This site is intended to become a complete archive of the Bread of Life magazine, edited by Gordon P. Gardiner of the Ridgewood Pentecostal Church, Brooklyn, New York.

Gordon P. Gardiner (1915-1986)

As of summer 2012, we believe all 5,680 pages from the 397 issues (with well over 1,700 photographs) have been scanned.  The raw page images are all available on this site, and now we ask your patience as all this material is straightened, cropped, and processed into PDF files. 

Although this site is updated infrequently, there has been a fair amount of activity behind the scenes.  In February 2013, we moved the PDF files to AWS servers in hopes of improving the download speed.  A new method to process the images has been developed, resulting in improved clarity of the text, and work is being done to scan and prepare the comprehensive index of all the issues.  Here is the status of all the issues presented so far:

Issues produced using the older image processing method: 1953 through 1963, with exceptions listed below.  If these issues were to be redone, any typesetting corrections would also have to be redone.  See a partial list of corrections below.

Issues produced using the newer image processing method, and extensively cleaned to remove speckles and smudged type: December, 1951 through April, 1952, and all of 1964.  Issues using the newer method but only moderately cleaned: May through December, 1952, October and November, 1957, and all of 1965.

Issues thoroughly proofread for typesetting and OCR errors: None so far.

The issues are presented as PDF files, a lower quality version suitable for online viewing, and a higher quality version suitable for printing.  Free PDF readers are available from Adobe and others.  These PDF files are quite large (usually from 2 to 4 megabytes). 

High-resolution grayscale JPEG images of each individual page are also available.  The files presented when you select the “Images” link for a given issue are compressed versions of the original scans.  If you have a need for the actual original page scans, which can be up to 20MB per page, please contact us and we can work out a method to get them to you.

As with almost any web site, you can download files to your computer using the browser.  For example, using Internet Explorer, right click the item you want to download and select “Save Target As…” Using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, right click the item and select “Save Link As…”, etc.

The scanned pages for each issue are collected into a single PDF (Portable Document Format) file, and the attempt made to interpret the text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).  This means that even though each PDF page contains no text but simply an image of the original page, it is possible to search and to copy some of the text contained on it.  Of course, this automatic OCR results in occasional (sometimes extensive) errors and omissions in the interpretation of the text.  In addition to misreading individual letters or words, sometimes OCR will read text across multiple columns rather than down each separate column, shuffling the word order.

If anyone has the time and inclination to produce modified PDFs with manually corrected OCR text, we would be happy to replace the corresponding issues on this site.  Please contact us if you wish to contribute this kind of effort.

After newly prepared issues are posted, it may take several weeks or more for the text to be integrated fully into the Google Custom Search system used by this web site, so please be patient and aware of this when using the search bar.

Some issues or portions of issues were produced using colored ink.  For these issues, the cover was scanned in color, but any remaining color pages were scanned only in grayscale.  The PDF files are all always produced in monochrome (black and white only) for easier reading and better results when printing.

The paper of some issues has darkened with age.  This makes it difficult to get a clear thresholded image, especially if the ink is not black.  Finding the right compromise for the threshold can result in a background that appears speckled, or text which appears light and incomplete.

At the bottom center of most pages, an identification watermark was added, showing the year and month of the issue containing that page.

A number of issues have material spanning the stapled center pages of the magazine.  To present this material without a gap, an extra page has been created (as well as an extra blank page so the total number of pages of each issue is even).  The issues with these additional pages are April, 1952; October, 1969; November, 1974; and March, 1975.

Some effort was made in the limited time available to remove distracting spots and speckles before generating the PDF version of the page images.  Occasionally, a glaring typesetting or spelling error was fixed during this phase as well, the original always being available in the page images section.  For example, in the issue of April, 1958, page 2, the typesetter placed the initial capital at the wrong edge of the paragraph; this was fixed for the PDF version.  Again, in the issue of August, 1964, page 9, some lines of type appear in the wrong order. 

Other corrections include:

10-1957, page 4, 14 lines down: His replacing Tis
11-1957, page 2, last paragraph, right side, 4th line up
2-1965, page 5, second to last line: “baptiz ed”
3-1965, page 14, misplaced line of type, top of right column
4-1965, page 5, incorrect font, first column, forth line.
6-1965, page 9, right column, 13th line: double h.

If you find a distracting typesetting error, please contact us, as we can usually find a way to smooth out such errors.

Note that starting in 1975, only 10 issues were produced per year, owing to the demands of Gordon Gardiner’s ministry at Pilgrim Camp, so there were no issues for August and September in those years.

Suitable replacements have now been found for all missing issues and pages.  Some of the replacement issues have holes for a three-ring binder, and you can see the holes in the original images, but for the PDF version (and sometimes the cover image), we have attempted to patch the images and replace any missing text as carefully as possible.

The material presented on this web site is under copyright.  Permission is granted to duplicate and distribute it freely for the advance of the kingdom of Christ and the glory of God.  Other uses, including any use which would involve the sale of this material or any excerpts from it, are prohibited.