Hello, this is pastor gary from first baptist church of laplata. Here’s a follow up to the Graham Cracker story from last Wednesday. Rev. Sylvester Graham invented the Graham Cracker as part of a vegetarian regimen to curb romantic desires. Those who followed Rev. Graham’s beliefs and diet were known as Grahamites. One particular Grahamite, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg ,was superintendent of the sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan; he insisted that his patients follow the Graham diet. The sanitarium kitchen had cooked some wheat and inadvertently left it out; it went stale. Thinking rolling the wheat would soften it back up, Dr. Kellogg was wrong: the wheat came out hard and in flakes. Since the flakes were vegetarian and bland, Dr. Kellogg fed it to his patients who rather enjoyed it. Will Kellogg, Dr. Kellogg’s brother, also worked at the sanitarium but was not a Grahamite. Will added sugar to the flakes—much to his brother’s consternation—and ended up founding the Kellogg’s corporation, now an $18 billion company. So Rev. Graham not only invented the Graham Cracker, but his diet lead to wheat flakes that Will Kellogg later made from corn. A former patient at the sanitarium, C.W. Post, upon his release, began manufacturing cereal flakes to rival Kellogg’s corn flakes igniting the early 20th century cereal wars. Wow, all that from a preacher trying to get his congregation to eat right! Jesus said in Matthew 13:31-32 that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed: it is very small, but it grows into a tree into which the birds can nest. God’s kingdom continues to grow, and we get to watch it happen!
Leave a Reply