Insights through Illusion for Daily Living

Being Real=Being Unforgettable

The Last Great Magician

One of my favorite things to study is the history of stage illusions. The golden age was from roughly the 1870s until TV was invented. The most famous illusionist of the time is virtually unknown today, not Houdini, but Howard Thurston.

His masterpiece was the levitation of a woman right in the middle of the stage. We are talking 1920s to 1930s. The amount of trouble he had to go to to produce this effect would stop anyone from performing it this way today. Because of the lighting of the Vaudeville theaters (or lack of) and the general distance from the audience to the stage, Thurston rigged hundreds of wires both above and below the woman to hold her in place.

They were invisible to the audience, but his convincer was bringing a random child from the audience (not a stooge, or confederate) on to the stage. Thurston picked the boy up, and pointed at the woman and whispered with a smile something only the child could hear. The child’s eyes went wide and his mouth gaped. Truly a miracle had taken place……well obviously not.

In the 1980s all grown up, a boy lucky enough to see Thurston’s show and be brought on stage said what actually happened was that when Thurston whispered in his ear he said, “if you touch one of those ****** wires….” and then threatened him. The boy having never heard someone talk like that naturally looked amazed. The audience applauded and everyone loved it.

What does this have to do with anything? Am I advocating that we start living obscenely to make our point? Student ministers, should we be shock-jocks? No, not at all, but the idea is that instead of telling the child that it was all an illusion, Thurston was real with the child (albeit a bit too real), but the child never forgot for the rest of his life what Thurston said to him.

When we treat the world with a facade, or student ministers when we sugar coat the Gospel, it becomes forgettable, it becomes weak. The cultural meme is to not offend anyone. This causes a blind eye to everything that we should stand against. It’s precisely this reason that students who have been taught meat of scripture and real lessons instead of fluff, remember and retain, and can use what they have been taught.

What ways are we real with the people we come in contact with? We have the greatest truth known to mankind that God, the creator of the universe, loves us personally so much, that He gave us a second chance. He sent Jesus to die in our place for what we owe, and rise again. He did this for one single reason, and that is because He loves us. Period. There can be no greater news, and yet we keep this to ourselves and try to make everyone smile.

The Gospel might shock people. The Gospel might offend people, but guess what that’s what it takes reach people. To be real. We can give the world what it wants, and not give them Jesus. That is the greatest crime we can commit as believers.

How can you be real today?

What are some ways that we are fake?

How do we eliminate that?

For more info on Howard Thurston, or any stage illusion history, check out:


by Jim Steinmeyer


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