An Open Letter to Ted Turner

Dear Ted, We have been sending you our monthly thoughtletter for just over one year now. I trust that it has, in fact, been coming before you, and that you have at least occasionally read it with interest. Although we have never met personally, I have been intrigued by what I know of your life's story. Last November I listened with particular interest to your interview on National Public Radio with David Frost. In that interview you repeatedly voiced skepticism about the credibility of the Christian faith. At one point, referring to the idea that Jesus Christ could ever actually save humanity from its problems, I remember you said, "Your only savior is in the mirror". Of course the question about whether Jesus Christ really is a Savior sent from God is also directly related to whether the Biblical record really is believable. Those of us who contend that it IS believable, inevitably cite fulfilled Bible prophecy as one of the most convincing evidences. If the Bible really is true communication from God to man, one might well expect to find in it revelation such as could not possibly have been produced by man on his own. And of course we certainly do. Repeatedly. As a matter of fact, this is precisely where you and your Cable News Network (CNN) come in. Here in my New England pulpit, for the past year, I have been preaching through the most mysterious Book of the Bible. In Revelation 11:7-13 John wrote that near the end of time two men will carry out a strange but Divine mission in Jerusalem, and then be killed. Revelation 11:9 (NIV) says that following their death, for three and a half days, "men from every people, tribe, language, and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial" --all in downtown Jerusalem! Ted, when John wrote those words near the end of the First Century, they simply didn't make sense. It took weeks and months just to travel from one country to another in those days. How could people from all over the world ever conceivably "gaze on" any specific object(s) within only a few days' time? This week, however, in our local paper (the Bangor Daily News), science columnist and EMTC instructor Clair Wood wrote: "There are literally hundreds of satellites orbiting above our heads at varying heights..." Wood reported that remote sensing via satellites will soon make even just bits of local information available worldwide. "The world has truly become a global community tied together by a network of all-seeing eyes high above their head", he said. Today's satellite technology, in combination with the nearly worldwide on-location reporting capabilities of CNN, would of course have been easily apparent to a God fully able to look down on the corridor of what we humans call time. And it would have posed no particular challenge to Him to reveal such an unlikely scenario (to the First Century mind, that is) in the form of a 2000-year advance prophecy through the Apostle John. In his new book, "Christianity: The Faith That Makes Sense: Solid Evidence for Belief in Christ" c1992 by Living Books, Tyndale House), Dennis McCallum refers to this same amazing Bible text and asks, "Would it really be plausible for a man two thousand years ago to imagine something like this? If it is, where are the other examples of such advanced speculation from the same period?" McCallum answers his own question: "In fact, there are no such speculations. The Bible is unique in this respect." It just seems to me that it would be the ultimate irony, Ted, if your own network news system, because of its magnificent capability, in fact turned out to be the very means whereby the veracity of the Bible and the faith that you have come to view skeptically would be clearly validated. Because I do care about you, I thought I'd at least try to communicate this to you here, now, in this way. I'm trusting that you will know that I am altogether sincere in my intent. I'd be honored by your response. Daryl E. Witmer, 7/7/92, Monson Maine