12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, `which is' your spiritual service. 12:2 And be not fashioned according to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
On Thursday (July 3) my wife and I were sitting on the balcony of a condo enjoying the ocean view from the 14th floor of Bay Watch Resort in North Myrtle Beach. I noticed two advertising banner planes approaching each other from opposite directions and said: "I've never seen two planes fly toward each other so close together." (It looked as if they were playing chicken.) We watched as the planes flew by each other, then breathed a sigh of relief. However, suddenly the propeller of one plane cut off 3/4 of the advertising banner being pulled by the other plane. The banner wrapped around the first plane causing it to rapidly lose altitude. I began to pray: "Lord, please protect that pilot, save his life." The plane came down hard in the chest deep part of the surf and flipped upside-down. The pilot climbed out with only minor injures and no one was hurt on the ground. As I thought about what I saw, it came to me that the banner plane was caught in its own propaganda. As it dragged along one media message, it got caught up in another causing it to crash. Our society is awash in advertising, brainwashing, and media and all those words and images are having an impact on us, whether we admit it or not. We are wrapped up in our own propaganda. The negativity, disrespect, violence, and vulgarity that we have surrounded ourselves with is bringing us down. Yesterday morning I searched the Internet to see if I could find more information about the crash. The pilot's name is Timothy Freeman Vickery. A "free man" was entangled and brought down by our modern propaganda. Could that be a warning? I also found this amazing fact. Two days after the Myrtle Beach crash, on Saturday, July 5, an advertising banner plane crashed on the West Coast, coming down in the surf on Seal Beach. This pilot also had only minor injuries and no one was hurt on the ground. The news headline read: "Ad Message Makes An Unexpected Splash." Were these two banner plane crashes just coincidence, or could they be a warning from both sides of our country on both sides of the 4th of July? Beware! The propaganda that surrounds and entangles us is bringing us down to an unexpected splash. |