It's Friday, August 23rd, 2024. I'm Albert Moller and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Well, we're going to turn to questions for today, but first I want to look at the

passing of Phil Donahue.

He died Sunday night just days ago at age 88.

Now, even as I'm speaking to you, I am days ago at age 88.

Now even as I'm speaking to you, I understand that there's some people who are saying,

oh, Phil Donahue died and others are saying, who's Phil Donahue?

And that's because of how time moves.

In the book of Ecclesiasties,

it makes very clear that time moves forward.

And you know, before long, you have persons

who don't remember someone because they didn't see them on television.

The old hymn says, time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away and that's a humbling

reality.

But if you were in the United States and a part of American culture in the last decades of the 20th century,

you almost assuredly knew exactly who Phil Donahue was,

because he redefined daytime television during that period in such a way that he built a huge

international reputation and a huge national audience for the program that was known as the

Phil Donahue show and eventually just as Phil Donahue.

And that's how Americans came to know him.

They knew him as Phil Donahue.

Now he was born in 1935 in Cleveland.

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