Th rest of the story

Thursday, June 12, 2014

One of my favorite of Paul Harvey's, The Rest of the Story, is the one about West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska. Normally all of the choir members came to church on Wednesday night for practice, and they tended to be early, well before the 7:30 starting time. But one night, March 1, 1950, one by one, two by two, they all had excuses for being late. Marilyn, the church pianist overslept on her after dinner nap, so she and her mother were late. One girl, a high school sophomore, was having trouble with her homework. That delayed her, so she was late. One couple couldn't get the car started. They, and those they were to pick up, were subsequently late. All fifteen choir members, including the pastor and his wife, were late. All had good reasons. At 7:30, the time choir rehearsal was to begin, not one soul was in the choir loft. This had never happened before. But that night, the only night in the history of the church that the choir wasn't starting to practice at 7:30, was the night there was a gas leak in the basement of the West Side Baptist Church. At precisely the time at which the choir would have been singing, the gas was ignited by the church furnace and the whole church blew up. The furnace room was right below the choir loft! Was that mere coincidence or the providence of God?

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