Skip to main content

Ace Down

   Probably the most famous ace pilot was Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen or as he was called “The Red Baron. He racked up 81 air kills in combat during the First World War. What made him so deadly was his discipline. He had a set of rules that kept him from danger, rules he adhered to with precision.

Number One: Never follow an enemy for too long, there was too much of a chance one of his buddies would come to the rescue and get you.  
Number Two: Never fly too far into enemy territory, then enemies' ground fire might pick you off. 
Number Three: Never fly too low to the ground, not only would it put you in range of enemy guns, but it also risks a crash if the plane is damaged.

  He kept those rules until April 21st, 1918 when we got into a dogfight with a young and inexperienced Brit named Wilfrid May. May’s guns had jammed and as he fled the Baron saw an easy target.

  Maybe because it seemed such an easy target Richthofen broke his rules, he stayed on the target too long and flew too low and into enemy territory. Sure enough another pilot Canadian Captain Arthur Roy Brown was able to get in position behind the Baron and a group of soldiers on the ground were able to open fire as well.

  No one knows for sure who got him, but nevertheless, the Baron’s plane was hit, and since he was so close to the ground he could not recover. He crashed in a nearby beet field, where he would bleed out and die, still strapped to his seat.

 We know the rules as well. Don’t stray too far into worldliness. Don’t get too low into sinful temptation. Don’t get too far from God’s word and his people. But we too fool ourselves into thinking it will be easy to escape the world attacks.

We may think we can ace the test but we are better off avoiding the temptation altogether!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

  Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so.  Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English.  Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome.  Wouldn’t you feel good?   You shouldn’t.  As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590.   You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with.   Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Master Your Self

  In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt.  He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!)  Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest.  Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt!   Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way.  He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal.  As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself.  He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors.   But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...
Post a Comment
Read more