7 Sermon Illustrations on Power Of Words

"I don't want to hear naughty words," said little Charlie to one of his school-fellows. "It does not signify," said the other boy: "they go in at one ear, and out at the other."—"No," replied Charlie. "The worst of it is, when naughty words get in they stick; so I mean to do my best to keep them out."

In many words, there is often much fencing, but no weapons wherewith the enemy is wounded; there is much running, but no chariot that winneth the race; much seemeth to be said, but it is an empty moving of the tongue: and, if there be any item of worth in a multitude of words, it is by chance, as, when a blind man shooteth many arrows, perhaps one may be near the mark.

— Spencer

A single word is often like a switch on a railroad, which, although it is a point almost too fine to be seen, yet is sufficient, when turned, to change the course of the train from one track to another, and perhaps from one road to another. Single words have often switched men off from bad courses, or off from good ones, as the case may be.

[This hoax was genuine but its claimed effect was not. The bored newspaper reporters did come up with a fake story, and printed it, to see what would happen. Sure enough, many newspapers republished them as fact. But the hoax did not spark the Boxer Rebellion, which had already started by the time the articles came out; the Chinese did not seem to be aware of the articles. See the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China_hoax. I thank Mike Lim of Manila, Philippines, for bringing this to my attention.]

The power of the tongue.

In 1899 four newspaper reporters from Denver, Colorado, set out to tear down the Great Wall of China. They almost succeeded. Literally. The four met by chance on a Saturday night in a Denver railway station. They represented the four main newspapers of Denver, and the editors had sent them out to dig up a story for the Sunday editions. They were each at the railway station hoping to snag a visiting celebrity. To their mutual frustration, no celebrities showed up.

One of them declared that he was going to make up a story and hand it in. The other three reporters laughed. They went over to a hotel to have a beer. One said he liked the idea of faking a story. Why not have each of them do it? And instead of four fake stories, why not one huge one? They had another round of beers.

A phony domestic story would be too easy to check on, so they thought up a foreign story. China was distant enough, so they agreed to write about China. One of them came up with the story: A group of American engineers stopped in Denver enroute to China. The Chinese gov't had decided to tear down the Great Wall. The Americans were bidding on it. The rationale, one asked? The wall is being torn down to symbolize international goodwill. And to welcome foreign trade. Thoroughly sloshed, the reporters left the hotel.

The four papers all carried the story. On the front page. The Denver Times trumpeted: “GREAT CHINESE WALL DOOMED! PEKING SEEKS WORLD TRADE!” It was phony, but other papers across America picked it up. Then those around the world. When the Chinese themselves learned that the Americans were sending a demolition crew to tear down their national monument, most were indignant. Others were enraged.

Particularly incensed were the members of a secret society, a group of Chinese patriots that despised foreign influence. Inspired by the story, they exploded in revolt. They attacked the embassies in Peking and slaughtered hundreds of missionaries throughout the country. Within two months, 12,000 foreign troops invaded China to protect their citizens. The bloodshed which followed, sparked by a journalistic hoax invented in a barroom in Denver, became the international incident known to every high school student as the BOXER REBELLION.

The power of the word! Nations have risen and fallen to the tongue. Lives have been inspired and cast down by the tongue. The tiny tongue is a mighty force in human life indeed.

#2680

========================

Another version from sermon by Nathan Buttery:

In 1899, four newspaper reporters, Al Stevens, Jack Tournay, John Lewis and Hal Wilshire, met by accident at a railway station one Saturday night in Denver in the USA. They were reporters for four different Denver newspapers and they had been sent out to dig up a story for the Sunday editions. All four of them happened to meet at the station, because that's where the news in those days was to be found. By the end of the evening, none of them had found anything worthy of a news story. One of them joked he would make up a story and the rest liked the idea, so they went off to a hotel to have a drink and discuss the idea. It was decided that instead of having four different stories, they should try and think up a whopper of story which all four newspapers could carry. It could not be an American story, since it would be all too easy to check up on. It would have to be a story about somewhere far away, where no one could check. And then, John Lewis came up with the idea. They would write that a group of American engineers were stopping the night in Denver en route to China. The Chinese government, they would say, is planning to pull down the Great Wall of China, and these American engineers are bidding for the job. Why would the Chinese want to pull down the Great Wall? To symbolize international good will and to welcome foreign trade. So the story was set. The next morning the Denver Times carried this headline: “Great Chinese Wall Doomed! Peking Seeks World Trade!” It was a phony story, but it was to have devastating effects. The next week, the story was taken up by the major American newspapers, and then by newspapers abroad. The Chinese discovered that the Americans were planning to send to a crew to destroy the Great Wall and some were enraged. One group of revolutionaries were so enraged that they attacked foreign embassies in Peking, and killed foreign missionaries. Within two months, and international army of 12,000 troops joined forces and invaded China to protect their own countrymen. The bloodshed which followed became known as the Boxer Rebellion, in which many lost their lives, all started by four journalists in Denver making up a story on a Saturday night over a few drinks.

___________________________

Several pastors have written me [David Holwick] asking if the story of the four reporters is true. I believe the current form of the story originated with Paul Harvey; it is found in Paul Aurandt, ed., “More of Paul Harvey's the Rest of the Story” (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), pp. 136-138.

Some websites suspect it is a hoax (www.museumofhoaxes.com/wallchina.html) but this history site by Charles Scott Kimball, a Christian, says it was a factor in instigating the rebellion:

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/china/ch06.html#Boxer

THE BOXER REBELLION

A few forward-looking individuals saw that the only way to save China was to imitate the ways of the West, as the Japanese had done. But most Chinese felt that road could only lead to disaster. What was the point in saving China, they argued, if it meant throwing away everything that had made China great previously? As a result, the first attempts at reform were done halfheartedly. Then the reformers found a sympathetic ear in the young emperor, Guangxu. In 1898 he gave them a free hand by authorizing a “Hundred Days of Reform.” They did so with a flood of announcements that thoroughly alarmed everyone who valued traditional institutions. Plans were made to establish a constitutional monarchy, a public school system, a free press, and elected local governments. The civil service examinations were modified to include Western learning as well as the Confucian classics. The army, navy, and bureaucracy were all marked for modernization.

All this was too much for the emperor's ruthless and reactionary aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi. Her chief general, Yuan Shikai, imprisoned Guangxu, and all of the reforms were promptly undone; the money set aside to build a new navy was used to build a new palace instead!

This reactionary backlash caused an upswing in xenophobia all over China. Secret societies formed to plot against the Manchus, the “foreign devils,” or both. The most famous of these was a group of anti-Western fanatics that called themselves the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, loosely translated as Boxers. The Boxers wore red scarves on their heads bearing the Chinese word for happiness, a red coat of arms on their chests, and red bands on their wrists and ankles; they practiced magic in the belief that it would make them bulletproof.

An American prank goaded the Boxers into action. One day four newspaper reporters in Denver with nothing better to do cooked up an elaborate hoax to get national attention; they published a story that claimed some American engineers were going over to China with plans to tear down the Great Wall, as a symbol of China's willingness to turn its back on its heritage and become a modern nation. When the enraged Boxers heard the news in June 1900, they stormed the foreign legations in Beijing, plundered foreign shops, tore up railroad tracks, and murdered both foreigners and Chinese Christians. All this was done with Cixi's blessing.

The armies of the United States, Japan, and six European nations moved in to protect their citizens; two months later, the rebellion was over. Afterwards they saddled China with an indemnity of $333 million, far in excess of all costs and damages. Weak, in debt, and exploited by outsiders, China fell into worse chaos than before. When the land battles of the Russo-Japanese War were fought a few years later, China had to watch the ravaging of her territory as a helpless bystander.