Do Gideons Exist?

Bonsai kittens are fake?

Well now, I'll have to cancel my order *and* change holiday dinner plans.

It's a lucky, lucky thing that this has nothing to do with the girls scheduled to fly over to cook my holiday bacon.

Is this some kind of assplay reference I don't get?

Same here. I still have one of those lying around somewhere. It was so much fun. I spent a whole semester randomly popping it open and quoting a random versicle. It never failed to draw a few giggles

Has anyone ever understood why certain words in the Gideon Bible are in italics?

Now THAT was funny!!!

Because it is the will of The Gideon.

I am not positive in the Gideon Bible, but generally it is for words added. They are there to show what the expression in the original language (Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic) meant, to clarify the translation to English (or whatever language it was translated to).

Haha no! Or rather, I don't think so... maybe.

There was a website that offered the service of young ladies to come over to your residence, specifically to cook bacon for your breakfast, and then leave. Nothing more. I don't recall the name of the site - it was one of those links you hear about in a blog somewhere, click on it, laugh, and leave.

It was ultimately shown to be a hoax, however this was quite a while back and likely it's long gone now.

Unless someone *actually did* create such a service. Business opportunity, anyone?

I heard that Rocky Raccoon fell back to his room, only to find Gideon's bible. Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt to help with good Rocky's revival.

Ah, I'm learning something new every day! Thanks, Kurgan.

taken from a (website) believed to be real!

Legend: Money is sometimes left in Gideon Bibles by Christians looking to reward the next tortured soul who turns to the Good Book for solace.

Origins: On
my first morning as Mrs. Mikkelson I leafed through the Gideon Bible left in our hotel room and found within its pages a $100 bill.

I was beside myself. Ecstatic, in fact. I loudly celebrated this unmistakeable Sign Of Favor From Above for the next couple of hours . . . right up until I caught sight of an odd twinkle in my new husband's eyes.

It dawned on me I'd been had. And by a folklorist too.

I should have known I wasn't going to find money in that Bible — I'd been looking through them for years and hadn't so much as one extra dollar to show for all that hunting. But faith in a believed "fact" dies slow, and I had grown up "knowing" one might someday find money in a Gideon Bible. Altruistic evangelists, you know. They leave money in hotel Bibles as a reward for the next devout soul to turn to God in that room.

Altruistic evangelists do visit hotel rooms, but not to leave money in Bibles — they leave the Bibles themselves. The Gideons International was founded in 1899, and its primary function is distributing Bibles and New Testaments "in the human traffic lanes and streams of national life."

Gideons don't preach; they just leave Bibles. "We let the Bible do the work," said Raul Laughlin, who has been a Gideon since the 1930s. "We don't do anything with doctrine. We just offer the Bible to those who want it and ask them to read it. We're not obnoxious about it. Our objective is to win men and women to Christ by placing the Scriptures around the world."

And place them they have, to the tune of 45,000,000 Bibles annually in prisons, hospitals, military bases, and hotel rooms. Those Bibles are provided without charge, and although some do end up "taken" by those in need, none have ever been "stolen," according to the Gideons.

It wasn't the Gideons, however, who initiated the practice of leaving Bibles at the bedsides of travellers. That honor goes to the International Bible Society, a group founded in 1809. In 1823 — 77 years before the Gideons started their ministry — the IBS took to putting Bibles in hotels.

Though a weary traveller is guaranteed to find a great deal to treasure in his bedside Bible, his enrichment is unlikely to come in the form of cold, hard cash. Hotel housekeepers do a thorough job of cleaning up after departed guests and making ready for new visitors, and they keep an eye out for items — including cash — left behind by the previous tenant.

But maids aren't perfect and might on occasion forget to shake out the Bible, so maybe it pays to keep looking.

Truthfully, if you ever did find money stashed in a hotel Bible, it's much more likely to have come from someone who was trying to safeguard his loot from thieves then afterwards forgot it than from charity-driven Christians looking to reward those who turn to the Lord in a time of need. There are only so many places one can hide valuables in a hotel room, and the Bible is most of them.