Secrets from Beyond The Grave

Chapter 13 How Will You Be Remembered?

As a teenager, I was ministering in Carmi, Illinois, and studying in the pastor's office when I came across a small booklet with pictures called The Infidel's Grave . The book recounted a true story and showed pictures from a cemetery with a bronze statue of a man. On his bronze statue were two scrolls. The first, which represented the Bible and was inscribed "Superstition," was under his feet. A second scroll was engraved with the words "Universal Mental Liberty" and was in his uplifted hand. The marker was the grave of Chester Bedell, who died at age eighty-two and was buried in North Benton, Ohio, in 1908. The man was outspoken against God and the Bible. (He wrote a book against the Bible called Universal Mental Liberty .) It was reported that Mr. Bedell had stated, "If there is a God or any truth in the Bible, let Him infest my grave with snakes." According to an interview in the 1930s with Bedell's daughters, when the sexton dug the grave, two snakes were killed. When the casket was laid in the ground, a third snake was removed from the grave. From 1908 to the 1930s, the grave became a popular tourist site, as the story of the infidel's grave spread to surrounding areas. There were photos in the old book showing as many as seven snakes coming from the grave in one day's time. In the 1930s, people from all over the United States came to the cemetery to visit the grave and see the bronze statue. According to the old sexton who was interviewed by B. E. Perigo in the 1930s, there were as many as two hundred visitors on one Sunday. During a major storm, the statue was blown down and removed and was replaced by a tombstone.1 Years ago I read a story that was published by Gordon Lindsay, founder of Christ for the Nations, about a Mr. Stanley Carter, who observed a strange marker in a cemetery near Lafayette, Indiana. The marker was inscribed with these words: Martin P. Jenners

Was born August 21, 1832 in a log cabin on the Northwest

Corner of Ferry and Fourth Streets

Died December 22, 1919

My only objection to religion is that is not true

1 Corinthians 15:52; Isaiah 26:14

No preaching, no praying, no psalm reading permitted on this lot

This man believed he had found a major contradiction in the Bible that led him into total disbelief in the inspiration of the Scriptures. The two scriptures in question read: . . . in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. --1 Corinthians 15:52