Chapter 22 of The Golden Bough This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The Golden Bough by Sir James Fraser Chapter 22. Tabooed Words Part 1 Personal Names Tabooed Unable to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage, commonly fancies, that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond, which unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man as easily through his name, as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part of his person. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself, and takes care of it accordingly. Thus, for example, the North American Indian, quote, regards his name not as a mere label, but as a distinct part of his personality, just as much as are his eyes or his teeth, and believes that injury will result as surely from the malicious handling of his name as from a wound inflicted on any part of his physical organism. This belief was found among the various tribes from the Atlantic to the Pacific and has occasioned a number of curious regulations in regard to the concealment and change of names. End of quotation. Some Eskimo take new names when they are old, hoping thereby to get a new lease of life. The tolampus of Salibis believe that if you write a man's name down, you can carry off his soul along with it. Many savages at the present day regard their names as vital parts of themselves and therefore take great pains to conceal their real names, lest these should give to evil-disposed persons a handle by which to injure their owners. Thus to begin with the savages who rank at the bottom of the social scale we are told that the secrecy with which among the Australian Aborigines personal names are often kept from general knowledge arises in great measure from the belief that an enemy who knows your name has in it something which he can use magically to your detriment. An Australian black, says another writer, is always very unwilling to tell his real name and there is no doubt that this reluctance is due to the fear that through his name he may be injured by sorcerers. Amongst the tribes of Central Australia every man, woman and child has, besides a personal name which is in common use, a secret or sacred name which is bestowed by the older men upon him or her soon after birth and which is known to none but the fully initiated members of the group. This secret name is never mentioned except upon the most solemn occasions to utter it in the hearing of women or of men of another group would be a most serious breach of tribal custom as serious as the most flagrant case of sacrilege among ourselves. When mentioned at all the name is spoken only in a whisper and not until the most elaborate precautions have been taken that it shall be heard by no one but members of the group. Quote, the native thinks that a stranger knowing of his secret name would have a special power to work him ill by means of magic. End of quote. The same fear seems to have led to a custom of the same sort amongst the ancient Egyptians whose comparatively high civilisation was strangely dashed and checkered with relics of the lowest savagery. Every Egyptian received two names which were known respectively as the true name and the good name or the great name and the little name and while the good or little name was made public the true or great name appears to have been carefully concealed. A Brahman child receives two names one for common use the other a secret name which none but his father and mother should know. The latter is only used at ceremonies such as marriage. The custom is intended to protect the person against magic since a charm only becomes effectual in combination with the real name. Similarly the natives of Nias believe that harm may be done to a person by the demons who hear his name pronounced. Hence the names of infants who are especially exposed to the assaults of evil spirits are never spoken and often in haunted spots such as the gloomy depths of the forest the banks of a river or beside a bubbling spring men will abstain from calling each other by their names for a like reason. The Indians of Chiloé keep their names secret and do not like to have them uttered aloud for they say that there are fairies or imps on the mainland or neighbouring islands who, if they knew folks' names would do them an injury but so long as they do not know the names these mischievous sprites are powerless. The Aralcanians will hardly ever tell a stranger their names because they fear that he would thereby acquire some supernatural power over themselves.  When an Ojibwe is asked his name he will look at some bystander and ask him to answer. Quote, this reluctance arises from an impression they receive when young that if they repeat their own names it will prevent their growth and they will be small in stature. On account of this unwillingness to tell their names many strangers have fancied that they either have no names or have forgotten them. End of quote. In this last case no scruple seems to be felt about communicating a man's name to strangers and no ill-effects appear to be dreaded as a consequence of divulging it. Harm is only done when a name is spoken by its owner. Why is this? And why in particular should a man be thought to stunt his growth by uttering his own name? We may conjecture that to savages who act and think thus a person's name only seems to be a part of himself when it is uttered with his own breath. Uttered by the breath of others it has no vital connection with him and no harm can come to him through it. Whereas, so these primitive philosophers may have argued when a man lets his own name pass his lips he is parting with a living piece of himself and if he persists in so reckless a course he must certainly end by dissipating his energy and shattering his constitution. Many a broken-down debauchee, many a feeble frame wasted with disease may have been pointed out by these simple moralists to their awestruck disciples as a fearful example of the fate that must sooner or later overtake the profligate who indulges immoderately in the seductive habit of mentioning his own name. However, we may explain it. The fact is certain that many a savage evinces the strongest reluctance to pronounce his own name while at the same time he makes no objection at all to other people pronouncing it and will even invite them to do so for him in order to satisfy the curiosity of an inquisitive stranger. Thus, in some parts of Madagascar it is taboo for a person to tell his own name but a slave or attendant will answer for him. The same curious inconsistency as it may seem to us is recorded of some tribes of American Indians. Thus we are told that, quote, the name of an American Indian is a sacred thing not to be divulged by the owner himself without due consideration. One may ask a warrior of any tribe to give his name and the question will be met with either a point-blank refusal or the more diplomatic evasion that he cannot understand what is wanted of him. The moment a friend approaches the warrior first interrogated will whisper what is wanted and the friend can tell the name receiving a reciprocation of the courtesy from the other. End of quotation. This general statement applies, for example, to the Indian tribes of British Columbia as to whom it is said that, quote, one of their strangest prejudices which appears to pervade all tribes alike is a dislike to telling their names. Thus you never get a man's right name from himself but they will tell each other's names without hesitation. End of quote. In the whole of the East Indian archipelago the etiquette is the same. As a general rule no one will utter his own name. To inquire what is your name is a very indelicate question in native society. When in the course of administrative or judicial business a native is asked his name instead of replying he will look at his comrade to indicate that he is to answer for him or he will say straight out, ask him. The superstition is current all over the East Indies without exception and it is found also among the Motu and Motu Motu tribes the Papuans of Finchhaven in North New Guinea the Nufours of Dutch New Guinea and the Malineseans of the Bismarck archipelago. Among many tribes of South Africa men and women never mention their names if they can get anyone else to do it for them but they do not absolutely refuse when it cannot be avoided. Sometimes the embargo laid on personal names is imminent. It is conditional on circumstances and when these change it ceases to operate. Thus when the Nandi men are away on foray nobody at home may pronounce the names of the absent warriors they must be referred to as birds. Should a child so far forget itself as to mention one of the distant ones by name the mother would rebuke it saying don't talk of the birds who are in the heavens. Among the Bangala of the Upper Congo he is fishing and when he returns with his catch his proper name is in abeyance and nobody may mention it. Whatever the fisherman's real name may be he is called Mwale without distinction. The reason is that the river is full of spirits who, if they heard the fisherman's real name might so work against him that he would catch little or nothing. Even when he has caught his fish and landed them the buyer must still not address him by his proper name but must only call him Mwale for even then if the spirits were to hear his proper name they would either bear it in mind and serve him out another day or they might so mar the fish he had caught that he would get very little for them. Hence the fisherman can extract heavy damages from anybody who mentions his name or can compel the thoughtless speaker to relieve him of the fish at a good price so as to restore his luck. When the Sulkar of New Britain are near the territory of their enemies the Gactae, they take care not to mention them by their proper name believing that were they to do so their foes would attack and slay them. Hence in these circumstances they speak of the Gactae as Olapsiak that is the rotten tree trunks and they imagine that by calling them that they will make the limbs of their dreaded enemies ponderous and clumsy like logs. This example illustrates the extremely materialistic view which these savages take of the nature of words. They suppose that the mere utterance of an expression signifying clumsiness will homieopathically affect with clumsiness the limbs of their distant foemen. Another illustration of this curious misconception is furnished by a kaffa superstition that the character of a young thief can be reformed by shouting his name over a boiling kettle of medicated water then clapping a lid on the kettle and leaving the name to steep in the water for several days. It is not in the least necessary that the thief should be aware of the use that is being made of his name behind his back. The moral reformation will be affected without his knowledge. When it is deemed necessary that a man's real name should be kept secret it is often customary, as we have seen to call him by a surname or nickname. As distinguished from the real or primary name these secondary names are apparently held to be no part of the man himself so that they may be freely used and divulged to everybody without endangering his safety thereby. Sometimes in order to avoid the use of his own name a man will be called after his child. Thus we are informed that the gypseland blacks objected strongly that anyone outside the tribe know their names lest their enemies, learning them should make them vehicles of incantation and so charm their lives away. As children were not thought to have enemies they used to speak of a man as the father, uncle or cousin of so-and-so naming the child but on all occasions abstained from mentioning the name of a grown-up person. End of quote. The alphoes of Pozo and Salibis do not pronounce their own names. Among them accordingly if you wish to ascertain a person's name you ought not to ask the man himself but should inquire of others. But if this is impossible for example when there is no one else near you should ask him his child's name and then address him as the father of so-and-so. Nay, these alphoes are shy of uttering the names even of children so when a boy or girl has a nephew or niece he or she is addressed as uncle of so-and-so or aunt of so-and-so. In pure Malay society we are told a man is never asked his name and the custom of naming parents after their children is adopted only as a means of avoiding the use of the parent's own names. The writer who makes this statement adds in confirmation of it that childless persons are named after their younger brothers.  That is they are called the father or mother of what we should call their first cousin.  Among the kookies and zemis or kachanagas of a Sam parents dropped their names after the birth of a child and are named father and mother of so-and-so. Childless couples go by the name of the childless father, the childless mother, the father of no child, the mother of no child. The widespread custom of naming a father after his child has sometimes been supposed to spring from a desire on the father's part to assert his paternity apparently as a means of obtaining those rights over his children which had previously under a system of motherkin been possessed by the mother. But this explanation does not account for the parallel custom of naming the mother after her child which seems commonly to co-exist with the practice of naming the father after the child. Still less if possible does it apply to the customs of calling childless couples the father and mother of children which do not exist of naming people after their younger brothers and of designating children as the uncles and aunts of so-and-so or as the fathers and mothers of their first cousins. But all these practices are explained in a simple and natural way if we suppose that they originate in a reluctance to utter the real names of persons addressed or directly referred to. That reluctance is probably based partly on a fear of attracting the notice of evil spirits partly on a dread of revealing the name to sorcerers who would thereby obtain a handle for injuring the owner of the name. Part 2 Names of Relations Tabooed It might naturally be expected that the reserve so commonly maintained with regard to personal names would be dropped or at least relaxed among relations and friends. But the reverse of this is often the case. It is precisely the persons most intimately connected by blood and especially by marriage to whom the rule applies with greatest stringency. Such people are often forbidden not only to pronounce each other's names, but even to utter ordinary words which resemble or have a single syllable in common with these names. The persons who are thus mutually debarred from mentioning each other's names are especially husbands and wives, a man and his wife's parents and a woman and her husband's father. For example, among the kafas a woman may not publicly pronounce the birth name of her husband or of any of his brothers, nor may she use the interdicted word in its ordinary sense. If her husband for instance be called Umbaka from Imbaka, a small feline animal, she must speak of that beast by some other name. Further, a kafa wife is forbidden to pronounce even mentally the names of her father-in-law and of all her husband's male relations in the ascending line. And whenever the emphatic syllable of any of their names occurs in another word she must avoid it by substituting either an entirely new word or at least another syllable in its place. Hence this custom has given rise to an almost distinct language among the women which the kafas call women's speech. The interpretation of this women's speech is naturally very difficult, for no definite rules can be given for the formation of these substituted words, nor is it possible to form a dictionary of them, their number being so great. Since there may be many women, even in the same tribe, who would be no more at liberty to use the substitutes employed by some others, than they would to use the original words themselves. A kafaman on his side may not mention the name of his mother-in-law, nor may she pronounce his, but he is free to utter words in which the emphatic syllable of her name occurs. A Kyrgyz woman dares not pronounce the names of the older relations of her husband, nor even use words which resemble them in sound. For example, if one of these relations is called Shepard, she may not speak of sheep, but must call them the Bleating Ones. If his name is Lamb, she must refer to Lamb's as the Young Bleating Ones. In southern India, wives believe that to tell their husband's name or to pronounce it even in a dream would bring him to an untimely end. Among the sea-diacs a man may not pronounce the name of his father-in-law or mother-in-law without incurring the wrath of the spirits. And since he reckons as his father-in-law and mother-in-law, not only the father and mother of his own wife, but also the fathers and mothers of his brother's wives and sister's husbands, and likewise the fathers and mothers of all his cousins, the number of tabooed names may be very considerable, and the opportunities of error correspondingly numerous. To make confusion worse confounded, the names of persons are often the names of common things, such as moon, bridge, barley, cobra, leopard, so that when any of a man's many fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law are called by such names, these common words may not pass his lips. Among the alphoes of Minna Hassa in Salibi's the custom is carried still further so as to forbid the use even of words which merely resemble the personal names in sound. It is especially the name of a father-in-law which is thus laid under an interdict. If he, for example, is called Kalala his son-in-law may not speak of a horse by its common name, Kawalo. He must call it a riding-beast, Sasakayan. So among the alphoes of the island of Buru it is taboo to mention the names of parents and parents-in-law or even to speak of common objects by words which resemble these names in sound. Thus if your mother-in-law is called Dalu which means beetle you may not ask for beetle by its ordinary name, you must ask for red-mouth. If you want beetle-leaf, you may not say beetle-leaf, Dalu-mun you must say Karon-fenna. In the same island it is also taboo to mention the name of an elder brother in his presence. Transgressions of these rules are punished with fines. In Sunda it is thought that a particular crop would be spoiled if a man were to mention the names of his father and mother. Among the new foes of Dutch New Guinea, persons who are related to each other by marriage are forbidden to mention each other's names. Among the connections whose names are thus tabooed are wife, mother-in-law, father-in-law, your wife's uncles and aunts and also her grand-uncles and grand-dance, and the whole of your wife's or your husband's family in the same generation as yourself, except that men may mention the names of their brothers-in-law, though women may not. The taboo comes into operation as soon as the betrothal has taken place and before the marriage has been celebrated. Families thus connected by the betrothal of two of their members are not only forbidden to pronounce each other's names, they may not even look at each other, and the rule gives rise to the most comical scenes when they happen to meet unexpectedly, and not merely the names themselves, but any words that sound like them are scrupulously avoided, in other words, used in their place. If it should chance that a person has inadvertently uttered a forbidden name, he must at once throw himself on the floor and say, I have mentioned a wrong name, I throw it through the chinks of the floor in order that I may eat well. In the western island of Torres Straits, a man never mentioned the personal names of his father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law, and a woman was subject to the same restrictions. A brother-in-law might be spoken of as the husband or brother of someone whose name it was lawful to mention, and similarly a sister-in-law might be called the wife of so-and-so. If a man by chance used the personal name of his brother-in-law, he was ashamed and hung his head. His shame was only relieved when he made a present as compensation to the man whose name he had taken in vain. The same compensation was made to a sister-in-law, a father-in-law, and a mother-in-law for the accidental mention of their names. Among the natives who inhabit the coast of the Gazelle peninsula in New Britain, to mention the name of a brother-in-law is the grossest possible affront you can offer to him. It is a crime punishable with death. In the Banks Islands, Melanesia, the taboos laid on the names of persons connected by marriage are very strict. A man will not mention the name of his father-in-law much less the name of his mother-in-law, nor may he name his wife's brother, but he may name his wife's sister. She is nothing to him. A woman may not name her father-in-law, nor on any account her son-in-law. Two people whose children have intermarried are also debarred for mentioning other's names. And not only are all these persons forbidden to utter each other's names, they may not even pronounce ordinary words which chance to be either identical with the names, or to have any syllables in common with them. Thus we hear of a native of these islands who might not use the common words for pig and to die, because these words occurred in the polysyllabic name of his son-in-law. And we are told of another unfortunate who might not pronounce the everyday words for hand and hot on account of his wife's brother's name, and who was even debarred for mentioning the number one, because the word for one formed part of the name of his wife's cousin. The reluctance to mention the names or even syllables of the names of persons connected with the speaker by marriage can hardly be separated from the reluctance evinced by so many people to utter their own names, or the names of the dead or of chiefs and kings. And if the reluctance as to these latter names springs mainly from superstition, we may infer that the reluctance as to the former has no better foundation. That the savage's unwillingness to mention his own name is based, at least in part, on a superstitious fear of the ill use that might be made of it by his foes, whether human or spiritual, has already been shown. It remains to examine the similar usage in regard to the names of the dead and of royal personages. Part 3. Names of the dead tabooed The custom of abstaining from all mention of the names of the dead was observed in antiquity by the Albanians of the Caucasus, and at the present day it is in full force among many savage tribes. Thus we are told that one of the customs most rigidly observed and enforced amongst the Aborigines is never to mention the name of a deceased person whether male or female. To name a loud one who has departed this life would be a gross violation of their most sacred prejudices and they carefully abstain from it. The chief motive for this abstinence appears to be a fear of evoking the ghost although the natural unwillingness to revive past sorrows undoubtedly operates also to draw the veil of oblivion over the names of the dead. Once Mr Oldfield so terrified a native by shouting out the name of a deceased person that the man fairly took to his heels and did not venture to show himself again for several days. At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white man for his indiscretion. Nor could I, adds Mr Oldfield, induce him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man's name, for by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the maligned spirits. Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of and then never by their names they were referred to in a subdued voice as the lost one or the poor fellow that is no more. To speak of them by name would it was supposed excite the malignity of quick gill the spirit of the departed which hovers on earth for a time before it departs forever towards the setting sun. Of the tribes on the Lower Murray River we are told that when a person dies, quote they carefully avoid mentioning his name but if compelled to do so they pronounce it in a very low whisper so faint that they imagine the spirit cannot hear their voice end of quote. Among the tribes of Central Australia no one may utter the name of the deceased during the period of morning unless it is absolutely necessary to do so and then it is only done in a whisper for fear of disturbing and annoying the man's spirit which is walking about in ghostly form. If the ghost hears his name mentioned he concludes that his kinsfolk are not mourning for him properly. If their grief were genuine they could not bear to bandy his name about. Touched to the quick by their hard-hearted indifference the indignant ghost will come and trouble them in dreams. The same reluctance to utter the names of the dead appears to prevail among the Indian tribes of America from Hudson's Bay Territory to Patagonia. Among the Goachiros of Columbia to mention the dead before his kinsmen is a dreadful offence which is often punished by death for if it happened on the rancher of the deceased in presence of his nephews or uncle the offender on the spot if they can. But if he escapes the penalty resolves itself into a heavy fine usually of two or more oxen. A similar reluctance to mention the names of the dead is reported of people so widely separated from each other as the Samoyeds of Siberia and the Todas of southern India the Mongols of Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara the Anus of Japan and Nandi of eastern Africa the Tingianis of the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicobar islands of Borneo of Madagascar and of Tasmania In all cases even where it is not expressly stated the fundamental reason for this avoidance is probably the fear of the ghost that this is the real motive with the Tuaregs we are positively informed they dread the return of the dead man's spirit and do all they can avoid it by shifting their camp after a death, ceasing forever to pronounce the name of the departed and eschewing everything that might be regarded as an evocation or recall of his soul Hence they do not like the Arabs, designate individuals by adding to their personal names the names of their fathers they never speak of so and so son of so and so they give to every man a name which will live and die with him So among some of the Victorian tribes in Australia personal names were rarely perpetuated because the natives believed that anyone who adopted the name of a deceased person would not live long probably his ghostly namesake was supposed to come and fetch him away to the spirit land the same fear of the ghost which moves people to suppress his old name naturally leads all persons who bear a similar name to exchange it for another lest its utterance should attract the attention of the ghost who cannot reasonably be expected to discriminate between all the different applications of the same name Thus we are told that in the Adelaide and in Counter Bay tribes of South Australia the repugnance to mentioning the names of those who have died lately is carried so far that persons who bear the same name as the deceased abandon it and either adopt temporary names or are known by any others that belong to them a similar custom prevails among some of the Queensland tribes but the prohibition to use the names of the dead is not permanent though it may last for some years in some Australian tribes the change of name thus brought about is permanent the old name is laid aside forever and the man is known by his new name for the rest of his life or at least until he is obliged to change it again for a like reason among the North American Indians all persons whether men or women who bore the name of one who had just died were obliged to abandon it and to adopt other names which was formally done at the first ceremony of mourning for the dead in some tribes to the east of the Rocky Mountains this change of name lasted only during the season of mourning but in other tribes on the Pacific coast of North America it seems to have been permanent sometimes by an extension of the same reasoning all the near relations of the deceased change their names whatever they may happen to be doubtless from a fear that the sound of the familiar names might lure back the vagrant spirit to its old home thus in some Victorian tribes the ordinary names of all the next of kin were disused during the period of mourning and certain general terms prescribed by custom were substituted for them to call a mourner by his own name was considered an insult to the departed and often led to fighting and bloodshed among Indian tribes of North Western America near relations of the deceased often change their names quote under an impression that spirits will be attracted back to earth if they hear familiar names often repeated end of quote among the Kiowa Indians the name of the dead is never spoken by the presence of the relatives and on the death of any member of a family all the others take new names this custom was noted by Raleigh's colonists on Roanoke Island more than three centuries ago among the Lengua Indians not only is a dead man's name never mentioned but all the survivors changed their names also they say that death has been among them and has carried off a list of the living and that he will soon come back to him hence in order to defeat his failed purpose they changed their names believing that on his return death though he has got them all on his list will not be able to identify them under their new names and will depart to pursue the search elsewhere Nicobarie's mourners take new names in order to escape the unwelcome attentions of the ghost and for the same purpose they disguise themselves by shaving heads so that the ghost is unable to recognize them further when the name of the deceased happens to be that of some common object such as an animal or plant or fire or water it is sometimes considered necessary to drop that word in ordinary speech and to replace it by another a custom of this sort it is plain may easily be a potent agent of change in language for where it prevails in any considerable extent many words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up and this tendency has been remarked by observers who have recorded the custom in Australia America and elsewhere for example with regard to the Australian Aborigines it has been noted that the dialects change with almost every tribe some tribes name their children after natural objects and when the person so named dies the word is never again mentioned another word has therefore to be invented for the object after which the child is called end of quotation the writer gives as an instance the case of a man whose name Carla signified fire when Carla died a new word for fire had to be introduced hence adds the writer the language is always changing again in the encounter bay tribe of South Australia if a man of the name of which means water were to die the whole tribe would be obliged to use some other word to express water for a considerable time after his decease the writer who records this custom surmises that it may explain the presence of a number of synonyms in the language of the tribe this conjecture is confirmed by what we know of some Victorian tribes whose speech comprised a regular set of synonyms to be used instead of the common terms by all members of a tribe in times of mourning for instance if a man called war crow departed this life during the period of mourning for him nobody might call a crow a war everybody had to speak of the bird as a narrow part when a person who rejoiced in the title of ringtail opossum way on the way of all flesh his sorrowing relations and the tribe at large were bound for a time to refer to ringtail opossums by the more sonorous name of man if the community were plunged in grief for the loss of a respected female who bore the honourable name of turkey busted the proper name for turkey busters which was went out and came in and so andy's with the names of black cockatoo grey duck gigantic crane kangaroo eagle dingo and the rest a similar custom used to be constantly transforming the language of the abiponis in Paraguay amongst whom however a word once abolished seems never to have been revived new words says the missionary dobritzhofer sprang up every year like mushrooms in a night because all words that resemble the names of the dead were abolished by proclamation and others coined in their place the mint of words was in the hands of the old women of the tribe and whatever term they stamped with their approval and put into circulation was immediately accepted without a murmur by high and low alike and spread like wildfire through every camp and settlement of the tribe you would be astonished says to see how meekly the whole nation acquiesces in the decision of a withered old hag and how completely the old familiar words fall instantly out of use and are never repeated either through force of habit or forgetfulness in the seven years that dobritzhofer spent among these Indians the native word for jaguar was changed thrice and the words for crocodile thorn and the slaughter of cattle underwent similar though less varied vicissitudes as a result of this habit the vocabularies of the missionaries teamed with erasers old words having constantly to be struck out as obsolete and new words inserted in their place in many tribes of British New Guinea the names of persons are also the names of common things the people believe that if the name of a deceased person is pronounced his spirit will return and as they have no wish to see it back among them the mention of his name is tabooed and a new word is created to take its place whenever the name happens to be a common term of the language consequently many words are permanently lost or revived with modified or new meanings in the nicobar islands a similar practice has similarly affected the speech of the natives a most singular custom says Mr. Darupstorf prevails among them which one would suppose must most effectually hinder the making of history or at any rate the transmission of historical narrative by a strict rule which is all the sanction of nicobar superstition no man's name may be mentioned after his death to such a length is this carried that when as very frequently happens the man rejoiced in the name of fowl hat, fire, road etc in its nicobarese equivalent the use of these words is carefully eschewed for the future not only as being the personal designation of the deceased but even as the names of the common things they represent the words die out of the language and are the new vocables or coin to express the thing intended or a substitute for the disused word is found in other nicobarese dialects or in some foreign tongue this extraordinary custom not only adds an element of instability to the language but destroys the continuity of political life and renders the record of past events precarious and vague if not impossible that a superstition which suppresses the names of the dead must cut at the very root of historical tradition has been remarked by other workers in this field the Klamath people observes Mr. A. S. Gashi possess no historic traditions going further back in time than a century for the simple reason that there was a strict law prohibiting the mention of the person or act of a deceased individual by using his name this law was rigidly observed among the Californians no less than among the Oregonians and on its transgression the death penalty could be inflicted this is certainly enough to suppress all historical knowledge within a people how can history be written without names in many tribes however the power of this superstition to blot out the memory of the past is to some extent weakened and impaired by a natural tendency of the human mind time which wears out the deepest impressions, inevitably dulls if it does not hold your face the print left on the savage mind by the mystery and horror of death sooner or later as the memory of his loved ones fades away he becomes more willing to speak of them and thus their rude names may sometimes be rescued by the philosophic inquirer before they have vanished like autumn leaves or winter snows into the vast undistinguished limbo of the past in some of the Victorian tribes the prohibition to mention the names of the dead remained in force only during the period of mourning in the Port Lincoln tribe of South Australia it lasted many years among the Chinook Indians of North America quote custom forbids the mention of a dead man's name at least till many years have elapsed after the bereavement end of quote among the Puyallup Indians the observance of the taboo is relaxed after several years when the mourners have forgotten their grief and if the deceased was a famous warrior his descendants, for instance a great grandson may be named after him in this tribe the taboo is not much observed at any time except by the relations of the dead similarly the Jesuit missionary Lafito tells us that the name of the departed and similar names of the survivors were so to say buried with the corpse until the poignancy of their grief being abated it pleased the relations to lift up the tree to raise the dead by raising the dead they meant bestowing the name of the departed upon someone else who thus became to all intents and purposes a reincarnation of the deceased since on the principles of savage philosophy the name is a vital part if not the soul of the man among the laps when a woman was with child and near the time of her delivery a deceased ancestor or relation used to appear to her in a dream and inform her what dead person was to be born again in her infant and whose name the child was therefore to bear if the woman had no such dream it fell to the father or the relatives to determine the name by divination or by consulting a wizard among the cons a birth is celebrated on the seventh day after the event by a feast given to the priest and to the whole village to determine the child's name the child's grains of rice into a cup of water naming with each grain a deceased ancestor from the movements of the seed in the water and from observations made on the person of the infant he pronounces which of his progenitors has reappeared in him and the child generally at least among the northern tribes receives the name of that ancestor among the Yorubas soon after a child has been born a priest of Ifa appears on the scene to ascertain what ancestral soul has been reborn in the infant as soon as this has been decided the parents are told that the child must conform in all respects to the manner of life of the ancestor who now animates him or her and if as often happens they profess ignorance the priest supplies the necessary information the child usually receives the name of the ancestor who has been born again in him part four names of kings and other sacred persons tabooed when we see that in primitive society the names of mere commoners whether alive or dead are matters of such anxious care we need not be surprised that great precautions should be taken to guard from harm the names of sacred kings and priests thus the name of the king of Dahomey is always kept secret lest the knowledge of it should enable some evil minded person to do him a mischief the appellations by which the different kings of Dahomey have been known to Europeans are not their true names but mere titles or what the natives call strong names the natives seem to think that no harm comes of such titles being known since they are not like the birth names vitally connected with their owners in the Gala Kingdom of Ghera the birth name of the sovereign may not be pronounced by a subject under pain of death and common words which resemble it in sound are changed for others among the Bahima of Central Africa when the king dies his name is abolished from the language and if his name was that of an animal a new appellation must be found for the creature at once for example the king is often called a lion hence at the death of a king named lion a new name for lions in general has to be coined in Siam it used to be difficult to ascertain the king's real name since it was carefully kept secret from fear of sorcery anyone who mentioned it was clapped into jail the king might only be referred to under certain high sounding titles such as the August the perfect the supreme the great emperor of the angels and so on in Burma it was accounted an impiety of the deepest die to mention the name of the reigning sovereign Burmese subjects even when they were far from their country could not be prevailed upon to do so even after his accession to the throne the king was known by his royal titles only among the Zulus no man will mention the name of the chief of his tribe or the names of the progenitors of the chief so far as he can remember them nor will he utter common words which coincide with or merely resemble in sound tabooed names in the tribe of the Dwandwis there was a chief called Langa which means the son hence the name of the son was changed from Langa to Galla and so remains to this day though Langa died more than a hundred years ago again in the Nomayu tribe the word meaning to herd cattle was changed from Alusa or Ayusa to Kagesa because Umayusi was the name of the chief besides these taboos which were observed by each tribe separately all the Zulu tribes united in tabooing the name of the king who reigned over the whole nation hence for example when Punda was king of Zululand the word for a root of a tree in Punda was changed to Unkabo again the word for lies or slander was altered from Amaccebo to Amakwata because Amaccebo contains a syllable of the name of the famous king Tsechwail these substitutions are not however carried so far by the men as by the women who are met every sound even remotely resembling one that occurs in the tabooed name as Carl indeed it is sometimes difficult to understand the speech of the royal wives as they treat in this fashion the names not only of the king and his forefathers but even of his and their brothers back for generations when to these tribal and national taboos we add those family taboos on the names of connections by marriage which have been already described we can easily understand how it comes about that in Zululand every tribe has words peculiar to itself and that the women have a considerable vocabulary of their own members too of one family may be debarred from using words employed by those of another the women of one Carl for instance may call a hyena by its ordinary name those of the next may use the common substitute while in a third the substitute may also be unlawful and another term may have to be invented to supply its place hence the Zulu language at the present day almost presents the appearance of being a double one indeed for multitude of things it possesses three or four synonyms which through the blending of tribes are known all over Zululand in Madagascar a similar custom everywhere prevails and has resulted as amongst the Zulus in producing certain dialectic differences in the speech of the various tribes there are no family names in Madagascar and almost every personal name is drawn from the language of daily life and signifies some common object or action or quality such as a bird a beast a tree a plant a color and so on now whenever one of these common words forms the name or part of the name of the chief of the tribe it becomes sacred and may no longer be used in its ordinary signification as the name of a tree an insect or what not hence a new name for the object must be invented to replace the one which has been discarded it is easy to conceive what confusion and uncertainty may thus be introduced into a language when it is spoken by many little local tribes each ruled by a petty chief with his own sacred name yet there are tribes and people who submit to this tyranny of words as their fathers did before them from time immemorial the inconvenient results of the custom are especially marked on the western coast of the island where on account of the large number of independent chieftains the names of things, places and rivers have suffered so many changes that confusion often arises for when once common words have been banned by the chiefs the natives will not acknowledge to have ever known them in their old sense but it is not merely the names of living kings and chiefs which are tabooed in Madagascar the names of dead sovereigns are equally under a ban at least in some parts of the island thus among the Saka lovers when a king has died the nobles and people meet in council round the dead body and solemnly choose a new name by which the deceased monarch shall be henceforth known after the new name has been adopted the old name by which the king was known the life becomes sacred and may not be pronounced under pain of death further words in the common language which bear any resemblance to the forbidden name also become sacred and have to be replaced by others persons who uttered these forbidden words were looked on not only as grossly rude but even as felons they had committed a capital crime however these changes of vocabulary are confined to the district over which the deceased king reigned in the neighbouring districts the old words continue to be employed in the old sense the sanctity attributed to the persons of chiefs in Polynesia naturally extended also to their names which on the primitive view are hardly separable from the personality of their owners hence in Polynesia we find the same systematic prohibition to utter the names of chiefs or of common words resembling them which we have already met with in Zululand and Madagascar thus in New Zealand the name of a chief is held so sacred that when it happens to be a common word it may not be used in the language and another has to be found to replace it for example a chief to the south of East Cape bore the name of Maripi which signified a knife hence a new word Nekra for knife was introduced and the old one became obsolete elsewhere the word for water Wai had to be changed because it chanced to be the name of the chief and would have been desecrated by being applied to the vulgar fluid as well as to his sacred person this taboo naturally produced a plentiful crop of synonyms in the Maori language and travellers newly arrived in the country were sometimes puzzled at finding the same things called by quite different names in neighbouring tribes when a king comes to the throne in Taihiti any words in a language that resemble his name in sound must be changed for others in former times if any man were so rash as to disregard this custom and to use the forbidden words not only he but all his relations were immediately put to death but the changes thus introduced were only temporary on the death of the king the new words fell into disuse and the original ones were revived in ancient Greece the names of the priests and other high officials who had to do with the performance of the Eleusinian mysteries might not be uttered in their lifetime to pronounce them was a legal offence the pedant in Lucian tells how he fell in with these august personages hailing along to the police court a rybald fellow who had dared to name them though well he knew that ever since it was unlawful to do so because they had become anonymous having lost their old names and acquired new and sacred titles from two inscriptions found at Eleusis it appears that the names of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead which were then thrown into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis the intention doubtless was to keep the names a profound secret and how could that be done more surely than by sinking them in the sea what human vision could spy them glimmering far down in the dim depths of the green water a clearer illustration of the confusion between the incorporeal and the corporeal between the name and its material embodiment could hardly be found than in this practice of civilized Greece Part 5 Names of Gods Taboud Primitive man creates his gods in his own image Xenophonies remarked long ago that the complexion of Negro gods was black and their noses flat that Thracian gods were ruddy and blue-eyed and that if horses, oxen and lions only believed in gods and had hands were with to portray them they would doubtless fashion their deities in the form of horses and oxen and lions hence, just as the furtive savage conceals his real name because he fears that sorcerers might make an evil use of it so he fancies that his gods must likewise keep their true names secret lest other gods or even men should learn the mystic sounds and thus be able to conjure with them Nowhere was this crude conception of the secrecy and magical virtue of the divine name more firmly held or more fully developed than in ancient Egypt where the superstitions of a date-less past were embalmed in the hearts of the people hardly less effectually than the bodies of cats and crocodiles and the rest of the divine menagerie in their rock-cut tombs The conception is well illustrated by a story which tells how the subtle Isis wormed his secret name from Ra the great Egyptian god of the sun Isis, so runs the tale, was a woman mighty in words and she was weary of the world of men and yearned after the world of the gods and she meditated in her heart saying, cannot I, by virtue of the great name of Ra make myself a goddess and reign like him in heaven and earth for Ra had many names but the great name, which gave him all power over gods and men, was known to none but himself Now the god was by this time grown old he slobbered at the mouth and his spittle fell upon the ground so Isis gathered up the spittle and the earth with it and needed thereof a serpent and laid it in the path where the great god passed every day to his double kingdom after his heart's desire and when he came forth according to his want attended by all his company of gods the sacred serpent stung him and the god opened his mouth and cried and his cry went up to heaven and the company of gods cried what alith thee and the gods shouted, lo and behold but he could not answer his jaws rattled, his limbs shook the poison ran through his flesh as the nile floweth over the land when the great god had stilled his heart he cried to his followers come to me, oh my children, offspring of my body I am a prince, the son of a prince the divine seed of a god my father devised my name my father and my mother gave me my name and it remained hidden in my body since my birth that no magician might have magic power over me I went out to behold that which I have made I walked in the two lands which I have created and lo, something stung me what it was I know not was it fire, was it water my heart is on fire my flesh trembleth, all my limbs do quake bring me the children of the gods with healing words and understanding lips whose power reacheth to heaven then came to him the children of the gods and they were very sorrowful an Isis came with her craft whose mouth is full of the breath of life whose spells chase pain away whose word maketh the dead to live she said, what is it divine father what is it the holy god opened his mouth he spake and said I went upon my way I walked after my heart's desire in the two regions which I have made to behold that which I have created and lo, a serpent that I saw not stung me is it fire, is it water I am colder than water I am hotter than fire all my limbs sweat I tremble my eyes not steadfast I behold not the sky the moisture be due with my face as in summertime then spake Isis tell me thy name divine father for the man shall live who is called by his name then answered Rah I created the heavens and the earth I ordered the mountains I made the great and wide sea I stretched out the two horizons like a curtain I am he who openeth his eyes and it is light and who shutteth them it is dark at his command the nile riseth but the gods know not his name I am hepera in the morning I am Rah at noon I am tum at eve but the poison was not taken away from him it pierced deeper and the great god could no longer walk then said Isis to him that was not thy name that thou spake is done to me oh tell me that the poison may depart for he shall live whose name is named now the poison burnt like fire it was hotter than the flame of fire the god said I consent that Isis shall search into me and that my name shall pass from my breast into hers then the god hid himself from the gods and his place in the ship of eternity was empty thus was the name of the great god taken from him and Isis the witch spake flow away poison depart from Rah it is I even I who overcome the poison and cast it to the earth for the name of the great god hath been taken away from him let Rah live and let the poison die thus spake great Isis the queen of the gods she who knows Rah and his true name from this story it appears that the real name of the god with which his power was inextricably bound up was supposed to be lodged in an almost physical sense somewhere in his breast from which Isis extracted it by a sort of surgical operation and transferred with all its supernatural powers to herself in Egypt attempts like that of Isis to appropriate the power of a high god by possessing herself of his name were not mere legends of the mythical beings of a remote past every Egyptian magician aspired to wield like powers by similar means for it was believed that he who possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man and could force even a deity to obey him as a slave obeys his master thus the art of the magician consisted in obtaining from the gods a revelation of their sacred names and he left no stone unturned to accomplish his end when once a god in a moment of weakness or forgetfulness had imparted to the wizard the wondrous law the deity had no choice but to submit humbly to the man or pay the penalty of his contumacy the belief in the magic virtue of divine names was shared by the Romans when they sat down before a city the priests addressed the guardian deity of the place in a set form of prayer or incantation inviting him to abandon the beleaguered city and come over to the Romans who would treat him as well as or better he had ever been treated in his old home hence the name of the guardian deity of Rome was kept a profound secret lest the enemies of the Republic might lure him away even as the Romans themselves had induced many gods to desert like rats the falling fortunes of cities that had sheltered them in happier days nay the real name not merely of its guardian deity but of the city itself was wrapped in mystery and might never be uttered not even in the sacred rites a certain Valerius Soranus who dared to divulge the priceless secret was put to death or came to a bad end in like manner it seems the ancient Assyrians were forbidden to mention the mystic names of their cities and down to modern times the Cheremis of the Caucasus keep the names of their communal villages secret from motives of superstition if the reader has had the patience to follow this examination of the superstitions attaching to personal names he will probably agree that the mystery in which the names of royal personages are so often shrouded is no isolated phenomenon no arbitrary expression of courtly civility and adulation but merely the particular application of a general law of primitive thought which includes within its scope common folk and gods as well as kings and priests


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I want you to open up with me Luke 10 and we will read a story and we'll get couple things out of that story for ourselves we will encourage ourselves encourage ourselves towards the vision towards the miracle cast that's coming up next Wednesday and we will once again pray because prayer moves the hand of God in our lives amen amen amen so Luke chapter 10 I will read verse 25 let's start we're gonna I'm just gonna skip couple verses here and there to just follow along one day an expert I'm reading an LT version one day an expert in religious loss to dub to test Jesus by asking him this question teacher what should I do to inherit the eternal life Jesus replied what does the law Moses say how do you read it the man answered you must love your Lord you must love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your strength and all of your mind and love your neighbor as yourself 28 verse says this right Jesus told him do this and you will live verse 33 then Jesus is telling a parable to this man to answer the question who is my neighbor so Jesus says that there was a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho he felt into the hands of the robbers thieves he got beaten he got stripped of his clothes he all his possessions were taken away and he was left to die and then Levite went by priest one by they ignored him and verse 33 says this then a despised Samaritan came alone and then when he saw the man he felt compassionate for him going over to him the Samaritan soothed his wounds with oil and wine and bandaged them then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to to an inn where he took care of him the next day he handed an innkeeper two silver coins telling him take care of this man if his bill will runs higher than this I will pay the next time I am here so this story is a very known story in in the Christian world this story is taught in starting from Sunday schools everybody knows the story but this story has two very key components that that shows us first of all we'll start with this is man the teacher of the law he tests Jesus and he comes and says Jesus what should I do to inherit the kingdom of God and he knows his own answer he answers to Jesus as love God with all your heart all your soul all your mind and Jesus confirms these things that he said and so I want us to pay attention to the first thing that he said was to love God with all our strength number number one thing the first thing in our lives in a Christian walk is we must love God our priority before we do anything for God before we go even witness before we even go invite people to church before we go do any good deed before we behave the way we're supposed to behave or follow the Ten Commandments Bible says that we should love God we should love him with all of our heart and everything that we have in ourselves the main our main priority in our life is to maintain the relationship with God and everything else in our life will come out of the relationship with God you say how do I love God I'll give you couple quick points in order to love God the more you have to realize how much God loves you first you have to understand that we as human beings we only take we have no ability to give only God is a giver and if we receive his love if we realize how much God loves us if we realize how much he cares for us if we realize we if we get a revelation of how much we mean to God and how much God loves us we will be able to in return respond to his love we're like the moon and he is like the Sun the moon in itself has no light it has nothing to offer to us at the in the night but what moon has to offer is just a reflection of the light that comes from the Sun and so in our in our lives in a Christian walk the first thing that we have to realize the first thing that we have to recognize and the first thing that we have to live by is the love that comes from my Heavenly Father Bible says that for God so loved the world that he gave his only son he given everything that he had under the Sun and well anywhere anything he gave his best he gave his son for us and so our love for God needs to be founded on a revelation of how much he loves us because outside of that revelation we that we cannot master up enough love to love him we have nothing to offer him and so I know in my personal life every time every time I when I feel like God is not near anytime I try to pray and I don't feel God's presence or I don't feel like I love God enough and as I used to be younger I used to try to do things to show God that I love him more to stir up that feeling of love in my heart but as I grew older I began to understand and realize that by doing all these things I I did not love God more but by realizing how by just coming to God coming to the cross coming to a realization how much God loves me it helped me to love God more and more and more and the more that I realized how much he loves me the more I was able to respond back to his love and so number one thing if you want to love God more you have to come to a realization and meditate and contemplate on the fact how much God loves you first number two is you have to spend time in his word you have to spend time in prayer this is where how relationship is developed if you say you love somebody but that you don't spend time with them it's just empty words the words if you say if you have somebody in your life significant other husband or wife you have parents and you say that you love them but you never put time into talking with them you never put time hearing what they have to say then the words are cheap the one mean the words mean very little so our job as Christians is first to recognize how much God loves us and then spend time in his word receiving from him him talking to us and prayer is talking back to him and hearing what he has to say to us a man Paul says that I count all things as garbage in comparison and getting to know Jesus in our lives we must put God first in our life we must put everything else even doing things for God as garbage as nothing in comparison to get into know him Paul says that that knowing Christ is an infinite value you know why it's an infinite because when you pass on to glory the knowledge of God will go with you the knowledge of goodness of God the relation of him will go on with you as you go pass on to glory as you go into eternity that knowledge will stay infinite with you stay forever with you for whole eternity so as we live this life on earth our job is to fall to love God and to love people but we can't love God we can't love people unless we truly experience God's love and unless truly we love God amen how many how many of us will spend time with God in his word in prayer and meditating on what God has already done for us there is another part and Jesus in another scripture he said that on these two things the whole law and prophets based on the whole Bible is based on everything in the Bible is based on these two things first love God second second one is love your neighbor loving your neighbor and the teacher of the law he was he was trying to get himself out of the situation by asking Jesus who is my neighbor obviously he was a teacher of the law he knew the 10 commandments he knew those things were the most important is to love God and to love your neighbor but just to get out of the situation and to not to not look foolish he decided to ask another question who is my neighbor and Jesus go on to describe goes on to describe and brings a story brings a parable of who your neighbor is your neighbor is not necessarily your physical neighbor that lives right next to you next to your apartment next to your house but Jesus begins to describe that your neighbor could be anybody your neighbor could be any person that you come in contact with it's what you choose to do with that neighbor that matters and so but before we go on before we go on talking about what the Good Samaritan did I want to point out a couple things for us to take home for us to take to be aware of to be alerted is we see that this man this Jewish man he is a person is in the covenant with God he let's call it in our in our daily language he's a Christian and he decides to leave Jerusalem to go to Jericho Jerusalem represents the city of God the church people of God congregation community of believers and Jericho on the Bible always represented a city of sin a cursed city and this man decides to leave the gathering of saints community of believers to go to a city that is cursed to go into the city where there is sin anytime in our lives we leave God's territory we exchange God and here's things for sinful things in our life we will encounter encounter thieves and robbers in our life you have to understand that sin is deadly sin hurts sin steals Bible shows us that whatever whatever Satan can do in our life sin can do in our life because sin opens a door to Satan his agents his demons to operate in our lives and Bible shows us that his tactics his strategy and his thing is only threefold to come to kill steal and destroy that's why God has had to send his son to die on the cross for us to redeem from the power and the consequences of sin because without him we were under curse and we were subject to sin and its consequences and sin Bible says leads to death and so that's why it's very important in our lives that we don't mess around with sin that we don't flirt with sin regardless how attractive in my look like how innocent in my look like sin will always what how they say sin will always take more than what you willing to give and will always make you pay more than you willing to pay that's why in our lives we have to live committed to God we have to commit we have to live committed to his ways that's why we have to live not because God is out there like a police officer chasing us down that anytime we do something wrong he's gonna slap us with a ticket and punish us no it's because there's demons there's Satan like the Bible says he walks like a roaring lion seeking whom to devour and when we sin we open a door to Satan to come to kill steal and destroy that's why our lives have to be we have to be serious in our life that's why we can't flirt with sin in our lives that's why we have to be committed to God and his will in our lives so that we can walk in protection before that we can walk in protection in our lives we see that first thing that they do is they strip him of his clothes clothing first thing that sin brings is first thing that sin does in your life is strips you of your righteousness is strips you of your inner peace and your inner joy in your life it brings guilt condemnation and shame it lowers personal self-esteem and brings negative thinking in your life and when our lives is open to sin or when or when we allow certain habits certain sins recurrent sins to come into our lives and we don't deal with them we don't confess our sins like the Bible says confess them to one another and receive prayer of deliverance that sin eventually will hurt us and first thing that it takes is our righteousness the righteousness that Jesus gives us that no guilt and no condemnation and those that Bible says in Jesus Christ it takes that away from us and it gives us guilt shame and lowers us lowers us down second thing that that these thieves did to this man is they robbed him any time you leave and door open to sin in your life any time you decide to joke around with sin on the week on Wednesdays I'm here on the weekends I'm in the club you know leave a door for for an addiction to to weed to drugs to alcohol to to gambling or other things on any other sins lying stealing anytime we don't deal with those sins and they linger in our lives they will open a door and they will steal from us they will steal from your marriage they will steal from your relationship they will steal from your family they will steal your finances sin does not have a capacity or ability to give it only takes it might look like it's giving you something with the right hand but with the left hand it will take everything that you left depends on we must not we must live our life committed and be serious minded life of victory belongs to those that are serious a serious minded amen say I'm serious minded amen amen another thing that sin does is leaves you hurt every time you allow sin in your life sin will hurt you sin will leave you disappointed it will leave you alone it will leave you desperate it will leave you in despair it will leave you depressed Satan did not comfort anybody sin did not comfort and give peace to nobody it only takes that's why our life has to be once again committed to God because when we walk with God we walk under his grace we walk under his covering we will be people that are saved healed walk in God's blessing and God's deliverance amen that's why we have to understand that people that live without God they fall in these three categories either live in guilt and shame and condemnation leave live their life robbed of things constantly in lack constantly disappointed and or leave live in hurt and pain and this is where good Samaritan comes you have to understand that the world is full of sin and sins consequences that's why God calls us to be those good Samaritans and like Pastor Vlad already shared today during prayer is that Samaritan this man Bible strictly in my version at least underlies that he's a despite Samaritan he was not the reason why he's despised as Jews to look down on Samir on Samaritans Samaritans were not highly esteemed or thought well of but we see that this man when a person is half dead like the Bible says when a person is hurt and and dying they don't care who's gonna come and help them when you are stuck in a house that is on fire you don't care if the fireman that's gonna come rescue you if he is nice and clean if he took a shower if he's wearing deodorant if he got his you know if he got his life together if he has a good family all you care about it who can come and rescue me and this is what the Bible shows us to us as Christians is that we don't have to achieve certain point in our life would I have to achieve this pre-sleep status or a person on the stage with the microphone singing to be a person that can help somebody you might be a person that just got saved last Wednesday or two Wednesdays ago or you might be a person that that God saved just a month or two ago you Bibles here from here says that you are qualified to help somebody you are qualified to share the good news with somebody maybe you still gotta still working things out in you maybe God is still delivering you setting you free maybe God is still taking you through the process you you can share your testimony or somebody else's testimony or what you've seen God has done for you for for for somebody the job of Samaritan of a good Samaritan is to help the hurting and every person is qualified a real Christian must be more like Jesus and Jesus always reached out to people Jesus always always reached out to people our goal as Christians is none other than to reach out to the dying world Jesus left us on this earth not to enjoy just to enjoy a salvation Jesus left us on this world and when he was leaving he was make sure the disciples knew the reason why he left them behind why he didn't take him with him to heaven is he said therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit he was to make sure that disciples would continue on his work of diminishing to the hurting see if God could save people he would do it because he said I want all the corners of the earth to be saved but God right from the beginning from the Garden of Eden he partnered up with men he did not create this world and he decided to put men and dominate over the man the will of man the desires of men he created this world and he gave it to the man as it as the man's dominion and he come he came to as a partner with man and when man fallen in the Garden of Eden they've given their dominion to to Satan they give up in the and even then God did not come and intervene and decided to make things on his own even then he decided to send his only son to become a fully man so that through humanity he can partner up with the whole the Jesus came he partnered up with the Holy Spirit he brought salvation on the cross and then he gave that mission to his disciples to man to continue on that mission and so God is looking today for partners God is looking for people that will answer his call God is looking for those Samaritans that say God I will go to those dying world and I'll reach out to the hurting tell rich out to those that are Satan and his demons stole everything from people that been hurt beat down and in shame and guilt and I will lift them up I want you to I want you to notice couple things that this Samaritan did is first of all he felt compassion for this man we as a church we must have compassion for people this is why every time we pray one of the first things we pray before even praying for revival before even praying for people we ask God God give us the compassion for people because we don't want our words to be just an empty words we don't want our prayers to be just an empty prayer we want our prayers to be filled with emotion with compassion with love for people and so number one thing that this good Samaritan had the quality that he had that we must possess as Christians we must possess compassion for the lost number two he bandage bandage their wounds and poured oil and wine to suit him we must speak hope and life into people as a good Samaritan we must bring a good news to them the good news of the gospel does not condemn the good news that the gospel says you've been hurt you've been beaten things been stolen from you but God can restore everything and God can make you whole once again when we come to people as a good Samaritan another quality we have to have is we must carry hope is we must carry positivity as we must carry the good news of the cross is that the sin and its consequences been dealt on the cross and that you don't have to carry it anymore you can come and freely receive the gift of God you can come and freely receive that righteousness you can come freely receive the healing and freedom that you've been longing for and seeking for as a good Samaritans we must be people of hope and people of good news amen how many of us gonna be people of hope and good news come on let's put our hands together for Jesus another thing that this good Samaritan did as he brought this man to an inn he brought him to a hotel he brought him to a clinic or or a place that he this man was gonna be looked afterwards we as good Samaritans another quality that we must possess is we must when we talk to people we must bring them to our home groups we must bring people in a place where they're gonna be taking care of what they're gonna be surrounded with positivity what they're gonna be surrounded with good people with good friends with good console and where they will be surrounded in a good atmosphere where they can recover and they can grow see a lot of times is that many Christians from what I've seen and I'm thankful that in our church we're we're we're avoiding this trap is that they would invite people but for the sake of inviting them but they have no place for them when they come to church they just become another number in the crowd nobody attends to their wounds nobody attends to their hurts and pains nobody attends to the things that are struggling with and a person even by coming and receiving a gospel soon after realizes that they got the wounds that are not dealt with and they fall away because they don't receive proper care and attention the spirit dies and so we as church we as a good Samaritans we must create an atmosphere in our home groups and in our church where people are being attended to on each and on a personal level where their wounds being taken care of where their generational curses over the lives being broken where those bad habits that they're struggling with we help them to overcome and teach them how to live a life of victory and how to grow in Jesus Christ and our home groups is the best place for this our home group leaders are being trained our home group leaders being accountable and our home group leaders are equipped well to minister to people and minister to their hurts and this is our job as good Samaritans in man church and another last thing that that you stood out to me is he paid for him now it also there's two falls that I want to bring up is that we have to minister to people with with our finances we have to help them we have to take care of them sometimes it might be something as little as taking out taking them out for a coffee and just getting to know them it might be just inviting them to your house and and just being hospital hospitable and then and sharing a meal with them and sharing your life with them apostle Paul says that when I brought you good news I did not even spare my own life I shared everything I shared even my own life with you guys and so our life as Christians number one is we must be people that we are willing to share our life hood our finances our efforts our smile our energy our love everything that has to do with us that we share our life with people but another thing that I see here is is that we must pray for people I think prayer is like that heavenly I remember I believe it's Dr. Ian Bichaud said that that prayer is like that heavenly currency that that that you can begin to pray for somebody begin to intercede for somebody a person that just got saved they need a lot of prayers they need to be covered in prayer so that they can grow in Jesus so the bondage is over the lives their mindsets could be changed the bondages could be broken so they can be healed within from from the inside so we as as church we must be people that pray for others and that's why you see that starting from beginning of the service in the middle of the service and we will do right now at the end of the service is we're gonna pray for people because we really realize our efforts are our strength even our niceness and our hospitality he can go to a certain point we can make people feel welcomed we can make people feel loved but only Jesus can truly change a person on an inside and the way that change happens is when we begin to pray for them genuinely as when we begin to exercise our heavenly currency and we begin to deposit into their bank account that heavenly currency of prayer we must be people that pray for others the best thing you can do for somebody is to pray for them if you truly love a person you will pray for them that person can be your family member that doesn't know Jesus the person might be a family member that struggling maybe they even know Jesus but they're struggling their sin the struggling in their in their addictions the struggling in their health the struggling with nightmares they struggle with different attacks kind of different kinds of thoughts that harassing them throughout the day this person could be your schoolmate it could be a co-worker this person can be just a random person that you come across at the gas station at the store or any other place but there are people in this world that need you they need good Samaritans they don't need qualified personnel they don't need a priest they don't need a Levite they just need a person that can love them and they can pray for them and they can bring them in making part of their family making part make them part of that of their home group can pray for them and challenge them and teach them how to grow in Jesus Christ you have to understand that every person we touch is not just one person impacted every person in every person we come in contact is not just one person that we're helping we're saving we're touching masses we're touching generations we're touching people that they can touch the one example that always gets to me and we've shared that example many times it's two people that lived about the same time I don't have the year that they lived in Barbaq a hundred years or so back and one one man was Max Duke he was an anti an atheist he lived a godless life he married and I'm not an ungodly girl and from the Union there were 310 who died as poppers meaning beggars living on government subsidies and support 150 were criminals seven were murderers a hundred were drunkards and more than half of the women were prostitutes his 540 descendants cost the state one and a quarter million dollars that's just paying for their incarceration prison or jail time we're not talking about how many disease were spread through prostitution how much money had to be spent on medical support and all of these things and any other things and crimes they committed they cost private and government damages but there was another man somebody that reached out to him he got saved he married his name was Jonathan Edward he lived at the same time as Max Duke he married a godly girl and then investigation shows that his descendants was a hundred one thousand three hundred ninety four descendants of Jonathan Edwards which 13 became college presidents 65 college 65 college professors three United States senators 30 judges a hundred lawyers 60 physicians 75 army and Navy officers a hundred preachers and missionaries 60 authors of prime of prominence one vice president of United States AD became public officials and and other public officials in other capacities 295 were college graduates among who were governors and states ministries and foreign ministries and foreign countries his descendants did not cost a state a single penny but on the other hand brought a lot of money this is what happens when one person gets saved a whole tree family tree gets changed this is what happens one person in a case of jet max juke what happens is when one person does not get saved and we're today as a hungry generation as goodness church we're today as people who believe in the word of God we can't afford to see that a hundred years later somebody's gonna read a stat from our city and say yes this was a person that did not get saved and this is what happened to them and their destiny we want to be a generation that is remembered that said there was many Jonathan Edwards there was many people in tri-cities that got saved and their generations got changed their family tree got changed they produced many people that brought many changes in their city many changes in their state many changes in the country and even in the world today we as believers that believe the word of God we can't make a decision we can sit in our church comfortably and say you know what I'm saved my family saved I'm good or we can make a decision say you know my family said I am saved I'm gonna go and save somebody else's family I'm gonna go change somebody else's destiny I'm gonna bring masses to Jesus in a mighty name amen Jesus always minister to masses and he raised disciples this is our job the job is to reach out to as many people as we can is to change as many destinies as we can because when we change one destiny we never change one destiny we always impact masses that's what Jesus was always about he said even if four corners of the earth will come he said I will accept him and bring him back Jesus and God sitting in heaven he's not looking for few he's not only satisfied with one person getting saved two people getting saved he's looking at four corners of the earth he's looking at tri-cities and he's looking at four corners of tri-cities he's not looking just a pasco and small church here small church there he's looking how all of the tri-cities all four corners of tri-cities can be saved and today we can be a part of that plan of salvation that Jesus has for our city amen say I am a part of a solution say I am a part of bringing masses to Jesus amen amen amen amen amen amen did you get something tonight church amen are you gonna be the solution to our city into the people in our city amen church


And 2 Kings 42 use are mauled by bears because they mocked Elijah's bald head. The question is, why would God have these bears come and maul these youths? Well, one is obvious. You don't mock people with bald heads. So that's number one. But now to get into the theological reason, the actual reason, not just my reason, which I think it's a pretty good reason, but let's go to the Bible and see what's actually happened. Now, in 2 Kings 223, he says that he went up. This is Elijah went up there to Bethel, and he was going up, by the way, and young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, go up, you bald head, go up, you bald head. Now, should be understood, they're doing just what others are doing. They are making fun of him having a bald head, which again, I have no idea why you would do so. It's like a buzzard making fun of an eagle. Why would you do so? But I want you all to notice this, though, that these youth, these young, young people, they're not necessarily children. The word that shoes here is not, or in this case, not a ring, which is to refer to a young man or a youngster. So maybe they're in their teens, maybe in their early 20s. That's what these are.  In that time, you would have people who are, these are ungodly. These are people who are not of God, who also would formulate these little gangs, like we see today. Gangs is not just a new phenomenon. You had these little roving gangs back then as well. Kids that were just up to no good. When I say kids, I mean youngsters.  That's important. I'll come to that in just a second. But he says that as they're going up, they're mocking him. And then in verse 24, when he looked back behind them, he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord, which is important. The two, then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up 42 lads of their numbers. He went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria. Now, I want to look at a couple of things. One, is that he tore them up. This word that's used here for being torn up is just, they were just split up. Now, do I think that some of them were killed? Yes. Does it mention that they were killed? No, they were just mauled. Is it possible that they survived? We don't know. But they were certainly hurt. They were tore up. They were ripped up. And so likely a lot of them, if not all of them, if not all 42 of them died. But again, that's important. And there are those who are going to say that this is probably not something that God did, but maybe some sort of natural occurrence. And I would have to reject that. Here's the reason why. Because the Bible is not trying to give us some sort of historical account of something that happened in nature. Some sort of natural occurrence, bears doing this or giraffes or lions or what have you know? The Bible is clear. It says that when he looked back, he saw them. He, Elijah, cursed them in the name of the Lord. And then these two bears came. Notice, though, that Elijah wasn't touched by the bears, just those young men who were mocking him. Now, it's important. The Bible says this, and this is clear, not to some false prophet, but to an actual true prophet. He says, in Psalm 105, 15, he says, touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. And so here we have this happening where someone is actually coming out against the prophet of God. And this isn't the first time. As a matter of fact, Elijah, same thing happened to him a few chapters earlier in Second Kings 1-9, the king sent to him a captive of 50 with his 50 and he went up to him. And behold, he was sitting on the top of a hill. And he said to him, O man of God, the king says, come down. Elijah replied to the captain of 50.  And this happened again. Same thing happened. So God is going to protect, at least at that time, he was going to protect his men, especially if they were in the middle of doing something fulfilling his purpose. Does that mean that he's always going to send a bear or a fire or something like that when someone is after or coming against the prophet of God? No, but in this case, he did. And so God is going to make sure that you know that that is his that is his prophet. And so what does he do? He sends two bears. The Bible says the earth is the Lord and the fullness thereof, including these bears. Now, the problem with these boys being killed and someone might say that, that's a bit overkill. These are young people. They've got time to repent. Well, God knows their heart. God knows what's going to happen. And even remember, Jesus makes a statement that if they don't even receive or believe the prophets, they're not going to believe me, which also is even worse. So does God know what these boys are going to do in life? Sure he does. Is God unjustified for sending these two female bears to mall or kill 42 youngsters? Even if they were children, but I think this is probably a young man. Is he unjust? No, he's not. Again, he knows who these boys were. Again, the likelihood that these were probably part of just some sort of little roving bands of troublemaking kids. They were clearly ungodly. And so what is the consequence for touching? In this case, the man of God, God took it serious enough to where he would send bears. Nothing that God does is overkill. As a matter of fact, what God does, he does for the purpose of making sure that you know it's him. And so going forward, I don't think that anyone had any more problems with Elijah and his beautiful bald head. As a matter of fact, again, why would any man not want to be bald? Maybe these kids were jealous. Whatever it was, though, God made sure that they would not touch or put their mouths on the prophet of God.