When Turner stopped believing

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

CNN founder Ted Turner is being remembered this week as a media pioneer and a larger-than-life personality. 

Commentator Cal Thomas reflects on another side of the man he came to know.

CAL THOMAS: If memory serves, I first met Ted Turner in 1978 at an Associated Press convention in Washington. I don’t recall if I approached him first, or he introduced himself to me.

I do recall he asked my opinion about a cable network he was seriously thinking of starting. He wanted to call it CNN and present straight news without opinion.

I told him I didn’t know anything about cable, but if he was behind it, I was sure it would succeed. It did succeed, spectacularly.

There were only three broadcast channels at the time—NBC, ABC, and CBS. They did their newscasts with three serious-looking anchors at precisely 6:30-7:00 pm each night, repeated for the West Coast. 

I remember when there were just 15-minute newscasts. When it was announced they would expand to 30 minutes, people wondered if there would be enough news to fill.

Turner was a complicated man. On two occasions, I had the opportunity to share the gospel with him. He rejected the good news, calling Christianity, “A religion for losers.” 

He later apologized, but never changed his view.

He told me he asked God to heal his ailing sister, but she died, and he stopped believing in God. I said that God has a Son who asked His father if it were possible to allow this cup—meaning the cross—to pass from Him. But nevertheless, “Not my will, but yours be done,” He said.

Following Turner’s death some people said he was in heaven for his environmental work, and that the animals he helped save were there with him. That might make some people feel good, but no one goes to heaven unless they have confessed their sins and accepted Christ as Savior. Otherwise, Jesus died for nothing. 

God gave us this good news so we would not perish.

I’m not Ted Turner’s judge, but anyone who thinks works will get them to heaven has rejected the only One who can get them there. 

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

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