It's Saintly to Pay?
10/30/2005 18:47 Filed in: Faith & Reason
You never know what will fall out of an old Bible...
This morning, I was perusing through a second-hand Bible I picked up a few years ago when a very yellowed newspaper clipping fell out. I didn't put it there, and according to the inside cover of the Bible, there were at least two owners before me. This particular Bible, The New Testament: A New Translation in Plain English by Charles Kingsley Williams (not to be confused with The New Testament in the Language of the People By Charles B. Williams) has a copyright date of 1952. Unfortunately, there's not a date on the newspaper clipping or even a reference to what newspaper it came from. But it's been stuck between there long enough to discolor the pages of the Bible itself.
Here's what it says:
IT'S SAINTLY TO PAY
DALLAS, Tex (AP)-- Deacons and trustees
of a Dallas Baptist church appeared in
District Court here and gained an order
restraining the pastor, Rev. John Wesley
Hackett, from having anything more to do
with the church.
He already had been told to leave, they
said, but had refused.
The complaint was that he had "driven out
of the church the old saintly members--and
more particularly the paying members."
The short article is really amusing if you think about it. Heaven forbid a pastor run off "paying members" for any reason! I hope that Rev. Hackett had a better experience in his next church which hopefully didn't equate sanctification with those who gave the most money.
Incidentally, you might be wondering which two pages in this Bible that the newspaper clipping was lying between. Well, I found it between two pages that span Matthew 6:13 - 7:11, which as I'm sure you know is from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I'm only speculating here, but perhaps, one of the original owners of the Bible had stuck the clipping in this section of the Bible to illustrate Matt 6:24, which reads in this particular translation, "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold fast to the one and look down on the other. You cannot serve God and money."
This morning, I was perusing through a second-hand Bible I picked up a few years ago when a very yellowed newspaper clipping fell out. I didn't put it there, and according to the inside cover of the Bible, there were at least two owners before me. This particular Bible, The New Testament: A New Translation in Plain English by Charles Kingsley Williams (not to be confused with The New Testament in the Language of the People By Charles B. Williams) has a copyright date of 1952. Unfortunately, there's not a date on the newspaper clipping or even a reference to what newspaper it came from. But it's been stuck between there long enough to discolor the pages of the Bible itself.
Here's what it says:
IT'S SAINTLY TO PAY
DALLAS, Tex (AP)-- Deacons and trustees
of a Dallas Baptist church appeared in
District Court here and gained an order
restraining the pastor, Rev. John Wesley
Hackett, from having anything more to do
with the church.
He already had been told to leave, they
said, but had refused.
The complaint was that he had "driven out
of the church the old saintly members--and
more particularly the paying members."
The short article is really amusing if you think about it. Heaven forbid a pastor run off "paying members" for any reason! I hope that Rev. Hackett had a better experience in his next church which hopefully didn't equate sanctification with those who gave the most money.
Incidentally, you might be wondering which two pages in this Bible that the newspaper clipping was lying between. Well, I found it between two pages that span Matthew 6:13 - 7:11, which as I'm sure you know is from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. I'm only speculating here, but perhaps, one of the original owners of the Bible had stuck the clipping in this section of the Bible to illustrate Matt 6:24, which reads in this particular translation, "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold fast to the one and look down on the other. You cannot serve God and money."