For the past few years, a few people in Dalton, Georgia, had been pushing an alleged miracle—a Bible that oozed oil. It was reckoned that the Bible had oozed over 400 gallons of oil since early 2017. The book was kept in a continually sloshing plastic bin of oil, after a Ziploc bag proved not to be sufficient to capture the oil.

In recent weeks, the local newspaper (actually the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which really is local) did some in-depth reporting on the subject and basically busted the “miracle”. Someone (identified as one of the promoters, one Jerry Pearce) had been buying mineral oil by the gallon at the local Tractor Supply. And the oil from Tractor Supply was identified as being identical in chemical structure to the oil from the Bible that was put in small vials and given away.

Overnight, pretty much everything shut down—the weekly church services, the tours around the country with the Bible. (I believe they even came to Phoenix.) It all dried up.

One might just call this the rise and fall of a pious fraud, and it is that. But these people were very much supporters of Donald Trump, and they saw his rise as the harbinger of the oil-producing Bible, which started flowing oil after Trump’s inauguration. And then there was this:

The oil also conferred a kind of political status on the group and provided entree into a circle of Trump-supporting prophets who see themselves as intervening for the president in the spiritual realm. Johnny and Leslie said they were invited by Christian right activist Andrea Lafferty to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, where Johnny said he surreptitiously spilled “a lot” of the oil in the chambers.

One of the promoters also claimed he had a vision of Trump which basically called on pastors not to push Trump forward but to stand with Trump. However, it’s all gone now that this particular Bible has been exposed as being not what it seems.

slate.com

But never fear, the virus is spreading. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported last week that an acoustic guitar at a church in Cleveland, Tennessee is now dripping oil, and there’s gold dust and flakes appearing at the church. Of course, it should come as no surprise that Jerry Pearce, one of the oil Bible promoters, had attended that church. But not everyone at the church was buying it:

The events splintered the Cleveland church. Members reported leaving, believing they were being deceived by their leader. Harry Brannen resigned from his position as associate pastor a week after the events began. He did not want to be a part of what was happening, he said.

timesfreepress.com