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Thread: A great book for one dollar and a few cents

  1. #1
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    A great book for one dollar and a few cents

    https://smile.amazon.com/This-That-P...n+this+is+that

    It's the story about the life of Aimee Semple McPherson from she was born in 1890 and up until she herself wrote the book in 1919. That was before she founded the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, the Foursquare church organization and before she became famous in secular media. But it was four years into her nationwide revival ministry.

    It is 555 pages long and costs a little over one dollar. If you don't have a Kindle like I do, you can read it on an app they have. The link will direct you to smile.amazon.com where you should select Tehilah's organization Bridges for Peace and they will donate a small percentage of the cost (in this case about a cent but I suppose that is better than nothing, lol)

    I haven't gotten further than her becoming a Pentecostal missionary to China in 1908 but I find the book hugely interesting so far. It also contains 40 sermons and all the photos included in the original paper version.

  2. The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Colonel For This Useful Post:

    Bookman (10-02-2016), curly sue (10-02-2016), fuego (10-02-2016)

  3. #2
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Boy did she love her "gospel auto". It came to be an all-purpose travelling home and pulpit when they weren't holding tent meetings or preaching in churches. The descriptions of how revival set whole towns on fire are riveting. You can read about both in chapter 17.

    The "gospel auto" was a 1912 Packard Touring Car, it looked something like this :


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    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Nice. She drove the Mercedes of her day.

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by fuego View Post
    Nice. She drove the Mercedes of her day.
    Did she preach the prosperity gospel? Wonder if folk criticized her for excesses like they do to certain preachers today. ;)

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    Quote Originally Posted by krystian View Post
    Did she preach the prosperity gospel? Wonder if folk criticized her for excesses like they do to certain preachers today. ;)
    I think they criticized her for other reasons such as several famous people claiming to have intimate encounters with her (the type where clothes were removed) among other things.

    Lot's of info with references can be found at:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Semple_McPherson

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by krystian View Post
    Did she preach the prosperity gospel? Wonder if folk criticized her for excesses like they do to certain preachers today. ;)
    They couldn't have gotten around to the remote towns they visited without a car of that standard. Their standard of living was minimalistic in terms of food and shelter, they apparently took no salaries and the work involved with rigging the huge tents and all the benches that were sent by train was hard.

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    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Farm Truck View Post
    I think they criticized her for other reasons such as several famous people claiming to have intimate encounters with her (the type where clothes were removed) among other things.

    Lot's of info with references can be found at:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimee_Semple_McPherson
    I remember Anthony Quinn when asked by Johnny Carson some people that fascinated him, he mentioned her. Not sure of their relationship though.

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    I've finished reading the first half of the book now, which ends with her making her way from the east coast and to California in the gospel car. I made that trip myself by car in 1999 and the trip through the desert area before reaching California sounded a bit familiar. Maybe a bit more like getting through the interior of Iceland a few years later, the condition of the roads back in 1918 wasn't all that good. She was the first woman to do that actually, to drive from coast to coast in an automobile.
    I find myself getting used to her descriptions of her life and ministry from the vantage point of writing it down in 1919. It's a bit different to when people write about that time at a much later time, whether they did so at the end of their lives or someone else did it after researching the matter.
    Some things startled me a bit, like when clouds of smoke kept passing their home in some factory town in about 1908. A typical industrial revolution thing and only known in third world countries with heavy pollution today. Or when she visits home in about 1910 and her family meets her at the train station including the family's pony, as if any other travelling arrangment would be unusual. And I find myself expecting a car. Or descriptions of problems with segregation in the south leading to their holding an additional "colored camp meeting" where the "colored" barely dared believe that they were allowed to attend. That was very many years before the civil rights movement. Towns being quaranteened or shut down because of an Influenza epidemic and issues related to the ongoing war also sounded a bit unfamiliar. Mentions of a great war makes my mind go World War 2 but this was actually number 1. So the jump from normality to being startled by something that sounds normal to McPherson is abrupt sometimes.

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    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    I read the first sermon now. It is short and it's a matter of pleading with the sinner to be saved from hell and to heaven. To get a new heart and the power to overcome every sin. In my opinion she sounds exactly like Todd White does these days. I could sense the same spirit in the sermon that I can sense in the descriptions of some of her meetings. The sermon probably wouldn't have worked today. It was probably spot on for its time and location though. It would probably have worked better than some of the sermons produced during the great awakenings or by ministers like Wesley or Finney. But the same heart and spirit can be rekindled and be related to people from a different time and culture with the result that the same power will flow.

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    I've mentioned a story about Fidel Castro before. In 1959 he visited America. They tried to install him in a five star hotel but he refused and they had to relocate him to a three star hotel. They tried to have him dine with dignitaries in the main dining hall of the hotel and again he refused and instead he went down into the basement and dined with the hotel staff there. There are photos of this. There are also photos of leaders of the Cuban revolution in uniform doing ordinary labor alongside the common man. Whatever depth or reality there was to this, it didn't last long. It soon turned into yet another totalitarian regime with Castro preaching his own version of correct communism for hours on end to halls full of people who were forced to attend, including to pay attention.

    Somewhere along the trail of the gospel car in this book written 40 years before the Cuban revolution, I spotted something similar. There is no point in telling you where as it can be gleaned from the entirety of the book and it only came together in my head as I arrived at a certain account. They were a bit similar to what Fidel Castro presented himself as while in America. Yes, sister Aimee was the leading figure and God had anointed her for that but beneath that they were all doing the work of the gospel and beneath that again when they weren't arranging things according to what that work necessitated, they were still Pentecostals. Just Pentecostals, that is. I don't know what all that means to you but the Holy Spirit added depth of revelation as I read and arrived at the mentioned account. Several years ago I saw a scene involving Smith Wigglesworth from about 1920 with my own eyes and saw who the man was in a flash. I'd say that the revelation of the early Pentecostals was as powerful. Though I didn't see anything with my eyes this time, I still feel like I was there and present with them for a little while. That is the work of the Holy Spirit, no approach to reading the book could produce that in and of itself.

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