You're Born An Original, Don't Die A Copy Order Printed Copy

Author: John L Mason
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About the Book

"You're Born an Original, Don't Die a Copy" by John L. Mason encourages readers to embrace their uniqueness and individuality. The book provides practical advice on how to discover and develop one's own strengths, talents, and passions in order to lead a fulfilling and authentic life. Through insightful anecdotes and motivational messages, Mason empowers readers to break free from societal pressures and expectations, and to confidently pursue their own path towards success and happiness.

Kathryn Kuhlman

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907, in Concordia, Missouri. Her parents were German and she was one of four children. Her mother was a harsh disciplinarian, who showed little love or affection. On the other hand, she had an extremely close and loving relationship with her father. She would describe, as a small child how, her father would come home from work and she would hang on his leg and cling to him. She often said that her relationship with God the Father was extremely real because of her relationship with her own father. Kuhlman was converted, when she was 14, at an evangelistic meeting held in a small Methodist church. When she was 16 she graduated from high school, which only went to tenth grade in their town. He older sister Myrtle had married an itinerant evangelist, Everett B. Parrott. They spent their time traveling and asked that Kathryn could join them for the summer. Her parents agreed and she went to Oregon to help out. She worked with them, and often gave her testimony. When the summer was over she wanted to stay, and the couple agreed. She ended up working with them for five years. The evangelistic team was made up of four people, Everette, Myrtle, Kathryn, and pianists named Helen Gulliford. In 1928 Everette missed a meeting in Boise, Idaho. Myrtle and Kathryn preached to cover for Everette. The pastor of the church encouraged Kathryn to step out on her own. Helen agreed to join her. Her first sermon was in a run-down pool hall in Boise, Idaho. The team covered Idaho, Utah, and Colorado for the following five years. In 1933 they moved into Pueblo, Colorado. They set up in an abandoned Montgomery Ward warehouse. They stayed there for six months. Denver, being a much bigger city, was the next stop. They moved several times but ended up in a paper company's warehouse, which they named the Kuhlman Revival Tabernacle. Then in 1935 they moved once more to an abandoned truck garage they named the Denver Revival Tabernacle. Kathryn was seeing a lot of success in Denver. The church grew to about 2000 members. She began a radio show called "Smiling Through" and invited speakers from all over the country. One of them was Phil Kerr who taught on divine healing. In 1935 another invited evangelist was Burroughs Waltrip. Waltrip was bad news for Kuhlman. He was a charismatic, handsome man several years older than she was. There was an immediate attraction, and one family claims to have seen the couple embracing in 1935, but he was married and had two children. Waltrip left Denver and went home to Austin, Texas, but the relationship simmered between Kuhlman and Waltrip. In 1937 he was invited back to Denver to take the pulpit for two months. Shortly after he divorced his wife and abandoned his two sons. He then spread the story that his wife had left him. He moved to Mason City, Iowa, where he told everyone he was single, and started a new ministry. Waltrip raised pledges of $70,000 to build a ministry building called Radio Chapel. It was state of the art with a disappearing pulpit and an art deco style. He appeared to be a successful and dynamic preacher. There was an ongoing relationship between Kuhlman and Waltrip, and they married in September 1938. Kuhlman was naive about the consequences of her choices and the marriage was a disaster. She announced to her church that she and Waltrip were married and they would go between Denver and Mason City preaching at their two churches. Most of the people in her congregation left due to her relationship with Waltrip. She gave up her church in Denver, lost some of her closest associates, and moved to Mason City. Waltrip's success turned out to be a pipe dream as well. The Radio Chapel was completed in June of 1938. By October 1938 Waltrip could not meet his debts. In December Waltrip was demanding a higher salary, even with the shortfall in income. His Board of Directors quit and left him to deal with the finances. His solution was not to pay the mortgage or debts on the Chapel. Radio Chapel went into bankruptcy. Waltrip's last sermon was in May 1939. The Waltrips were on their own. Kathryn's happy vision of she and her husband flying back and forth between Denver and Mason City with a successful preaching careers was utterly demolished. The next few years were very hard for the couple. They embarked on the road as traveling evangelists, primarily staying in the Midwest. They were not accepted in many places due to their marriage history. Initial advertisements listed Waltrip as the primary evangelist. Then occasionally Mrs. Waltrip was also mentioned. By the early 1940s Kathryn Kuhlman Waltrip was given equal billing. Finally by the mid-1940s Kathryn was using only Kathryn Kuhlman in meetings where she was the primary speaker. In 1944 Kuhlman went on an evangelistic tour on the east coast without Waltrip. It may have been a conscious decision to leave him, or she may also have taken the opportunity to reassess her life. It appears to have been more gradual as Waltrip wrote about them as a couple as late as 1946. Kuhlman never returned to Waltrip and they eventually divorced in 1947. She left her marriage behind and from then on acted as if it never existed in the first place. In 1946 Kuhlman was asked to speak in Franklin, Pennsylvania. She was well received and decided to stay in the area. Kuhlman began preaching on radio broadcasts in Oil City, Pennsylvania. These became so popular they were picked up in Pittsburgh, and she was preaching throughout the area. She began to preach about the healing power of God. In 1947 a woman was healed of a tumor while listening to Kuhlman preach. Several Sundays later a man was also healed while she was teaching on the Holy Spirit. She was now convinced of God's healing work. One important thing to note is the context and timing of this breakout period in Kuhlman's life. 1947 was the beginning of the Healing Revival (sometimes referred to as the Latter Rain Revival) that would last for the next 10 years. What was happening in Kuhlman's meetings was breaking out across the United States. It was in this time frame that the Voice of Healing Ministry was established and men like William Branham, Oral Roberts, A.A. Allen and many others were propelled onto the public stage. Kuhlman was not associated with those groups, but stepped into the flow of what God's Spirit was doing across the nation and the world. In 1948 Kuhlman held a series of meetings at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh. She eventually moved to Pittsburgh in 1950, and continued to hold meetings at Carnegie Hall until 1971. She was used by God to bring the charismatic message to many denominational churches, including the Catholic Church. (She received a lot of criticism over this and was accused of being a closet Catholic.) These were her best known years. Her style was flamboyant. She would hold her famous miracle services and the auditorium was filled to capacity every time. She was on radio and television shows. She was ordained in 1968 by the Evangelical Church Alliance. Hundreds of people were healed in her meetings, and even while listening to her on the radio or television. People she prayed for would often be hit with the power of God and be "slain in the Spirit." Kuhlman never claimed that she was the healer. She always pointed people to Jesus as their healer. Kuhlman had been diagnosed with a heart problem in 1955. She kept a very busy schedule and overworked herself, especially in the 1970's. She traveled back and forth from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles frequently, as well as taking trips around the world. Her heart was enlarged and Kuhlman died on February 20, 1976, in Tulsa, following open-heart surgery. Videos of some of her services are still available and continue to be popular today.

the most wonderful books on earth

As many begin a new year of Bible reading, we would do well to remember one of the chief dangers: searching the Scriptures, and missing the Savior. Recall Jesus’s words to the Jewish leaders of John 5, those most devoted of Bible readers: You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39–40) Amazingly, it is possible to know your Bible and not know your God. It is possible to study the word and neglect the Word. It is possible to search the Scriptures and miss the Savior. How can we guard ourselves from such a deadly yet subtle danger? Ultimately, we need the Holy Spirit to breathe Christ into the dry bones of our devotions. We need him to come, morning by morning, and turn our living room or desk into a Mount of Transfiguration. And so, we pray. But alongside prayer, we can also resolve to keep one goal of Bible reading high above the rest: Catch as much of Jesus as you can. Know and enjoy him. See and savor him. Study and love him. And to that end, let me offer a modest proposal for your consideration: as you read the Bible this year, plant your soul especially in the Gospels. Keep a Foot in the Four I am not proposing that you read only the Gospels this year, but that you consider finding some special way to plant (and keep) your soul in them. You could, for example, use the one-year Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan, which includes a Gospel reading for every day. Or you could memorize an extended portion of the Gospels, like the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) or the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17). Or you could read and reread one of the Gospels, perhaps with journal and commentary in hand. This proposal will not fit every reader. Some, perhaps, have spent most of their Christian life in the Gospels, and this may be the year to wander with Moses in the wilderness, or hear what Ezekiel has to say, or trace the logic of Romans. But I suspect many, like myself, would benefit from the counsel of J.I. Packer and J.C. Ryle. First, hear Packer: We could . . . correct woolliness of view as to what Christian commitment involves, by stressing the need for constant meditation on the four Gospels, over and above the rest of our Bible reading; for Gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him. “We should never let ourselves forget,” Packer continues, “that the four Gospels are, as has often and rightly been said, the most wonderful books on earth” ( Keep in Step with the Spirit , 61). Now listen to Ryle: It would be well if professing Christians in modern days studied the four Gospels more than they do. No doubt all Scripture is profitable. It is not wise to exalt one part of the Bible at the expense of another. But I think it should be good for some who are very familiar with the Epistles, if they knew a little more about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. ( Holiness , 247) Neither Packer nor Ryle sought to create red-letter Christians, who treat the words of Jesus as more inspired than the rest of Scripture. All the Bible is God-breathed, and the Son of God speaks as fully in the black syllables as he does in the red. Why then would whole-Bible lovers like these two men counsel Christians to give themselves to the Gospels? Consider four reasons. The Gospels give glory a texture. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John could have given us a summary of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection in their own words. Instead, the Gospels take us among the twelve, where we see and hear Jesus for ourselves. Why? John tells us: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). For John and the other disciples, the glory of Christ was not a vague or summarized or paraphrased glory; it was a particular glory, a textured glory, a glory they had “seen and heard” (1 John 1:3) in the specific words, deeds, joys, heartaches, and sufferings of the Word made flesh. And by Gospel’s end, they want us to join them in saying, “We have seen his glory” (John 20:30–31). “Sinners and strugglers like us need more than general notions of Jesus in our most desperate moments.” Sinners and strugglers like us need more than general notions of Jesus in our most desperate moments; we need his particular glories. The fearful soul needs more than to remember that Jesus gives peace — it needs to hear him say in the upper room, “Let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). The oppressed mind needs more than a vague idea of Jesus’s power over darkness — it needs to watch him send demons fleeing (Mark 1:25–26). The guilty heart needs more than to say, “Jesus forgives” — it needs to feel Calvary shake under the force of “It is finished” (John 19:30). Sin is not vague. Sorrow is not vague. Satan is not vague. Therefore, we cannot allow Christ to be. The Gospels shatter false Christs. Ever since the real Jesus ascended, we have been in danger of embracing “another Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:4) — or at least a distorted Jesus. Some do so deliberately, in search of a more convenient Messiah. Many, however, just struggle to faithfully uphold what Jonathan Edwards calls the “diverse excellencies” of Jesus Christ, the lamblike Lion and lionlike Lamb ( Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ , 29). We understand lions, and we understand lambs, but what do we make of a Lion-Lamb? Imagine yourself in Peter’s shoes. Just when you think you’ve discovered Jesus’s tenderness, he goes and calls someone a dog (Matthew 15:25–26). Just when you imagine you’ve grasped his toughness, he takes the children in his arms (Mark 10:16). Just when you pride yourself for seeing him clearly, he turns and says, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:33). And just when you’re sure you’ve failed beyond forgiveness, he meets you with threefold mercy (John 21:15–19). “We need our vision of Jesus regularly shattered — or at least refined — by the real, unexpected Jesus of the Gospels.” “My idea of God is not a divine idea,” C.S. Lewis writes. “It has to be shattered time after time” ( A Grief Observed , 66). So too with every one of us. We tend to remake the full, surprising, perfect humanity of Jesus in the image of our partial, predictable, distorted humanity. So, like Peter, we need our vision of Jesus regularly shattered — or at least refined — by the real, unexpected Jesus of the Gospels. The Gospels make Bible reading Personal. When we talk of “personal Bible study,” we may say more than we mean. The best Bible study is indeed Personal — centered on the Person of Jesus Christ. His presence rustles through every page of Scripture, Old Testament or New. All the prophets foretell him; all the apostles preach him. And the Gospel writers in particular display him. Yet how easily Bible reading becomes an abstract, impersonal affair — even, at times, when we are reading about Christ . To know Christ doctrinally and theologically is not necessarily to know him personally. To follow old-covenant shadows to their substance is not necessarily to follow him . To grasp the logic of redemption is not necessarily to grasp his love. To be sure, we cannot commune with Christ without knowing something about him. But we can certainly know much about Christ without communing with him. “It is well to be acquainted with the doctrines and principles of Christianity. It is better to be acquainted with Christ himself,” Ryle writes ( Holiness , 247). And nowhere does the Bible acquaint us with Christ the Person better than in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John especially are written for those who, like the visitors in John 12, come to Scripture saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21). The Gospels are bigger than they look. The four Gospels are relatively small compared to most of the books on our shelves. If we wanted, we could read through each in a single sitting. But like the Narnian stable in The Last Battle , the inside of the Gospels is bigger than the outside. Between their covers lies an infinite glory — a Jesus whose riches are not metaphorically but literally “unsearchable” (Ephesians 3:8). We will never catch all there is to know and love about Jesus, but we can catch something more next year. So come again and walk with him on the waters. Come and watch a few loaves feed five thousand. Come and sing with Zechariah, rise with Lazarus, and walk with the women to the empty tomb. Come and remember why the Gospels are indeed “the most wonderful books on earth” — because they give us the most wonderful Person.