46 thoughts on “Reader Submitted Photo: Sword of The Lord”

  6. I read lots of these when I was going to fundy churches. I remember seeing all the ads for churches with great big photos of the pastor.

    The most I remember from actually reading it is how this one preacher was talking about how he almost put his coffee in the microwave for 40 minutes, and had to call his wife to show him how to fix it. Surprised he admitted he needed his wife to show him how to do something, but I guess since it was kitchen work, and that was her place anyway, it was OK.

    1. If she’d have been there to do her wimmins work, he wouldn’t have had to heat his own coffee.

  8. My father tried to buy a subscription for me. I was like nooooooooooooooooooo!!

  10. We use the leftovers from our church–pretty much all of them sent–as kindling paper in the fireplace. No one seems to know who ordered them they just started showing up.

    I may have mentioned this once before, but in the words of Grouch Marx, “If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me. I want to hear it again.”
    Anyway–A veteran missionary pilot at our church picked one up and said, “Huh. I think i read this exact issue twenty years ago.” Since pretty much all of the sermons are from dead guys, he possibly did.

    1. They have to find ways to keep their circulation up somehow. This is true for practically every publication out there these days, of course, but I have heard that SOTL has severely lost subscribers over the last decade or so.

  13. Ugh…I saw the ad for their “Ladies’ Jubilee”. Worst.Ladies.Conference.Ever. They treat women like juveniles and expect them to be happy about it. I remember when they literally crowned a queen and her court (reward to pastor’s wives who brought the most ladies from their church to the conference).

    How shallow is that?

    🙄

    1. I have horrific memories of those ladies conferences. You’re spot on that they treat women as children. The last one I went to in 2002 they actually expected the ladies of all ages to sing the insipid garbage they have the children at VBS sing including all the motions. I was like you have to be kidding! We drove 2 hours for this?

      The food was cold too, freezing cold lasagna. If they couldn’t keep it warm they should’ve just served us sandwiches.

      And the teaching/preaching, and don’t tell me it’s not preaching, all from shrill voiced women preaching the fundy party line on submission, and all the usual guilt trips about how you don’t measure up. 👿

        1. Oh, but it is so much FUN, dontcha know? It always amazed me what these women thought women enjoyed. Marlene Evans was the most out of touch woman I ever MET, and yet she thought she knew EVERYTHING about what women liked, wanted and needed. I don’t know who planned these things or why, but they never EVER came CLOSE to anything I ever liked, wanted or needed. And in my years since I have been out, I have met more women who HATED them than EVER liked them. Phoney women, fake fun, waste of time, waste of money, bad food, bad doctrine, kiss-ups kissing up. Yeah, that sure is how *I* want to spend a weekend. (Oh, and PAY for the privelige)

        2. If you haven’t seen it, check out the promotional video (somewhere in the SFL archives) of Cindy Schaap advertising one of those Ladies’ Conferences. It’s eerily reminiscent of those tapes that hostages are forced to make at gunpoint, where they say, “I’m fine and I am being treated well. Please do what these nice people say.”

  14. They always talk about how vain women are but the pictures of the preachers of the sermons (always 3 on the front page) are from when they were young. Then they’d come to our church and you didn’t recognize them because they had aged. Was it so hard to update their pictures? I guess since they preached the same messages over and over since they were young they thought they should just keep the same pictures.

    I remember being subscribed to this and they would multiply like rabbits and be set aside til you had quite a pile of them. They became a fire hazard. Too bad I didn’t think of using them as kitty litter, but I wouldn’t want my kitty to be a fundy. 🙄

  17. As the human servant of 4 cats, I can tell you a 28-lb bucket of TidyCat can’t cover the stink in that paper.

  18. This is the kind of thing that drives Kitty to Cat-nip.

    **Ohhhhh, we’re all going to suffer some terrible CATastrophe for making mockery of the most scared SOTL writings.**

      1. I can’t speak for Don but perhaps he meant ‘scaredy-cat’.

        The editor, in the Noteworthy News section, does seem to tend towards scared writings. Everybody and everything is out to get him.

      2. On further review… the call on the field stands. The writer did mean to say sacred. 😉

        but since most SOTL writing is IFB propaganda, opinion and legalism the term scared is also going to be allowed since it conveys the judgmental spirit of the publication much more accurately. 🙄

        Automatic First Down!

  20. Reminds me of the old Robin William’s joke, “I used the National Enquirer to line the cat box and now my cat won’t crap in there. He just looks at me and say, ‘That would be redundant.'” 😆

  21. only Revival Fires would be worse…
    They once printed a “sermon” where the guy claimed you can get AIDS from toilet seats. That did it for me even back then, I cancelled the subscription.
    so idiotic 🙄
    What would fundies preach about if they weren’t allowed to preach against stuff?

    1. Whenever you make up cool stories, I think it’s wise to draw the line at actually giving out bad medical advice.

  22. I have called this paper “The Butter knife of the Lord” for about 20 years.

    Now with my disdain for this paper known, I shall make a slight complaint.

    As many faults as these men have, they are plenty, Christ crucified for our sins is proclaimed, even on the front page of one of the papers in the photo.

    As much as it pains me to say this, you might want to rethink this one.

    1. Maybe not, prchrbill. How many, except those in fundy churches, have ever read those words? They probably do like most of us do: “SOTL! Run away!”

      The message is ineffective when it’s wrapped in garbage.

  23. I have a Unitarian(!) minister friend who, in his previous life as a fundie, knew John R. Rice and said that for all his separatist bluster, he was a very gracious man in person, and a man of genuine spiritual depth who loved God and understood the power of prayer. I thought that was quite a statement, given the source. My friend has no use for fundamentalism in general.

    1. I suspect that with some MOG, this is true. But put them in front of a church and it is another person. Bi-polar to the MAX.

      1. Yup. My old mog is a ‘nice man’. This means that when he, in his role as pastor, makes terrible decisions that destroy lives, and teaches horrible lies from the pulpit, nobody is willing to challenge or correct him. He is a ‘nice man’, so he must have good intentions, regardless of the fruit of those intentions. It just means that more damage is done in the long term.

        Not all nice men are good pastors.

  24. Is there a site that I can sign up to get this free? It is the perfect size for my cat litter box.

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