Recently I was cleaning my bookcase and found an old book that I enjoyed as a child. It had stories in it such as Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and John Henry. While these stories are fictional, I enjoyed them because they were entertaining, and easy to understand.
Fast forward to the late 70's when I was a teenager sitting at the CA hall in Janesville Wisconsin.
The speaker was explaining the great sacrifice God made in sending his son down to earth to die for all mankind. he used the following example, (or tall tale) to describe it.
"Imagine a train fully loaded with passengers, heading down the track at full speed.(Symbolic of sinful mankind) Unknown to the engineer several miles ahead there is a bridge crossing and it is badly damaged. Right in front of the bridge there is a switching tower and the switchman is fully aware of the problem, and thankfully there is a secondary track that the train can follow and avoid the bridge. As he gets ready to throw the switch he notices that his young son (symbolic of Jesus) is walking on the secondary track. The train is fast approaching so he must decide what is more important, saving the train full of people , or his son. The switchman decides to save the train, and his son gets killed. Yet many of the passengers do not know what a sacrifice the switchman made for them."
Then he talked, and guilted the audience into how we should be doing all we can in the ministry, and reaching out to do more in our own halls. Everyone ohhh'd and ahhhh'd later, but I always thought how God knows everything, why didn't he take care of the loose ends before it happened (broken bridge, and kid on the tracks)
Even now I can develop a small headache thinking about all the far -reaching aspects of this story, and how everyone just lapped it up.
Does anyone have their own example of a JW tall tale ?