Stealth Pilot Says "God took my hands and pulled"

From Underground Strategic Command

Prayer Saved Them

Faith At Gunpoint: Cassie Bernall's Story

Overcoming Impossible Barriers

Stealth Pilot Says "God took my hands and pulled"

The United States stealth fighter pilot shot down over Yugoslavia in March of this year says God helped him survive.  The pilot, who's name was not mentioned in a report published by the Air Force, ejected during a night mission on March 27 deep in Serbian territory.  The pilot's F-117A Nighthawk had been hit by a Yugoslav surface-to-air missile or anti-aircraft fire, military sources said.
    The ejection was violent, the pilot said.  "The one fragment of this whole event I can't remember is pulling the (ejection seat) handles.  God took my hands and pulled."  The pilot landed in a Yugoslav field where he hid in a culvert for six hours until he was rescued by helicopters from the Air Force's 16th Special Operations Group.  While in hiding, the pilot says he saw flashing lights and reported that a search dog came within 30 yards of his position, the Air Force said.
    The pilot had an American flag folded under his flight suit.  "For me, it was representative of all the people who I knew were praying," he said.  "It helped me not let go of hope.  Hope gives you strength and it gives you endurance."

From underground Strategic Command, A Chaplain's 'Cool Job' Reaches 30,000 ft.
By John Gaskin

BELLEVUE, Neb. (BP) -- Jason Peters ministers in a parish that stretches from 30,000 feet above the earth to deep within an underground command post.
    He is living a childhood dream as a chaplain at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb.
    "As a child I had the privilege of knowing retired Army Chaplain Arnold 'Smokey' Stover. I was shocked when he told me the Army had pastors. My father was a pastor and had served in Vietnam, but I had no idea you could do both at the same time. My first thought was, 'What a cool job!'"
    Fifteen years later, Peters now has that job.
    Assigned to three different units at Offutt, comprising more than 1,000 members, Peters is considered their pastor and responsible to the wing commander for meeting their spiritual needs.
    "Within each assignment, I find different avenues of ministry," said Peters, a 1998 graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Mo.
    One of the units is the J-6 Directorate of the United States Strategic Command, which includes personnel from the Navy, Army, Marines and Coast Guard. Peters received top-secret clearance so he could minister in this large, underground industrial environment.
    "Because of the sensitive nature of their work, coupled with the fact that there are six generals/admirals in the complex, the stress level is high and the outlets are few. As a chaplain, I am sometimes able to help them work through issues about which they can't even tell their spouse," Peters said.
    Another of his units is the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron. "In order to connect with the pilots, the navigators and the electronic warfare officers or 'ravens,' I have been given the opportunity to fly reconnaissance missions with them. Wearing their uniform, understanding their language and being able to identify with their jobs has opened some great doors of ministry."
    Peters works one night shift a week in order to visit the maintenance personnel working on the aircraft. "I encourage them in their faith and ask them thought-provoking questions. It is amazing how open they are to talking about issues of faith in the middle of the night."
    The 440 cops in the 55th Security Forces Squadron are the third part of Peters' parish. "After spending hours at flight line guard posts, at the gates and riding around in patrol vehicles, I am finally beginning to be recognized as one of them," he said.
    They take advantage of guaranteed confidentiality with a chaplain. "I have had the opportunity to do marriage counseling, counseling for work-related issues, sexual addiction and substance abuse, and even responded to two active-duty suicides in the last six months."
    His ministry to the security forces includes the confinement facility on base. "Just a few weeks ago I was blessed with the opportunity to spend over an hour with a man who was being court martialled on charges related to child pornography. In that hour I was able to share the gospel and pray with him."
    The more normal side of Peter's ministry includes weekly services on base for about 200 worshipers and leading the chapel youth group.
    "My wife, Kimberly, and I have also had numerous opportunities for ministry in our neighborhood. Living in military housing has allowed us to be involved in neighborhood Bible studies, barbecues and some intense late-night chats.
    "Military chaplains are simply missionaries," Peters said. "We minister in a world that is foreign to those who never served in the military. We speak in acronyms, shop in BX's, PX's, NEX's and commissaries. We often wear funny-looking clothes and some of us even enjoy living in tents.
    "I thank God for the doors he has opened," Peters said, "and only hope that our chaplains will faithfully respond to the task."

(Baptist Press, Tuesday, May 18, 1999)

Prayer Saved Them

Their plan went down in the Pacific Ocean -- no small body of water.  The survivors, however, relied on prayer to survive.  Three Australians, a Swede, and others prayed with a minister as they tried to swim for shore.  "I called out to people, 'if any of you have faith in God, I would like to pray with you.'  So we actually had a prayer in the water," Australian minister Neil Watts said.  After six hours of swimming in the dark, through jellyfish infested waters, through heavy rain, and against a strong current, the men came ashore in Port Vila.  Seven others are still missing in the crash of the Twin Otter Aircraft. (Religion Today, Tuesday, May 11, 1999)

Faith At Gunpoint: Cassie Bernall's Story and More

By Art Toalston

LITTLETON, Colo. (BP)--As Jesus fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish, "Cassie fed the world with one word, 'Yes,'" said Dave McPherson, youth minister at West Bowles Community Church, Littleton, Colo., the Sunday after Cassie Bernall was slain at Columbine High School.
    Cassie's "Yes" came in response to the question, "Do you believe in God?" posed by one of the two deranged classmates who shot her to death, along with 11 other students and a teacher, and wounding nearly two dozen others, before taking their own lives in a April 20 melee at the 1,900-student school.
     "Yes, I believe in God," Cassie, 17, told the gun- and pipe bomb-wielding gunman.
     "Why?" he mused rhetorically without giving Cassie a chance to respond before pulling the trigger.
     "Bernall entered the Columbine High School library to study during lunch. She left a martyr," the Denver Rocky Mountain News stated.
     Cassie's answer came after a long pause.
     "I think she knew she was going to die if she said that," one of her friends, Kevin Koeniger, a member of Cassie's youth group at West Bowles Community Church, told National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."
     "That's why she waited so long. She didn't wait determining whether to say yes or no. But she knew that if she said yes, she would die," Koeniger said.
     "I think if there's one way to die, a good way of doing it is dying for your faith," said another of the 200-member youth group, her name indistinguishable on the NPR broadcast. "I think she's awesome."
     "I can't even explain like the joy that comes from my knowing a person that would die for my Lord," another friend, Erika Dendorfer, told NPR. "I'm sad that she had to go in the way that she did with two killers, but I'm happy that she went dying for Christ."
     The intent of the gunmen (Columbine students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Kelbold, 17) to kill a Christian "backfired," said a youth whose name also was indistinguishable on the NPR broadcast.  "People around the world have heard about this, the girl who died a martyr," he said.
     Cassie's witness for Christ in death indeed has gone global. One of the earliest reports of her fateful affirmation was on CNN's "Larry King Live." In addition to the NPR segment, she was described on ABC's "20/20" newsmagazine April 26 as a "modern-day martyr" who "refused to renounce her faith." The headline of a story about her death in The Boston Globe April 24 read, "A martyr amid the madness," while The Washington Post also employed the concept of martyrdom in an April 27 story.
     The Globe noted, "Accounts of the final moments of Cassie's life echo with the history of early Christendom, when a profession of faith could be a fatal act."
     Cassie spoke of her faith in a youth group video just two days before her death.
     "You really can't live without Christ. It's, like, impossible to really have a really true life without him," she said.
     In living as a Christian, she said, "I just try to not contradict myself, to get rid of all the hypocrisy and just live for Christ."
     Nearly 2,500 people attended Cassie's funeral April 26 at West Bowles Community Church.
     "Cassie went to a martyr's death," pastor George Kirsten told the mourners, "and we're going to celebrate that because she's in the martyr's hall of fame."
     McPherson, the youth minister, said in his message, "What the church has talked about for 2,000 years, what every church in this world has talked about on a daily basis, Cassie, you did it."
     Several years earlier, Cassie had been a troubled middle-school student who, as The Denver Post put it, was "enthralled by witchcraft, suicide and a view of life so dark that her desperate parents dragged her" to meet with McPherson.
     McPherson told The Post he well remembers meeting with the sullen youth who spoke in monosyllables. "There's no hope for that girl," he admitted thinking afterward. "Not our kind of hope.''
     A few weeks later, however, Bernall hurried up to him after a Sunday service. "You'll never believe what happened,'' she said of her new faith in Christ.
    Among other vignettes from Cassie's life and death:
     Attending her funeral were numerous members of Victory Outreach, a storefront church in one of Denver's roughest neighborhoods, where Cassie and her friends shared dinner every few weeks with prostitutes and drug addicts who are part of the inner-city congregation.
    Cassie's younger brother, Chris, found an almost-prophetic poem the night of her death which she had written the previous Sunday, The Boston Globe reported.  Cassie wrote:

"Now I have given up on everything else -- I have found it
to be the only way to really know
Christ and to experience the
mighty power that brought
him back to life again, and to find
out what it means to suffer and to
die with him. So, whatever it takes
I will be one who lives in the fresh
newness of life of those who are alive from the dead."

    Cassie had planned to cut her corn silk-colored hair that hung halfway down her back "and give it to someone who makes wigs for kids who are going through chemo," her aunt, Kayleen Bernall, told The Denver Post. Cassie had planned to have it cut "really short," her aunt said, quoting Cassie as saying, "I want enough hair for two or three kids, as many kids as possible."     Cassie had wanted to go to medical school, become a doctor and do medical work in England and Scotland, her aunt said.  Cassie also wanted to become better at the nature photographs she loved to take.
     Incidentally, Cassie was not the lone Christian killed at Columbine High April 20.
     According to the Internet site ReligionToday, Rachel Joy Scott, 17, who was also killed in the library, had led a weekly prayer and Bible study group of fellow teens the past year and a half at Orchard Road Christian Center, an Assemblies of God congregation.  The ReligionToday report was drawn from the Assemblies of God news service.
     "We consider her [Scott] to be a Christian American martyr," the church's youth minister, Barry Palser, told The Washington Post.  Her April 24 funeral was attended by nearly 2,000 people. Rachel, a fun-loving participant in drama and forensics, had told friends she was considering graduating early to travel with a Christian drama team and perhaps later to become a missionary or to work with troubled youth, the Denver Rocky Mountain News reported.  And she had promised her prom date, Nick Baumgartner, to give up her occasional smoking.
     John Tomlin, 16, another victim, attended a Baptist church twice a week to participate in a youth ministry, Boyd Evens, his pastor, said, according to ReligionToday. Tomlin had traveled to a small town in Mexico last year as part of a ministry that helped build a house for a poor family who had been living in a shack. He had planned to enlist in the Army after graduation.
     Two of the victims, teacher William "Dave" Sanders and student Danny Rohrbough, were shot while helping others escape from the gunmen.
    Sanders, whose April 26 funeral was at Littleton's Trinity Christian Center, herded students to safety when gunshots broke out in the school cafeteria, The Denver Post recounted. Sanders, 47, who had taught at Columbine 24 years, then went upstairs to aid other students, dragging one who had been wounded in the leg to safety, before being shot twice in the chest. According to the Associated Press, Sanders staggered into a classroom where students tore off their T-shirts and pressed them to his wounds.  They pulled out Sanders' wallet and held it open so he could see pictures of his wife and three daughters. His dying words were, "Tell my girls I love them."
    Rohrbough, 15, whose April 26 funeral was at Littleton's Grace Presbyterian Church, was shot in the back while holding open a door to let others escape from the gunfire. His lifeless body was among the first TV images broadcast live to the nation the afternoon of the tragedy.
    The church's pastor, Dwight R. Blackstock, said Rohrbough might still be alive "if he'd have made a little different choice. Yet he chose to stay there and hold the door for others so that they might go out before him and make their way to safety. They made it and Danny didn't," according to an account of the funeral in the Denver Rocky Mountain News. Blackstock noted that Rohrbough's heroic act, "in the last few moments of his life on this earth, was the kind of thing Jesus holds up as an example to us all.  Jesus said, 'Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'
     "That's what Danny did."   (Baptist Press, Tuesday, April 27 1999)

Overcoming Impossible Barriers

God knows our heart when others, and even we ourselves, doubt ability. Peter no doubt must have felt that way when he not once, not twice, but thrice denied our blessed Lord Jesus Christ (cf Luke 22:54b-62). I know that feeling very well. Having resigned a pastorate only 10 months after being called, I not only know the failure Peter felt but the joy and renewal he felt when Jesus restored.

    Ministers enter a pastorate thinking they will be there for years. I was no exception to that. But ten months after I began, I was finished. The afternoon of my last Sunday I sat in my living room well aware of the great and seemingly impossible to overcome barriers that faced me and my family as we began the long and often grueling process of finding a church. Looking back on it now, I see I had it all wrong. There were even more barriers than I had first imagined. There would be even longer days than I felt were before me. There were days that I cried even harder than I had previously. Still, God was there -- in even grander ways than I first imagined.

    To my great surprise and relief, churches began to contact me right away -- that very night, in fact. But one by one, God closed most of those doors. One door, however, remained steadfastly open. A member of the state convention's executive board had shared my name with a church not far from where my family now live. In fact, I had invited them to visit the Sunday before I resigned but they refused.

    I filled the pulpit for a dear friend and fellow minister in my hometown two weeks later. The pastoral search committee from two churches were there. At their request, my wife and I interviewed with one of the churches in a Sunday School class following worship. The children were on their best behavior -- thank the Lord!

    Inside the Sunday School class, something miraculous happened. My wife and I found ourselves in the midst of friends not strangers; genuine brothers and sisters in Christ who earnestly longed for God's Word to set the direction and path for their lives. More interviews followed, this time at the church itself. We met with the Deacons, the Finance Committee, the Personnel Committee, and of course the Pastoral Search Committee. Our hearts raced with great joy and excitement with each meeting and every telephone call. God appeared to be moving us in their direction -- but we wanted to be sure.

    A month later, in mid-March, I boldly proclaimed God's Word before an exceptional gathering of members and their families. The response was overwhelming! Many were moved to make kingdom building decisions that would affect the rest of their lives. The altar was almost completely covered with people on their knees!

    The church voted the following Sunday -- a bit unusual where I come from but discovering God's will was my primary concern. I think I prayed more that week than I had in years. "Close the door, Lord" I prayed, "close it now so I will know if you want me to serve you elsewhere." The door not only stayed open -- it swung open even farther!

    I recently began a new chapter in my life and ministry for God. My lingering feelings of unworthiness and uselessness are now gone, replaced by a new fire to not repeat the past ever again. God had overcome the mammoth barriers that separated me from His kingdom's service. Indeed, like Peter, He had restored me when I was unworthy to be restored.

    My story is not unique. God wants to restore you too. It matters not what you may have done or in what you may have failed, God loves you enough to take on whatever obstacle presents itself in your life. And He's not only willing to take them on, He has the power to overcome them. I stand ready to help wherever I can. Because I love Him and you . . .