This page is named for my Calvinist friend who gave us this idea. This page is reader generated. The intent is to list the urban legends and myths which are spread by pastors or church leaders.
1. NASA scientists have discovered the missing day of Joshua’s time.
This story has been circulating in its NASA version at least since the 1960s. NASA denies that this ever occurred. The story goes back to a book by Charles Totten entitled “Joshua’s Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz: A Scientific Vindication” (1890). Harold Hill told his version in “How to Live Like a King’s Kid” (1974). Hill, the former president of the Curtis Engine Company of Baltimore, was involved in diesel engine operations at Goddard, but had no involvement with any computer operations.
2. Mike Warnke was the head of a satanic coven before becoming a Christian.
A 1992 article in Cornerstone magazine provided documentation and eyewitness testimony that contradicts the claims Mike has made about himself. Much of this testimony is by close associates and friends of Mike. The article also exposed Mike’s multiple marriages and divorces as a Christian. For more detail see Cornerstone: The Mike Warnke series. Mike later admitted “I am guilty of some embellishing of the story,” although he stands by his previous testimony of some satanic involvement. An accountability board from his church was organized and has provided oversight of Mike and Susan Warnke and their ministry since 1993. Mike’s web site has more information.
3. The mentally handicapped witness that saved thousands
Here’s one that Tony Campolo uses.It’s about the mentally handicapped child who has been mainstreamed in high school, and through a confluence of circumstances ends up singing “Jesus loves me” or something like that.A revival breaks out. Bunches of kids come to Christ. The town has changed etc.When my friend heard this from Campolo the first time, he started telling his college history prof about the great story, and the college prof finished the story. Then the prof said, “That’s one’s been around for a long time.”
One year at the SBC convention, my friends and I heard the same illustration end about 3 different sermons.It’s a long revival week. It’s the last night of the revival. As the speaker is leaving, in the parking lot, a 17 year old girl who had attended all nights of the revival approaches the speaker in the parking lot, and says, “Pastor, I need to know how to be saved.” “And I told her how to be saved, and she was gloriously saved.”
4. Be careful who you forget to quote.
In college, I heard a Sunday School lesson that was taken point by point from a speech given at a religious convention I’d attended a few years previously. The speaker never attributed the lesson to that speech (except to make a reference to “the guy on the tape”.) The reason I knew that the lesson was taken from that speech? I had a copy of the tape, also, and I’d listened to it several times.
5.There is a frequently used “statistic” about the fraction of the people who have ever lived that are alive today. “Over 50%” seems to be often mentioned.
This is clearly not right. The best estimate I have heard came out around 7% (best in the sense that the method used to estimate the number was given) and even that seems high. Here is a link that demonstrates the math. Link http://www.squarecirclez.com/blog/90-of-those-who-ever-lived-alive-today/325
6. The candy cane is a Christian symbol -the J stands for Jesus, the stripes stand for His purity an d spilled blood.
Although this is a nice thought, it appears to be not true. Link
http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/candycane.asp
7.There is story about Abraham Lincoln buying a black child at an auction and then tell her she was free. It would make Lincoln pretty stupid to turn out a child on her own. A little search on the internet turned up the pastor who first made up the story.. and told it as true.
I would *love* to blast that urban church legend about the shape of candy canes (and the red and white stripes on them) out of the water, but iirc, there’s some space devoted to it on Snopes.com
Am guessing that having grown up when barbershops still had red and white poles, I tend toward skepticism on these matters.
Just for fun, here’s the Snopes.com page on candy canes: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/candycane.asp
the part about candy canes being used as a means for “persecuted Christians to identify each other” is especially … annoying, maybe?
Numo
I have added your submission to the list. Darn it-I liked this one.
@ Dee: I thought you might!
also… if it really is true (about candy canes), why on earth did *we* not hear all about this when we were growing up?
It seems to me that a few people writing kids’ storybooks have had their work taken as “nonfiction” by adults – in much the same way as lots of adults have tried to make Frank Peretti’s “spiritual warfare” novels into reality. (Part of what I sent you privately; should have mentioned this, as it is critical to the mythology behind so-called “strategic level spiritual warfare” and many New Apostolic Reformation/Third Wave claims and beliefs.)
All of this makes you wonder about some of the tales in the early books of the OT, which were not put into writing until ca 500 BC during the Babylonian exile, or were rewritten then from memory. Writing down an oral tradition passed down over many centuries? Perhaps the “originally inspired teller” of the story (equivalent to the “original autograph” was without any error, but what about the process of passing down from teller to listener, generation after generation?? And all of it attributed to “God said to [Abram, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, etc.]” Just wondering.
Dee,
Off Topic,
kinda like the color change .. but the type in the recent comments is very difficult to read.
*love* the overall design change, though if things were up to me, I’d make the typeface in posts and comments a much darker grey…
Karl and Numo
Thanks for the input. I’ll check with the guy behind the curtain.
This new design is allowing the homepage to load lightning fast; ditto for posting comments.
Many thanks to the Guy Behind the Curtain for all his hard work!
As to fonts being hard to read have you tried increasing the font size? Should be a menu choice on your browser.
“I’d make the typeface in posts and comments a much darker grey…”
Do you have some custom browser settings? All the type shows up as black on all the tests I’ve done.
@ Guy: I’m looking at this in both Google Chrome and the latest build of Firefox. (And using XP and Vista.)
In FF, on Vista, the typeface is a medium grey; ditto for Chrome.
In XP, using Chrome, the typeface is either a very dark grey or true black. (Hard to tell; my netbook uses XP and its graphics card isn’t the best.)
I never use IE unless I absolutely have to – and I have seen this medium grey deal on some of the newer WordPress templates.
@ Guy again: Looking closer – in XP, using Chrome, the typeface is a dark grey. Definitely not black.
I like it. Made two constructive suggestions. The type shows as a gray rather than black on my Dell monitor, and other type is black. But it is a dark gray, so I am not sure what the complaint is. Some of the text in the posts appears as a dark gray, some as black.
@ Guy again: “typeface” meaning the color of the typeface for comments, not posts.
(Sorry for the deluge of replies!)
Guy behind curtain:
on my Dell computer and flat panel screen, using latest firefox:
In the post on this item, the paragraphs vary in whether they are gray or black, with some of each, but all a very readable contrast. The comments appear as a very dark gray. “Leave a Reply” and the entry of my name are black. But the foils next to the blanks appear gray as does “your email address will not be published. Go figure. Good luck getting to the bottom of this. It reminds me of trying to find the formula error in a program to compute simultaneous correlation coefficients on 52 variables over 10,000 subjects.
Hi.
I listened to a pastor tell a story about Abraham Lincoln buying a black child at an auction and then tell her she was free. What a lot of hooey! Not only not true,it would make Lincoln pretty stupid to turn out a child on her own. A little search on the internet turned up the pastor who first made up the story.. and told it as true.
me
I shall copy onto your page.
http://www.formsofaddress.info/Degree_Honorary.html
Honorary degrees are an honor… but not a degree. In the US, a person with an honorary degree is NOT entitled to use the term Doctor.
me,
What a great explanation!
Perhaps we should address those with honorary degrees who want to be called “Dr.” thusly: “The honorary overreaching Dr.” Dr. Soandso who has an unearned doctorate in ___”
Another urban legend spread by pastors to support a pet theology: That shepherds will break the leg of a wandering lamb, then carry it about with them to train it to stay with them. Outside of repetitions of this story in Christian circles, there is no evidence this is now or ever was an actual practice, and plenty of reason not to believe it, including the testimony of actual shepherds and the fact that it would be dangerous for the animal (who might, after all, not heal correctly) and impractical for the shepherd (who cannot be carrying lambs about all the livelong day.)
I would like it published that the often quoted myth that the “eye of the needle” that Jesus was referring to in Matthew 19:24, actually refers to a small entrance on the walls surrounding Jerusalem. The story goes that the gate is called “the Eye of the Needle”, and it was built so small that in order to get a ladened camel through, you had to remove everything off the camel’s back and the camel had to kneel down and basically walk on its KNEES to get through. That of course paints a WONDERFUL picture for preachers to illustrate that we have to rid ourselves of all we think we bring to God (unpack the camel) and humble ourselves before God (get the camel down on its knees) in order to be saved. That is a GREAT illustration….there’s just one problem–IT ISN’T TRUE! There WAS NO gate in the ancient city walls around Jerusalem called “the Eye of the Needle”, and the simple fact is that CAMELS CANNOT WALK ON THEIR KNEES! It is all a nice story that makes a GREAT point for a sermon, and whose only drawback is that it is COMPLETELY FALSE!
And yet, this myth keeps being used in sermons and makes occasional appearances in emails that make the rounds and are forwarded from person to person to person.
It’s a nice story, but it simply IS NOT TRUE.
Actually, there are a lot of myths being spread from pulpits and on the Internet. We have to beware of this, and hold to what the word of God says.
I heard it again this Palm Sunday: “The very same people who yelled HOSAANNA in the highest would yell crucify him only 5 days later”.
Except….
How do we know they were the same people? It doesn’t say they were – in one gospel it says it was the high priests who yelled it, in another that the high priests incited “the crowd”. Never does it say they were the same people as were at the triumphal procession.
Frankly, given the number of people in Jerusalem at that time of year, I am very very skeptical. (Josephus apparently calculated 3,000,000 people would have been there for Passover. Only a small fraction would have seen the triumphal entry, and only a small fraction would have been in the square before Pontius Pilate – the probability that they were the SAME people seems very remote.)
Makes for a good sermon – unless you want your sermons to be accurate.
me
Thank for adding to Dave’s pulpits myths. I’m sure my friend Dave would be pleased.:)
One told in the first person by a faculty member at SWBTS when he came to Ohio to preach a revival. Told in the first person, with appropriate accent and tone for the two roles.
When I was on my way here from Fort Worth, I stopped in the airport to have my shoes shined. I noticed that the shoe shine man had his Bible open to Revelation. I asked him if he understood it. He said "Yes, Suh." I said "That is interesting. I am a theologian and seminary professor specializing the the apocalytpic scriptures, and I am not sure that I understand Revelation." The shoe shine man said "Well, Suh, it is very simple. Jesus gonna win and we gonna win with Him." And if that is all you get out of Revelation, you have learned a great lesson.
Don't know whether it was true when he told it, but he told it on himself.
Anyone else get told that the word ‘luck’ comes from ‘lucifer’? We couldn’t say ‘good luck’ to one another because of that. It wasn’t the pastor who said it, it was just something that everyone seemed to believe.
Many years ago during a sermon in church I heard the story of an affluent church where a dirty, scruffy young man came walking up the aisle during the service and sat down cross-legged on the floor at the front. An usher came up the aisle and the congregation wondered what was going to happen. The usher sat down cross-legged next to the guy. Recently I wondered about that story and did a bit of investigating. I found it repeated on a website only it had been updated. The guy now had body piercings and tattoos.
Here’s one I have heard too often: “Scientists have proved a bumblebee can’t fly”. See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1076/is-it-aerodynamically-impossible-for-bumblebees-to-fly for the counter. What a load of malarkey that one is!