THE FOUR MEN PRAYER GROUPS
LIKE us on Facebook
& Follow us on Twitter
  • Bringing Souls to Jesus
  • Join the True Brotherhood
  • The Four Men Prayers
  • God's Marines Patron Saint "The Grunt Padre"
  • Testimonials
  • God's Marines and Four Men Prayer Group Members
  • Help Spread the Four Men Prayer Groups
  • The Four Men Boot Camp
  • The Forty Days of Boot Camp
  • FAQ and More Information
  • Links to Holiness
  • Contact Us
  • Bringing Souls to Jesus Blog
  • God's Marines Ranks

The Ninth Day of the Four Men Boot Camp

12/12/2011

13 Comments

 

The Power of Four
(Tom Hanks Speech)

Picture
From his remarkable speech at Vassar College
Posted by Marion Owen, Fearless Weeder for PlanTea, Inc. and
Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul

How many cars would you have to take away from California's crowded roadway to rid them of gridlock? A computer similation supplied the answer: four percent, or four out of a hundred. The study provided inspiration for actor Tom Hanks in a remarkable speech at Vassar College's graduation ceremony on May 22, 2005.

Here is Tom Hanks' speech. Read it. Print it out. Pass it on. Share it with others...

THE POWER OF FOUR

by Tom Hanks

Not long ago I was reading about the problem of gridlock on the freeways of Southern California--the traffic jams which cripple the city, stranding millions and laying waste to time, energy, and the environment. Gridlock is as serious and as impenetrable a problem as any we face, a dilemma without cure, without solution, like everything else in the world, it seems.

Some smart folks concocted a computer simulation of gridlock to determine how many cars should be taken off the road to turn a completely jammed and stilled highway into a free-flowing one. How many cars must be removed from that commute until a twenty-mile drive takes twenty-five minutes instead of two hours? The results were startling.

Four cars needed to be removed from that virtually stuck highway to free up that simulated commute... four cars out of each one hundred. Four cars per one hundred cars, four autos out of every one hundred autos, forty cars from each thousand, four hundred out of ten thousand. Four cars out of one hundred are not that many. Two cars out of every fifty--one driver out of twenty-five drivers.

Now, if this simulation is correct, it is the most dramatic definition in earthly science and human nature of how a simple choice will make a jaw-dropping difference to our world. Call it the Power of Four. One commuter in your neighborhood could put the rush back into rush hour. So, if merely four people out of a hundred can make gridlock go away by choosing not to use their car, imagine the other changes that can be wrought just by four of us--four of you--out of a hundred.

Take a hundred musicians in a depressed port city in Northern England, choose John, Paul, George, and Ringo and you have "Hey Jude". Take a hundred computer geeks in Redmond, Washington, send 96 of them home and the remainder is called Microsoft.

Take the Power of Four and apply it to any and every area of your concern. Politics: Four votes swung from one hundred into another hundred is the difference between gaining control and losing clout. Culture: 2 ticket buyers out of fifty can make a small, odd film profitable. Economics: by boycotting a product 1 consumer out of 25 can move that product to the back of the shelf, and eventually off it altogether.

Four out of 100 is miniscule and yet can be the great lever of the Tipping Point. The Power of Four is the difference between helplessness and help. H-E-L-P: a four-letter word like some others with many meanings.

The graduating class of 2005 can claim, with perhaps more credibility than any other class in history, that during its four years of college the world went crazy. In the fall of 2001, our planet earth and the United States of America were different sorts of places--in tone, in tolerance, in peace and war, in ideas and in ideals--than they are on this spring day in 2005. These past years have been extraordinary in the express rate of change, well beyond the usual standards of culture, well above the personal watermarks you have stamped as college students. As college graduates, you now live in a brand new world, with new versions of political upheaval, global pandemic, world war and religious polarization, the likes of which have rarely visited our planet all at once--and thank God for that.

Today's main purpose is to celebrate your entering into society, but the fact is you have all been very much steeped in it already- Poughkeepsie being the proxy and microcosm of the whole wide world. None of you were untouched by the events in September of your freshman year, none unaffected by the ideological movements of local and geo-politics since. All of you have been staring your individual fate and our collective future right in the eye for the last four years. The common stereotype would have you today, cap in the air, parchment in hand, asking yourself "what do I do now?" You, the class of 2005, have already had many, many moments during your time at Vassar when you asked yourself that question. You might have added the word 'Hell', or some such four-letter word to the phrase: "What the HELL do I do now?" In which case, today might not be all that different from other days on campus-- except your parents are here and they might take you out for better food.

On Commencement Day, speechmakers are expected to offer advice--as though you need any, as though anything said today could aid your making sense of our one-damn-thing-after-another world. Things are too confused, too loud, and too dangerous to make 'advice' an option. You need to hear something much more relevant on this day. You need to hear the most important message thus far in the third millennium. You need to hear a maxim so simple, so clear and evocative that no one could misconstrue its meaning or miss its weighty issue.

So, here goes. It's not a statement, but a request. Not a bit of advice, but a plea. It is, in fact, a single four-letter word, a verb and a noun which takes into account the reality of your four years at Vassar as well as the demands of the next four decades you spend beyond this campus.

It's a message, once made familiar by the Beatles--those Northern English lads who embodied The Power of Four.

Help. HELP. HEEEELLLLLLPP!

We need help. Your help. You must help. Please help. Please provide Help. Please be willing to help. Help... and you will make a huge impact in the life of the street, the town, the country, and our planet. If only one out of four of each one hundred of you choose to help on any given day, in any given cause-- incredible things will happen in the world you live in.

Help publicly. Help privately. Help in your actions by recycling and conserving and protecting, but help also in your attitude. Help make sense where sense has gone missing. Help bring reason and respect to discourse and debate. Help science to solve and faith to soothe. Help law bring justice, until justice is commonplace. Help and you will abolish apathy-- the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.

Life outside of college is just like life in it: one nutty thing after another, some of them horrible, but all interspersed with enough beauty and goodness to keep you going. That's your job, to keep going. Your duty is to help-- without ceasing. The art you create can glorify it. The science you pursue can prove its value. The law you practice can pass on its benefits. The faith you embrace will make it the earthly manifestation of your God.

Here at Vassar whatever your discipline, whatever your passion you have already experienced the exhausting reality that there is always something going on and there is always something to do. And most assuredly you have sensed how effective and empowering it can be when more than four out of one hundred make the same choice to help.

You will always be able to help.

So do it. Make peace where it is precious. Help plant trees. Help embrace diversity and celebrate differences. Help stop gridlock.

In other words, help solve every problem we face - every single one of them--with the Power of Four out of a hundred. Help and we will save the world. If we don't help--it won't get done.

Congratulations. Good luck. Thank you.

From Tom Hanks speech at Vassar College 2005

http://www.plantea.com/Tom-Hanks.htm

You are about to realize the Power of Four when your Four Men prayer group is fully formed.  Four Men agreeing to pray and sacrifice to save souls.  That will  change the world, one soul at a time. 

Keep up the Great Work!



Next day of the Four men Boot Camp: 
​http://www.thefourmen.info/2/post/2011/12/the-tenth-day-of-the-four-men-boot-camp.html

Not yet in the God's Marines Boot Camp?
Rise up today to join the True Brotherhood of the Four Men Prayer Groups:

 www.thefourmen.info/join-the-true-brotherhood.html


13 Comments
MICHAEL LEONARD
1/12/2012 12:30:31 am

THE BIBLE SAYS WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED IN
MY NAME I AM THERE IN THE MIDST OF THEM I WAS THINKING
WHAT ABOUT FOUR MEN

Reply
Jesse Tipton
5/7/2013 04:21:10 am

FOUR will mean that absolutely NOTHING is going to be impossible. Even if one, hopefully it wont happen, doesn't pray then everything will still come to be. I am getting excited just thinking about it. PRAISE THE LORD!!!!! Let's get the ball to roling.

Reply
Scott Audet
2/29/2012 07:42:47 pm

Thank you Brian!

Reply
Oscar Olaguye
5/12/2012 10:27:51 pm

Four in a hundred is probably what God is looking for to savez the world! what difference can we make in ourselves, our families and through them to the world!

Reply
Nes Ugoy
1/17/2013 11:40:52 pm

It also took the power of 4 men to persuade the people of Moses, including Aaron, in Mt. Sinai to create an idol.

Really very powerful the number four is. Very inspiring.

Thanks, Brian.

Reply
Sean Murray
2/12/2013 06:30:32 am

We can change the world by converting one soul at a time.

Reply
Timoteo Saldana Honesto
2/27/2013 03:49:24 pm

The Four Directions

The American Indian prays by facing the Four Directions, The East, The North, The South, and The West. The Four Directions are even mentioned in Sacred Scripture.

"And I turned and lifted up my eyes and saw: and, behold, four chariots came out from the midst of two mountains: and the mountains were mountains of brass. In the first chariot were red horses: and in the second chariot black horses. And in the third chariot white horses: and in the fourth chariot grisled horses, and strong ones. And I answered and said to the angel that spoke to me: What are these, My Lord? And the angel answered and said to me: These are the four winds of heaven which go forth to stand before the Lord of all the earth."

-Zacharias VI: 1-5

May the Lord of the Four Winds bless all of you!

Timoteo, OFS

Reply
Dr. Brian
10/14/2013 06:24:23 am

I grew up on Four Winds Drive, God is mysterious and powerful in so many ways! God Bless the Four Men Prayer Groups!

Reply
Bob
8/28/2013 07:49:41 am

To me, 4 is just a number. A look at the icon of the friends and the paralytic shows that each friend controlled one rope. If the bed could be made differently perhaps 2 or 3 men would be necessary to lower those ropes, and we might be called the 2 men group.

My thought goes to the bond of responsibility that exists between each man and the paralytic. We each are taking on the responsibility of praying for the paralytic's soul. We are manning the rope, and without the 1-1 relationship, the paralytic would drop.

May God help us as we choose to take on this responsibility. May God show lasting love to each of the men in each group and especially to Brian who has brought this idea into reality for us.

Reply
David E Mello
9/9/2013 04:33:39 am

Completion of the ninth day

Reply
Steve Daily
2/7/2016 04:09:53 am

The thoughts overwhelm me. ..the power of 4....it took 4 to lower the paralytic. ..there's no way 2 could have done it safely or quickly. ...and I love the vision "manning the rope" we are needed but we must also pray for our brothers on their ropes that they can do that which calls them...

Reply
+Pat+
8/17/2016 09:33:25 am

Day 9 Complete. I do like the Hanks speech. We must all do our part. There is such a thing as the cascading effect of one person's action affecting the greater mass. We have all heard of the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Such is the power of one person to change their immediate environment. Think of St Thèresé of Lisieux and the Little Way.

Reply
jong ricafort
6/14/2018 08:29:38 am

Four means, God wants all men from the four corners of the world to unite together in ONE MISSION to save souls...
And this inspiration is right where we are...
God bless the founder of this inspiration.
S&IHMMP4us.Amen

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Ultimate Decade Rosary
    Picture
    My First Autograph Book
    Picture
    Ultimate Decade for Protection
    Picture
    Go to St. Joseph Book
    Picture
    Mary, Help of Christians Book
    Picture
    God's Grandmother Book
    Picture
    Ultimate Decade for Healing
    Picture
    Suffering Souls Book
    Picture
    Soldiers of the Rosary
    Picture
    Daily Communicants
    Picture
    Inspire Children to become Saints
    Picture
    Army of the Face of Jesus
    Picture
    Divine Mercy for the Dying
    Picture
    Book on Spiritual Adoption
    Picture
    Sons of Saint Joseph
    Picture
    The Stationers
    Picture
    We need your Prayers to End Abortion
    Picture
    Become a Friend of the Angels
    Picture
    Pray for America
    Picture
    Best Friends of the Holy Spirit
    Picture
    Saint Michael's Warriors
    Picture
    Eucharistic Adoration to End Abortion
    Picture
    True Letter of Jesus
    Picture
    The Releasers
    Picture
    Decade a Day Disciples
    Picture
    Dolls from Heaven
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.