From Northridge to the World : Shortwave Pulpit Reaches Millions

Two artillery shells and the twisted remains of a Soviet-made Katyusha rocket lie on the carpeted floor of George Otis’ Northridge office. On the wall is a framed AK-47 assault rifle, captured from a Palestinian terrorist.

The tanned, silver-haired Otis wears cowboy boots and pressed khaki. He is at the head of a table, speaking to eight confederates in front of two wall-sized maps dotted with red pins.

His coffee mug says, “Expect a Miracle.”

Otis, 71, is carrying out a mission.

But his mission is not an against-all-odds commando raid on a terrorist stronghold.

It is bringing the word of Christianity to the far reaches of the world.

The longtime Simi Valley resident is president of High Adventure Ministries, a Northridge-based Christian organization best known for operating the Voice of Hope radio station in southern Lebanon.

High Adventure also broadcasts religious programming to Central and South America from a powerful shortwave transmitter atop Chatsworth Peak. Later this year, Otis plans to launch a third Christian radio station aimed at mainland China. The 3-million-watt station will be based in the Philippines and will broadcast in Mandarin.

“It’ll light up China like a big sun,” Otis said.

Around the office table, Otis and his eight associates say a prayer for that station--and for Jimmy Swaggart, a fellow preacher who is the latest to be humbled by scandal.

Unlike Swaggart and other noted evangelical broadcasters who have sought the limelight, Otis has maintained a low-key style among the people outside his charismatic Christian brethren.

Reaches Millions

Otis doesn’t do television. Instead, he makes shortwave radio his pulpit. Otis is a man who lives to get his Christian message out, and shortwave radio signals, which can travel great distances, enable him to reach millions.

Besides, he said, “I’d make a lousy pastor.”

Otis seems to have no shortage of friends in high places.

He has appeared on the religious “700 Club” television show and is a close associate of presidential candidate Pat Robertson and singer Pat Boone.

Voice of Hope, which broadcasts a shortwave signal and a conventional AM radio signal, began in 1979 after Otis told such high Israeli officials as then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that he wanted closer ties between Israel and the U.S. Christian community.

When Begin and others told him to spend his time ministering to Christians in southern Lebanon, he befriended the late Maj. Saad Haddad of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army, which controls a narrow strip along the northern Israeli border. Haadad said he needed a radio station, and, with Israeli approval, Otis provided one.

“That’s what he said he needed, and I believed him,” Otis said. “I said it can’t be just a radio station. It has to be a Christian radio station. That’s the only place the money could come from.”

The station cost about $2 million. Otis, a wealthy former aerospace executive, said he raised much of the money in a matter of months through direct mail and personal appeals to major contributors such as Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network, which gave $100,000.

Voice of Hope walked a fine line, broadcasting a mostly musical format interspersed with one-minute Bible readings in English and Arabic, but not Hebrew, which might offend the Israelis.

Without Israeli support, “it certainly wouldn’t have survived,” said William Quondt, who was director of the Middle East office of the National Security Council at the time. “It got its initial popularity by playing music,” he said. “Since then, it became increasingly political.”

Voice of Hope’s alliance with the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army apparently made it the target of frequent shelling, which produced some of the souvenirs in Otis’ office.

On Oct. 17, 1985, four armed terrorists blew up part of the station’s complex, killing three of Otis’ Lebanese staff. The station, borrowing CBN facilities, returned to the air the same day.

Otis, though, says he has forgiven the only attacker to survive the bombing and, indeed, a year later posed with him for a photo that is now displayed among others on Otis’ wall. There Otis stands with Nasser Karfan, 22, the grinning, handcuffed terrorist.

‘Get Right With God’

Otis said he took Karfan a tin of cookies and an Arabic Bible with Karfan’s name inscribed on it. Before parting, Otis said, “I had asked him if he would be willing to get right with God.” And he said, ‘Yes,’ ” Otis said.

Otis’ political reach seems to extend as far as his radio stations.

Otis is a friend of Robertson, a fellow charismatic, and says he supports his presidential bid although running High Adventure and its million-dollar yearly budget keeps Otis too busy to stump or organize for the candidate.

The ministry has not contributed money and has refused a Robertson campaign request for its mailing list, said Thomas (Ed) Steele, an Orange County public relations consultant and longtime Otis associate.

Otis chides Robertson for his defensiveness about being called a television evangelist.

“His fight against that, I thought was ridiculous,” Otis said. “It was an overreaction. What is he? He is a former television evangelist.”

Otis describes a 1970 meeting with then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan, in which he says God spoke through him in prophecy to say that Reagan would ascend to the presidency.

After that meeting with Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Pat and Shirley Boone and evangelist Harold Bredesen at the governor’s home in Sacramento, the group held hands while Otis delivered an “exiting prayer,” Otis said.

“It was a prophecy from God, directly to Ronald Reagan: ‘If you will continue to walk uprightly before me, it is my will that you be resident in the White House and become the president of this nation,’ ” Otis said of the prayer. “Everyone’s hands were physically shaking, and mine were too, and so were the governor’s. We had been physically, clearly trembling. . . . He knew God had spoken to him.”

Boone is a close friend whom Otis baptized in the singer’s swimming pool. The singer also wrote a forward in “High Adventure,” one of several books written or co-written by Otis and published by a company he founded.

Titles of other Otis books include “Voice of Hope,” “Millenium Man” and “God, Money, and You.”

Otis is part of the charismatic Christian movement, which emphasizes the roles of divine intervention in daily life, spiritual healing and speaking in tongues.

And, like many fundamentalists, Otis believes the establishment of Israel in 1948 fulfilled biblical prophecy that, in Otis’ words, “the end of this age is close.”

On an appearance on the CBN’s “700 Club” in December, Otis said God recently had told him to “discern the signs of the times.”

‘Electric Hour’

“We’re in the most electric hour that ever has been, the sky is about to fall in, the Four Horsemen are probably galloping through the Earth today,” Otis said. Three of the horsemen, he said, are seen today in famine, communism and AIDS.

Otis eventually got to the subject of money.

“I pray, dear God,” he told the television audience, “that we’ll get not just generous with CBN today, but that we’ll get extravagant. . . . we need to have those who are viewing today to go to their bank accounts, to go to God, and God will confirm that He has spoken today and said, ‘Do it now, lest you find yourself with assets you never used for me.’ ”

Back at his office, Otis takes a sip from his perpetually full “Expect a Miracle” coffee mug. He explains the importance of fund-raising appeals that are the lifeblood of High Adventure and other on-the-air ministries.

It is a mission, a quest, a high adventure that Otis has embarked upon since his religious awakening 20 years ago.

“We’re feeling the love of God. He wants to give a call, a message to all the people of the Earth. We hope that they’ll discover, as I did from hearing through the ears, the word of God.”