A powerful and dramatic story of Jim Downing and his “Pearl Harbor bombing experience and beyond,” told by Navigator Brett Clark. Brett Clark is the Community Relations Director of the great Navigator Ministry, headquartered in Colorado Springs.
With bombs falling at Pearl Harbor in 1941, Navigator Jim Downing prayed: “I’ll be with you in a minute, Lord!”
Instead, Jim lived another 75 years and wrote a book – The Other Side of Infamy — when he was 102. Jim went to Heaven in 2018 when he was age 104 ½. Jim Downing holds the “Guinness Book of Records” for being the oldest male author to have written a book. (Book available at https://www.navpress.com/search?keyword=other+side+of+infamy.)
Jim became the 6th Navigator to be enlisted by Navigator founder Dawson Trotman. (See https://www.navpress.com/dawson-trotman) He was attracted to “follow Jesus” – not to escape hell – but because he wanted the same quality of life he witnessed in other Jesus followers around him.
On the evening of December 6, 1941, he was leading a Navigator Bible study of about 100 people in a home near Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack came just 12 hours later. Several in that group, mostly men, would be dead!
Sunday morning the news of the attack was announced on the local radio. Returning to his ship at rapid pace the next morning — as postal officer he knew most of his crew’s names. As he was going about seeing the wounded, he remembered all the names he could to be able to write their parents to tell their families all he knew about them, including their heroic deaths.
There are many other stories recorded with Brett. When Jim was near age 100, Jim Downing told Brett that if there were any gathering wherein, he could minister, he would be delighted to do so. So, Brett Clark became Jim Downing’s “right hand man.” They went all over the country, discipling, honoring the Lord.
This went on until Jim Downing turned age 104. Then Jesus took him to Heaven!
Past related radio links
To hear … “Student missionary Mort Whitman and HHH talk about impact on us of ‘Navigator Topical Memory System’” … click on … http://haroldhendrick.com/2015/06/29/student-missionary-mort-whitman-and-hhh-talk-about-impact-on-us-of-navigator-topical-memory-system/;
To hear … “Jim McNiel, the ‘Walking Bible,’ amid laughs, re joys of memorizing, applying, living out the Bible … click on … “http://haroldhendrick.com/2018/11/12/jim-mcniel-the-walking-bible-amid-laughs-re-joys-of-memorizing-applying-living-out-the-bible/;
To hear … “Jim ‘Walking Bible’ McNiel relishes laugher amid rich joys & thoughts of Scripture he has memorized” … click on … http://haroldhendrick.com/2015/11/30/jim-walking-bible-mcniel-relishes-laugher-amid-rich-joys-thoughts-of-scripture-he-has-memorized/.