The Five People You Meet In Heaven Essay

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The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom (Review #8)

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They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you, the rams of Nebai'oth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will glorify my glorious house. Who are these that fly like a cloud, and like doves to their windows? For the coastlands [far distant lands] shall wait for me, the ships of Tarshish first, to bring your sons from far, their silver and gold with them, for the name of the LORD your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has glorified you. Foreigners shall build up your walls, and their kings shall minister to you; for in my wrath I smote you, but in my favor I have had mercy on you.

Your gates shall be open continually; day and night they shall not be shut; that men may bring to you the wealth of the nations, with their kings led in procession. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish Isaiah Formal nations and their boundaries were established after the Flood in the Covenant with Noah. Before the Flood the earth was governed, evidently, by patriarchal family units. The above insights show up in Paul's sermon Mars Hill in Athens:.

So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown god. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.

And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.

And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. These are the descendants of Shem. When Shem was a hundred years old, he became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood; and Shem lived after the birth of Arpachshad five hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. When Arpachshad had lived thirty-five years, he became the father of Shelah; and Arpachshad lived after the birth of Shelah four hundred and three years, and had other sons and daughters.

When Shelah had lived thirty years, he became the father of Eber; and Shelah lived after the birth of Eber four hundred and three years, and had other sons and daughters. When Eber had lived thirty-four years, he became the father of Peleg; and Eber lived after the birth of Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and had other sons and daughters. When Peleg had lived thirty years, he became the father of Reu; and Peleg lived after the birth of Reu two hundred and nine years, and had other sons and daughters.

When Reu had lived thirty-two years, he became the father of Serug; and Reu lived after the birth of Serug two hundred and seven years, and had other sons and daughters. When Serug had lived thirty years, he became the father of Nahor; and Serug lived after the birth of Nahor two hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. When Nahor had lived twenty-nine years, he became the father of Terah; and Nahor lived after the birth of Terah a hundred and nineteen years, and had other sons and daughters.

When Terah had lived seventy years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now these are the descendants of Terah. Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Now Sarai was barren; she had no child. Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; but when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran. Whenever I read these names, I think of the wretched state of the human race.

Even though we have the most excellent gift of reason, we are nevertheless so overwhelmed by misfortunes that we are ignorant not only of our own origin and the lineal descent of our ancestors but even of God Himself, our Creator. Look into the historical accounts of all nations. If it were not for Moses alone, what would you know about the origin of man? Of this wretched state, that is, of our awful blindness, we are reminded by the passage before us, which gives us instruction about things that are unknown to the whole world. What do we have about the very best part of the second world besides words, not to mention the first one, which antedated the Flood?

The Greeks wanted to have the account of their activities preserved, the Romans likewise; but how insignificant this is in comparison with the earlier times, concerning which Moses has drawn up a list of names in this passage, not of deeds! Hence one must consider this chapter of Genesis a mirror in which to discern what we human beings are, namely, creatures so marred by sin that we have no knowledge of our own origin, not even of God Himself, our Creator, unless the Word of God reveals these sparks of divine light to us from afar.

Then what is more futile than boasting of one's wisdom, riches, power, and other things that pass away completely? Therefore we have reason to regard the Holy Bible highly and to consider it a most precious treasure. This very chapter, even though it is considered full of dead words, has in it the thread that is drawn from the first world to the middle and to the end of all things. From Adam the promise concerning Christ is passed on to Seth; from Seth to Noah; from Noah to Shem; and from Shem to this Eber, from whom the Hebrew nation received its name as the heir for whom the promise about the Christ was intended in preference to all other peoples of the whole world. This knowledge the Holy Scriptures reveal to us. Those who are without them live in error, uncertainty, and boundless ungodliness; for they have no knowledge about who they are and whence they came.

Martin Luther, Luther's Works , Vol. The mark of it was a black skin, and therefore they are destined to be servants among mankind. But the Canaanites, as far as we know, were not black-skinned people. The curse was wholly fulfilled in Joshua's day when these descendants of Canaan, morally perverted through this evil strain which had survived the flood and now breaks out again in human history, were left alive by Israel. Thus there was loosed in society an evil element which has spread throughout the entire race since, and breaks out in sexual perversions from place to place. This is the biblical explanation for these things. There is, however, a grain of truth in applying this passage to the Negro people. Most powerful lies gain their power from having at least a modicum of truth about them.

It is true that the colored peoples of the earth are descendants of Ham, Hamitic people. They come in varying shades: the yellow of the Chinese, the brown of the Indians, the black of the Africans, and even including some that are white-skinned. Now we must turn to the prophetic words uttered by Noah about his sons as to the destiny of their descendants. He also said [notice how he deliberately sets this apart from what he said about Canaan], "Blessed by the Lord my God he Shem; and let Canaan he his slave.

God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan he his slave Here we have the three families of mankind. The family of Ham is represented by Canaan, although not limited to his descendants. In certain of the old versions, in these two verses referring to Canaan, the account reads, "Ham, the father of Canaan," which is probably the more accurate rendering. Now this is a most important passage. We can hardly overrate its importance in understanding the world of our day Notice that Shem is given religious primacy among mankind. The Semitic people, the descendants of Shem, were responsible under God to meet the spiritual needs of mankind.

That is their role in humanity. It is most striking, isn't it, that the three great religions of earth, which can properly be called religions, all come from the Semitic family: Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity. There is much distortion of truth in these, granted, but the sense of mission by the Semitic families of earth is very evident. This family includes the Jews, the Arabs, certain ancient peoples, as well as other modern groups. Japheth was promised enlargement. The Japhethic people are, in general, the peoples of India and Europe, the Indo-European stock, with which any demographer is familiar. It is largely from this family that we Americans come.

It is most interesting that history has recorded their geographical enlargement. The entire Western hemisphere of our globe is settled by Japhethic peoples, and the Indians Hindus are of the same stock. But there is much to suggest in history that the enlargement that is promised here to Japheth is also intellectual. Historically, all the great philosophers are Japhethic. The Greeks, who began modern philosophy, are descendants of Japheth, as we will see in the very next chapter, also the Hindus.

The Greeks and the Hindus are the two truly great philosophic races of earth. Some of you may say, "Well, what about Confucius; he was a Hamite? Anyone who studies him will realize how true this is. There is a very astute Christian scholar, whose writings are privately distributed, who has been a great help to me in various fields of Bible study. His name is Dr. Arthur Custance, from Toronto, Ontario, to whom I am greatly indebted for some of these concepts. He takes the phrase, "let him [Japheth] dwell in the tents of Shem" as predictive of the Cross, when the spiritual guidance of humanity passed from the Jews to the Gentiles, i. To Shem was given the primacy of religious teaching, but there comes a time when Japheth enters that field "dwells in the tents of Shem" , and philosophy which is essentially Japhethic was married to theology.

This has been the case since the dispersion of the Jews around the world. There is much more we will say on this as we go on into chapter 10, but let me speak briefly about Ham. Ham is given the role of a servant in relation to both of these other families of earth. But, notice carefully, not a servant in the sense of enslavement. That role was limited to the descendants of Canaan. Canaan was to be that, but not the rest of the sons of Ham.

However, they were to fulfill a servant relationship, not in the sense of enslavement, but as the practical technicians of humanity. If you study ancient history and technological achievements which were in many ways the equal of, or superior of, much that we have today, were founded and carried to a high technological proficiency by Hamitic people.

This is the role in history given by God to the descendants of Ham. They were the great inventors of mankind. It may come as a shock to some, who boast in Aryan superiority and think of Americans as the most inventive people on the earth, to know that almost every basic invention can be traced to the Hamites, rather than to the Japhethites, which we represent. All that Japhethic people do is to develop the philosophy of science and apply technology, but the discovery of these are largely traceable to the Hamitic peoples of the earth. Now, to bring this introduction of the subject to a conclusion, all of this is reflected most interestingly in the New Testament.

We have for instance, the so-called Synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke , which are very similar to one another and quite different from the gospel of John. Yet Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not copies of one another but they represent differences of approach. It has often been pointed out that they are aimed at different types of people. The interesting thing is that when you inquire who these people are you find that they are Shem, Ham, and Japheth, in that order. Matthew is aimed at the Semitic people. It is the gospel for the Jews, above all others.

Mark is clearly the gospel of the servant. This is stressed by Bible teachers whenever they teach Mark; his gospel is profoundly the presentation of the servant, the practical mind, the Hamitic mind. Luke is clearly aimed at the Greek, or the Japhethic mind. It is also interesting that three groups are recorded in the New Testament as specifically coming to seek the Lord Jesus. They are: the shepherds, the Wise men, and the Greeks. Here you have again the order: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The shepherds were Israelites, Semitic. Most Bible scholars feel that the Magi, the Wise men from the East, were really not from the East that was a general term but from Arabia, and represent the Hamitic peoples.

The Greeks are clearly Japhethites. So there again, always in the same order, we have Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Also, the gospel, was first preached in this order. In the book of Acts we are told that on the day of Pentecost Peter stood up and said, "Ye men of Israel," and addressed the gospel to them. Then in the next section we find Philip called to leave a revival in Samaria and go down to preach to a single individual in the desert, who is a Hamite, an Ethiopian, the treasurer of Ethiopia. Then, a little bit later on, Peter is sent to the Japhethites, preaching the gospel to Cornelius, a centurion of Rome.

Furthermore, all three of these groups are represented at the crucifixion. Each branch of mankind took part in the crucifixion. The moral responsibility for it fell upon the Jews. It is they who said, "His blood be upon us and. Now we shall see much more of this in chapter 10, but I think this is enough to show how accurately the Bible previews history, and how it deals realistically with these matters. There are often hidden in trace them, carry us into vast and exciting fields of discovery. There are three divisions of mankind, as there are three divisions in man, in you. To each of these divisions is given the responsibility for meeting one of the basic needs of man, spiritual, physical, and intellectual.

In each one of us these same three divisions are found. We each have a capacity to worship; we each have a capacity to reason; and each has a capacity to create. These are the things that distinguish us from the animals. This is the image of God in man. Each of them needs to be held in perfect balance. The world is in a state of confusion, uncertainty and despair because the balance God intended has been left unfulfilled, so, in your individual life you are in a state of confusion, despair, frustration, weakness, or whatever it may be, because you have neglected to fulfill the three-fold capacities of your own nature.

You can only do so as they are kept in perfect harmony, one with the other. It is wrong to think of man as essentially spiritual. He is also intellectual and physical. It is wrong to think of him as being essentially physical, and to develop the athletic abilities to the neglect of the others; he is also spiritual and intellectual. The interesting thing is that in the Bible the intellectual is put last. If the order of scripture obtains for the individual as well as for the race, the order within us is also Shem, Ham, and Japheth. First the spiritual, then the physical, then the intellectual. In that order mankind finds its complete fulfillment.

If we understand ourselves we will also understand the world around us. The glory of the gospel is that it addresses itself to mankind exactly on those terms. We find ourselves entering into fulfillment, into excitement, into a dramatic sense of being what we were intended to be, when we open our lives to God through Jesus Christ, making that our first priority; then developing the physical life, taking care of physical needs, physical demands; and through these two working together, developing the intellect to an understanding of ourselves Chapter 10 of Genesis is a record of how mankind fanned out over all the earth, like spokes in a wheel, radiating from a center which both science and Scripture place in the Middle East.

The Middle East has been called, "the cradle of civilization," or "the cradle of mankind. In this chapter we learn how they spread throughout the earth. We have already studied the prophetic utterance of Noah concerning the contribution his three sons and their descendants would make to humanity. We saw that to Shem was given the religious primacy of mankind. The Semitic peoples are responsible, under God, to develop the spiritual life of mankind. It is not surprising, therefore, that from the Semitic peoples have come the three major religions of earth: Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity.

To Ham was given the art of technical proficiency. The Hamitic people are the technicians of mankind, showing an amazing adaptability to the world in which they live. To Japheth was given intellectual enlargement, and the widest geographical distribution of the three families. History has long since confirmed abundantly this distribution of mankind, exactly as the Bible says This is the kind of chapter that requires careful and exhaustive study, but I shall merely attempt a quick survey, pausing where Moses, the author of Genesis, also pauses to make comment on certain names that appear in this section.

These are important comments and we need to understand why Scripture suddenly turns the spotlight upon certain individuals. These are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood. This division of the chapter, centering on Japheth, is the shortest, yet to us in many ways it is the most important, because it is to this family of mankind that most of us belong. We are Japhethites and we find this of intense interest, although the Scripture spends the least time with it. Those who study races and peoples are known as ethnologists, and one of the tools of ethnology is to trace the persistence of names through history. Some of these place names and names of individuals persist for a long time through the course of human events, and form a kind of peg or nail upon which we can hang certain important movements in history and by which we can trace certain developments.

We can do this with many of the names in this passage. Letters may be transposed, endings added, prefixes taken away or added, but there is a basic root which persists for years and even centuries of the time, and these give us a way of tracing the spread of the peoples of earth. The family of Japheth is essentially what we call the Aryans. Hitler made much of the Aryan race, claiming that the Germans were pure Aryans and the rest were mongrels.

Of course, the Jews were of a completely different family. But where Hitler made his mistake and where many people today make a mistake is to fail to differentiate between differences which exist between people and a supposed superiority. Because people are different is no sign that they are inferior or superior. This is one of the basic things we need to understand in studying the peoples of the earth. Early in the history of the world, the Japhethites, or Aryans, split into two groups.

One group settled in India and the other group in Europe. Together they form what is known as the "Indo-European" family of nations. Any ethnographer is familiar with these divisions, but they are the same basic stock. The next time you visit India you should realize that you are visiting your cousins in the same basic family. The interesting thing is that both of these divisions, the Indian and the European, trace their ancestry back to Japheth. This is not from the Bible, but from history:. The Greeks say that their ancestor was a man named Japetos, and you can see in that the resemblance to Japheth.

They regarded him as not only the father of their race, but the father of all humanity. The Indians, on the other hand, have an account of the flood similar in many respects to the Biblical account. The name of their hero is not Noah, but Satyaurata, and he had three sons. The name of the oldest was Iyapeti you can see Japheth in that, very easily , and the other two were Sharma, and C'harma Shem and Ham. The interesting thing about the Indian account is that C'harma was cursed by his father because he laughed at him when he got drunk, a certain echo of the story we have in Genesis. You see from this how this chapter is embedded in history. The Word of God is dealing with realistic matters when it traces these divisions. We learn here that Japheth had seven sons, but only two of them are traced for us in any detail: The first son was Gomer.

From this word, Gomer, by a process of elision and transposition of letters, there came the word, Gaul, or Gallic. These are the people, interestingly enough, to whom the New Testament Epistle to the Galatians is written. The Galatians were Gauls. They migrated to the north and settled in Spain, France and in Britain. From these Gauls come most of the early families of Western Europe and, consequently, of the Americas as well. The oldest son of Gomer was Ashkenaz. He and his descendants first settled around the Black Sea and then moved north into a land which is called Ascenia, and which later became known as the Islands of Scandia, which we now know as Scandinavia.

You can trace a direct link between Ashkenaz and Scandinavia. Another of the sons of Gomer was Riphath. Although we do not know too much about Riphath, we do know that he located in Central Europe, and some scholars feel that the word, Europe, itself comes from this name, Riphath. Another son is Togarmah. This name is easily traced. He was the ancestor of the present-day Turks and Armenians, who also migrated northward into Southern Germany.

Certain scholars have felt that the word, Germany, derives from the word, Togarmah. If you drop the first syllable you have the basic root of Germany. Two others of the sons of Japheth were Madai and Javan. Javan is unquestionably the ancestor of the Greeks. His name, Javan, is still found in Greece in the form of Ionia. His sons were Elishah, from which we get the Greek word, Helles the Greeks are still called Hellenes , and Tarshish, whom most scholars associate with Spain; Kittim, which is the Island of Cyprus; and Dodanim, who settled around the Black Sea, and still finds a modern parallel in the word, the Dardanelles.

These can all be traced by the geographical titles and place names they left behind. Next is the family of Ham , which is the family gifted with technical proficiency. Because of the great adaptability of these people to primitive conditions, the Hamites became the great pioneers of mankind. These were the people most able to adapt themselves to the conditions they found wherever they settled. We owe a great deal to the Hamitic nations. Later on, these lands were occupied by Japhethic nations, and at the present day the entire Western hemisphere is peopled by Japhethic rather than Hamitic nations, though it was once the other way around.

The four sons of Ham are relatively easy to trace in history: Cush is associated with the peoples of Southern Arabia and Ethiopia. Ethiopians still trace their ancestry back to Cush. Egypt is self explanatory. Put is associated with Lydia, on the west of Egypt, in North Africa. Canaan centered largely in and around Palestine, though the Canaanites later became much more widespread, as this account tells us further on. The account zooms in on an individual named Nimrod, who is called a great hunter.

He is a rather mysterious figure, of great importance in ancient history. He is the founder, as we are told, of both Babylon and Nineveh, the two great cities of antiquity which ultimately became enemies of Israel. The prominent thing said about him here is that he was a mighty man, "a mighty hunter before the LORD. This was a time when civilization was sparse and wild animals were a constant threat to the peoples. Kings, having nothing much else to do, organized hunting parties and acted as the protectors of their people by killing wild animals. Nimrod evidently gained a great reputation as such a hunter, but he was more than a hunter of wild animals.

The Jewish Talmud helps us here, for it says that he was "a hunter of the souls of men. We are told here that he was "the first mighty man on earth," i. That phrase, "mighty man," takes us back to Genesis 6 where, in that strange story of the invasion of the "sons of God" into the human race, there resulted a race of giants called Nephilim. We are told that, "these were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown. These also appear later on in the Canaanite tribes. We have found this suggestive line of thought running through the Scriptural account up to this point. It now suggests that Nimrod was one of these "mighty men," and therefore introduced a perverted, degraded form of religion into the world.

It began at Babylon, spread to Nineveh, and can be traced in history as it subsequently spread throughout the whole of the earth. Thus, in this man Nimrod, we have the seed of idolatry and false religion coming in again after the Flood. If you drop the first consonant of Nimrod's name and take the others -- M, R, D -- you will have the basic root of the god of Babylon, whose name was Marduk, and whom most scholars identify with Nimrod.

In the Babylonian religion, Nimrod or Marduk held a unique place. His wife was Semiramis. Some of you who have been at Cairo have stayed at the Semiramis Hotel, which is named after her. Marduk and Semiramis were the ancient god and goddess of Babylon. They had a son whom Semiramis claimed was virgin-born, and they founded the mother and child cult. This was the central character of the religion of ancient Babylon, the worship of a mother and child, supposedly virgin born.

You can see in this a clever attempt on the part of Satan to anticipate the genuine virgin birth and thus to cast disrepute upon the story when the Lord Jesus would later be born into history. This has been the effect of it. This ancient Babylonian cult of the mother and child spread to other parts of the earth. You will find it in the Egyptian religion as Isis and Osiris. The same cult prevails in various other localities. It appears in the Old Testament in Jeremiah, where the Israelites are warned against offering sacrifices to "the Queen of Heaven. The cult has also crept into Christianity and forms the basis for the Mariolatry that has prevailed in Roman Catholic Church, where the Mother and Child are worshiped as joint redeemers.

If you would like to read more on this, there is a book by Alexander Hislop, a very authoritative writer in this field, called The Two Babylons. I am sure you will find it of great interest if you desire to pursue this further. This idolatrous religion culminates at last in the Bible in the book of Revelation. Eddie asks the Blue Man if the little girl he tried to save from the falling ride actually survived, but his companion gives no response. The Blue Man finally tells Eddie that he must meet four more people before he can continue on his journey into the afterlife. Eddie recalls being held captive by enemy soldiers for many months, along with the Captain and four others. We learn that Eddie was responsible for devising the plan that enabled the Americans' escape.

In the aftermath, the Captain commanded Eddie and the other soldiers to torch the supposedly empty village under which they had been imprisoned. While the others prepared to outrun the blaze, Eddie raced into a burning tent because he thought there was a child trapped inside. However, a bullet shattered his knee, stopping him in his tracks. Eddie learns about the importance of sacrifice from the Captain, who admits to being the guilty of shooting Eddie. The Captain explains that Eddie had to sacrifice his knee to save his life.

The Captain then reveals that he died after stepping on a landmine while trying to get Eddie to safety - so he made a sacrifice as well. The Captain is at peace with his sacrifice and advises Eddie to let go of his anger. Next, Eddie finds himself outside of a diner filled with various people from different eras and walks of life. Through the window, Eddie recognizes one of the patrons - his father. Eddie tries to get the old man's attention, but Eddie's father cannot hear his son. Eddie has flashbacks of the abuse he suffered at his alcoholic father's hands. Then, Eddie meets Ruby - the third of his "Five People.

Ruby offers Eddie a new perspective on the circumstances surrounding his father's death. Eddie used to think that his father caught pneumonia after making a drunken decision to jump into the freezing ocean. However, it turns out that Eddie's father was saving the life of his oldest friend, Mickey Shea. Mickey took a suicidal jump into the ocean after Eddie's father caught him assaulting Eddie's mother, but even so, Eddie's father could not let his friend drown.

Eddie's father had many faults, Ruby explains, but he was loyal. She tells Eddie that his father called to his family out the hospital window right before his death. Ruby knows this because she was tending to Emile in the very same room. After Eddie's father died, Eddie and his new wife, Marguerite , had to move in with Eddie's mother in order to look after her. Eddie took on his father's old job at Ruby Pier. Eddie remembers resenting his father for dying because it led to Eddie spending his life at Ruby Pier, a place he desperately wanted to escape.

However, Ruby shows Eddie that his anger brought him much more pain than his father's neglect and abuse, and advises him to let go. Eddie heeds Ruby's advice. He is finally able to break through his emotional walls and forgive the man he spent so much of his life hating. Eddie's next encounter leads him through room after room of wedding receptions from many different cultures. At the final ceremony, Eddie recognizes the beautiful Italian bridesmaid - his beloved wife, Marguerite.

Marguerite was the love of Eddie's life; they met on Ruby Pier as teenagers. They suffered through a number of struggles after Eddie's return from war. They had to move into Eddie's mother's apartment building after Eddie's father's death. Then, they found out that they were unable to have children. They finally saved up enough money to adopt, but Eddie incited Marguerite's ire by gambling some of it away at the racetrack on his 39th birthday. They fought.