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Themes: Call to Service L.P.C. It was the mid-1930's. Four nations began to realize they were heading for war - Britain, France, Germany and the United States. It was a despairing thought for the British to repel the growing force of the German Luftwaffe bombers. "The bomber," feared Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, "will always get through." A national nightmare began. Britain was faced with the onslaught of the German Luftwaffe and what could stop them? Henry Tizard, chairman of Britain's Committee for the Scientific Study of Air Defense, wasn't overtaken with the despair. His committee searched for ideas.
University professors and backyard mechanics proposed solutions; however, when one tinkerer proposed the use of powerful radio waves to knock out enemy aircraft, Tizard became interested. Quickly he contacted Britain's head of national radio research, Robert Watson-Watt who analyzed the proposal and immediately suggested that Britain aim radio waves at hostile aircraft. Not for the purpose of doing damage but perhaps one-millionth of a millionth of a millionth of the force of the pulse would bounce back as an echo. If Britain would listen for these minute echoes, they could know what was coming from where and how fast. Radio Detection And Ranging, RADAR, was born.
Britain's Air Ministry accepted the proposal and in the spring of 1935 established four researchers at a military base on the North Sea. Within a month the team was tracking a plane 17 miles off shore. By 1936, Watson-Watt's team began construction of five radar stations to guard London. Two years later, the research team shrank their radar equipment into a 2 foot box and created airborne radar. When the nightmare began, Britain was ready.
When wave after wave of Luftwaffe bombers would head for London, Britain intercepted them before they got there. British mastery of radar had hit the Luftwaffe as a total and bitter surprise. Adolf Galland, Germany's top Ace in the Luftwaffe attack and later a general, blamed their defeat on Britain's radar and fighter control network. In hindsight the German general saw it all: As German planes assembled over France, their "formations were already picked-up and never allowed to escape from the (British) radar eye."
Watson-Watts team answered the call of their country to save it from the oppression of the German Luftwaffe. So Gideon answered the call of God to deliver Israel from the oppression of Midian.
But years after Gideon answered the call to save the nation, the Lord Jesus came to earth to fight a greater enemy than Midian. He came to put away sin (Heb.9:26) and make it possible for God to save men (Rom.3:25). He was not a hero as Gideon was, but was despised and rejected (Isa.53:1-3). Yet His work at Calvary was not only for one nation but for all the world (John 3:16). Do you know this Savior?
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Peter Orasuk
