FROM EYE CATE TO HEART CATE
The Amazing Story of Best Seller Publicity
accepted Christ as his Saviour and is now an ardent advocate of poster dis tribution. A Jewish woman’s attention was drawn to the picturesque signs on
By Hazel Thomson
T happened iti California. A young mother employed at a Hollywood race track was attracted to some small posters on the street cars and buses she rode back and forth to work. Each one she read dis turbed her. They seemed to say, “ Be not deceived.” She was earning three hundred dol lars a month at the race track, but the silent sermons o f those convicting posters kept telling her she should not be engaged in that type o f work. “ Those signs,” she later testified, “ were preparing me for the great Los Angeles revival. There I gave my heart to the Lord. Yet, strange to say, I did not find peace. I went back to the tent again and told the workers. “ Billy Graham pointed his finger at me, saying, ‘Girl, are you holding anything back from the Lord? Go home and fix it up.’ “ I did. That night I got peace.” The next day she told her boss that she was quitting. Later, without a job, but with a heart overflowing with heavenly joy, she exclaimed, “ It is wonderful! The Lord is taking care o f me, and now my twelve-year-old daughter has been converted too.” A girl from Shreveport, Louisiana, was also struck by those same com pelling signs on the Los Angeles streetcars. She mentioned it to a girl at work. Noticing her interest, her fellow-worker invited her to a church where she accepted the Lord. “ It was the posters that led me.” she claims, “ and now I’m preparing myself for missionary work in India.” Then there was Tony. The posters not only had eye appeal for this Los Angeles gangster and racketeer, but stimulated his curiosity as well. Noticing an address attached to the posters, he sent for a representative. “ What’s your racket?” he inquired bluntly. It took the Best Seller representa tive a year and a half to prove to Tony that his job was not a racket, but an honest-to-goodness desire to see Tony become a Christian. Tony Page Six
financial failures and the accompany ing anxiety had wrecked his health. One day while riding on a bus, his eyes focused on a winning Best Seller poster on which these startling words were printed: “ Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The words plagued him. “ That’s what I’m doing now-—reap ing the years o f greed and miserli ness,” he mused. He sought spiritual help and soon accepted Jesus Christ as his Saviour. A Reader Writes An interesting letter from Comp ton, California, received by a repre sentative o f Best Seller, reveals that the posters have a twofold influence: first, eye appeal; second, heart con viction. Assuming that the address attached to the poster was the name of an ad vertiser, a reader addressed the fol lowing letter to Mr. Bert Seller, Pub licity, Los Angeles: Dear Sirs: In riding the No. 7 car on my way to work, I noticed your ad vertisement with these words: “ Jesus said, ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his right eousness’ — Matt. 6:33.” As I am interested in God I wish to understand those words. How shall I seek the kingdom of God, and how will I find it? I have read these words in the Bible and now when I saw them with your name I feel that you must know how this can be done. Your reply will be greatly ap preciated for which I am enclos ing a self-addressed stamped en velope. Needless to state, this seeking heart was instructed in the way o f life! T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
Miss Josephine Peterson, Director of Best Seller Publicity. It was to her that God first gave the vision of the possibilities in publiciz ing the Word o f God. the streetcar. On one she read: “ For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” That revealed an aspect o f Chris tianity quite different from hers. “ If that is true,” she reasoned, “ then Jesus Christ is someone to turn to rather than to spurn.” The next day she bought a Bible in a dime store and began to read it. An alert neighbor, learning of her interest, invited her to her church where a Hebrew Christian was speak ing. At that service the Jewess ac cepted God’s Son to whom the poster had pointed. A wealthy, but worried, business man in British Columbia had not slept without drugs for three months. He had lived all his life for making money and tenaciously clinging to all that he could accumulate. But a few
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