Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 20
May 2, 1968
NUMBER 1, PAGE 8-9a

The Passing Parade

Fanning Yater Tant

Oral and the Methodists. An AP dispatch from Tulsa tells us that Oral Roberts is due to become a Methodist minister on May 27. After being a "Pentecostal Holiness" preacher for 21 years, the nation's most famous 'faith healer' is moving up the ladder of respectability. On March 19 he became a member of Tulsa's fashionable Boston Avenue Methodist Church, and will be ordained into that denomination's clergy this month. All of which fits like a glove into the picture of how a 'sect' develops into a 'denomination'. And if you haven't yet read Ed Harrell's tract on the subject, do so. We can supply it.

Sign on the door of a church nursery: "I Cor. 15:51." Curious about this, I looked it up. It reads: "We all shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed."

Modest, moderate, or mini. I am writing this page on the last day of a short visit in Mississippi, where I have been in a "special" with the faithful congregation here, and have been staying in the home of Brother Leroy Henry — than which no finer Christian home can be found. Jim Cooper was telling me about an advertisement in the local paper from Gayfer's, the largest department store along this part of the Gulf Coast. The ad was explaining that the store could satisfy the desires of any lady who wanted a skirt regardless of whether she wanted it "modest, moderate, or mini." Obviously, the writer of the ad made a distinction between what was "modest" and what was "moderate, or mini."

Gossip. The women were busily tearing apart one of their beloved friends who was absent. They tore and tore and tore, until finally one of them could stand it no longer. "These things are untrue," she protested. "But darling," replied the ring-leader, "I remember the incidents as vividly and distinctly as if they had really happened!"

Wisdom from Lincoln. "Some wives talk all of the time...but no wife talks none of the time." Abraham Lincoln

Get it right! We get all kinds of copy in the Gospel Guardian office, so thought we would pass on to those of you who submit manuscripts a few simple rules which were found in a bulletin put out by the Minnesota Newspaper Association not long ago. So:

I. Don't use no double negatives.

2. Make each pronoun agree with their antecedent.

3. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

4. About them sentence fragments.

5. When dangling, watch your participles.

6. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

7. Just between you and I, case is important too.

8. Don't write run-on sentences they are hard to read.

9. Don't use commas. which aren't necessary.

10. Try to not ever split infinitives.

11. Its Important to use your apostrophe's correctly.

12. Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.

13. Correct spelling is essential.

"Viewing the remains." Hirschel Thornton of Atlanta, Georgia, has added five drive-in windows to his funeral home. The "remains" will be placed on display, in slightly tilted coffins, and friends and relatives can drive slowly past and take a quick gander at the late lamented. Thornton says now you can "pay your respects" in blue jeans and curlers and without the bother of having to dress up and meet the grieving family and all that sort of stuff. Asked where he got the idea, he said, "I dreamed it one night." Sound: more like a nightmare to me! I think Hirschel missed the whole point of holding a wake for the dead. It is NOT for "viewing the remains" but for sharing a few moments of grief and sympathy with the sorrowing members of the family, reliving with them the events that have made life meaningful, recapturing both the pathos and the glory of human existence. You can't do this by driving by and giving a farewell toot on your horn.

Freudian slip? A few years ago a song-book went on the market with a typographical error in the song "Guide Me, 0 Thou Great Jehovah." The phrase that reads, "land me safe on Canaan's shore" came out as "land my safe on Canaan's shore." Maybe this was a Freudian slip of the printer, and he was another one of those who was trying to figure out some way to "take it with him." But Freudian or not, that "my safe" must truly express the deep-seated longing and desire of many a man of our day. What a bitter thing it must be to work and worry, strain and struggle, and by fair means or foul get a few millions together — and then leave it all for some ungrateful heirs to fight over!

High cost of babies. Some of us were talking the other day about the high cost of babies, whether they come by birth or by adoption. Which reminded this writer that his only son, Jefferson David Tant, born in 1935, cost the magnificent sum of $15.00. He was delivered by Dr. C. B. Billingsley (of beloved memory) in the Sparks Hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas, at a time when the hospital was trying to build its patronage by offering "specials." On that occasion they had an "obstetrics special" providing a three-day stay in the maternity ward, delivery room, and all the trimmings for $15.00! Dr. Billingsley made no charge to preachers (any preacher), and the ambulance to bring mother and babe home was provided without charge by the Putnam Funeral Home — for whom I had conducted a few "free funerals. Times (and prices) do change!

We aren't the only ones! Typists and proof-readers on the G. G. Aren't the only ones who make mistakes. For instance, the prestigious Atlanta Journal informs us that, "Men compromise 1.5 per cent of the South's nursing students." Which may be true — but is probably not what the Journal meant to say.