The Saga of the Bible Faith Handkerchief

Sorry for the rather long absence. Well, long for me, I suppose. I was working on some fairly important meatspace stuff, and still am, but the workload has gone down a couple of notches, so here I am, with a fairly monumental post.

See, today we have an Action Skeptics Multimedia Extravaganza. It all started when my boss received a strange envelope in the mail. It turned out to be a strange religious envelope, and, as he does with most strange religious things he comes across, he put it in my mailbox at work.

It changed my life. As he shared it with me, now I want to share it with you.

I took it upstairs with me after I clocked in and began to look it over. I was soon fairly falling out of my chair with laughter as the insanity of this thing began to register. I think I'll start at the beginning. Here's a picture of the back of the envelope. Click the picture to make it bigger (sorry; it's a bit blurry).










Just look at that thing. They crammed as much text onto that thing as is humanly possible to cram. If that envelope had any more text on it, it would become a text black hole, collapsing under the weight of its own words and sucking in all letters and punctuation within its gravitational reach. I know it's hard to read, so I'll reproduce the text. It says, with formatting faithfully reproduced:

Dear God,
WIth our Bibles opened to St. Matthew 18:19, we humbly and sincerely pray on bended knewws for You to anoint this letter with Your precious and holy power to meet the most pressing needs that someone is facing as they open this church letter of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we pray that this one who needs this divine help will write their needs on page two of this letter and will place this blessed, biblical, Acts 19:11,12, Handkerchief and this sealed Bible prophecy under their side of the bed as they sleep tonight.

Let Thy power from heaven descend upon this home tonight and tomorrow night, after this one has mailed their most pressing needs back to this 56-year-old church ministry. We pray that they will break open this sealed prophecy after sunset tomorrow. Amen

I think they let a retarded monkey go to town with the b, u, and i buttons in Word. It is seemingly random. Maybe its some sort of strange Bible underline/bold code that Michael Drosnin will have to figure out. Also, I'm unsure when the phrase "Acts 19:11,12" became an adjective. All I know is that this was only the beginning of a long and strange journey into the world of the 56-year-old St. Matthew's Churches Ministry.

The first thing inside the envelope was this:













It was originally folded and sealed, with the picture of Jesus on the front. It instructs the reader not to open the "prophecies" until after he or she has placed the prayer page (the next thing we'll look at) in the mail before sunset on the next day. If the reader elects not to return the "Church Prayer, Bible Handkerchief," then the prophecy must be destroyed unopened and unread, because it is sacred. Now, I've had this thing for about a week now, and my boss opened it before he gave it to me, so I guess we're both incurring the wrath of god on this one. Oh, well. Somehow I think I'll survive.

The "prayer page" is a strange beast. It, like the envelope, is fully of enigmatic formatting decisions and strange references to Acts 19:11,12. Whoever wrote it seems obsessed with handkerchiefs:













This one turned out sharper than the others, so you can probably read it yourself if you click the thumbnail. The beginning showcases the writer's handkerchief fetish:

As a minister for more than half-a-century, I've read and reread, in the Holy Bible, how God instructs ministers to send Bible faith handkerchiefs to people's homes, and, as a result, miracles of blessings occur.

This thing is a mess. "Half-a-century" does not need to be hyphenated, as it is neither adjectival nor a compound noun. It's just half a century. A close reading shows that sometimes the formatting extends to the punctuation after the bolded words and sometimes it doesn't. Whoever wrote this did not have a copyeditor, but he did probably have a shitload of handkerchiefs sitting around. I'm envisioning a small man, over half-a-century old, hunched over an ancient and massive oak desk, clacking away at a typewriter from the 20s. He wants to spread the love of god and his love of handkerchiefs, and he is doing so at a breakneck pace. His fingers fly across the keys as another letter comes into being. He reaches to his left, to a giant pile of handkerchiefs, picks one up, and mops his creased and sweaty brow. He tosses the handkerchief into another pile on the floor. Surrounding his desk are ancient hardwood bookshelves eight feet tall, each and every one of them covered in handkerchiefs and Bibles. The man finishes the letter, smiles and nods. God has given him his holy fervor and love of handkerchiefs, and he will tell the world the Good News before the lord takes him home to Heaven, Land of Infinite Handkerchiefs.

Whence comes our friend's love? Let's look at Acts 19:11,12. It's quoted in the picture, but for your easy reading, I'll reproduce it here. From the King James Version:

And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul: So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.

A search of the entire KJV at Bible Gateway shows that this is the only occurrence of the word "handkerchief" in the entire Bible, and it is hardly an instruction from god to send Bible faith handkerchiefs to people to create miracles of blessings. It's an aside, a short passage detailing how magical Paul was. It also mentions aprons. How the fuck come I didn't get an apron? I've been wanting a cooking apron for a while now. Why do St. Michael's Churches focus so singlemindedly on the handkerchief and insist on sending this letter to random people? It's just very strange, is all.

The other side of the prayer page:













This side speaks of the writer's feeling in his heart that he must pray for you due to some monumental even of the past, present, or future. At least he narrows it down a bit. It contains the following very strange sentence: "You are holding a church, Bible faith handkerchief." I have absolutely no idea how to parse that sentence. The only thing that seems correct is that it is direct address, and they think my name is "Bible faith handkerchief." The page also has the prayer form itself. Among the things you can ask them to pray for are:

- A Closer Walk With Jesus
- To Stop A Bad Habit
- A Money Blessing

And my personal favorite:

- Confusion In My Home

Please Lord, give unto me thy divine confusion.

We filled it out and asked for some cash and some prayers, but you'll have to wait until later to find out who will be the beneficiaries of the Bible faith handkerchief. For now, I think it is time to look at the prophecy, opened against the very Will of God.













This is the strangest prophecy I've ever seen, as it doesn't actually tell the future at all. It's just a bunch of all-caps text that seems to want me to believe it was written and poorly formatted by god himself. That's silly; everybody knows that only Death talks in all caps. It's basically just instructions to pray and believe and the standard nonsense except with the added handkerchief weirdness. The only thing that comes even close to prophecy is the phrase "MY DEAR CHILD, I HAVE MUCH PLANNED FOR YOU." Well, Death, I imagine you do, but I fail to see what a handkerchief has to do with anything. I defied the very Will of God for this? What a gyp.

The best part of the whole package was the page full of testimonials to the power of the Bible faith handkerchief. It's colorful, it's got pictures, and it's completely ridiculous. Here are the front and back:










Some select quotes:

I wrote [you]and [you] sent me a handkerchief because my son was in jail, and he was going to court and I took the Handkerchief with me to court and through God's power and [your] prayer, God made a way for my son to come back home with us.

So it wasn't his lawyer's courtroom tango? It wasn't a lack of evidence against him? What I get from this claim is "My son deserved to be in jail, but thanks to you and your handkerchief, he got off scot free. Praise Jesus!"

I put the Handkerchief in the Bible...and sent it back to you. I received a check for $3,500...I received a check for $2,500...

Context removed. We would know where those checks came from were it not for those damned ellipses. To an idiot, this might just look like Magical Mystery Money, but I suspect foul play...

THIS ANOINTED ACTS 19:11, 12 FAITH HANDKERCHIEF IS LIKE AN ANOINTED PROPHET OF GOD COMING TO YOUR HOUSE TO BLESS YOU. USE IT IN FAITH.

The only person that's going to be blessing me is my girlfriend when I sneeze all over that damned handkerchief.

I did some searching and found the website of the handkerchief people: St. Matthew's Churches. Two things stuck out at me. The first was this page of photos. The sheer number of people in the various pictures there frightens me. The second was their contact page. They list one phone number and then directly below it they list another phone number for "Emergency Prayer."

This is simply too good to pass up. Does anyone know how I might record calls on my cell? If you do, leave a comment. Help will be greatly appreciated. I would also like my more creative (and sadistic and juvenile) readers to leave ideas in the comments: what should I call about? What awful tragedy or terrible state of affairs warrants a call to the Emergency Prayer line?

And now it's time for the Main Event. I have for you today a series of videos of the Action Skeptics dramatically reading and commenting on the contents of the Bible faith handkerchief package. It's split up into three videos as the whole thing was too large. The second video is sideways owing to my stupidity: I thought it would normalize the video like it does still photos, but I was wrong. By the time I realized it, it was too late; Magus had gone to bed. So you're stuck with a fucked-up video, but even given the sidewaysiness of it, it's still worth watching. Apparently the audio is also not synched correctly. Maybe we'll do that again, but for now it's all we have. He gives a great reading of the strangest and funniest parts of the testimonial page. Enjoy.



















Just a paper fucking "handkerchief." A gaudy pattern printed on a sheet of copy paper. That's what's gonna cause me all these miracles? That's what's gonna get me my $20,000? A piece of ugly, ripped, folded, and mutilated paper? Man, god sucks.

However, the saga of the Bible faith handkerchief is far from over. I'm sending this puppy right back to them and we'll see what my boss gets in return. After all, they promise "A wonderful, free spiritual gift" if you return the prayer page and the handkerchief. I'll have a follow-up report on this as soon as I get my gift. And don't forget to leave me suggestions for my emergency prayer call!