Captain Eddie Rickenbacker: God Still Answers Prayer

By Lind Swarthout

He was called America’s Ace of Aces during World War I, the highest scorer of American aerial victories over the Germans. He could just as easily have been labeled the “luckiest man alive,” however, since he survived–by his own count–135 brushes with death during his exciting lifetime. In this fascinating biography, Lind Swarthout traces the life of Eddie Rickenbacker, who at the time of writing had just been rescued from 24 days adrift at sea sustained by an indomitable spirit and unshakeable faith in God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tannenberg Publishing
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781787201767

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Text originally published in 1944 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

CAPTAIN EDDIE RICKENBACKER: GOD STILL ANSWERS PRAYER

BY

LIND SWARTHOUT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

FOREWORD 5

AN INTERVIEW WITH EDDIE RICKENBACKER 7

CHAPTER 1—EDDIE BELIEVES IN PRAYER 8

CHAPTER 2—COMING UP THE HARD WAY 12

CHAPTER 3—TAKING THE BREAKS AS THEY CAME 19

CHAPTER 4—THE FLYING ACE 28

CHAPTER 5—TRAIL BLAZING IN AVIATION 35

CHAPTER 6—EDDIE MAKES AVIATION PAY 44

CHAPTER 7—ON A RAFT WITH THE BIBLE 52

CHAPTER 8—GOD STILL ANSWERS PRAYER 60

CHAPTER 9—FINISHING THE SECRET MISSION 67

CONCLUSION 76

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 77

FOREWORD

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

More mothers are praying today than ever before, for their sons are on the front line of battle, hiding in foxholes, drifting on parachutes high in the stratosphere, bailing out of flaming bombers and wingless fighter planes, floating on rafts, riding tanks with guns blazing. The mothers of these boys are calling on God to protect their sons who are fighting to preserve liberty of life and worship, and are asking Him to bring their boys home safely once more. Deep in the mind of each mother is this question:

Will God hear and answer my prayers?

I have written this book to give such mothers an example which proves that the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. Elizabeth Rickenbacker, the mother of Eddie Rickenbacker, is a woman of prayer and testified:

I prayed day and night and God is good.

Mothers, this book aims to inspire you to lift your voices in prayer and believe that when you meet the conditions for prayer, God will answer you as He did Mother Rickenbacker.

I have written this book to inspire the world’s young men who daily face dangers wherein their own strength is not sufficient. Eddie Rickenbacker and his companions, fulfilling the conditions for prayer, confessing their sins to their Maker, lifted their voices to God for deliverance.

Young men, as God heard those prayers of penitence and delivered, so will He hear your petitions in these tragic hours.

"We never stopped praying, and God was with us on our raft. I could feel Him there...I deal with machinery and material things but I am sure...God was on our raft. Frankly and humbly we prayed for our deliverance." So spoke Eddie Rickenbacker.

Pray humbly, men on the battle lines. Pray confessing your sins; pray in faith believing; pray meeting God’s conditions. God will hear and answer such prayers.

Wives and sweethearts, I have written this book for you, that you might lift your humble petitions to the God of deliverance, as did the wife of Captain Rickenbacker who said, I have prayed night and day since he was lost.

I have written this book for the inspiration of entire cities, such as New York City, whose people Mayor LaGuardia asked to pray for the Captain’s and his companions’ deliverance. In that great city the prayers of consecrated believers reached the throne of grace, and God heard.

Take your burdens, America, to someone bigger, as a lad said who spent thirty-four days on a raft with God.

I found great comfort at night in just looking up, testified Mrs. Ethel Bell, an African missionary twenty days adrift in the South Atlantic. She said in her story Adrift: "One by one the stars came forth, solemn eyes that looked down upon us...adrift upon the unfathomable bosom of the mighty ocean. But if God could build the nest for the blind bird...I knew He could also ‘temper the wind’...and watch over His children, no matter where they were on earth or on the sea. I recalled many times the words of the Psalms:

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and the right hand shall hold me.

LIND SWARTHOUT

Pasadena, California

AN INTERVIEW WITH EDDIE RICKENBACKER

Many have wondered how many of the survivors found spiritual salvation with their physical salvation. The Rev. Percy Crawford, director of the Young People’s Church of the Air, a national broadcast, writes of an interview which he had with Captain Rickenbacker. During the conversation Dr. Crawford said to the flier: Sir, I believe you know better than any living man that the most important thing in all the world when you are near death is to have a hope beyond the grave.

Captain Rickenbacker replied, Indeed, I do know that,

Then I ask you, said Crawford, are you trusting Jesus Christ as your own personal Saviour?

Why, replied Rickenbacker, I am surprised that you ask that...

Well! Are you? Are you? Dr. Crawford interrogated.

Captain Rickenbacker answered, Yes, I am. I am trusting Jesus Christ as my own personal Saviour.—Our Hope.

CHAPTER 1—EDDIE BELIEVES IN PRAYER

Eddie Rickenbacker is no stranger to prayer. His Life has been bound together by an invisible chain of petition. Running like a thread from his childhood to the present, weaving its way through his experiences as America’s flying ace in World War I to his more dramatic days with the Bible on a raft, prayer’s glorious influence has never been long absent from him.

Eddie has not always been a praying man himself, but the mother who rocked his cradle was a praying mother. From his twelfth year onward he was forced to meet life with both fists clenched, and always he stood up to fight alone.

He represents the American spirit, and the path he blazed from his early years beckons other difficulty-handicapped youth. However great the odds against him, motivated by a consuming passion to win, he fought his way upward.

His background was colorful. He grew up when the automobile was in its early stages of development and challenged every youth to master its problems and tame its bucking engines. Eddie accepted the challenge.

The fighting planes of World War f, crude in design and far from safe, caught Eddie’s fancy and gave him the opportunity to become America’s peerless ace of the air. Though other men were cautious, he drained the last ounce of speed from automobile or airplane engine. He has never been content to leave to others tasks labeled impossibles.

Facing life on the battlefield, on the speedway, in the airways, he has asked no more than a place to fight, to work, to win. From the start his credo has been: Look out, Life, here I come.

Seeking no easy berth, he has sought nothing he has not earned. Fighting his way through what to others was an unsurmountable mountain of odds, he has proved himself to be a rugged individualist.

However, though Rickenbacker is a man of amazing strength, there have been times when he was utterly weak. In such moments—as when little hope was in sight for him and the seven men who fought the Pacific—Eddie has lifted his voice in prayer to the Master of courageous, fighting men, and has humbly asked God to work a humanly impossible miracle. On these occasions his faith has been rewarded with the heaven-sent answer.

Finding the difficulties too great to solve himself, he has linked his faith to the unseen forces of God, and has become a man of prayer.

I am as safe at the war front, he said to his mother when called during the first World War to drive General John Pershing’s car, as I am in this old house. Might not its roof cave in and bury us all? Each waits the Master’s call, and when my time comes, I go.

This epitomizes the philosophy to which Eddie has held through life. He has been sustained by the faith that’ no matter how great the difficulties blocking duty’s path, he would come through. This has given him courage.

Better thank God for your Testament, son, he said to Johnny Bartek when he stepped ashore at the South Pacific base where he was rescued. You see now what faith can do for you. Later Rickenbacker gave further testimony to the upholding power of his faith. After his harrowing experience and dramatic rescue he said, I never doubted for one moment that we’d be saved. Though his companions’ faith had faltered and they had abandoned hope of rescue, the Captain’s belief in deliverance had not grown weak.

You know, I believe a lot in prayer, he said to William Stidger, popular preacher, after they had spoken before the Detroit Rotary Club in 1922. When I went away to war, my mother was worried about me, and I said to her, ‘Now, Mom, whenever you feel like worrying, take it out in praying instead. I’ll be just as safe as I would be at home. You know this house is a pretty dangerous place, but we’ve managed to live comfortably in it all our lives. You just keep praying for me, Mother, and God will take care of everything.’

His mother made this her prayer practice since the earliest World War I days. Wherever Eddie was, her prayers followed him. At the front line of battle, when enemy planes surrounded him, Mother Rickenbacker’s prayers were ever present. When Eddie returned home, she did not forget her son as his airplanes raced. Through the sky on missions of service or adventure, and when news came that Eddie was lost in the Pacific, Mrs. Rickenbacker’s faith in God’s promise of deliverance was strong.

I never doubted that he would be saved, she said after his thrilling rescue. "I have made it a habit to pray for him instead of worrying about him in times of danger. I spent my time believing that God would bring him safely through the dangers, however great and serious. This is a message the wives and sweethearts