Ask and you shall receive: 1 prayer creates broadcast miracle'If God wanted us to have air time, He would have to provide it'

By Drew Zahn

Old photo showing (with arrow) spot where Vic Eliason prayed for airtime
MILWAUKEE, Wis. – Vic Eliason still remembers the exact spot on the floor where he stood with three students in 1961, praying for a miracle after a fruitless week of searching Milwaukee for someone – anyone – who would grant the fledgling broadcasters 15 minutes of airtime for a Christian radio program.
Fifty years later, another young man Eliason knew decades ago, today known as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, designated May 15, 2011, as "WVCY Day," in honor of the radio station that was founded in answer to those prayers and the ministry, VCY America, that has grown to operate nearly 30 Christian radio stations across the Midwest and provide on-air content for dozens more.
Eliason told WND how God answered his prayer for a miracle:
"We prayed on that spot on a Friday, believing that if God wanted us to have air time, He would have to provide it," Eliason recalled. "On Monday, the door slammed open and a man I had never seen before asked, 'Could anybody here use some free air time?'"
The man was from WBON Radio, assigned by his boss to craft a half-hour religious program. But after he was given the program's theme song, "I'm Not Worthy," he was convicted that he wasn't the right man for the job. Like the three youths praying with Eliason, he had been pounding the pavement, searching for someone to fill the void. Then he stumbled into Eliason's Youth For Christ center and became an answer to prayer.
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VCY America grew from that first half-hour program to own multiple stations – some topping out at 100,000 watts – covering wide swaths of the Midwest, broadcasting 24 hours a day. In time, the ministry added the nationally syndicated "Crosstalk" talk show, a television station, a Christian school, a 385-acre youth camp, a pair of recording studios, a print shop, a library, an impressive array of technological hookups and telephone networks that allow VCY America to host local Christian talk radio covering individual communities all over the country out of its hub in Milwaukee, a central studio that can coordinate, for example, an on-air host in Tennessee taking calls from listeners in Canada and even a birthday club that sends gifts, gospel tracts and Bibles to thousands of children on their birthdays in dozens of countries each year.

Vic Eliason
The size and reach of the ministry sometimes overwhelms even Eliason:
"The marks of God's provision," Eliason marveled, "we don't deserve what we have here. If you took 25 radio stations and look at the capital value, even in this economy, it scares you to death. … Our light bill runs $1,030 a day every day, and that's before you start paying people, insurance and all this other stuff. And how God does it, I don't know, not even to this day."
He continued, "It seems like I've been in this ministry 50 weeks; it doesn't seem like 50 years, and that to God's glory. I feel as excited today as the day I walked in here, saying, 'God, what are you going to do next?'"

Eliason still remembers how his fascination with radio began, listening not to Christian messages on the family receiver, but to a very, very different voice indeed.
"When I was a kid," Eliason told WND, "we didn't have running water, we had kerosene lights, and I remember hearing the screaming voice of Adolf Hitler on the radio."
But his mother, noticing Eliason's interest in the radio tubes and wiring and mechanics of the medium, planted the idea that the evolving technology could be used for a grander purpose:
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