And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. <\/i><\/p>\n
\u2014II Thess. 2:11<\/i><\/p>\n
2103<\/b> Rasputin The Monk<\/b><\/p>\n
Rasputin, the monk is credited by some historians as one of the precipitating causes of the Russian Revolution. At one public meeting he boasted that the Tsar of all Russia made no decision without first listening to him. On affairs of state, the Tsar sought his advice, sometimes refusing to see his ministers and sending for Rasputin instead. The \u201cmad monk\u201d dismissed ministers and secured the appointment of others at will. Through his intrigues, his superior Bishop Hermogen was banished to a monastery in Lithuania. <\/p>\n
And how did he gain such power? Because his prayers were supposed to have saved from death Alexis, the only son of Tsar and Tsarina, heir to the throne and heir also to an incurable blood disease, hemophilia. <\/p>\n
2104<\/b> Trees With Baked Apples<\/b><\/p>\n
Discovering that most people of the day believe everything they read, a young reporter in Connecticut went to work. Reporter Louis Stone, for nearly two decades, invented and sold stories throughout America about such freaks of nature as a tree that produced baked apples, a squirrel that brushed its master\u2019s shoes with its tail every morning, and a cow owned by two spinsters that was so modest she would not allow a man to milk her. That was during the late 19th century. Finally, Stone was exposed as the \u201cWinsted Liar,\u201d where Winsted, Connecticut, became famous as his birthplace. <\/p>\n
2105<\/b> Money-Making Machine<\/b><\/p>\n
In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, a farmer was duped into investing his life savings in a \u201cmoney-making machine\u201d which he was assured would turn out 100 cruzeiro (about $20) notes. Four slick salesmen demonstrated the machine, loaded with real notes, and convinced the farmer to hand over $45,000 for it. After failing to print himself a fortune, the farmer took it to police and pleaded with them to \u201cmake it work!\u201d<\/p>\n
2106<\/b> Ancient Letters On Modern Paper<\/b><\/p>\n
Many intelligent people possess amazingly credulous natures. Michael Charles, the famous 19th-century French mathematician and Sorbonne professor was trapped into buying a total of 27,340 letters for $30,000. <\/p>\n
The letters were allegedly written by the resurrected Lazarus to Peter, Mary Magdalene to a Burgundian King, and a Gallic doctor to Jesus Christ. But the surprise is, the letters were all written in modern French and on contemporary paper! <\/p>\n
2107<\/b> The UFO Man<\/b><\/p>\n
Waldport, Oregon (AP)\u2014Authorities here are investigating reports that about 20 persons have sold their property and left the area with a man who claimed to be from outer space. <\/p>\n
Sheriff detective Ron Sutton said he has received reports of one man selling his $5,000 fishing boat for $5 and of a new van that was given away. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne hippy is said to have given away his guitar,\u201d said Sutton. \u201cTo him, that meant everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 300 persons attended the meeting, at a motel in this coastal hamlet of 800 people. The message at the meeting, authorities said, was that sometime in the next 10 years, people from earth would be taken to another world and a better life. Before they went, they would have to sell their worldly goods and discard their personal relationships. People at the meeting were told there was a camp in Colorado that would prepare them for departure in a UFO. <\/p>\n
Mel Gibson of the Oregon state police said one man gave away 150 acres, all his farm equipment and three children. The children and land were given to friends. <\/p>\n
Gibson said no missing persons reports have been filed, since those who leave usually tell their friends or relatives where they are going. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s strange,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cI\u2019ve been around here for about 20 years, but I\u2019ve never come across anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
2108<\/b> Credulous Warden<\/b><\/p>\n
The Sante Prison in France is so well constructed and guarded that since its completion in 1867, only six prisoners were able to escape successfully. But Leon Daudet, a prisoner, walked out of its front gates in 1927 by the simplest of methods. A friend telephoned the warden that Daudet had been pardoned. And the credulous prison official\u2014without checking immediately released him. <\/p>\n
2109<\/b> Recipe For Suckers? <\/b><\/p>\n
Shortly after Calvin Coolidge\u2019s marriage, a door-to-door bookseller sold Mrs. Coolidge a weighty tome called Our Family Physician<\/i> for eight dollars. Afraid of telling Mr. Coolidge about her purchase, she left the book lying around on the sitting room table without saying anything about it. <\/p>\n
Mr. Coolidge never mentioned the book but one day his wife glanced inside the cover and there on the flyleaf her husband had written:<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t see any recipe for curing suckers.\u201d<\/p>\n
2110<\/b> Buying Back His Book<\/b><\/p>\n
During the 18th century, Dr. Johann Beringer, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Wurzburg, Germany, was obsessed with his pet topic. The topic: fossils were capricious fabrications of God. And so his students went to work. <\/p>\n
They made and implanted in a nearby hill hundreds of grotesque clay tablets including one actually signed by Jehovah. The doctor was so convinced of the \u201cfind\u201d that he published a book on the subject, steadily ignoring the confessions of his students. He thought his students were trying to rob him of his conclusion and glory. <\/p>\n
It was not until he discovered stones bearing his own name that he realized the hoax. For the rest of his life, he spent whatever fortune he had gathered in trying to buy back the existing copies of his own book. <\/p>\n
2111<\/b> Mender of Eyes Quack<\/b><\/p>\n
Queen Anne\u2019s favorite physicians were quacks. She had always suffered from weak eyes and at that time the specialty known as ophthalmology did not exist. Anybody could pose as a specialist in eye diseases and one of these was William Reed, a tailor who \u201chaving failed as a mender of garments, set up as a mender of eyes.\u201d According to historians he was illiterate, but so convincing was his sales talk and so gullible was the queen that she would have nobody else treat her eyes. In the end, she knighted him for his valuable services to royalty. <\/p>\n
2112<\/b> Greed Unending<\/b><\/p>\n
An eccentric adventurer named Harry Lasseter walked into Sydney, Australia, in 1931, cornered three promoters and told them a fantastic tale that so fired their imaginations that it never occurred to them that the man might be unbalanced, dreaming or just lying to get a job. He stated that, as a lone prospector in the barren back country 30 years before, he had discovered a chain of rocks that he was certain contained at least $5,000,000,000 worth of gold. <\/p>\n
Believing him, the promoters organized an expedition and, led by Lasseter, set out to claim the fabulous reef. As he failed to find it after a search of many months, the leaders ordered their party to return home, having realized that the reef existed only in the man\u2019s imagination. Although Lasseter partly admitted it, he went on alone\u2014and died of thirst. To stop others from making the same mistake, the hoax was given considerable publicity. Yet, within the next few years, ten other expeditions not only went out to find this particular reef but got lost and their rescues cost the Australian government approximately $2,000,000. <\/p>\n
\u2014Freling Foster<\/p>\n
2113<\/b> Epigram On Gullibleness <\/b><\/p>\n
\u2022 Some people are like blotters. They soak it all in, but get it backwards. <\/p>\n
\u2022 A fool always finds one more foolish to admire him. <\/p>\n
\u2014Bileau<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201cYou can fool some of the people some of the time; some of the people all the time; but you can\u2019t fool all the people all the time.\u201d All of this may be a practical bit of wisdom for the politician or the business executive. But when it comes to religious deception, the masses are universally gullible. <\/p>\n
\u2014Prairie Overcomer<\/i><\/p>\n
See also:<\/b> Conformity ; Deceit ; Matt. 24:24; Mark 13:22; II Tim. 3:13.<\/p>\n
H <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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