Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 1
December 15, 1949
NUMBER 32, PAGE 7

The Overflow

F. Y. T.

Bro. Goebbel's questions In this issue Brother Clarence C. Goebbel has an article asking some pertinent and vital questions on the "college in the budget" problem. The Gospel Guardian intends to answer his questions, one way or another. If our negotiations with Bro. Brewer develop satisfactorily, the whole matter will be discussed through these pages. If our negotiations fail, then the editors of this paper, along with many capable Bible students through out the brotherhood, will be giving a careful and thorough study to the teachings of the scripture as they hear on this very great present day issue. So, keep reading the Guardian for a full treatment of the problem.

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Developing leaders The College and Heights congregation in Topeka, Kansas, has a membership of only about three hundred, yet there are at least fifteen or twenty men in the group who can do a highly creditable job of gospel preaching when called upon. This removes that frightening bug-a-boo of some of our churches—the fear of "being caught with their preacher gone." By developing this home talent the congregation can release their evangelist for much gospel preaching in weak and difficult places. They will be happier, their preacher will be better satisfied, and the work Christ wants done will be accomplished.

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To put it briefly

"Hell is for two classes of people: those who will do anything, and those who won't do anything."

—Exchange

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"My dear friends and brethren"

Do you sometimes want to scream when the preacher keeps coming over and over and over again the same pet phrase or expression? Well, Elder John Longley would have known how to sympathize with you. He reports that in one of Benjamin Franklin's early sermons, the great (to be) editor and preacher repeated the expression, "My dear friends and brethren" exactly 150 times! Elder Longley kept track of the obnoxious repetitions by punching holes in a piece of paper with a pin. . . doubtless wishing with increasing fervor as the sermon lengthened that he were pricking the preacher with that pin instead of the paper.

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At last it comes out—the devil a female!

Early last month Ward Hogland, preacher for the Park Hill Church in Fort Smith, was engaging in a debate with Burt F. Marrs, Stanberry, Missouri, who is President of the Church of God (Seventh Day) Publishing House in Stanberry. When Hogland pressed Marrs to say whether or not the Ten Commandments were binding on Adam, he finally affirmed that they were. Being then asked to name the person with whom Adam might have broken the seventh commandment by committing physical adultery, he was at some loss to answer, but after floundering a bit, blurted out. "The devil!" Echoes from the roar of laughter that swept the audience are said still to be reverberating among the hills of Eastern Oklahoma.

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They saw the virgin At the little Bavarian village of Thurn last month, seven small girls, ranging in age from ten to twelve, gave the town the biggest excitement it has had since the war. They all declared they had seen a vision of the virgin Mary, "in the sky above the trees, dressed all in white, and carrying a black rosary." Twenty thousand Catholics worked themselves into an ecstasy over the incident, being incited and urged on by three Catholic priests. They knelt for hours around the children, praying, chanting, and crossing themselves. All of which is an old, old story in Catholicism's technique for keeping her control over the multitudes. But the thing that interested us was the extremely sympathetic attitude of the Associated Press toward this example of mass hysteria. To the reporter, at least, the virgin was really there! There wasn't even a hint that the girls might have been mistaken. It was down to earth "factual" reporting in the same casual matter-of-fact style that one might expect from a police report. So great has Catholicism's power become over the press.

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It Revives Our Faith

We have noticed several instances lately in which fine gospel preachers have left some big congregation in the south and west to go and work with small and struggling congregations in the north, east, and west. We know several of them who took quite a sizeable reduction in income to go; and they went over the protests and against the desires of the big churches with which they were working. All of which revives somewhat our faith in the "preaching fraternity"—and our faith, we admit, needs considerable reviving after a few encounters with preachers who frankly state that they aren't "going to stick their necks out" on the controversial issues that arise from time to time. Latest of these preachers to leave a big congregation in order to labor with a much smaller group to come to our attention is M. C. Cuthbertson. He left Central church in Amarillo to go to a congregation in Salem, Oregon, approximately one-fourth the size of Central. More power to him, and to others like him!

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Fine attendance for a day service Remember that "big preacher" we told you about two or three weeks ago, who was giving his explanation of Paul's "no striker" proviso in the list of eldership qualifications ? Well, nearly everybody who has mentioned it to us guessed his identity without difficulty. And one of them told us this; This same "b. p." was trying to encourage attendance at the days services in a certain meeting. Said he, "I held a ten-day meeting not long ago in which we started in the first day with only 30 present. The next day we had 60; and the audience doubled each day over the day before till the meeting ended." Unless we miscalculate, that would give exactly 15,360 people in attendance the last day service. Nice crowd!

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Won't stick his neck out Word comes to us of a preacher in South Texas who recently said, "You fellows can argue and preach all you want on those controversial subjects, but I'm not sticking my neck out! I'm going to preach the things the brethren all agree with, and I'll still be preaching when you are out of a job." If we were that devoid of both principles and scruples, we'd quit preaching altogether, and go into some nice lucrative employment—as, for example, bank-robbing, or bootlegging.