The Bible That Oozed Oil

Hello all.

Just in case anyone else is interested, there is great story in Slate Magazine concerning a hoax involving a miraculous bible that somehow produced hundreds of gallons of oil for the faithful.

However, when tested the oil produced by the bible turned out to be mineral oil. And another remarkable fact is that the very person who was propagating this story about the vast amounts of oil produced by this bible was seen at a local store buying vast amounts of mineral oil.

https://slate.com/human-interest/202...l-miracle.html

The Bible That Oozed Oil

Quote:

in the summer of 2016, God gave Johnny Taylor a prophecy. It wasn’t a specific vision, but something more like a promise. After the presidential election that fall, so the prophecy went, God would begin to “position” Johnny and his group of friends to do great things. Months later, when Donald Trump won—no surprise to Johnny—God provided another message: After the inauguration, he said, “I’ll show you what I’m doing.” ... From then on, more oil appeared almost every time Jerry picked up the Bible, a leather-bound copy of the New King James translation. The oil moved to the back of the book, saturated the endpapers—a heart-shaped splotch appeared over a map of Israel—and then started at the beginning, in Genesis 1. Eventually Jerry had to put the book in a Ziploc bag, and then in a large plastic bin he bought at Tractor Supply. ... The Bible itself was stationed toward the middle of the room, in a wide aisle perpendicular to the stage. It sat on a folding table in its plastic tub, submerged in a few inches of oil. Two small Tupperware containers of oil sat on either side of it, where visitors could dip their fingers. Johnny Ageworth, an old friend of Jerry’s, was among the handful of men unofficially guarding the tub. He said he had handmade the special hinged lid that fit on top of the bin to prevent overeager fans from scooping up the Bible without permission. “When I first saw the [oil-producing] Bible, the Lord said, ‘This is what you’re going to be doing,’ ” Ageworth said. He wore a pendant shaped like a cross, with a vial of the oil embedded in the center. ... Less than a week after I left Dalton, that story changed. First, Leslie posted a notice to the ministry’s website, announcing that the Bible had stopped producing oil on Jan. 10, weeks before I arrived. Because there was no new supply of oil to hand out, the last weekly service at the Wink Theatre would take place on Feb. 11. Then, on Feb. 13—Jerry’s 77th birthday—the same Chattanooga Times Free Press writer who had covered the oil Bible in November reported a bombshell: An anonymous source told the reporter that Jerry Pearce was a regular customer at a nearby Tractor Supply store. And he’d been seen purchasing large containers of clear oil. Two managers at the store “visually identified” Jerry to the reporter and confirmed that he bought “gallons of mineral oil.” This time, a chemical analysis performed for the paper by the University of Tennessee–Chattanooga found that Jerry’s oil was indeed nearly identical in chemical structure to the brand of mineral oil sold at Tractor Supply. When Wyatt Massey, the Times Free Press reporter, questioned Jerry about the evidence after a prayer service in January, Jerry “got pretty upset pretty quickly,” Massey told me. “He scoffed, like, ‘This is crazy, this is stupid.’ ” ...

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