October 28, 2019 - “The Word of God is quick to see the thoughts and purposes of the heart”… Heb. 4:12
We got in a discussion after a church service last week about who said, “You can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all the time”. One lady said it sounded like Will Rogers and another thought it was Shakespeare. I later checked the internet and found it was President Abraham Lincoln.
Fooling people is one of man’s favorite pastimes and P.T. Barnum was a master at it. He is responsible introducing more new expressions to the English vocabulary than any other modern person. “Jumbo” was the name of his elephant and now we have “jumbo shrimp,” “jumbo jets”, etc. etc. “Throwing your hat in the ring”, “grandstanding”, “let’s get this show on the road”, and “come rain or shine” are a few of his originals.
Strangely enough, his best-known saying, “there’s a sucker born every minute”, actually came from his competitor, David Hannum who was referring to the people that P.T. had fooled in his “Barnum and Bailey Circus.”
Barnum’s “What is-it Animal,”” “Feegee Mermaid,” and 161-year-old woman fooled a lot of people but he never tried to fool God. The inscription on his tombstone reads: “Not my will but thine.” He knew what all men should know:
You can’t fool God any of the time.
