities made his work highly attractive to the public.[21] Escher is not the first artist to explore mathematical themes: Parmigianino (1503–1540) had explored spherical geometry and reflection in his 1524 Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, depicting his own image in a curved mirror, while William Hogarth‘s 1754 Satire on False Perspective, foreshadows Escher’s playful exploration of errors in perspective.[22][23] Another early artistic forerunner is Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), whose dark “fantastical”[24] prints such as The Drawbridge in his Carceri (“Prisons”) sequence depict perspectives into complex architecture with many stairs and ramps, peopled by walking figures.[24][25]Only with 20th century movements such as Cubism, De Stijl, Dadaism and Surrealism did mainstream art start to explore Escher-like ways of looking at the world with multiple simultaneous viewpoints.[21] However, while Escher had much in common with, for example, Magritte‘s surrealism, he did not make contact with any of these movements.[26]

  • Forerunner of Escher’s curved perspectives, geometries, and reflections: Parmigianino‘s Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, 1524

  • Forerunner of Escher’s fantastic endless stairs: Piranesi‘s Carceri Plate VII – The Drawbridge, 1745, reworked 1761

Tessellation

Further information: Tessellation

In his early years, Escher sketched landscapes and nature. He also sketched insects such as ants, bees, grasshoppers and mantises,[27] which appeared frequently in his later work. His early love of Roman and Italian landscapes and of nature created an interest in tessellation, which he called Regular Division of the Plane; this became the title of his 1958 book, complete with reproductions of a series of woodcuts based on tessellations of the plane, in which he described the systematic buildup of mathematical designs in his artworks. He wrote “Mathematicians have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain.”[28]

Hexagonal tessellation with animals: Study of Regular Division of the Plane with Reptiles (1939). Escher reused the design in his 1943 lithograph Reptiles.

After his 1936 journey to the Alhambra and to La Mezquita, Cordoba, where he sketched the Moorish architecture and the tessellated mosaic decorations,[29] Escher began to explore the properties and possibilities of tessellation using geometric grids as the basis for his sketches. He then extended these to form complex interlocking designs, for example with animals such as birds, fish, and reptiles.[30] One of his first attempts at a tessellation was his pencil, India ink and watercolour Study of Regular Division of the Plane with Reptiles (1939), constructed on a hexagonal grid. The heads of the red, green and white reptiles meet at a vertex; the tails, legs and sides of the animals exactly interlock. It was used as the basis for his 1943 lithograph Reptiles.[31]

His first study of mathematics began with papers by George Pólya[32] and by the crystallographer Friedrich Haag[33] on plane symmetry groups, sent to him by his brother Berend, a geologist.[34] He carefully studied the 17 wallpaper groups, and created periodic tilings with 43 drawings of different types of symmetry.[c] From this point on he developed a mathematical approach to expressions of symmetry in his art works using his own notation. Starting in 1937, he created woodcuts based on the 17 groups. His Metamorphosis I (1937) began a series of designs that told a story through the use of pictures. In Metamorphosis I, he transformed convex polygons into regular patterns in a plane to form a human motif. He extended the approach in his piece Metamorphosis III, which is four metres long.[9][35]

In 1941 and 1942, Escher summarized his findings for his own artistic use in a sketchbook, which he labeled (following Haag) Regelmatige vlakverdeling in asymmetrische congruente veelhoeken (“Regular division of the plane with asymmetric congruent polygons”).[36] The mathematician Doris Schattschneider unequivocally described this notebook as recording “a methodical investigation that can only be termed mathematical research.”[34] She defined the research questions he was following as

(1) What are the possible shapes for a tile that can produce a regular division of the plane, that is, a tile that can fill the plane with its congruent images such that every tile is surrounded in the same manner?
(2) Moreover, in what ways are the edges of such a tile related to each other by isometries?[34]

Geometries

Further information: perspective (geometry) and curvilinear perspective

Multiple viewpoints and impossible stairs: Relativity, 1953

Although Escher did not have mathematical training—his understanding of mathematics was largely visual and intuitive—his art had a strong mathematical component, and several of the worlds which he drew were built around impossible objects. After 1924, Escher turned to sketching landscapes in Italy and Corsica with irregular perspectives that are impossible in natural form. His first print of an impossible reality was Still Life and Street (1937); impossible stairs and multiple visual and gravitational perspectives feature in popular works such as Relativity (1953). House of Stairs (1951) attracted the interest of the mathematician Roger Penrose and his father the biologist Lionel Penrose. In 1956 they published a paper, “Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion” and later sent Escher a copy. Escher replied, admiring the Penroses’ continuously rising flights of steps, and enclosed a print of Ascending and Descending (1960). The paper also contained the tribar or Penrose triangle, which Escher used repeatedly in his lithograph of a building that appears to function as a perpetual motion machine, Waterfall (1961).[37][38][39][40]

Escher was interested enough in Hieronymus Bosch‘s 1500 triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights to recreate part of its right-hand panel, Hell, as a lithograph in 1935. He reused the figure of a Mediaeval woman in a two-pointed headdress and a long gown in his lithograph Belvedere in 1958; the image is, like many of his other “extraordinary invented places”,[41] peopled with “jesters, knaves and contemplators”.[41] Escher was thus not only interested in possible or impossible geometry, but was in his own words a “reality enthusiast”;[41] he combined “formal astonishment with a vivid and idiosyncratic vision.”[41]

Perpetual motion machine with Penrose triangles: Waterfall, 1961

Escher worked primarily in the media of lithographs and woodcuts, though the few mezzotints he made are considered to be masterpieces of the technique. In his graphic art, he portrayed mathematical relationships among shapes, figures and space. Integrated into his prints were mirror images of cones, spheres, cubes, rings and spirals.[42]

Escher was also fascinated by mathematical objects like the Möbius strip, which has only one surface. His wood engraving Möbius Strip II (1963) depicts a chain of ants marching for ever around over what at any one place are the two opposite faces of the object—which are seen on inspection to be parts of the strip’s single surface. In Escher’s own words[43]

An endless ring-shaped band usually has two distinct surfaces, one inside and one outside. Yet on this strip nine red ants crawl after each other and travel the front side as well as the reverse side. Therefore the strip has only one surface.[43]

The mathematical influence in his work became prominent after 1936, when, having boldly asked the Adria Shipping Company if he could sail with them as travelling artist in return for making drawings of their ships, they surprisingly agreed, and he sailed the Mediterranean, becoming interested in order and symmetry. Escher described this journey, including his repeat visit to the Alhambra, as “the richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped.”[9]

Escher’s interest in curvilinear perspective was encouraged by his friend and “kindred spirit”[44] the art historian and artist Albert Flocon, in another example of constructive mutual influence. Flocon identified Escher as a “thinking artist”[44] alongside Piero della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Wenzel Jamnitzer, Abraham Bosse, Girard Desargues, and Père Nicon.[44] Flocon was delighted by Escher’s Grafiek en tekeningen (“Graphics in Drawing”), which he read in 1959. This stimulated Flocon and André Barre to correspond with Escher, and to write the book La Perspective curviligne (“Curvilinear perspective“).[45]

Platonic and other solids

Sculpture of the small stellated dodecahedron as in Escher’s 1952 work Gravitation. University of Twente

Escher often incorporated three-dimensional objects such as the Platonic solids such as spheres, tetrahedons and cubes into his works, as well as mathematical objects like cylinders and stellated polyhedra. In the print Reptiles, he combined two and three-dimensional images. In one of his papers, Escher emphasized the importance of dimensionality:[46]

The flat shape irritates me – I feel like telling my objects, you are too fictitious, lying there next to each other static and frozen: do something, come off the paper and show me what you are capable of! … So I make them come out of the plane. … My objects … may finally return to the plane and disappear into their place of origin.[46]

Escher’s artwork is especially well liked by mathematicians like Doris Schattschneider and scientists like Roger Penrose, who enjoy his use of polyhedra and geometric distortions.[34] For example, in Gravitation, animals climb around a stellated dodecahedron.[47]

The two towers of Waterfall‘s impossible building are topped with compound polyhedra, one a compound of three cubes, the other a stellated rhombic dodecahedron known as Escher’s solid. Escher had used this solid in his 1948 woodcut Stars, which also contains all five of the Platonic solids and various stellated solids, representing stars; the central solid is animated by chameleons climbing through the frame as it whirls in space. Escher possessed a 6 cm refracting telescope and was a keen enough amateur astronomer to have recorded observations of binary stars.[48][49][50]

Levels of reality

Drawing Hands, 1948

Escher’s artistic expression was created from images in his mind, rather than directly from observations and travels to other countries. His interest in the multiple levels of reality in art is seen in works such as Drawing Hands (1948), where two hands are shown, each drawing the other. The critic Steven Poole commented that[41]

It is a neat depiction of one of Escher’s enduring fascinations: the contrast between the two-dimensional flatness of a sheet of paper and the illusion of three-dimensional volume that can be created with certain marks. In Drawing Hands, space and the flat plane coexist, each born from and returning to the other, the black magic of the artistic illusion made creepily manifest.[41]

Infinity and hyperbolic geometry

Doris Schattschneider‘s reconstruction of the diagram of hyperbolic tiling sent by Escher to the mathematician H. S. M. Coxeter[34]

In 1954, the International Congress of Mathematicians met in Amsterdam, and N. G. de Bruin organized a display of Escher’s work at the Stedelijk Museum for the participants. Both Roger Penrose and H. S. M. Coxeter were deeply impressed with Escher’s intuitive grasp of mathematics. Inspired by Relativity, Penrose devised his tribar, and his father, Lionel Penrose, devised an endless staircase. Roger Penrose sent sketches of both objects to Escher, and the cycle of invention was closed when Escher then created the perpetual motion machine of Waterfall and the endless march of the monk-figures of Ascending and Descending.[34] In 1957, Coxeter obtained Escher’s permission to use two of his drawings in his paper “Crystal symmetry and its generalizations”.[34][51] He sent Escher a copy of the paper; Escher recorded that Coxeter’s figure of a hyperbolic tessellation “gave me quite a shock”: the infinite regular repetition of the tiles in the hyperbolic plane, growing rapidly smaller towards the edge of the circle, was precisely what he wanted to allow him to represent infinity on a two-dimensional plane.[34][52]

Hyperbolic tessellation: Circle Limit III, 1959

Escher carefully studied Coxeter’s figure, marking it up to analyse the successively smaller circles[d] with which (he deduced) it had been constructed. He then constructed a diagram, which he sent to Coxeter, showing his analysis; Coxeter confirmed it was correct, but disappointed Escher with his highly technical reply. All the same, Escher persisted with hyperbolic tiling, which he called “Coxetering”.[34] Among the results were the series of wood engravings Circle Limit I–IV.[34] In 1959, Coxeter published his finding that these works were extraordinarily accurate: “Escher got it absolutely right to the millimeter.”[53]

Legacy

The Escher Museum in The Hague. The poster shows a detail from Day and Night, 1938

Escher’s special way of thinking and rich graphics have had a continuous influence in mathematics and art, as well as in popular culture.

In art collections

The Escher intellectual property is controlled by the M.C. Escher Company. Exhibitions of his artworks are managed separately by the M.C. Escher Foundation.[e]

The primary institutional collections of original works by M.C. Escher are the Escher Museum in The Hague; the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC);[56] the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa);[57] the Israel Museum (Jerusalem);[58] and the Huis ten Bosch (Nagasaki, Japan).[59]

Exhibitions

Poster advertising the first major exhibition of Escher’s work in Britain. Dulwich Picture Gallery, 14 October 2015 – 17 January 2016. The image is based on Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935.[f]

Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for long somewhat neglected in the art world; even in his native Netherlands, he was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held.[41][g] In the twenty-first century, major exhibitions have been held in cities across the world.[62][63][64] An exhibition of his work in Rio de Janeiro however attracted more than 573,000 visitors in 2011;[62] its daily visitor count of 9,677 made it the most visited museum exhibition of the year, anywhere in the world.[65] No major exhibition of Escher’s work was held in Britain until 2015, when the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art ran one in Edinburgh from June to September 2015,[63] moving in October 2015 to the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.[60] The exhibition moved to Italy in 2015–2016, attracting over 500,000 visitors in Rome and Bologna, before moving to Treviso[64] and then Milan.[66]

  • Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand, 1977[67]
  • Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1995–1996[68]
  • Capitoline Museums, Rome, 2004–2005[69]
  • Art Gallery of Alberta, 2010[70]
  • Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 2011[71]
  • Akron Art Museum, Ohio, 2011[72]
  • Glenbow Museum, 2013[73]
  • Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2013–2014[74]
  • National Palace Museum, Taiwan, 2014[75]
  • Chiostro del Bramante, Rome, 2014–2015[76]
  • National Gallery of Canada, 2014–2015[77]
  • Currier Museum of Art, New Hampshire, 2014–2015[78]
  • Salvador Dalí Museum, Florida, August 2015–January 2016[79]
  • North Carolina Museum of Art, October 2015–January 2016[80]
  • Royal Palace of Milan, Italy, June 2016–January 2017[66]

In mathematics and science

Wall tableau of one of Escher’s bird tessellations at the Princessehof Ceramics Museum in Leeuwarden

Doris Schattschneider identifies 11 strands of mathematical and scientific research anticipated or directly inspired by Escher. These are the classification of regular tilings using the edge relationships of tiles: two-color and two-motif tilings (counterchange symmetry or antisymmetry); color symmetry (in crystallography); metamorphosis or topological change; covering surfaces with symmetric patterns; Escher’s algorithm (for generating patterns using decorated squares); creating tile shapes; local versus global definitions of regularity; symmetry of a tiling induced by the symmetry of a tile; orderliness not induced by symmetry groups; the filling of the central void in Escher’s lithograph Print Gallery by H. Lenstra and B. de Smit.[34]

Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter,[81] published in 1979, discusses the ideas of self-reference and strange loops, drawing on a wide range of artistic and scientific sources including Escher’s art and the music of J. S. Bach.

The asteroid 4444 Escher was named in Escher’s honor in 1985.[82]

In popular culture

Main article: M. C. Escher in popular culture

Escher’s fame in popular culture grew when his work was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.[83] Escher’s works have appeared on many album covers including The Scaffold‘s 1969 L the P with Ascending and Descending; Mott the Hoople‘s eponymous 1969 record with Reptiles, Beaver & Krause‘s 1970 In A Wild Sanctuary with Three Worlds; and Mandrake Memorial‘s 1970 Puzzle with House of Stairs and (inside) Curl Up.[h] His works have similarly been used on many book covers, including some editions of Edwin Abbott‘s Flatland which used Three Spheres; E. H. Gombrich‘s Meditations on a Hobby Horse with Horseman; Pamela Hall’s Heads You Lose with Plane Filling 1; Patrick A. Horton’s Mastering the Power of Story with Drawing Hands; Erich Gamma et al.’s Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-oriented software with Swans; and Arthur Markman’s Knowledge Representation with Reptiles.[i] The “World of Escher” markets posters, neckties, T-shirts, and jigsaw puzzles of Escher’s artworks.[86] Both Austria and the Netherlands have issued postage stamps commemorating the artist and his works.[13][87]

Selected works

  • Trees, ink (1920)
  • St. Bavo’s, Haarlem, ink (1920)
  • Flor de Pascua (The Easter Flower), woodcut/book illustrations (1921)
  • Eight Heads, woodcut (1922)
  • Dolphins also known as Dolphins in Phosphorescent Sea, woodcut (1923)
  • Tower of Babel, woodcut (1928)
  • Street in Scanno, Abruzzi, lithograph (1930)
  • Castrovalva, lithograph (1930)
  • The Bridge, lithograph (1930)
  • Palizzi, Calabria, woodcut (1930)
  • Pentedattilo, Calabria, lithograph (1930)
  • Atrani, Coast of Amalfi, lithograph (1931)
  • Ravello and the Coast of Amalfi, lithograph (1931)
  • Covered Alley in Atrani, Coast of Amalfi, wood engraving (1931)
  • Phosphorescent Sea, lithograph (1933)
  • Still Life with Spherical Mirror, lithograph (1934)
  • Hand with Reflecting Sphere also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror, lithograph (1935)
  • Inside St. Peter’s, wood engraving (1935)
  • Portrait of G.A. Escher, lithograph (1935)
  • “Hell”, lithograph, (copied from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch) (1935)
  • Regular Division of the Plane, series of drawings that continued until the 1960s (1936)
  • Still Life and Street (his first impossible reality), woodcut (1937)
  • Metamorphosis I, woodcut (1937)
  • Day and Night, woodcut (1938)
  • Cycle, lithograph (1938)
  • Sky and Water I, woodcut (1938)
  • Sky and Water II, lithograph (1938)
  • Metamorphosis II, woodcut (1939–1940)
  • Verbum (Earth, Sky and Water), lithograph (1942)
  • Reptiles, lithograph (1943)
  • Ant, lithograph (1943)
  • Encounter, lithograph (1944)
  • Doric Columns, wood engraving (1945)
  • Balcony, lithograph (1945)
  • Three Spheres I, wood engraving (1945)
  • Magic Mirror, lithograph (1946)
  • Three Spheres II, lithograph (1946)
  • Another World Mezzotint also known as Other World Gallery, mezzotint (1946)
  • Eye, mezzotint (1946)
  • Another World also known as Other World, wood engraving and woodcut (1947)
  • Crystal, mezzotint (1947)
  • Up and Down also known as High and Low, lithograph (1947)
  • Drawing Hands, lithograph (1948)
  • Dewdrop, mezzotint (1948)
  • Stars, wood engraving (1948)
  • Double Planetoid, wood engraving (1949)
  • Order and Chaos (Contrast), lithograph (1950)
  • Rippled Surface, woodcut and linoleum cut (1950)
  • Curl-up, lithograph (1951)
  • House of Stairs, lithograph (1951)
  • House of Stairs II, lithograph (1951)
  • Puddle, woodcut (1952)
  • Gravitation, (1952)
  • Dragon, woodcut lithograph and watercolor (1952)
  • Cubic Space Division, lithograph (1952)
  • Relativity, lithograph (1953)
  • Tetrahedral Planetoid, woodcut (1954)
  • Compass Rose (Order and Chaos II), lithograph (1955)
  • Convex and Concave, lithograph (1955)
  • Three Worlds, lithograph (1955)
  • Print Gallery, lithograph (1956)
  • Mosaic II, lithograph (1957)
  • Cube with Magic Ribbons, lithograph (1957)
  • Belvedere, lithograph (1958)
  • Sphere Spirals, woodcut (1958)
  • Circle Limit III, woodcut (1959)
  • Ascending and Descending, lithograph (1960)
  • Waterfall, lithograph (1961)
  • Möbius Strip II (Red Ants) woodcut (1963)
  • Knot, pencil and crayon (1966)
  • Metamorphosis III, woodcut (1967–1968)
  • Snakes, woodcut (1969)

See also

  • iconArt portal
  • iconVisual Arts portal
  • Victor Vasarely

Notes

  1. Jump up^ “We named him Maurits Cornelis after S.’s [Sara’s] beloved uncle Van Hall, and called him ‘Mauk’ for short …”, Diary of Escher’s father, quoted in M. C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work, Abradale Press, 1981, p. 9.
  2. Jump up^ The circled cross at the top of the image may indicate that the drawing is inverted, as can be seen by comparison with the photograph; the neighbouring image has a circled cross at the bottom. Likely, Escher turned the drawing block as convenient while holding it in his hand in the Alhambra.
  3. Jump up^ Escher made it clear that he did not understand the abstract concept of a group, but he did grasp the nature of the 17 wallpaper groups in practice.[9]
  4. Jump up^ Schattschneider notes that Coxeter observed in March 1964 that the white arcs in Circle Limit III “were not, as he and others had assumed, badly rendered hyperbolic lines but rather were branches of equidistant curves.”[34]
  5. Jump up^ In 1969, Escher’s business advisor, Jan W. Vermeulen, author of a biography on the artist, established the M.C. Escher Foundation, and transferred into this entity virtually all of Escher’s unique work as well as hundreds of his original prints. These works were lent by the Foundation to the Hague Museum. Upon Escher’s death, his three sons dissolved the Foundation, and they became partners in the ownership of the art works. In 1980, this holding was sold to an American art dealer and the Hague Museum. The Museum obtained all of the documentation and the smaller portion of the art works. The copyrights remained the possession of Escher’s three sons – who later sold them to Cordon Art, a Dutch company. Control was subsequently transferred to The M.C. Escher Company B.V. of Baarn, Netherlands, which licenses use of the copyrights on all of Escher’s art and on his spoken and written text. A related entity, the M.C. Escher Foundation of Baarn, promotes Escher’s work by organizing exhibitions, publishing books and producing films about his life and work.[54][55]
  6. Jump up^ The poster for the exhibition is based on Hand with Reflecting Sphere, 1935, which shows Escher in his house reflected in a handheld sphere, thus illustrating the artist, his interest in levels of reality in art (e.g., is the hand in the foreground more real than the reflected one?), perspective, and spherical geometry.[23][60][61]
  7. Jump up^ Steven Poole comments “The artist [Escher] who created some of the most memorable images of the 20th century was never fully embraced by the art world.”[41]
  8. Jump up^ These and further albums are listed by Coulthart.[84]
  9. Jump up^ These and further books are listed by Bailey.[85]

Further reading

Books

  • Ernst, Bruno; Escher, M. C. (1995). The Magic Mirror of M. C. Escher. Taschen America. ISBN 1-886155-00-3.
  • Escher, M. C. (1971). The Graphic Work of M. C. Escher. Ballantine.
  • Locher, J. L. (1971). The World of M. C. Escher. Abrams. ISBN 0-451-79961-5.
  • Locher, J. L. (1981). M. C. Escher: His Life and Complete Graphic Work. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-8113-3.
  • Schattschneider, Doris; Walker, Wallace (1987). M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles. Pomegranate Communications. ISBN 0-906212-28-6.
  • Schattschneider, Doris (2004). M. C. Escher : Visions of Symmetry. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-4308-5.
  • Schattschneider, Doris; Emmer, Michele, eds. (2003). M. C. Escher’s Legacy: a Centennial Celebration. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-42458-X.
  • Veldhuysen, W. F. (2006). The Magic of M. C. Escher. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-51289-0.

Media

  • Escher, M. C. The Fantastic World of M. C. Escher, Video collection of examples of the development of his art, and interviews, Director, Michele Emmer.

External links

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  • Media from Commons
  • Quotations from Wikiquote
  • “M.C. Escher official website”.
  • “Math and the Art of M.C. Escher”. USA: SLU.
  • Artful Mathematics: The Heritage of M. C. Escher (PDF). USA: AMS.
  • Escherization problem and its solution. CA: University of Waterloo.
  • “Escher for Real”. IL: Technion. Archived from the original on 20 January 2008. — physical replicas of some of Escher’s “impossible” designs
  • “M.C. Escher: Life and Work”. USA: NGA.
  • “US Copyright Protection for UK Artists”. UK. Copyright issue regarding Escher from the Artquest Artlaw archive.
  • Schattschneider, Doris (June–July 2010). “The Mathematical Side of M. C. Escher” (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. USA. 57 (6): 706–18. Retrieved 9 July 2010.
  • Gallery of tessellations by M.C. Escher
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  • WorldCat Identities
  • VIAF: 5051087
  • LCCN: n79007761
  • ISNI: 0000 0001 0865 0831
  • GND: 118531069
  • SUDOC: 026852934
  • BNF: cb12604568f (data)
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  • CiNii: DA00887548
  • RKD: 26631

Categories:

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HUGH HEFNER WAS A MODERN DAY KING SOLOMON AND I TOLD HIM THAT OVER AND OVER (PART 12) Letter from 4-29-16 (based on 1996 sermons from FELLOWSHIP BIBLE OF LITTLE ROCK)

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Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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.

Pastor Jamie Smedsrud noted:
King Solomon had more money than Bill Gates, more girls than Hugh Hefner, more power than any other person. He tried it all and had it all. But near the end of his life he said that it was all like “chasing the wind.”

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.

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Image result for adrian rogers

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

Image result for ravi zacharias ecclesiastes

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Dan Jarrell pictured below:

Image result for FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH DAN JARRELL

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Image result for robert lewis bill parkinson

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Robert Lewis pictured below:

Image result for robert lewis fellowship bible church

Bill Wellons pictured below:

Image result for bill wellons fellowship bible church

Bill Parkinson pictured below

Image result for bill parkinson fellowship bible church

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The much of the material for the 2 letters below was taken from a 1996 sermon on the Book of Ecclesiastes by Robert Lewis at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock.

April 29, 2016

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

Dear Mr. Hefner,

I know that you are a big fan of the Beatles and they have been big fans of yours over the years. In fact, I was told that both Ringo and John were visitors to your Playboy Mansion. Looking back at the Beatles’ lives it is obvious that they all went through a time in the 1960’s when they tried the playboy lifestyle but they all chose later to be in committed marriages.

On You Tube in the video Paul McCartney (1/9) – Wingspan at 5:18 mark Paul said At a  a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.”  Paul went on to marry Linda Eastman and they stayed together until her death April 17, 1998. They were married almost 30 years and had three children together ( Mary Anna, Stella Nina, and James Louis) plus Paul adopted Heather Louise who had been born earlier.

The difference in the hard work it takes to make a  marriage work with one lady versus the laziness involved with just trying to maximize the amount of sex you get with various women is very real. Both you and King Solomon can say that you both have bedded over 1000 women but Francis Schaeffer rightly noted, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”

In the You Tube video Ask Hef Anything: Breakup with Holly you asserted: “We (Holly and I) had just celebrated our 7th anniversary together and maybe the natural cycle of relationships is they wear out at the end of 7 years. They talk about a 7 year itch….Kimberly is a wonderful mother but she is not very good at marriage. I don’t know if I am very good at marriage or not. I never have been in a situation where I had a chance to find out, but I am certainly good at romance and it is love I am looking for.”

I SEE SO MANY SIMILARITIES BETWEEN YOU AND KING SOLOMON WITH THAT COMMENT.

Ecclesiastes 2:8-9The Message (MSG)

I piled up silver and gold,
        loot from kings and kingdoms.
I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song,
    and—most exquisite of all pleasures—
    voluptuous maidens for my bed.

1 Kings 11:1-3 English Standard Version (ESV)

11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, 3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:11 sums up his search for meaning in the area of the Sexual Revolution with these words, “…behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”

You like Solomon have defined your life by the volume of sex that you have had and you both have entered your last years with regrets.

A while back I sent you the sermon THE PLAYBOY’S PAYDAY  by Adrian Rogers and that  sermon was based on the fifth chapter of Proverbs which I want to encourage you to read today. Rogers went on to say that the playboy lifestyle was bankrupt of lasting satisfaction and that God’s plan of marriage was best. In fact, the Book of Ecclesiastes shows that Solomon came to the conclusion that nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20)

HUGH, I have just got finished writing a letter to Paul McCartney since he is coming to Little Rock this week to do a concert that I will attending. In this letter I did refer to you several times and I have enclosed a copy for you to see.

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

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

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

PS: This is the 33rd letter I have written to you and I have again responded to a quote that you had made earlier.

RINGO, HEF AND BARBIE:

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Art attack ... (l-r) tycoon Hefner, a Matisse and Lennon
Art attack … (l-r) tycoon Hefner, a Matisse and Lennon put his cigarette out in the Matisse picture while visiting the Playboy Mansion
Lennon picture: REX
Paul McCartney  Wingspan – talking with Mary on You Tube
Below Francis Schaeffer holds up Beatles SGT PEPPER album during the film HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Episode 7
Francis Schaeffer below in HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? film series
Marilyn Monroe was featured on cover of SGT PEP, just one of the 6 sex symbols who made it on the cover
Hugh Hefner makes cameo appearance in Mel Brooks movie THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART ONE and he says, “I am very excited about it. It is a new concept. It is called a centerfold.”
King Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiates
https://youtu.be/DmeUuoxyt_E
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April 25, 2016

Paul McCartney
MPL Music Publishing, Inc.
41 West 54th Street
New York, NY 10019-5404

Dear Paul,

My family and I are really thrilled that you are performing in Little Rock on April 30th and we will be the first to be seated that day when the doors are open. I wanted to say how much we respect you as a family man, but we were starting to wonder in the 1960’s how you would eventually live your life. This letter today was taken mostly from my recent blog post at http://www.thedailyhatch.org on the Beatles and the 1960’s sexual revolution. 

Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. This sounds like what Hugh Hefner set out to do also with his Playboy Clubs. Francis Schaeffer has rightly noted  that Hefner’s goal  with the “playboy mentality is just to smash the puritanical ethnic.”No wonder Ringo Starr and John Lennon were later visitors at the Playboy Mansion. 

This climaxed in 1968 with these words: Why don’t we do it in the road?, No one will be watching us, Why don’t we do it in the road?

On You Tube in the video Paul McCartney (1/9) – Wingspan at 5:18 mark you said At a  a certain age you start to think “Wow, I have to get serious. I can’t just be a playboy all of my life.” HERE YOU ARE SHOWING HOW EMPTY YOU FOUND THE PLAYBOY EXPERIENCE AND HOW YOU WANTED SOMETHING MORE MEANINGFUL!!!!!!!!

During the 1960’s the Beatles were searching for a lasting meaning for their lives and they wanted to see if the Sexual Revolution of the 1960’s was a piece of the puzzle that was missing for them.  No wonder in the video THE AGE OF NON-REASON (Episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?) Francis 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.” 

Paul I want to encourage you to go to You Tube and look up the video How Should We then Live Episode 7 small which is only 28:35 long and watch it. 

When I think of the Beatles’ efforts to find meaning for the lives in the 1960’s it reminds me of King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes.  Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “UNDER THE SUN” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘UNDER THE SUN.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.” 

HERE BELOW IS SOLOMON’S SEARCH IN THE AREA OF THE 6 “L” WORDS. He looked into  learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries,  and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). TODAY WE WANT TO LOOK AT SOLOMON’S SEARCH INTO THE WORD “LADIES.” 

Ecclesiastes 2:8-10The Message (MSG)

I piled up silver and gold,
        loot from kings and kingdoms.
I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song,
    and—most exquisite of all pleasures—
    voluptuous maidens for my bed.

9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!

1 Kings 11:1-3 English Standard Version (ESV)

11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. 3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”

King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:11 sums up his search for meaning in the area of the Sexual Revolution with these words, “…behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained UNDER THE SUN.”

 Adrian Rogers said in sermon, “Playboy’s Payday,” these words:

Do you know what Hugh Hefner said on another occasion? He was reminiscing. Here is this guy who has all of these girls around  him, all of this booze, all of these casinos and presumably can have any   sensual pleasure he wants. He said, You know, in the next ten years I would rather meet a girl and fall in love and have her fall in love with me than to make another one hundred million dollars.   But I fear the man doesn’t know what love is.  I feel that he’s missed it.  What he’s saying is, I’ve got it all, but I don’t have satisfaction!  There’s something that’s worth more than a hundred million dollars to me, and I don’t have it!

Marilyn Monroe, the sex goddess who took her own life, said, “I hate sex.”  Everybody says, “Oh, look at the pleasure that she’s having.” 

Adrian Rogers’ sermon was based on the fifth chapter of Proverbs which I want to encourage you to read today. Rogers went on to say that the playboy lifestyle was bankrupt of lasting satisfaction and that God’s plan of marriage was best. In fact, the Book of Ecclesiastes shows that Solomon came to the conclusion that nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20). You can only find a lasting meaning to your life by looking above the sun and bring God back into the picture.

Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”

In the History Channel TV Special (about Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Lifestyle)  “HOW PLAYBOY CHANGED THE WORLD” at the 49 min mark the narrator says “The so-called WAGES OF SIN were now paying off.” This was referring to the growth in profits at  PLAYBOY MAGAZINE. The narrator turned  Romans 6:23 totally around when it really says, “FOR THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” However, Galatians 6:7 asserts, “Be not deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

Robert Lewis pictured below:

Image result for robert lewis fellowship bible church

Robert Lewis on 4-14-96 as a teaching pastor at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock delivered a sermon entitled LIFE UNDER THE SUN which was based on Ecclesiastes chapters 1 and 2. Here is a portion of that sermon below:

Solomon wanted to know the meaning of life beyond God in this world. So he tried to live life at the edge or the extreme so to report not like a philosopher in a ivory tower, but he wanted to do that by putting himself personally into these pursuits to see IS THERE ANY OTHER MEANING IN LIFE BESIDES GOD. This is really what he tries to do. Ecclesiastes 1:13, “And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven.” The word SEEK means to do rigorous research and that is what he has done. 

The word EXPLORE means to examine all sides of things and he didn’t do that just as Lab Technician, but Solomon did it the old fashion way. He got personally involved. He researched every category as far as it could go in order to know everything about life. So he didn’t talk about materialism but he became the ultimate materialist...He became the ultimate hedonist. You want to know about sex? Solomon can tell you everything about it….UNDER THE SUN there is no real meaning in any of it. The best life can do is keep delivering to you the empty promise that if you have something else then you will be happy, but the curse is when you get it. Ecclesiastes 2:17, “So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.”

I befriended a man several years ago who was a kind of real Little Rock PLAYBOY. In fact, his lifestyle and sexual escapades were legendary around the city. He was rich, single, hansom and very sophisticated. He told me, “A woman any night and anything your mind can imagine.” Where did it lead him? Ultimately it led him to a hotel in Little Rock where he put a gun in his mouth because to have it all is to find out it is empty.  

Image result for robert lewis men's fraternity

Let’s go back to Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.” The meaning of this verse was distorted in the film “HOW PLAYBOY CHANGED THE WORLD” about Hugh Hefner’s life. Did you know that Romans 6:23 is part of what we call the Roman Road to Christ. Here is how it goes:

  • Because of our sin, we are separated from God.
    For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  (Romans 3:23)
  • The Penalty for our sin is death.
    For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
  • The penalty for our sin was paid by Jesus Christ!
    But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
  • If we repent of our sin, then confess and trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we will be saved from our sins!
    For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.  (Romans 10:13)
    …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. (Romans 10:9,10)

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

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

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

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November 8, 2017 – 5:27 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Tagged Adrian Rogers, Alistair Begg, Ben Parkinson, Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, Billy Graham, Brandon Barnard, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Dan Jarrell, Daniel Akin, Darryl Dash, Ed Young, Ethan Renoe, francis schaeffer, George Critchley, Greg Gillbert, Jr., Ken Whitten, kerry livgren, Kirk Wetsell, Lee Strobel, Mark Henry, Matt Chandler, Nelson Price, Norman L. Geisler, Philip Graham Ryken, R.G.Lee, ravi zacharias, Richard Zowie., Robert Lewis, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Tom Zobrist, Vance Pitman, Walter C. Kaiser |

WOODY WEDNESDAY Ranking Woody Allen’s 47 movies!!!! Part 17

Ranking Woody Allen’s 47 movies!!!! Part 17

The Best & The Rest: Every Woody Allen Film Ranked

 Jessica Kiang
 July 12, 2016 3:03 pm
 Features

This week, Woody Allen‘s 2016 title (for as we all know, there’s one each year), “Cafe Society,” starring Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, Corey Stoll, Blake Lively and Anna Camp, opens after a warm reception as the opening film at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. You can read our take from Cannes here, or hang on to scroll through and see where it lands on the list below, but we thought this would be a good time to gussy up our previous sprawling two-part Allen retrospective, and because we’ve been a little harmonious around here of late and miss the sounds of sobbing and breaking crockery, to rank it.

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Weathering personal scandal and coming in and out of fashion like flares, Allen’s been at constant work as a director for five decades now, and “Cafe Society” marks his 47th theatrically-released feature. Which means we have a lot to get through, so let’s get straight to it, shall we? Here, ranked worst to best, are all of Woody Allen’s theatrical features —with any list this long, there’s bound to be massive disagreement, so remember, the comments section awaits your ire. Or your congratulations, on the slim chance you agree with all of it.

Bullets-Over-Broadway-woody-allen-john-cusack6. “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994)
One of the rare occasions on which the director shares a screenwriting credit (a one-off collaboration with Douglas McGrath) “Bullets over Broadway” is Allen at his best, with 7 Oscar nominations to prove it. The film marked one of his purest, most unalloyed joys since the “early, funny ones” as if Allen himself had suddenly grown tired of the wider existential moroseness that had marked many of his preceding titles. Despite in many ways being the least Woody-like of the proxies, John Cusack is fantastic (one of his best roles) as the 1920s Barton Fink-ish playwright with delusions of Eugene O’Neill greatness, and the rest of the cast play a delicious horror show collection of freaks, pedants and oddballs. Jennifer Tilly is wondrous as the screeching, dunderheaded moll Olive who doesn’t understand the word “fore” (“So you’re telling me I’m talking about golf?”) and Dianne Wiest, of course, is killer in an Oscar-winning performance as the vainglorious Helen Sinclair, who seduces Cusack by lustily breathing, “Don’t speak!” and “The world will open up to you like a magnificent vagina!” like Gloria Swanson off her face on prescription drugs.

 

Love and Death (1975) Official Trailer – Woody Allen, Diane Keaton Movie HD

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Love and Death 1975 napoleon scene

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Love and Death5. “Love and Death” (1975)
Allen’s career to this point has been a series of movies that were little more than sketch shows: knockabout gags elevated by his erudition and intellectualism. But in “Love and Death” we see his more scattered tendencies take shape, yet without losing the anarchic energy of his scrappier work. The shaggy-dog story of a loner who screws up so badly he can’t even die right, Allen plays a Russian coward named Boris whose love for Sonja (Diane Keaton) vies with their political disagreements as Napoleon’s army advances. Featuring then-trademark knockabout slapstick and crude sex gags (on being congratulated on being a powerful lover Boris replies “thanks, I practise a lot when I’m alone”) it is nonetheless also one of Allen’s more conceptual pictures, dense in allusions to the tragic romances and epic existentialist novels of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there’s an infectious, impish glee on display too, as though Allen can’t quite believe his luck that he gets to treat the great works of classic literature (and indeed filmmaking) as his own personal sandpit.

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WOODY WEDNESDAY Settling into a hotel bar in Soho after a long day shooting a film for Woody Allen in the Bronx, Justin Timberlake wastes no time ordering the first of several Vesper martinis. “I was terrified all day today, dude,”

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HUGH HEFNER WAS A MODERN DAY KING SOLOMON AND I TOLD HIM THAT OVER AND OVER (PART 11) Letter from 10-10-16 (based on 1996 sermons from FELLOWSHIP BIBLE OF LITTLE ROCK)

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Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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Image result for hugh hefner younger days

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.

Why Learn from Solomon?

by Chris Priestley | Sep 11, 2014 | Blog | 0 comments

Although Solomon tragically became the Hugh Hefner of his day, we have much to learn from his writing because of three reasons.

Straight Lines from Crooked Sticks

The Reformer Martin Luther rightly said, “God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.” Outside of Jesus, all of our teachers are deeply flawed. The Apostle Paul was once a terrorist who imprisoned and murdered Christians, but by the grace of God, he was transformed into the one of the greatest church planters of all time and the author of half of the books of the New Testament. Likewise, God chose to depict His intent for marriage through a man who would also experience the folly of forsaking God.

All Scripture is God-Breathed

Paul writes of the Old Testament, “All Scripture is God-breathed.”[1] Though the life of Solomon was deeply flawed, by the inspiration and grace of God, his writing of the Song of Solomon was not.

A Wise Warning to All Who Hear

Thirdly, Solomon’s future tragedy paints a haunting backdrop over the beauty of his pure passion experienced in the Song of Solomon. Anecdotally, we receive great warning when marriage is in a season of bliss and grace, that apart from vigilance, repentance, and the pursuit of God, we—like Solomon—are prone to wander and can wreck our marriages or future relationships with our sin and folly.

[1] 2 Timothy 3:16a.

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, Mark Driscoll, 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.

This letter below was based on a sermon by Bill Wellons delivered in 1996 at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock.

Dan Jarrell pictured below:

Image result for FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH DAN JARRELL

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Image result for robert lewis bill parkinson

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Robert Lewis pictured below:

Image result for robert lewis fellowship bible church

Bill Wellons pictured below:

Image result for bill wellons fellowship bible church

Bill Parkinson pictured below

Image result for bill parkinson fellowship bible church

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(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)

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October 10, 2016

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

Dear Mr. Hefner,

Today we are caught in the most divisive political race in a century between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Even though we don’t agree politically we probably can agree on that. I understand that you have had some interaction in the past with Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was my  political hero for 2 more reasons also.  First, Reagan cut taxes in a big way during his time as president. Secondly, he appointed C. Everett Koop at Surgeon General and appointed many PRO-LIFE JUDGES.

I understand you support financially NARAL. Did you know that the founder of NARAL left the abortion business because as technology advanced he discovered that the unborn baby experienced pain? His name was Dr. Bernard Nathanson. 

(Bill Wellons pictured above)

Bill Wellons (teaching pastor at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock from 1977 to 2009) in his sermon on Ecclesiastes MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME (04-28-96) made these comments:

Ecclesiastes 3:7 says, “There is a time to be silent and a time to speak.” I wish I had learned this a long time ago.

James 1:19   “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger…”

Proverbs 10:19 “When words are many, transgression is not lacking,  but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.” 

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(The Byrds rock band below)

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My interpretation of this verse is “a closed mouth gathers no feet.” THERE IS A TIME TO SPEAK TOO. Those in attendance at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast held in conjunction with the National Religious Broadcasters witnessed a time for speaking. Mother Teresa took the podium and pleaded for the lives of unborn children. This tiny nun  began her address by reading a portion of scripture. Then she stunned the assembled dignitaries which included President Clinton and the first lady and the Vice President and his wife by saying “The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.” Then she asked a great question. “For if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child how can we tell people they can’t kill each other?”

Chuck Colson wrote that Mother Teresa was polite and respectful yet she did not flinch in speaking the truth. She demonstrated civility wedded to bold conviction confronting world leaders with the message of biblical righteousness. Clearly she viewed the breakfast as a time to speak.

She continued, “Please don’t kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child.” After her speech she approached President Bill Clinton and pointed her finger at him and said, “Stop killing babies.”

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Former US President Bill Clinton talks to a nun from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata on Saturday.
— Reuters photo

_

_________

Woody Allen’s liberal political views come out in his films and his solution for peace is not realistic since he doesn’t recognize the Bible’s view of mankind’s fallen nature.

Image result for francis schaeffer

Mother Teresa said, “For if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child how can we tell people they can’t kill each other?” This demonstrated Mother Teresa’s understanding of what the Bible has to say about our sin nature since the fall in Genesis Chapter 3. Francis Schaeffer in his fine book about modern man ESCAPE FROM REASON  states,

“the True Christian position is that, in space and time and history, there was an unprogrammed man who made a choice, and actually rebelled against God…without Christianity’s answer that God made a significant man in a significant history with evil being the result of Satan’s and then man’s historic space-time revolt, there is no answer but to accept Baudelaire’s answer [‘If there is a God, He is the devil’] with tears. Once the historic Christian answer is put away, all we can do is to leap upstairs and say that against all reason God is good.”(pg. 81)

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8 English Standard Version (ESV)

A Time for Everything

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! Lyrics

To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die.
A time to plant, a time to reap.
A time to kill, a time to heal.
A time to laugh, a time to weep.To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to build up, a time to break down.
A time to dance, a time to mourn.
A time to cast away stones.
A time to gather stones together.To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time of love, a time of hate.
A time of war, a time of peace.
A time you may embrace.
A time to refrain from embracing.To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to gain, a time to lose.
A time to rend, a time to sew.
A time for love, a time for hate.
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.

By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture.  Here is his final conclusion concerning the meaning of life and man’s proper place in the universe in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil

This letter started off talking about  politics but then I moved over to the spiritual. The spiritual answers your heart is seeking can be  found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

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

PS:This was the 51st letter that I have written to you on the subject of Ecclesiastes and comparing you to King Solomon. I hope you have a chance to google HUGH HEFNER ECCLESIASTES and you will see that you are compared to Solomon over and over. Mark Driscoll asserted, “If Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Hugh Hefner somehow morphed into one man who was also simultaneously Pope and President that person might be named Solomon.

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November 8, 2017 – 12:00 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Tagged Adrian Rogers, Alistair Begg, Ben Parkinson, Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons, Billy Graham, Brandon Barnard, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Dan Jarrell, Daniel Akin, Darryl Dash, Ed Young, Ethan Renoe, francis schaeffer, George Critchley, Greg Gillbert, Jr., Ken Whitten, kerry livgren, Kirk Wetsell, Lee Strobel, Mark Henry, Matt Chandler, Nelson Price, Norman L. Geisler, Philip Graham Ryken, R.G.Lee, ravi zacharias, Richard Zowie., Robert Lewis, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Tom Zobrist, Vance Pitman, Walter C. Kaiser |

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