CBN will be celebrating fifty years of broadcasting in just a few weeks. That’s half a century! I have been part of this work more than half of that time (1967-1971) with a break away period involved with my own work in upstate New York (starting a Christian community/a Scott Ross internationally broadcast radio show/a record company/publishing a newspaper/writing a book/training leaders/ beginning a school, traveling, speaking.)
I returned here to CBN in the latter part of 1983. To date that’s a total of thirty three years with this work. But for me it’s more than just a job, or a worldwide broadcasting facility; it’s a relationship, beginning with my first meeting with Pat Robertson in 1967. I thought it might be good to recount those beginnings.
I had just recently returned to the Lord after what I call my “prodigal years” in New York City.
I did not recognize a quite casual invitation at church one day as coming from Him. One of the men asked me if I’d like to drive to Baltimore with him that afternoon to attend a meeting of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship, a group of charismatic laymen.
I said yes, and then spent the trip wondering why. What could a group of middle-aged businessmen have to do with my situation? It was young people I tuned in with. Whenever I drove up to New York to see Nedra, I’d stop to pick up the fellows who stood at the entrance to the turnpike. I’d have the car radio set at a rock station and right away, we were talking music. When finally the guys asked me something like, "So, what are you into?" and I answered, "Jesus," there’d never be an embarrassed silence. Instead, there’d be real interest like, "Wow, man, that’s heavy. Jesus. How’d you get into that?"
It all came so naturally — coupling music with talking about Him . . . So what was I doing in this drafty cafeteria in Baltimore? I had plenty of time to wonder about it because the main speaker — a guy named Pat Robertson — was delayed by a storm. When he did get there and began to speak, everyone in the audience seemed to already know what he was talking about. He kept referring, in his deep Virginia drawl, to "our Christian TV station," and "our Christian radio station."
Christian radio station? Christian TV station? I could just picture it. Any station run by this Hollywood-handsome square in his neatly pressed suit, was certainly not going to be my kind of outfit. The guy, I was sure, would be an ultra-conservative southern super-dude. I could just see his chalked face if some long-haired people from the rock culture showed up at his sanctified station.
So why did I go up and talk with Pat Robertson after the meeting? Why did he seem so interested when I told him I had been in radio myself?
"What’ve you done?"
I told him. And then for some reason I also found myself telling him about the music-centered people I knew, how hungry they were, how lonesome, how suicidal, even, some of them.
"Listen," Pat Robertson said, "would you come down to Portsmouth to do a talk show with me? I’d like to hear more about these friends of yours."
Which is how it happened that a few days later I was driving through Portsmouth, Virginia looking for the headquarters of the Christian Broadcasting Network. I pulled up in front of a garage-like building which housed the offices of WXRI radio, and a few moments later was sitting with Pat Robertson in the studio. We talked on the air about the generation of young men and women like Nedra and me who were trying to say something about themselves and their world through their culture and their music.
We were still on the air when Pat’s secretary stepped into the studio and handed him a letter. Pat read it to himself, then said into the mike: "This is a real coincidence. Here we are talking about drugs and alternate life styles and in the morning mail comes this letter from a college girl who asks why we never speak about these things."
Pat read the letter aloud, all but names and places. The girl had been involved in drugs and sex and wanted to know if religion had anything better to offer.
When the program was over, Pat and I talked again about the timing of that letter. Was it a nudge from God? Maybe we were to start a music-and-talk show designed to reach people just like this girl. But, you know, ideas are easy to come by. We shook hands in the hallway and said the usual things like, "We’ll be in touch."
And then, out in the parking lot, a sensation of fear swept over me. I got in the car and leaned my head back. The sides of the car began to melt, turning soft, turning to rubber. I didn’t see how it could be a chemical phenomenon: by now I’d been off drugs over five months.
I ran back into the studio. The floor, the walls were spongy and sagging. The receptionist in the hallway looked at me. "You all right?" she said. She jumped up from the desk. "No, you’re not all right!"
The girl ran down the hall calling, "Pat! Pat!"
Pat and two other guys showed up. Without asking questions they, the receptionist and a couple of secretaries formed a circle around me. "Satan, you foul enemy," said Pat in a voice which rang with authority, "we stand together in the power of Jesus against this attack. This man is no longer yours! In the name of Jesus, we command you to leave him alone!"
Even as he spoke I felt the dizziness lift, the numbness in my hands and legs disappear, the fear passed.
I was stunned by the speed of it. I knew these fear attacks, knew how long it took to recover from one of them. With Bible verses, with prayer, even with prayer in tongues, I’d never fought free in under four of five hours. But this release had been almost instantaneous. What was the difference? "We stand together," Pat had said . . . I wanted to ask him about it, but he was talking eagerly on about the new show idea.
"You know, Scott," he said, "Satan only fights what threatens him. I think this attack is a sign that our conversation a minute ago was important. Think some more about a music-and-talk show for CBN, would you? Pray about it. Talk to your wife about it."
It was obvious that Pat regarded that circle of believers in the hallway and the instant answer to prayer as normal procedure. All the way back to Hagerstown, Maryland, where I was living at the time, I puzzled over those words. We stand together . . .
(To be continued)