Well, there was so much static and interference, and screeching and scrawling, and once in a while we could hear the bell ring, and we’d get to know what round they were in. Then, the next day my Dad could read in the newspaper who won. We didn’t know when we went home that night who had won.

My Dad said that it [the radio] would never be perfected—it would never work, but it did work. And we bought one of those things. It came to be a very, very good way to spread the Gospel. I believe, then, that God gave us radio for the purpose of spreading His Gospel.

And then, I can remember, also, the first television program that I ever saw. I believe you can remember your first television program, the first one you ever saw. Well, some of you can. Now, some of these young folks can’t, because it was here when they came into this world. But I remember the first one. We went to California to visit some of our relatives out there that had prospered a little bit more than we had. We got out there, and they had one of these gizmos that sat upon the table, and you could see what was going on, as well as hear, like on radio, and they called it a “television.” We sat up every night till midnight watching Championship Wrestling with Gorgeous George! That’s the first introduction I had to television. And I knew for sure that wrestling was NOT the reason God gave us television! There had to be another purpose for it.

We went back home. In the town where we lived, in Aida, Oklahoma, they were building a new television station, and I said to the elders, “We need to be a leader! in preaching the Gospel on this new television station.”

They first said, “We’re just a small church. We can’t do that.”

But you know, one of the great challenges, and one of the great blessings we get in the body of Christ is by doing…what…we…can’t…do! “We’re just a small group, and we can’t,” you know. Oh, we’ve hidden behind that old excuse so long that it’s timeworn. We CAN do some things, because God…is…able…to…make…us…ABLE…to…DO…THINGS that need to be done!!...IF we have the faith to rely on Him and look to Him. He will provide all things necessary to the work that He’s given us to do.

Anyway, we were the second paid program on that station. The first paid program came on the first day that station went on the air, and then we came on that night, and we had the second paid program on that station. The church grew from, oh, 175 people—about that—to around 500, because people heard the Gospel, and they heard it on radio and television.

Now comes along Internet, and that’s an added benefit. I don’t have time to go into that, but we now are coming to use Internet as one of the chief means of communicating the Gospel. What an open door there is there for us, and we’re going to be there also in the SEARCH Program!

Now, I’ve told you all of that so that you know that my commitment to God is to preach His Word! But, not just to preach His Word in the Sunday morning assembly.

When I was still in high school, at age 17, I preached my first sermon. That will be 64 years come the 12^th day of next month [Brother Lyon preached his first sermon on November 12, 1939]. Less than a month from now, I will have been preaching 64 years. I preached on Sunday night, and then I preached somewhere else every Sunday…every Sunday, beginning on that date while I was in high school, and then for a year or so thereafter.

Then I went to Freed-Hardeman [College at that time—Freed-Hardeman University now]. I came back and went into local work. The first place we could, we got some time on radio, because that was my commitment to the Lord—to preach the Gospel out where people can hear it.

Recently I was reading, preparing a program, and I came upon a statement in some book—it might have been a John MacArthur book—I sort of believe it was, but I can’t say for certain. I was researching in a number of books and reading different people, researching my program idea. I came upon this statement, and it stuck with me. I can’t go back and find it. I usually highlight everything with a yellow marker, but I can’t find it.

Anyway, whoever said it said truth. Here’s what he said: “In the absence of sound doctrine, God is silenced.” Now, you think about the truthfulness and the power of that statement. In the absence of sound doctrine, GOD is silenced. And, I’m afraid if we’re not mighty careful that, with all of our modern means of communication, and with all of our commitment and all that we have at our availability, if we’re not careful, we may be silencing God.

I was working at [sounds like] Hudson’s Vick Country Store in Colgate [Oklahoma?]—a country store in Colgate. I went around the building one Saturday afternoon to run an errand for them. There was a crowd gathered outside on that Saturday afternoon, and there was a charismatic preacher who was preaching on the sidewalk. There was a crowd of maybe 200 people gathered there—enough that it had blocked the traffic. Anyway, as I went along to get through them, over to where the car was so I could take the car, well, he was saying something that…well, the people were just so in laughter about it. They were just in stitches. He was a regular comedian.