I seem to have always been very interested in our ability to communicate. Having been born during a time when television was relatively a new thing and surviving into our present age, I cannot help but look back with a certain romantic fondness for the affect it has had in my life. I remember hearing that my Dad as a child in the 1930s had been on the Authur Godfrey Radio Talent show singing; Im a Little Tea Pot. Family units, normally groups of 2 or more would sit transfixed to hear the sounds of music and drama. Transistor Radios came about decades later and were new gadgets with everyone sporting their purchase, even on the beaches. The Battery business boomed during the 60s. The only radio I ever built was from an Edmund Scientific Crystal Radio Kit I purchased when I was 12 or 13. Attaching a wire to our backyard pole, next to Mr. Sparcos Figga Tree, I adjusted a knob or two and finally heard my very first broadcast from it - I was forever caught, fully intrigued. A couple years later I met a man who was into Ham Radio and spent an hour with a few buddys listening as he fine tuned his set and spoke with someone in another country. Back in the 1960s it was still a novel thing to communicate with someone from a great distance. Trans Atlantic Cables were relatively new which enabled our phone communication systems. Satellites, a recent invention, had been around since the very late 50s but were few and cost prohibitive. People dont realize that the Fax Machine, though different from what we have today, was a 19th Century invention. In the early 1840s it was invented and was in common use a decade or two later. We had the ability to send pictures via this wonderful communication appliance. I joined the United States Navy in 1969. After a few months at Boot Camp in the Great Lakes I was sent to Radio A School in Bainbridge Maryland. Here I would learn to Type, Send and Receive Morse Code, understand a new Military Phonetic Alphabet, learn encrypted messaging, etc.. After A School I was sent to the Oasis of the Atlantic, the Island of Bermuda. Vietnam was still going strong but Uncle Sam sent me to paradise instead. The designation of my clearance now read; Crypto Top Secret and gave me the right to view documents that would pass through the Message Center in Bermuda. I will never forget the day I first walked into a Military Message Center. I thought I had entered a whole new world for sure. The sounds, sights and smells of the place amazed me. A number of teletypes set side by side moved at the incredible speed of 100 words per minute! We can laugh at that now, but it was Top of the Line back then. A huge Autodigital Card Punching Computer took up a large part of the floor plan. Several stationary areas were set up for formatting messages and for proof-reading. Run-Off duplicating machines which gave off a pungent odor, sat in another area surrounded by cases of rolled paper and duplicating fluid. If you lit a match in here the entire place would have exploded. So much for health and safety issues. Our lungs were not ours anyway, they were Government Property. While in Bermuda I worked at the Message Center, the Operations Control Center, and the Weather Operations Facility. I loved being at OPCON and enjoyed talking to Pilots of both Air and Sea. We had to keep an accurate typed record of all communications that came in via the airwaves. Normally this was an easy task, but at times, because of the business of the day it could be nerve wracking, at least for a 19 year old! The one thing it taught me, for which I am grateful, was the ability to hear what was said to me and to recall it perfectly. I would find this very useful in all the years that followed. Two years would pass and I would next be stationed on the USS Forrestal CVA59, an aircraft carrier and command ship of the Sixth Fleet with its overseas home-port being Athens, Greece. Aboard ship the Message Center was very much like that of the one in Bermuda except this one moved up to 12 degrees from port to starboard in a rolling sea. We did pass through at least one hurricane on the Atlantic and one Typhoon in the Mediterranean Sea. Even though the ship was 1100 feet long, being mouthed by an angry ocean or sea is something you never forget. Looking back, that was the year my life changed the most. It was immediately after the Typhoon in the Mediterranean when I gave my heart and mind to the Person of Christ Jesus. I learned on that last day of January, 1973 at 7:45 PM to listen to the most important Voice, and to His communication of the Gospel. In a mere moment I was changed. Honorably Discharged from the Navy in 1973 I had little to do with communications for a number of years. Then in 1985 I was led to begin a 15 minute radio program called; A Stone From The Shepherds Bag. Taken from the incident in Scripture when the boy David advanced towards Goliath of Gath, removing a smooth stone he had gathered from the creek between the hills, this broadcast had to do with Spiritual Warfare. Eventually a few of us started another broadcast, this time a 30 minute program called; Going UPstream! Here we interviewed Christians from all walks of life hoping to demonstrate something of how people live and walk in faith in various platforms in our communities. For a dozen years the programs continued until shortly before WNNN 101.7FM became defunct. The internet has opened doors for not only a local or national forum of communication but interestingly, a Global Outreach. The opportunity has come to all of us to promote our thoughts to a far greater crowd than those that once gathered around Floor Model Tube Radios. As inroads into technology advance the audience grows substantially. Never before in human history do so many have the opportunity to stand on their own soapbox, or proclaim their own gripes, or joys. And it is right to do so. What You have to say is important. In some cases ... vitally important. People are geared now to global communications. They seldom watch a television set and actually, that may soon enough become a thing of the past. It is amazing to think that our service men and women are actually able to talk and view family members from the very battle field. That seems odd in a way, but it is part of the time we live in. One of the prophecies of Scripture which speaks of a certain event in human history to come, could not have occurred without our present form of global communications. The viewing of the dead bodies of Two very amazing Men. This event occurs at the end of their 1,260 days of anointed ministry in which no rain falls on the face of the Earth. (Dont doubt this event, this has actually happened at least once before in Mans History, during the reign of Ahab when Elijah the Tishbite was a prophet.) At the end of their appointed time of ministry, they will be killed in the streets of Jerusalem. Here their bodies will lay dead for all the world to view. A global party will be thrown because the Beast was able to destroy them. People from every nation, yours and mine included, will gloat over their inactive bodies and have great joy, until the end of three and one half days. Then in the sight of a Global Community, these two dead men will come to life and resurrect in the sight of everyone and ascend into the heavens at the Call and Voice of God. This time period ushers in a very difficult moment in human history, but certainly not the Final. Ever since the Tower of Babel, God has kept His hand on Mans ability to communicate, and this for a purpose and a time. Every advance in this area has been wrought of God to steadily build towards the time of the end. Not the End of Creation, that is set for a time long away. We need to use the present day technologies to present the very best of our lives. Amen The progress we have made since then is As the Information Pool grows in a Global Community ....
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:48:44 +0000
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