Gospel—S. Bambaur
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Will your anchor hold in the floods of death, When the waters cold, show your latest breath on the rising tide? You can never fail while your anchor holds within the veil. Hymn #11 Will someone please start that?
Will your?
Father go.
I parked something on that table on the way up, which most of you can't see, but some can, and maybe you can peer over the head and see it. And I'll have to explain a little bit about what that is and you can take a look at it later. It's the object lesson for tonight.
So I'll read the first verse and maybe you'll understand why.
You know what the first verse is. All of you probably know where it is. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
This is probably one of the things that is under attack today, what I have there. On our trip out here from the east, we went through somewhere in the deepest, darkest Massachusetts on Hwy. 2 and stopped for dinner along the way. And then the table next to us, there was a couple there that we started to kind of engage in conversation. They seemed pretty friendly.
And.
The man and his wife and she began to talk about.
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Clear Lake, which is a region down by Houston where patties brother lives near there and she's Patty said oh, I have a brother that lives in near there in Alvin and they knew where that was in the conversation pursued.
And she had worked at the Space Center there and was an astronaut. Katie Coleman was her name and her husband, Josh Simpson and.
So one of the fellows in the astronaut program had gone to the same Presbyterian Church that Patty's brother goes to. And so Patty had met this person at A at a function that was for her nephew there when we were there.
And they were there, Dave Hillmer and his wife. So she dropped that name. And of course, she, Katie knew them. And as the conversation began to die down, we, we asked them, we were eating dinner that we didn't see a hotel and we were ready to hold up for the night. And, and they said didn't they didn't know of any in the areas of small town, but we happen to have a guest cottage and it's all made-up. The sheets are fresh and you would be welcome to use it.
This was an unusual situation, but we went ahead on over there and found that his job as an artist. So Patty connected with that as an artist, but his job is as a glass blower and he would make these.
Art artifacts out of glass. And he had bought a barn there. It was a large barn and he went to work there probably 30 years ago.
In his trade, he's probably in his late 50s and he makes these. You've probably seen them at the gift shop.
They're about, some are about the size of a bowling ball and they're made out of glass and that you can set them on the table. They have a flat bottom and you can look at them and be amazed and your friends will come and visitors and they will look at them and be amazed and you've got conversation piece they're going for you. So he sells these at a pretty good clip. He's probably #3 or 4 glass maker in the world.
So as we stayed there, we had the opportunity the next day. He was being interviewed by a magazine name I forgot, but the reporters were there, four of them, and they were taking pictures of him in his activity there, making these ornaments. This is a little one that he gave us as a souvenir. But as I say, some of them are the size of a bowling ball, weigh about 90 lbs.
And.
They're very ornamental. And the way he does this, he has this long rod, a little bigger around than this, about six or seven feet long, and it's made out of metal. And he has these furnaces there that go all the time, huge furnaces, doors on them, and they're fed by propane gas. He has a 3000 gallon propane tank buried out in his lawn. He fills it three or four times a year.
For his business.
So he's got these four or five large furnaces going, and you open the door and you stick that stick in there and you twirl around a little bit and now it comes a little BLOB of molten glass on the end of it.
And so they take that over to a stand and put this stick on on some props. And one guy is turning it and he's standing there with a cup made out of oak that's dipped in water. And he takes the cup and puts it up under the this molten glass while the guy is spinning it so that it takes a round form. Otherwise it kind of melts on him and and falls over. So he he's able to form it this way. There's a lot that goes into this.
There's a reason why I'm telling you all this, so don't go away yet.
He does this about four or five times. He doesn't put it in there and, and bring out a BLOB of glass. It's the size of a bowling ball. He works up to it layer upon layer upon layer. So as he brings a layer, this this project out of the kiln and I asked him about that. The kiln is about as wide open as the top of this podium and it has a door that slides shut. So one of the helpers opens it and he sticks the hole in there.
Into this molten glass and he gets his supply of glass and he starts to take it out and they close it back up and then they go to work on it. I asked him, do you what happens when you hit the side of that kiln? Does it shatter? He says no, it sticks to the door. Whatever you hit so tight you can't get it off and you lose your project. So it's a delicate operation. It's a very technical operation. It's a detailed operation. And he's doing this four or five times to get one the size of a bowling ball. And then when he brings this thing out.
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S3 has a few layers there. The thing is maybe this big and he'll take from this table where he has a tray there with different colored glass that stretched out to about the size a little bigger than a pencil lead, a large pencil lead, a small pencil, a large pencil lead, you know, right about in that area.
And the glasses, the little pieces of glass that he had, there are different colors. So it picks up his tweezers in the glass. It's hot. He has them probably at 500°.
And he picks it up and he pokes it on that thing and it sticks there.
And he'll take a little score a razor and he'll he'll streak it like this at different places and gets different designs on it and these different things that he can put in there. And you will see that as you look at that close up. Only this had a bowling ball size is largely magnified over what we have there. But you'll get the idea. Now what I'm saying in all of this is there is a lot of detail and forethought that goes into making one of these things.
It is not the result of an explosion in a volcano that it just pops out and lands this way. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This first statement that God gives us is primarily under attack.
First of all, they used to think that the universe was eternal and it went all the way back. That's what they taught me in College in the 60s. That was before The Big Bang idea, when everything started from a point of singularity and all the laws of nature breakdown and there's no particles and there's no law, there's no nothing. And then you had this big explosion and the universe pops out of that. And they sat there scratching their head wondering what they're going to do about that. Because that requires some kind of a prime mover to make this happen. They can't count on particles and laws of nature going all the way back anymore.
Talking about these people who will turn off on you, especially college students, these ideas of metaphysical naturalism that is metaphysical. The broad idea of how everything is naturalism, how we get what we've got. How did this come about? And they're going to try to explain it on a purely naturalistic basis.
So that they do not allow God to get his foot in the door. Now, I've been to college and I've heard this, so I know this happens. I remember in the geography class in the night about 1964 when I was taking a geography class at Chico State in Northern California, this professor stood there, leaned on his podium with all this hubris he could muster. And he says God is an idea. In the mind of man, evolution is a fact.
And you said it with such hubris. And I wasn't saved and I didn't challenge him. And I thought, my, I wonder if that's so.
I didn't know any better at that time.
And I didn't know how to challenge the concept.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
If the universe goes all the way back through cause and effect, you have what is called an infinite regress, because it takes energy to have cause and effect, and you're going to run out of energy. So what is supplying the energy in this infinite regress? All the way back of cause and effect, all the way back, all the way back into eternity? Never stop it. Where do you get the energy to support that?
Now, with The Big Bang idea, where do you get the matter to work with? Where do you get the material to work with? We have the answer to that in this singular, succinct statement.
But a lot comes with it. In the beginning, God created the heavens. How far does that go? The heavens, plural. How far out does it go? How old? Takes a look out there and looks as far as it can. Can't find the end of it.
But what it does find is things banging into each other in flames and explosions. It's hard to imagine the effect that sin has had on the whole creation.
And you can read about that in the 8th chapter of Romans that the whole show groans and travails.
Under this weight of sin.
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He has sent his son.
To restore that which He took not away, He has delegated to the Son the whole process of creation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
And the word was gone and all things were created by him and not anything that was made was not created.
In any other way than by him.
The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. God has a project going here in.
This concept of creating something or making something, as we look at this as a man, perhaps I want to build a house. Perhaps Henry Ford wanted to build a car.
Perhaps somebody wanted to build an airplane. This begins as an idea in an intelligent being. We'll call that the formal cause, because the Greeks called it that.
It's an initial consideration by an omnipotent being able to bring about what he has in mind.
God had this in mind in eternity past. This is no.
Second guess or makeup project?
He is the formal cause.
To get something in operation that is in the thoughts, there are several things that you need. You need a material cause. So if the Greeks are going to build a tribe to go out and fight the Medes and Persians, they've got to have some wood and they have to have enough of it to make their triream that they can put 70 or 80 soldiers on so that they can go up and drop the plank on the Persian boats and storm the boat and win the battle. It got this all thought out.
But more than a formal 'cause they have to have a material, 'cause they have to have the material for this thing to do it. So they go out and cut down a bunch of trees and go at it. Then they need an efficient cause. Somebody has to put this together. You can't leave the the pile of wood out there and expect it to do its thing. Somebody has to give it a hand.
So the Carpenter comes and he hacks and all these people that the navigators and the sailors, they come and they put this thing together.
That's the efficient cause, the final 'cause there are four reasons, formal, material, efficient and final cause to get something from out of the mind into existence. The final cause is that for which they have intended.
And the final cause is to put this thing to work, to defeat the needs in Persians, in the Greeks and the Median Persians. Henry Ford's idea was to get something go down the road and and give us transport. Somebody built an airplane to get us there faster. That's how it works without exemption. So it won't do to say that the whole universe just came out of nothing. It never works that way. Nothing ever works that way.
Another case for the creation. Why am I going into this so long? I know that you young people going to college are facing these issues just as I was 50 years ago. They haven't changed.
In this world that we live in, there are the what is called anthropic principles that.
Are in play in order for life as we know it to exist here.
All the details that we observe in the universe where our earth is.
My very energetic mother.
Earth is the third guy out, third one out in the solar system. That's important. Not too hot, not too cold. The Earth is tilted 23 1/2° on an axis. Important. Gives us seasons.
It spins at a certain rate.
So that one side doesn't get baked and the other side get frozen. So we have night and day. It goes around the sun.
At a consistent and predictable way. So again, that we have seasons.
All of these things.
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Its position in the universe, the moon that we have, the two planets that are outside of us that are out there running interference, running into asteroids so that we don't. The whole show is in a convulsion, but God preserves by His own loving hand a situation here upon which He puts those that are created in His likeness and His image.
Likeness to commune, image to represent.
Ask yourself right now, how are you doing? When's the last time you spoke to God and how did you do it?
Throw me a bone, Get Me Out of this so I can go on and do something else, and if I get in trouble again, I'll give you a call.
This is the flipping attitude of the unbelievers. Never bowed the knee in repentance toward God and faith in Jesus Christ.
And they go on that way all the way through their lives.
In a mockery and a hypocrisy.
In this said likeness and image likeness to commune, we can do that.
Image to represent in this communion.
When you pray, it's intelligent, using words. Jesus is known in John chapter one as the Word, the expression of God. Have you ever thought about how language plays out?
In language in order for this communicating opposable digit upright, standing, morally conscious, God conscious being, we call man different than every other creature that God made likeness and image. You can't attribute that to a chimpanzee or a monkey or a gorilla. This thing about.
Language.
There are three things that are necessary for us to have this conversation that we're having right now. For you to have a conversation with your brother or sister or mother or father or friend at school.
In language there are three necessary things, complexity, a selectivity and an aperiodic.
A material to work with in the complexity in our language. We have 26 little things that you see written on your page there and we call it an alphabet. This is the complexity. Just two letters won't do. What if we had just a B and an A? We would sound like the Babylonians, Bah Bah, Bah Bah and he confused the language and called it Babylon and we still use the word today. We need more than just two or three.
In this complexity we have 26 in our language.
That we use in different forms, and each one has an assigned sound to it. This is complex. Well, there they are, 26 letters. Do we reach down and grab a handful and throw them on the page? Will that make any sense? No, it won't. It gets worse. We have to have a selective process so that the author of a book, War and Peace, Tolstoy, takes down and grabs them, and he puts them here, just the right ones. And he forms words which form sentences, which form paragraphs, which form chapters, which forms the grand story.
And only the human being is capable of this process. This is so intricate, so intricate that it could not have worked its way up through the evolutionary process. The third one is it has to be a periodic. You just again, cannot.
In your selection and complexity, you select the ones you want out of the complexity you have at hand, and then in a periodic way you put them together. A periodic means that it's not just a standard repetitious way, like I said to be a Babylon idea.
So if we look at our first statement in INVTHE, this didn't get there by accident. It's a very complex thing. And the fellow named Noam Chomsky, who's the hero of language studies in the scientific field, looked at that as he came up with this. He said, I just don't see. And he's he, he's not a believer, he says, I don't see how this could have worked its way up through the evolutionary system.
This is too intricate.
Think of what we're doing here. I'm making these statements, I'm finishing these sentences and you're taking them in and you're hearing this is not Polly wants a cracker. You can train a parrot to say that, but that's not communication. And Folly doesn't even know what she's saying. But she can be trained to say that. And that is a unique critter anyway. And all she can get out of it is Holly wants a cracker and doesn't know what she said.
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She's saying it by rope. What we're doing is so far beyond that that it almost defies description, especially in the slow.
Process the slow, slow, slow process and the billions of years that is needed to get from zero to where we are. And they used to figure that the universe was about 22 billion years old and the Earth may be 12.
And now the universe is about 12 billion years old and the Earth about 6 billion years old, and most of those fellows are scratching their head thinking we cannot go from zero to upright articulating man in 6 billion years. We need more time than that. The process doesn't work that fast.
The whole trick to it is to hide it behind so much time you can't comprehend it.
OK, we've got in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and it's the first statement that he made. And I've spent a bit of time on that, almost half of our time, because that is the thing under challenge in today's culture, especially in Western and educated civilizations, European.
In America and Russia.
Let's go to the end of Genesis.
Chapter 50.
We had in the beginning rather than go through each chapter and give the salient points of each one, you know.
That he created man in his likeness and image, and it didn't take him very long to fall from both.
To violate both.
We call it sin. It's disobedience. They did what God told them not to do.
And they didn't have a very wide range of opportunities to do what God told them not to do.
But they did it anyway.
Because Satan was more subtle than any beast of the field.
There are consequences.
Now we've got quite a few people on the earth when we get to the end of Genesis.
Chapter 50 and we read that Joseph died. This is Genesis 5026. He died.
You go back, I think it's a chapter 5. It's the obituary column and everyone there, so and so lived so many years, and he died and he died and he died.
And the wages of sin is death. And Joseph died 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
And the book starts with such possibilities and ends in a coffin in Egypt.
And that is the destination of each one of us, unless the Lord comes first.
And it is the destination of each one. Without the Lord, and the wages of sin is death.
And the ratio is still 1 to one, and there is no escape apart from the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The provision that God has made in great love to each one of us.
And you will realize your need as you go along in a place of independence and self will it will catch up with you.
It's a painful life to leave the Lord out. It's a blessed life to bring him in. That doesn't mean that trials don't happen to believers. Of course they do. We live in the same scene. But we are spared so many of those diseases of Egypt.
That are prevalent today.
Divorces. Broken relationships.
Different kinds of diseases of the body from illicit activities.
Accidents that, perhaps?
Leave us maimed for the rest of our lives through inebriation and driving, sclerosis of the liver and excesses of drunkenness. All of these things are the diseases of Egypt and believers he spares from those things.
Because we know that they're an interference.
Between US and the one who bought us with his precious blood.
Now we'll go to Psalm.
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118.
And look at the very middle verse of the Bible.
We have covered, but not exhausted, Genesis. We skipped over a few words.
And get to the very middle verse of the Bible, Psalm 118 I'll read.
Verses 8:00 and 9:00 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord to put confidence in Princess.
Where is your confidence going to be when you're in extremis?
One day about.
20 years ago I guess.
See, my son is 42. He's over 20 years, so he's about 18 at the time.
We got a phone call at home from the neighbor and they said this guy just showed up at our house. He's soaking wet. He hiked all the way across the field. He's exhausted. He's on his last leg. He said he was coming down the river in a canoe.
And he hit a snag and he capsized and it's swift and it's cold in his.
Wife is there on the log upon which they capsized and she is hanging on for dear life and we need help.
And the neighbor he finally got to, he didn't know where he was. He just carted off across the field, loud field and and ran probably AI would say at least a mile through this plowed field.
We sought the neighbor with his fleet. The neighbor called us because he knew that we lived right on the river and had a boat. So my son was home and I, we went down and we got in the boat and turned on the engine and started going to where they are, which was only about 300 yards up from where I live. It's a river and there's a current. It's a wide river, wider than this gem and deep enough to run a boat in, but you have to watch where you're going because there are snags and sandbars.
And here's this gal hanging on to this log about this big around that had floated down there and jammed in the soil in the river and sticking up as a snag on which they had capsized.
And he had gotten to shore, and the shore was probably 20 yards away for her. And it was swift and it was cold and she was exhausted. There was no way that she could get to the shore. She needed a rescue.
It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in Princess. What I'm going to tell you is a story that is a similitude, Jose says. I have also spoken unto you and similitudes, so if he can do that, I will follow suit.
It's a good example. We went out there and got up from about here to that lamp stand from where she was, and we're in the bubble and we're trying to decide just how to go about this so that we don't hit the snag and capsizer or Press your leg wanted to be safe.
What are the options? We could get off maybe 10 yards. It'd be safe. I could say jump in and swim over here. She couldn't have done it. She would have drowned in the process.
Her only hope was we had to get right up there, risk hitting the snag, get right up here, face the current going upstream because it was a swift current, so we could stay there in position. We got right to where she was.
Right ahead of her. I turned around and said hop in. She couldn't do it. She was clinging to that and didn't have the strength to let go, get a leg in the boat and get herself in. So my son, 18, Stout.
She puts out her arm, she puts out his arms, and he holds her a good grip and gets her, pulls her all the way into the boat. Now you see where this similitude is going. Christ comes right to where we are. He became a man. He dwelt among us.
There's no use giving us 10 commandments. That's like telling her to hop in the river and swim to where I am, and if you make it, you're saved.
We are not up for 10 commandments. We're not up for law, any kind of law that we might invent for ourselves, thinking that God will accept what we do and overlook the rest that we shouldn't have done. After all, God must be gracious. This is the way he made me. Here am I, what else can I do? And to misrepresent God, For God is holy and he cannot overlook sin. So he took his own beloved Son. And you can get this in Romans chapter 3 and he.
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He sends them here, right to where we are. And he was rejected. He came unto his own, His own received him not. He goes to the Gentiles. He's taken.
He had stripped of his clothing, his spit upon his unjustly tried.
That's man's thoughts and his reaction.
To the absolutely pure, sinless one who comes from God, who is God, who is the Creator of all things, and man meets his creator and he pushes him away, are you still doing that? You would be no less guilty than those that were there at that time. You say, well, if I were there, I wouldn't have done that.
If you're pushing him away now, you would have pushed him away then.
This is a moral issue.
He allowed that to happen. He goes to Calvary's Frost. They mount him on a Roman gibbet.
They mock him. They spit upon him.
And leave him there and say.
If he is the Son of God, let God save him. And they depart, and God closes the scene with a midday darkness.
As he pours out his judgment that was due to me for all my sins.
And the way that I have responded to God for the 1St 22 years of my life and all sins after that as well, They were placed on Him and He bore them in my stead. We have a substitute, but if you will not receive the substitute, you will die in your own sins and be judged for your own sins.
You will take the responsibility fully upon yourself and never be able to pay the price.
The wicked shall be silent in darkness. There is no more controversy.
And yet they will still be shaking their fists in enmity had gone. There is no repentance in hell. There is no change of heart in hell. This is the day of salvation. This is the day that He has spoken, and He waits in patience.
We'll go to Revelation chapter 22.
I just want to mention there in Matthew chapter one, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. As we start the New Testament, the old ends in a curse man set aside seemed to be irresponsible.
Now God provides in pure grace. So we get in the New Testament the introduction.
Of the man of peace, the Holy One.
We go to the end of the book.
What does it say?
The grace.
Of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Amen.
The grace, it's pure grace. There is nothing that we could do. So God did, and he spared not His only beloved begotten Son, the bosom, the darling of his bosom, the Eternal 1.
In communion in the Godhead, in eternity past.
In perfect harmony, without discord, perfect communion.
Full of grace, full of truth. Now.
Justifying God.
As to the question as to why does he allow SAN, why has he put up with it?
He has provided an offering that suits himself so that He is just in justifying the ungodly that will come to Him. He is just in doing this. He is sweeping nothing under that rug. Nothing that you have done. All is exposed and laid upon Him when you come to Him for the Savior.
And God therefore is just. He has dealt with the sin issue that has separated us from Him.
He has met it according to his own standards.
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The provision is entirely his. One more story and I'll close.
And the story is. I use it as an illustration.
Of the desperation of our position.
And the provision that comes outside of ourselves.
When I was in my 20s.
I went into Naval aviation. It was just out of college. I was going to be drafted. I had no option. I thought I would make the best of the deal and went down to fly at the Navy recruiter to go into Naval aviation. I couldn't see well enough.
To be a pilot, but I couldn't see well enough with glasses to be a navigator. So my billet was that I flew in the back of F fours for two cruises over in Vietnam.
Several 100 combat missions over North Vietnam, Laos from South Vietnam.
Carrier based one day.
I was lying with a fellow named John Padgett, who had gone through the Naval Academy, and we always flew in Sections 2 airplanes.
Any other airplane was heard Wheeler.
Who had gotten his Commission through OCS and he was about 3 months junior to my the pilot I was flying with named John.
So herbs are wingmen because the senior pilot is the lead pilot. I'm explaining all this because it's part of the story.
In the backseat of each of this these two aircrafts, I'm in one, Jim Benger is in the other one.
Jim was a history major and went to college somewhere in Pennsylvania.
There was a target down there, I think it was a plant.
It was a daytime. We never saw trucks in the daytime along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They did everything under the bushes. You didn't see troops, you didn't see movement. They moved at night. Here was his truck. It's a daytime.
Off and we were vectored to destruct. We looked at it down there, we'd come in at about 30,000 feet. Yep, truck down there right as can be sitting there. It was either broke down where it was a plant.
Because my pilot was senior to the other crew, we went in first.
We come in at 30,000 feet, footage at 45°, build the airspeed to 450 knots, come down, get the paper on the target. That's the the site. It's in the pilot seat on the target. We meet all those parameters you release at a certain altitude and physics takes care of the rest.
We rolled in, dropped our bombs, pulled off at about 2000 feet above ground level, not above sea level. These are our parameters. Less apartment to be hit by ground fire. We pull off, we're coming back around and I look back to see Herb and Jim coming in and they were in a spin. They'd lost control. They were in a spin. The reason they lost control is they had taken a hit and it had damaged their controls. It takes 10,000 feet for a healthy F4 to pull out of a spin. They were down around 4000 feet.
No possible way.
Pretty soon I saw the plane hit the ground blow up in a big explosion.
Herbert Jim Then I saw two good parachutes. They had waited to the last because they were hoping to pull that out rather than land down there and be captured. 2 good parachutes. It was herbs lot to land in a clump of trees. We'll say this, these mats here, the little forest of trees, that clump of them. And he lit right in there, let himself down to the ground and hid there. They were Vietnamese troops all over the place.
Jim, there's a road over here that's that blue line. He lands on this side of Loaded Rd. about 300 yards from where Herb landed and that's an open field and nowhere to hide. And there's this parachute and we are up here at 10,000 feet watching all this. We carry APR 2 radio when on our on ourselves. If we punch out, we can talk to somebody on the guard channel. We had communication with them from down there on the ground.
To our aircraft at 10,000 feet, there's Jim down there with his parachute, an orange section, a white section, an orange section and a white section all the way around. And here are the troops up here on the hill and they're starting to come down. The first thing I did was call a helicopter to come and rescue Herb and Jim.
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They can't walk out. They can't evade.
Time is the essence. They're going to be captured if they stay there.
Was somewhat hidden. Jim was out in the open. We're waiting for the helicopter to come.
It takes about an hour. They don't park the helicopters right next to the bomb site. They're over in friendly territory that they can protect. They got to come about 70 miles, 75 miles. It takes the crew a little time to run out there, jump in, get turned up and fly at about 170 miles an hour to the designated need where they were their destination.
As the helicopter is coming.
Says I see some troops coming at me from a distance there.
We're out of bombs, maybe a four, doesn't carry guns. We have no munitions. But we knew that they didn't know that. So we came down out of 10,000 feet to about 1000 feet. HGO.
And we remote and ride along and F4 probably 750 miles an hour.
At that low altitude, it's a fast moving target. Went right over the top of Jim and headed for the direction where he said they were coming. It's a bluff.
Flew right over the top of them.
They probably just had enough time to didn't hear us coming. Looked up as it went overhead too late. Take a shot. Climbed right back up to 10,000 feet. Jim radios it worked. They're moving back.
We did what we could. It's not enough. We have to get back to the ship to make recovery. We have certain amount of fuel. The F4 is not the Volkswagen of the Sky. You can't stay up there and cover.
We take off about 3000 lbs of fuel. We get maxes off 1200 lbs.
That's what we need to land on the carrier, come back and land and a six that was up there as a little more time in the air.
He stayed as unseen commander of this situation. He came back later to the ship.
And told me that Herb had been rescued but Jim was captured. And the last words he heard from Jim is they're closing in on me again. Doesn't look like they're going to shoot. Looks like I'll be appealing. W click. End of conversation. That captured. They took him all the way back to Hanoi to the prison to guard him and to keep him there. This is in 1969 November. The release was late early 73, about March 4 years almost that he was there.
Had a wife back home in San Diego.
Not what he wanted to do.
Well, we got her back, her having landed in the trees. I talked to Jim Bedinger 25 years later. I found his address. I had gotten out of the Navy. He stayed in and then retired. I lost track of him. I didn't know how to look him up. I'm not computer savvy. I'm superannuated, obsolete. I don't know how those things work.
But my kids aren't. So one of my kids finds Jim Bendinger.
Been Joe Smith, you'd have never found Jim Benger found him on the so however, you'll find people on the Internet or on the computer and said, hey, dad just found Jimmy lives in San Diego. Here's his here's where he works.
I grabbed the phone, I called him up, talked to him, and I hadn't talked to him for 20 years.
Last time I talked to him was on a PR2 survival radio.
I'd like to get the rest of the story. Called him, said he lived down in San Diego. I said, Jim, sometimes I get down to LA we'd go to a conference down there. Be glad to see you. Yeah, I'd be glad to see you, too. So we got together at another squadron member who was out then and lived in Escondido, just South of San Diego. And we met there after the Bible conference at La Shadow Hills.
And he comes and he, he tells us about his situation as a prisoner of war and how they captured him and they put him in a wagon and they took him up to Hanoi and when they put him in the prison cell there.
They put two to a cell, so he goes in with another prisoner that was captured in Laos, but on the right side of him was John McCain and on the left side of.
Was.
00:50:01
Oh, the guy from Arizona. The president.
Here is unpolitical as I am.
John McCain and James Stockdale. Stockdale was over here in Mccains, one that ran for president. They were on each side of Jim and this Hanoi prison.
John knocks on the wall, see knocks on the wall. He could hear the commotion and Jim being put in there. And he's talking to Ernie and in hush tones, Jim. Jim who won the last Army Navy football game.
Jim, Jim who won the last election, he wanted some news for home. I mean, you can understand that it's a little cubicle. We've been there for six years by that, five years by that time.
The KFC.
Senior ranking officer was in the Air Force, but he was senior ranking officer of all those that were in that prison system. That puts him in charge. You do exactly as he says. His chain of command, military order, it keeps order. Even in a situation like that, he says something.
That's what you do.
Stockdale says to the second, says McCain. I want you to shut up and go to sleep. And that's an order.
And he did. You bet he did.
Anyway, Jim gets back, they interrogated, he says. So the guy comes up to him short, stocky, and he says Jim was young. By the way, that was about his fourth hop in combat. He just gotten out of college, went to an officer candidate school, went to the training, talked on the ship, went to Vietnam, got shot down on the third half. So he was probably the youngest, one of the youngest prisoners of war in the whole compound.
So the commandant N Vietnamese comes to Vienna, he says.
You very young, you're not prisoner, you're not not going to treat you like a war criminal. All these other support criminal, you're very young. Who's going to show him special favors? It's a technique that they would use to break down them around in the camp, in the concentration camp. You know where I'm going with this integrity.
Do you think that we're not under the gun, under attack? Satan has a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour. We have a similar situation. This is a similitude. I introduced it that way at the beginning. You have to take it that way and you'll learn lessons from this story. What is Jim's response coming? That says we will show you special favors, you will get more to eat. We are trained in the military not to take any favors that weren't extended to every single person in the POW camp.
And Jim said, no, these are not Theodorus. These are not war criminals. These are Pows just like I am. And I wouldn't accept anything that you wouldn't extend to the rest of the prisoners.
And the common nonsense, I will punish you, Jim says. This is according to the Geneva Convention and Articles of War concerning prisoners of war.
We no sign Geneva Convention, Jim says.
But those who are supporting you, both Communist China and Russia, have signed.
Common that size losing, losing face in front of the rest of the prisoners. And he turns on his heel and lays him and says, I will punish you. He never came back. He stood fast as a prisoner of war. It may have cost him a lot.
He was preserved. The Lord will preserve those who stand fast and mean business. We are not preaching here.
A gospel where you slip in and continue in your own ways and have no representation. Remember likeness and image. To commune and to represent and use restored us to that.
Through pure grace.
By means of his own son on Calvary St.
We owe him everything that we have. Jesus.
Is not only Savior, he is Lord, and we must not compromise with that.
00:55:05
Fight the good fight.
Fight the good fight.
Can we sing number?
19.
Hymn #19.
And I would ask somebody to start that for me.
I preach petty Saints. I didn't preach. I don't sing. You'll save me a lot of embarrassment. Somebody will start.
I won't even get close to the first word.