FEAR

Four Impelling Motives

 There are four great impelling motives that move men to action: Fear, Hope, Faith, and Love—these four, but the greatest of these is Fear. Fear is first in order, first in force, first in fruit. Indeed, fear is “the beginning of wisdom.” Scripture summarizes the chief cause of sin and crime: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

—Prairie Overcomer

From Ann Landers

 It is reported that the newspaper counselor, Ann Landers, receives an avenge of 10,000 letters each month, and nearly all of them from people burdened with problems. She was asked if there was any one of them which predominates throughout the letters she receives, and her reply was the one problem above all others seems to be fear.

 People are afraid of losing their health, their wealth, their loved ones. People are afraid of life itself.

—The Bible Friend

Anatomy Of Fear

 In spite of what they say, 90% of the chronic patients who see today’s physicians have one common symptom. Their trouble did not start with cough or chest pain or hyperacidity. In 90% of the cases, the first symptom was fear.

 This is the opinion of a well-known American internist as expressed in a roundtable discussion on psychosomatic medicine. This is also the consensus of a growing body of specialists. Fear of losing a job, of old age, of being exposed—sooner or later this fear manifests itself as “a clinical symptom.”

 Sometimes the fear is nothing more than a superficial anxiety; sometimes it is so deep-seated that the patient himself denies its existence and makes the round of doctor to doctor, taking injections, hormones, tranquilizers and tonics in an endless search for relief.

Frightened Men

 Professor Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry at the early age of 41, wrote a pamphlet entitled, “I’m a Frightened Man.” As a member of the Uranium Committee on the key operation of U-235, he said: “I write to frighten you. I am a frightened man myself. All the scientists I know are frightened—frightened for their lives—and frightened for your life.”

Death Manufacturer Fears Death

 Alfred Krupp, the Prussian manufacturer of death, was so in dread of death himself that it is said he never forgave anyone who brought up the subject in his presence. All his employees were strictly forbidden, under fear of discharge to speak of death when he was about. A relative of his wife, who was visiting with them, died suddenly, and Krupp fled from the house in terror.

 Later, when his wife remonstrated with him about his act, he forsook her and never lived with her again. As he sensed age taking its toll, he offered his physician a sum amounting to one million dollars if he would prolong his life ten years. Of course no doctor can guarantee life to anyone, and Krupp died.

—Evangelistic Illustration

Head In The Sand—Louis XV

 Louis XV, King of France, foolishly ordained and ordered that death was never to be spoken of in his presence. Nothing that could in any way remind him of death was to be mentioned or displayed, and he sought to avoid every place and sign and monument which in any way suggested death. Carlyle said of him: “It is the resource of the ostrich, who, when hunted, sticks his foolish head in the ground and would fain forget that his foolish body is not unseen too.”

—C. E. Macartney

Unhappy Stalin

 How unhappy Stalin was: He was constantly in fear of being poisoned or killed himself. He had 8 bedrooms which could be locked up like safes in a bank. Nobody ever knew in which of these bedrooms he slept on any given night.

Epigram On Fear

•     A sign was seen scrawled on a blackboard during the just-completed final exams at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas: “WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT “F” ITSELF.”

•     Sometimes when I get in a nervous dither over such current problems as inflation, war, taxes, crime, pollution, political intrigue, urban sprawl, population, and whatever, I find myself yearning for 1933, when all we had to fear was fear itself.

—Kiwanis Magazine

•     The man who knows no fear is not only a gross exaggeration; he is a biological impossibility.

—Rotor

•   After buying a $50,000 insurance policy before a plane trip, the traveler stepped on a nearby scale. Out came one of those fortune-telling cards. The message read: “A recent investment may pay big dividends.”

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