Peter Jennings Aniversary

One year ago today, ABC anchorman Peter Jennings left this world after a battle with lung cancer.

Almighty God, we remember before you today your faithful servant Peter Jennings; and we pray that, having opened to him the gates of larger life, you will receive him more and more into your joyful service, that, with all who have faithfully served you in the past, he may share in the eternal victory of Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I believe Peter is up there in heaven serving God, and I hope to meet him there someday. :saint:

 

Peter Jennings was a Christian: During an interview with Beliefnet.com in June, 2000, regarding the special, The Search for Jesus, Peter Jennings stated on page 4 of the interview, "Well, first of all, I want to keep my own faith out of it because it's not relevant to the broadcast. I think it's fairly widely known by anybody who pays attention that I'm raised Anglican. I'm a practicing Christian, and that's about as far as I want to go with it because I don't want people to think that somehow I brought my own notion of faith or spirituality to bear on it."

During a speech at Harvard Divnity School in the 1990s, Peter Jennings stated that the overwhelming majority of newsrooms in America have an "appalling ignorance of religion and faith" and that was why he wanted religion to be a beat at ABC. He further said, "Incidentally, though I do think it proper for journalists to keep their distance, I discovered there was a new spark to my own faith. I had been raised in a fairly predictable Anglican communion, where the practice of religion was, I am sorry to say, often as much social behaviour as it was spiritual. But today I find there is both comfort and challenge in practicing my faith, and though I am a dismal failure in many fronts, in trying to live it...my own faith has helped me to develop eyes that see the spiritual dimension in many stories. You can find a religious angle on every beat...politics...medical reporting...education...family and social issues...When it is done right, the added dimension of spirituality resonates with the audience to a surprising degree."

Peter Jennings was a Christian who seemed to be humble and very well aware of his own human failings.

If one's faith is genuine, it will produce works. I read that he did a lot of charitable work, such as working in soup kitchens, even when the cameras weren't on him. He befriended homeless people and formed the Peter Jennings Foundation, which fights illiteracy and homelessness. He also funded a school in Newark, New Jersey. He also made religion a beat at ABC News, making it the first major American network to do so. A boy from Serbia credits Peter's news inteview with him in Bosnia in 1994 with changing the course of his life for the better. A couple saw the broadcast and made arrangement for him to come to the United States. The Serbian boy, now a young man in the Navy, became a U.S citizen a few months ago. Many smokers have quit because of Peter Jennings's announcement and death from lung cancer. Some of them were interviewed on this evening on World News.

In the year 2000, when Christianity Today magazine asked Peter Jennings if Jesus would have been willing to grant interviews to journalists, Peter Jennings replied, "Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that he would have."

During the night of August 7, 2005, Peter Jennings left this world and got that interview with Jesus.

 

Calm down, everybody! I never said you couldn't spend eternity with Jesus. I also look forward to being with Him. You will also have the joy of meeting the Christians who went before you. There is nothing wrong with that.

The prayer was from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Episcopalians pray for the dead as a loving gesture and nothing more.

:wavey:

 

That special was a mistake for more than one reason: some of the theologians Peter Jennings interviewed were with the Jesus Seminar. Most theologians disagree with the Jesus Seminar. Another flaw was that the show depicted Jesus as a man and not as the Son of God. In other words, Jesus was watered down. Peter Jennings said that believing that Jesus is the Son of God is a matter of faith. He was correct about that. We walk by faith, not by sight. He said in the interview with Beliefnet.com in June, 2000, that he had reservations because he didn't want to be seen as undermining people's faith "which is the last thing in the world I would ever want to do," he said.

Personally, I wouldn't have interviewed anyone from the Jesus Seminar. I would have interviewed other people: Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Pat Robertson. :tongue3:

 

Yes, He does, and they are the most unusual interviews a human can have: Exodus 3, I Samuel 3, 1 Kings 19:12-18, and Job 38. :thumbs: