by Keith Bassham
We received a few calls early in July from folks who thought their Tribune had been lost in the mail, or perhaps was otherwise misplaced. I thank those who noticed the absence of the magazine, but the explanation is that we do not publish in June. The magazine is printed in mid- to late-May so we can report the Graduation Fellowship Meeting, and then we take a one-month hiatus. This allows us to take vacation time, install software updates, make computer upgrades, and prepare our records for the end of the fiscal year. In July, we resume the regular publishing schedule.
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One hundred years ago this month, the war known as the First World War began. The next few years would prove the naming was appropriate. At the first, Americans called it the European War, but by war’s end in 1918 all the world’s economic powers, including the U.S., were involved. The more than 70,000,000 military personnel allied themselves with one of two sides, and 9,000,000 combatants would eventually die.
The war introduced new technology and military tactics. It also became a building block in the foundation laid for a new kind of world, complete with revised ideas about society, philosophy, and international diplomacy. No other war had changed the map so radically. Hardly anything was untouched by The Great War (what people called it until the Second World War came), and some of the effects and events around the war remain important to the present. In this issue of the Tribune, Virginia pastor David Stokes pulls back the curtain for us some in a feature article relating the First World War with the rise of independent Baptists in this country. David can stack a lot of thinking into a just a few paragraphs, so take your time as you read.
Another of our pastors, Robert Pate of Iowa, has contributed a feature article about the astronomical phenomena know as the blood moon. Several books and ministries are making a lot of noise about what’s happening in the heavens, and Robert helps put things into perspective.
The rest of the magazine this month has news from our churches and missionaries, along with the rest of our regular columns. You will also find details for the Fall National Fellowship Meeting in Taylor, MI. Finally, the election of new national officers for the Baptist Bible Fellowship was just completed, and we introduce them to readers on page 5 of this issue. We wish these men well and ask that God bless them and our Fellowship under their leadership.
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In the last issue, the Tribune contained an ad placed by our friend Dwight Billingsley for a Holy Land tour. Unfortunately, when we proofed the ad, we missed an important detail — the price, which seems to be $0 in the ad. That is, of course, an error. The corrected ad with the correct price appears in this issue. We regret the error, and we will try to do better in the future.