Scripture

Truthful words stand the test of time,
    but lies are soon exposed.

~Proverbs 12:19, NLT

Quote

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.

~Mark Twain

David Cowart mentioned last Friday that AI {artificial intelligence} has increased plagiarism to an all time high. More and more preachers are going to AI for their sermon outlines. I can promise you, my outlines, such as they are, did not come from AI. I will say, I do use it and I am fascinated by it. Plagiarism has been around for a long time. Sometimes when I am looking for quotes, I see a name beside the quote and I know that this person is taking credit for a thought that belongs to someone else. Rick Warren is king of the plagiarist: I am shocked that Charles Stanley never filed a law suit against him. Just a few short years ago, the SBC president was caught preaching the exact same sermon as another preacher two states away. This certainly undermines credibility.

But there is one problem: TRUTH is enduring, it is the same today, yesterday and forever. It is very possible for you to have a thought, that to you is profound and unheard of, but the same thought may have occurred to others and you are just not aware of it. I have never meet anyone who agrees with me on the sacrifice of Isaac or the flight of Elijah. I maintain that Jezebel did not want to kill Elijah, she wanted to frighten him. If you can send a courier, you can also send a hit man. I don’t know of many people who want credit for what I have said, do you? There are some people I do not quote. I do not trust their integrity.

Originality is rare; I read all the time. Priscilla just gave me a set of NT commentaries by Charles R. Erdman: they are great! I read Augustine, Luther, Graham, Packer, Lloyd-Jones, Dallas Willard, C. S. Lewis, Elisebeth Elliot, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, every English translation of the bible I can get my hands on and I have read every inch of Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on the NT and Psalms.  I have read Alton McEachern commentary on Psalms three times. I also read a little Swindoll. The list is almost endless. I read two, three sometime four books at a time. So let me ask you, how much of what I say is going to be original? Not much! I wrote a new quote today…“Gloom never makes a burden lighter.” The thought came to me while I was reading Charles R. Erdman, but he didn’t say it. I can’t say he said something that he didn’t, but I would have never stumbled on to this axiom without his book. I hope you understand what I am trying to say.

Extra

I do appreciate my prayer partners. There was a huge crowd at the grave side yesterday. I was in shock. I thought it would be 15-20 and it was more like 115-120. I can’t lie, I got nervous and never got over it. I was impressed with the view from the cemetery. It is a very peaceful place. When I saw Billy’s portrait [probably made 40 years ago] he looked so familiar. They said that in the day, he attended a lot of ball games.

I am going to try to tie up some loose ends today. I hope you have a good day and thanks for reading the blog.

Extra/Extra

I thank God for highly intelligent men and women who write good books. Some books are hard: Bradley Fitzgerald gave me Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago 30 years ago and I got to page 700; it had over 1,300. There are different versions, one of the new ones has less than 600 but one of the older version has over 2,000 pages. When I got Audible, I listed to Gulag Archipelago twice. It is intriguing. I also tried reading Dostoevsky and found the sledding too difficult, but again Audible came to the rescue. I listened and followed along in the book.  The IDIOT  {Dostoevsky} makes a great illustration. A stranger comes to town, treats everyone with kindness and they call him an idiot. Picture of Christ, who loved everyone and they crucified Him. There are a lot of helps on reading; use them. When I read Leviticus or any difficult passage, I listen to the NIV and follow along in whatever translation I am reading.  You can listen to many of the Puritan’s books on YouTube and they are free. You can listen to biographies on YouTube free. I have not had time to do it yet, but you can listen to Charlie Kirk on YouTube.