Buying Back His Book

For this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

During the 18th century, Dr. Johann Beringer, professor of natural philosophy at the University of Wurzburg, Germany, was obsessed with his pet topic. The topic: fossils were capricious fabrications of God. And so his students went to work.

They made and implanted in a nearby hill hundreds of grotesque clay tablets including one actually signed by Jehovah. The doctor was so convinced of the “find” that he published a book on the subject, steadily ignoring the confessions of his students. He thought his students were trying to rob him of his conclusion and glory.

It was not until he discovered stones bearing his own name that he realized the hoax. For the rest of his life, he spent whatever fortune he had gathered in trying to buy back the existing copies of his own book.