Elvis Presley is still making a lot of money for a guy that died thirty years ago. He recently reclaimed the No. 1 spot on Forbes list of Top-Earning Dead Celebrities earning $49 million this year. He is not alone however. Comic artist Charles M. Schulz made $35 Million and the physicist Albert Einstein made $18 million, more than he made in his lifetime. They make this money from royalties and license deals for their image. This concept shouldn’t shock us. The Bible tells us that. In Revelation 14:13 we read, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!' "Yes," says the Spirit, "so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them." Even when we are no longer alive what we have done will live on. It makes us wonder about the things we are struggling for in this life. Do the things we focus on have eternal significance? All the money these dead celebrities made is worthless to them now. We need to head the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. "But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
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