Fringe

I recalled the name Salem Kirban and his novel 666 from my Jesus-Freak days in the 1970’s, and on a whim, looked him up.  I had never read his books myself, but I recall seeing them at the old Good News Bookstore on Rte 28 in Derry, and a few guys at the Dix Street House read him.  Something about the covers looked a little strange. He wrote many books on biblical endtime prophecy, and you can still get your hands on some volumes if you wish. However, not much is written about Kirban himself – just a few biographical blurbs.  There is a wikipedia article in French, which does me little good.

It is always uncomfortable to re-enter that world of self-appointed experts, all intent on PROVING that all the other respected Christians are JUST WRONG and POSSIBLY SATANIC.  Billy Graham teaches heresy, and CS Lewis, and Martin Luther, and John Calvin, and John Wesley, and certainly anything remotely Roman Catholic or anything popular now.  All dangerous, all denying the PLAIN TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE.  And this is your final, final, final warning.  Sometimes they will have a kind word for Moody, or the Scofield or Ryrie Bibles, but even that’s not a guarantee.

Even in that group there’s barely a trace of Kirban’s writing now – not even important enough to refute anymore, I guess.  In the 1980’s he moved on to writing nutrition books about juice fasts.  That figures.  I’ve had posts before on how the Bible weirdness and food weirdness folks often find each other or become each other.  Something primitive, something that believes the understanding of mankind is wrong to the core, but there is a secret way out, known to the special few.  I was apparently farther out on the fringe than I thought.  I hewed to the boring side myself, but I was in shouting distance of loons.

That would be another set of stories about odd people, in addition to the IQ society folks. And, come to think of it, attendees at Society For Creative Anachronism events.  Didn’t writers used to ramble around, rubbing shoulders with interesting characters and writing them up in entertaining fashion?  Maybe I’ve had more of that than I thought, but have not noticed it because my field of comparison is psychiatric patients, who I cannot write about for reasons of confidentiality.

This chain of reasoning may have been prompted by receiving our yearly Christmas card from Chuck, with the envelope sticker that encourages us to Read the King James Version – the Bible that God uses, A.V. 1611.  Odd to think that God might need to use a Bible.  You’d think He’d be on top of that without having to look it up.  It kinda makes you worried what all those new Christians in China are going to use, too.  Hard enough to have to learn English, but Elizabethan English is worse.