《Sermon Illustrations (D~F)》(a compilation) table of contents
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- DECEIT
DECADENCEMeanwhile, decadence and despair haunt many of America's youth. Perhaps fourteen-year-old Rod Matthews represents the most horrible extreme. Uninterested in baseball or books, Rod found one thing that did stimulate him: Death. His curiosity was intensely aroused by a rental video, Faces of Death, a collage of film clips of people dying violently. He wanted to see death happen in real life. So one winter day Rod lured a young friend into the woods and hammered him to death with a baseball bat. At Matthews's trial a child psychiatrist testified that the boy was not conventionally insane. He just "doesn't know right from wrong...He is morally handicapped." Charles Colson, Against the Night, pp. 21-22. 
Statistics and StuffSocial critic Russell Kirk has defined decadence as the loss of an aim or object in life. "Men and women become decadent when they forget or deny the objects of life, and so fritter away their years in trifles or debauchery." Charles Colson, Against the Night, p. 56. DECAY15 pieces of trash and when they will disintegrate: Paper traffic ticket: 2-4 weeks Cotton rag: 1-5 months Degradable polyethylene bag: 2-3 months Piece of rope: 3-14 months Wool stockings: 1 year Bamboo pole: 1-3 years Unpainted wooden stake: 1-4 years Painted wooden stake: 13 years Wooden light pole: 15-36 years Railroad crosstie: 30 years Tin or steel can: 100 years Aluminum can: 200-500 years Plastic six pack cover: 450 years Glass coke bottle: unknown Source Unknown. DECEITThomas Edison was concerned about the way visitors to his office helped themselves to his expensive Havana cigars. Since he wouldn't lock them up, his secretary suggested he have cigars made from cabbage leaves and substitute them for the Havanas. Edison agreed, then forgot about it, and only remembered later when the Havanas started vanishing again. When he asked his secretary why the bogus cigars hadn't arrived, she told him they had arrived and had been given to his manager -- who, not knowing they were fakes, had packed them for Edison to take on a trip. "And do you know," Edison laughed, "I smoked every one of those cigars myself!" Today in the Word, December 16, 1992.
Bob Harris, weatherman for NY TV station WPIX-TV and the nationally syndicated independent Network news, had to weather a public storm of his own making in 1979. Though he had studied math, physics and geology at three colleges, he left school without a degree but with a strong desire to be a media weatherman. He phoned WCBS-TV, introducing himself as a Ph.D. in geophysics from Columbia U. The phony degree got him in the door. After a two-month tryout, he was hired as an off-camera forecaster for WCBS. For the next decade his career flourished. He became widely known as "Dr. Bob." He was also hired by the New York Times as a consulting meteorologist. The same year both the Long Island Railroad and then Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn hired him. Forty years of age and living his childhood dream, he found himself in public disgrace and national humiliation when an anonymous letter prompted WCBS management to investigate his academic credentials. Both the station and the New York Times fire him. His story got attention across the land. He was on the Today Show, the Tomorrow Show, and in People Weekly, among others. He thought he'd lose his home and never work in the media again. Several days later the Long Island Railroad and Bowie Kuhn announced they would not fire him. Then WNEW-TV gave him a job. He admits it was a dreadful mistake on his part and doubtless played a role in his divorce. "I took a shortcut that turned out to be the long way around, and one day the bill came due. I will be sorry as long as I am alive." Nancy Shulins, Journal News, Nyack, NY.
In late September 1864 Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was leading his troops north from Decatur, Alabama, toward Nashville. But to make it to Nashville, Forrest would have to defeat the Union army at Athens, Alabama. When the Union commander, Colonel Wallace Campbell, refused to surrender, Forrest asked for a personal meeting, and took Campbell on an inspection of his troops. But each time they left a detachment, the Confederate soldiers simply packed up and moved to another position, artillery and all. Forrest and Campbell would then arrive at the new encampment and continue to tally up the impressive number of Confederate soldiers and weaponry. By the time they returned to the fort, Campbell was convinced he couldn't win and surrendered unconditionally! Today in the Word, June 27, 1993.
Christopher Columbus kept two records of the distances traveled on his first voyage to the New World in the Santa Maria. One was true, he thought, but he deliberately faked the other. Ironically, the fake log turned out to be the more accurate of the two. To alleviate his crew's fears that they were getting too far from home on an unknown sea, Columbus gave them a reduced mileage estimate. When, for example, he told them on Sept. 11, 1492, that they had covered 16 leagues, he recorded 20 leagues in his secret log. Though he didn't know it, Columbus' "true" distance records were overestimated by 9% on the average. His faked distances came out closer to the actual distances traveled. When the crew found out about his deception, they threatened to mutiny. Before they did, however, land--and a New World-- appeared. Parade Magazine, March 18, 1984.
In 1212 a French shepherd boy by the name of Steven claimed that Jesus had appeared to him disguised as a pilgrim. Supposedly, Jesus instructed him to take a letter to the king of France. This poor, misguided boy told everyone about what he thought he had encountered. Before long he had gathered a large following of more than thirty thousand children who accompanied him on his pilgrimage. As Philip Schaff records it, when asked where they were going, they replied, "We go to God, and seek for the holy cross beyond the sea." They reached Marseilles, but the waves did not part and let them go through dry-shod as they expected. It was at Marseilles that tragedy occurred. The children met two men, Hugo Ferreus and William Porcus. The men claimed to be so impressed with the calling of the children that they offered to transport them across the Mediterranean in seven ships without charge. What the children didn't know was that the two men were slave traders. The children boarded the ships and the journey began, but instead of setting sail for the Holy Land they set course for North Africa, "where they were sold as slaves in the Muslim markets that did a large business in the buying and selling of human being. Few if any returned. None ever reached the Holy Land." Two cunning men enjoyed enormous financial profits simply because they were willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of children. Steve Farrar, Family Survival in the American Jungle, 1991, Multnomah Press, pp. 60- 61.
As physics professor at Adelaide University in Australia, Sir Kerr Grant used to illustrate the time of descent of a free- falling body by allowing a heavy ball suspended from the lecture-theater roof trusses to fall some 30 feet and be caught in a sand bucket. Each year the bucket was lined up meticulously to catch the ball -- and each year students secretly moved the bucket to one side, so that the ball crashed thunderously to the floor. Tiring of this rather stale joke, the professor traced a chalk line around the bucket. The students moved the bucket as usual, traced a chalk mark around the new position, rubbed it out and replaced the bucket in its original spot. "Aha!" the professor explained, seeing the faint outline of the erased chalk mark. He moved the bucket over it and released the ball -- which thundered to the floor as usual. Reader's Digest, Contributed by D.G. Dewar.
"Marathoner Loses by a Mustache." So read the headline of a recent Associated Press story. It appeared that Abbes Tehami of Algeria was an easy winner of the Brussels Marathon--until someone wondered where his mustache had gone! Checking eyewitness accounts, it quickly became evident that the mustache belonged to Tehami's coach, Bensalem Hamiani. Hamiani had run the first seven-and-a-half miles of the race for Tehami, then dropped out of the pack and disappeared into the woods to pass race number 62 on to his pupil. "They looked about the same," race organizers said. "Only one had a mustache." It's expected that the two will never again be allowed to run in Belgium. Today in the Word, Moody Bible Institute, January 1992.
Deception has been a part of warfare since the Trojan horse. During WWII, it became high art. Members of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops used special "weapons" like dummy planes, tanks, antiaircraft guns, and amplified recordings that created war sounds to fool the German high command. To enable a combat unit to change positions or even attack when the Germans thought it hadn't moved at all, the 1800 men of the 23rd impersonated entire divisions. They would move in at night, change insignias, and inflate their rubber decoys. Meanwhile, the troops they were replacing sneaked away. Such deception was a major factor in the success of the Allies' D-Day invasion, as the German 15th Army waited elsewhere for an assault that never came. Today in the Word, November 10, 1991.
Once, when a stubborn disputer seemed unconvinced, Lincoln said, "Well, let's see how many legs has a cow?" "Four, of course," came the reply disgustedly. "That's right," agreed Lincoln. "Now suppose you call the cow's tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?" "Why, five, of course," was the confident reply. "Now, that's where you're wrong," said Lincoln. "Calling a cow's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Bits & Pieces, July, 1991.
You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. A. Lincoln.
Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough. G. K. Chesterton.
One summer morning in the 1920s, a Scotsman names Arthur Ferguson stood idly in London's Trafalgar Square. As he watched, an obviously well-to-do American began admiring the statue of Admiral Lord Nelson and the column it rested on. Struck with a sudden inspiration, Ferguson put his remarkable selling ability to work and "sold" Nelson's column to the American for about $30,000--lions included! Not one to rest on his laurels, Ferguson went on from there to sell the famous clock Big Ben to another American for $5,000 and took $10,000 from yet another as down payment on Buckingham Palace. By the time justice caught up with him, Ferguson had added the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty to the list of his amazing "sales"! He spent several years in prison for his remarkable deceptions. Source Unknown.
It is reported that in the late 1860s, President Ulysses S. Grant gave a cigar to Horace Norton, philanthropist and founder of Norton College. Because of his respect for the President, Norton chose to keep the cigar rather than smoke it. Upon Norton's death, the cigar passed to his son, and later it was bequeathed to his grandson. It was Norton's grandson who in 1932 chose to light the cigar ceremoniously during an oration at Norton College's 70th anniversary celebration. Waxing eloquent, Norton lit the famous cigar and proceeded to extol the many virtues of Grant until...Boom! The renowned cigar exploded! That's right- over sixty years earlier Grant had passed a loaded cigar along to a good friend, and at long last it had made a fool of his friend's grandson! Today in the Word, July, 1989, p. 39.
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