Touch by an Angel
The American dramatic television series Touch by an Angel premiered on CBS on September 21, 1994 and ran for nine seasons until its conclusion on April 27, 2003. It’s 211 episodes chronicled the cases of two angels, Monica (Roma Downey) and her supervisor Tess (Della Reese), who bring messages from God to various people to help them as they reach a crossroads in their lives.
On Season 1 episode 1 of the series, which happens to be a 47 minutes long, Monica meets Tess at a Bus Stop. Tess tell Monica “I guess you did a good job with that 747” and tells her she will be working as an Angel on earth. Touched by an Angel is a wholesome TV show which encompasses the word of God and make TV family friendly and morally sound. I highly recommend it.
John Dye who played Andrew was introduced as the angel of death in Season 2. Sadly he died January 10, 2011. He was 47 years old.
I find this story to be amazing since The 47 Experience has a lot to do with divine angelic intervention and freewill.
Iron Man
The Iron Man movies were some of the best ever to be released by Marvel Studio. But there is one scene at the end of Iron Man 2 that got me thinking. Iron Man 2 focuses much on drones being used by an enemy. During the final fight scene, a previously unseen 47 shows up on War Machine’s left should. The AF-47 represents Air Force military branch of the U.S. Armed forces. Who and why was it placed there and what does it mean? Iron Man 2 was released in 2010 and is now 14 years old. In 2024 AI and Drones are big topics, so when I see a movie that seem to be prophesying the future, I pay attention.
Interestingly, the Navy along with Northrop Grumman had been working on development of a UAV drone named the X-47A Pegasus which was an experimental Unmanned Aerial Vehicle that first flew in 2003.
A later version the X-47B, was developed for the Navy. It first flew in 2011 and was throughly tested. It was even able to aerial refuel and land on aircraft carriers. After the USAF made plans for a next generation bomber, Northrop Grumman began a study for the X-47C stealth bomber. the NGB program was shelved in 2010 perhaps in favor of the manned B-21. Could this be the reason why AF 47 was used in the movie?
In order to fly in US airspace would be a challenge for drones since pilots need to verbally communicate with Air Traffic control. In comes NextGEN which is the an ADS-B based communication system that will replace air traffic control as we know it. Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is a large-scale initiative by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to modernize the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS).
This NextGEN system is being tested by the FAA on its Bombardier Global 5000 which is coincidently tail numbered N-47. So it could be argued that the creators of Iron Man were referencing the Air Force’s desire to go manned instead of unmanned or perhaps a hybrid version of such. The air traffic control systems being developed today would facilitate the use on unmanned aerial vehicles in the future.
