Francis Schaeffer in his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT (Chapter 4) asserts:
Because men have lost the objective basis for certainty of knowledge in the areas in which they are working, more and more we are going to find them manipulating science according to their own sociological or political desires rather than standing upon concrete objectivity. We are going to find increasingly what I would call sociological science, where men manipulate the scientific facts. Carl Sagan (1934-1996), professor of astronomy and space science at Cornell University, demonstrates that the concept of a manipulated science is not far-fetched. He mixes science and science fiction constantly. He is a true follower of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). The media gives him much TV prime time and much space in the press and magazine coverage, and the United State Government spent millions of dollars in the special equipment which was included in the equipment of the Mars probe–at his instigation, to give support to his obsessive certainty that life would be found on Mars, or that even large-sized life would be found there. With Carl Sagan the line concerning objective science is blurred, and the media spreads his mixture of science and science fiction out to the public as exciting fact.
Schaeffer with his wife Edith in Switzerland.
This mixing of science and science fiction had a purpose behind it. James Hubner enlightens us. James Hubner in his book LIGHT UP THE DARKNESS (pages 18-19) wrote:
Carl Sagan said this about extraterrestrial creatures, “When we know who they are, we will know who we are.” That is a remarkable statement, a remarkable religious statement. Why is it significant to know our identity? Why do humans desire to know who they are? …By asking these questions, Sagan exposed his own image-bearing soul while being completely unaware of it.
Contact is a fictional book written by a well known atheist (and strong supporter of the existence of aliens) named Carl Sagan. His main goal in writing the novel was to ridicule Christianity. It was Carl’s best shot at proving atheism was the only true belief. Within the book, Sagan discusses the relationship between science and faith. He establishes that science has all the answers without God. Hollywood discovered the story line and developed a movie out of it. The main character, Ellie Arroway, represents science. Carl Sagan wrote himself in to be her part. The antagonist, Palmer Joss, represents Sagan’s view of faith. The two characters, as well as what they represent, are constantly being compared and contrasted throughout the film. Science and faith are intertwined in each other more than Carl Sagan ever imagined.
For a writer who is so blatantly anti-Christian, Sagan is awfully familiar with the idea of General revelation. General revelation is the knowledge of God that can be seen through nature taken and interpreted from the passages in Romans 1: 19-20, which says, “[S]ince what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Throughout Contact, characters are mesmerized by the heavens. Ellie gives a compelling testimony about the aliens she sees and how spectacular all that creation is. Even Palmer talks about his general revelation experience when he looked at the stars and, “I knew I wasn’t alone…it was God.”
When any of the characters look at the stars, they can’t believe how magnificent they all are. God has made plain to these scientists his existence through the heavens and they use it as proof against him. If anything, science should make faith stronger. A Christian would see the heavens and all of creation and refer to them as general revelation as described in Romans 1.
Psalm 8 says, “You have set your glory in the heavens…when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?…” All of these things are done by Ellie. She fantasized about alien civilizations and completely misses the big picture.
Romans 1:22-25 says, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images…They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator…” This is the big picture Ellie is missing. She fails to realize that she is worshiping science.
Science is not fact, instead, it is the study of the universe. It is studied by humans and is, in turn, faulty. Science is something human created, not God created. She has general revelation, but she worships the creation and not the creator. Psalm 19:1 says, ” The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands…” According to Ellie, the heavens declare there must be aliens. Looking for aliens is not looking nearly far enough.
Ellie had been to Sunday School before, dabbling in religion as a child. She was “asked not to return” and thus turned her back on any idea of religion. Romans 1:21-23 says, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being…” Ellie became foolish by thinking that aliens were all that there was. The aliens themselves were futile in their thinking that the emptiness is only bearable with others. Even the alien she saw was in the image of her father, a mortal human. She has faith in that alien when she returns because they sent to proof with her to show everyone that she really did visit them. Everything Ellie does concerning her faith in aliens mimics the kind of faith she should have in God, basically worshiping the belief in the existence of aliens. This being when the existence of God is right before her. Sagan portrays general revelation almost perfectly, and the movie still is supposed to ridicule, not support, Christianity.
Science and Faith are related on a rocky ledge. It would be very easy to slide to one side and disregard the other. Science is the study of creation. It cannot be worshiped because without the creator it would be nothing. Faith is the same way. It’s the idea of having a creator to believe in. Without the creator, of course, faith would be nothing either.
Palmer is the only one who understands the big picture. He says, “Nothing [about science is wrong], so long as your motivation is the search for Truth.” This search for Truth is the very foundation on which his faith was built. He had a general revelation while looking at the sky, as Romans 1 describes. Ellie, or Sagan, however, does not understand that Science without Faith is meaningless. They must go together to understand what is possible about God.
Sagan unknowingly shows his ignorance by contradicting himself. His goal was to ridicule faith, but his character of faith seems to be more rational than the others. He portrays faith as inconclusive, whereas, his character of Ellie is the one changing sides. Ellie is the one who is supposed to be all science but her dialogue becomes faith-like, similar to Palmer’s. Ellie, science, and Palmer, faith, are constantly meeting and separating and meeting again. If science was completely unrelated to faith, the two shouldn’t meet at all. They find common ground at the end of the movie, but they shouldn’t with Sagan’s philosophy. Sagan contradicts himself again with his beloved aliens, as well. They don’t know who was there before them, who created the ‘transit system’ or who created the creator of the machine was. This sounds remarkably God-like, but Sagan doesn’t believe in God.
Science without faith would not fill a person with awe as Ellie says it would. “I wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe and humility and hope…” Science does not make a person humble. It does quite the opposite. Science with faith, on the other hand, would make someone hopeful in the power of God, humble because only God is that magnificent and full of awe because only God can do such great things. Aliens don’t make people feel insignificant; God does.
Ellie is constantly searching for meaning within science. In Palmer’s book, he says, “Ironically, the thing that people are the most hungry for…meaning…is the one thing that science hasn’t been able to give them.” Science cannot offer meaning, only God can do that. Ellie thinks that, “[S]cience simply revealed that he [God] never existed in the first place?” Palmer changes the subject because Sagan didn’t want faith to have any answers. Really, though, Ellie just missed the whole idea of science. Ellie is willing to give her life to the discovery of aliens, all for the sake of finding meaning. Meaning cannot be supplied through science, but with the help of science through faith, truth and meaning can be found.
Things don’t work out for Ellie when faith isn’t in her life. She loses her funding, and finds direction, but never resorts back to faith. It is faith that tries to work its way back into her life. Palmer doesn’t want to lose Ellie, and without realizing it, Sagan contradicted himself again because
science and faith belong together, and he had the characters play that out.
The characters never seem satisfied with simply science. When Ellie is talking to the alien, Sagan’s ideas show through. The alien refers to the human race as ‘lost’. Sagan thinks that the existence in aliens will love the problem. Aliens won’t solve the problem. Science alone won’t solve the problem. The characters that represent science are in a search that wont be fulfilled. Palmer isn’t searching for meaning because he found his in faith. Ellie finds her faith in science and, more importantly, aliens. Without her faith, her testimony would be nothing. There was the acknowledgement that faith must be present to find fulfillment and meaning.
It is easy to confuse the lines between science and faith. Faith is a belief in something bigger, something that cannot be proved with evidence, but has already been made evident to humanity. Science, according to Sagan, is the idea that all that exists is what can be seen and proved. The distinction between the two must be made. They fill in each others gaps. They are incomplete without each other. It is easy separate them because it is easy to not understand how related and interwoven they are. The process of understanding is key.
I have written a lot in the past about Carl Sagan on my blog and over and over again these posts have been some of my most popular because I believe Carl Sagan did a great job of articulating the naturalistic view that the world is a result of nothing more than impersonal matter, time and chance. Christians like me have to challenge those who hold this view and that is why I took it upon myself to read many of Sagan’s books and to watch his film series Cosmos.
On December 5, 1995, I got a letter back from Carl Sagan and I was very impressed that he took time to answer several of my questions and to respond to some of the points that I had made in my previous letters. I had been reading lots of his books and watching him on TV since 1980 and my writing today is a result of that correspondence. It is my conclusion that Carl Sagan died an unfulfilled man on December 20, 1996 with many of the big questions he had going unanswered.
Much of Carl Sagan’s aspirations and thoughts were revealed to a mass audience of movie goers just a few months after his death. The movie “CONTACT” with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey is a fictional story written by Sagan about the SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI). Sagan visited the set while it was filming and it was released on July 11, 1997 after his unfortunate death.
The movie CONTACT got me thinking about Sagan’s life long hope to find a higher life form out in the universe and I was reminded of Dr. Donald E. Tarter of NASA who wrote me in a letter a year or so earlier and stated, “I am not a theist. I simply and honestly do not know the answer to the great questions…This brings me to why I am interested in the SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI)…Let me assure you, one of the first questions I would want to ask another intelligence if one were discovered is, DO YOU BELIEVE IN OR HAVE EVIDENCE OF A SUPREME INTELLIGENCE?”
Rice Broocks in his book GOD’S NOT DEAD noted:
Astronomer Carl Sagan was a prolific writer and trustee of the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) founded in 1984 to scan the universe for any signs of life beyond earth. Sagan’s best-selling work COSMOS also became an award-winning television series explaining the wonders of the universe and exporting the belief not in an intelligent Creator but in potential intelligent aliens. He believed somehow that by knowing who they are, we would discover who we as humans really are. “The very thought of there being other beings different from all of us can have a very useful cohering role for the human species” (quoted from you tube clip “Carl Sagan appears on CBC to discuss the importance of SETI [Carl Sagan Archives]” at the 7 minute mark, Oct 1988 ). Sagan reasoning? If aliens could have contacted us, knowing how impossible it is for us to reach them, they would have the answers we seek to our ultimate questions. This thought process shows the desperate need we have as humans for answers to the great questions of our existence. Does life have any ultimate meaning and purpose? Do we as humans have any more value than the other animals? Is there a purpose to the universe, or more specifically, to our individual lives?
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Carl Sagan had to live in the world that God made with the conscience that God gave him. This created a tension. As you know the movie CONTACT was written by Carl Sagan and it was about Dr. Arroway’s SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (SETI) program and her desire to make contact with aliens and ask them questions. It is my view that Sagan should have examined more closely the accuracy of the Bible and it’s fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament in particular before chasing after aliens from other planets for answers. Sagan himself had written,”Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death…If some good evidence for life after death was announced, I’d be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere antedote”(pp 203-204, The DemonHaunted World, 1995).
Sagan said he had taken a look at Old Testament prophecy and it did not impress him because it was too vague. He had taken a look at Christ’s life in the gospels, but said it was unrealistic for God to send a man to communicate for God. Instead, Sagan suggested that God could have written a mathematical formula in the Bible or put a cross in the sky. However, what happens at the conclusion of the movie CONTACT? This is Sagan’s last message to the world in the form of the movie that appeared shortly after his death. Dr Arroway (Jodie Foster) who is a young atheistic scientist who meets with an alien and this alien takes the form of Dr. Arroway’s father. The alien tells her that they thought this would make it easier for her. In fact, he meets her on a beach that resembles a beach that she grew up near so she would also be comfortable with the surroundings. Carl Sagan when writing this script chose to put the alien in human form so Dr. Arroway could relate to the alien.Christ chose to take our form and come into our world too and still many make up excuses for not believing.
Lastly, Carl Sagan could not rid himself of the “mannishness of man.” Those who have read Francis Schaeffer’s many books know exactly what I am talking about. We are made in God’s image and we are living in God’s world. Therefore, we can not totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity. In my letter of Jan 10, 1996 to Dr. Sagan, I really camped out on this point a long time because I had read Sagan’s book SHADOWS OF FORGOTTON ANCESTORS and in it Sagan attempts to totally debunk the idea that we are any way special. However, what does Dr. Sagan have Dr. Arroway say at the end of the movie CONTACT when she is testifying before Congress about the alien that communicated with her? See if you can pick out the one illogical word in her statement: “I was given a vision how tiny, insignificant, rare and precious we all are. We belong to something that is greater than ourselves and none of us are alone.”
“Contact” Theatrical Trailer (1997)
Contact (movie) Jodie Foster Speech
Contact – Talking With Hadden – Finding The Key
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Dr Sagan deep down knows that we are special so he could not avoid putting the word “precious” in there. Francis Schaeffer said unbelievers are put in a place of tension when they have to live in the world that God has made because deep down they know they are special because God has put that knowledge in their hearts.We are not the result of survival of the fittest and headed back to the dirt forevermore. This is what Schaeffer calls “taking the roof off” of the unbeliever’s worldview and showing the inconsistency that exists.
In several of my letters to Sagan I quoted this passage below:
Romans 1:17-22 (Amplified Bible)
17For in the Gospel a righteousness which God ascribes is revealed, both springing from faith and leading to faith [disclosed through the way of faith that arouses to more faith]. As it is written, The man who through faith is just and upright shall live and shall live by faith.(A)
18For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative.
19For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them.
20For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],(B)
21Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and [a]godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.
22Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves].
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Can a man or a woman find lasting meaning without God? Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
Let me show you some inescapable conclusions if you choose to live without God in the picture. Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun.”
Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13 “I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”)
Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1; “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed—
and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors— and they have no comforter.” 7:15 “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness. ).
Nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20).
There is no ultimate lasting meaning in life. (1:2)
By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture in the final chapter of the book in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had and that “all was meaningless.” I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:
Like most geniuses, Miro is an unclassificable artist. His interest in the world of the unconscious, those ideas and emotions hidden in the depths of the mind, link him with Surrealism, but with a personal style, sometimes closer to Fauvism and Expressionism. His most important works are those from the series of “Constellations“, created in the early 40s.
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 this post we are going to see that through the years humanist thought has encouraged artists like Michelangelo to think that the future was extremely bright versus the place today where many artist who hold the humanist and secular worldview are very pessimistic. In contrast to Michelangelo’s DAVID when humanist man thought he […]
_________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]
I have been in a hospital bed from January 10-19, 2024 with a gallbladder that almost killed me about 7 days ago. Today is January 20th and I thought it was a good time to start finishing up on my review of Matthew Perry’s autobiography. ESPECIALLY SINCE I HAVE BEEN ON MY BACK THE LAST 10 DAYS IN A HOSPITAL BED WATCHING EPISODES OF “FRIENDS.”
I read Matthew Perry’s autobiography and finished it in in early October of 2023. I was walking 3 miles a day and considered my prospects at age 62 very good to live for many more years, but that all changed from October 27-30, and I was spending my time on my back at a local hospital learning that I have cancer.
Got some bad news on 11-17-23 that my PET SCAN found a lot of cancer in my liver too which puts me in stage 4 pancreatic cancer and a life expectancy of 6 months and with possible success from chemotherapy treatments my life may be extended up to 2 years with 5% chance of 5 years. Need all the prayer partners I can get so feel free to tell others!!!
I really enjoyed reading this autobiography of Matthew Perry, and it reminded me of the character Ricky Gervais plays in AFTERLIFE named Tony. I wish Matthew had read the Book of Ecclesiastes because many of the things he thought would bring his life satisfaction are the same empty pursuits that Solomonexplored 3,000 years ago.
MORE TO LIFE THAN FAME
In fact, I was alive in a world where, despite its neutrality, I had managed to create for myself an important, meaningful place. I needed to realize that when I died, I wanted my Friends credit to be way down on the list of things I had accomplished. I needed to remind myself to be nice to people—to have them bumping into me be a happy experience, not one that necessarily had to fill me with dread, as though that was all that mattered. I needed to be kind, to love well, to listen better, to give unconditionally. It was time to stop being such a scared asshole and realize that as situations came up, I would be able to handle them. Because I was strong.
The recent events in Little Rock concerning KARK TV’s top weatherman Brett Cummins and his experience of drinking alcohol and snorting coke has left a lot of people asking questions. Since the evening ended in the tragic death of one of Brett’s friends, Dexter Williams, many questions have centered on the use of illegal drugs. Some has wondered why KARK in their press release failed to even mention Cummins’ drug use.
I am hoping that those that I know who are involved in drugs will think long and hard also about the recent addition to the “27 Club” of Amy Whinehouse.
Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren went on a journey in their life together. They both were founding members of the rock group Kansas. Dave Hope actually got heavily involved in the drug scene as his rock band made it to the top. His story of deliverance through Christ is in the two video clips later in this post. First I want to take a look at the story of Kerry Livgren. Step by step in this 8 minute video clip he tells about his journey and how he found the answer he was searching for by putting his faith alone in Christ. I want to challenge those who have chosen to escape through drugs to watch this video and I wound love to have your feedback.
Kerry Livgren( music group Kansas) testimony and promotion of film The Imposter starring Kevin Max(DC Talk) and Jeff Deyo.
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At this point I am posting a portion of a previous post I did earlier this year. It deals with the search for satisfaction that Woody Allen, Coldplay, Kansas and King Solomon all went on. It includes the video clips of Dave Hope and Kerry Livgren of Kansas.
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Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago:
Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas
What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on these weighty matters.
Let me start off by pointing out what they all had in common. First, they were very successful and rose to the top of their fields. Second, they were very famous and of course, thirdly they were wealthy and experienced the privileges that fame and wealth brought. Finally, they were still seeking answers to life’s great questions even though it seemed they had experienced all the world had to offer.
Unlike many the past grammy winners of “Best Rock Album,” Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends by Coldplay is filled with songs that deal with spiritual themes such as death, the meaning of life and searching for an afterlife.
Leadsinger Chris Martin notes, “…because we’ve had some people close to us we’ve lost, but some miracles — we’ve got kids. So, life has been very extreme recently, and so both death and life pop up quite often” (MTV News interview, June 9, 2008).
Russ Briermeier of Christianity Today observes that this album is “often provocative, spiritual, and seemingly on the verge of identifying a greater truth, asking and inspiring many questions without providing the answers.” It reminded me of King Solomon’s search for answers in the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. Solomon also dealt the subject of death a lot. Ecclesiastes 7:2-4 asserts, “It is better to spend your time at funerals than at festivals. For you are going to die, and you should think about it while there is still time. Sorrow is better than laughter, it may sadden your face, but it sharpens your understanding.”
The subject of death is prominent in the songs “Poppyfields,” “Violet Hill,” “Death and All His Friends,” “42,” and the “Cemeteries of London.” Then the song “The Escapist” states, “And in the end, We lie awake and we dream, we’re makin our escape.” In the end we all die. Therefore, I assume this song is searching for an afterlife to escape to. The song “Glass of Water” sheds some more light on where we possibly escape to: “Oh he said you could see a future inside a glass of water, with riddles and the rhymes, He asked ‘Will I see heaven in mine?’
Coldplay is clearly searching for spiritual answers but it seems they have not found them quite yet. The song “42“: “Time is so short and I’m sure, There must be something more.” Then the song “Lost“: “Every river that I tried to cross, Every door I ever tried was locked, I’m just waiting til the shine wears off, You might be a big fish in a little pond, Doesn’t mean you’ve won, Because along may come a bigger one and you will be lost.”
Solomon went to the extreme in his searching in the Book of Ecclesiastes for this “something more” that Coldplay is talking about, but he did not find any satisfaction in pleasure (2:1), education (2:3), work (2:4), wealth (2:8) or fame (2:9). All of his accomplishments would not be remembered (1:11) and who is to say that they had not already been done before by others (1:10)? This reminds me of the big fish in the little pond that Coldplay was talking about. Even if you think you are on top, are you really? Also Solomon’s upcoming death depressed him because both people and animals alike “go to the same place — they came from dust and they return to dust” (3:20).
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me thatKerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, like Solomon and Coldplay, they realized death comes to everyone and “there must be something more.”
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
The movie maker Woody Allen has embraced the nihilistic message of the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. David Segal in his article, “Things are Looking Up for the Director Woody Allen. No?” (Washington Post, July 26, 2006), wrote, “Allen is evangelically passionate about a few subjects. None more so than the chilling emptiness of life…The 70-year-old writer and director has been musing about life, sex, work, death and his generally futile search for hope…the world according to Woody is so bereft of meaning, so godless and absurd, that the only proper response is to curl up on a sofa and howl for your mommy.”
The song “Dust in the Wind” recommends, “Don’t hang on.” Allen himself says, “It’s just an awful thing and in that context you’ve got to find an answer to the question: ‘Why go on?’ ” It is ironic that Chris Martin the leader of Coldplay regards Woody Allen as his favorite director.
Lets sum up the final conclusions of these gentlemen: Coldplay is still searching for that “something more.” Woody Allen has concluded the search is futile. Livgren and Hope of Kansas have become Christians and are involved in fulltime ministry. Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:
(part 1 ten minutes)
(part 2 ten minutes)
Kansas – Dust In The Wind
Ecclesiastes 1
Published on Sep 4, 2012
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider
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Ecclesiastes 2-3
Published on Sep 19, 2012
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider
I am posting this blog post today from a hospital bed!!!!
I read Matthew Perry’s autobiography and finished it in in early October of 2023. I was walking 3 miles a day and considered my prospects at age 62 very good to live for many more years, but that all changed from October 27-30, and I was spending my time on my back at a local hospital learning that I have cancer.
Got some bad news on 11-17-23 that my PET SCAN found a lot of cancer in my liver too which puts me in stage 4 pancreatic cancer and a life expectancy of 6 months and with possible success from chemotherapy treatments my life may be extended up to 2 years with 5% chance of 5 years. Need all the prayer partners I can get so feel free to tell others!!!
I really enjoyed reading this autobiography of Matthew Perry, and it reminded me of the character Ricky Gervais plays in AFTERLIFE named Tony. I wish Matthew had read the Book of Ecclesiastes because many of the things he thought would bring his life satisfaction are the same empty pursuits that Solomon explored 3,000 years ago.
sleeping with maximum women the answer?
And how, pray tell, did you manage to pay such a debt, Mr. Perry, such an onerous debt to the woman who saved your life in one of the most meaningful ways imaginable? Why, good reader, I paid that debt to Tricia by sleeping with almost every woman in Southern California.
(KTLA/NEXSTAR) — Actor Matthew Perry, best known for his role on “Friends,” died on Saturday, according to several news outlets. He was 54.
Authorities responded to reports of a cardiac arrest at an L.A.-area home where Perry was located, according to TMZ. The outlet reports Perry died from an apparent drowning. Meanwhile, Associated Press and Peoplereport Los Angeles Police Department representatives confirmed an officer response to Perry’s residence for the death of a male in his 50s. LAPD did not confirm the deceased was Perry, however.
The circumstances surrounding the actor’s death remain unclear, although reports claim no foul play was involved. Los Angeles Times reports Los Angeles authorities confirmed Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub.
Perry was most known for his iconic role as Chandler Bing on the hit NBC sitcom “Friends” which ran from 1994 to 2004. He made his television debut in a 1979 episode of the ABC drama “240-Robert” and his final television role was a portrayal of late politician Ted Kennedy in the 2017 Reelz miniseries “The Kennedys: After Camelot.”
The former Canadian also appeared in a variety of comedy films including, “Fools Rush In,” and “The Whole Nine Yards.” Perry’s film debut was in 1988’s teen drama “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” alongside the late River Phoenix. His final film role was in the 2009 Disney film “17 Again.”
BEVERLY HILLS, CA – OCTOBER 14: Actor Matthew Perry arrives at the 9th Annual Dinner Benefiting the Lili Claire Foundation at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on October 14, 2006 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images)
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />“Friends” stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer return to the iconic comedy’s original soundstage, Stage 24, on the Warner Bros. Studio lot in Burbank for a real-life unscripted celebration of the beloved show.
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />BEVERLY HILLS, CA – MAY 10: Actor Matthew Perry and actress Courteney Cox Arquette mingle at the AFI Associates luncheon honoring Hollywood’s Arquette family with the 6th Annual “Platinum Circle Award” held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on May 10, 2006 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI)
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA – AUGUST 10: Actor Matthew Perry arrives at CBS, CW And Showtime 2015 Summer TCA Party at Pacific Design Center on August 10, 2015 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />FRIENDS — Pictured: (clockwise from bottom left) Courteney Cox Arquette as Monica Geller, Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green — (Photo by Reisig & Taylor/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />FILE – In this Sept. 22, 2002, file photo the cast of television’s “Friends”, from left: Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox Arquette, Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer appear during the 54th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)
<img class=”i-amphtml-intrinsic-sizer” style=”max-width: 100%; display: block !important;” role=”presentation” src=”data:;base64,” alt=”” aria-hidden=”true” />WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE WITH ANDY COHEN — Pictured: Matthew Perry — (Photo by: Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Perry also appeared as himself for the 2021 HBO Max special “Friends: The Reunion,” which brought the entire cast back together for the first time since the show’s series finale.
The Williamstown, Massachusetts-born Perry was nominated for and received some of television’s top accolades, including a 2007 Golden Globe Award nomination and four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Through the years, Perry also accumulated six nominations and one win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
He revealed his immense struggle with addiction to drugs and alcohol during his career in a 2022 memoir titled, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir.” In promotion of the book, Perry sat down for a much-publicized interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer last October, where he described feeling “OK” in his addiction journey, telling Sawyer he’d established safety nets to prevent the disease from running his life.
“For a start, I’ve surrendered, but to the winning side, not the losing,” Perry wrote in the memoir. “I’m no longer mired in an impossible battle with drugs and alcohol.”
During this turbulent time, Perry detailed his notable weight loss and gain during various “Friends” seasons along with serious health issues that required several hospitalizations.
One of Perry final social media messages, posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, came on Oct. 24, when the actor posted: “Let’s make stigmas a stigma. #mentalhealth.”
Nexstar has reached out to Perry’s representatives for comment and will update when we hear back.
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Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
Have you made any New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get into shape? Many Americans have great intentions at the start of a new year. Perhaps you have already purchased a gym membership or a piece of exercise equipment. If so, good for you! It’s important to get in shape and be healthy. I own a recumbent bike…and I love it. I work out on it nearly every day. I cycle miles on this bike and burn calories and increase my heart rate. The cool thing is: I don’t even have to leave my house…and in the rainy Pacific Northwest, this is a blessing. But if I am honest, it is a terribly boring and tedious way to exercise. When I look down at the odometer and it says I’ve cycled five miles, I’ve actually gone nowhere. I work up a sweat and ride until I am weary, yet I know that I am going to have to hop back on the bike all over again tomorrow. It is rather depressing!
Life is like riding on a recumbent bike. It is a boring, tedious, and repetitive ride. A thoughtful person will ask, “What is the purpose in life?” Have you ever asked this question? Most people have. For some of us, this question has plagued us over the course of our lives…even our Christian lives. A few years ago, scientists at John Hopkins University surveyed nearly 8,000 college students at forty-eight universities and asked what they considered “very important” to them. What do you think these college students said? Make a lot of money? Get married? Get a job? Buy a home? I can tell you this: only 16 percent answered “making a lot of money.” But a whopping 75 percent said that their first goal was “finding a purpose and meaning to my life.”3 This is a staggering piece of research, isn’t it?
In this New Year, maybe you are seeking to discover a purpose and meaning to your life. If so, the book of Ecclesiastes will guide you in this endeavor…but not in the way you might think.4Ecclesiastes has been dubbed, “the strangest book in the cannon [Bible].”5 It is an enigma for many Christians, for the bulk of this book is the memoirs of a man that is sharing his observations about what is wrong with life. In Eccl 1:1-11, we learn that life is fleeting and disappointing.
1. Life is fleeting (1:1-7).
In this first section, we will come to grips with the temporary nature of life. Inthe first three verses, the author introduces himself and his theme. Verse 1 begins: “The words6 of the Preacher,7 the son of David, king in Jerusalem.”8Although our author chooses not to identify himself, his titles or pen names give him away as Solomon.9 Solomon’s story is recorded for us in the first eleven chapters of 1 Kings. Although King David had many sons, it was his son Solomon who was chosen to be heir to the throne. God so favored Solomon that He appeared to him in a dream offering Solomon whatever blessing he desired. Solomon astutely asked God for wisdom to lead the nation well. He asked for wisdom instead of riches and fame. God honored Solomon’s request, granting him not just unparalleled wisdom, but wealth and recognition as well.
Solomon wrote three books of the Bible: Proverbs, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes. He is considered the wisest and perhaps richest man that has ever lived. He had a fleet of ships that would bring gold to him every day from far off lands. Tragically, Solomon married a foreign woman, which was forbidden by God because of the temptation to be led astray spiritually. Ironically, it was this unwise decision to gain favor from different nations by taking foreign wives that diverted Solomon’s eyes from the one true God. Scripture records that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Truly, this diverted Solomon’s devotion, so that it is often said of him that he had a divided heart.
If we were to depict Solomon as someone more modern, he might be considered a mix between Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, HUGH HEFNER, and Brad Pitt. In Ecclesiastes, what philosophical conclusions does this rich powerful genius come to after living a life with everything at his fingertips? We would expect Solomon’s sermon to be entitled “Seven Habits of Highly Successful Kings.”10 In 1:2, Solomon gives the theme of his book.
“‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.’”
[Solomon has argued that life is fleeting. In 1:8-11, he shares a second problem with life.]
2. Life is Disappointing (1:8-11).
In these next four verses, Solomon demonstrates that everything and everyone in life will ultimately disappoint us. There are three basic reasons for this: There is no satisfaction under the sun, there is nothing new under the sun, and no one is remembered under the sun.
No satisfaction under the sun (1:8). Solomon states that nothing is truly fulfilling. He writes, “All things are wearisome; man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.”27The Rolling Stones made famous the song, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Sadly, this song could have been written by Solomon himself. Just like Mick Jagger and the rest of the Stones, Solomon had it all…and then some, yet everything was wearisome to him since one can never say, see, or hear enough. Man just can’t get NO satisfaction! Have you seen a good movie? Read a good book? Listened to a great song? Enjoyed a restful vacation? Delighted in a special experience? It is never enough. It never satisfies, for ultimately you want MORE.
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Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard,Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
In the letter I base most of what I had to Mr. Hefner on a sermon I heard from Ken Whitten. I also quoted Francis Schaeffer too.
April 18, 2016
Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
Over and over again I have written you and compared your life to that of King Solomon the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes and today I am at it again. If there was one word to describe your life the word PLEASURE is probably that word. As you know I have written you every week since October of 2015 in the hope that you will be willing to reflect back on your life of pleasure UNDER THE SUN like King Solomon did and see what proper reflections your life has rendered. Francis Schaeffer has rightly noted concerning you that your goal with the “playboy mentality is just to smash the puritanical ethnic.” In fact, in your own personal life you definitely have gone the opposite direction of Puritanism.
King Solomon
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Today we will look at the last chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes and also look at the sermon on that chapter by Ken Whitten of Idlewild Baptist Church in Tampa, Florida. The sermon today is very appropriate for you since you are approaching your deathbed. In the article, “Hugh Hefner: 10 Truths Behind the Playboy Legend, 6:22 PM PDT 9/21/2011 by THR Staff the article notes:
8. HEFNER DOESN’T TALK ABOUT DEATH
He hardly ever talks about death, a close colleague says: “Even when [a longtime assistant] died, after the memorial, he never mentioned her again.” Is he afraid of the prospect? “No,” insists Hefner, an agnostic who professes no faith in any afterlife. “My mother lived to 101.”
Below is a portion of the Ecclesiastes sermon by Ken Whitten delivered in December 1998:
The conclusion of the whole matter. Solomon has been a philosopher instead of a preacher. God had called him as a preacher but even preachers can get to the place where they think they are smarter than God. Solomon has left his first love. Solomon is the Old Testament prodigal. Solomon is the preacher who we get to gain from his mistakes. He has chased all the pretty bubbles in life. He has tried to find his life in wisdom and education but found it not. He tried to find his wealth and he thought like the world thinks and like Madison Ave teaches that if you get more than you are more, and if you are more then you will be more, and he tried that but came up empty. He tried women. He tried lust. He had some many wives and so many concubines that even the beautiful gift that God gives to a husband and wife, he lost the treasure of that.
(Hugh you gave up your family to chase the skirts)
One by one he checks off his life and says “That’s not, that’s not, that’s not and he is coming back to God and Solomon wants us to understand as he remembers his life previously and where he is now. He goes back to the beginning of his life and he starts out by saying in Chapter 12:
Remember God in Your Youth
12 Remember [thoughtfully] also your Creator in the days of your youth [for you are not your own, but His], before the evil days come or the years draw near when you will say [of physical pleasures], “I have no enjoyment and delight in them”;2 before the sun and the light, and the moon and the stars are darkened [by impaired vision], and the clouds [of depression] return after the rain [of tears];3 in the day when the keepers of the house (hands, arms) tremble, and the strong men (feet, knees) bow themselves, and the grinders (molar teeth) cease because they are few, and those (eyes) who look through the windows grow dim;4 when the doors (lips) are shut in the streets and the sound of the grinding [of the teeth] is low, and one rises at the sound of a bird andthe crowing of a rooster, and all the daughters of music (voice, ears) sing softly.5 Furthermore, they are afraid of a high place and of dangers on the road; the almond tree (hair) blossoms [white], and the grasshopper (a little thing) is a burden, and the [a]caperberry (desire, appetite) fails. For man goes to his eternal home and the mourners go about the streets and market places.6 Earnestly remember your Creatorbefore the silver cord [of life] is broken, or the golden bowl is crushed, or the pitcher at the fountain is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed;7 then the dust [out of which God made man’s body] will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.8 “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher. “All [that is done without God’s guidance] is vanity (futility).”
Purpose of the Preacher
9 Furthermore, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; and he pondered and searched out and arranged many proverbs.10 The Preacher sought to find delightful words, even to write correctly words of truth.
11 The words of the wise are like [prodding] goads, and these collected sayings are [firmly fixed in the mind] like well-driven nails; [b]they are given by one Shepherd.12 But beyond this my son, [about going further than the words given by one Shepherd], be warned: the writing of many books is endless [so do not believe everything you read], and excessive study and devotion to books is wearying to the body.
13 When all has been heard, the end of the matter is: fear God [worship Him with awe-filled reverence, knowing that He is almighty God] and keep His commandments, for this applies to every person.14 For God will bring every act to judgment, every hidden and secret thing, whether it is good or evil.
Life is moving forward not backward. You are heading somewhere. Give attention to your salvation is what Solomon is saying here. FEAR GOD is the Old Testament way of saying BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND BE SAVED. You are come to the place where you face God and make sure of your salvation. FEAR GOD AND KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS. The word of God is a road map to our life. The word of God says FEAR GOD AND KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS this is the whole of man. The word DUTY is in italics and this means the whole of man. Our whole what? Our whole body our whole soul, our whole body, our whole spirit.
The word of God has something to say to your body, your soul to your spirit. To your health, to your holiness, to your happiness. Fear God and keep his commandments. You know what I think Solomon is saying. If I had to do it over again I would have a little more fun, a little more faith and a little more fear in life. I would have feared God more and Ecclesiastes 12:14 “For God will bring every act to judgment, every hidden and secret thing, whether it is good or evil.” All of us have secrets in our life that we probably would be ashamed of if you knew what we were thinking.
Someone asked John Quincy Adams how he is doing. “John Quincy Adams is quite well. But the house where he lives is becoming dilapidated. It is tottering. Time and the seasons have nearly destroyed it, and it is becoming quite uninhabitable. I shall have to move out soon. But John Quincy Adams is quite well, thank you.”
John Quincy Adams
Stuart Hamblen wrote:
It is no secret what God can do
What He’s done for others, He’ll do for you
With arms wide open, He’ll pardon you
It is no secret what God can do
There is no night for in His light
You never walk alone
Always feel at home
Wherever you may go
There is no power can conquer you
While God is on your side
Take Him at His promise
Don’t run away and hide
Stuart Hamblen
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Stuart Hamblen also wrote another song called THIS OLD HOUSE:
This ole house is a-gettin’ shaky
This ole house is a-gettin’ old
This ole house lets in the rain
This ole house lets in the cold
On my knees I’m gettin’ chilly
But I feel no fear or pain
‘Cause I see an angel peekin’
Through a broken window pane
Stuart Hamblen is talking about our body.
If you take 24 hour day and compare the minutes to a life’s span then when you are 15 years old it is 8:51am and when when you are 20 yrs old then it is 11:05am and 30 yrs old 1:25 pm and when you are 40 yrs old and it is 4:16pm and when you are 60 it is 10:11 pm and when you are 70 yrs old it is near midnight.
Solomon closes his Book of Ecclesiastes after saying to fear God is the final conclusion. ARE YOU READY TO MEET GOD TONITE?
Let me share with you the gospel according to the Book of Romans. Here is how it goes:
Because of our sin, we are separated from God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
The Penalty for our sin is death. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.(Romans 6:23)
The penalty for our sin was paid by Jesus Christ! But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
If we repent of our sin, then confess and trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we will be saved from our sins! For whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13)
…if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9,10)
PS:This was the 31st letter that I have written to you and many of those letters have been on the Book of Ecclesiastes. Again it today is was responding to a quote from you.
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
I am posting this blog post today from a hospital bed!!!!
I read Matthew Perry’s autobiography and finished it in in early October of 2023. I was walking 3 miles a day and considered my prospects at age 62 very good to live for many more years, but that all changed from October 27-30, and I was spending my time on my back at a local hospital learning that I have cancer.
Got some bad news on 11-17-23 that my PET SCAN found a lot of cancer in my liver too which puts me in stage 4 pancreatic cancer and a life expectancy of 6 months and with possible success from chemotherapy treatments my life may be extended up to 2 years with 5% chance of 5 years. Need all the prayer partners I can get so feel free to tell others!!!
dad leaves alcohol behind but 7 million dollars later Matthew still addicted
The drink, and that walk, had created a thinker, a seeker, but not some soft-focus, Buddhist crap—one who was on the edge of a deep crater of flames, haunted by the lack of answers, by being unaccompanied, by wanting love but being terrified of abandonment, by wanting excitement, but being unable to appreciate it, by a dick that didn’t work. I was face-to-face with the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell, a fifteen-year-old boy brought up close to the face of eschatology, so close he could smell the vodka on its breath. Years later, my father, too, would take his own meaningful walk: he had had a bad night on the drink where he fell through some bushes or something, and he talked to Debbie about it the following morning and she said, “Is this the way you want to live your life?” And he said, no—then he went for a walk and quit drinking and hasn’t had a drop since. Excuse me? You went for a walk and quit drinking? I have spent upward of $7 million trying to get sober. I have been to six thousand AA meetings. (Not an exaggeration, more an educated guess.) I’ve been to rehab fifteen times. I’ve been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death’s door. And you went for a fucking walk?
But magic never lasts; whatever holes you’re filling seem to keep opening back up. (It’s like Whac-A-Mole.) Maybe it was because I was always trying to fill a spiritual hole with a material thing.… I don’t know. Either way, when it came to the last day of shooting, I sat on my bed in my Chicago hotel room and cried. I sobbed and sobbed because I knew even then I would never again have an experience like that—my first movie, far from home, free to flirt and drink and hang out with a brilliant young man like River Phoenix.
(KTLA/NEXSTAR) — Actor Matthew Perry, best known for his role on “Friends,” died on Saturday, according to several news outlets. He was 54.
Authorities responded to reports of a cardiac arrest at an L.A.-area home where Perry was located, according to TMZ. The outlet reports Perry died from an apparent drowning. Meanwhile, Associated Press and People report Los Angeles Police Department representatives confirmed an officer response to Perry’s residence for the death of a male in his 50s. LAPD did not confirm the deceased was Perry, however.
The circumstances surrounding the actor’s death remain unclear, although reports claim no foul play was involved. Los Angeles Times reports Los Angeles authorities confirmed Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub.
Perry was most known for his iconic role as Chandler Bing on the hit NBC sitcom “Friends” which ran from 1994 to 2004. He made his television debut in a 1979 episode of the ABC drama “240-Robert” and his final television role was a portrayal of late politician Ted Kennedy in the 2017 Reelz miniseries “The Kennedys: After Camelot.”
The former Canadian also appeared in a variety of comedy films including, “Fools Rush In,” and “The Whole Nine Yards.” Perry’s film debut was in 1988’s teen drama “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” alongside the late River Phoenix. His final film role was in the 2009 Disney film “17 Again.”
The Williamstown, Massachusetts-born Perry was nominated for and received some of television’s top accolades, including a 2007 Golden Globe Award nomination and four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Through the years, Perry also accumulated six nominations and one win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.He revealed his immense struggle with addiction to drugs and alcohol during his career in a 2022 memoir titled, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir.” In promotion of the book, Perry sat down for a much-publicized interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer last October, where he described feeling “OK” in his addiction journey, telling Sawyer he’d established safety nets to prevent the disease from running his life.
“For a start, I’ve surrendered, but to the winning side, not the losing,” Perry wrote in the memoir. “I’m no longer mired in an impossible battle with drugs and alcohol.”
During this turbulent time, Perry detailed his notable weight loss and gain during various “Friends” seasons along with serious health issues that required several hospitalizations.
WATCH WHAT HAPPENS LIVE WITH ANDY COHEN — Pictured: Matthew Perry — (Photo by: Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)Read More »
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Tony in the film AFTERLIFE keeps thinking about the good ole days with his soulmate and thinks that everything was great then when it wasn’t. Wade Wainio makes this observation in the following article:
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There are, however, signs that Tony was disappointed in life even before Lisa’s death. He hates his job at the Tambury Gazette, saying it’s not journalism. He decries what he considers the awful future of online publishing, including click-bait and angry fools in article comment sections.
In episode 4 of Netflix original After Life, Tony is forced to question his bleak outlook yet remains resilient in his pessimism.
After Life has been steeped in the depression of Tony Johnson (Ricky Gervais), following the death of his wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman). However, Tony’s sense of humor is a sign that, deep down, he still has a spark of life left. Of course, sad reminders follow him around regularly. In this episode, he passes by Lisa’s old room in the hospital. Although he doesn’t cry, he is clearly reminded of her.
There are, however, signs that Tony was disappointed in life even before Lisa’s death. He hates his job at the Tambury Gazette, saying it’s not journalism. He decries what he considers the awful future of online publishing, including click-bait and angry fools in article comment sections. He is confronted yet again by Matt (Tom Basden), Tony’s brother-in-law and boss who’s sick of his sour attitude.
How does Tony in AFTERLIFE or Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes get peace in their lives?
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
24 There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
Dan Jarrell commented on this passage in Ecclesiastes:
Either way you translate it, it says nothing is so good for us other than a satisfied life but nothing is as impossible for us because it is not in us to be satisfied for who can eat and enjoy life without him? The answer is NOBODY CAN!!!! So you come down to the idea that if one seeks satisfaction they will never find it. In fact, every pleasure will be fleeting and can not be sustained, BUT IF ONE SEEKS GOD THEN ONE FINDS SATISFACTION. That is my sermon in a nutshell. That is the conclusion.
__
Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
In this post today and several posts that follow this will be based on a sermon series I heard at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 1996 on the Book of Ecclesiastes. The pastors back then were Robert Lewis, Bill Wellons, Bill Parkinson and Dan Jarrell. Below is the letter I wrote based both on Dan Jarrell’s sermon from the same series.
Dan Jarrell pictured below:
________
__
Robert Lewis pictured below:
Bill Wellons pictured below:
Bill Parkinson pictured below
_
I also quoted Ravi Zacharias when I wrote, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
Tony in the film AFTERLIFE keeps thinking about the good ole days with his soulmate and thinks that everything was great then when it wasn’t. Wade Wainio makes this observation in the following article:
You got to take the time to watch the film series AFTERLIFE on Netflix since Ricky Gervais, you and Solomon in ECCLESIASTES talk about so many of the same nihilistic themes on life!!!
On the last page of your autobiography are these words: MY BIGGEST REGRET? Only that I’ve been given millions to make movies, total artistic control, and I never made a great film.” I have two responses to that. First, you have made a great film. I would argue that CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is a truly great film because it demonstrates how without God MIGHT MAKES RIGHT and there is no argument against that I have ever heard!!!
In fact, I have about 2 million hits on my blog and a large portion of those individuals who have visited my blog have read this quote below that I wrote about you over and over:
I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. I salute him for doing that. That is why I have returned to his work over and over and presented my own Christian worldview as an alternative.
Second, I would assert that just like Solomon in ECCLESIASTES and Tony in AFTERLIFE or Mick Jagger in the ROLLING STONES, you can not find satisfaction UNDER THE SUN!
There are, however, signs that Tony was disappointed in life even before Lisa’s death. He hates his job at the Tambury Gazette, saying it’s not journalism. He decries what he considers the awful future of online publishing, including click-bait and angry fools in article comment sections.
In episode 4 of Netflix original After Life, Tony is forced to question his bleak outlook yet remains resilient in his pessimism.
After Life has been steeped in the depression of Tony Johnson (Ricky Gervais), following the death of his wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman). However, Tony’s sense of humor is a sign that, deep down, he still has a spark of life left. Of course, sad reminders follow him around regularly. In this episode, he passes by Lisa’s old room in the hospital. Although he doesn’t cry, he is clearly reminded of her.
There are, however, signs that Tony was disappointed in life even before Lisa’s death. He hates his job at the Tambury Gazette, saying it’s not journalism. He decries what he considers the awful future of online publishing, including click-bait and angry fools in article comment sections. He is confronted yet again by Matt (Tom Basden), Tony’s brother-in-law and boss who’s sick of his sour attitude.
How does Tony in AFTERLIFE or Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes get peace in their lives?
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
24 There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
Dan Jarrell commented on this passage in Ecclesiastes:
Either way you translate it, it says nothing is so good for us other than a satisfied life but nothing is as impossible for us because it is not in us to be satisfied for who can eat and enjoy life without him? The answer is NOBODY CAN!!!! So you come down to the idea that if one seeks satisfaction they will never find it. In fact, every pleasure will be fleeting and can not be sustained, BUT IF ONE SEEKS GOD THEN ONE FINDS SATISFACTION. That is my sermon in a nutshell. That is the conclusion.
__
Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
In this post today and several posts that follow this will be based on a sermon series I heard at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 1996 on the Book of Ecclesiastes. The pastors back then were Robert Lewis, Bill Wellons, Bill Parkinson and Dan Jarrell. Below is the letter I wrote based both on Dan Jarrell’s sermon from the same series.
Dan Jarrell pictured below:
________
__
Robert Lewis pictured below:
Bill Wellons pictured below:
Bill Parkinson pictured below
I also quoted Ravi Zacharias when I wrote, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
On page 164 of your autobiography you state:
Jean, John, and I hung out sometimes at Hugh Hefner’s. Not much but now and then. It was an open house nearly twenty-four hours, hung with Picassos and full of celebrities, sport figures, sextuplets women. The sexy women were the main draw.
Let me share a letter I wrote to your friend Hef below:
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
Tony in the film AFTERLIFE keeps thinking about the good ole days with his soulmate and thinks that everything was great then when it wasn’t. Wade Wainio makes this observation in the following article:
—
There are, however, signs that Tony was disappointed in life even before Lisa’s death. He hates his job at the Tambury Gazette, saying it’s not journalism. He decries what he considers the awful future of online publishing, including click-bait and angry fools in article comment sections.
In episode 4 of Netflix original After Life, Tony is forced to question his bleak outlook yet remains resilient in his pessimism.
After Life has been steeped in the depression of Tony Johnson (Ricky Gervais), following the death of his wife Lisa (Kerry Godliman). However, Tony’s sense of humor is a sign that, deep down, he still has a spark of life left. Of course, sad reminders follow him around regularly. In this episode, he passes by Lisa’s old room in the hospital. Although he doesn’t cry, he is clearly reminded of her.
There are, however, signs that Tony was disappointed in life even before Lisa’s death. He hates his job at the Tambury Gazette, saying it’s not journalism. He decries what he considers the awful future of online publishing, including click-bait and angry fools in article comment sections. He is confronted yet again by Matt (Tom Basden), Tony’s brother-in-law and boss who’s sick of his sour attitude.
How does Tony in AFTERLIFE or Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes get peace in their lives?
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
24 There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
Dan Jarrell commented on this passage in Ecclesiastes:
Either way you translate it, it says nothing is so good for us other than a satisfied life but nothing is as impossible for us because it is not in us to be satisfied for who can eat and enjoy life without him? The answer is NOBODY CAN!!!! So you come down to the idea that if one seeks satisfaction they will never find it. In fact, every pleasure will be fleeting and can not be sustained, BUT IF ONE SEEKS GOD THEN ONE FINDS SATISFACTION. That is my sermon in a nutshell. That is the conclusion.
__
Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
In this post today and several posts that follow this will be based on a sermon series I heard at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 1996 on the Book of Ecclesiastes. The pastors back then were Robert Lewis, Bill Wellons, Bill Parkinson and Dan Jarrell. Below is the letter I wrote based both on Dan Jarrell’s sermon from the same series.
Dan Jarrell pictured below:
________
__
Robert Lewis pictured below:
Bill Wellons pictured below:
Bill Parkinson pictured below
_
I also quoted Ravi Zacharias when I wrote, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.”
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
Below is a portion of an article by Ben Sherlock on April 28, 2019 on AFTERLIFE:
BEN SHERLOCK
Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Seinfeld to Superman, Scorsese to Star Wars, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He’s currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.
After Life is yet another show anchored by Ricky Gervais’ unique take on things, and these quotes demonstrate the show’s intelligence.
9“Hope Is Everything.”
When we experience the darkest moments in our lives, it can seem like things will always be that bad and it’ll never get better. So, we have to just hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
This is what keeps Tony going throughout the six initial episodes of After Life. He holds out hope that he’ll be able to move on from losing the person he cared about the most in the world and get his life back on track. All he has is hope and he holds onto it for dear life. In many ways, hope really is everything.
—-
Can Ricky pull off restoring hope into life with his Humanist point of view?
“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)
—-
Another great sarcastic secular comedian just like Ricky Gervais in many ways is Doug Stanhope and below is a letter I sent him on the subject of HOPE and the Book of Ecclesiastes:
December 22, 2014
Dear Mr. Stanhope,
Like you I am a great admirer of John Stossell, Milton Friedman and Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute. I blog about these guys often at http://www.thedailyhatch.org.
Since I have lived and worked in Little Rock many years, I used to run into Bill Clinton quite a lot in downtown Little Rock. It was quite remarkable to me when he chose to emphasize that the small town of Hope was his home town even though he had only lived there 3 or 4 years. Of course, he did so because of the power of the word “HOPE.” I wanted to talk to you about three men and the subject of nihilism: You are the first man and the 2nd is the Bass player DAVE HOPE of the 1970’s rock band Kansas and King Solomon of Israel who wrote Richard Dawkins’ favorite book of the Bible which is Ecclesiastes. There is a thread of nihilism that can be compared in these three men’s stories. Ironically, nihilism is the opposite of HOPE and two of these guys have the word HOPE in their names.
From sex to religion, nothing’s off-topic for the fearless comedian. Posted December 12th, 2012, 1:12 PM by Andy Hunsaker
Last year, on Louis C.K.’s breakout hit series “Louie,” Doug Stanhope played Eddie, an old friend and peer of Louie’s who hadn’t found any success in comedy, nor any happiness in life. Sharing Louie’s low tolerance for bull$#!@, Eddie confided in him that he was just passing through town on his way to Boston, where he would do his final show before killing himself. Every argument Louie tries to muster to convince him otherwise is quickly and brutally shot down, and eventually, he has to just acquiesce to Eddie’s intentions and bid him farewell. With a strong performance from both men, they destroyed the common wisdom that suicide should never be a viable option.
The more viscerally affecting part of that episode is that Eddie doesn’t seem all that far removed from Stanhope himself, aside from the quality of his comedy. Stanhope’s stage persona is a nihilistic man who has to blind himself on alcohol and drugs to enjoy any small part of the bleak, unending hellscape of existence, but as he often says, he’s funnier when he’s drunk, which means he’s not blinding himself at all.
________________________________________________
Obviously you have already arrived at the nihilistic conclusion that many other atheists have reached in the past.
The late Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer sums up where the secular worldview has brought modern man:
So some humanists act as if they have a great advantage over Christians. They act as if the advance of science and technology and a better understanding of history (through such concepts as the evolutionary theory) have all made the idea of God and Creation quite ridiculous.
This superior attitude, however, is strange because one of the most striking developments in the last half-century is the growth of a profound pessimism among both the well-educated and less-educated people. The thinkers in our society have been admitting for a long time that they have no final answers at all.
Take Woody Allen, for example. Most people know his as a comedian, but he has thought through where mankind stands after the “religious answers” have been abandoned. In an article in Esquire (May 1977), he says that man is left with:
… alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness…. The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It’s absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless. As Camus wrote, it’s not only that he (the individual) dies, or that man (as a whole) dies, but that you struggle to do a work of art that will last and then you realize that the universe itself is not going to exist after a period of time. Until those issues are resolved within each person – religiously or psychologically or existentially – the social and political issues will never be resolved, except in a slapdash way.
Allen sums up his view in his film Annie Hall with these words: “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
Many would like to dismiss this sort of statement as coming from one who is merely a pessimist by temperament, one who sees life without the benefit of a sense of humor. Woody Allen does not allow us that luxury. He speaks as a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees. If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying. As the famous artist Paul Gauguin wrote on his last painting shortly before he tried to commit suicide: “Whence come we? What are we? Whither do we go?” The answers are nowhere, nothing, and nowhere. 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)
HAS COMEDY PROVIDED YOU ANY ANSWERS? 3000 years ago Solomon pursued six “L” words in his search for the meaning of life and probing the area of LAUGHTER was one of his first places to start. In Ecclesiastes 2:2 he starts this quest but he concludes it is not productive to be laughing the whole time and not considering the serious issues of life. “I said of laughter, “It is foolishness;” and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?” (2:2). Then Solomon asserted the nihilistic statement in Ecclesiastes 2:17: “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
In the Book of Ecclesiastes what are all of the 6 “L” words that Solomon looked into? He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies, luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20). IRONICALLY, YOU HAVE MADE ALL SIX OF THESE BUTTS OF YOUR NIHILISTIC JOKES!!!
Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.” This puts him in the same place that you find yourself.
You are an atheist and you have a naturalistic materialistic worldview, and this short book of Ecclesiastes should interest you because the wisest man who ever lived in the position of King of Israel came to THREE CONCLUSIONS that will affect you.
FIRST, chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future. (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)
These two verses below take the 3 elements mentioned in a naturalistic materialistic worldview (time, chance and matter) and so that is all the unbeliever can find “under the sun” without God in the picture. You will notice that these are the three elements that evolutionists point to also.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12 is following: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.
SECOND, Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
THIRD, Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1, 8:15)
Ecclesiastes 4:1-2: “Next I turned my attention to all the outrageous violence that takes place on this planet—the tears of the victims, no one to comfort them; the iron grip of oppressors, no one to rescue the victims from them.” Ecclesiastes 8:14; “Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.”
Solomon had all the resources in the world and he found himself searching for meaning in life and trying to come up with answers concerning the afterlife. However, it seems every door he tries to open is locked. Today men try to find satisfaction in learning, liquor, ladies, luxuries, laughter, and labor and that is exactly what Solomon tried to do too. None of those were able to “fill the God-sized vacuum in his heart” (quote from famous mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal). You have to wait to the last chapter in Ecclesiastes to find what Solomon’s final conclusion is.
In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me that Kerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, Solomon realized death comes to everyone and there must be something more.
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Take a minute and compare Kerry Livgren’s words to that of the late British humanist H.J. Blackham:
“On humanist assumptions, life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does not is a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance and ends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, one after the other they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere….It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all. The objection merely points out objectively that such a situation is a model of futility“( H. J. Blackham, et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).
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Both Kerry Livgren and the bass player DAVE HOPE of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and DAVE HOPE had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. DAVE HOPE is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida. IT IS TRULY IRONIC THAT TWO MEN WITH THE WORD “HOPE” IN THEIR NAMES HAVE SUCH DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE 3 PROBLEMS THAT MAN MUST FACE IN ECCLESIASTES.
YOU believe three things. FIRST, death is the end and SECOND, chance and time are the only guiding forces in this life. FINALLY, power reigns in this life and the scales are never balanced. In contrast, DAVE HOPE believes death is not the end and the Christian can face death and also confront the world knowing that it is not determined by chance and time alone and finally there is a judge who will balance the scales.
Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
I wanted to accomplish two things today. First, I wanted to point out to you that if you stay with the atheistic humanist worldview then the nihilism that you embrace is the only logical conclusion to come to. Second, I wanted to point out some scientific evidence that caused Antony Flew to switch from an atheist (as you are now) to a theist. Twenty years I had the opportunity to correspond with two individuals that were regarded as two of the most famous atheists of the 20th Century, Antony Flew and Carl Sagan. (I have enclosed some of those letters between us.) I had read the books and seen the films of the Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer and he had discussed the works of both of these men. I sent both of these gentlemen philosophical arguments from Schaeffer in these letters and in the first letter I sent a cassette tape of my pastor’s sermon IS THE BIBLE TRUE? (CD is enclosed also.) You may have noticed in the news a few years ago that Antony Flew actually became a theist in 2004 and remained one until his death in 2010. Carl Sagan remained a skeptic until his dying day in 1996.
You will notice in the enclosed letter from June 1, 1994 that Dr. Flew commented, “Thank you for sending me the IS THE BIBLE TRUE? tape to which I have just listened with great interest and, I trust, profit.” It would be a great honor for me if you would take time and drop me a note and let me know what your reaction is to this same message.
Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.
In this letter below I quoted the sermon outline from Adrian Rogers when I wrote, “Hugh you remind me of Solomon because you are looking for lasting meaning in your life and you are looking in the same 6 areas that King Solomon did in what I call the 6 big L words. He looked into learning (1:16-18), laughter, ladies,luxuries, and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and labor (2:4-6, 18-20).”
Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
Solomon has tried it all and nothing satisfies the
cravings of his heart. Solomon does not keep his conclusions
hidden from us. Right up front after the introduction in v.1, we
read, “Vanities of vanities, repeated again. It’s all vanity.” He
is not referring to pride in one’s appearance or talent, standing
in front of a mirror. He is simply saying it’s all empty, it’s all
meaningless. It is all worthless. And he doubly repeats “vanity”
for emphasis. His emphasis is not needed though, as he is very
clear what degree of emptiness he observes in life.
Solomon’s life didn’t start out this way. It began with
such promise. Back in I Kings chapter 2, we read that his
father, King David is on his deathbed. David has some final
words of wisdom to pass on to his son, Solomon. V.2: “I am
going the way of the earth, (I am dying). So be strong, show
yourself a man.” (This is what David says real strength and a
real man looks like) v.3: “Keep the charge of the Lord your
God and walk in His ways…that you may succeed in all that
you do and wherever you turn.” Son, if you want to succeed in
life, this is the key “Obey God, follow God’s truth.” That is the
way to being a real man, a strong man.
In chapter 3 of I Kings, we read of Solomon doing just
that in following God’s law. God appears to Solomon in a
dream and says, “Ask anything you wish me to give you.” If I
were Solomon, I might have asked for a thousand more wishes,
but Solomon answered even better, “v.9: “give thy servant an
understanding heart to judge thy people and to discern between
good and evil.” Literally Solomon asks for a “hearing heart
that listens to God’s voice.” He asks for wisdom to apply
God’s truth to life, and God gave him that and added to it
wealth and power. Solomon had such a great and promising
start. It says in I Kings 3:3: “Solomon loved the Lord, walked
in the ways of his father…except v.3: he sacrificed and burned
incense on the high places. Exceptions, cultural sins,
compromises will pull us down. Even though Solomon loved
God, there were cracks in his armor. Later in life, those cracks
would split and grow and multiply as he was drawn away from
God’s heart by over 700 wives and 300 concubines. Whatever
he wanted he took; sex, drugs, alcohol, building projects, lavish
gardens, parks, wealth upon wealth. Yachts, horses, He made Bill Gates look like a pauper and Hugh Hefner look like an alter boy. He discovered it all was empty, meaningless, vanity,
nothing. It took Solomon a lifetime to figure out that what his
dad said to him was correct and he then began to follow God
again.
Frederick Buechner summarizes Solomon’s point
when he writes, “If you decide to knock yourself out getting
rich and living up to it, Solomon points out all you have to
show for it in the end is the biggest income tax in town and a
bad liver; and when you finally kick the bucket, the chances are
that your dim-witted heirs will sink the whole thing in a phony
Florida real estate deal or lose it at the track in Saratoga. If you
decide to break your back getting a decent education and end
up a Columbia Ph.D. and an advisor to Presidents, you’ll be
just as dead when the time comes as the high school drop-out
who went into sausage stuffing, and you’ll be forgotten just
about as soon.”
________
Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
I am finishing up today some letters that I sent to Hugh Hefner that were based primarily on the sermon series BETTER THAN which is a study in the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES done by our pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 2016. I will resume the Hef letters from other sources in my next post.
Our teaching pastors here at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH are Mark Henry,
Ben Parkinson
and Brandon Barnard.
Today’s letter is based on a sermon by Ben Parkinson.
March 13, 2016
Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
I THOUGHT OF YOU TODAY HUGH WHEN OUR TEACHING PASTOR Ben Parkinson delivered his message on ECCLESIASTES on the subject of IS JESUS “BETTER THAN” FOR YOU? at our church FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH. Ben Parkinson talked about how important it is to have someone to share life with.
After marrying Hefner on New Year’s Eve 2012, Harris spoke to Huffington Post Live, via Daily Mail, and revealed what marriage meant for her. “For me it meant more security, knowing that I am the one for him,” she explained. “Like we were talking about, there are always girls in and out and always the feeling of maybe being replaced… And he made sure I didn’t feel that way anymore and that was what the wedding was all about.”
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King Solomon wrote the book SONG OF SOLOMON when he was young and involved in his first marriage and it was a great picture of what true love was meant to be. However, later he ended up chasing after foreign women who served false gods and Solomon’s life became a mess. As an old man Solomon wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes and he reflects back on many of the mistakes he made in his life.
I am glad that you are living in a relational way with Crystal and that you have someone to share life with, but did you know that God created you that way but God also wants you to have a relationship with Him too. Here is portion from my pastor’s message:
What has the Book of Ecclesiastes taught us? Point #1 ALTHOUGH GOD’S GIFTS TO US ARE “BETTER THAN” NOT HAVING THEM, THEY CAN NEVER REPLACE THE GOODNESS OF GOD TO US.
Because life is about glorifying God we can’t ignore him and try to find life in something he has made. These good gifts (LABOR, LADIES, LUXURIES, LEARNING, LAUGHING) God gives us have limits. There is a diminishing return to them that God makes sure are inherent in them so they will never satisfy us if we try to put them on the throne of our hearts instead of God. God loves us too much to let us be satisfied with something less than him, because he is the [only true God] worth worshiping, worth glorifying, worth living for.
These gifts fail us because we were made to love a relational God.
9 Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.10 For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!11 Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?12 And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
These good gifts (LABOR, LADIES, LUXURIES, LEARNING, LAUGHING) are meant to move us to connect with God in a relational way and not only that but to connect us one to another in a relational way…And so to the degree we have to trade relationships to find greatness in these things that Solomon has been exploring to pursue the most pleasure we can, to pursue the highest level of work we can accomplish, to pursue the greatest wealth we can find, in order to do these things if we had to leave relationships behind, people behind, we will fell the FUTILITY OF THAT, we will feel the FRUSTRATION OF THAT because there are only two things that truly last forever that we can invest in during this life and that the WORD OF GOD and THE SOULS OF PEOPLE. These are the only two things that will last forever and in the degree we are significant we are trading the temporal for the eternal. To the degree we are not investing our lives in those two things we feel we are on this treadmill of GROUNDHOG DAY and we feel no matter what we do we are not really making progress in life and we are wasting our time in life.
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So Pastor says there are only two things worth putting your time and life into and that is the WORD OF GOD and the SOULS OF PEOPLE. I know HUGH that you don’t believe the Bible is true. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop concerning the accuracy of the Bible.
TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #96)
Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith seen below
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Now we should Now we should turn to one of the most spectacular of modern archaeological discoveries, Ebla. While digging on an extensive mound forty-four miles south of Aleppo in Syria in 1974/75, an Italian archaeological expedition came across another of the vast libraries to which we referred earlier. A small room within the palace suddenly yielded up a thousand tablets and fragments, while another not far away a further fourteen thousand. There lay row upon row, just where they had fallen from the burning wooden shelves when the palace was destroyed about 2250 B.C.
What secrets did these tablets reveal? Without wishing to seem unnecessarily repetitive, we can say immediately that Ebla represents yet another discovery from the ancient past which does not make it harder for us to believe the Bible, but quite the opposite. And remember, these tablets date from well before the time of Abraham. The implications of this discovery will not be exhausted by even the turn of this century. The translation and publication of such a vast number of tablets will take years and years. It is important to understand that the information we now have from Ebla does not bear directly upon the Bible. As far as has been discovered, there is no certain reference to individuals mentioned in the Bible, though many names are similar, for example, Ishmael, Israel, and so forth. Biblical place names like Megiddo, Hazor, Lachish are also referred to. What is clear, however, is that certain individuals outside the Bible who previously had been considered fictitious by the critical scholars, simply because of their antiquity, are now quite definitely historic characters.
For example, the Assyrian King Tudiya (approximately 2500 B.C.) had already been known from the Assyrian king list composed about 1000 B.C. His name appeared at the head of the list, but his reality was dismissed by many scholars as “free invention, or a corruption.” In fact, he was very much a real king of Ebla. Thus, the genealogical tradition of the earlier parts of the Assyrian king list has been vindicated. It preserves faithfully, over a period of 1,500 years, the memory of real, early people who were Assyrian rulers. What we must learn from this is that when we find similar material in the Old Testament, such as the genealogical list in Genesis 7 or the patriarchal stories, we should be careful not to reject them out of hand, as the scholars have so often done. We must remember that these ancient cultures were just as capable of recording their histories as we are.
The most important aspect of the Ebla discoveries is undoubtedly their language. This has been found to be ancient West-Semitic language to which such languages as Hebrew, Canaanite, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Moabite are related. Thus we have now, for the first time, the whole “tradition” of West-Semitic language stretching over 2,500 years–something which was previously true only of Egyptian and Akkadian, to which Babylonian and Assyrian belong.
Up until quite recently, therefore, this meant that scholars could argue that many words which appeared in the Hebrew Old Testament were what they called “late.” What they meant by this was that these words indicated a much later authorship than the time stated by the text itself. It would be as if one of us pretended to write a sixteenth-century book using such modern words as AUTOMOBILE and COMPUTER. In the case of the Pentateuch, for example, this was one of the arguments which led some scholars to suggest that it was not Moses who wrote these books, as the Bible says, but anonymous scribes from approximately 1,000 years later. The discoveries at Ebla have shown that many of these words were not late, but very early. Here is yet another example of a claimed “scientific” approach that merely reflects the philosophical prejudices of the scholars involved.
PS:This was the 25th letter that I have written to you on the subject of Ecclesiastes and comparing you to King Solomon. I hope you have a chance to google HUGH HEFNER ECCLESIASTES and you will see that you are compared to Solomon over and over. Maybe it has to do with the fact that both of you have slept with over 1000 women? Today I pointed out that it is blessing from God to be in a marriage relationship with someone you love and that God not only created you as a relational person so you could share your life with someone but also God wants you to have a relationship with Him!!
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
Lets all be honest about the desires of our heart: they can be a beautiful thing, but they can also be daunting. Our fallen nature tends to send us on this trajectory of chasing things that aren’t as life giving as we think they are.
How many times have you woken up each morning, looked in the mirror, and just not been satisfied?
Our fallen culture does a really good job of pointing to the things you’re not in order to sell you what it believes you should be.
Wow, that sounds really familiar!
Snake?
Fruit?
Woman and Man?
5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
I am not advocating that the church should hide itself from the culture of the world.
However, when navigating what our heart is longing for, I believe that we have to ask these questions:
What am I chasing?
Why am I chasing it?
Does this stir my affection for the Creator?
The gospel is God’s greatest locator of what our heart is invested in.
It’s painful, its awkward, its beautiful, and its fulfilling.
The book of Ecclesiastes is by far one of the greatest social experiments ever recorded…
King Solomon asks the Lord for wisdom, and Israel reaches an unprecedented height of power. (1 Kings 3:10)
He throws parties that put Jay-Z and Kanye to shame.
His sex life makes Hugh Hefner look like a gentleman.
His business and gift of negotiation would have told Donald Trump, “You’re fired.”
The world was at his feet. He had absolutely everything that the culture could offer in this world.
Yet he says this…
17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. 18 I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19 and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21 because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. – Ecclesiastes 2:17-21
He’s saying, “I did it all, and this experience still leaves me empty. Not only that, people have looked to me thinking this is the answer to life, and now I am leaving a pile of junk behind to a bunch of idiots.”
When God says that “nothing in this world will satisfy you like Me”… Its not a philosophical position, He means it.
God has given us many great gifts; food, sex, money, etc.
However, when the gift becomes the god, we tend to forget how much joy there is in even knowing the Giver.
Jesus tells the woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become min him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14)
Jesus knows the woman is seeking something life giving; something that multiple men and relationships just haven’t given her. She is thirsty, tired, and simply caught in a cycle that she doesn’t know how to leave.
Yet Jesus asks the same question God has not stopped asking us since He asked our first parents:
God knows your desires far better than you do, and His mission is not to take them away from you, but rather show you that they can be so much more.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” – CS Lewis.
Where is your heart?
What are you chasing?
What stirs your affection for the Creator?
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Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
In the next few weeks I will be posting some letters that I sent to Hugh Hefner that were based primarily on the sermon series BETTER THAN which is a study in the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES done by our pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 2016. Our teaching pastors here are Mark Henry,
Ben Parkinson
and Brandon Barnard.
Today’s letter is based on a sermon by Brandon Barnard.
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March 6, 2016
Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
In your interview, “Q&A: Hugh Hefner,” in the Guardian are these words:
What is your guiltiest pleasure?
My life, probably!
Francis Schaeffer has rightly noted concerning you that your goal with the “playboy mentality is just to smash the puritanical ethnic.” In fact, in your own personal life you definitely have gone the opposite direction of Puritanism, and I thought of you today when I was listening to our sermon at church. Our pastor said, “Some people would read Ecclesiastes and just say EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY because in the end it is all vanity. However, Solomon doesn’t endorse foolish choices and foolish living. Living foolishly does have consequences. Psalms 14:1 The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ The fool is the one who says I want to do it my way and not God’s way.”
If you remember the sermon THE PLAYBOY’S PAYDAY that I sent you from Adrian Rogers and it was based on Proverbs chapter 5 that was written by King Solomon to his son. DON’T YOU THINK YOU SHOULD PASS THIS ADVICE ALONG TO YOUR SONS COOPER AND MARSTON? Here is a portion of that chapter below:
Marston Hefner
My son, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding, 2 that you may keep discretion, and your lips may guard knowledge. 3 For the lips of a forbidden[a] woman drip honey, and her speech[b] is smoother than oil, 4 but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. 5 Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to[c] Sheol; 8 Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, 9 lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless, 10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner, 11 and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,
18 Let your fountain be blessed,and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated[d] always in her love. 21 For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders[f] all his paths.
Today at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH our teaching pastor Brandon Barnard delivered the message REJOICE AND REMEMBER based on Ecclesiastes 11 and 12 in the sermon series entitled BETTER THAN and I wanted to share a portion of that sermon with you today.
Ecclesiastes 11:1- 12:8
11 Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. 2 Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. 3 If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. 4 He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.
5 As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb[a] of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
7 Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun.
8 So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes isvanity.[b]
9 Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
10 Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain[c] from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.
Remember Your Creator in Your Youth
12 Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”;2 before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain,3 in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed,4 and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low—5 they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along,[d] and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets—6 before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern,7 and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.8 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.
King Solomon
FIRST, Live courageously and trust God completely.
A. Ecclesiastes doesn’t endorse foolish choices or foolish living.
B. This does endorse grace driven effort.
Titus 2:11-14 English Standard Version (ESV)
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
Quotations taken from Borden of Yale, by Mrs. Howard Taylor, Moody Press, Chicago
In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As heir to the Borden family fortune, he was already wealthy. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave 16-year-old Borden a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world’s hurting people. Finally, Bill Borden wrote home about his “desire to be a missionary.”1
One friend expressed disbelief that Bill was “throwing himself away as a missionary.”
In response, Borden wrote two words in the back of his Bible: “No reserves.”
Even though young Borden was wealthy, he arrived on the campus of Yale University in 1905 trying to look like just one more freshman. Very quickly, however, Borden’s classmates noticed something unusual about him and it wasn’t that he had lots of money. One of them wrote: “He came to college far ahead, spiritually, of any of us. He had already given his heart in full surrender to Christ and had really done it. We who were his classmates learned to lean on him and find in him a strength that was solid as a rock, just because of this settled purpose and consecration.”2
During his college years, Bill Borden made an entry in his personal journal that defined what his classmates were seeing in him. That entry said simply: “Say ‘no’ to self and ‘yes’ to Jesus every time.”3
Borden’s first disappointment at Yale came when the university president spoke in a convocation about the students’ need of “having a fixed purpose.” After that speech, Borden wrote: “He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations.”4 Surveying the Yale faculty and much of the student body, Borden lamented what he saw as the end result of an empty, humanistic philosophy: moral weakness and sin-ruined lives.
During his first semester at Yale, Borden started something that would transform campus life. One of his friends described how it began: “It was well on in the first term when Bill and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast. I cannot say positively whose suggestion it was, but I feel sure it must have originated with Bill. We had been meeting only a short time when a third student joined us and soon after a fourth. The time was spent in prayer after a brief reading of Scripture. Bill’s handling of Scripture was helpful. . . . He would read to us from the Bible, show us something that God had promised and then proceed to claim the promise with assurance.”5
Borden’s small morning prayer group gave birth to a movement that soon spread across the campus. By the end of his first year, 150 freshman were meeting weekly for Bible study and prayer. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale’s 1,300 students were meeting in such groups.
Borden made it his habit to seek out the most “incorrigible” students and try to bring them to salvation. “In his sophomore year we organized Bible study groups and divided up the class of 300 or more, each man interested taking a certain number, so that all might, if possible, be reached. The names were gone over one by one, and the question asked, ‘Who will take this person?’ When it came to someone thought to be a hard proposition, there would be an ominous pause. Nobody wanted the responsibility. Then Bill’s voice would be heard, ‘Put him down to me.'”6
Borden’s outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus. He cared about widows and orphans and the disabled. He rescued drunks from the streets of New Haven. To try to rehabilitate them, he founded the Yale Hope Mission. One of Bill Borden’s friends wrote that he “might often be found in the lower parts of the city at night, on the street, in a cheap lodging house or some restaurant to which he had taken a poor hungry fellow to feed him, seeking to lead men to Christ.”7
Borden’s missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Once he fixed his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered. He also challenged his classmates to consider missionary service. One of them said of him: “He certainly was one of the strongest characters I have ever known, and he put backbone into the rest of us at college. There was real iron in him, and I always felt he was of the stuff martyrs were made of, and heroic missionaries of more modern times.”8
Although he was a millionaire, Bill seemed to “realize always that he must be about his Father’s business, and not wasting time in the pursuit of amusement.”9 Although Borden refused to join a fraternity, “he did more with his classmates in his senior year than ever before.” He presided over the huge student missionary conference held at Yale and served as president of the honor society Phi Beta Kappa.
Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high-paying job offers. In his Bible, he wrote two more words: “No retreats.”
William Borden went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.
When the news of William Whiting Borden’s death was cabled back to the U.S., the story was carried by nearly every American newspaper. “A wave of sorrow went round the world . . . Borden not only gave (away) his wealth, but himself, in a way so joyous and natural that it (seemed) a privilege rather than a sacrifice” wrote Mary Taylor in her introduction to his biography.10
Was Borden’s untimely death a waste? Not in God’s perspective. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words “No reserves” and “No retreats,” he had written: “No regrets.”
_
SECOND, Enjoy life fully and thank God for today.
A. Rejoice in the years you have and remember they come to an end.
B. Rejoice in your youth and remember that judgment comes to all.
C. Remove worry and live wisely.
D. Remember your creator in all things.
Jeremiah 2:12-13 English Standard Version (ESV)
12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, 13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Matthew 6:33 English Standard Version (ESV)
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
_
Chris Rice wrote this great song, “Life Means So Much”
Every day is a journal page
Every man holds a quill and ink
And there’s plenty of room for writing in
All we do is believe and think
So will you compose a curse
Or will today bring the blessing
Fill the page with rhyming verse
Or some random sketching
Teach us to count the days
Teach us to make the days count
Lead us in better ways
That somehow our souls forgot
Life means so much
Life means so much
Life means so much
Every day is a bank account
And time is our currency
So nobody’s rich, nobody’s poor
We get 24 hours each
So how are you gonna spend
Will you invest, or squander
Try to get ahead
Or help someone who’s under
Has anybody ever lived who knew the value of a life
And don’t you think giving is all
What proves the worth of yours and mine
Teach us to count the days
Teach us to make the days count
Lead us in better ways
That somehow our souls forgot
Life means so much
Every day is a gift you’ve been given
Make the most of the time every minute you’re living
PS: Today is the 23rd letter I have written you and most of the letters have been based the FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH sermon series on Ecclesiastes. How much of your life HUGH has been lived to satisfy your own desires and how much spent telling others about where true wisdom can be found? At least tell your sons about the wisdom of Proverbs 5 and warn them of the pitfalls of the Playboy lifestyle!!!
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
let us think of the sex relationship. What is man’s attitude towards the girl? It is possible, and common in the modern setting, to have a “playboy” attitude, or rather a “plaything” attitude, where the “play- mate” becomes the “plaything.” Here, the girl is no more than a sex object.
But what is the Christian view? Somebody may offer at this point the rather romantic no- tion, “You shouldn’t look for any pleasure for yourself; you should just look for the other per- son’s pleasure.” But that is not what the Bible says. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We have a right to pleasure, too. But what we do not have a right to do is to forget that the girl is a person and not an animal, or a plant, or a machine. We have the right to have our plea- sure in a sexual relationship, but we have no right whatsoever to exploit a partner as a sex object.
There should be a conscious limitation upon our pleasure. We impose a limit—a self-imposed limit—in order to treat the wife fairly as a per- son. So although a husband could do more, he does not do everything he could do, because he must treat her also as a person and not just as a thing with no value. And if he does so treat her, eventually he loses, because love is gone, and all that is left is just a mechanical, chemical sexuality; humanity is lost as he treats her as less than human. Eventually not only her humanity is diminished, but his as well. In con- trast, if he does less than he could do, even- tually he has more, for he has a human rela- tionship; he has love and not just a physical act. It is like the principle of the boomerang—it can come full circle and destroy the destroyer.
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Over and over I have read that Hugh Hefner was a modern day King Solomon and Hefner’s search for satisfaction was attempted by adding to the number of his sexual experiences.
I want you to play a game with me today. Here is how it works. You raise your hand if my question relates to you – humor me, okay? Let’s begin. First, raise your hand if you hate audience participation games where you have to raise your hand. Doesn’t matter because we are going to play the game anyway. Raise your hand if you are not totally SATISFIED with your cell phone coverage. Raise your hand if you are not totally SATISFIED with your current financial picture. Raise your hand if you are not SATISFIED with your body and the way you look. Let’s get a little more serious. Raise your hand if you are not SATISFIED with the job you are doing as a parent. I want you to raise your hand if you are not SATISFIED with the way you have been living your life and the way your life is going. Some of you cannot get any SATISFACTION, can you?
This is interesting. In 1965, there was a person who felt a lot like you do and he wrote a song called “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Who knows who this person is? Mick Jagger. It was over 40 years ago and you would think over a 40-year period he would get some satisfaction, but Mick is in his 60’s now and he is still looking for satisfaction. He is still wearing his tight jeans, dressing like a teen, wearing his hair long, and trying to jump around on a rock stage. I heard him on a talk show not long ago and he still “can’t get no satisfaction.” Here is what we are going to do so we can get into what I want to talk about. We are going to actually sing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” We can do this in this church, maybe we couldn’t in some, but we will here. I cannot sing well, so if you do not participate, this could be really bad. Okay, on the count of three, One, Two, Three. “I can’t get no satisfaction. I can’t get no satisfaction. But I try and I try and I try and I try… I can’t get no….” Oh man, you are feeling it.
The reason I did this is we did not only sing a rock song by the Rolling Stones, we also sang the theme song to the lives of many people – some of you. Biblically, we also sang the soundtrack to the Book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is the private journal in the Bible of King Solomon who was King David’s son and successor. Solomon also went on a 40-year journey searching for satisfaction.
Let me tell you a little bit about King Solomon. When he started out as king, he had a very intimate, close relationship with God and God blessed him. God deposited leadership gifts and wisdom into his life. God gave him resources to build the kingdom. You name it and God gave it to Solomon. You probably remember the story when the Lord asked Solomon what he wanted.
1 Kings 3:5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
1 Kings 3:9 …give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
1Kings 3:11-13 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked… Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for – both riches and honor – so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.
It was amazing. No one in the Bible did, or had, what Solomon did and had. He began very well and climbed quickly to success. Not long into it, something began to happen internally to Solomon. Internal erosion began eroding at the heart of Solomon. It seemed King Solomon hopped in his car/chariot and took a long trip away from God. For the next 40 years of his life, he wandered through life. King Solomon could not get any satisfaction and he wrote about it in the journal of his 40-year trip.
Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! EVERYTHING is meaningless.”
Solomon thought life was MEANINGLESS. We have a person who initially was full of excitement, purpose, and extremely willing to do anything God asked. Something happened. He moved away from God and wandered through a 40-year taste test/smorgasbord/buffet life searching for satisfaction.
Before you get too down on Solomon, how many remember how it was when you first came to the Lord? You were excited, purposed, extremely willing to do anything God asked. “Mission field? Sure, I’ll go.” You were excited about God, played praise tapes/cd, read your Bible, prayed, etc. However, it’s not like this today. Something happened. You got in your chariot and, for years now, you have been searching for satisfaction. Maybe you have been to several churches looking for a good word (I trust you found one). You tried some freedom and liberty and maybe changed your emphasis from God to work and money. Amazingly, this is exactly the roads Solomon traveled and he wrote about it in his journal. His first stop was searching for education.
Ecclesiastes 1:13-14 I devoted myself to search forUNDERSTANDING and to explore by wisdom EVERYTHINGbeing done in the world. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. EverythingUNDER THE SUN is meaningless, like CHASING THE WIND.
Amazing! God gave Solomon so much, yet Solomon felt he had a tragic existence. How about you? Solomon searched out EVERYTHING for understanding. He studied art, architecture, built magnificent buildings, studied music, composed 1,005 songs, studied astronomy, biology, etc. You name it, Solomon knew about it. He was so educated and knew so much people came from the entire world to hear Solomon speak.
1Kings 4:30-34 Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than any other man… He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He described plant life… He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom…
Solomon knew all there was to know about everything, but with all his education, Solomon said, “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.” So, he did what we all do. He continued searching. His next taste test was pleasure.
Ecclesiastes 2:1 I said to myself, “Come now, let’s give PLEASURE a try. Let’s look for the ‘good things’ in life.” But I found that this, too, was meaningless. “It is silly to be laughing all the time,” I said. “What good does it do to seek only pleasure?” After much thought, I decided to cheer myself with wine…
It was all about the women and the wine. It was the “HUGH HEFNER” lifestyle – Playboy mansion. He had wine and women night after night after night.
1 Kings 11:3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.
Solomon slept with more women than he could remember. He drank the finest wines and said, “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.”
Solomon took another taste test from the smorgasbord. This time it would be possessions, money, and wealth.
Ecclesiastes 2:4-10 I also tried to find meaning by building huge homes for myself and by planting beautiful vineyards. I made gardens and parks, filling them with all kinds of fruit trees. I built reservoirs to collect the water to irrigate my many flourishing groves. I bought slaves, both men and women, and others were born into my household. I also owned great herds and flocks, more than any of the kings who lived in Jerusalem before me. I collected great sums of silver and gold, the treasure of many kings and provinces. I hired wonderful singers, both men and women, and had many beautiful concubines. I HAD EVERYTHING A MAN COULD DESIRE! So I became greater than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. And with it all, I remained clear-eyed so that I could evaluate all these things. Anything I wanted, I took. I did not restrain myself from any joy. I even found great pleasure in hard work, an additional reward for all my labors.
Solomon found pleasure, but not satisfaction – big difference. Solomon built a huge life for himself. He had any possession a person could want. He could snap his fingers and people came running to provide his desires. He had more money than Bill Gates and Donald Trump added together. He was the most powerful person in the world. Nevertheless, do you know what? He said, “I can’t get NO SATISFACTION.”
Solomon did everything and tried everything including checking out religions. He married women from other religions only to find they took him even farther from satisfaction. Solomon tasted the education thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He tasted the pleasure/sex/party thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He tasted the possession, wealth, power thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” He tasted the religion thing and said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
I will make certain we balance here. DOES GOD WANT YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL AND ENJOY LIFE? OF COURSE HE DOES, BUT IF THIS IS WHERE AND HOW YOU DETERMINE YOUR SATISFACTIONIN LIFE, YOUR LIFE WILL BE MEANINGLESS. Solomon was wealthy enough, wise enough, and powerful enough to search higher, deeper, and farther than anyone has ever searched and he said here is the conclusion.
Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well. For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:13 Here is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is the duty of every person.
The wisest man who ever lived who did it all, saw it all, tasted it all, felt it all, said this is it. THE CONCLUSION IS TO FIND GOD BEFORE DEATH FINDS YOU.
Fear God and obey his commands. Does God actually want us to ‘fear’ him as in be afraid of him? I thought God was like a wonderful father who loves and takes care of me. I don’t know I ‘fear’ or ‘feared’ my natural father. What’s up with this? Most people think the fear of God is thinking God has a holster full of lightening bolts just waiting for you to screw up and as soon as you do, bam, he zaps you. This is not the thought here or the context of the passage. Fearing God is not a fear of his “lightening bolts.” It is knowing not doing what he commands will not work well for our lives and the farther we distance ourselves from his commands, the worse our life goes. It is like, why would you fear jumping off a cliff? It is because the outcome would be bad. Injury is the least that will happen. The fear is I will severely mess up my life, not God zapping me with lightening bolts. Yet, I watch people jump off cliffs every day by not fearing if they disobey God’s ways they injure their own lives.
Solomon used the term “under the sun” in 27 different verses. Solomon did everything under the sun. His conclusion is to spend your days under the sun finding the God who lives above the sun.
Solomon uses the term meaningless 38 times. Solomon talked about the wind and chasing after the wind 14 times. Life goes by like the wind and people chase after nothing and reach for something emptiness. Do not do this. Spend time finding God. In your time under the sun, did you find the God who dwells above the sun?
What have you tasted? Maybe you have not tried it in the huge proportions Solomon tried, but in reality, you and I take sips every single day. For example, what do people do when a relationship does not satisfy them? They go out and taste test another. What do people do if their job does not satisfy them? They taste test a different job. Maybe you say if you had a great friend who would treat you great and be the kind of friend you really need then it would SATISFY you. Maybe you feel like if your kids would just obey you it would SATISFY you. Or, if they would turn out to be the kind of children you want them to be this would SATISFY you. If you can get your degree, or make the perfect grade then it would SATISFY you. If your husband would come to church with you, it would SATISFY you. Maybe for you it is money. You think if I could just get this much money it will SATISFY me. Maybe you are not happy with the way you look. Maybe a plastic surgery will SATISFY you or a new fad diet that works and the list goes on and on and on. One day you will pull over on the side of the road just like Solomon. You will look at your life and see you taste tested and it was all meaningless and none of it SATISFIED. You will say, “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION.”
Did you see the movie “Meet Joe Black” staring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt? Bard Pitt played the role of death (Joe Black) who came to take Anthony Hopkins (Bill Parrish). Bill is very successful, wealthy, powerful man, but one day Bill meets death face to face. (Let’s watch the clip.)
A day comes when we will all ask “the question.” It is, “Am I going to die?” WHEN YOU MEET DEATH FACE TO FACE AND EYE TO EYE, HOW WILL YOU REACT? Have you spent the necessary time, money, possessions, and wisdom searching for God, or have you merely searched for money, possessions, and earthly wisdom? What will be the outcome? Have you been truly successful? Have you found the God who dwells above the sun?
In the movie, it came time for Bill to go. Should he be afraid? Should you? One more clip… (watch the clip).
So, do you need to be afraid? Only you know. It depends on what you do under the sun concerning the God who dwells above the sun. It’s all meaningless, meaningless, meaningless – without Jesus.
Let’s pray.
Many of the sermons that I heard or read that inspired me to write Hugh Hefner were from this list of gentlemen: Daniel Akin, Brandon Barnard, Alistair Begg, Matt Chandler, George Critchley, Darryl Dash, Steve DeWitt, Steve Gaines, Norman L. Geisler, Greg Gillbert, Billy Graham, Mark Henry, Dan Jarrell, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., R. G. Lee, C.S. Lewis, Chris Lewis, Kerry Livgren, Robert Lewis, Bill Parkinson, Ben Parkinson,Vance Pitman, Nelson Price, Ethan Renoe, Adrian Rogers, Philip Graham Ryken, Francis Schaeffer, Lee Strobel, Bill Wellons, Kirk Wetsell, Ken Whitten, Ed Young , Ravi Zacharias, Tom Zobrist, and Richard Zowie.
In the next few weeks I will be posting some letters that I sent to Hugh Hefner that were based primarily on the sermon series BETTER THAN which is a study in the BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES done by our pastors at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH in Little Rock in 2016. Our teaching pastors here are Mark Henry,
Ben Parkinson
and Brandon Barnard.
Today’s letter is based on a sermon by Mark Henry.
The 87-year-old millionaire has an estimated net worth of $45 million. He amassed a huge wealth when he founded the Playboy Magazine.
Like father, like son, Hugh and Cooper pose in purple silk pyjamas at last
Mark Henry, teaching pastor at FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH Little Rock
February 29, 2016
Hugh Hefner Playboy Mansion
10236 Charing Cross Road
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1815
Dear Mr. Hefner,
Back in 1980 Keith Green wrote and performed the song I PLEDGE MY HEAD TO HEAVEN and it summed up the Book Ecclesiastes well with these words:
Well I’ve had the chance to gain the world, and to live just like a king, But without your love, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Without God in the picture all is vanity in life UNDER THE SUN and nothing means a thing!!! You would enjoy the music of this song and I want you to take 3 minutes to go to YOU TUBE and check out the performance on harmonica by Bob Dylan.
Keith Green (October 21, 1953 – July 28, 1982) Keith and Bob Dylan recorded together in 1979-1980
Bob Dylan’s record GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY
The reason I have written you this long series of letters comparing you to King Solomon is because you both have slept with over 1000 women and you both lived like Kings.
On the website Lifetime.com under the heading: HUGH HEFNER, BIOGRAPHY are these words:
Epitomizing the lifestyle promoted by his magazine, Hefner has also had a long line of mistresses. His girlfriends have included several Playboy Playmates of the Year, such as Marilyn Cole, Lillian Muller and Patty MacGuire.
I thought of you HUGH when I looked up the words the other day to the song GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY by Bob Dylan. It talks about mistresses, socialites, money, TV stars, business men, liquor, silk clothes, caviar, king-sized beds and living in a mansion and this all reminded me of your lifestyle.
In Bob Dylan’s song GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY are these lines:
You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.
Might be a rock’n’ roll adict prancing on the stage Might have money and drugs at your commands, women in a cage You may be a business man or some high degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief.
You may be a state trooper, you might be an young turk You may be the head of some big TV network
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame
You may be living in another country under another name.
You may be a construction worker working on a home You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome
You might own guns and you might even own tanks
You might be somebody’s landlord you might even own banks.
You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir.
Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed.
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
This Sunday February 28, 2016 our teaching pastor Mark Henry preached a sermon from Ecclesiastes 8 called THINKING OF YOURSELF LESS. In this sermon he talks about this Bob Dylan song GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY and below here is portion from that sermon:
Ecclesiastes chapter 7 is all about foolishness versus Wisdom. What is a fool as pictured in the Bible? A fool is not someone who lacks intellect. Foolishness is not a mind problem, but it is a will problem, and a heart problem.Foolishness is a lack of submission to God. It is resistant to character formation in your life. A fool desires to live an independent and autonomous life apart from God where the world centers around he or she.
Wisdom is about being the right kind of person who is following Jesus and making the right kinds of decisions.
PRIDE IS SELF-SUFFICIENCY. Self-sufficiency is depending on our own resources and strength instead of depending on God. Self-sufficiency is you depending on your own goodness rather than depending on the goodness of Christ. It is making ourselves the center and not God and it is really self-worship. PRIDE IS SELF-PROMOTION.
HUMILITY IS NOT THINKING LESS OF YOURSELF. IT’S THINKING OF YOURSELF LESS. (Quote by C.S.Lewis)
C.S. Lewis
___
The realities of Humility are:
WE HAVE TO SUBMIT TO SOMEONE.
Ecclesiastes 8:2-5
2 I say: Keep the king’s command, because of God’s oath to him. 3 Be not hasty to go from his presence. Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases.4 For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, “What are you doing?”5 Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.
This idea of human autonomy is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Bob Dylan wrote a song a long time ago and the lyrics said, “You got to serve somebody.” That is what Solomon is saying. We all have to answer to someone. If the police turns on their lights and you don’t pull over then you are going to jail. God has put authority in our life to humble us. Now here Solomon is talking about our need to submit to the king…The most important person we submit to is Jesus who is the eternal king and the KING OF KINGS which means there is no such thing as human autonomy.
We will never be the ultimate authority in our lives because Jesus is. Our sin fights against Christ’s authority in every way. It makes us want to make up our own moral rules…It takes God’s grace for us to acknowledge that there is a king and we are not him. It takes grace for us to forsake the purpose of our kingdom of our kingdom so we can take up the purpose of his kingdom.
2. WE DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING.
Ecclesiastes 8:6-9
6 For there is a time and a way for everything, although man’s trouble lies heavy on him.7For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be?8 No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it.9 All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.
3. WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL.
Ecclesiastes 8:10-14
10 Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. 11 Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.12 Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him.13 But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.
Francis Schaeffer pictured below:
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Francis Schaeffer talked about this same issue in Ecclesiastes:
Between birth and death power rules. Solomon looked over his kingdom and also around the world and proclaimed that right does not rule but power rules.
Ecclesiastes 4:1 1 Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them.
Ecclesiastes 8:14 The Message (MSG) 14 Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.
We could say it in 20th century language, “The books are not balanced in this life.”
However, the books are balanced by God in the afterlife. Ecclesiastes last two verses state: The last and final word is this: Fear God. Do what he tells you. 14 And that’s it. Eventually God will bring everything that we do out into the open and judge it according to its hidden intent, whether it’s good or evil.
PS: This is the 21st letter I have written to you and again I have responded to an aspect of your life with what the Bible has to say about it. SELF-PROMOTION is pride and living like King Solomon and sleeping with 1000 women is just being selfish and in the end it does not bring satisfaction. SATISFACTION will only come when you put your trust in Christ alone for your salvation and you repent of your sins.
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s favorite […]
I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were short and from one of Hef’s […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
_____ I started this series on my letters and postcards to Hugh Hefner back in September when I read of the passing of Mr. Hefner. There are many more to come. It is my view that he may have taken time to look at glance at one or two of them since these postcards were […]
|I saw this on the internet on June 20, 2017 _ Playboy’s Hugh Hefner on board a boat with Barbi Benton and friends sporting a striped navy shirt and a pipe in mouth and a real catch in hand during the 70s. ____________________________________ Below is the last letter I ever wrote to Hugh Hefner. […]
I learned yesterday that Hugh Hefner had passed away. Just last year I visited Chicago and drove by his Chicago Playboy Mansion pictured below. ___ Playboy after dark filmed in Chicago Playboy Mansion During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian […]
The Daily Hatch 
