Greetings all.
As I mentioned in my last correspondence, CBN will be celebrating fifty years of broadcasting in just a few weeks. Our year of Jubilee 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.
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.
(If you missed the first part of this story beginning with my first meeting with Pat Robertson in 1967, find the link at the bottom of this page.)
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In many ways, the work at CBN was everything I'd wanted. The talk-and-music show caught on, and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the talk part, that is. College students would call in and we would talk and argue over the air. People were meeting Jesus and getting help with their hang-ups right on the program. The letters that came in were unbelievable:
“Last Tuesday night I was thinking about suicide. But I heard your program where that blind woman called in, and I decided maybe my problems weren’t so earth-shattering after all. Or from a 16-year-old: I'd been on speed for three months, afraid to come down off the high because the low was so awful. The first night I tuned in your show, I came right off and I never did crash!”
It really was exciting thinking of the possibilities in a show of this kind. But I almost had to forget the music side of my format. I just couldn’t find any Christian sounds that I liked. It was all Hammond organ and bird-whistle music. I couldn't believe how bad most of it was. I'd sit in the studio with the earphones on, playing record after record, trying to find something I wouldn't blush to put on the air. Not only was the music awful but the lyrics spoke some kind of private language only a real in-group could understand.
One morning after staff prayers at the studio, I complained about how bad the music was.
"Have you ever heard of Ralph Carmichael?" Pat said.
"Sort of."
"Try some of his music."
And it was good, certainly the closest to a contemporary sound I could find anywhere. But how much Ralph Carmichael can you play? Then I had an idea. I remembered a conversation I'd had recently with Noel Stookey the Paul of the folk group Peter, Paul Mary. When I'd told Noel about the new show he seemed to understand what we were driving at. What if I talked about that visit with Noel on the air, then played some of the trios music.
Wow. The first record was still on the turntable when the call buttons on the phone lit up like a computer panel; it seemed like every parent in Virginia was calling to complain about protest music going out over a Christian station.
But phone calls were not the end of it. A little later the studio door bust open and a red-faced, furious guy rushed in and jerked my power-supply cords out of the wall. "You . . . you . . . if you play any more of that sin music may God strike you dead!" We finally got the guy out of the studio but when Pat heard about it he made the decision: No more Peter, Paul and Mary.
Pat seemed to accept this kind of thing as part of the job, but I seethed for days.
My wife Nedra had been in New York City, but as soon as she got to Portsmouth we'd gone house-hunting. Although a few people gave her deep-olive complexion a double take, no one refused to show us an apartment. We found a three-floor townhouse complete with cathedral ceiling in the living room for only $75 a month. The only catch was, it was unfurnished.
If anyone has a spare orange crate, let us know, I told the people down at CBN.
I didn't know what I'd said that made everyone start laughing. "It's Jesus," Pat explained. "The way He does things. Last week CBN bought an old house with some furniture in it no one knew what to do with. Help yourself."
So we came into a set of chairs and a dining room table and a sofa and some lamps and a mattress. No bedstead, but he mattress went fine on the floor. And it was in our new home, during my prayer time in the morning, that the strange thing began.
I was still reading the Bible before work each day, but now in the quiet time afterward, something new was happening. Words would keep popping into my mind. Urgent, forceful words, with a funny feel to them, almost as if they were alive and trying to be born. One day three quarters of the way through the book of Job, I came across a perfect description of what I was experiencing.
“Behold, my heart is like wine that has no vent; like new wine skins, it is ready to burst. I must speak that I may find release; I must open my lips and answer.”
That was exactly what it felt like. At the office I described the feeling to Pat. He leaned back in his chair.
"It could be what the Bible calls prophecy," he said. "You know, speaking for God, God's words using human throat and lips. Why don't you experiment and see? Let the words come out. You'll find out quick enough whether or not they come from God."
However, after many experiments with trying to hear God and prophesy in various meetings and at home to Nedra, all I did was make a big mess out of the words that were popping into my head that and I called God, when God hadn’t spoken at all.
The next day when I got to the office at CBN I shut myself in Pat Robertson’s office and began to pour out my many tales of error, that were now causing troubles at home. So much for prophecy, I summed up.
Pat nodded as though this were a perfectly predictable turn of events. "I told you to experiment," he agreed. "And when you did, you got stung. Satan stepped in and nearly scared you off altogether, didn’t he?"
Satan stepped in . . . The words didn't sound so much like a figure of speech as they once had.
"Don't you know Satan’s the great counterfeiter?" Pat went on. "He can whisper the most plausible ideas you’ve ever heard right in your ear. And he's the slickest old Bible quoter there is."
"Then then how do you know prophecy from a big lie?"
"There were three ways," Pat said. "Not just one of them, but all three together were the way God confirmed His word to us. Satan may trump up one of them, or even two, but he's too chaotic a character to get all three working together."
"The written Word," Pat went on, "was the first test. Check every voice you hear against the Bible. That’s where you get confirmation as to the validity of what you think you are hearing. Don't take anybody's word about what’s in the Bible. Check it out for yourself.
"Next," said Pat, "test the prophecy in your own spirit. Bring everything you have to bear on it experience, commonsense, your own past history, your inclinations. Our spirit is to test the spirits, you know.
"And finally," he said, "when scripture and your own spirit agree, lay your proposed action before the body of Christ. Not some guy you never met who calls up on the telephone. I'm talking about the recognized elders of the church, my friend. Recognized local leaders who will hear out your prophecy and give a mature judgment like it says in First Corinthians. Remember how ..."
But I was no longer listening. Words like elders and leaders were banging around my head. Then where was freedom? Where was the Spirit? Where were the things Nedra and I were looking for when we signed on for this Christian trip?
If I was going to have to start taking orders now, checking it out with some kind of committee every time I wanted to sneeze, I might just as well be back in one of those narrow little churches I'd grown up in, with a list of rules ten miles long and everyone minding everyone else’s business. The ones that picked my father to death with their gossiping and spying. No thanks. I wasn't going to listen to anyone but Jesus.
Those other two tests, though your own inner witness and what the Bible had to say they sounded okay. And six months later I had a chance to try them out.
(To be continued)