Audrey W. Johnson (1907-84), a native of England, grew up in a Christian home but went through a period of agnosticism, due to the influence of secular philosophers. Outwardly, she seemed to enjoy life but inwardly she struggled with quiet despair.
Then “suddenly God’s mysterious revelation was given to me. I can only say with Paul, ‘It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.’”1 In tears she joyfully came to know Christ as Savior and began a lifelong love for the Word of God.
After dedicated and diligent private study (a biography reveals no advanced formal education from that point) she sailed for China in 1936 under the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship).
During the horrors of World War II, the Japanese interned her with others in huts which were former horse stables. Hers “held 89 cots with six open toilets and two small wash basins… Conditions ranged from stifling heat in the summer to freezing cold in the winter.”
Food was limited to rice with a one-inch cube of meat daily. As a result “she dropped from 145 lbs. to less than 105.” Yet in spite of all the suffering and privation, she recognized and rejoiced in God’s providential care.
After the war, she served on the faculty of the China Bible Seminary in Shanghai. However, in 1948 she suffered house arrest by the Communists. Two years later, in the wake of their takeover, she was forced to leave her chosen field.
Audrey settled in California, though her heart was longing for China. At this providential time, five women, already well instructed, asked her to teach them the Bible. “Who hath despised the day of small things?” (Zech. 4:10) and other passages mightily challenged her and she agreed.
She dictated a few simple questions, following the method of study she had adopted after her return from unbelief:
1. What does the passage say?
2. What did it mean to the people in the day it was written?
3. What does it mean to me?”
As a result, the Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) was founded in 1958 at Oakland. The years ahead would see tremendous growth and blessing.
Miss Johnson was “deeply committed to the authority of Scripture. She taught it with power and lived by it in her life and ministry.”
Thus began what became her life work. She believed “that God desired personally to impact the life of anyone willing to go alone with Him, to study prayerfully the Bible for himself, and to do whatever the Holy Spirit taught him. The various aspects of BSF were developed to encourage this personal, daily interaction with God through a disciplined study of the Bible, as well as its application.”
Her brief time in China had providentially prepared her for this great and growing ministry.
“Though fully occupied with her own organization, she was interested in the work and ministry of others. Her friendship with Francis Schaeffer of L’Abri Fellowship was a source of mutual encouragement. She was a charter member of the Council for Biblical Inerrancy and for a time was the only woman on its board of directors.”
Later the work was moved to San Antonio, Texas, after a generous gift of land for the construction of expanded facilities.
Miss Johnson developed cancer, which in spite of treatment and much prayerful intercession, worsened and then claimed her in 1984.
Today BSF has 1,000 classes in 34 countries serving about 225,000 adults and 60,000 children. People from all walks of life, varied cultures, and religious backgrounds attend “to learn the Bible.” Information is available from 1-877-273-3228.
Audrey Johnson planned and prepared well. Surely her works do follow her.
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
Our count down of Top Ten Theologians continues with #7: C.S. Lewis. His inclusion on this list will be an obvious choice for some and a surprise for others. Yes, I completely agree it is risky and potentially short-sighted to have two 20th century people (Lewis and Barth) on the list. Time has not vetted these men as much as someone like Irenaeus or Anselm. Generations to come may downgrade the influence from any 20th century theologian. I am excited, nonetheless, to offer you C.S. Lewis.
Lewis’s World
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault (pronounced foo-ko) may be one of the most influential 20th century thinkers you’ve never heard of. He was interested in studying the development of ideas. How and why do we know what we know? He held a chair at Collège de France with the title, “History of Systems of Thought.” He wrote several books on diverse subjects such as: psychiatry; medicine; the human sciences; prison systems; as well as the history of human sexuality.
Foucault’s observations and skepticism challenged many long-standing ideas. His first book wondered why some people are considered crazy? What if these “crazy” people lived at a different time in a completely different culture? Would they still be considered crazy?
How about, for example, John the Baptist? His clothes were nasty. He lived out in the desert eating bugs. He yelled at people to repent. They responded by letting John hold them under water. In first century Israel John was viewed as one of the greatest prophets who ever lived. Transfer John the Baptist to New York City and he’d be locked up in a mental hospital. Craziness is relative.
In Foucault’s studies on sex he wondered why people seemed to possess differing ideas of sexual appropriateness. Why do women in certain developing countries walk around topless? Every person at that particular time and place believes topless women are normal. It is unimaginable to consider the same women walking around Victorian England. The sexual customs of these two cultures are worlds apart. Sexual morals appear to be relative.
Foucault believes periods of history have possessed specific underlying conditions of truth that constituted what he expresses as discourse (for example art, science, culture, etc.). Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, in major and relatively sudden shifts, from one period’s knowledge to another.1
Different cultures have different ways of discussing and knowing reality. What is crazy? What is immoral? What is joy? Who is God? What is beautiful? Foucault shows how people answer these questions for themselves. There are no objective answers, knowing is relative.
Foucault’s thoughts are very popular. Even though he died in 1984, he is currently the most cited author in the humanities.2 For books published in 2007, for example, he was cited 2,521 times. During the same period, in comparison, Friedrich Nietzsche was only cited 501 times.3
Foucault is skeptical of ideas or realities which claim to exist for all people at all times. Christianity, however, claims a Savior who exists for all people at all times. C.S. Lewis will become known as the “Apostle to the Skeptics.”
Lewis’s Life
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29, 1898. At the age of four, after the death of the beloved neighborhood dog “Jacksie,” Lewis announced his new name would be “Jacksie.” He eventually permitted friends and family to call him the shortened “Jack.”
In 1905, at the age of seven, the family moved into a new home. Lewis writes:
The New House is almost a major character in my story. I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics unexplored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. 4
The “endless books” certainly shaped Lewis; he writes:
My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.5
C.S. Lewis was well-read by the age of eight.6 A complete list of the books he had read by the age of nine would be very long.7 His diary entry of March 5, 1908: “I read Paradise Lost, reflections thereon.”8 The epic, Paradise Lost, contains over 10,000 individual lines of poetic verse!
Lewis gravitated to not only reading but writing at an early age, due to a hereditary condition with his thumbs known asSymphalangism. He explains the condition:
What drove me to write was the extreme manual clumsiness from which I have always suffered. I attribute it to a physical defect which my brother and I both inherit from our father; we have only one joint in the thumb. The upper joint (that furthest from the nail) is visible, but it is a mere sham; we cannot bend it. But whatever the cause, nature laid on me from birth an utter incapacity to make anything. With pencil and pen I was handy enough, and I can still tie as good a bow as ever lay on a man’s collar; but with a tool or a bat or a gun, a sleeve link or a corkscrew, I have always been unteachable. It was this that forced me to write. I longed to make things, ships, houses, engines. Many sheets of cardboard and pairs of scissors I spoiled, only to turn from my hopeless failures in tears. As a last resource, as a pis aller, I was driven to write stories instead.9
Lewis was brought up in a Christian home. He states, “I was taught the usual things and made to say my prayers and in due time taken to church. I naturally accepted what I was told but I cannot remember feeling much interest in it.”10
Shortly after the death of his mother, in 1908, Lewis and his brother were sent to boarding school. The school Matron, Miss C., had been on a spiritual journey for truth and a way of life. Mysticism, Mythology and the Occult occupied a large part of her thoughts at this time. Lewis writes:
Nothing was further from her intention than to destroy my faith; she could not tell that the room into which she brought this candle (her ideas) was full of gunpowder.
Lewis began to doubt many aspects of Christianity. Prayer became a ludicrous burden of false duties. He felt it strange for all religions to be considered wrong except for his Christianity. He called the truthfulness of Christianity, in light of seemingly incorrect paganism, a fortunate exception. He writes:
In addition to this, and equally working against my faith, there was in me a deeply ingrained pessimism; a pessimism, by that time, much more of intellect than of temper. I was now by no means unhappy; but I had very definitely formed the opinion that the universe was, in the main, a rather regrettable institution.11
Lewis considered himself an atheist by the time he was fifteen. He resonated with Lucretius’s atheistic argument:
Had God designed the world, it would not be;
A world so frail and faulty as we see.12
Lewis explains, “And so, little by little, with fluctuations which I cannot now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief.”13 Lewis viewed his Atheism in a very interesting way:
I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.14
In 1917, at the age of 18, Lewis left his studies to volunteer in the British Army. During World War I he was commissioned an officer in the Third Battalion. He arrived on the front lines and experienced trench warfare for the first time on his nineteenth birthday. On April 15th, Lewis was wounded and two of his friends were killed by friendly fire. He was discharged in December 1918, and soon returned to his studies.
Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford; he excelled in every area he studied. He won a triple first, the highest honors in three areas of study.15 By 1925, at the age of 27, Lewis began teaching at Magdalen College, a part of the University of Oxford. He taught at Oxford for most of his adult life and then spent the last several years as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge.
While teaching at Oxford, Lewis continued writing prolifically. In 1929, an informal group of literary friends from Oxford began meeting together on Tuesday mornings. The group named themselves the “Inklings.” Members of the group included: J.R.R. Tolkien; Nevill Coghill; Lord David Cecil; Charles Williams; Owen Barfield; and Lewis’s brother Warren. Concerning Tolkien, Lewis writes:
When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. They were H.V.V. Dyson… and J.R.R. Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist (Roman Catholic), and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist (study of language in written historical sources). Tolkien was both.16
Lewis slowly re-embraced Christianity, influenced by arguments with Tolkien. He was also largely influenced by reading George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton’sThe Everlasting Man. Lewis explains leaving Atheism:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms.17
Tolkien, upon Lewis’s conversion, tried to get him to join the Roman Catholic Church. Lewis would be a committed Anglican for the rest of his life. He made a purposeful effort through his writings, however, to avoid promoting any one denomination.
Between 1929 and 1963 (34 years) Lewis wrote approximately 58 literary works. He wrote works in his academic field of Medieval and Renaissance English, as well as many books in the theological field of apologetics (defending the faith). He wrote in several genres including: non-fiction; fiction; science-fiction; and children’s books.
Later in life Lewis corresponded with an American lady named Joy Gresham. She was a Communist and an Atheist who converted to Christianity mainly through the writings of Lewis. Lewis’s brother writes, “For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met…who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humor and a sense of fun.”18 Lewis agreed to enter into a civil marriage with Joy so she could live in the UK. Joy was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and their relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. They were married at the side of her hospital bed in 1957, Lewis was 59 years old.
Joy’s cancer thankfully went into remission and the two newlyweds were able to experience a couple years of “normal” married life. The cancer relapsed and she died in 1960. Lewis wrote the book A Grief Observed describing his experience of coping with the death of his wife. The book was so raw and personal he originally released it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk to keep readers from knowing it was written by him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief.19 He allowed the book to reflect the name of the true author upon his death.
The last three years of his life Lewis struggled with health problems related to his kidneys. He eventually died in 1963, one week from his 65th birthday. Lewis is buried next to his brother at Holy Trinity Church in Oxford.
Lewis’s Thoughts
The thoughts of C.S. Lewis place him at #7 on our list of Top Ten Theologians. Men like Michel Foucault were getting people to doubt the knowability of things. How do we really know what we know? Europe is transitioning at the time from being the center of Western Orthodox Christianity to being a post-Christian society. Lewis considers himself to be a layman, not a trained theologian. His expertise is in Medieval and Renaissance English. To the seeming embarrassment of many colleagues, Lewis continually returns to writing about his Christian faith. He was once one of the world’s most skeptical skeptics. He is now a fully convinced believer in Jesus. One of the central themes of his life and faith is the concept of Joy.
Surprised by Joy
Lewis thinks about joy in a unique way. He explains:
I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that any one who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is the kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.20
Think of Lewis’s concept of joy similar to an echo. When you are a child you hear an echo that fills you with more joy than you ever imagined possible on earth. You live your entire life listening to hear the echo again. If you have ever heard the echo you will know there is nothing sweeter in the world than hearing the echo. Your pursuit of joy is almost a life of grief because you live most of your life not hearing the echo. You yearn for its return to your ears, if only for a moment. Many people, however, will turn to the pleasures offered in this world as a replacement for the echo because the echo is not in our power but seeking pleasure is possible at our whim. Lewis found he heard the echo most when reading Christian writers such as George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton.
In the Weight of Glory (1949) Lewis writes:
A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread: he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating, and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In other words, If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Lewis understands the echo in a whole new way. He was wrong to yearn for the echo. When he heard the echo it would be gone as soon as he recognized its arrival. His famous Surprised by Joy moment is the realization that the echo has a source. The echo is no longer the center of Lewis’s life; the echo comes from the voice of a person: Jesus Christ. He is the source of the joy.
Lewis, with strong intellectual moorings, asks a society heading toward post-Christianity and relative post-Modernism if they possess this joy? Lewis spends his life wordsmithing his way from book to book directing people to Joy found only in Christ.
Objective Reality of God
Lewis does not leave people to simply seek their own conception of Joy. He does not plead with people to listen for whatever echo works best for them. He explains:
There was no doubt that Joy was a desire…but a desire is turned not to itself but to its object…The form of the desired is in the desire. It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, course or choice, ‘high’ or ‘low.’ It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I perceived (and this was a wonder of wonders) that just as I had been wrong in supposing that I really desired the Garden of the Hesperides, so also I have been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all.21
If you lose an objective God existing outside of your subjective thoughts, you lose Joy and can only hope for momentary pleasures. You can only hope for what you can control. We experience the most Joy, however, when we experience the most of God. Lewis writes, “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify god and enjoy Him forever’. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, god is inviting us to enjoy Him.”22
Lewis makes a crucial link between Joy and Truth. Foucault is saying Absolute Truth is actually relative. So you see what is at stake. The entire modern world – and even more so the postmodern world – were moving away from the conviction of an objective God. Liberal theology and emergent writers flowed with the world of subjectivism and relativism. Lewis stood against it with all his might.23
Lewis’s Influence
C.S. Lewis was a serious skeptic, a serious Christian and an intellectual powerhouse able to speak clearly to ordinary people. His BBC radio broadcasts during World War II provided a theological depth to people trembling under the Nazi bombing of London. These broadcasts became his classic work Mere Christianity.
The great influence of Lewis lies in his apologetic abilities. He sought to show how a Christian can be fully involved in their faith emotionally as well as intellectually. He did not try to prove the faith, in typical evidentialist ways, but he instead removed barriers to belief and helped those who were weak in faith to see that they could reasonably embrace Christ and remain intellectually honest. One British historian called Lewis the single most effective person proclaiming the gospel in England in the 20th century.24 Lewis stands tall for anyone questioning a full intellectual embrace of the Gospel. Those who have spent time sitting at the feet of Lewis will walk away with a heart and mind more devoted to the Savior.
Lewis’s Foibles
John Piper succinctly communicates some of Lewis’s theological foibles:
He doesn’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture25, and defaults to logical arguments more naturally than to biblical exegesis. He doesn’t treat the Reformation with respect, but thinks it could have been avoided, and calls aspects of it farcical26. He steadfastly refused in public or in letters to explain why he was not a Roman Catholic but remained in the Church of England27. He makes room for at least some people to be saved through imperfect representations of Christ in other religions28. He made a strong logical, but I think unbiblical, case for free will to explain why there is suffering in the world29. He speaks of the atonement with reverence, but puts little significance on any of the explanations for how it actually saves sinners30.
Piper, however, who disagrees with Lewis on so many theological points, still considers C.S. Lewis to be one of the two men outside of the Bible who have had the greatest influence on his life. The other man is Jonathan Edwards.31 Piper writes:
So, in spite of all Lewis’s flaws, the most fundamental reason why he has been so influential in my life, and so awakening to my own soul, is that he remained anchored as a Christian in the unfathomable rock-solid objectivity of God and his Truth and his gospel as infinitely Beautiful and infinitely Desirable and, therefore, as the unshakeable ground of unutterable and exalted Joy.32
In response to people criticizing certain aspects of his theology, Lewis explains:
Most of my books are evangelistic, addressed to tous exo [those outside]. . . When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my unbelieving fellow-countrymen either in the highly emotional form offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language of highly cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither. My task was therefore simply that of atranslator—one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand. . . . Dr. Pittenger would be a more helpful critic if he advised a cure as well as asserting many diseases. How does he himself do such work? What methods, and with what success, does he employ when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround him in his own city?”33
Lewis’s Effect on Us
As we seek to reach the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround us in our own city we are fools if we do not spend time sitting at the feet of C.S. Lewis. He combines a feeling artist with an intellectual. He is able to lecture at Oxford and Cambridge while writing stories for children. He is fully aware of the newest ideas, yet does not neglect the wisdom of the ages. He once said, “Every third book you read should be outside your century.”34 Lewis encourages us to be anchored in the past, to stand intellectually tall in the present for the objective truth of God, while raising our hands joyfully in worship to the Savior.
What do you think of C.S. Lewis? Please comment below on our fourth Top Ten Theologian. Up next, a beast of burden (that’s a hint)…
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]
and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.
Harry Kroto
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There are 3 videos in this series and they have statements by 150 academics and scientists and I hope to respond to all of them. Wikipedia notes:John Stephen JonesFRS[2] (born 24 March 1944) is a Welshgeneticist and from 1995 to 1999 and 2008 to June 2010 was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London.[3][4] His studies are conducted in the Galton Laboratory. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on the subject of biology, especially evolution. He is one of the contemporary popular writers on evolution. In 1996 his writing won him the Royal SocietyMichael Faraday Prize “for his numerous, wide ranging contributions to the public understanding of science in areas such as human evolution and variation, race, sex, inherited disease and genetic manipulation through his many broadcasts on radio and television, his lectures, popular science books, and his regular science column in The Daily Telegraph and contributions to other newspaper media”.
________________
His comments can be found on the 3rd video and the 102nd clip in this series. Below the videos you will find his words.
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)
“In all frankness I do think religion and science are in many ways antithetical. I know there’s endless argument about this particularly by the many scientists who are religious. But the problem is that religion is something that depends on faith and once a scientist starts depending on faith, he or she is finished as a scientist. You cannot believe that something is true in science without evidence. And you cannot study mystery which is of its very nature mysterious and that’s what religion is all about. It’s filled with mysteries of its own making, designed to be insoluble. The nature of the trinity. The indivisibility of the three parts of god. The father and the son, are they the same thing or are they different? There’s no answer to that question you can debate it endlessly, humankind spend a 1000 wasted years doing that. Science asks smaller, simpler questions and most of all questions that can be answered. So I think it’s actually antithetical to religion.”
Are Christians the only ones exercising faith? Francis Schaeffer points out that it was Charles Darwin’s own IMPLICIT FAITH in his own theory that caused him to ignore the evidence right in front of him that contradicted his own theory. I confronted Dr. Jones’ statement, “In all frankness I do think religion and science are in many ways antithetical,” in the following letter:
February 13, 2015
Dear Dr. Jones,
I have to say that I have read many of your articles online and watched many of the talks you have given on You Tube and I must say that you are one of the finest representatives of your secular humanist evolutionist point of view out there today.
I just finished reading the online addition of the book Darwin, Francis ed. 1892. Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters [abridged edition]. London: John Murray. There are several points that Charles Darwin makes in this book that were very wise, honest, logical, shocking and some that were not so wise. The Christian Philosopher Francis Schaeffer once said of Darwin’s writings, “Darwin in his autobiography and in his letters showed that all through his life he never really came to a quietness concerning the possibility that chance really explained the situation of the biological world. You will find there is much material on this [from Darwin] extended over many many years that constantly he was wrestling with this problem.”
“In all frankness I do think religion and science are in many ways antithetical. I know there’s endless argument about this particularly by the many scientists who are religious. But the problem is that religion is something that depends on faith and once a scientist starts depending on faith, he or she is finished as a scientist. You cannot believe that something is true in science without evidence. And you cannot study mystery which is of its very nature mysterious and that’s what religion is all about. It’s filled with mysteries of its own making, designed to be insoluble. The nature of the trinity. The indivisibility of the three parts of god. The father and the son, are they the same thing or are they different? There’s no answer to that question you can debate it endlessly, humankind spend a 1000 wasted years doing that. Science asks smaller, simpler questions and most of all questions that can be answered. So I think it’s actually antithetical to religion.” — Steve Jones. UCL Professor of Genetics.
I want to agree with you that the view of evolutionary science in a closed system is “actually antithetical to religion.” However, the vast majority of great scientists of the last 500 years did hold the view that we live in an open system and they did not hold the view of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. Recently I read the article ANSWERING THE NEW ATHEISTS, by KerbyAnderson, Sunday, January 30 th, 2011, and that article notes:
Are science and Christianity at odds with one another? Certainly there have been times in the past when that has been the case. But to only focus on those conflicts is to miss the larger point that modern science grew out of a Christian world view. In a previous radio program based upon the book Origin Science by Dr. Norman Geisler and me, I explain Christianity’s contribution to the rise of modern science.{27}
Alister McGrath challenges this idea that science and religion are in conflict with one another. He says, “Once upon a time, back in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was certainly possible to believe that science and religion were permanently at war. . . . This is now seen as a hopelessly outmoded historical stereotype that scholarship has totally discredited.”{28}
….Do religious people have a blind faith? Certainly some religious people exercise blind faith. But is this true of all religions, including Christianity? Of course not. The enormous number of Christian books on topics ranging from apologetics to theology demonstrate that the Christian faith is based upon evidence.
But we might turn the question around on the New Atheists. You say that religious faith is not based upon evidence. What is your evidence for that broad, sweeping statement? Where is the evidence for your belief that faith is blind?
Orthodox Christianity has always emphasized that faith and reason go together. Biblical faith is based upon historical evidence. It is not belief in spite of the evidence, but it is belief because of the evidence.
The Bible, for example, says that Jesus appeared to the disciples and provided “many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).
Peter appealed to evidence and to eyewitnesses when he preached about Jesus as “a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know” (Acts 2:22).
The Christian faith is not a blind faith. It is a faith based upon evidence. In fact, some authors contend that it takes more faith to be an atheist than to believe in God.{7}
Suppose we are climbing in the Alps and are very high on the bare rock, and suddenly the fog rolls in. The guide turns to us and says that the ice is forming and that there is no hope; before morning we will all freeze to death here on the shoulder of the mountain. Simply to keep warm the guide keeps us moving in the dense fog further out on the shoulder until none of us have any idea where we are. After an hour or so, someone says to the guide, “Suppose I dropped and hit a ledge ten feet down in the fog. What would happen then?” The guide would say that you might make it until the morning and thus live. So, with absolutely no knowledge or any reason to support his action, one of the group hangs and drops into the fog. This would be one kind of faith, a leap of faith.
Suppose, however, after we have worked out on the shoulder in the midst of the fog and the growing ice on the rock, we had stopped and we heard a voice which said, “You cannot see me, but I know exactly where you are from your voices. I am on another ridge. I have lived in these mountains, man and boy, for over sixty years and I know every foot of them. I assure you that ten feet below you there is a ledge. If you hang and drop, you can make it through the night and I will get you in the morning.
I would not hang and drop at once, but would ask questions to try to ascertain if the man knew what he was talking about and it he was not my enemy. In the Alps, for example, I would ask him his name. If the name he gave me was the name of a family from that part of the mountains, it would count a great deal to me. In the Swiss Alps there are certain family names that indicate mountain families of that area. In my desperate situation, even though time would be running out, I would ask him what to me would be the adequate and sufficient questions, and when I became convinced by his answers, then I would hang and drop.
There is another model that I have a little more faith in which comes from this rather well known book by Charles Darwin called THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES and that sees evolution not as a matter of belief but as a matter of fact. Darwin called this book “one long argument,” and that is what it is. It is occasionally a rather dry read but it is well worth reading, and at the end of reading that I would find it hard to deny the truth of evolution.
Let me make some observations on what you have said. You have admitted that you do have faith in your first sentence. Also you say that Darwin’s book THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES is according to Darwin “one long argument.” Therefore, we have to look over his evidence then decide if it lines up with the real world and then we will either put our faith in that evidence or we will reject it. I do not believe in “blind faith” and it seems that is what you are describing in your statement about the mysteries that are insoluble. The evidence I have examined concerning the historical accuracy of the Bible has convinced me that the Bible is the word of God and therefore, my faith is based on evidence.
After your famous talk several creationist organization reacted and here is a reaction from the website http://www.creationresearch.net:
Written by Administrator Tuesday, 18 June 2013 00:38
“I always think that the finest evidence for evolution comes from fossils, and it is very hard to imagine, is it not, a fossil virus, but one has been found.” From “Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right”
From Royal Society Public lecture by Prof Steve Jones, 11 Apr 2006. Video
Editorial Comment: Since Steve Jones is a professor of genetics at the University College of London UK, you would think that his “best evidence for evolution” would be from his own expertise of genetics, not fossils. However, after many years of debating evolutionists we have noticed they consistently claim the best evidence for evolution comes from branches of science other than their own. The creation versus evolution debate is commonly portrayed as being faith versus science, but Jones’ comment reminds us that belief in evolution is based, not on direct scientific observations made by experts in their field. It is based on one expert’s faith in the authority of other experts in different fields who willingly return the favour – and all hope the public never find out! If you can see the funny side of that – you’re right, it’s the Emperor’s new clothes all over again. Belief in Biblical creation also involves faith, but it is not faith in the expertise of human scientists and philosophers who weren’t there, instead it is a fact based faith in the Creator who was there. (Ref. belief, philosophy) Evidence News 24 June 2006 _
Is your faith in the evidence that supports the theory of evolution comparable to the faith I have in the Word of God being true and God creating the world? Recently I ran across the term “Implicit Faith” and I thought of your view that evolution must be true and we have to be living in a closed system. When I read the book Charles Darwin: his life told in an autobiographical chapter, and in a selected series of his published letters, I also read a commentary on it by Francis Schaeffer and by the way I DID NOT FIND CHARLES DARWIN’S WRITINGS “A DRY READ” LIKE YOU SAID YOU DID EARLIER, BUT IT WAS VERY CAPTIVATING IN MANY WAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to both quote some of Charles Darwin’s own words to you and then include the comments of Francis Schaeffer on those words. I have also enclosed a CD with two messages from Adrian Rogers and Bill Elliff concerning Darwinism.
“By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,”
Francis Schaeffer commented:
He now says who can accept the miracles? But notice again this is an argument from presuppositions, because what this means is that he has accepted the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system which I say is the basic presupposition of modern man. So therefore since he has accepted a closed system he assumes there is no miracle, but that doesn’t mean he has any evidence that there were no miracles. It doesn’t mean he is at ease as a man because he has ruled these things out. Darwin is a man in tension. Does the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system explain the wonder of the universe and secondly the mannishness of man? He himself feels caught on these two great hooks of the real world. In others I would say, “DARWIN your presuppositions don’t even satisfy you. You rule miracles on the basis of your presuppositions but your belief of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system does not even satisfy you.” Darwin went to his death unsatisfied and yet he was forced to give up his own presuppositions but he never gave them up. It seems to me you have the old man Darwin perspiring in his tension that you can only think of Paul’s conclusion in Romans 1, that when men deliberately turn away from the truth that is there, the external universe and the mannishness of man, God gives them up to an unsound mind. If there even was anybody that ever demonstrated this it was Darwin himself at the end of his life. It is a position that Darwin holds with implicit faith. You must understand what the term IMPLICIT FAITH means. In the old Roman Catholic Church when someone who became a Roman Catholic they had to promise implicit faith. That meant that you not only had to believe everything that Roman Catholic Church taught then but also everything it would teach in the future. It seems to me this is the kind of faith that these people have in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system and they have accepted it no matter what it leads them into.
I got on the BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATION WEBSITE and read this article about you, Professor Steve Jones asks ‘Is Human Evolution Over?’ at BHA’s first annual Holyoake lecture, October 14th, 2009. Since you are associated with the British Humanist Association I wonder if you ever got to meet their former president H.J.Blackham (1903-2009)? Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop quoted him in their book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?
The humanist H. J. Blackham has expressed this with a dramatic illustration:
On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit.79
One does not have to be highly educated to understand this. It follows directly from the starting point of the humanists’ position, namely, that everything is just matter. That is, that which has existed forever and ever is only some form of matter or energy, and everything in our world now is this and only this in a more or less complex form.
To sum up Schaeffer is saying, “If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.” (Francis Schaeffer in THE GOD WHO IS THERE)
IF WE ARE LEFT WITH JUST THE MACHINE THEN WHAT IS THE FINAL CONCLUSION IF THERE WAS NO PERSONAL GOD THAT CREATED US? I sent you a CD that starts off with the song DUST IN THE WIND by Kerry Livgren of the group KANSAS which was a hit song in 1978 when it rose to #6 on the charts because so many people connected with the message of the song. It included these words, “All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Kerry Livgren himself said that he wrote the song because he saw where man was without a personal God in the picture. Solomon pointed out in the Book of Ecclesiastes that those who believe that God doesn’t exist must accept three things. FIRST, death is the end and SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life. FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. The Christian can face death and also confront the world knowing that it is not determined by chance and time alone and finally there is a judge who will balance the scales.
Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on You Tube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
About the film:
In 1973, six guys in a local band from America’s heartland began a journey that surpassed even their own wildest expectations, by achieving worldwide superstardom… watch the story unfold as the incredible story of the band KANSAS is told for the first time in the DVD Miracles Out of Nowhere.
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist, author and avid atheist, once said, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” Is that true? Does Christianity call us to scorn or reject reason and evidence in an effort to have a faith that pleases God? Here at PleaseConvinceMe.com, we’re making every effort to demonstrate the relationship between faith, reason and evidence. Our site is filled with evidence that demonstrates the truth of Christianity, because the Christian faith is grounded in reason and evidence.
The God of the Bible does not call his children to obey blindly. The Bible itself serves as a piece of evidence, the testimony of eyewitnesses who provide us with reasons to believe. That’s why the scriptures repeatedly call us to have a “reasoned” belief in Jesus. Scripture tells us:
1. We should value reason so that we won’t be like “unreasoning animals” (Jude 4, 10)
2. We should love God with our “mind” as well as our heart and soul (Matthew 22:37-38)
3. We should remember that Jesus said that the miracles He performed were offered as evidence so we would “know and understand” that the Father was in Him and He was in the Father (John 10:37-38)
4. We should remember that God provided “proof” for all of us by raising Jesus from the grave (Acts 17:30-31)
5. We should remember that Jesus did not hesitate to provide additional “convincing proofs” (evidence) to the disciples, even after He had been resurrected from the tomb (Acts 1:2-3)
6. We should remember that Paul regularly “reasoned” with people as he provided evidence from the Scriptures and testified as an eyewitness to the resurrection (Acts 17:2-3)
7. We should use our minds to “examine everything” carefully (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21)
8. We should resist the temptation to have blind faith, and should instead “test the spirits” to see if they are from God (1 John 4:1)
9. We should examine what we believe until we are “fully convinced” (Romans 14:5, 2 Timothy 1:8-12, 2 Timothy 3:14)
When we use our minds, investigate the evidence and become convinced, something wonderful happens; we have the courage to defend what we believe. Jesus gave us more than enough evidence to believe that He was who he said he was, and He never asked us to believe blindly. When Jesus asked us to have faith in Him, he asked us to accept what he said on the basis of the evidence that He gave us. The Christian faith is a reasonable faith:
Unreasonable Faith
Believing in something IN SPITE of the evidence. We hold an unreasonable faith when we refuse to accept or acknowledge evidence that exists, is easily accessible and clearly refutes what we believe
Blind Faith
Believing in something WITHOUT any evidence. We hold a blind faith when we accept something even though there is no evidence to support our beliefs. We don’t search for ANY evidence that either supports or refutes what we are determined to believe
Reasonable Faith
Believing in something BECAUSE of the evidence. We hold a reasonable faith when we believe in something because it is the most reasonable conclusion from the evidence that exists
The Bible repeatedly makes evidential claims. It offers eyewitness accounts of historical events that can be verified archeologically, prophetically and even scientifically. We, as Christians are called to hold a reasonable faith that is grounded in this way.
_____________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times […]
Friendly Fire with John Whitehead—Rob Boston (Part 1) Uploaded by RutherfordInstitute on Aug 20, 2007 An interview with Rob Boston, Assistant Director of Communications, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Part 1. ____________ Above you see Rob Boston discuss the teaching of intelligent design in the class room. He was against it. Obama’s […]
_____________________________ Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3 Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007 Part 3 of 3: ‘Is Woody Allen A Romantic Or A Realist?’ A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors, perhaps his finest. By Anton Scamvougeras.http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/antons@mail.ubc.ca ______________ I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times […]
________________ Kansas – Dust In The Wind “Live” HD Rolling Stones: “Satisfaction!” U2 Still Haven’t Found (with lyrics) Carl Sagan appears on CBC to discuss the importance of SETI [Carl Sagan Archives] __________________________________________________ On December 5, 1995, I got a letter back from Carl Sagan and I was very impressed that he took time to answer […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
On March 17, 2013 at our worship service at Fellowship Bible Church, Ben Parkinson who is one of our teaching pastors spoke on Genesis 1. He spoke about an issue that I was very interested in. Ben started the sermon by reading the following scripture: Genesis 1-2:3 English Standard Version (ESV) The Creation of the […]
At the end of this post is a message by RC Sproul in which he discusses Sagan. Over the years I have confronted many atheists. Here is one story below: I really believe Hebrews 4:12 when it asserts: For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the […]
In today’s news you will read about Kirk Cameron taking on the atheist Stephen Hawking over some recent assertions he made concerning the existence of heaven. Back in December of 1995 I had the opportunity to correspond with Carl Sagan about a year before his untimely death. Sarah Anne Hughes in her article,”Kirk Cameron criticizes […]
In late 1966, “Sunday Morning” was the final song to be recorded for The Velvet Underground & Nico. It was requested by Tom Wilson, who thought the album needed another song with lead vocals by Nico with the potential to be a successful single. The final master tape of side one of the album shows “Sunday Morning” only penciled in before “I’m Waiting for the Man“.
Wilson brought the band into a New York City recording studio in November. The song was written with Nico’s voice in mind by Lou Reed and John Cale on a Sunday morning. The band previously performed it live with Nico singing lead, but when it came time to record it, Lou Reed sang the lead vocal. Nico would instead sing backing vocals on the song.
Aiming to create a hit for the album, “Sunday Morning” features noticeably more lush and professional production than the rest of the songs on the album. The song’s prominent use of celesta was the idea of John Cale, who noticed the instrument in the studio and decided to use it for the song.
A cover of the song by the Doug Anthony All Stars was used in a season 1 episode of DAAS Kapital, but did not appear on the DVD set of the sci-fi sitcom due to “contractual reasons… and because we never paid to use it in the first place,” according to Paul McDermott. In its place is the newly recorded original song “Saturday’s The Day For Leaving”.[5] During the song, the DVD displays text to this effect, before mentioning the original version “is still on YouTube“.[6]
The chord progression is used in Kramer‘s “Don’t Come Around“, which includes the lyric, “I love this song,” presumably referring to the Velvet Underground song rather than the Kramer song.
Jump up ^DAAS Kapital DVD, S1E3 “Gluttony” (DVD). ABC. 2013.
_________________
Velvet Underground-All Tomorrow’s Parties
Uploaded on Jun 28, 2010
Video was created using a video from Rai Tre. The video is them jamming live most likely at The Factory in New York. Not sure of year. Song is from The Velvet Underground And Nico. (Album) TheDrakeHotel also uses this video.
Copyright Rai Tre (For Video)
Copyright Verve Records (For Song)
Inspiration for the song came from Reed’s observation of the Warhol clique; according to Reed, the song is “a very apt description of certain people at the Factory at the time. … I watched Andy. I watched Andy watching everybody. I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things.”[2] The song was Andy Warhol’s favorite by The Velvet Underground.[3]
The song was recorded at Scepter Studios, New York, during April 1966. It features a piano motif played by Cale (initially written as an exercise) based largely on tone clusters. It was one of the first pop songs to make use of prepared piano[4] (a chain of paper clips were intertwined with the piano strings to change their sounds). The song also features the ostrich guitar tuning by Reed, by which all of the guitar strings were tuned to D.[3]
Nico provides lead vocals. The song was originally recorded with only one track of her vocals; they were later double-tracked for the final album version. Most versions of the album use this version of the song, though the initial 1987 CD release uses the original mix without the double-tracking.
The earliest known recorded version of “All Tomorrow’s Parties” was recorded on reel to reel tape by Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison in a New York apartment loft on Ludlow Street. With Reed on acoustic guitar, the song features a strong folk music sound—particularly in Cale and Morrison’s harmony vocals—which critic David Fricke[5] suggests demonstrates Reed’s fondness for Bob Dylan. This version, released on the Peel Slowly and See box set, is composed of multiple takes, which add up to a time of 18:26.
Single version, July 1966
An edited version of the song was released in July 1966 as a single with “I’ll Be Your Mirror” as a B-side. The song cuts out about half of the studio version at just under three minutes. It did not chart.
The sixth track from The Velvet Underground & Nico, featuring Nico’s double-tracked lead vocals. This sample contains the beginning of the third verse.
Jim Morrison’s sad drug death was followed by Pamela Courson’s sad story!!! pamela courson/ jim morrison interview Interview with Jim Morrison’s father and sister Uploaded on Aug 9, 2010 This interview is from “When You’re Strange” DVD bonus material. I do not own this video and own no rights to it! Pamela Courson Uploaded […]
__________ NICO – I’m Waiting For The Man – (1982, Warehouse, Preston, UK) One of the top 10 songs from The Velvet Underground and Nico is the song “I’m Waiting for the Man I’m Waiting for the Man From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search “I’m Waiting for the Man” Song by […]
The life of Lou Reed (includes videos from 1960′s and 1970′s) ____________ Rock & Roll – Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs – Live 1) Lou Reed – Sweet Jane – live in Paris, 1974 Velvet Underground-”Sunday Morning” from “Velvet Underground and Nico” LP Lou Reed From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump […]
Jim Morrison’s relationship with Nico Nico Icon documentary part 1. Nico Icon documentary part 2. ______________ Jim Morrison at Andy Warhol’s Party.wmv (with Nico) Uploaded on Apr 26, 2010 From the Oliver Stone movie. The Doors. _______________________ nico discusses jim morrison. Uploaded on Jan 2, 2008 nico discusses jim, and how he impacted her […]
I really enjoyed the movie “Savannah Smiles” last night and afterwards I looked up what happened to Bridgette Andersen and where she is today. IMDB notes: Bridgette Andersen was born on July 11, 1975 to Frank Glass and Teresa Andersen in Inglewood, California and grew up in Malibu. She always considered it good luck to […]
Today I heard Tim Todd’s testimony about drugs. Related posts: Whitney Houston dead at 48, long history of drugs and alcohol February 11, 2012 – 8:31 pm Sad news about Whitney Houston’s death tonight. I have included some earlier posts about drugs and alcohol and rock stars. LOS ANGELES (AP) — Whitney Houston, who ruled as […]
I have written about the “27 Club” several times in the past and I have got a lot of hits in the last 30 days on these blog posts below that deal with Rock and Rollers and drugs. Keith Richards’ wife is a bible believing christian Pete de Freitas of Echo and the Bunnymen is a […]
I’m In A Rock ‘N’ Roll Band – The Singer (Part 1) Jim Morrison – books on tape – w subtitles Light My Fire – The Doors The Rolling Stones – Satisfaction ________________________ The Rolling Stones – The Breakthrough The Rolling Stones – Brian Jones The Rolling Stones- Paint it Black Nirvana – Smells Like […]
Pictures and Videos of Edie Sedgwick and the story of her losing battle against drugs and alcohol Part 2 Drugs and alcohol have taken the life of many people and I have posted many times about their unfortunate deaths. Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Gary Thain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain, and Jim […]
Pictures and Videos of Edie Sedgwick and the story of her losing battle against drugs and alcohol Part 1 Factory Girl – The Real Edie Uploaded on Aug 30, 2011 Friends and family of Edie Sedgwick discuss what the factory girl was really like, and the battles and relationships she went through _____________ Edie Sedgwick Excerpt […]
Around 4 years ago I was in Philadelphia and the local radio station had a talk show that was blasting Alice Walton for coming into town and buying the 1876 Thomas Eakins’ masterpiece “The Gross Clinic” which was hanging at the Jefferson Medical College. However, the people of Philadelphia were given 45 days to […]
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
“Argument weak at this point. Thump podium and holler louder!”
This cliché is quoted derisively from time to time to demonstrate that all arguments have presuppositional beginnings that are logically and empirically “weak.” Every idea, all religions (belief systems)–even scientific theories–have foundational concepts that are unprovable by physical means and intellectual acumen.
This is so commonly understood and widely accepted that we rarely think about this ubiquitous condition. Everybody believes in something. Even the atheist believes that there is no God; there is certainly no way to “prove” such a concept. All men and women have faith that their particular presuppositions provide an adequate basis for their actions and lifestyles.
That broad set of presuppositions is also known as a worldview.
Dallas Willard relates a concept in his book Divine Conspiracy that he occasionally uses in his classes:
In our culture one is considered educated if one “knows the right answers.” That is, if one knows which answers are the correct ones. I sometimes joke with my students at the university where I teach by asking them if they believe what they wrote on their tests. They always laugh. They know belief is not required. Belief only controls life.1
Belief controls life. Now that piece of wisdom is important!
Jesus said it this way:
A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. (Luke 6:45)
Belief controls life. Ideas have consequences.
What you believe determines what you think.
What you think dictates what you do.
And what you do dominates your life.
In 1981, Francis Schaeffer wroteA Christian Manifestoas a response to a “new” Humanist Manifesto. As he opened his critique of the humanist’s thinking, Dr. Schaeffer noted the fundamental “change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been away from a world view that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) toward something completely different–toward a world view based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance.”2
This wholesale shift in thinking has so permeated the evangelical church that most Christians struggle with the concept of an almighty, omniscient Creator to whom they must answer one day. The pervasive symptom of this change in thinking is the shift away from trusting the revealed Word of God as an absolute source of truth from the God who cannot lie (Titus 1:2).
Many evangelical churches believe that the Bible may “contain” truth, but that one can no longer be certain of its authority, accuracy, or applicability. Science has supposedly rendered the early chapters of Genesis either useless as history or downright deceptive. Scholars have uncovered so-called “new” secrets about the Lord Jesus and about the Bible. Famous preachers, politicians, and celebrities loudly proclaim allegiance to Jesus, only to be exposed in some scandal that would embarrass the heathen.
We have come far–but certainly not in the right direction! What, then, is the possibility or the potential for righteous correction?
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. (Psalm 119:9-11)
May the heart of the great Creator, whose word spoke the heavens into existence, draw us this day into a certainty about His inspired word of truth.
References
Willard, D. 1998. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 317.
Schaeffer, F. A. 1981. A Christian Manifesto. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 17-18.
* Dr. Morris is Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Morris III, H. 2009. Ideas Have Consequences. Acts & Facts. 38 (6): 22.
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices once […]
The opening song at the beginning of this episode is very insightful. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 3) DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]
It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer. I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]
This essay below is worth the read. Schaeffer, Francis – “Francis Schaeffer and the Pro-Life Movement” [How Should We Then Live?, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, A Christian Manifesto] Editor note: <p> </p> [The following essay explores the role that Francis Schaeffer played in the rise of the pro-life movement. It examines the place of […]
I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have. Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.
Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)
Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)
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Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION
When the proponents of state servitude imply a connection to slavery or the holocaust, they fail to comprehend depth of their misconception.
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Matthew J. Franck is Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute and he did assert “Kermit Gosnell has been the equivalent of the American slave-dealer—someone who has done work rendered absolutely necessary by the twisted laws of his regime, but who has nevertheless been ignored or regarded with unease, and even repulsion, by his fellow citizens.”
Franck went on to comment:
Barack Obama, on April 26, was the first sitting president of the United States to give a public address to a convention of the slave-dealers of our age. That morning he gave a twelve-minute speech to the annual conference of Planned Parenthood, an organization responsible for more abortions than any other provider in the country.
Evidently he is not afraid to come into contact with our own “class of native tyrants,” who carry on the despicable business of destroying hundreds of thousands of human lives each year, and have the audacity to say they are serving “women’s health.” But then this is, after all, the same politician who voted against an Illinois law to protect the lives of newborns who survived failed abortions.
There is a limit even to Obama’s audacity, though. The president mentioned the “right to choose” four times in his brief speech, but somehow this transitive verb never took an object. Choose what? He never uttered the word “abortion,” though it was plain that the entire speech was about the centrality of abortion to the president’s notion of women’s “health.” Is there any other constitutional right, real or invented, that does not go by its true name when its defenders speak of it?
And far be it from the president to utter the name of Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist now convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for “snipping” the necks of babies who survived their abortions, as well as manslaughter in the case of a pregnant woman who did not survive his ministrations.
Gosnell, whose clinic was shut down by the Philadelphia authorities who charged him with murder, is the ne plus ultra of the abortion trade. Not because of the filth, the squalor, the jars of amputated keepsake baby feet, the employment of unlicensed incompetents, the promiscuous use of narcotics on unwitting patients, or the poisonous racism of a physician who preyed upon women and babies of his own race—although all of these are no surprise at all in America’s most unregulated branch of medicine.
No, Gosnell is the “slave-dealer” par excellence because, even if he had run the cleanest, brightest, most professional clinic in the country, he was simply following out the remorseless logic of the abortion regime installed forty years ago by the Supreme Court.
Women came to him for the very latest of late-term abortions, and he made sure their children were dead. WHETHER HE ACCOMPLISHED THEIR DEATHS IN UTERO OR EX UTERO- BEFORE OR AFTER THEIR BIRTHS- DIDN’T REALLY MATTER TO GOSNELL. AND, AS WE HAVE HEARD FROM PLANNED PARENTHOOD OFFICIALS, FROM THEN-ILLINOIS STATE SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, and from “pro-choice” politicians like Senator Barbara Boxer, it doesn’t matter to them, either.
Their insouciance about infanticide, moreover, is given intellectual respectability when a leading academic publication like the Journal of Medical Ethics publishes a symposium on infanticide in which the majority of the contributing scholars cannot bring themselves to condemn it.
And there is something inexorably logical about this attitude. How can it really matter where an innocent human being’s life is deliberately snuffed out? If it’s a legally protected “baby” after birth at 24 weeks’ gestation, but only an unprotected “fetus” before birth at 25 weeks’ gestation, how does that make any sense? Yet this is the kind of gyration the law produces, just as it was shot through with contradictions and inanities under the regime that sanctioned slavery.
It mattered a great deal whether Gosnell’s tiny victims were born dead or alive to his defense counsel, attorney Jack McMahon, for it meant the difference between capital crimes and the facilitation of women’s “constitutional rights.”
My name is Claire Culwell, and I am an abortion survivor…
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“Everyone needs to hear Claire’s story! Often times at pro-life events or banquets we can forget who is at stake in abortion. Claire’s passion reminds the audience that every life lost due to abortion cannot be taken back but every life saved from abortion is a profound witness of God’s hope and love for every human life. Having seen her speak multiple times, I know that Claire’s story captures an audience at a pregnancy center event like no other story because she is living proof of what we stand for, life!”–Shawn Carney, Co-founder 40 Days for Life, Host ofBeing Humanon EWTN
I found out I was affected by abortion about 3 years ago. This changed my life. I had walked into theCoalition For Lifewondering what their organization provided and 5 months later I met my birth mother who told me my life is a miracle.
My birth mother was 13 years old at the time she became pregnant with me. Her mother took her straight to an abortion clinic where she had a surgical abortion. After thinking she had “fixed the problem,” a few weeks later she realized her belly was still growing. Her mother took her back to the abortion clinic where she learned that she had been pregnant with twins…One was aborted; One survived.
My life is a miracle and I would be selfish to keep this GIFT of life to myself. I want to tell everyone what a gift I and even they have been given!! I want to encourage them to seek alternatives to abortion because I would never want any woman/man to go through the grief and the pain that my birth mother went through simply because she didn’t know she had any other option. I also want to be a vessel to offer God’s forgiveness to the men and women who have previously had abortions. I know healing is possible and I have been given the gift of surviving an abortion so that I can tell these men and women that they are forgiven…coming from an aborted child, I hope they know the power of forgiveness and healing through meeting me. My involvement in Coalition For Life transformed me, taught me how to stand up for life on the front lines, and how to share my story in a meaningful way. I have the staff at Coalition For Life to thank for encouraging me to get involved and to share my story not only on the sidewalk but in public (my biggest fear) because God is glorified when I publically proclaim that“I am here not because of anything I did, but ONLY because of God’s mercy and love for me.”
My life is a testimony that there are wonderful alternatives to abortion (such as adoption in my case) and an accident/unwanted child still deserves life…even a child with disabilities. I was born 2 1/2 months early, weighed 3 lbs 2 oz, had dislocated hips and club feet. I had to wear casts on my feet, a harness and eventually a body cast. The abortion still affects me today. All that to say,LIFE IS STILL WORTH IT.If my life can touch just one person who has had an abortion or considering an abortion or adoption, then I am fulfilling my purpose in the pro-life movement.
I will not be silent because each mother and child are in the same place my biological mother, my twin and I were in 22 years ago and I am here to sayTHERE IS HOPEandthere are options!
Traveling and sharing my story was not something that I had planned for myself, but God proved to have better plans for me than I had for myself.Sharing my story is as much of a gift to MYSELF as it is to others.
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ What a great article below: Dr. Alveda King: Guilty Gosnell Verdict May Spark More Justice for Women and Babies Contact: Eugene Vigil, King for America, 470-244-3302 PHILADELPHIA, May 13, 2013 /Christian Newswire/ […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ May 14, 2013 Murdered Thousands, Convicted for Three: The Kermit Gosnell Verdict By Drew Belsky Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/murdered_thousands_convicted_for_three_the_kermit_gosnell_verdict.html#ixzz2TMstLk1c Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on FacebookPhiladelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ A Verdict Doesn’t End the Gosnell Story By: Chairman Reince Priebus (Diary) | May 13th, 2013 at 03:27 PM | 28 RESIZE: AAA The horrors that unfolded in the clinic of Dr. […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ All-American Horror Story: Top 10 Kermit Gosnell Trial Revelations by Kristan Hawkins | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 4/12/13 3:38 PM Since so many in the media have failed/refused to report on […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis _____________ Tony Perkins: Gosnell Trial – FOX News Published on May 13, 2013 Tony Perkins: Gosnell Trial – FOX News ________________ Hey Obama, Kermit Gosnell Is What a Real War on Women Looks Like […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ___ _____________ Tony Perkins: Gosnell Trial – FOX News Published on May 13, 2013 Tony Perkins: Gosnell Trial – FOX News ________________ Family Research Council Praises Jury for Bringing Justice to Victims of Abortionist […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ _____________ Tony Perkins: Gosnell Trial – FOX News Published on May 13, 2013 Tony Perkins: Gosnell Trial – FOX News ________________ Kermit Gosnell and the Logic of “Pro-Choice” by Matthew J. Franck within […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ Fr. Pavone: Right to choose must yield to right to life STATEN ISLAND, NY — Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, had the following comment on the verdict in […]
Many in the world today are taking a long look at the abortion industry because of the May 14, 2013 guilty verdict and life term penalty handed down by a jury (which included 9 out of 12 pro-choice jurors) to Dr. Kermit Gosnell. During this time of reflection I wanted to put forth some of the […]
Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis ________________ The truth of abortion … the hope for Gosnell’s repentance A conviction in the murder trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell has boosted the efforts of pro-lifers to demonstrate what abortion really […]
The Selfishness of Chris Evert Part 2 (Includes videos and Pictures) _________________________________ _____________________ _______________________ __________________________ Tennis – Wimbledon 1974 [ Official Film ] – 05/05 Published on May 1, 2012 John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Bjor Borg, Jimmy Connors, Cris Evert… ___________________ Jimmy Connors Reflects Published on May 13, 2013 Jimmy Connors visits “SportsCenter” to discuss his memoir, […]
This post is a continuation of our Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology series. To see the complete series please click here.
Pilate’s Role
Who is Jesus? You and I are sitting down in the Credo House, enjoying a delicious Luther Latte. We’re talking about the important questions of life and I lean forward asking you that simple question, “Who is Jesus?” What do you think about him? Is He everything the Bible communicates? Did He actually live, die for the sins of humanity, and rise from the dead? Do you consider Him your Lord? Is He the ultimate King of the Jews? Is He the King of Kings? These are important questions for all of mankind to consider.
One man, according to the Bible, was uniquely called upon to wrestle with the identity of Jesus. His name: Pontius Pilate. Pilate was the Prefect (governor) of the Roman province of Judea from 26-36 AD. The Jewish high priests at the time were unable to legally sentence a man to death. Most of the leading Jews wanted Jesus killed. In order for Jesus to be killed the death sentence had to be carried out under Roman law. The Jewish leaders needed Pontius Pilate to condemn Jesus to death. Early one morning a mob drives Jesus to Pilate. Pilate becomes responsible for deciding the fate of Jesus.
John 18 describes the scene:
So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (John 18:33-38)
Wow, what an amazing dialogue. Jesus forces Pilate to wrestle with his identity. Where does the conversation go from here? Pilate tells the crowd he believes Jesus to be innocent. The crowd finds a loop-hole in the system asking for a criminal, Barabbas, to be released from prison and for Jesus to be found guilty. Pilate appeases the crowd by sending Jesus away to be flogged. After experiencing the horror of flogging, the Bible tells us Jesus is sent back to Pilate. Pilate and Jesus have another conversation described in John 19:
He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:9-11)
Jesus speaks with determined clarity. Pilate continues to move in the direction of releasing Jesus. Those seeking the death of Jesus cry out to Pilate, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. (John 19:12)” Pilate eventually gives in and agrees to have Jesus crucified. Interestingly, the Bible explains, Pilate places on sign of the cross of Jesus which read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
Pilate Outside the Bible
What we know about Pontius Pilate comes primarily from the Bible. Three men named Tacitus, Josephus and Philo all lived around the time of Jesus and mention Pilate in their writings.
Tacitus writes:
To dispel the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits, and treated with the most extreme punishments, some people, popularly known as Christians, whose disgraceful activities were notorious. The originator of that name, Christus, had been executed when Tiberius was emperor, by order of the procurator Pontius Pilatus. But the deadly cult, though checked for a time, was now breaking out again not only in Judea, the birthplace of this evil, but even throughout Rome, where all the nasty and disgusting ideas from all over the world pour in and find a ready following.
Josephus writes:
About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, for he was a performer of wonderful deeds, a teacher of such men as are happy to accept the truth. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the leading men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him at the first did not forsake him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.
Philo, more than the other men, speaks to the character of Pilate. He explains Pilate as, “a man of inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition.” Philo explains several situations where Pilate provokes and is cruel to the Jewish people. The Bible and these three men speak plainly about Pilate, the world of Pontius Pilate, and the man from Nazareth whom He sentenced to be crucified. Pontius Pilate is seen by Tacitus, Philo and Josephus as the real governor of Judea and the real man who sentenced Jesus to be crucified.
Discovery
In 1961 the archaeological world was taken back to the first century Roman province of Judea. A group of archaeologists, led by Dr. Antonio Frova were excavating an ancient Roman theater near Caesarea Maritima. Caesarea was a leading city in the first century located on the Mediterranean Sea. A limestone block was found there with a surprising inscription. The inscription, on three lines, reads:
The inscription is believed to be part of a larger inscription dedicating a temple in Caesarea to the emperor Tiberius. The inscription clearly states, “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.” The inscription is significant on several levels.
Significance
It makes sense for Pilate to be dedicating a temple in Caesarea Maritima. The prefect usually lived in Caesarea and only went to Jerusalem for special purposes. An inscription of Pilate found in Caesarea fits with the first century world described in the Bible.
The dating of the inscription, in connection with its mention of Tiberius (42 BC-37AD) places the governor Pontius Pilate at the same place and time as the Bible’s information about Jesus.
As with the Caiaphas Ossuary mentioned in a previous post, the vast significance of the Pilate Inscription is attached to the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus. The inscription does not prove the conversations between Pilate and Jesus. The inscription does not prove Pilate condemned Jesus to be crucified. The inscription does not prove the forgiveness of mankind’s sin through the death of Christ. The inscription does, however, support the historical reliability of the cross, as with the Caiaphas Ossuary, by supporting the existence of one of its central characters.
What do you think? Do you find the Pilate Inscription to be a significant discovery in archaeology? Join the conversation by commenting on the post. In the next post we look again at crucifixion from a completely different perspective.
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]
On the late, great, Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman’s 101st birthday, it is fitting to remember his legacy of school choice and continue the fight for educational opportunity he left for us.
“A stable and democratic society is impossible without widespread acceptance of some common set of values and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens. Education contributes to both,” Friedman once remarked.
Friedman knew that education is essential for a free society to flourish, but he understood that government-administered schooling is not the way to achieve quality educational options for all children.
Friedman was the father of the educational choice movement, which he first conceived through the idea of school vouchers. The Friedman philosophy of education promotes educational opportunity where parents are free to choose an education that best meets the needs of their children, with money following the children to any schools of their choice: public, private, charter, virtual, or home school.
Choice releases children from government-run schools assigned to them based on their parents’ zip codes. Options such as vouchers empower parents to choose better alternatives for their children’s education. Choice improves the amount of educational options available to families and promotes competition, applying economic pressure that can lead to better performance in the public system as well.
Friedman knew that educational choice is a win-win solution for everyone.
Friedman’s legacy of educational choice continues to expand. Several states now have a plethora of educational options: school vouchers, tax credits, charter schools, online learning, and education savings accounts (ESAs).
ESAs have especially refined Friedman’s original concept of a school voucher. A family with an ESA can use 90 percent of the per-child amount of state funds that would have gone to the child’s assigned public schools to instead be deposited directly into an ESA in the child’s name. The money in the savings account follows the child and can be used by parents to finance a variety of education-related services and providers. They can, for example, use their ESA funds to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services, and educational therapies—all while saving taxpayer money. It is an educational option that would have made Friedman proud.
Although educational freedom continues to grow, there are still millions of children around America stuck in low-performing schools.
Friedman understood that vouchers are only a means to educational freedom:
The purpose of vouchers is to enable parents to have free choice, and the purpose of having free choice is to provide competition and allow the educational industry to get out of the 17th century and get into the 21st century and have more innovation and more evolvement.
In 2013, America faces a fork in the road: One direction is toward educational freedom; the other is toward increased centralization through one-size-fits-all efforts such as the Common Core national standards.
In honor of Friedman’s birthday, we must rededicate ourselves to the unfinished task remaining before us, the true end of his philosophy of educational choice: educational freedom in America.
On the Arkansas Times Blog the person using the username “Jake da Snake” noted, “Friedman also railed long and hard for school vouchers to be adopted, to little avail…” (June 11, 2011). Milton Friedman firmly believed, “competition is a way in which both public and private schools can be required to satisfy their customers.” Here […]
Johan Norberg – Free or Equal – Free to Choose 30 years later 4/5 Published on Jun 10, 2012 by BasicEconomics In 1980 economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman inspired market reform in the West and revolutions in the East with his celebrated television series “Free To Choose.” Thirty years later, in this one-hour documentary, […]
Johan Norberg – Free or Equal – Free to Choose 30 years later 3/5 Published on Jun 10, 2012 by BasicEconomics In 1980 economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman inspired market reform in the West and revolutions in the East with his celebrated television series “Free To Choose.” Thirty years later, in this one-hour documentary, […]
Johan Norberg – Free or Equal – Free to Choose 30 years later 2/5 Published on Jun 10, 2012 by BasicEconomics In 1980 economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman inspired market reform in the West and revolutions in the East with his celebrated television series “Free To Choose.” Thirty years later, in this one-hour documentary, […]
_____________________________________ Milton Friedman On Charlie Rose (Part One) The late Milton Friedman discusses economics and otherwise with Charlie Rose. _________________________________________ Milton Friedman: Life and ideas – Part 01 Milton Friedman: Life and ideas A brief biography of Milton Friedman _____________________________________ Stossel – “Free to Choose” (Milton Friedman) 1/6 6-10-10. pt.1 of 6. Stossel discusses Milton […]
Free or Equal?: Johan Norberg Updates Milton & Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose I got this below from Reason Magazine: Swedish economist Johan Norberg is the host of the new documentary Free or Equal, which retraces and updates the 1980 classic Free to Choose, featuring Milton and Rose Friedman. Like the Friedmans, Norberg travels the globe […]
______________________________________ Milton Friedman On Charlie Rose (Part One) The late Milton Friedman discusses economics and otherwise with Charlie Rose. _________________________________________ Milton Friedman: Life and ideas – Part 01 Milton Friedman: Life and ideas A brief biography of Milton Friedman _____________________________________ Stossel – “Free to Choose” (Milton Friedman) 1/6 6-10-10. pt.1 of 6. Stossel discusses Milton […]
Milton Friedman and Chile – The Power of Choice Uploaded on May 13, 2011 In this excerpt from Free To Choose Network’s “The Power of Choice (2006)”, we set the record straight on Milton Friedman’s dealings with Chile — including training the Chicago Boys and his meeting with Augusto Pinochet. Was the tremendous prosperity unleashed […]
Milton Friedman was a great economist and a fine speaker. ___________________ I have written before about Milton Friedman’s influence on the economy of Chile. Now I saw this fine article below from http://www.heritage.org and below that article I have included an article from the Wall Street Journal that talks about Milton Friedman’s influence on Chile. I […]
Biography Part 2 In 1977, when I reached the age of 65, I retired from teaching at the University of Chicago. At the invitation of Glenn Campbell, Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, I shifted my scholarly work to Hoover where I remain a Senior Research Fellow. We moved to San Francisco, purchasing […]
This post is a continuation of our Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology series. To see the complete series please click here.
The Biblical Account
1400 BC was an unusual time in history. Moses, about 40 years earlier, led a sea of people through the Red Sea. He was intent to lead them from Egypt straight to the Promised Land. The people, however, arrived a bit later than they were planning. The people leaving Egypt did not obey God as they should have (think golden calf) so forty years were spent traveling through a vast desert wasteland. During these 40 years God miraculously provided manna, meat, water and the Ten Commandments for the people to survive.
By 1400 BC the disobedient generation who fled Egypt had all died. The next generation was ready, with God paving the way, to conquer a land which had been promised to them more than 500 years beforehand. Moses takes them within sight of the Promised Land. He is told to climb Mount Nebo where he will die.
Joshua takes over command of the people. His first act is leading them all through a river; a challenging task for even a 21st century military commander. His strategy: just let the people in the front carrying the ark of God start walking into the water and it will naturally part allowing all the people to walk through on dry ground. The strategy works. His next challenge is conquering the heavily fortified ancient city of Jericho. His strategy is given to him by God in Joshua 6:3-5:
You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus you shall do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. And when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people shall go up, everyone straight before him.
The men of Jericho laugh as they watch what can best be described as unconventional warfare tactics. The strategy, however, actually works! The plan is executed down to the smallest detail. After the final shout the walls of Jericho fall down. The city is burned. Jericho is conquered in one week. Truth appears to be stranger than fiction. The conquest of Canaan has just been inaugurated through a river stopping and a fortified city being defeated through the combination of marching, music and shouting. At least this is the history described in the Bible.
Can an intellectual person really embrace the biblical account of Jericho? The biblical account makes for a fanciful bedtime story, but can the Bible really be accurately communicating an historical event?
A Remarkable Dig
The archaeological world first turned their gaze toward Jericho beginning in the late 1800’s. The first documented excavation occurred in 1867 and 1868 by the famous British engineer Charles Warren. Warren was most interested in finding out whether the large earthen mound, known as Tell es-Sultan, is natural or man-made? Warren dug six vertical shafts to see what was inside the mound.
To everyone’s amazement he found, “As a general result on the completion of these excavations it may be said for a certainty that these mounds are artificial throughout, and that they probably are the remains of ancient castles. ” Amazing, it was now verified the contents of Tell es-Sultan are man-made. What lies underneath? Will anything ever be found that could shed light on the biblical story of Joshua?
The next major excavation on Tell es-Sultan was done by a team from Austria and Germany from 1907-1909 and then again in 1911. Their major contribution to our understanding of Jericho was discovering a revetment wall which they followed around most of the city. A revetment wall is a retaining wall which prevents erosion. Further walls were typically built on top of a revetment wall. Tell es-Sultan was already taking shape as the ancient walled city of Jericho.
John Garstang, a British archaeologist, was then the first person starting in 1930 to lead an excavation using more modern archaeological methods. He dug at Tell es-Sultan from 1930 to 1936. The two most notable discoveries by Garstang’s team was a collapsed city wall toward the top of the mound (built on top of a wall which was built on top of the revetment wall…yes, possibly 3 different vertical walls), and evidence of a thoroughly violent destruction of the city. Garstang dated, based on pottery found at the same depth, the city was destroyed around 1400 BC. In his own words he writes:
In a word, in all material details and in date the fall of Jericho took place as described in the Biblical narrative. Our demonstration is limited, however, to material observations: the walls fell, shaken apparently by earthquake, and the city was destroyed by fire, about 1400 B.C. These are the basic facts resulting from our investigations. The link with Joshua and the Israelites is only circumstantial but it seems to be solid and without a flaw.
Garstang’s conclusions brought a lot of controversy from some of his colleagues who questioned his speedy reporting and dating methods. Garstang asked an up-and-coming British archaeologist named Kathleen Kenyon to study his findings. Kenyon studied all previous findings from Jericho and then led her own excavations from 1952-1958. Her study of Jericho made her famous.
Garstang and Kenyon both discovered a lot of pottery and artifacts from Jericho. Kenyon identified 20 different architectural phases, with evidence that some of these phases lasted for long periods of time, Over the course of the 20 phases there were three major and 12 minor destructions. A fortification tower was rebuilt four times and repaired once, followed by habitation units that were rebuilt seven times. Amazing, Kenyon analyzed more than 20 different time periods of Jericho. There was one layer of history which most closely was in line with the time of the biblical account.
Kenyon describes the calamity she observed through the archaeological findings of the time period most closely related to the Bible:
The destruction was complete. Walls and floors were blackened or reddened by fire, and every room was filled with fallen bricks, timbers, and household utensils; in most rooms the fallen debris was heavily burnt, but the collapse of the walls of the eastern rooms seems to have taken place before they were affected by the fire.
One of Kenyon’s great discoveries from Jericho was the grain supply. Her team found many jars more than 3,000 years old which were all full of burned grain! Why is this so significant? The military strategy of the day was siege. An army would surround a city, cut off all food and water supply, and wait for the people to starve. A besieged city contains no food at the time of destruction. Additionally, if a city were to surrender before their food supply ran out they would intentionally destroy their remaining food supply knowing it would only feed their enemies.
Many of the jars were still sealed shut, so the city was full of food while it was being destroyed. The jars full of burned grain tell us two things: 1) the city had a full supply of food when it was burned; 2) the defeat of Jericho likely occurred at the beginning of harvest since the city was so well stocked at the time of attack.
Significance
All of these previous findings correlate with the biblical narrative:
The city was strongly fortified (Joshua 2:5,7,15, 6:5,20).
The attack occurred just after harvest time in the spring (Joshua 2:6, 3:15, 5:10).
The inhabitants had no opportunity to flee with their food (Joshua 6:1).
The siege was short (Joshua 6:15).
The walls were leveled, possibly by an earthquake (Joshua 6:20).
The city was not plundered (Joshua 6:17-18).
The city was burned (Joshua 6:20)
Kenyon’s Analysis
Kenyon’s full multi-volume report of her excavation (you can buy it online for $1,500 – donations of her report to our ministry will not be rejected) was not published until after her death. Kenyon’s final analysis stated the city was destroyed in 1550 BC instead of 1400 BC. She ultimately disagreed with Garstang’s analysis. In her view, the Israelites come to a totally destroyed city in 1400 BC, not a well-fortified city. The biblical story could not have happened as described. Her dating of 1550 BC mainly came from the lack of an expensive type of pottery from Cyprus popular in 1400 BC. Because of Kenyon’s final analysis many scholars have written off the biblical account of Jericho as a mere fairy tale.
Recent Research
Recent scholars have revisited the archaeological reports. Kathleen Kenyon did a fantastic job documenting the excavation making thorough examination of her discoveries possible. Dr. Bryant G. Wood makes a strong case for the destruction of Jericho to be restored to Garstang’s date of 1400 BC. You can read Dr. Wood’s findings here: http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/05/Did-the-Israelites-Conquer-Jericho-A-New-Look-at-the-Archaeological-Evidence.aspxAmong other points, Dr. Wood observes Kenyon excavated in a poor residential part of Jericho. Kenyon should not have expected expensive pottery from Cyprus in a poor part of town. The common pottery she discovered does support a time of 1400 BC. I encourage you to read all of Dr. Wood’s analysis supporting a date of 1400 BC.
Archaeology can be Messy
Jericho is a perfect example of the potential messiness when you step into the world of archaeology. Some scholars interpret the archaeological evidence as a death-blow to the biblical account. Other equally capable scholars interpret the archaeological evidence to be in full support of every little detail mentioned in the book of Joshua. Ultimately it is up to you to study both sides and come to your own conclusion.
Please join the discussion by posting your thoughts in the comments section below.
The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry King’s Show. One of two most popular posts I […]
Prophecy–The Biblical Prophesy About Tyre.mp4 Uploaded by TruthIsLife7 on Dec 5, 2010 A short summary of the prophecy about Tyre and it’s precise fulfillment. Go to this link and watch the whole series for the amazing fulfillment from secular sources. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvt4mDZUefo ________________ John MacArthur on the amazing fulfilled prophecy on Tyre and how it was fulfilled […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 2) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
John MacArthur on the Bible and Science (Part 1) I have posted many of the sermons by John MacArthur. He is a great bible teacher and this sermon below is another great message. His series on the Book of Proverbs was outstanding too. I also have posted several of the visits MacArthur made to Larry […]
Adrian Rogers – How you can be certain the Bible is the word of God Great article by Adrian Rogers. What evidence is there that the Bible is in fact God’s Word? I want to give you five reasons to affirm the Bible is the Word of God. First, I believe the Bible is the […]
Is there any evidence the Bible is true? Articles By PleaseConvinceMe Apologetics Radio The Old Testament is Filled with Fulfilled Prophecy Jim Wallace A Simple Litmus Test There are many ways to verify the reliability of scripture from both internal evidences of transmission and agreement, to external confirmation through archeology and science. But perhaps the […]
I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is […]
Here is some very convincing evidence that points to the view that the Bible is historically accurate. Archaeological and External Evidence for the Bible Archeology consistently confirms the Bible! Archaeology and the Old Testament Ebla tablets—discovered in 1970s in Northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 B.C. demonstrate that personal and place […]
Francis Schaeffer noted, “In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967)…The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND PENNY LANE. This was developed with great expertness in their record SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND in which psychedelic music, with open statements concerning drug-taking, was knowingly presented as a religious answer.”
Beatles 1966 Last interview
I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this series we have looked at several areas in life where the Beatles looked for meaning and hope but also we have examined some of the lives of those writers, artists, poets, painters, scientists, athletes, models, actors, religious leaders, musicians, comedians, and philosophers that were put on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. We have discovered that many of these individuals on the cover have even taken a Kierkegaardian leap into the area of nonreason in order to find meaning for their lives and that is the reason I have included the 27 minute episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted, ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world.”
How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)
Artist Peter Blake poses for a photograph besides a copy of The Beatles Sgt Pepper LP album cover that he designed in 1967 as he reopens the Holburne Museum on May 12, 2011 in Bath, England. The new museum’s first exhibition – which opens to the public on Saturday – is Peter Blake: A Museum for Myself and will for the first time show extraordinary objects from Peter Blake’s own collection together with a number of important works by the artist himself. The new Holburne Museum includes the restoration of its Grade I listed building and the construction of a striking new extension by Eric Parry Architects. The Museum houses a collection of fine and decorative arts built around the remarkable art collection of Sir William Holburne, first assembled in 19th century Bath, including works by Gainsborough, Zoffany and Turner.
In this flow there was also the period of psychedelic rock, an attempt to find this experience without drugs, by the use of a certain type of music. This was the period of the Beatles’ Revolver (1966) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967). In the same period and in the same direction was Blonde on Blond (1966) by Bob Dylan….No great illustration could be found of the way these concepts were carried to the masses than “pop” music and especially the work of the BEATLES. The Beatles moved through several stages, including the concept of the drug and psychedelic approach. The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND PENNY LANE. This was developed with great expertness in their record SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND in which psychedelic music, with open statements concerning drug-taking, was knowingly presented as a religious answer. The religious form was the same vague pantheism which predominates much of the new mystical thought today. One indeed does not have to understand in a clear way the modern monolithic thought in order to be infiltrated by it. SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND was an ideal example of the manipulating power of the new forms of “total art.” This concept of total art increases the infiltrating power of the message involved.
Paul McCartney- Penny Lane (Live)
Here is an excerpt of a fine article about Schaeffer’s take on the Beatles’ album:
Music and The General Culture’s Shift Away From Absolute Truth
By
Pastor Stephen Feinstein
Two days ago, I wrote about artists plunging below the line of despair soon after the philosophers. By way of reminder, the line of despair, according Francis Schaeffer, is when people abandon the idea of absolutes and instead see reality as being relative to each individual. Relativity makes sense in a godless, accidental universe. Since many philosophers and artists bought into the philosophy of atheism, they gave up absolute truth with it. The end result is everyone can make up their own truth since ultimately everyone is wrong anyway.
Well, after the artists went below the line of despair, music went next, and then the general culture was soon to follow. Thus, today I will talk about the plunge of music and general culture below the line. As I have said before, the things that Schaffer points out are even more relevant for our day than his.
Just as Hegel was the doorway for philosophy and Impressionism was the doorway for art, Debussy (1862-1918) was the doorway for music to drop below the line of despair. He abandoned traditional musical Musique Concrete. Sound was seriously and deliberately distorted. They would take real sounds, but break them up, rearrange the parts, and throw them back together in any chaotic way they chose. Their message was loud and clear. Everything is relative, all things are in change, and nothing (not even sound) is absolute. This seems to be the uniform message of postmodern man. They see us as arising by chance and chaos, and eventually all will return to that state. So in the meantime, they say we must reject all meaning since there is no purpose or plan that unifies all of the particulars in the universe. For those who are interested, Schaffer gives some very interesting examples on page 36 of The God Who is There, of real samples from these types of composers, scales, eschewed tone in unnatural ways, and utilized chromaticism to alter music’s basic diatonic organization. In other words, our ears naturally make sense out of patterned scales and predictable tones, but he decided to jumble these around allowing for nonsensical sounds. This opened the door for music composers to deliberately go below the line of despair, as seen by the first large movement to do so. That movement was, well, it did not stop with music. This progression below the line moved onto a fourth step—general culture. Schaeffer covers the different elements of general culture in this chapter to make his point. He begins with literature and claims that Henry Miller (1891-1980) started to move the general culture below the line. His writings were certainly pornographic, but his purpose was more philosophical than perverse. His goal was to smash everything, including sex. He rejected that there is any meaning, so his goal was to smash all traditional thoughts of meaning, and he even sought to show that sex is meaningless. Without meaning or standards, he can write about whatever he wants, no matter how perverse…
Next Schaeffer moves onto drama and focuses in on John Osborne (1929-1980). As brilliant as a playwright as this man was, he too was part of this movement towards absurdity. In his famous play Martin Luther, he deliberately distorts history to promote his view of truth. Luther was a man that was absolutely committed to truth and he was convinced that he was right in his doctrinal stances against the Roman Catholic Church. Well, in Osborne’s play, the story ends with one of Luther’s old Catholic mentors asking, “Martin, do you know you are right?” And contrary to all history, Osborne has Luther answer, “Let’s hope so.” The curtain rolls, and the audience is left with the mood that nothing is certain. What a moving way to end a play! If someone missed the point in a philosophy textbook, they certainly would have gotten it from the emotional pit in their stomach after watching the play. This is how drama works. It has the unique power, like music, to bypass the intellect and go straight for the emotions.
Poetry also fell below the line. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) wrote a poem called Elegy, which is a depressing verbal expression of total meaningless. They are the words of a tortured soul. He put to poetic form the musings of the philosophers, and in so doing he capture the emotional torment caused by such a worldview. Once again, his poetic form could speak to more people than the philosophers could ever hope to.
Modern Cinema is no different. Good movies are not labeled as good because they are morally right, but instead because they are technically good with good camera shots, artistic flavor, and a philosophical message. It is much the same today. Often the movies that win the awards are the movies that the general public did not care for. The general public often likes to see a good guy overcome a bad guy amidst a two hour roller coaster of action and suspense. But in the opinion of the cultural elites, this is nothing more than bad writing and bad filming meant to appease the masses with romantic illusions of escape. The elites want none of that! Instead, the films that are dubbed as “good” are almost always created by people who agree with the postmodern view of man. Their films have plots that ultimately blur morality, certainty, and truth. They are at their core existentialist.
If you were to explain the drift of modern thought to the average person, they probably would not understand what you are talking about, but as Schaeffer points out, it does not mean they are not influenced by the things they see and hear in movies and on TV, and what they sing along to in pop music. In fact, it is from these areas that the masses have probably been most influenced. It is in these areas that the average “Joe” fell below the line of despair, whether he realized it or not.
For example, the psychedelic music of the Beatles were a deliberate attempt to destroy antithesis, promote relativism, undermined the truths of Christianity, and promote New Age Spirituality and drug use. The musicians that followed them simply brought more of the wickedness. Since the message was set to catchy tunes and directed toward drug-battered minds, an entire generation bought into the counterculture movement of the 1960s, and we are still living in the ramifications of it today. Music has only become more relative and meaningless. It has only promoted more drug use, violence, and sexual promiscuity…
This all stems from the fact that fallen man rejects absolute truth because they reject the God of the Bible. In the past, they clung to idolatry so that they could appeal to some authority other than God in order to account for their absolute standards. But when the chief thinkers rejected any purpose or meaning to things, and instead insisted upon an atheistic existence, absolute standards were rejected. The philosophers wrote and articulated it, the artists painted it on canvas, the musicians promoted it with their new styles, and the general culture (literature, poetry, drama, cinema, TV, and pop music) unwittingly accepted it. Now this is the default mode of thinking for the people of Western Civilization. People reject absolutes even if they don’t know why. Most people would not call themselves atheists, but their entire view of truth and reality stems from an atheist worldview. It is amazing how the absurd ideas of a few philosophers were able to change the way of thought for the entire modern world.
So Christian, what is your view on truth? In a world where antithesis is rejected, we need to push the antithesis again and again until the culture understands they cannot escape it. There are ways to do this, and perhaps they will be shared in later posts. We know that it is impossible to live without absolutes. We know the universe does have meaning. Therefore we are not hypocritical or inconsistent when we live as such. But the culture is hypocritical and inconsistent when it rejects God’s absolutes and yet forms its own, while with the same breath claiming such absolutes do not really exist. We need to confront them with God’s absolute truth, which is the only absolute truth that exists.
_______
John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix
Uploaded on Jul 1, 2010
John Lennon (Beatles), Eric Clapton (Cream), Keith Richards (Rolling Stones), Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience) – Yer Blues
Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 5 August 1966 in the United Kingdom and three days later in the United States. The album was produced byGeorge Martin and features many tracks with an electric guitar-rock sound that contrasts with their previous LP, the folk rock-inspired Rubber Soul (1965).
In the UK, Revolver ’s 14 tracks were released to radio stations throughout July 1966, with the music signifying what author Ian MacDonald later described as “a radical new phase in the group’s recording career”.[1] The album spent 34 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, reaching the number one spot on 13 August.[2] It also topped the Billboard Top LPs listings in America, staying there for six weeks.
In December 1965 the Beatles‘ album Rubber Soul was released to wide critical acclaim.[5] According to author Robert Rodriguez, it was seen as a “major breakthrough beyond the Merseybeat sound of their previous five LPs”.[5] Early the following year, the band carried out overdubs on live recordings taken from their summer 1965 US tour,[6] for inclusion in the concert film The Beatles at Shea Stadium.[7] Aside from this activity, the four band members had no professional commitments for three full months – the longest period of leisure they had experienced since 1962.[8]
The group’s manager, Brian Epstein, had planned for the Beatles to begin work in April 1966 on what would be their third feature film, but when the band members failed to agree on a suitable script, the plans were scrapped in favour of recording a newLP.[9] While Epstein rushed to book touring dates for the summer months, in an effort to fill what had become an empty schedule, the extended layoff allowed the Beatles further time to prepare for their follow-up to Rubber Soul.[10] On 1 May they performed before a crowd of 10,000 during the NME ’s annual Poll-Winners Concert at Empire Pool, in Wembley – their last concert before a paying audience in the United Kingdom.[11] Already one month into recording sessions for Revolver, the Beatles played a lacklustre set that conveyed their increasing lack of interest in live performance.[5] According to Rodriguez, there was an almost continuous series of rumours circulating in 1966 that they had decided to break up.[12]
John Lennon had been the Beatles’ dominant creative force through 1965, when Paul McCartney began to exert his influence in the group beyond sharing the songwriting, musical accompaniment and assisting with arrangement.[13] By 1966 McCartney had attained an approximately equal position with Lennon, who had to that point contributed the lead vocal for the majority of their singles, album openers, and closers.[14] The recording of Revolver marks the midpoint between the period of the Beatles’ career that was dominated by Lennon – who was by this time growing increasingly disinterested in his life as a Beatle – and the period dominated by McCartney, who would provide the group’s artistic direction for every post-Revolver project.[15] In addition,George Harrison‘s newfound interest in the music and culture of India had inspired him as a composer;[16] with the release of Revolver, author Nicholas Schaffner later wrote, “there were now three prolific songwriting Beatles”.[17]
In Rodriguez’s view, whereas Sgt. Pepper is a “period piece” that is “inextricably tied to its time”, Revolver is “crackling with potent immediacy”.[19] He credits the album with influencing the development of a diversity of music genres, including electronica,punk rock, and world music. In his opinion the album’s “eclecticism … is seen by many as its most appealing quality”.[19]Kenneth Womack identifies “I’m Only Sleeping“ ’s preoccupation with dreams, and the references to death found in the lyric to “Tomorrow Never Knows” as examples of the Beatles’ exploration of “phenomenologies of consciousness” on Revolver.[20] The songs represent two important elements of the human life cycle that are “philosophical opposites”.[20]
In Womack’s opinion, Harrison’s overdubbed opening count-in of “Taxman” is deliberately off rhythm and out of tempo.[22] Riley credits the contrived atmosphere with establishing the “new studio aesthetic of Revolver“.[23] He describes Harrison’s vocals, which were treated with heavy compression and ADT, as “angry” and “poisoned with acridity”.[24] McCartney’s active bassline features glissandi that are reminiscent of Motown ’s James Jamerson. He also performed the song’s Indian-styled lead guitar solo, which spans two octaves and uses the Dorian mode.[25] The track was intended as a protest against the high marginal tax rates paid by top earners like the Beatles, which were sometimes as much as 95 percent of their income; hence: “Should five percent appear too small, be thankful I don’t take it all.”[26] Lennon helped Harrison finish the song’s lyrics, contributing the line: “My advice for those who die: declare the pennies on your eyes.”[26] The lyric mentions “Mr Wilson” and “Mr Heath”, referring toHarold Wilson and Edward Heath, who were, respectively, the British LabourPrime Minister and ConservativeLeader of the Opposition at the time.[27] Rodriguez credits “Taxman” as the first Beatles song written about “topical concerns”.[28] The author Shaugn O’Donnell describes it as a “frame or doorway, a boundary between reality and the mystical world” of the album.[22]
Womack describes “Eleanor Rigby” as a “narrative about the perils of loneliness”, including the track among the Beatles’ “most fully realized songs”.[29] The story involves the title character, who is an aging spinster, and a lonely priest named Father McKenzie who writes “sermon[s] that no one will hear”.[30] He presides over Rigby’s funeral and acknowledges that despite his efforts, “no one was saved”.[31]The lyric was the product of a group effort, with Harrison, Starr, and Lennon contributing to McCartney’s song.[32][nb 1] Martin arranged the track’s string octet, drawing inspiration from Bernard Herrmann‘s 1960 film score for Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho.[34]Everett describes the recording’s timbre as “dry” and “gritty”, which he finds “particularly effective when the cellos double the melody as the priest wipes dirt from his hands”.[35] McCartney added a vocal countermelody to the song’s last refrain that was treated with ADT and channelled through a Leslie speaker.[36] The musicologist Ian MacDonald notes that, because most pop songs avoid the topic of death, “Eleanor Rigby” ’s embrace of the taboo subject “came as quite a shock” to listeners in 1966.[37] In Riley’s opinion, “the corruption of ‘Taxman’ and the utter finality of Eleanor’s fate makes the world of Revolver more ominous than any other pair of opening songs could.”[38][nb 2]
In the opinion of Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould, the backward guitar solo on “I’m Only Sleeping” seems to “suspend the laws of time and motion to simulate the half-coherence of the state between wakefulness and sleep”.[41] According to MacDonald, Lennon wanted his vocal to sound like a “papery old man’s voice”, so it was treated with ADT and subjected to varispeeding until a desirable sound was achieved, leaving the vocal at E minor, one semitone lower than the original.[40] Everett notes that the song’s unstructured melody never commits to the tonic, instead favouring the dominant.[42] He praises the recording’s “unusual timbres”, describing the song as a “particularly expressive text painting”.[42] Womack credits the combination of Lennon’s airy vocals, McCartney’s “pensive bassline”, and Harrison’s “otherworldly backward guitar solo” with “establish[ing] an appropriately ethereal mood” that urges the listener to embrace the “dreamworld of sleep”.[20] Riley identifies the song as Revolver ’s first allusion toescapism.[38]
“Love You To” marks Harrison’s first foray into Hindustani classical music. The song’s melody is based on the five highest notes of C minor in Dorian mode.[43] With minimal input from the other Beatles,[44]Harrison recorded the track with musicians from the north London-based Asian Music Circle, who provided instrumentation such as tabla, swarmandal and tambura.[45] While the identity of the sitarist on the track has been the subject of debate among commentators,[46] Peter Lavezzoli, author of The Dawn of Indian Music in the West, is among those who credit the part to Harrison. Lavezzoli describes Harrison’s playing as “the most accomplished performance on sitar by any rock musician” and recognises the song as “the first conscious attempt in pop to emulate a non-Western form of music in structure and instrumentation”.[47] Everett identifies the track’s change of metre as its most salient feature, a characteristic that was without precedent in the Beatles’ catalogue thus far, but would influence Lennon “within weeks” before going on to feature prominently on the band’s subsequent album, Sgt. Pepper.[48] Written during a period when Harrison was heavily influenced by his experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD,[49][50] the lyrics to “Love You To” address the singer’s desire for “immediate sexual gratification”, Womack writes, and serve as a “rallying call to accept our inner hedonism and release our worldly inhibitions”.[51]
“Here, There and Everywhere” was inspired by the Beach Boys‘ song “God Only Knows“.[51][nb 3] McCartney’s double-tracked vocal was treated with varispeeding, resulting in a higher pitch at playback than the original.[53] Womack notes the introductory vocals, which shift from 9/8 to 7/8 to 4/4 within the span of twelve words.[51] According to Everett, “nowhere else does a Beatles introduction so well prepare a listener for the most striking and expressive tonal events that lie ahead.”[54] Womack characterises the song as a romantic ballad “about living in the here and now” and “fully experiencing the conscious moment”.[51] He notes that, with the preceding track, “Love You To”, the album expresses “corresponding examinations of the human experience of physical and romantic love”.[51] Riley describes “Here, There and Everywhere” as “the most perfect song” that McCartney has ever written.[55] In his opinion, the track “domesticates” the “eroticisms” of “Love You To”, drawing comparison with the concise writing of Rodgers and Hart.[56] McCartney wrote the song in early June 1966, toward the end of the Revolver sessions, and as the Beatles were under pressure to complete the album before their scheduled flight to Germany on 23 June for a European tour.[57][nb 4]
Womack describes “Yellow Submarine” as “a simple tune about the joys of carefree living”.[59] McCartney wrote the song, which he characterises as a “kid’s story”, as a vehicle for Starr’s limited vocal range.[59] With the help of Martin and Emerick, as well asthe Rolling Stones‘ Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and the roadiesNeil Aspinall and Mal Evans, the Beatles attempted to create a nautical atmosphere by mixing the sounds of various instruments, including gongs, whistles, and bells with an assortment of Studio Two’s sound effect units.[59] Lennon recorded the track’s superimposed voices in Abbey Road’s echo chamber, recalling what Womack describes as “a forgotten vestige of a Liverpudlian, seafaring past”.[60] In Riley’s opinion, the juxtaposition of McCartney’s graceful tenor vocals in “Here, There and Everywhere” with Starr’s “throaty” baritonecroon in “Yellow Submarine” provides an element of comic relief that only the Beatles could successfully achieve.[61] He describes the song as “exactly suited” to Starr’s “humble charm”, noting the track’s clever mix of comedy in the style of The Goon Show with satire inspired by Spike Jones.[62] According to Riley, “‘Yellow Submarine’ doesn’t subvert Revolver ’s darker moods; it provides joyous distraction from them.”[62][nb 5]
The light atmosphere of “Yellow Submarine” is broken by what Riley describes as “the outwardly harnessed, but inwardly raging guitar” that introduces “She Said She Said“.[62] He praises the song’s expression of the “primal urge” for innocence, which imbues the lyric with “complexity”, as the speaker suffers through feelings of “inadequacy”, “helplessness” and “profound fear”.[62] In his opinion, the track’s “intensity is palpable” and “the music is a direct connection to [Lennon’s] psyche”.[62][nb 6] “She Said She Said” marks the second time that a Beatles arrangement used a shifting metre, as the foundation of 4/4 briefly switches to 3/4 with the lyrics: “when I was a boy, everything was right”, before settling back into 4/4.[65] Harrison later recalled that he helped Lennon finish the composition, which involved joining together three separate fragments of song.[66] The track was recorded during a single nine-hour session on 21 June, one day before the album’s completion deadline.[67] MacDonald characterises “She Said She Said” as “the antithesis of McCartney’s impeccable neatness” and “one of the most irregular things that Lennon ever wrote”.[68] Owing to an argument in the studio, McCartney did not contribute to the recording, leaving Harrison to perform the bassline in addition to the lead guitar and harmony vocals.[69] The lyric was inspired in part by a conversation that Lennon and Harrison had with actor Peter Fonda in Los Angeles in August 1965, while all three were under the influence of LSD.[49] During the conversation, Fonda commented: “I know what it’s like to be dead”, because as a child he had technically died during an operation.[58] Lennon, fearing that the sombre tone of the story might lead to a bad trip, asked Fonda to leave the party.[68] Riley notes that by ending the first side of Revolver with “She Said She Said”, the Beatles return to the ominous mood established by the album’s first two songs.[70]
“Good Day Sunshine” was written mainly by McCartney. In a review of the song, for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger describes it as “an appropriate soundtrack” for “one of the first fine days of spring, just after you’ve fallen in love or started a vacation”. The verses reflect aspects of vaudeville, while McCartney has also acknowledged the influence of the Lovin’ Spoonful on the composition.[71]
The song “And Your Bird Can Sing” was written primarily by Lennon, with McCartney claiming to have helped on the lyric, estimating the song as “80–20” to Lennon.[72] Harrison and McCartney played the dual lead-guitar parts on the recording.[73]
“For No One” is a melancholy song featuring McCartney playing piano and clavichord, accompanied by Starr on hi-hat and various percussion. The horn solo was played by Alan Civil, who recalled having to “busk” his part, with little guidance from McCartney or Martin at the overdubbing session.[73] While recognising McCartney’s “customary logic” in the song’s musical structure, MacDonald comments on the sense of detachment conveyed in the lyrics to this “curiously phlegmatic account of the end of an affair”. MacDonald suggests that McCartney was possibly attempting to employ in musical terms the same “dry cinematic eye” that director John Schlesinger had adopted in the 1965 film Darling.[74]
“Doctor Robert” was written by Lennon and McCartney.[75] McCartney stated: “The song was a joke about this fellow who cured everyone of everything with all these pills and tranquilizers. Doctor Robert,” he added, “just kept New York high.[76] There’s some fellow in New York, and in the States we’d hear people say: ‘You can get everything off him; any pills you want.’ That’s what Dr. Robert is all about, just a pill doctor who sees you all right.”[77]
Harrison said he wrote “I Want to Tell You” about “the avalanche of thoughts” that he found hard to express in words.[78] The song opens with a descending guitar riff as the recording fades in, similar to the start of the Beatles’ 1964 track “Eight Days a Week“. Rolling Stone critic Mikal Gilmore has described Harrison’s incorporation of dissonance in the melody as being “revolutionary in popular music” in 1966, “and perhaps more originally creative than the avant-garde mannerisms that Lennon and McCartney borrowed from the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky in this same period”.[79] According to musicologist Dominic Pedler, the E7♭9 chord used in the song is “one of the most legendary in the entire Beatles catalogue”.[80]
McCartney’s “Got to Get You into My Life” was influenced by the Motown Sound[81] and used brass instrumentation extensively. Although cast in the form of a love song, McCartney described the song as an “ode to pot”.[82] It was released as a single in the US in 1976, ten years after Revolver, to promote the compilation album Rock ‘n’ Roll Music on which it appeared. (The vocal in the fade out at the end of the song is different on the mono version than on the stereo version. The last text line “What are you doing to my life?” is easier to hear on the mono version).
Rodriguez describes “Tomorrow Never Knows” as “the greatest leap into the future” that the Beatles “had yet taken”.[9] The group’s innovation in the recording studio reached its apex with the Lennon composition, which was an early example in the emerging counterculture genre of psychedelic music,[83] and included such groundbreaking techniques as reverse guitar, processed vocals, and looped tape effects. Musically, it is drone-like, with a strongly syncopated, repetitive drum-beat played over a single chord. The lyrics were inspired by Timothy Leary‘s book, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The title was inspired by a Ringo Starr malapropism.[84] The song’s harmonic structure is derived from Indian music and is based upon a high volume C drone played by Harrison on a tamboura.[85] Much of the backing track consists of a series of prepared tape loops, stemming from Lennon’s and McCartney’s interest in and experiments with magnetic tape andmusique concrète techniques at that time. According to the Beatles’ session chronicler Mark Lewisohn,[86] Lennon and McCartney prepared a series of loops at home, and these then were added to the pre-recorded backing track. This was reportedly done live in a single take, with multiple tape recorders running simultaneously, some of the longer loops extending out of the control room and down the corridor. Lennon’s processed lead vocal was another innovation. Always in search of ways to enhance or alter the sound of his voice, he gave a directive to EMI engineerGeoff Emerick that he wanted to sound like he was the Dalai Lama singing from the top of a high mountain.[87] Emerick solved the problem by routing a signal from the recording console into the studio’s Leslie speaker, giving Lennon’s vocal its ethereal, filtered quality (Emerick was later reprimanded by the studio’s management for doing this).
Revolver invented musical expressions and initiated trends and motifs that would chart the path not only of the Beatles and a cultural epoch, but of the subsequent history of rock and roll as well.[110]
—Russell Reising
According to Rodriguez, whereas Sgt. Pepper has been routinely identified as the Beatles’ greatest album – indeed, as arguably the finest rock album – Revolver has consistently contested and often surpassed it in lists of the group’s best work.[111] He characterises Revolver as “the Beatles’ artistic high-water mark”, and notes that unlike Sgt. Pepper, it was the product of a collaborative effort, with “the group as a whole being fully vested in creating Beatle music”.[18] In Riley’s view, Sgt. Pepper is the Beatles’ most notorious record for the wrong reasons – a flawed masterpiece that can only echo the strength of Revolver.”[112] In the opinion of the musicologist Russell Reising: “However one defines and wherever one ranksRevolver, no one can deny that Revolver ’s impact was, by any standard of measurement, massive and transformative.”[110]
Rodriguez praises Martin and Emerick’s contribution to the album, suggesting that their talents were as essential to its success as the Beatles’.[113] He describes Revolver as the album that marks the group’s waning interest in live performance “in favor of creating soundscapes without limitation”.[114] In his opinion, whereas most contemporary music acts shy away from attempting a concept album in the vein of Sgt. Pepper, Revolver ’s “eclectic collection of diverse songs” continues to influence modern popular music.[114] According to the music critic Jim DeRogatis, Revolver represents a relic “of the first era of psychedelic rock and shining testaments to what can be accomplished in the recording studio when folks are fuelled on the potent drug of rampant imagination.”[115] In the opinion of the musicologist Russell Reising, “Revolver remains a haunting, soothing, confusing, grandly complex and ambitious statement about the possibilities of popular music.”[116]
In 1997 Revolver was named the third greatest album of all time in a Music of the Millenniumpoll conducted in the United Kingdom by HMV Group, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. In 2000 Q magazine placed it at number 1 in its list of the 50 Greatest British Albums Ever.[117] In 2001, the TV networkVH1 named it the greatest album of all time, a position it also achieved in the Virgin All Time Top 1,000 Albums.[118] In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Revolver third on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”.[119] In 2006 the album was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time.[120] In 2006, Guitar World readers chose it as the tenth best guitar album of all time.[121] In 2010, Revolver was named the best pop album of all time by the official newspaper of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano.[122] In 2013, Entertainment Weekly named Revolver the greatest album of all time.[123]
All songs written and composed by Lennon–McCartney, except “Taxman”, “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You”, which were composed by George Harrison[124].
George Martin – producer; mixing engineer; piano on “Good Day Sunshine” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”; Hammond organ on “Got to Get You into My Life”; tape loops of the marching band on “Yellow Submarine”
Marianne Faithfull – background vocals on “Yellow Submarine” (uncredited)
Neil Aspinall – background vocals on “Yellow Submarine” (uncredited)
Pattie Boyd – background vocals on “Yellow Submarine” (uncredited)
Tony Gilbert, Sidney Sax, John Sharpe, Jurgen Hess – violins; Stephen Shingles, John Underwood – violas; Derek Simpson, Norman Jones – cellos: string octet on “Eleanor Rigby”, orchestrated and conducted by George Martin (uncredited, with Paul McCartney)
My absolute favorite albums are Rubber Soul and Revolver. On both records you can hear references to other music — R&B, Dylan, psychedelia — but it’s not done in a way that is obvious or dates the records. When you picked up Revolver, you knew it was something different. Heck, they are wearing sunglasses indoors in the picture on the back of the cover and not even looking at the camera . . . and the music was so strange and yet so vivid. If I had to pick a favorite song from those albums, it would be “And Your Bird Can Sing” . . . no, “Girl” . . . no, “For No One” . . . and so on, and so on. . . .
Their breakup album, Let It Be, contains songs both gorgeous and jagged. I suppose ambition and human frailty creeps into every group, but they delivered some incredible performances. I remember going to Leicester Square and seeing the film of Let It Be in 1970. I left with a melancholy feeling.
The Beatles – Penny Lane
Uploaded on Mar 31, 2008
Band:The Beatles
Song:Penny Lane
Lyrics:
“Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
of every head he’s had the pleasure to know
And all the people that come and go stop to say hello
On the corner is a banker with a motor car
the little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a “mac” in the pouring rain
Very strange
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Wet beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit and meanwhile back in
Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It’s clean machine
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Full of fish and finger pies
in summer meanwhile back
Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway
Penny Lane, the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in from the pouring rain
very strange
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
Wet beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit and meanwhile back
Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Lane”
Penny Lane made famous by The Beatles
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32
‘Penny Lane’
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Main Writer: McCartney Recorded: December 29 and 30, 1966; January 4-6, 9, 10, 12 and 17, 1967 Released: February 13, 1967 10 weeks; no. 1
“Penny Lane” was Paul McCartney’s ode to the Liverpool he knew as a child, but the song also had a hidden inspiration: His white-hot competitive streak. “The song was generated by a kind of ‘I can do just as well as you can, John,’ because we’d just recorded ‘Strawberry Fields,'” said George Martin. “It was such a knockout, I think Paul went back to perfect his idea. And they were both significant. They were both about their childhood.” The songs would be released together — opposite sides of the first single from the Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions.
Many of the lyrics come straight from McCartney’s adolescence. Penny Lane is a Liverpool neighborhood where Lennon lived as a child and also the name of a bus depot McCartney would pass through on the way to Lennon’s house. A barbershop in the area, Bioletti’s, displayed pictures of different haircuts it offered — hence the lines “There is a barber showing photographs/Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know.” As McCartney put it, “The song is part fact, part nostalgia for a place which is a great place — blue suburban skies as we remember it.”
“Penny Lane” was striking not just for McCartney’s gorgeous melody but also for its complex arrangements. The Beatles “were avidly hungry for new sounds,” Martin said. With McCartney playing three piano parts, bass, harmonium and tambourine; his bandmates playing more piano, guitar, drums and a hand bell; and several horn sections, “Penny Lane” built a detailed wall of sound that achieved the force of a rock song without sounding anything like one.
The recording’s crowning touch was inspired by a televised performance of J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 2” that McCartney saw after the basic track for “Penny Lane” had been recorded. He arranged for the trumpet player he’d heard on the broadcast, David Mason, to come in and add a piccolo trumpet solo (as well as a brief coda, which appeared only on early promotional copies).
Besides giving the Beatles a chart-topping hit, “Penny Lane” gave Lennon’s old neighborhood a boost as well: The Penny Lane area became a significant tourist attraction, and Beatles fans quickly went about pilfering its street signs.
The Beatles – ‘You got to hide your love away’ music video
Uploaded on Nov 6, 2007
The Beatles – ‘You got to hide your love away’ music video.
31
‘You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away’
Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Main Writer: Lennon Recorded: February 18, 1965 Released: August 13, 1965 Not released as a single
“That’s me in my Dylan period,” Lennon remarked about “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” “I am like a chameleon, influenced by whatever is going on. If Elvis can do it, I can do it. If the Everly Brothers can do it, me and Paul can. Same with Dylan.”
Just as the Beatles had inspired Bob Dylan to incorporate a tougher rock & roll sound into his music, Dylan’s example had pushed the Beatles — and Lennon in particular — to explore a more personal approach to writing songs. McCartney said that Dylan’s poetic lyrics “hit a chord in John. It was as if John felt, ‘That should have been me.’ And to that end, John did a Dylan impression” on “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” (The song’s opening lines are remarkably similar to Dylan’s 1964 track “I Don’t Believe You [She Acts Like We Have Never Met],” which begins, “I can’t understand/She let go of my hand/And left me here facing the wall.”)
Serendipity also helped in writing “Hide Your Love Away.” Lennon had originally written, “If she’s gone, I can’t go on/Feeling two foot tall,” but when he accidentally sang “two foot small” while showing the song to McCartney, they both realized that was better.
“Hide Your Love Away” was recorded in one day for the Help! soundtrack, and its performance in the film, with the Beatles relaxing in their house built for four, is one of the movie’s highlights. It was the first Beatles recording to feature all acoustic instruments, and it also marked one of the few times that Lennon, always painfully self-conscious about his singing, did not double-track his lead vocal, as he often did since discovering this studio trick.
The band brought in an outside musician for only the second time: For a six-pound fee (roughly $17 at the time) and no credit, Johnnie Scott recorded tenor and alto flute parts for the song. The Beatles gave Scott some general direction and let him sketch out the arrangement on his own. Scott did recall that the boys were in a fine mood at the time. “Ringo was full of marital joys,” he said. “He’d just got back from his honeymoon.”
Though the Beatles didn’t release it as a single (“It’s not commercial,” Lennon said), the English folk group the Silkie, who were signed to Brian Epstein’s management company, scored a Top 10 hit with it in the United States, and the Beach Boys covered it on 1965’s Beach Boys’ Party!album.
During the late 1950s, Blake became one of the best known British pop artists. His paintings from this time included imagery from advertisements, music hall entertainment, and wrestlers, often including collagedelements. Blake was included in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and had his first solo exhibition in 1960. In the ‘Young Contemporaries’ exhibition of 1961 in which he exhibited alongsideDavid Hockney and R.B. Kitaj, he was first identified with the emerging British Pop Art movement. Blake won the (1961) John Moores junior award for Self Portrait with Badges. He came to wider public attention when, along with Pauline Boty, Derek Boshier and Peter Phillips, he featured in Ken Russell‘s Monitor film on pop art, Pop Goes the Easel, broadcast on BBC television in 1962. From 1963 Blake was represented by Robert Fraser placing him at the centre of swinging London and brought him into contact with leading figures of popular culture.
On the Balcony (1955–57) is a significant early work which remains an iconic piece of British Pop Art, showing Blake’s interest in combining images from pop culture with fine art. The work, which appears to be a collage but is wholly painted, shows, among other things, a boy on the left of the composition holding Édouard Manet‘s The Balcony, badges and magazines. It was inspired by a painting by Honoré Sharrer depicting workers holding famous paintings, Workers and Paintings.
Blake has referred to the work of other artists many times. Another example, The First Real Target (1961) a standard archery target with the title written across the top is a play on paintings of targets by Kenneth Noland and Jasper Johns.
Blake painted several album sleeves. He designed the sleeve for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with his wife Jann Haworth, the American-born artist whom he married in 1963 and divorced in 1979. The Sgt. Pepper’s sleeve has become an iconic work of pop art, much imitated and Blake’s best-known work. Producing the collage necessitated the construction of a set with cut-out photographs and objects, such as flowers, centred on a drum (sold in auction in 2008) with the title of the album. Blake has subsequently complained about the one-off fee he received for the design (£200[1]), with no subsequent royalties. Blake made sleeves for the Band Aid single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (1984), Paul Weller‘s Stanley Road (1995) and the Ian Dury tribute album Brand New Boots and Panties (2001; Blake was Dury’s tutor at the Royal College of Art in the mid-60s). He designed the sleeves for Pentangle‘s Sweet Child and The Who‘s Face Dances (1981), which features portraits of the band by a number of artists.
In 1969, Blake left London to live near Bath. His work changed direction to feature scenes based on English Folklore and characters from Shakespeare. In the early 1970s, he made a set of watercolour paintings to illustrate Lewis Carroll‘s Through the Looking-Glass using a young artist, Celia Wanless, as the model for Alice and in 1975 he was a founder of the Brotherhood of Ruralists. Blake moved back to London in 1979 and his work returned to earlier popular culture references.
In January 1992, Blake appeared on BBC2’s acclaimed “Arena” Masters of the Canvas documentary and painted the portrait of the wrestler Kendo Nagasaki.
In June 2006, as The Who returned to play Leeds University 36 years after recording their seminal Live at Leeds album in 1970, Blake unveiled a Live at Leeds 2 artwork to commemorate the event. The artist and The Who’s Pete Townshend signed an edition which will join the gallery’s collection.
More recently, Blake has created artist’s editions for the opening of the Pallant House Gallery which houses collections of his most famous paintings. The works are homages to his earlier work on the Stanley Road album cover and Babe Rainbow prints. He designed a series of deck chairs.
In 2006, Blake designed the cover for Oasis greatest hits album Stop the Clocks. According to Blake, he chose all of the objects in the picture at random, but the sleeves of Sgt. Pepper’s and Definitely Maybe were in the back of his mind. He claims, “It’s using the mystery of Definitely Maybe and running away with it.” Familiar cultural icons which can be seen on the cover include Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, Charles Manson (replacing the original image of Marilyn Monroe, which could not be used for legal reasons) and the seven dwarfs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Blake revealed that the final cover wasn’t the original which featured an image of the shop ‘Granny Takes A Trip’ on the Kings Road in Chelsea, London.
Blake created an updated version of Sgt. Pepper—with famous figures from Liverpool history—for the campaign for Liverpool to become European Capital of Culture in 2008, and is created a series of prints to celebrate Liverpool’s status.[2]
A fan of Chelsea Football Club, Blake designed a collage to promote the team’s home kit in 2010. He also designed a shopping bag for the Lucky Brand Jeans company for the holiday season. As part of ‘The Big Egg Hunt’ February 2012 Sir Peter Blake designed an egg on behalf of Dorchester Collection. Blake created the carpet which runs through the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom‘s Middlesex Guildhall building.[3]
As he approached his 80th birthday, he undertook a project to recreate the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover with images of friends and “great people” this time using desktop editing software rather than plywood cut-out images as used in the set created for the original album cover.[4]
To mark his 80th birthday, an exhibition was held at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to celebrate the artist’s long associations with music called [Peter Blake and Pop Music] (23 June to 7 October 2012).[5]
Blake became a Royal Academician in 1981, and a CBE in 1983: in 2002 he was knighted as a Knight Bachelor for his services to art.[7] Retrospectives of Blake’s work were held at the Tate in 1983 and Tate Liverpool in 2008.[8] In February 2005, the Sir Peter Blake Music Art Gallery, located in the School of Music, University of Leeds, was opened by the artist. The permanent exhibition features 20 examples of Blake’s album sleeve art, including the only public showing of a signed print of his Sgt. Pepper’sartwork. In March 2011, Blake was awarded an honorary DMus from the University of Leeds, and marked by the public unveiling of his artwork for the Boogie For Stu album. On 18 July 2011, Blake was awarded an Honorary degree for Doctor of Art fromNottingham Trent University. In 2014 he was made an Honorary Academician at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.
E P I S O D E 1 0 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode X – Final Choices 27 min FINAL CHOICES I. Authoritarianism the Only Humanistic Social Option One man or an elite giving authoritative arbitrary absolutes. A. Society is sole absolute in absence of other absolutes. B. But society has to be […]
E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]
E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]
E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]
E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]
E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]
Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]
Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]
Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]
Audrey W. Johnson (1907-84), a native of England, grew up in a Christian home but went through a period of agnosticism, due to the influence of secular philosophers. Outwardly, she seemed to enjoy life but inwardly she struggled with quiet despair.
Michel Foucault (pronounced foo-ko) may be one of the most influential 20th century thinkers you’ve never heard of. He was interested in studying the development of ideas. How and why do we know what we know? He held a chair at Collège de France with the title, “History of Systems of Thought.” He wrote several books on diverse subjects such as: psychiatry; medicine; the human sciences; prison systems; as well as the history of human sexuality.
In 1905, at the age of seven, the family moved into a new home. Lewis writes:
Lewis gravitated to not only reading but writing at an early age, due to a hereditary condition with his thumbs known asSymphalangism. He explains the condition:
Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford; he excelled in every area he studied. He won a triple first, the highest honors in three areas of study.
Lewis slowly re-embraced Christianity, influenced by arguments with Tolkien. He was also largely influenced by reading George MacDonald and G.K. Chesterton’sThe Everlasting Man. Lewis explains leaving Atheism:
The thoughts of C.S. Lewis place him at #7 on our list of Top Ten Theologians. Men like Michel Foucault were getting people to doubt the knowability of things. How do we really know what we know? Europe is transitioning at the time from being the center of Western Orthodox Christianity to being a post-Christian society. Lewis considers himself to be a layman, not a trained theologian. His expertise is in Medieval and Renaissance English. To the seeming embarrassment of many colleagues, Lewis continually returns to writing about his Christian faith. He was once one of the world’s most skeptical skeptics. He is now a fully convinced believer in Jesus. One of the central themes of his life and faith is the concept of Joy.
Lewis does not leave people to simply seek their own conception of Joy. He does not plead with people to listen for whatever echo works best for them. He explains:
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Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist, author and avid atheist, once said, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” Is that true? Does Christianity call us to scorn or reject reason and evidence in an effort to have a faith that pleases God? Here at PleaseConvinceMe.com, we’re making every effort to demonstrate the relationship between faith, reason and evidence. Our site is filled with evidence that demonstrates the truth of Christianity, because the Christian faith is grounded in reason and evidence.
“Argument weak at this point. Thump podium and holler louder!”
Who is Jesus? You and I are sitting down in the Credo House, enjoying a delicious Luther Latte. We’re talking about the important questions of life and I lean forward asking you that simple question, “Who is Jesus?” What do you think about him? Is He everything the Bible communicates? Did He actually live, die for the sins of humanity, and rise from the dead? Do you consider Him your Lord? Is He the ultimate King of the Jews? Is He the King of Kings? These are important questions for all of mankind to consider.
Wow, what an amazing dialogue. Jesus forces Pilate to wrestle with his identity. Where does the conversation go from here? Pilate tells the crowd he believes Jesus to be innocent. The crowd finds a loop-hole in the system asking for a criminal, Barabbas, to be released from prison and for Jesus to be found guilty. Pilate appeases the crowd by sending Jesus away to be flogged. After experiencing the horror of flogging, the Bible tells us Jesus is sent back to Pilate. Pilate and Jesus have another conversation described in John 19:
In 1961 the archaeological world was taken back to the first century Roman province of Judea. A group of archaeologists, led by Dr. Antonio Frova were excavating an ancient Roman theater near Caesarea Maritima. Caesarea was a leading city in the first century located on the Mediterranean Sea. A limestone block was found there with a surprising inscription. The inscription, on three lines, reads:
1400 BC was an unusual time in history. Moses, about 40 years earlier, led a sea of people through the Red Sea. He was intent to lead them from Egypt straight to the Promised Land. The people, however, arrived a bit later than they were planning. The people leaving Egypt did not obey God as they should have (think golden calf) so forty years were spent traveling through a vast desert wasteland. During these 40 years God miraculously provided manna, meat, water and the Ten Commandments for the people to survive.
The men of Jericho laugh as they watch what can best be described as unconventional warfare tactics. The strategy, however, actually works! The plan is executed down to the smallest detail. After the final shout the walls of Jericho fall down. The city is burned. Jericho is conquered in one week. Truth appears to be stranger than fiction. The conquest of Canaan has just been inaugurated through a river stopping and a fortified city being defeated through the combination of marching, music and shouting. At least this is the history described in the Bible.
The archaeological world first turned their gaze toward Jericho beginning in the late 1800’s. The first documented excavation occurred in 1867 and 1868 by the famous British engineer Charles Warren. Warren was most interested in finding out whether the large earthen mound, known as Tell es-Sultan, is natural or man-made? Warren dug six vertical shafts to see what was inside the mound.
The next major excavation on Tell es-Sultan was done by a team from Austria and Germany from 1907-1909 and then again in 1911. Their major contribution to our understanding of Jericho was discovering a revetment wall which they followed around most of the city. A revetment wall is a retaining wall which prevents erosion. Further walls were typically built on top of a revetment wall. Tell es-Sultan was already taking shape as the ancient walled city of Jericho.
Garstang’s conclusions brought a lot of controversy from some of his colleagues who questioned his speedy reporting and dating methods. Garstang asked an up-and-coming British archaeologist named Kathleen Kenyon to study his findings. Kenyon studied all previous findings from Jericho and then led her own excavations from 1952-1958. Her study of Jericho made her famous.
One of Kenyon’s great discoveries from Jericho was the grain supply. Her team found many jars more than 3,000 years old which were all full of burned grain! Why is this so significant? The military strategy of the day was siege. An army would surround a city, cut off all food and water supply, and wait for the people to starve. A besieged city contains no food at the time of destruction. Additionally, if a city were to surrender before their food supply ran out they would intentionally destroy their remaining food supply knowing it would only feed their enemies.
