112 thoughts on “The Day and the Hour (A Timely Sermon)”

1. I guess it doesn’t count if you’re cleaning your own bathroom, only the church’s. Check. The fundy notion that you’re ONLY serving God when you’re serving the church is something that has long rankled with me.

2. Where are the rambling anecdotes?

   That would be a good way to stretch this thing out into an hour long sermon. (Which would totally not waste another hour of anyone’s time.)

   1. I thought about it but it was already tl;dr so I didn’t. 🙂

      1. If the Canadian rhythm is anything like rock and roll rhythm, you have at least a fifteen minute diversion right there.

      2. It’s supposed to be ‘circadian rhythm’ it amused me to make the speaker fail at trying to come up with “science” to back up his point.

         1. Actually, any good ol’ southern preacher worth his salt (or any good ol’ northern preacher slavishly imitating the good ol’ southern preachers of yore) would call it the “cicadian rhythm” and get all misty eyes about growing up on the cotton fields of Mississippi and getting up early with his daddy to chop cotton and sing the hymns of the Lord to the accompaniment of the cicadas (a diversion is allowed here for the preacher to mock global warming because he still hears the cicadas every summer) and how daylight savings time represents the breakdown of the family and some of you teenagers need to remember that and go hug your mommas and daddies..

         2. I caught that and was going to ask if the discoverer of the “Canadian” rhythm had been knighted – “Sir Canadian”

         3. Oooh, cicadian rhythm. Love it. We had one of those dang 17-year cycles last year. Those critters were absolutely thunderous!! :p

         4. The “Canadian rhythm” part got a genuin LOL out of me…

3. First, since Macushalondra didn’t claim it?

   1. I was first a couple times a few years ago so it’s no longer a big thrill for me. It’s all yours if you want it. But maybe I cheated, I didn’t read the whole post, just skimmed it and my eyes lit on that part about cleaning the church’s bathroom.

4. There are actually a few “pastors” that I’ve listened to, and attended their churches, that could totally pull this off. Sadly many of their congregations would probably agree 100%

5. It was a little tl;dr but all good sermons are, hay-men?

6. And all God’s people said, ” woe is me!”

   1. PLUS 100

7. I thought this could have been a legit sermon until I saw “But let us hasten on.”

   No real IFB pastor hastens on. Blasphemy.

   1. True. When I was a pastor, it didn’t become a sermon until the 48 minute mark. Anything less was just an admonition. Or, God forbid, one of them liberal “homilies,” God forbid.

      1. I’ve found that the ten to fifteen minute sermons I have heard in my Episcopal parish have generally had more impact on me than the hours (or more) I spent listening to someone berate me at high volume. Economy of speech, and good writing will do it…

8. Haymen brutha – I woke up this morning and did not have a sermon for today. I want to express my grateful thanks to you for posting this as it will be my sermon for today.

   I will give you credit for the outline as I never want to be accused of plagiarism, but that’s all you will get credit for as I need to impress upon my folks how qualified I am at taking other preachers outlines and making a sermon out of them.

   I trust you will post another sermon next week as I have a lot of tv shows to catch up on this week and will probably not have time to prepare next week’s sermon.

   Haymen!

9. Fine preachin’ this morning, Pastor Doctor Darrell. Now that’s the way to bring the fire down! The convicting power of the Lord was at work. It’s such a blessing to sit under the ministry of a Man of God that ain’t afraid to speak the truth to the secular humanist liberals.

   Now, this ain’t meant for a correction, for God forbid I ever speak a word against God’s Man, but this mighta been a little too deep for some of our folks. Maybe next time we could have more stories and less of these here science facts?

   1. And I see some of our other dear members have already put in a request for more stories. Honestly, Pastor Doctor, we come here to hear the stories. I don’t mean to play the Prophet Nathan to your King David, but thou art the man, and we ain’t really interested in science facts.

      1. He could’ve told the story about the woman who, due to daylight savings time, tarried in bed for an extra hour. As she sped to her IFB church with her small children in the car, she was struck by another speeding vehicle. Sadly, her children all perished in the crash. She was badly burned, but survived. Had she listened to The Lord and prioritized Sunday School attendance, well…

         1. Oh yeah, that’s the one. The old Disobedient Christian Loses Family in Bloody Crash story. That’s always good for a few rededications at the altar. And, for the children in the audience, good for a few decades (or perhaps an entire lifetime if the pastor is skillful enough to manipulate that fear on a weekly basis) of fear-driven religion. What a blessing!

            It’s understandable, though, that His Worthiness Pastor Darrell didn’t include these stories in today’s sermon. He was obviously striving for a more intellectual approach. As God’s Anointed, he’s allowed to show off his vast store of knowledge every once in a while.

      2. Haymen! Brother Nico! Let’s be sure we keep the honey on the bottom shelf! All that intellectual and scientific stuff is just gonna confuse folks and lead to nothing but trouble.

10. Nice three point sermon! It looks very familiar. Love the thematic thing with each point, that is just how our pastor used to do it 🙂

11. I’m curious as to what the sermon would be in the fall when we live a 25 hour day? Would it be targeted @ science…or @ the people for wasting it on sleep & other frivolity:)?

    1. Both! Unless the preacher decides that the extra hour is a blessing from God.

       1. God annointed the extra hour to remind us of Joshua 10:12-14. 😉

12. Darrell, you are far too good at that. +1 for “Canadian rhythm”.

13. Darrell, you did a fine job. Let’s go through the checklist.

    1. Alliteration — check
    2. Using Scripture as a garnish — check
    (note: this involves slicing, dicing, and arranging small bits and pieces of Scripture in the sermon to give an impression that the Sermon is Scriptural without actually having any Scripture in context in it! You had one whole verse, which is a gracious plenty, though!)
    3. Guilt trip — check
    4. Unfounded assertions — check
    5. Numerous Logical Fallacies — check
    6. Idiotic political ramblings — check
    7. Conflating Satan’s titles with God’s titles — check
    (And cleverly done, dear boy! Provides a nice bit of authenticity, what? And how many preachers actually pay attention to this sort of thing anyway?)
    8. Getting the facts wrong, and using them in an irrelevant way anyway. (Canadian rhythm v. Circadian rhythm. Wow.) – check
    9. Railing at the people who are listening to the sermon as if they weren’t there listening to it – check
    10. Adding anecdotal fluff – check
    11. Put-downs of science and technology, including the use of instruments having nothing to do with the subject at hand. (Seismographs! Nice going!) – check
    12. Finishing up with an altar call – check

    I’d like to add that counting the number of times an English word is found in the KJV was a nice touch. How many times do you think the word “and” is used? God really must love conjunctions!

    But there were, sadly, a few flaws.

    1. You did not mention how faithful you, the Pastor, the Man of God (wait, THE MAN OF GOD — that’s better), have been. No decent fundy sermon is complete without the obligatory contortionary patting of oneself on the back.

    2. You also did not speak a word about giving. Oh, I know there are several who don’t preach about giving in every service. But those pastors have smaller churches. You want to have a large congregation, right?

    3. You could have taken the opportunity to shame those who came in late. After all, they were not “redeeming the time”!

    So, all in all, a good job. You get a B.

    1. Thank you. You are very kind. 🙂

    2. How dare ye correct the Man of God!!!!!

    3. Here’s the hymn for the altar call:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC0Qt1lvLq8

14. I have been blessed Brother Doctor Pastor Darrell. What a way to shake that bush. What a way to waste a congregation’s time. If it only so true.

    Do we get another sermon next Sunday?

    1. No promises. 😉

15. I didn’t hear a thing about what how TIME should be spent on SUNDAY evenings and WEDNESDAY evenings (three to THRIVE… which rhymes with TIME !!! ) Also, soul-winning TIME.
    The choir could have sung, “Have you any TIME for Jay-sus”
    I also missed hearing the pulpit thumps with “look up here, look up here.”

16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVUrTftBl2U

17. Well done, Dr. Darrell! I blame Benjamin Franklin. No, really–Benjamin Franklin.

    1. Most people don’t know this but he was kidding.
       He was a real smart-___ and his little essays were often jokes masquerading as ideas. He would have loved “The Onion.”

       He was a great guy!

       1. “He was a great guy!”

          Not according to Mark Twain:

          [Franklin’s] maxims were full of animosity toward boys. Nowadays a boy cannot follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin on the spot. If he buys two cents’ worth of peanuts, his father says, “Remember what Franklin has said, my son–‘A groat a day’s a penny a year'”; and the comfort is all gone out of those peanuts. . . . And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural rest, because Franklin said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity: “Early to bed and early to rise / Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.” As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms. . . .If [my parents] had let me take my natural rest where would I have been now? Keeping store, no doubt, and respected by all.

          Of course, Twain was a master satirist and was having a little fun at Franklin’s expense. Like Franklin, Twain also would have loved The Onion! 🙂 All kidding aside, I agree with you about Franklin’s brilliance. Quite incredible. And he was very good at self-promotion.

          1. I wouldn’t be surprised if ol’ Ben found himself agreeing with Mr. Twain, “You’re the first man who actually figured out the truth!” 😉

18. I love the detail at the end of point 1 “but let us hasten on”. Speaker must’ve seen some faces that were indicating they realized he was far askew, and it’s time to abandon that ship and move onto something they won’t catch onto! 🙂

19. Finally a fundy sermon I agree with, at least mostly. I hate losing an hour I could have used. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m almost sure that Daylight Savings Time is Obama’s fault. Almost all bad or inconvenient things can be blamed on him.

    1. You can do better than that – you need to have some grand Chick-esque theory of how Daylight Savings time was invented by ISLAMS so they could all time their prayers to Mecca or something like that.

       1. Not Islams, THE VATICAN! Remember, it’s from St.Peters that every social evil known to Fundy Man originates!

          1. Yeah but the Vatican founded Islam anyway, so it all fits.

       2. Of course let’s not forget that Romish Gregorian Calendar which Protestant Great Britain , along with her colonies and possessions, bravely withstood until 1752. Naturally piffling excuses were given for the eventual shameful compromise– things like accuracy and international trade, I think.

          By the way, since according to the godly Julian Calendar it’s only February 26th, I call “First!”

20. I hate, hate, hate Daylight Savings, springing forward, falling back. I pledge my full support to any presidential candidate who promises to end this ridiculous practice. I don’t care if he/she is a communist, in a mental ward, and Presbyterian. (Can you tell I had to get up early?)

    This parody, though, was hilarious. Snorted soft drink out the nose at the invitational hymn.

21. My great-grandmother truly believed this. Daylight savings time was meddling with God’s time and was thoroughly unnatural. She refused to change her clocks, according to my mother, but apparently still managed to get everywhere on time, so I’m not sure what all the complaining was about except for show.

    1. Whoops, the HTML tags got away from me there.

22. Darrell, I spent twenty two years in that IBF mess, am a Midwestern Baptist College graduate and ordained minister. Thank God HE brought me out of it. It has been 27 years since my last ibf involvement..with Cornerstone Baptist Church and the great Doctor Dean Miller. I was fooled BADLY by your piece and can ASSURE you that this would make “good preachin” in ibf churches across our land. You did miss a great point and should have tied into the sun standing still in Joshua’s day and the NASA scientist who “,found the missing day on his computer, believed the Bible and became a Christian. Btw, I will never get an honorary doctorate from MBC because, since 1988, I have been a devout Five point Calvinist

    1. Thanks Dennis–I had forgotten about this Missing Day gem. When I got older and more inquisitive I found out that tall tales like this one and the one about how men have one less rib than women were untrue. I was not only irritated, I was embarrassed that I had been so stupid to believe it.

       Note to IFB preachers: Kids nowadays don’t need an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica to check up on your “facts.” Might be time to dispose of the played-out tall tales that have been faithfully handed down by your worthy forebears.

       1. I remember hearing the rib thing when I was quite young, and immediately counting my ribs (I was skinny). I immediately knew it was balderdash, and anyway, men don’t have lopsided ribcages.

          1. Ah, counting the ribs to see if these things be so. I did that as well and, like you, found an equal number on each side. But then I thought that to really prove my theory I need to count the ribs of a female, so I thrust forth my hand to the nearest likely candidate to do my research. Big Glenda didn’t appreciate my efforts and roundly condemned me with her fists.

             I concluded that not only do women have the same number of ribs as men, they can also hit just as hard.

          2. Glenda sounds like an angry woman who could not understand true scientific research.

          3. She seemed fine until I started, as she loudly put it, “feeling her up.” She spoke with the voice of a trumpet blast, or like the sound of many waters. Everyone was immediately aware of my flawed research methods.

             My motives were pure, my methods not well considered. That’s what I get for trying to use observation, investigation , and experiment to verify the bible.

          4. nico, you sure her name wasn’t Bertha?

             “She was a big woman. BIG woman. Her name was Bertha. Bertha Butt. She was one of the Butt sisters. He didn’t care. He looked up at her and said: “Sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me!”. She looked down on him. She was ready to crush him, but she began to like him.”

             From The Jimmy Castor Bunch, “Troglodyte” (1972)

          5. I also remember thinking at the time that if Adam was created with a full set of ribs and had one removed artificially, then it would be illogical to presume that his offspring would also lack a rib. That would be as silly as an amputee spawning a race of one-legged men. And if the defect was passed down, why only to the males? I was very rebellious.

          6. Dr. Fundystan, this kind of scientific thinking is spiritually dangerous and will lead to accepting all kinds of wickedness.

             If you want to understand genetics, the VERY teaching of the bible is clear. For example, if you want ringstraked, specked, and spotted traits in your cattle, you just take green rods of poplar, hazel, and chesnut and carve appropriate designs in them. Plant them in front of the cattle’s watering troughs. When the bulls get frisky and mount the cows or heifers, they will look on the rods at the moment of bovine bang-bang, thereby conceiving calves with the desired traits (Genesis 30). Easy-peasy.

             It is not out of the question that Adam could pass down a missing-rib gene to his male (but not female) offspring. I mean, he passed down the guilt of his sin to all of us, so why not a missing rib?

          7. Rebellious, as in actually doing some thinking and not just accepting every bit of rot fed to you? Then I suppose I was, too.

          8. Goldangit. Just double-checked my references. The cattle in question were sheep and goats, not cows. The “bovine bang-bang” should be sheep shenanigans.

          9. Ovine bang-bang.

          10. I think the local Panda Garden had Ovine Bang-Bang at last Saturday’s buffet, in between the Chicken Kung-Pow and the Shark Nest Soup.

          11. Be careful eating that furriner food–it might cause you to have non-American heathen babies. “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?”

              Behold! I speak with the authority of a Man of God. If thou puttest the evil thing into thy belly, thy loins will heave with “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.”

              As Christians, we should be able to proudly say with Peter: “Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean.”

          12. Well, every 4th baby born in the world is Chinese, so you can never be too careful.

              Also, proper dumplings (including the heavenly pierogi, and lets not forget the Samosa – meat filled varieties only of course) are free of leaven (even the leaven of the pharisees) and so can and should be consumed with gusto. After all God has given us all things freely to enjoy (with MSG and the throat clenching slime of an egg drop soup. ) [Amplified]

          13. Ah, nicely done, Captain! In refuting my Scripture with Scripture, you’ve hit upon the Grand Unified Theory of Fundyism: The bible is its own best interpreter. (Perhaps this is more like the Theory of Subjective Circular Reasoning, but whatever.)

              This rather simple-sounding statement belies its complexity and contradictions. It purports to bring the Very Word of God (KJV 1611), the spirit-led-God-called-irrefutable understanding of the MoG, and the entire existence of Every Thing into a well-defined whole–no loose strands, no need for questions, no reason to doubt, no gray areas (Wash Away the Gray!) no errors that must be corrected, never say “I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

              At any rate, I rely on this theory to heap your refutation back on your own pate, like coals of fire. As a certified and ordained MoG I have just as much a right to make a fool of myself as the next MoG. 🙂

          14. Fundamentalists’ Unified Grand & Glorious Interpretive Theory, or

              FUGGIT

          15. 🙂 to infinity!

          16. Cap’n Solo sez:
              “Well, every 4th baby born in the world is Chinese, so you can never be too careful.”

              I think my cousin Leroy must have heard that, because he named his babies Melvin, Mary Louise, Elmer, and Shing Lo Pao.

23. I think I have heard many MOG’s with legitimate doctorates from Basement Bible Institute preach this exact same sermon.

    Eternal shame on Darrell for stealing their sermon and then using it as a mockery….although he preached it the same as they….

24. Great Sermon, except you forgot to criticize and embarrass those who dared to walk in an hour late.

25. This week the BackStory podcast was on the history of time zones & time change. They said that and time society has tampered with time (adding zones to make time more uniform or adding time change for whatever stupid reason they did it), religious zealots preached hard against it. They acted incredulous, but it didn’t surprise me one bit.

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHkrpKYehcI

26. This is not a joke that anyone in the IBF would understand, but our Methodist pastor shared it this morning:

    Daylight Savings Sunday is marked by a congregation full of grumpy Christians who just started giving up caffeine for Lent right before they had to get up an hour earlier for church!

    1. Last year our deacon forgot and showed up after we’d begun communion. Very red-faced, too.

27. I’d also add that a fundy I know recently informed me that images of the sun on sundials are images of Baal. This idea is rooted in the now-thoroughly disproven theory that Baal was a sun-god. But, like everything else, fundies even prefer their godless scientific research to be about five decades behind the times.

    1. I would have thought that the literature of Ras Shamra discovered in 1929 would have laid the sun god idea to rest. Of course, the fundys would need to read the Ugaritic myths to know that. And heaven forbid that they actually learn to read the literature in Ugaritic.

       1. Isn’t Ugaritic, like ancient Greek, the language of Egypt!?! 😯

          1. Yes, like the music of Egypt.

28. Heeheehee, this was fantastic.
    Though I do hate Daylight Savings Time. Or maybe I wish we were in Daylight Savings Time all the time. Look, you try seeing how dark and awful and cold it gets by 4;00 in the afternoon in the middle of December! GAH.

    1. I lived at 71 degrees north latitude for 11 years. You speak the truth about the dark & cold.

       1. Gee, 71 degrees north latitude! That’s about 300 miles north of the arctic circle, isn’t it? The winters up there must have been almost unBarrowble.

29. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

    Source well known.

    B.R.O.

30. Here in New Mexico it is said regarding Daylight Savings Time: A wise Native American Elder has said “Only white people could think that you and can cut six inches off the top of a blanket,
    sew it onto the bottom of the blanket and think that you have a longer blanket.”

    1. Yes, that about sums it up.

31. DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
    When told the reason for daylight savings time the Old Indian said, “Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket.”

    Contributed by Ernie Salgado Jr. from http://www.theindianreporter.com/blogs/stand_alones/

    It’s not just the white man anymore!

    B.R.O.

    1. Whether the end of the blanket is the top or the bottom, its still capable of infecting you with smallpox – (insert government vaccination conspiracy theory here)

32. Definitely.
    Any preposterous statement of “fact” should be punctuated with “You won’t hear this at any other church.”

33. The sad thing is I have actually heard a sermon on this topic and this sermon was not that far off. In with their sermon was how working 3rd shift allowed the devil in your life (men love darkness rather than light right?). I remember a guy quitting his job at the alter that night because he worked 3rd shift.

    When I invite friends to look at this site who were never fundies, they laugh and say “they really don’t do that do they?” Yes, yes they do….

34. Here’s a little clock-setting music for my peeps:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN5T1caDWBI

35. Dear Stuff Fundies Like Reader:

    AN HOUR WE COULD HAVE SPEND PRAYING.

    AN HOUR WE COULD HAVE SPENT WITNESSING

    AN HOUR WE COULD HAVE SPENT PREPARING A SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON.

    AN HOUR WE COULD HAVE SPENT CLEANING A CHURCH BATHROOM.

    AN HOUR WE COULD HAVE INVESTED IN ETERNITY IS NOW GONE IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE.

    And when the clock goes back so we gain an hour, that would mean ….??????

    Christian Socialist

    1. It means those church toilets had better SHINE, brother, SHIIINNE like Gabriel’s trumpet, or the Man-O-gid’s shiny sharp SHoes, that gid-given extra hour means those toilets are going to SHINE can Ah gets a HAY-men, people?

    2. C.S. :

       AN EXTRA HOUR WE WILL SPEND PRAYING.

       AN EXTRA HOUR WE WILL SPEND WITNESSING.

       AN EXTRA HOUR A LAYMAN WILL SPEND PREPARING A SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON.

       AN EXTRA HOUR A LAYMAN WILL SPEND CLEANING A CHURCH BATHROOM.

       AN EXTRA HOUR WE WILL INVEST IN ETERNITY IS GIVEN TO US IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE.

       Can I hear a hearty “Haymen?!”

36. We have no stinkin’ daylight savings in Saskatchewan. Because (and this is quite true – people said it!), introducing it would confuse the cows.

    Udder confusion, I guess…

    1. Folks said exactly the same thing in Indiana, for many years.

       1. Isn’t Indiana the place where some counties go on Daylight Saving Time and some counties don’t, so the clock keeps flipping back and forth as you drive across the state?

          1. Arizona has it right.

37. I will never make a good fundy. I wonder about things like “if god created the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day to mark the days and the the seasons and the years, how did he know when the first, second and third day ended?

    I recall some years ago when the time change occurred on Easter Sunday. The pastor (who did not avail himself of worldly news services) was startled to arrive and find that the congregation was leaving the sunrise service and wondering why the h*!! he wasn’t there yet!

38. We Arizonans don’t do daylight savings, so I guess we’re doing something right! (We’re holier than you, nanny-nanny boo-boo!)
    Seriously, I liked the Canadian rhythm. The Arrogant Worms has that! But here, in Arizona, we have the Cicadian rhythm, that was mentioned earlier in the comments.

    1. I give you 5 extra points for the “nanny-nanny boo-boo!”

       1. Scooping up the field mice and boppin’ ’em on the head!

39. The only thing better than that sermon is:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8

    1. I think they took those lyrics from some of my freshman students’ essays.

40. This post actually gave me creepy, guilty, throwback deja vu. :^(

41. ♫Sweet Hour of……♫ oooops

42. Ok. Very funny post and I got a good laugh out of it. But is there any basis for the IFB to object to the time changes?

    1. Sister, fundies don’t need no basis. All they need is a conviction.

       1. You misunderstood my post. What I was asking was,”Does the IFB really make an issue out of the annual transitions to and from DST? (I used to work in an office that included an IFBer, and I never heard hime voice any objection. Maybe he was backslidden?

          1. Oh, I knew what you were asking, I was just having a little fun. 🙂

             I’ve never heard an IFB pastor preach against DST, but it is definitely not out of the question. Each pastor, as the divinely appointed Man of God, has the right to raise his individual preferences, convictions, fancies, dreams, interpretations, and moods to the level of gospel (hence my comment). So if DST pisses off a pastor enough, sure thing you’re going to hear about it that Sunday!

       2. Sister, fundies don’t need no basis. All they need is a conviction.

          True. But many of them need to be convicted and put away.

43. Today’s newspaper included an article about art created by human beings 10,000 years ago. I guess that’s not congruent with the fundy timeline? Perhaps I sinned by reading it?

44. But you forget… We will spend that extra hour next fall! 🙂 Think of it as a time investment into our future… we don’t waste it now, so that we can waste it in the fall…

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