They were trying to cope with a depression the likes of which no one living had ever seen and, while trying to keep body and soul together, they could hear the drumbeat of war. It was coming and they knew it. And then there was that Dust Bowl.
But it was during "The Dirty Thirties" that, in spite of everything, America was involved in a love affair. Millions and millions of Americans were in love with radio and they gathered around it every night. American families went silent as their radios did the talking for the evening. They were so in love with the radio that, during the time of the Great Depression, they would fall behind on their washing machine payments and their car payments, but they kept on buying radios by the millions.
And it was on the night of October 30, 1938, that men and women, mothers and fathers, boys and girls gathered around their radios, innocent and unaware about what was going to be unleashed on them, not knowing that they were about to live through a nightmare they'd remember for the rest of their lives.
Orson Welles, a dramatic genius had spent all week getting ready to present H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" for his "CBS Mercury Theater of the Air" as if it were a news program, presented by live "reporters,"and "military commanders" on the scene. Other actors were to portray average citizens either shrieking in horror or describing the terrible things they were seeing.
Americans had become accustomed to hearing live reports from reporters on the scene in Europe as the nations were moving toward war. They'd heard a frantic, beside himself reporter witness and describe the burning and of the Hindenburg, as he shouted, "Oh, the humanity, oh, the humanity!" They'd heard the bulletins about the horrible kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, and had been conditioned to hearing bad news a "We-interrupt-this- program"statement would always bring.
Whereas H. G. Wells had placed his story of a Martian invasion in England, Orson Welles placed the advent of the Martians in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, and the rest is history.
The most popular radio program that night, as usual, wasn't "The Mercury Theater of the Air;" it was "Edgar Burgen and Charlie McCarthy," a ventriloquist and his dummy who kept the nation in stitches week after week. But that night on the Edgar Burgen program, there was a musical interlude and, as usual, people started, as they said back then, "twisting the dials" of their radios and they hit on Orson Welles and his "War of the Worlds." The problem was that when they left the ventriloquist's program, they arrived at Orson Welles' program just a few seconds late, so they didn't hear that this was a dramatic recreation of the book, "War of the Worlds," and thereby hangs a tale.
They thought it was real, that a place (which was a real place) in New Jersey had been invaded by an advance vanguard of Martian ships and the hideous monsters that the reporters were describing emerging from their flying saucers were slaughtering thousands of Americans with their light rays.
The terrified listeners heard a "professor at Princeton" describe how he'd observed explosions on Mars that night, and now here the Martians were, arriving on our planet slaughtering the State Militia of New Jersey, called out to protect the citizens, and they heard a reporter interview the commander of that militia as he watched the massacre of his men.
What frightened them most occurred as they listened to a reporter describe the encroaching Martians coming closer and closer and as they heard the screams of the people being attacked, all of sudden the mic goes dead by deliberate design and Orson Welles wrung the dreadful silence for all it was worth, at least 15 seconds of radio quiet and the horrified listeners assumed the Martians had killed the reporter.
As the program progressed, terrified Americans heard that their countrymen were "dropping like flies," "jumping off bridges," "fleeing like rats," and soon they learned that New Jersey had been "cut off," and New York City had been "cut off" from the rest of the country too. All this was happening within the first fifteen minutes of the program, but no one stopped to think that that was too fast to be real. How could you assemble the New Jersey National Guard in fifteen minutes?
It was so real, Americans everywhere became convinced that the Martians were on their way to get them. Twenty families gathered up what belongings they could, piled into their cars, sped off, and jammed into the local police station.
People would look out their windows and see the streets. If they were empty, they assumed that everybody had already fled and they needed to flee too. If they saw that the streets were crowded with cars, they assumed that people were trying to get away and they needed to get away too.
In a town in Washington State, the power went off (a classic case of bad timing) and resident's fled to the mountains. There were reports of suicides that night. All this within the first fifteen minutes of "War of the Worlds."
A screaming woman interrupted a prayer meeting at a Methodist Church with the news of the Martian invasion. Calls jammed telephone lines at 8:15 PM EST, as people were calling their families to warn them and to say goodbye. They were trying to get through to the police, and the newspapers. Neighbors were warning neighbors.
A man and his wife heard the broadcast on their car radio and started back south toward Los Angeles to say good-bye to their children, but they ran out of gas, then sat in their car waiting for the death-dealing Martians to come over the California mountains to kill them.
What some people later swore that they heard that night on the radio wasn't "a Martian invasion," but "a German invasion." Many thought the Germans had landed, although America wasn't at war at the time.
One lady told her little boy that there was some chicken in the refrigerator they should eat because, as she said, "We won't be here tomorrow." There were reports of college students fainting. Not only girls, but also boys.
There were near riots and panic in the streets of America that night before Halloween in 1938.
Creative genius that he was, Orson Welles had one of his actors imitate the accent of President Franklin Roosevelt during the program, but the program introduced him as "the U. S. Secretary of the Interior" to give the government's warning of the invasion. Yet, in spite of telling the people that it was the Secretary of the Interior, people later claimed that they heard FDR himself on the radio that horrible night.
"Reporters" described the "poisonous black smoke" that was choking people to death; they described the flames that were all over the place. Some listeners later claimed that they saw the smoke and started choking and that they also saw the flames. All over the United States, people were literally choking and seeing things in the darkness.
When the executives at CBS started hearing that their program was causing a nationwide panic, one of them raced into the studio and told someone there to make Welles stop the program for a station break to tell the nation it was all make-believe. It just so happened that Orson was at the mic at that moment and he had control of the studio. He didn't do it. He didn't stop the program for that announcement until a full 20 minutes later.
Orson Welles' broadcast of "War of the Worlds" was before my time (!) and when I read about the widespread panic it caused in America and how 12,500 articles were written about it, and how it haunted people for decades, I thought, "What morons. How gullible. Those idiots back then really believed something so stupid."
But then, when I heard a rebroadcast of parts of the program, it did seem real! I saw how people, trained to trust their radio reporters, would believe it. I heard the screams, I listened to "average citizens" describe the death-dealing light rays of the Martians. I heard the interviews of the military and government officers as they described it.
Those radio actors were better than good; they were better than better; they were the best! If I were in that situation as those listeners in 1938 and were responsible for protecting my family, I'd have fallen for Orson Welles' hoax too. If I didn't choose to run, I'd at least have been worried.
The human brain is a marvel of God's creation, but the human mind is limited and finite. Its judgments can be clouded by fear, by emotion, prejudices, and by a threat, real or imagined.
The program shows us this much: people hear reports of "poisonous black smoke choking people to death," and then they swear to high heaven that they saw the smoke that night and that they started choking. People hear reporters describing the flames of the Martian invasion and they swear they saw those flames. Rational? Logical?
It's difficult for the human race to admit that, by its mental processes, it can come to ultimate truth apart from divine intervention. It's hard for our proud race to admit that there are things we don't and cannot know apart from God's telling us.
We think we have it all figured out: a person gets to heaven if his good works are good enough to counterbalance his bad ones.We've got that down pat. To us it's as logical and rational as can be. But this is "man's wisdom" as Paul says in I Corinthians 1. Grace (God's unmerited favor at the cross) is not something man would figure out. Man's mind, his fallen logic, his fallen intuition, his fallen feelings, and his fallen emotions, all lead him to the erroneous conclusion, "For by works we are saved," and thus, all over the world, he's invented one religion after another over the course time, working his way to God.
But God's wisdom is summed up with, "For God so loved the world, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life." Believing in Christ is equivalent to believing the good news about Christ.
God's wisdom is that forgiveness of sin and eternal life come without cost to us when we trust what He's told us in the Bible: His Son, Jesus Christ, died for our sins, rose from the dead and that we can have that forgiveness and that eternal life immediately upon trusting Jesus and Jesus alone for it. (I Cor. 15)
It comes down to this: You have to put your ultimate trust somewhere. Do you trust Christ and the Bible or your finite, limited, and fallen intellect, capable of being blinded by emotion, fear, appearances, intuition, prejudice, and feelings?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Journal."
If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.
Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM. You'll be glad you did.
Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:
notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
No comments:
Post a Comment