DOUBTERS
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts.
—II Peter 3:3
1214 Graham’s Expected Audience
Billy Graham, looking over the 200 persons who had come to hear him at a University of Minnesota student-faculty meeting, remarked that many had come just out of curiosity. With a smile he added, “I can always count on the department of psychology showing up in full force.”
—Christian Advocate
1215 Red Sea Parting A Mirage?
A Pennsylvania State University physicist suggested that the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea may have been the result of a desert mirage.
The physicist, Dr. Alistair Fraser, said Christ walking on water also could have been a mirage.
He made his comments at a meeting of the Optical Society of America.
Dr. Fraser told the meeting there were photographs that reproduced both phenomena. He said the biblical description of the Red Sea crossing was a particularly accurate picture of a mirage.
1216 With Hat And Coats On
It was on Thanksgiving several years ago that Helen Hayes cooked her first turkey. Before serving it she announced to her husband, Charles MacArthur, and their son James: “Now I know this is the first turkey I’ve ever cooked. If it isn’t right, I don’t want anybody to say a word. We’ll just get up from the table without comment, and go down to the hotel for dinner.”
Then she retired to the kitchen. When she entered the dining room, bearing the turkey, she found her husband and son seated at the table—wearing their hats and coats.
—Kansas City
1217 Shut Up For Jesus
A heated controversy raged at the University of Nebraska. Officials there forbade a Campus Crusade wrestling team from giving testimonies during an appearance. Many students, professors, and even a few newspapers asked why other groups were free to promote homosexuality, radical politics, and the like while Christians were muzzled. The Omaha World-Herald lampooned the school’s action in an editorial entitled “Sit Down, Shut Up For Jesus.”
The school is now forging a policy regarding religious activities on campus.
1218 Tiger In House On Cook’s Dog
Charles Berlitz, a vice-president of the Berlitz Schools of Language tells of going out to Sumatra last year with an oilman who had studied Indonesian with them in New York. The chap bought a house outside Palembang, and Berlitz urged him to plunge right in with the language. The first call the pupil took at the office turned out to be from one of his newly-hired servants.
“Just goes to show you,” the oilman said when he hung up, “you think you know the language, but when you get here you find you don’t know a thing about it. Sounded just like he said a tiger was in the house, chasing the cook’s dog.”
He heard right. It was!
—United Press International
1219 No Time For “Car Joke”
A “smart” salesman in the city of Bodoe, Norway, recently lost a sixteen-car sale. The story goes as follows.
A young man in a sweater, overalls, and rubber boots entered a car dealer’s shop in this city just north of the Arctic Circle.
“Have you got cars on hand?”
“Sure we have,” the salesman answered.
“I want sixteen cars, if I like the model.”
“I have no time for jokes—buzz off,” answered the salesman.
The man did—right across the street to another car dealer, selling a different make of cars.
He made similar inquiries and got full service. The man in overalls really wanted sixteen cars and paid in cash—500,000 Norwegian kroner ($77,000).
He belonged to a sixteen-man crew of a Norwegian trawler that caught record quantities of herring last season. Each fisherman netted 70,000 kroner during the season. They decided to buy new cars and to buy all sixteen at once, to get the highest possible discount.
—Prairie Overcomer
1220 How Often!
How often we trust each other.
And only doubt our Lord.
We take the word of mortals,
And yet distrust His word;
But, oh, what light and glory
Would shine o’er all our days,
If we always would remember
God means just what He says.
—Selected
1221 Tanker Captain Dismissed It
In 1970, the Liberian tanker Arrow ran aground off Nova Scotia, broke into two and sunk. The oil it was carrying floated to shore, polluting up to 125 miles of shoreline. Its Greek captain admitted that he did see an echo on his radar, but he “dismissed it as spurious.” “This was my mistake,” he confessed. But the damage was done.
1222 Epigram On Doubters
• Doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs.
—Walt Allmand
• If you tell a man that there are 581,678, 934,341 stars in the universe, he’ll believe you. But if a sign says, “Fresh Paint,” he has to make a personal investigation.
See also: Atheists ; Skeptical Attitude ; II Thess 1:8; Heb. 2:1; I Pet. 2:1. I John 2:22.