Russell O'Quinn grew up in Van Nuys California. He fell in love with airplanes one day when was when he was on the roof of his family home with his dad at the age of five. His dad had nailed his pants to the roof so he wouldn't fall off, and since the approach corridor from the local airport passed overhead, he watched the planes fly overhead all day. He built model planes and read everything he could get his hands on. As he grew older, he would go to the airport and hang over the fence to watch the planes take off and land.
His parents were terrified when they t considered the prospect of Russell flying airplanes and did whatever they could to divert his interest. By the time he was a teenager, he was having heated arguments with his parents concerning his heartfelt desire to fly. Finally, a compromise was reached. Russell would hire on at the local airport to work on the airplanes as a grease monkey. A sign near the entrance to the airfield caught his eye, and his dad noticed it as well:
FLYING LESSONS $XX PER HOUR
"Promise me that you won't do that," said his dad. Like most of us were when we were teenagers, Russell was a wooden-headed literalist, and his reply was legalistic and deceptive.
"Okay, I won't spend any money on flying lessons." Instead, he worked out a deal where he would trade out work for flying lessons without actually paying cash for them.
It was the mid 1940's and World War II had just ended. Russell had watched a Clark Gable movie called Test Pilot about a hundred times and his course was set. His dream was to become a test pilot. He had already learned to fly, (although he had been literally grounded for six months by his parents after buzzing his house on his first solo flight) but he didn't know how to make his way from being a fledgling pilot/grease monkey at the local airport to the cockpit of cutting edge fighter aircraft. Aerobatics competitions were coming back now that the war was over, and Russell decided to use the aerobatics competitions as a stepping-stone to his goal. If he could make a name for himself in aerobatics, he figured, he might just be able to move into the profession of his dreams. He began practicing all sorts of maneuvers.
His parents were still trying to dissuade him from pursuing a career as a professional pilot, and so, during the summer, they would load him up and take him to visit relatives in Oklahoma, hoping he would find other interests. He would ride horses and sleep under the stars, but he tried to steer clear of one relative in particular, a peculiar aunt. She would pray out loud before meals at dinnertime and was frequently read the Bible aloud regardless of who might be nearby. She went to church two or three times a week. Russell wasn't used to that sort of behavior at home; his folks only went to church two or three times a year. The last summer he spent in Oklahoma was right after he graduated from high school. It was on this visit that Russell's weird aunt cornered him. He was terrified that she was going to pour religion down his throat and he braced himself for what he was afraid she would say, but he was surprised.
“She sat me down and began to talk to me, not at all about what I was afraid she was going to. She had a quality known as wisdom. I didn't know much about that word in those days. And she began on this wise:”
‘You know, if you're ever going to amount to anything in this profession you've chosen, you ought to go on to college. You ought to get a higher education. Get an Aeronautical Engineering degree.’ I was ready to reject that out of hand because I already had my number one educational objective, and that was to go to Florida and enter the Aerobatic competitions, but before I could get that out of my mouth, she dangled a carrot in front of me I couldn't resist. She said,”
‘If you'll go, I'll pay for the first year's room, board, and tuition.’
“What could I lose? I could try it for a week or two and if I didn't like it I could always leave. I should have known better when she already had the college picked out, but nonetheless, that September, I found myself standing on the campus of a small college up in Arkansas.”
Russell checked into the men's dormitory and got settled in, then decided to explore the campus. What he discovered was that his aunt had betrayed him. Most of the students were just as weird as his aunt and walked around with Bibles under their arms. His aunt had sent him into a hotbed of religion. But he met some more guys who felt the same way he did, and decided to stick it out for awhile and have some fun with his new friends causing trouble for the religious nuts that largely comprised the faculty and student body.
He learned that people and organizations make mistakes. His aunt had made a mistake by putting the first year's worth of room, board, and tuition in his hands in cash. He began a research project on his own. First, he discovered that somebody had donated an adjoining piece of land to the college, and that it had a small airport on it. They didn't know what to do with the airport, but Russell did. He discovered that a fairly advanced Army Surplus training aircraft could be purchased for about half the amount his aunt had given him. He bought an airplane and parked it at the airport next to the college.
Russell determined to study aerobatics on his own while he was in college.
He began practicing two low altitude maneuvers. The first one was going to be his signature maneuver, performed on takeoff.
“After doing the run up at the end of the runway, I turned around and lined up with the runway, take off and climb to about fifteen or twenty feet, and at this very low altitude I'd retract the landing gear and the flaps, accelerate out to the maximum speed that I could reach at this altitude, pull up vertically and do a vertical snap roll, and on a very precise heading push over and sort of disappear off into the sunset.”
Russell practiced this incredibly dangerous maneuver every time he left the airport with an audience of excited students and disapproving faculty. When he was away from the airfield he would fly through the valleys below hilltop level until he reached a dead end. A few of his friends were pilots and Russell would play chicken with whoever was in the copilot's seat by letting the plane head toward the dead end and seeing who would pull back on the stick first to avoid a crash. Once his plane broke out of a valley onto a meadow where horses and cows were grazing.
“There's something about the sound of a Pratt and Whitney R-1340 aircraft engine coming toward a cow at 150 miles an hour that does strange things to their psyche. I found that a cow will outrun a horse any day of the week when properly motivated.”
One evening he was cornered by one of his professors, a fellow who had some of the same characteristics as his aunt. The professor cornered him and invited him to dinner. Since Russell couldn't think of an excuse not to go right then, he accepted the invitation. After a marvelous dinner, the professor invited Russell into his study to talk. He was ready to turn the old gentleman off, but two things prevented him from doing that.
“I suddenly became aware for the first time in my life that I was confronted with someone outside my immediate family who cared about me. The second thing was that I secretly admired this man. He was very knowledgeable and very capable, and he had taken time out of his busy schedule to talk to me. And I'd never had anybody do that before. And so I decided to listen.”
"You know," he said, "you're in an institution of higher learning. And sooner or later you'll be confronted with a course that will teach about the origins of the universe, the origins of the earth, the origins of mankind." And he said, "Many years ago I gave a great deal of study to these subjects, and I'm going to give you the benefit of a little of what I learned." He said, "After studying these subjects extensively, I came to the conclusion that there are only two basic premises at the bottom. You can come at them from any direction you want, but you'll always wind up at these two premises. One premise holds that in the beginning there was a cataclysmic explosion that happened eons ago, and since that time, the heavens and the earth, and mankind, and all living things have been formed by a process known as 'evolution.' The other position holds that there's an Almighty, all knowing, all capable God, who created the heavens and the earth, and mankind in particular. And after leaving these studies, I went into the study of the sciences that were related and as I began to study the sciences, little by little I became aware of the enormity of the power that I was seeing unfolded in front of me, and the genius of design and creativity. Little by little I came to the conclusion that there had to be Somebody behind this. One of the things that drove me to that conclusion was only one word in our language that adequately describes evolution: ACCIDENT.
"I could in no wise reconcile what I had begun to see in my study of the physical sciences with that word, and so I came to believe that indeed there is a God."
The professor went on to explain that man had been created by God, and was separated from God by disobedience, and that God desired a reconciliation. And then he introduced Russell to Jesus Christ. The minute he mentioned that name, Russell became very uncomfortable, but the professor went on to explain Jesus did what was necessary for man to find his way back to God. He died on the Cross some 2000 years ago. The professor explained how it's only through Jesus Christ that man can have his sins forgiven, be reconciled to the eternal God of Creation and have an eternal home.
Russell wasn't ready that night to make a decision for Christ, and he escaped the professor's study to pick up where he had left off, staying just ahead of the "campus cops" as the faculty was called.
One of his friends, who was also a pilot, wanted to be checked out on Russell's airplane. Russell put him in the front seat and flew with him for several hours training him. His friend became proficient in flying the plane and the day came when he was to make his first solo flight.
“We went out to the airport and did our walk around inspection of the aircraft. I helped him on with his parachute, and we got up on the wing. I watched him strap in and go through the start procedure, tapped him on the shoulder, got down off the wing and watched him taxi away. He got down to the end of the runway, did the run-up and the preflight checklist just like I trained him, turned around and lined up with the runway, took off and climbed to about thirty feet, leveled off, retracted the gear and the flaps, accelerated out, pulled up and tried to emulate the maneuver that he had ridden with me through so many times, and at about five hundred feet, he lost control of the airplane and pitched over and dove straight into the ground at about 150 miles per hour."
Russell had never seen death before, and he was confronted with it in a very violent way. He said it was an understatement to say that he was a shocked young man. He would never forget that day as long as he lived. It hit Russell like a runaway express train that he was responsible for the death of his friend. It had never dawned on Russell that someone might follow him, and that it might cost that person so much.
Russell locked himself in his dormitory room that day and got down on his knees to pray for the first time in his life.
“Oh God, what's happened to me today is too great for me to bear, I can't handle it.” Then he remembered a more formal prayer from the Bible professor's class
“Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner, and save me, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.”
That night Russell said he discovered that there is indeed a God, and that He's a God of His promise.
Russell didn't know what it meant to be a Christian. He knew he could never become as good as his aunt or the Bible professor. What he finally realized was that nobody can live good enough to have their sins forgiven, and earn their way to that eternal home God promises each of us if we'll accept Christ. Jesus lived a life of sinless perfection, was crucified, and rose again to give us an eternal home if we'll accept His plan for our lives. Russell found that he didn't have to become a preacher or a missionary to some foreign land. God allowed Russell to pursue the occupation he loved so much. I fact, God allowed Russell to go on and achieve ever dream he had as a boy.
“Many years ago I was selected as the project test pilot for an advanced weapons system. Thousands of people had been involved in the development of this system. It was a cooperative effort by several aerospace companies. And when the time came to fly, when the prototype units were completed, we converted an advanced jet fighter into a test bed and installed this system in it. We were a two hundred-man test group, myself, and two other back up pilots. I went out to the base at about five in the morning, suited up, briefed, and strapped this fire breather on. I sat there on the ground for two hours, functioning the system, telemetrying the data to a variety of receivers around where people were in vans with their heads in scopes analyzing the data that came to them, and after we were satisfied that the system operated properly, I started engines and taxied to the end of the runway, and after a last-minute tweaking, I took off and climbed to thirty thousand feet and leveled off. In the interim, the sun had come up, and it had turned into one of those beautiful days, the azure blue sky, the puffy white clouds, and I had about ten minutes to get to the test area where I was to begin performing the maneuvers that were written out on the test cards on my knee board, and I had time to reflect. And again, it hit me like a runaway express train. As I was sitting there in awe of this marvelous and beautiful morning, I realized that right this instant I was living every last dream I'd ever had as a boy. Clark Gable never flew an airplane like this one. They had never conceived of the technology I had on board when that movie was made. You know what I learned? I hope this may be worth something to some of you. When dreams come true, they're not all they're cracked up to be. Now please don't misunderstand me, dreams are the stuff of life, and we are to pursue them, but there are some of you who are running a hundred miles an hour down the road after dreams. But you take it from one who's had a lot of them come true, that unless God is the Author of those dreams, you have a tragic disappointment awaiting you.
“First of all those dreams will not satisfy the way you think they will. If you're wise you'll understand that they only lead to bigger dreams, and it never stops, by the way. And you know when they come true, that golden sheen that we put in them, especially when we dream them as young people, some how becomes tarnished when they come true. There's responsibility attached to them, and they aren't as fun as we thought they'd be.
“Another thing I learned is that dreams become memories just that quick. I have a couple of friends that are test pilots, one of them is well known, he's done more than I have in this profession, they're both retired now, and they're sad men to be around, at least to me. You can sit with them and suddenly you realize that they're frightened of the future. It's OVER. And they know it. And they'll sit there by the hour talking to you about the good old days, reliving the golden years. And it occurred to me one day, doing that, sitting there listening to them, 'What a tragedy, to arrive near the end of your profession or the end of your life and be frightened of the future, and have only memories.'
“I thank God that, so many years ago He gave me an eternal future. Retirement does not signal the end for me, it signals the beginning! I learned a verse that is very precious to me:
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man the things that God has prepared for them that love Him." (I Corinthians 2:9)
“We ain't seen nothin' yet! The length of a person's life is a mist. It appears for a little while in the morning and then it vanishes away. I hope you'll remember this. Friend, if you put all your eggs in the basket of this world, you've made a tragic mistake.
“Not long ago I was asked to take the plane that I'm presently flying and spend two weeks giving flight demonstrations to eighteen young military pilots. These pilots were select; they were selected out of the bases around the United States to fly this particular mission. They were the Top Guns of the mission. This was a classified mission, I'm sorry I can't tell you what it is, or what it was... I was asked to take my airplane and my team and go to a secret base out in the west, and we spent two weeks out there doing this. We were all gathered together in the base auditorium on a Monday morning at the beginning of it. The commanding general for this mission was up on the platform giving the agenda and the introductions for the two weeks. I was sitting out in the audience, and just four chairs down from me was a young major that had been selected as the temporary commander for these young pilots during the two weeks, and he leaned over and was talking to one of my associates, and he said,
"Who's the test pilot who's gonna give us the flight demonstrations during the next two weeks?" My wise guy associate said,
"It's the old guy sitting three chairs down."
"Is he going to need help out to the airplane every morning? Did he bring a cane with him?"
The next morning Russell had the young major in a briefing at 7 a.m. At 8 a.m. they were strapping themselves into a fighter plane that was more advanced than anything the young Top Gun major had ever seen.
These men had never flown a front-line jet fighter. They had never sat on a state-of-the-art zero-zero rocket ejection seat or worn half the equipment we wear, much less flown in this environment or this caliber of airplane. We were concerned that we didn't have enough time to prepare them.
Russell gave the young major his final, most critical briefing standing by the aircraft, and then they climbed on board.
“We strapped in, I started the engines, closed the canopy, taxied to the end of the runway and took off, and we climbed out to their practice area. This profile is about thirty minutes long, and if you've seen the movie Top Gun, we do every maneuver you saw on that movie plus a whole lot more. Most of our maneuvers are vertical in both directions, with entries of between 5 and 7 positive g's and with rapid reversals to 2 and 3 negative g's. We wind up doing six hundred mile-an-hour evasive tactics a hundred feet off the desert floor, conclude with a popup maneuver. We enter that at 5 g's, go vertical, roll into an inverted position. We have an instrument that presents a menu of targets. We select one, roll in on the target, do a simulated attack on it, come off of it, do two victory rolls and we're done. And if you haven't been doing that every morning after breakfast, I guarantee you it'll ungate your eyeballs for you! I slowed down from warp 7 and the young major in the back seat was as white as a sheet and had filled up two bags. I landed, set everything down and opened the canopy and he had to have help to get out of the back cockpit. We got down on the ramp, and I couldn't resist, I leaned over and said,
"You wanna borrow my cane?"
Russell went on to say that the studies he and his associates did on this particular training exercise were rather shocking. These select Top Gun pilots represented the best of the best from military bases all around the nation, yet not one of them had been prepared for what was coming. It was a terrifying experience for each and every one of the pilots. One reason it was so terrifying was that they thought they knew what was coming. Even though they were pilots who knew how to fly and were familiar with the technology (some had even seen combat!), and had the briefing materials in their hands for weeks, not a single one of them was prepared for what they experienced.
Russell's presentation was designed to help us all understand that without Christ, even though a person may be quite familiar with the "briefing material" God has given us in the Scriptures, he or she is in for a terrifying experience. What will make it even more terrifying is that many of those who don't know Christ actually think they know what's coming, and they don't have a clue. While none of us will ever sit on a zero-zero rocket ejection seat or fly a frontline jet fighter plane, each of us will one day experience something much more intense. We will all stand in one of two places. The Judgment Seat of Christ awaits those who know Him as Savior and Lord. The Great White Throne and eternal damnation awaits those who have rejected Christ and the Holy Spirit He offers so freely.
None of us knows exactly what it'll be like to stand before God after our lives are over. But it's coming, and we'd better know it.
