FAITH GETS RESULTS, SAYS EX-AIR FORCE MAN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 38, 14 September 1949, Page 4

FAITH GETS RESULTS, SAYS EX-AIR FORCE MAN

Mr George Curie, president of the New Zealand National Council of the Youth. For Christ International, who opened a series of meetings in the Gi;and Theatre, Whakatane, on Monday night, says faith gets results. The series continued last night and will be completed#*: with meetings tonight and tomor-v row night. Object of the campaign, Mr Curie pointed out to the Beacon, is to interest yoqng people who have not been previously interested or who have lost interest in religion to. get into or get back to the Christian Churches. Sometimes the initial appeal is unconventional. As Mr Curie, puts it, his organisation uses a “streamlined presentation of the Gospel message”, geared to appeal to the younger generation of today and to show, convincingly, that Christianity is a practical 1 way of life with an answer for all life’s problems. Living By Faith

To show that faith gets results the evangelical teams who travel this and other countries get no salaries. They rely for their. daily needs of their mission on their faith in the power of prayer and of God’s promise to answer it. Said Mr Curie, “A God wßl© would not keep His promises would not appeal to me.” He claims to have proved beyond doubt prayers' are answered.

And this man has been in some tough spots. 1 As a youth of 19 he joined the Air Force, trained here and in Canada and finally served four years as a navigator in Sterling bombers based in England. He wasn’t a preacher then, but he had firm faith that God had a job for him after the war, and that he was coming through. Ten Crashes To escape unhurt from one crash might have been straight luck. To survive a couple would be exceptional luck. The third might be a coincidence, but when a calm-eyed, firm-jawed young man tells one with obvious sincerity that all he got out of ten bad crashes was\ a scratch on the - wrist after flying through all the flak the enemy could throw at him, one begins to shahe his faith in miracles. The rest of the crew who came to share his beliefs also shared his escapes, some of which seemed quite impossible .by all human standards.

This story took a bit of dragging out. Like most men who have really been through the hoops, this one was modest. But as the yarn illustrates his main point—that God does in fact guide and guard—here it is:—

On a torrid trip to the outskirts of the Ruhr district, where a package was faithfully delivered to the confusion of Hitler’s ' war industries, the bpmb aimer got hit rather badly. While Mr Curie (then Flying Officer) was doing an urgent first aid job, the pilot asked for a course. Us a Course!” Unable to leave the injured man, the navigator prayed, “Lord, give us a course,” and passed on to the pilot the answer that came into his head. It got them home straight and quickly, but 300 feet up on the way in to land two of the engines cut out, and the experts say it is impossible to land that type of plane with two out of business. This one landed—in l a dive at 95 m.p.h., wiped the under-carriage, ripped clear through the closed double doors of a brick building and out the back, and finished up tangled in the cables of a crash crane tender. Crew unhurt, lie’s Proved It Now, here’s the most miraculous part of the lot: That crash crane was parked a matter of yards from an ammunition dump full of live bombs which would not have left enough splinters in a wide radius to make a decent match stick.

Mr Curie claims faith gets results.