Category: Answer to Prayer

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Abandon Ship!

I was a young sailor on June 4, 1942, when the USS Yorktown was sunk in the Battle of Midway. We were only three miles from land—straight down! And that is where our great aircraft carrier still rests today as a tomb for some eighty-six of our friends whose lives so suddenly ended on that tragic day.

The best of the American and Japanese navies were in full conflict at the Battle of Midway, and we already had taken three bomb hits. Our hangar deck was in flames from one bomb, another had set fire to our fourth deck, and a third had exploded in the stack and blown out the fires in our boilers. We all felt the ominous silence of dead engines as we floated lifeless in the water!

At 2:00 P.M., our engineers had just gotten the ship’s engines started again when the next wave of Japanese attack planes came roaring in and dropped their torpedoes for the kill. That was more than a half century ago, and yet I can hear the agitated voice that spoke over the headphones and loudspeakers as if it were yesterday: “Stand by for torpedo attack!”

I can still close my eyes and shudder at the memory of the thudding of the two torpedoes as they struck us on the port (left) side. I was down on the third deck at water level when they blasted the side of our ship and ripped huge holes in our hull, and I can still remember how the ship lifted into the air with the impact of the explosions. As the water rushed in, the great aircraft carrier listed to the port side at twenty-seven degrees until the very edge of the hangar deck was dipping into the water. Inside the ship, there was nothing like a deck or a bulkhead, for every surface was lying at an angle and making it almost impossible to maneuver from one compartment to another. Water mains were broken and were spewing forth water, and the lights were out. Only the blue battle lamps illuminated the scene.

I will never forget the last command of Captain Elliott Buckmaster. A chill went through all of us as we heard his fateful words: “Abandon ship!”

In the following hectic hours, we struggled for survival. We had little time to think of the many friends we were leaving behind in the depths of the ship. If we were having trouble with a loss of electricity and broken water lines at the third deck, surely the men below us were flooded with little hope of survival. Yet, in spite of the jeopardy of our condition, I recall the disciplined calm among our sailors as we worked our way up through the destruction. Well trained for such a calamity, we helped each other find our way to the surface and then slid down two-inch lines into the oil-covered sea.

History has recorded the battle strategies, the mistakes, the glories, and the tragedies of the war at sea. The Battle of the Coral Sea, in which the Yorktown was first damaged, turned back the southern expansion of the Japanese Empire; the Battle of Midway, where she was sunk, was the turning point of the Pacific War. We look back now and see the entire Pacific Theater of the war from beginning to end—the Japanese expansion in Asia and the Pacific Islands, the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought America into the war, the prisoner-of-war camps, the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the signing of the unconditional surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri. Much has been said, written, and documented on film, but what history does not remember is that wars are not composed of the grand battles alone but of the personal challenges, tragedies, sacrifices, and faith of individuals caught up in the greater conflict.

History does not remember that at the very time when the survivors of the Yorktown were fighting for their lives, in the thick oil slick that surrounded the sinking vessel, many individuals and churches in America were praying. My own wife was seized with a deep burden for prayer, and just before the battle, I had one of the most outstanding spiritual experiences of my life. To all that has been written, I am adding my voice to say, “God was at Midway!”

This is an excerpt from the book, Dead in the Water, written by Stanford E. Linzey, and republished with a new introduction by my brother, S. Eugene Linzey, and an afterword by me. It is available on Amazon and on this website. The painting of the ship is by contemporary artist, Richard W. DeRosset.

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Ministry Follows Friendship

In 1986, Blue Diamond Growers in California initiated an ad campaign asking shoppers to buy a can of almonds each week. This was based on the fact that one almond tree produces fifty-two cans of almonds per year, and there are exactly fifty-two weeks in a year. Their slogan? “A can a week, that’s all we ask.” You can still find the old commercials on YouTube.

When I told my wife during a phone call that someone at Camp Echo was coming to faith in Christ every week, she recalled the TV commercial from years earlier and said, “A soul a week, that’s all we ask.” Being from California, I understood the allusion right away.

Linda had been praying that every week, someone would come to faith in Christ, and it was happening: someone at church on Sunday, a visitor to my office during the week, or a soldier in a unit training area. She prayed for the people I was ministering to, and God answered her prayers: a soul a week.

When I was a rookie chaplain, my supervisor showed up one day to mentor me. “Here’s my philosophy of serving as a military chaplain: ministry follows friendship. If you love your soldiers and spend time with them and they know you like them, then they’ll come to you when they want to talk about their spiritual need. Just love them, spend time with them, and trust the Holy Spirit to draw them. When they are ready to talk about the Lord, they’ll know who to go to.”

That sounded pretty good to me, so I adopted his philosophy of chaplain ministry. It was an effective approach throughout my military career, and it was true in Iraq.

Laughin’ and Prayin’

One Tuesday morning a big ol’ boy stepped into my office, and entered the Kingdom of God. He walked in unannounced. “Mind if I drop my body armor, chaplain?” It was already hitting the floor before I had a chance to reply.

“Not at all. Be my guest. Where are you from?”

“I’m from Brevard, North Carolina.”

“Brevard? I’ve been to Brevard.”

“Pity you,” he laughed loud at his own joke. “What were you doin’ in my town?”

“A friend of mine lives there. I was passing through and stopped to visit for a couple hours. Now, what are you doin’ in my office?”

“I grew up in church, but never got serious ‘bout Jesus or nuthin.’ Just out o’ boot camp an’ AIT, an’ they send me here. So, I figure if I’m gonna die right here in the desert at the ripe ol’ age of 19, might as well get saved, confess my sins, whole nine yards, make things right, ya know.”

I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun praying with someone as I did with him that day. Six feet four, a muscular 225-pounder with short brown hair and medium brown eyes. He walked loud, talked loud, and lived loud. I imagine he even sinned loud.

“Hey! I even know what to pray,” he grinned.

“OK, you go first, then I’ll pray.”

“Gotcha!”

He was right; he knew what to do, and he prayed a great prayer. I don’t recall ever hearing someone telling God jokes during a confessional prayer, but he did. We both started laughing. He kept on praying right through our laughter.

“Hey! I bet even the Lord has a sense of humor. Not a problem laughin’ during prayer, is it, Chaplain?”

“Not a problem. I’m sure God is laughing too. Along with all his angels up there!”

“Ha!” Then he started naming his sins from childhood, high school, basic training, all the way up to a couple days ago. Sins with girls, booze, cigarettes, lyin’, stealin’, cheatin’ in school, missin’ church. Then he concluded with, “An’ I ain’t sinned the past coupla days, Lord, so I guess that brings me up to date. Come into my heart. Amen!” Just like that, he was done.

When he finished praying, I was laughing so hard, I don’t think I could have prayed yet, so I suggested that we talk for a while and get acquainted before I take my turn.

A few days before this encounter, he was wearing his body armor while working, and injured his spine. It looked like the Army was getting ready to send him back to Brevard because he was in non-stop pain.

“So, I guess, I’m going home unless Jesus heals me.”

“Well, let’s pray about that too,” I suggested.

“Gotcha! Your turn to pray.”

Besides talking to the Lord about the young man’s back injury, my prayer was that his commitment to Christ would be genuine and lifelong, regardless of whether he stayed in the Army or went home, whether the Lord healed his back or not.

When I finished praying, my new friend looked at me, grinned and said, “Shoot, when I get home an’ show up at church, my pastor’s gonna have a heart attack. I don’t think he ever thought I was gonna get saved. Boy will he be surprised.”

He looked at his watch. “Whoa! Gotta get back to work. Hey! By the way. Can I get a Bible? When’s church?”

I handed him a Bible. “Church is at ten hundred Sunday, nineteen hundred Tuesday, and any time, any day you manage to find me.”

“Great. I’ll be your usher and deacon. You can count on it.” He hefted his body armor and Kevlar, grimaced with pain, and left just as loudly as he came. Just like that, he was gone.

The young man started coming to church. As promised, he got there early to help set up chairs and serve as usher, greeter, deacon, bulletin-passer-outer, altar worker, whatever I asked him to do. He was a tremendous addition to the ministry team. He stayed afterwards to help clean up. Then went to the DFAC with a group of us for lunch. It took about a month for him to process out and return to North Carolina. I wish I could have seen the look on his pastor’s face when he walked in the door of that Baptist church in Brevard.

This is an excerpt from the book Safest Place in Iraq. Available from this website, Amazon, or any book store.

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Gazing at the Destruction of Pearl Harbor

It was more than half a century ago that I stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown and gazed in awe at the recent destruction of Pearl Harbor. My sailor friends and I were very young then, but a few months later, the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway would make men of us quickly.

Since those decisive days, many fine accounts have been written about those key battles but generally in a secular context for the historian’s interest. They have enhanced our knowledge of the war in the Pacific and particularly of those great battles, and we are indebted to them, but there was another side to the story that never has been told.

During that early period of World War Il, I was in the U.S. Navy serving as an enlisted musician on the aircraft carrier Yorktown, which was a major player in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. From my experience in the ship, I observed the supernatural intervention of God that played a vital role among both officers and enlisted men. I wish to bring some of that story into focus for the families and friends of the Christian religious community whose loved ones served so heroically in those critical events of the war.

I am writing for all the military personnel who served in those actions and particularly for the survivors of the Yorktown and their families and friends. The Yorktown (CV-5) Club, which I currently serve as chaplain, meets annually to relive the events and to keep alive the spirit for which we served. I am grateful to the club members for the camaraderie and spirit of fellowship that have endured through the years and are ignited each year anew as we meet together.

I am writing for those many Christians who may not pursue secular history as such but would appreciate reading history that takes into account God’s intervening force in the lives and events of the people involved. Many prayed for their men and women during those dark hours of World War Il and believed that God heard and answered their prayers, and those of us who benefited from their intercessory prayer continue as witnesses to God’s grace.

Divine providence is as relevant today as it was in Bible times. Events do not “just happen.” The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway are cases in point, for we did not win those battles by our wits alone. The odds were stacked against us at Midway, but in answer to the prayers going on back home in our great nation, the enemy forces made crucial mistakes at Midway. Those errors cost them the loss of ships and men, which resulted in their defeat and the turning of the tide in the war.

I am writing to give testimony to God’s presence in the most difficult of times and to witness to the saving grace of Jesus Christ. My hope is that this testimony might be an encouragement to others who find themselves in uneven circumstances. Also, I wish to encourage others to be faithful to God and to one another in any and all eventualities, good or bad.

I am writing for my children who have not known what their father went through during the war. One of my daughters wept as she read the account of the sinking of the Yorktown and remarked that her brothers and sisters did not know these things.

Finally, I write to remind myself of God’s divine favor and providence lest I forget the time when I felt so alone and helpless. Lest I forget. Lest I forget.

This is an excerpt from the preface of my dad’s book, Dead in the Water. It is available on Amazon and on this website. Captain Stanford E. Linzey was a sailor on the USS Yorktown during WWII. After the war, he served as a pastor for a decade, and then returned to the Navy as a chaplain. The image below was provided by Pixabay.com.

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Can Dreams Come True?

A question often asked by people around the world is whether dreams can come true. I think they can. Of course, it depends on what kind of dreams we’re talking about.

When I was a kid, I often dreamed about finding buried coins in the front yard. Lots of money, usually quarters and dimes. When I was eight or nine, this dream was so real that in the dream I took all the loot, wrapped it up, and hid it in my bottom dresser drawer so it would all be there when I woke up in the morning. I was so disappointed when I woke up the next day, ran over to my dresser, opened it, only to find that there was no money. I used to have that dream three or four times a year up until I was about thirty. Now it’s only once every other year or so. It never has come true.

Then there’s the dream where I’m in school or at church or some other public location, and all I have on is my underwear. Interestingly, in this dream, even though I am totally embarrassed, nobody else ever even seems to notice. Fortunately, this dream has never come true.

After returning from the war in Iraq, I frequently had dreams and nightmares for the next two years or so. Explosions, or gunfire, or dangerous situations. What a relief when those gradually faded away. It’s been several years now. The only two aspects of PTSD that still linger are the claustrophobia and eating in a hurry. I can’t seem to overcome those.

But there are some dreams that really do come true. Let me tell you about three of them.

Several years ago, my wife and I were invited to teach a three-week intensive class at the Hungarian Bible College in Budapest. We taught the class every morning, then in the evenings and weekends, would preach in churches in Budapest and nearby towns.

One day, our missionary hosts had to go up to Czechoslovakia (now Czech and Slovak) for meetings with their regional supervisor, and told us how to get from their home to the college. The trip would require a bus ride part of the way, then the subway, and then we had to walk the rest of the way. Of course, the trip would be reversed after the class in order to get back to their home.

Up to this point, we had resisted taking the subway because the missionaries had told us about an American pastor who got lost in the metro. He had missed the station where he was supposed to get off and rode the train all the way to the end. Seven hours later, he called to ask them to come and get him.

When we got to the subway, there was a huge, long escalator that took us way, way down. Longest escalator I have ever seen. When we finally reached bottom and turned right, I stopped.  This was really strange, because the scene in front of me was familiar.

“Linda, I’ve been here before.”

“What are you talking about? We’ve never been to Budapest.”

“I know that, but I’ve seen this before.” It was a really eerie feeling.

“How could you have seen this before?”

“I don’t know. But if this is what I’ve seen before, the subway cars will come from the right, and they’ll be blue.”

In about fifteen seconds, the train arrived . . . from the right . . . and it was blue. We go in, the doors close, and the freaky experience continues.

“When we get to the next stop, the doors on the left will open, and the walls will all be yellow.” Sure enough, that’s what happened.

Even Linda was weirded out by now. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know! But at the next stop, the doors on the left will open and the walls will be orange. But when we get to where we need to get off, the doors on the right will open, and the walls will be blue.” It all unfolded exactly as I expected.

Then it dawned on me. Even though I had never been in a subway, a year-and-a-half before we came to Hungary I had a dream about being in this very subway, and the details in that dream were exactly the same as the reality we were now experiencing. That was a dream that came true.

Another dream I had as a kid was to be a Navy chaplain like my dad. But by the time I was ready to become a chaplain, the Lord redirected, I went into the Army instead, and had a wonderful career. Six years after retiring from the Army (which was thirty years after I became an Army chaplain) I was invited to serve as the Protestant pastor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, working with the chaplains. It was a one-year assignment, but a fantastic experience. I felt like I had come full-circle back to my dream of being a Navy chaplain.

One more dream worth mentioning here, was the dream of growing up, falling in love, and marrying the woman of my dreams. That’s another dream that came true. Life with Linda has been everything I had hoped for . . . and then some.

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Snatched by Goodness

On October 31, I preached in the Naval Academy chapel. The scripture of the day was Hebrews 9:11-14, where Jesus is introduced as “High Priest of the Good Things.” The sermon title was “Snatched by Goodness,” and I told a couple of stories of my life being spared by someone who literally snatched me by the collar. Then I asked one of the men of the chapel to tell of a personal experience he had as a Naval Aviator. Ed Grunwald’s story is a powerful testimony of the goodness of God in answer to prayer in a desperate situation.

Ed called me yesterday to tell me another story. He graduated from the Naval Academy with the class of 1950, and has been a member of the USNA protestant congregation since retiring from the Navy. For the past twenty-five years, he has been praying for an opportunity to tell his story to the congregation.

I had no idea all that was going on when I felt the leading of the Lord to have him share his story. I had met him when I visited him in his home a few weeks earlier, and as I was preparing the sermon, I just had an inclination to ask him.

God is good. Jesus is the “High Priest of the Good Things.” And it’s wonderful to hear about how people’s lives have been touched by goodness.

If you click on the YouTube link, you can view and listen to the whole service. My message begins at 29:45. Ed’s story starts at 35:15 and runs about eleven minutes.

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