THE BALLAD OF THE TEENAGE QUEEN

"There's a story in our town
Of the prettiest girl around
Golden hair and eyes of blue
How those eyes could flash at you."

(From "The Ballad of the Teenage Queen")

 So goes the first verse of the song, "The Ballad of the Teenage Queen," made popular in 1958. We might use that first verse as a metaphor for those pretty stories that float through our churches in all their sermonic glory. These stories have golden hair and eyes of blue which make them irresistible to the homelitician in a Saturday night search for the inspiring illustration that carries an emotional impact. Here is one of those stories:

"Shortly after Dallas Theological Seminary was founded in 1924, it almost folded. It came to the point of bankruptcy. All the creditors were ready to foreclose at twelve noon on a particular day. That morning, the founders of the school met in the president’s office to pray that God would provide the desperately needed funds to keep the school open. 

 "In that prayer meeting was Harry Ironside. When it was his turn to pray, he said in his refreshingly candid way, 'Lord we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are Thine. Please sell some of them and send us the money.'

"Just about that time, a tall Texan in boots and an open-collar shirt strolled into the business office. “Howdy!” he said to the secretary. 'I just sold two carloads of cattle over in Fort Worth. I’ve been trying to make a business deal go through, but it just won’t work. I feel God wants me to give this money to the seminary. I don’t know if you need it or not, but here’s the check,' and he handed it over.

"The secretary took the check and, knowing something of the critical nature of the hour, went to the door of the prayer meeting. and timidly tapped. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder and president of the school, answered the door and took the check from her hand. When he looked at the amount, it was for the exact sum of the debt. Then he recognized the name on the check as that of the cattleman. Turning to Dr. Ironside, he said, 'Harry, God sold the cattle.'” 

The story is lovely; it qualifies because of its hair of gold and eyes of blue. Irresistible to the max. However, it's a glurge. It's been circulated all over Christendom from pulpit to pulpit. The problem is, it's a fabrication. (The one part that is true is that Chafer, having stubbornly copied the financial policies of George Mueller, had driven the school into a huge debt that left faculty members unpaid and creditors knocking at the door.) 

 According to a 1978 letter from Dr. John F. Walvoord, in answer to an inquiry regarding this story, he dispelled the answer to this prayer as saving the day at DTS and set the record straight. He wrote:

"Actually, he (Dr.Ironside) made a remark about the cattle on a thousand hills belonging to the Lord and he hoped that someone would donate cattle to the seminary. Out of this, however, the seminary received one steer which was used in our dining room to help feed our students. I was not there at the time, but I understand that this was the response. It had nothing to do with paying off our debt, as the story was told.

"The story was circulated around the country, and in the process of circulation it accumulated some additional points that were not exactly correct." 

There are stories like that and they're glurges--stories such as the football player and his blind father in the bleachers, NASA's computers and Joshua's longest day, the atheist professor and the failure of the dropped beaker (or chalk) to break, and the camel's going through the Camel Gate in Jerusalem. 

The telling of these stories that sound too good to be true, once discovered to be fallacious, put a dent in the speaker's credibility, what Aristotle said was one of the three essential traits a persuasive speaker must have, his ethos. 

So the moral is that there are enough true stories of faith and prayer moving mountains that we ought not give skeptics glurge tales which can be easily discredited. Before repeating such stories, check them out as best you can.