Articles by Dr. David Jeremiah
You may have read Franklin Graham’s 1995 autobiography, Rebel With a Cause—Finally Comfortable Being Graham. In his own words, Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and Ruth Bell Graham, tells the story of his own rebellion against the faith in which he was raised by his parents. He looked and acted the part—the cover of the book even pictures him in his leather motorcycle jacket. But unlike actor James Dean in the 1995 classic, Rebel Without a Cause, Franklin Graham finally embraced the cause he had been rebelling against—the cause of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. Today, Franklin Graham is known around the world as head of both Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian humanitarian relief organization, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, succeeding his father in that latter role. Many people don’t think about another of God’s most fruitful servants as a “rebel with a cause”—but Moses was. He was a rebel who spent a good part of his life on the run—running from both man and God under a mixed set of circumstances. But one thing Moses was never without: a cause.
In an educational outreach, NASA released a video from the International Space Station to teach schoolchildren the importance of physics and the science of trajectories. Astronaut Don Pettit held up a stuffed version of an angry bird. He blew up a green balloon representing a pig. He stretched a bungee cord across the hatchway and launched the bird, demonstrating the trajectory of its flight. “Astronauts have to worry about these things,” Pettit explained, “because if you’re in a rocket and, say, you’re trying to get from one orbit and rendezvous with Space Station, you end up going on a curved trajectory and you need to know how to fire your rocket engines.”[1] I applaud NASA in its innovative efforts to teach science to schoolchildren, but I know an even better lesson. The God of wisdom has given us a book filled with truth about angry attitudes and words. His advice can keep us on a heaven-bound trajectory and help us avoid crash landings. [1] See “New Angry Birds Announcement from the International Space Station,” Time Magazine (Time Techland) http://techland.time.com/2012/03/08/new-angry-birds-announcement-from-the-international-space-station, accessed March 8, 2012.
Over the years, books have gotten nicer and been printed faster over the years, but the basic format has stayed the same. That is, until 1971. Digital Books In 1971, Project Gutenberg was created to make electronic copies of important books. Fast forward to 2017 when you can read books on any number of handheld, wireless reading devices. The day of e-books is here and it is changing our world. Books are easy to access and store. You can take hundreds of books with you, stored in your pocket reader, and read them anytime, anywhere. For publishers, e-books are a dream come true: Once the original digital version of a book is available, an infinite number of digital copies can be sold and downloaded at barely any additional cost to the publisher.