I think that it is only fitting for us to remember all those brave Americans who died to preserve our freedom in this greatest if battles, and what FDR said about our Faith in God.

Ron

The Battle of Okinawa is considered the largest land-sea-air battle in world history, and the last major battle of World War II. It began April 1, 1945, when 60,000 U.S. troops landed on the Island of Okinawa. It was called “The Typhoon of Steel” because of the hundreds of kamikaze attacks, where suicide bombers flew planes filled with explosives into American ships.

Fighting continued for 82 days. Kamikaze pilots sank 38 U.S. ships, and damaged 368 more, in what is considered the greatest loss of American ships in U.S. naval history. There were over 72,000 American casualties. Imperial Japan lost over 110,000 soldiers, in addition to nearly 150,000 Okinawan civilian casualties, many of whom were ordered by the retreating military to be human shields or to commit suicide, as the Imperial honor code, called “seppuku” or “harakiri,” considered surrender a shame worse than death.

Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed in the battle, April 18, 1945, by Japanese machine-gun fire on an island northwest of Okinawa Island. Ernie Pyle had been embedded with Army infantry soldiers in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.

Infantry soldiers were given “Government Issued” supplies, resulting in the initials “G.I.”

Ernie Pyle’s newspaper columns were turned into the 1945 movie, The Story of G.I. Joe.

Ernie Pyle wrote in 1943:
“I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.”

The fierceness of Japanese combat in the Battle of Okinawa convinced the U.S. Navy and Marines to expect over a million casualties if they attempted to invade the main Japanese islands. This convinced Democrat President Harry S Truman to drop the atomic bomb on the industrial centers of Hiroshima and Kyoto in August of 1945. Secretary of War Henry Stimson argued to spare Kyoto as a target. The city Kokura was then chosen, but on the fateful day cloud cover blocked the crews’ visual identification, so the bomb was dropped on nearby Nagasaki.

Tragically, Nagasaki had been the most Christian city in all of Japan.

Nagasaki was first visited by Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier in 1549, through whose efforts the powerful daimyo (lord) Ōmura Sumitada had been baptized. Over 300,000 Japanese became Christian by the end of the 16th century. Suffering intense persecution, the Kakure Kirishitan “Hidden Christians” or Mukashi Kirishitan “Ancient Christians” passed their faith on to succeeding generations, century after century.

Martin Scorsese’s movie SILENCE (2016) gives the account of missionaries to Japan and the persecutions suffered by Japanese Christians.

Emperor Meiji finally allowed religious freedom during the Meiji Restoration, 1868-1912.

From 1912 to 1926, Japan experienced unprecedented freedom and prosperity during the “Taishō democracy.”

Beginning in 1926, Japan’s Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito and his generals re-concentrated power politically into a totalitarian, militaristic state.

Emperor Hirohito’s Imperial Japan entered into a Tripartite Treaty with Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party on September 27, 1940, being referred to as the “Axis Powers.”

After the Imperial planes had attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recited the reason the U.S. entered into war in his address to Congress, December 8, 1941:

“The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage … lives have been lost …Ships have been reported torpedoed between San Francisco and Honolulu …The Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya … Hong Kong … Guam … Philippine Islands … Wake Island … and Midway Island.”

FDR stated January 6, 1942: “Japan’s … conquest goes back half a century …

War against China in 1894 …

Occupation of Korea (1910) …

War against Russia in 1904 …

Fortification of the mandated Pacific islands following 1920 …

Seizure of Manchuria in 1931 …

Invasion of China in 1937.”

Invading Imperial soldiers massacred over 300,000 in Nanking, China, 1937-1938.

FDR concluded his address: “We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for peace, not only for ourselves but for all men, not only for one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills. Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race.”

“We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: ‘God created man in His own image.  We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage …”

“We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. “

“Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image — a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom. That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives.”

“No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been, there never can be, successful compromise between good and evil.”

“Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith.”

March 2^nd is Texas Independence Day.  But do you know the real history of how it came about.  And have you ever read the real Texas Declaration of Independence.  Every real Texan should read it at least once.

Below I have transcribed a verbatim copy of it for you.  However, first, let me give you a short history of what brought it about, and then show you the document.  See, the Mexican people had been under the control of Spain and then France for so many years.  Finally they gained their independence.  They were overjoyed at what they expected would be their new-found freedom. 

The Americans living in the northern part of Mexico north of the Rio Grande River in the area called Texas were thrilled too.  They were expecting to enjoy new freedoms also.  Most had come to Texas to start a new life and acquire their own land. 

The people of Mexico had their first free election and elected their own president.  His full name was ………Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón or for short, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

However, much to their consternation, he immediately overrode their constitution and became a vicious dictator.  He ruled through executive orders, demanding more control and higher taxes.  Santa Anna decided the people were incapable of ruling themselves, so he ignored the Constitution, dissolved the Congress and declared himself dictator. 

Santa Anna wrote to the U.S. minister to Mexico, Joel R. Poinsett:  “A hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty … a despotism is the proper government for them, but there is no reason why it should not be a wise and virtuous one.” 

Santa Anna demanded citizens surrender their guns, decreeing:  “All foreigners who might be caught under arms on Mexican soil should be treated as pirates and shot”   Santa Anna wrote in his Manifesto, 1837:  “I offered life to the defendants who would surrender their arms and retire under oath not to take them up again against Mexico.”  He incited killings and used his military against those resisting his centralized power.  

 New Orleans there was a Mexican army led by General José Antonio Mexía.  He decided to march his troops down and free the people of Mexico from Santa Anna. In 1835, Federal General José Antonio Mexía marched his troops from New Orleans to Tampico, but Santa Anna defeated him and executed every prisoner. 

None of this sat well with those Texans living north of the Rio Grande river.  They needed their weapons to kill wild game, which was a big part of their diet, and for protection from the Kiowa, the Apaches, and especially the Comanches.  They drew up a Declaration of Independence from Mexico and started to organize for defense. 

So, Santa Anna himself decided to lead his army north and put down these rebellious Texans.  On February 23, 1836, General Santa Anna’s army arrived outside the Old Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar.  His troops, eventually numbering 1,800, flew the blood-red flag of no quarter, signifying that all those captured would be killed.

Texan and Tejano defenders, numbering between 182 to 257, responded by firing their cannon.  In the “13 days of glory at the Alamo,” Santa Anna’s take-no-prisoner policy had all defenders killed, including: William Travis, Jim Bowie, and former U.S, Congressman Davy Crockett. 

Santa Anna ordered those who surrendered to be executed and have their corpses burned.  The few survivors included Susanna Dickinson, her baby, Angelina, and Travis’ young black servant, Joe.

The only Texas army left in the field was Col. James Fannin’s.  It departed Goliad to rescue the Alamo but was surrounded in open ground and 350 were captured.  Santa Anna ordered the prisoners executed.  When the Mexican officer hesitated carrying out the executions, Santa Anna sent another officer who proceeded to execute nearly all of them in the Goliad Massacre, March 27, 1836.  Bodies were stripped, piled, burned and left exposed to vultures and coyotes.  A few dozen of the Texans were spared execution through the courageous intervention of Francita Alavez, the “Angel of Goliad,” and Mexican Colonel Francisco Garay.

Had Fannin’s troops been left in prison, Texans would have been disheartened, but instead, Santa Anna’s Goliad Massacre aroused world outrage. 

General Sam Houston had by now recruited a crew of tough Texans.  Much to their consternation Houston kept retreating until he had led Santa Anna and his troops all the way down to the San Jacinto area south of present day Houston.  He waited until the Mexican army retreated into their tents for their daily siesta. Then those brave Texans attacked in force.  They loaded their cannons with grape shot and aimed them at ground level.  They say that all across the battle field were the loud shouts of the Texans…….”Remember the Alamo!, Remember Goliad!……Remember the Alamo!, Remember Goliad!” 

The Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836 was a massive Texan victory.  Santa Anna was shot through the leg and managed to hide in the swamp, but those Texans found him and drug him back in front of General Sam Houston.  He had no choice but to cede all the territory north of the Rio Grande to the new Texas Republic. 

So, like I said, every real Texan should read the Texas Declaration of Independence at least once, and here it is for you:

“UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE by the delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the Town of Washington, on the Second Day of March, 1836.  When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted; and so far from being a guarantee for their inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression… …insuch a crisis … the inherent and inalienable right of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves and a sacred obligation to their posterity to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their welfare and happiness …”

The Texas Declaration continued:  “The late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez Santa Anna,who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers, as the cruel alternative, either abandon our homes acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood… It denies us the right of worshiping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a National Religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.  It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defense – the rightful property of freemen – and formidable only to tyrannical governments …  It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers …”

The Texas Declaration ended:  “We, therefore, the delegates, with plenary powers, of the people of Texas … DECLARE, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas, do now constitute a FREE, SOVEREIGN, and INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC …  Conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations.

Remember the Alamo

Please note that in declaring their independence the Texans not only demanded the right to keep their guns and homes and property, but they absolutly did not want to be subjected to a State Religion.  As they put it in their Declaration, they demanded the “right of worshiping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience” and that this worship be according to “the glory of the true and living God”. 

I would really like for you to know about one of the most brilliant men that ever lived…..Isaac Newton.  Do take the time to read this short revelation about him that I have prepared for you…….. 

Ron

Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642, the same year Galileo died.  Newton’s mother was widowed twice, resulting in him being raised by his grandmother.  He was sent off to grammar school at The King’s School, Grantham, England.  His uncle, Rev William Ayscough provided the recommendation for him to attend Trinity College, Cambridge, 1661.

In the Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, written by William Stukeley, there is this story:  “Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself; occasioned by the fall of the apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. 

“Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? But constantly to the Earth’s center? Assuredly the reason is, that the Earth draws it.  There must be a drawing power in matter. And the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the Earth must be in the Earth’s center, not in any side of the Earth.

“Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly or towards the center? If matter thus draws matter; it must be proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the Earth, as well as the Earth draws the apple.’’ 

So Issac Newton from this formed the Laws of Universal Gravitation that we study in our beginning physics courses. 

Newton became a renown mathematician and a natural philosopher. 

He formulated the three laws of motion, which aided in advancement of the discipline of dynamics.  He explained in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687: 

“FIRST LAW: An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force; 

SECOND LAW: Force equals mass times acceleration; 

THIRD LAW: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.” 

Newton was honored to occupy the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, 1669, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1672.

He was given the position of Master of the Mint, 1699, and in 1701, entered Parliament.           

In addition to discovering the Laws of Universal Gravitation, Newton was a discoverer of calculus.  He helped develop it into a comprehensive branch of mathematics. 

He constructed one of the first practical reflecting telescopes.

Using a prism, Newton demonstrated that a beam of light contained all the colors of the rainbow.

He laid the foundation for the great law of energy conservation and developed the particle theory of light propagation. 

In 1703, Sir Issac Newton became the President of the Royal Society, and served in that position until his death. 

This was one of the most brilliant men that ever lived…….just an amazing mind!!!  He has to be considered the father of modern physics………such a brilliant scientist!   

Now here is my point:  All across the U.S. in our universities are a plethora of scientists and professors who say there is no God, that “science” has proved that to be true.  They are atheists who say science has proved and led them to this conclusion.  So, since most of the laws upon which their work and studies rest were discovered and formulated by the brilliant Sir Issac Newton.  Let’s look at what he thought and said about whether there is a God or not. OK? 

Newton wrote one of the most important scientific books ever, Principia, 1687, in which he stated:  “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being … All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the ‘Lord God’ … This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called ‘Lord God’ … The supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity He exists always and everywhere.” 

Newton wrote in the last query of Optics, or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light (1704, London, 1730, 4th edition, quoted in Sullivan, p.125-126):  “Now by the help of these principles, all material things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid particles, above-mentioned, variously associated in the first creation by the counsel of an intelligent agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order.  And if he did so, it’s unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of the world, or to pretend that it might arise out of a chaos by the mere laws of nature; though being once formed, it may continue by those laws for all ages.”

Newton wrote in Principia, 1687:  “From His true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent and powerful Being; and from His other perfections, that He is supreme, or most perfect.  He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, His duration reaches from eternity to eternity. His presence from infinity to infinity. He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done.” 

Newton was quoted in Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton by Sir David Brewster (Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co., 1855, Vol. II, 354):  “God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him, and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbors as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts. 

“And by the same power by which he gave life at first to every species of animals, he is able to revive the dead, and has revived Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who has gone into the heavens to receive a kingdom, and prepare a place for us, and is next in dignity to God, and may be worshiped as the Lamb of God, and has sent the Holy Ghost to comfort us in his absence, and will at length return and reign over us.”         

Newton wrote in a “Short Scheme of the True Religion” (Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, Edinburgh, Thomas Constable and Co., 1855, Vol. II, P. 248):  “Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind. 

“There is one God, the Father, ever-living, omnipresent, omniscient, almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus …To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him. 

“That is, we are to worship the Father alone as God Almighty, and Jesus alone as the Lord, the Messiah, the Great King, the Lamb of God who was slain, and hath redeemed us with His blood, and made us kings and priests.” 

Sir Isaac Newton died MARCH 20, 1727.           

Flight 93

On this 22nd Anniversary of 9/11 I thought you would like to read the actual, verbatim transcript of Todd Beamer’s conversation with a GTE operator.  He was a passenger on Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania.  He was able to get into a pantry on the plane and get ahold of an “air phone”.  He and his three companions died as they overwhelmed the terrorist hijackers and put the plane into a death dive.  Otherwise it would have been crashed into our US Capitol Building.  These were regular folks who turned into major heroes.   As my friend, E.V. Hill likes to say: “God delights in using just regular people to accomplish his purposes”.

Ron

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Todd: Hello… Operator…listen to me…I can’t speak very loud. – This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco..  We have a situation here….Our plane has been hijacked…..can you understand me?

Lisa: (exhaling a deep breath to herself) I understand… Can the hijackers see you talking on the phone?

Todd: No

Lisa: Can you tell me how many hijackers are on the plane?

Todd: There are three that we know of.

Lisa: Can you see any weapons? What kind of weapons do they have?

Todd: Yes…. they don’t have guns….they have knives – they took over the plane with knives.

Lisa: Do you mean…like steak knives?

Todd: No, these are razor knives…like box cutters.

Lisa: Can you tell what country these people are from?

Todd: No…..I don’t know. They sound like they’re from the mid-east.

Lisa: Have they said what they want?

Todd: Someone announced from the cockpit that there was a bomb on board.  He said he was the captain and to stay in our seats and stay quiet. He said that they were meeting these men’s demands and returning to the airport… It was very broken English, and… I’m telling you…it sounded fake!

Lisa: Ok sir, please give me your name.

Todd: My name is Todd Beamer.

Lisa: Ok Todd….my name is Lisa…Do you know your flight number? If you can’t remember, it’s on your ticket.

Todd: It’s United Flight 93.

Lisa: Now Todd, can you try to tell me exactly what happened?

Todd: Two of the hijackers were sitting in first class near the cockpit.  A third one was sitting near the back of the coach section. The two up. front got into the cockpit somehow; there was shouting. The third hijacker said he had a bomb. It looks like a bomb. He’s got it tied to his waist with a red belt of some kind.Lisa: So is the door to the cockpit open?

Todd: No, the hijackers shut it behind them.

Lisa: Has anyone been injured?

Todd: Yes, ..they…they killed one passenger sitting in first class. There’s been lots of shouting. We don’t know if the pilots are dead or alive. A flight attendant told me that the pilot and copilot had been forced from the cockpit and may have been wounded.

Lisa: Where is the 3rd hijacker now Todd?

Todd: He’s near the back of the plane. They forced most of the passengers into first class. There are fourteen of us here in the back. Five are flight attendants. He hasn’t noticed that I slipped into this pantry to get the phone. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor in the rear of the plane……….oh Jesus.. Help!

Lisa: Todd….are you ok? Tell me what’s happening!

Todd: Hello…..We’re going down….I think we’re going to crash……Wait – wait a minute. No, we’re leveling off….we’re ok. I think we may be turning around…..That’s it – we changed directions.  Do you hear me….we’re flying east again.

Lisa: Ok Todd…. What’s going on with the other passengers?

Todd: Everyone is… really scared. A few passengers with cell phones have made calls to relatives. A guy, Jeremy, was talking to his wife just before the hijacking started. She told him that hijackers had crashed two planes into the World Trade Center……Lisa is that true??

Lisa: Todd…..I have to tell you the truth…..it’s very bad.  The World Trade Center is gone. Both of the towers have been destroyed.

Todd: Oh God —help us!

Lisa: A third plane was taken over by terrorists. It crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC. Our country is under attack….and I’m afraid that your plane may be part of their plan.

Todd: Oh dear God. Dear God…….Lisa, will you do something for me?Lisa: I’ll try….if I can….Yes.

Todd: I want you to call my wife and my kids for me and tell them what’s happened. Promise me you’ll call..

Lisa: I promise – I’ll call.

Todd: Our home number is 201 353-1073…….You have the same name as my wife…Lisa….We’ve been married for 10 years. She’s pregnant with our 3rd child. Tell her that I love her…….(choking up)..I’ll always love her..(clearing throat) We have two boys.. David, he’s 3 and Andrew, he’s 1…..Tell them……(choking) tell them that their daddy loves them and that he is so proud of them. (clearing throat again) Our baby is due January 12th…..I saw an ultra sound…..it was great….we still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy………Lisa?

Lisa: (barely able to speak) I’ll tell them, I promise Todd.

Todd: I’m going back to the group—if I can get back I will…

Lisa: Todd, leave this line open…are you still there?……

Lisa: (dials the phone..) Hello, FBI, my name is Lisa Jefferson, I’m a telephone supervisor for GTE. I need to report a terrorist hijacking of a United Airlines Flight 93….Yes I’ll hold.

Goodwin: Hello, this is Agent Goodwin.. I understand you have a hijacking situation?

Lisa: Yes sir, I’ve been talking with a passenger, a Todd Beamer, on Flight 93 who managed to get to an air phone unnoticed.

Goodwin: Where did this flight originate, and what was its destination?

Lisa: The flight left Newark New Jersey at 8 A.M. departing for San Francisco. The hijackers took over the plane shortly after takeoff, and several minutes later the plane changed course – it is now flying east.

Goodwin: Ms. Jefferson…I need to talk to someone aboard that plane. Can you get me thru to the planes phone?

Lisa: I still have that line open sir, I can patch you through on a conference call…hold a mo…..

Todd: Hello Lisa, Lisa are you there?

Lisa: Yes, I’m here. Todd, I made a call to the FBI, Agent Goodwin is on the line and will be talking to you as well.

Todd: The others all know that this isn’t your normal hijacking. Jeremy called his wife again on his cell phone. She told him more about the World Trade Center and all.

Goodwin: Hello Todd. This is Agent Goodwin with the FBI. We have been monitoring your flight. Your plane is on a course for Washington, DC. These terrorists sent two planes into the World Trade Center and one plane into the Pentagon. Our best guess is that they plan to fly your plane into either the White House or the United States Capital Building.

Todd: I understand…hold on……I’ll…….I’ll be back..

Lisa: Mr. Goodwin, how much time do they have before they get to Washington?
Goodwin: Not long ma’am. They changed course over Cleveland; they’re approaching Pittsburgh now. Washington may be twenty minutes away.

Todd: (breathing a little heavier) The plane seems to be changing directions just a little. It’s getting pretty rough up here. The plane is flying real erratic….We’re not going to make it out of here. Listen to me….I want you to hear this….I have talked with the others….we have decided we would not be pawns in these hijackers suicidal plot.

Lisa: Todd, what are you going to do?

Todd: We’ve hatched a plan. Four of us are going to rush the hijacker with the bomb. After we take him out, we’ll break into the cockpit. A stewardess is getting some boiling water to throw on the hijackers at the controls. We’ll get them….and we’ll take them out. Lisa, …..will you do one last thing for me?

Lisa: Yes…What is it?

Todd: Would you pray with me?

They pray: Our father which art in Heaven
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive our trespassers,
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory
Forever…..Amen
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…
He makes me to lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside the still waters
He restores my soul
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for His name’s sake
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me…..

Todd: (softer) God help me…Jesus help me….(clears throat and louder)
Are you guys ready?……..

Let’s Roll ……………………

Smoke from the crash of Flight 93 seconds after is plunged straight into the earth

I wish to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11.  I could recall the actions of the brave firemen who climbed up those burning building, and it would be appropriate.  However, to make the commemoration more meaningful I much prefer to tell you a true story that happened that day about a brave blond girl,  which you have probably never heard.
Ron

Heather Penny

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, 1st Lt. Heather Penney arrived at work at Andrews Air Force Base.  She grabbed a seat around the briefing table. She was just returning from two weeks of air combat training in Nevada, but in a very real way, Penney was still a rookie without much experience in a supersonic fighter.  But she was the first woman ever confirmed for aerial combat in the US.  And she later flew many missions in Iraq on two tours there.   

She was born on an Air Force base. Her father, Col. John Penney, was a pilot with multiple combat missions at the stick of America’s A-7 Corsair II under his belt in Vietnam. 

Along with the other folks there at Andrews, she had just seen the tv pictures of the Twin Towers.  Everyone was immediately aware of the World Trade Center crash, but like most Americans at the time, they assumed it was nothing more than a tragic accident. 

In fact, many dismissed the story, assuming it had been a personal plane, like a small Cessna, that likely hit the building. But 17 minutes after the first aircraft hit the North Tower, another Boeing 767, this time United Airlines Flight 175, hit the South Tower. Most of the nation didn’t know it yet, but the pilots at Andrews Air Force Base did; America was at war.

 At 9:37 a.m., a third hijacked aircraft, this time American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon, just a 30-minute drive from the briefing room where Penney sat.

Almost simultaneously, another message came through the pipeline: there was another hijackaircraft in the air and it was heading straight for Washington DC. 

Heather and her group were not in the regular Air Force.  They were in the Virginia Air National Guard.  But they knew that they were the closest ones that could guard the Capital area.  And they had taken an oath to guard the American people. 

They sprang into action, but despite their professionalism, confusion swelled within the ranks. No one had anticipated such an attack, and there were no standing procedures to follow. Penney knew the hijacked aircraft would have to be intercepted and shot down before it could reach a target like the Capitol building, but there were no armed F-16s standing by for the job. 

Every Fighting Falcon on the tarmac was equipped with dummy rounds and fake munitions meant to mimic real ordnance for training. It would take at least an hour to get the ammunition changed out and have missiles mounted on the aircraft’s hardpoints. 

“We know we have to get airborne. We know we have to protect. I was so eager, so impatient, and yet so frustrated and angry, because we couldn’t,” Penney said. 

“As I said, we’re with the DC Guard. We’re not part of our nation’s alert squadron.” 

But waiting an hour wasn’t an option. The United States was under attack and the men and women of Andrews Air Force Base may have been the only thing standing between the American Capitol and what was now a 250,000-pound missile full of innocent people heading straight for it. 

Penney was too junior in rank to do anything about it, but just then she saw Col. Marc “Sass” Sasseville scrambling to put on his flight suit, having just received the go-ahead from Vice President Dick Cheney to put fighters in the air and start searching for the hijacked airliner. 

“Lucky, you’re coming with me,” the colonel shouted.  (That was what they called Penney) 

Jumping at the opportunity to get into the fight, Penney headed off behind Sass, running to their respective F-16s. But the junior pilot had never had to scramble a fighter in combat conditions before. 

Like any pilot, she deferred to her training, hurriedly beginning the checklist required to safely start an F-16 and get it ready to fly. 

“Lucky, what are you doing? Get your butt up there and let’s go!” Sasseville shouted. So, Penney jumped into the cockpit, fired up her engines, and screamed to her ground crew to yank out the wheel chocks keeping the aircraft from rolling. 

As she began to taxi down the runway, her crew chief still had his headphones plugged into the fuselage, allowing the two of them to communicate directly. He was still pulling safety pins out of the fighter as it rolled down the tarmac. 

By the time her crew chief unplugged, Sass was already in the air. Penney whispered to herself, “God, don’t let me [expletive] up” and followed right behind. They had made it into the sky, and only then did the gravity of the situation begin to set in. 

Other Air Defense fighters from the regular Air Force were already in action, but they were all way out over the Atlantic.  They had assumed from their training that any threat to the US would be coming from that direction.  That left “Lucky” and “Sass” as the only defenders of the DC area. 

As they flew low over the smoldering Pentagon at over 400 mph, the senior pilot considered their options. He already knew that with no munitions on board, they were on a suicide mission. That wasn’t the part troubling him. It was the aerodynamic design of their target that gave him pause. 

“We don’t train to bring down airliners,” said Sasseville later. 

“If you just hit the engine, it could still glide, and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing.” 

As they headed out to find Flight 93 which was now only 200 miles from DC, Col. Sasseville told Penney that he was going for the cockpit of the airliner.  Penney decided in her mind that she would go for the tail.  “Sass” was planning to hit his ejection button upon impact and maybe survive.  However, “Lucky” was not planning on hitting her’s.  She was planning to die upon impact. 

As you know, Todd Beamer and his three new friends brought down Flight 93 themselves.  And you have heard many times about how brave they were and how brave those firemen were to climb up into those burning buildings.  But I am sending you this because you may not have heard about how brave this young blond girl was.  Those firemen knew they were heading into danger, but “Lucky” knew she was going to die for sure as she streaked ahead in her Fighting Falcon!!! 

In Tela, where our medical teams stayed so many times, they had one little public hospital and one doctor……Dr. Gunera.  He and I had become good friends.  One time he came to the US to attend a medical seminar in Las Vegas for a week.  At the end of the week he came back through Dallas and had his wife fly up from Honduras and meet him there.  The two of them stayed for a week on my ranch.  I loaned them one of our vehicles and they had a great time touring all over north Texas.

Shortly before I met him, he and his whole family were led to the Lord in their home by a very interesting fellow. This fellow is famous all over Mexico, Central America and South America.  He had a radio show that was listened to by millions of people there five days each week.  He was originally from Argentina, and Argentin Spanish sounds particularly well over the radio.  He went with me on two medical trips, and all the ladies in particular there knew him and adored him.  He transcribed the show at a studio in the Mid-cities between Dallas and Ft. Worth.  He did not preach, he did not give any opinions, he did not teach, he just read the bible. 

I never realized how many people, particularly the women in the Hispanic world on our continent cannot read.   And even if they can, they cannot read well enough to understand the bible.  They just religiously listened to him reading the bible to them.  He had quite a useful radio ministry.

Dr. Gunera loved tennis and played with me on my court on my ranch.  And in Tela there was a tennis court left over from the days United Fruit was headquartered there.  Every time I went down, I would take him a supply of tennis balls which were non-existent for purchase in Tela.

I would go down there two or three days before our medical teams were to arrive.  Dr. Gunera and I would go out and select the sites for the clinics.  They had Public Health ladies scattered out across the country-side.  We would have them pass out numbers to the people who were the most in need of treatment.  That way things were much more orderly for the clinics.  If you had no number, you were not seen. 

It was also absolutely heart rending to see ladies with little babies in their arms who may die if they did not get certain of our medicines, like a series of anti-biotics to kill an infection.   And they did not get a number.  And by late in the afternoon, the doctors and nurses and dentists were just absolutely totally fatigued from all the work they had put in, especially in that heat.  They just had to leave and go back and get refreshed for the next day at a new location.

When I would stay to gather up all the equipment, those ladies would not say a word, but would “speak and plead” with me with their eyes.  It is hard to describe, but sometimes even now, I wake-up in the middle of the night seeing those pleading eyes.

None of these People got a Number, but they are Just Hanging Around Hoping to get nto the Clinic, Someway!

The Public Health ladies also had the authority to send people who were very ill in to Dr. Gunera’s little hospital.  He did not do major operations, and he had only a very limited supply of drugs for them.  He had ladies there who were not RN’s but knew enough to help nurse them back to health if at all possible, as best they could.

Most times Dr. Gunera would come help in our clinics when we had them in his area.  One day when we were having a clinic fairly close to Tela, they sent out a messenger for him to come back to town.  At that time the Communists had taken over Nicaragua and the KGB contingent there was trying to take over Salvador and Honduras and Guatemala and Belize.  The US Navy had instituted a program of visiting the different ports up and down the coast in those countries and distributing things like medical supplies as a good-will gesture.  Since Tela had a port from which United Fruit still shipped out their bananas, it could take a deep draft ship. 

The message for Dr. Gunera was that a full-size US Navy Destroyer was coming in to deliver medical supplies to him.  We went together down to the port and arrived just as the Destroyer was docking.  The Navy had arranged for the press to be there.  There were lots of pictures being taken of Dr. Gunera meeting the ship’s officers and of the Mayor of Tela meeting them too.

But what Dr. Gunera was interested in was what may be coming off that ship.  We stood there together watching as rows of sailors were carrying boxes of medical supplies down the wharf.  I was watching Dr. Gunera as his face just fell from its previous expression of expectation.  The Navy had nothing there that he really needed.  They had boxes and boxes of plastic pulmonary devices that the Navy probably did not want and that he had little use for either, though they looked impressive for the attending press.  I had already gotten him a huge supply of Tylenol from a US company, so he did not need the boxes and boxes of Tylenol that the sailors were bringing down.  What he really needed was all kinds of anti-biotics, but they were not on the Destroyer.

I determined to go back and contact the Navy and find the officer in charge of that program and tell him that they were not really helping.  I did find him and he already knew.  He was very apologetic.  But he knew how the system worked.  He did promise that he would do his very best to get Dr. Gunera a supply of things that he really needed.

So, while we were standing there at the wharf, I asked Dr. Gunera what single thing he needed more than anything else.  He was quick with the answer…..anti-venom.  They have a pit-viper down there called a Yellow Beard.  It gets its name from the yellow strip around its bottom lip.  They are called pit-vipers because their head is indented or concave.  That allows them to sense heat from a mammal or a human leg and strike in the dark.  In the US our pit-vipers are rattle snakes, water moccasins, and copper heads.

Dr. Gunera said that the yellow beards were so deadly that of all those people who had been bitten in his area, only three had made it to his hospital without dying, and that all three of those died after they arrived.  They are a particular scourge to the ladies who work in the rice fields.

Anyway, the Navy officer promised to try his best to get Dr. Gunera some anti-venom.

This was one incredible woman. She was born in Missouri but wound up with her husband and two young children in Sherman, Texas. At the very worst part of the great depression, her husband just left her and the children. She figured that if they were not going to starve, she had better get a job.

She went downtown and walked around the square. She picked out the store that she liked best and went in and asked to see the manager. She made it into his office and presented her case. The manager said: “Let me see if I have got this right, lady. There are a host of people outside desperately wanting a job. So, you walked around the square and picked out my store to come and work for.” Mary said: “That is correct.”

The manger explained that he didn’t need any more employees and that besides, he had a list of job applicants a “mile long”. However, Mary was quite insistent, and finally proposed to work for no salary, only on commission. The manger was so taken-aback by this that he just agreed. So, she went down to work.

On that very first day, Mary observed that most everything in the store had a price that ended in 95 or 98 or 99 cents. She knew that women in those days most all mended their own clothing and were always needing another spool of thread. So, she put the tree with spools of thread up by the cash register, and had the women take their change in spools of thread which were priced in those days at one cent per spool.

The manager was so impressed that he hired her to a regular job before the day was over.

She then moved her children down to Dallas and studied to be a CPA. She became the bookkeeper/accountant for a prominent furniture store. At that store she observed that women would come in and buy a whole complement of furniture, but that they had no idea about what colors in their home would look best with the furniture, and especially what accessories would dress-up the room to go best with the furniture. Those thoughts never left her.

She eventually got a job with a fellow who was selling such accessories on the “party plan”. In “nothing flat” she had 500 women in her pyramid group. When the owner refused to pay the money and bonuses she had earned under the plan since it was so large, she left and formed her own company.

She named it Home Interiors and Gifts. She then needed a loan to furnish the capital to grow her company. She went around to most all the banks in downtown Dallas with no success. Finally, one banker was so intrigued with her, that he made her the loan. Later, when she was putting millions of dollars into that bank’s coffers, was he ever glad that he had decided to have faith in Mary Crowley. She stayed very loyal to that bank.

She not only recruited a multitude of ladies to work for her direct selling company, she was so influential with her powerful personality, that she influenced those ladies to totally remake their lives for the better and become close to God. Those ladies’ husbands loved her too since she insisted that her ladies take special care of their husbands in all ways.

Mary was especially noted for her “sayings” that she would give her ladies to inspire them. The company even had a little book of her sayings printed. It has a powder blue cover with gold writing on the cover.

Mary would tell those ladies, all across America, as she pointed at them: “Ladies, you be somebody; God didn’t have time to make a nobody!!!”

She trained her friend Mary Kay Ash how to do direct selling. Mary Kay concentrated on selling cosmetics and skin care products. They made an unwritten deal with each other that Mary Crowley would never sell cosmetics, and Mary Kay would never sell home interior products.

As a reward, Mary Kay would have her best producers get one of her pink Cadillacs for a year. However, Mary Crowley more concentrated on “mink”. To her, mink represented success and “having arrived”. Over and over she would tell her ladies……..”Think Mink!” She became famous for it.

Mary had special philanthropies that she gave too, such as her Cancer Research Center, but on top of all that, she gave away approximately 8 million dollars every year to various other special causes, like putting certain young people through Dallas Baptist University with a full scholarship.

Mary just didn’t fool with the trivial. One of her famous sayings had to do with problems that would keep most folks up at night worrying about them. Mary would say: “I am not going to worry about that tonight. I am going to turn that over to Jesus to handle and just go on to sleep. He is going to be up all night anyway!”

She was particularly interested in Dallas Baptist University and its high academics set into a Christian context. That is where we first met, as Trustees of the University. I can’t really describe it, but we became so closely bonded together. It was out of the ordinary and most unusual. When she went off that board, having served her allotted terms, I am sure that is why I was asked to be Chairman of the Board of Trustees, when I was way too young for that job. Whatever Mary wanted, she usually got.

On quite a few occasions, Mary Crowley and Mary Kay Ash would have me to lunch at some big prominent luncheon spot in Dallas. They would have some specific project that they would want me to handle. But on those occasions, there would be 50 or 60 other women in there having lunch. They would all be watching these two famous and well known ladies sitting on both sides of this young man and earnestly talking to him. It was quite obvious that they would really like to know what those two well known ladies were telling him.

Mary was so important to that company. When a big group of her ladies would be having a meeting somewhere in America it was imperative that she be there. No substitute would do. As a result, they had two Fan Jet Falcon’s and a compliment of pilots to be sure that she got there. The 2nd Falcon was just in case the first one may have some problem to keep it from flying that day. Mary was quite low-key as respects showing off, but her people insisted on those jet Falcon planes.

Late in her career she built herself a new house in one of Dallas’ “Silk Stocking” areas along Inwood road. I went there many times, but the first time, her house-warming occasion, was most impressive. “Everyone” was there. I distinctly remember visiting with Tom Landry (coach of the Dallas Cowboy’s) and his wife. Mary took me on a tour of it. I have seen some big closets. I have a big closet, but I have never seen one like the one in her bedroom. It was so long, that when you looked down it, past all that plethora of fur coats, it was like the two sides came together in the far distance.

Out back of the house on a little island in the creek she had built a private chapel. What I remember most about it was the high-backed chairs that Billy Graham had given her for it. They had come from a nunnery in Europe where the nuns would kneel in the seat of the chairs for their morning and evening prayers.

So, folks, I have gone through all this about Mary to just relate one little story concerning the theme of this book.

At the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas in the late 1970’s there was this monster, prestigious dinner to honor a famous dignitary. All manner of people were there, including the President of the United States. As part of the program, toward the end, Mary was to speak for a short time, W. Clement Stone, who founded and was President of the Combined Insurance Companies of America and the founder of the Positive Mental Attitude Movement, was to speak for a short time, then the President was to speak, and finally Mary was to give a prayer to finish off the evening.

In order to accommodate all the dignitaries at the head table, they had constructed five levels behind it. Each level had continuous tables for eating with chairs behind them. By the time you got to the fifth level it was really high. I estimated at least over a full story in height all the way from the fifth level to the concrete floor behin.

I was placed in the next to the top level.

Mary now had cancer again. Most people there knew that this was probably the last time they would ever be seeing her in a public setting. The night before the dinner Mary called me. She knew that this was probably the last time she would ever be able to greet all the people there who would want to come up to see her. She also knew how tough and protective that her son could be…….that as soon as she was finished, he would just grab her and whisk her out.

She told me that the moment she finished her prayer, she wanted me to be standing right there beside her to shield her and make sure that she would be able to greet all those dear well-wishers. Mary said: “Ronald, you be right there beside me when I finish!!! Do you understand???”

So, the evening progressed. However, there was one near tragedy. Most of us had heard W. Clement Stone’s standard life story speech several times. But now he was really “up in years”. When he got up there in front of that mike he was speaking again as he had done so many, many times. He just started into his standard speech. We all knew that it lasted nearly an hour. No one wanted to wait an hour to hear the President. I was just cringing. The Master of Ceremonies for the evening didn’t know what to do. There was only one person there who could gracefully salvage the evening,…… Mary Crowley. Bless her heart, she slipped up there, put her arm around old Clement and led him back to his chair. I thought I could hear a sigh of relief across that whole vast audience.

But I had my problem. How was I going to be able to get down from my perch to be standing beside Mary just as she finished her prayer? Particularly how was I ever going to be able to get past all those Secret Service guys who were guarding the President. To come down those stairs while she was praying was going to look so out of place, which is exactly what those guys would be looking for.

The plan that I devised was to step up to the top level and walk behind all those people eating on the top level and go all the way down to the end and get down those end stairs someway. Ringing in my head were Mary’s words: “Ronald, you be there!!!”

So just as she started her prayer, I stepped up to the top level and started along behind the people there. I looked down and saw how very far it was to the concrete way down below. I remember thinking, there should be some kind of railing here. This is dangerous.

I hadn’t gotten but a very short distance when for some strange reason this big fellow just lurched back in his chair. I wasn’t expecting or anticipating such. He just toppled me off. I was headed down, head first, toward that distant concrete.

I don’t expect you to believe what happened next. I can’t even believe it. But so help me God, it is absolutely true. I just floated all the way down. I landed prone on my back as lightly as a feather. I have never ever felt such an absolutely peaceful feeling in my whole life as while I was floating down……..no broken neck, no broken leg!.

Now I was on the same level as the speaker’s rostrum. I walked around that built up structure, past two Secret Service guys, trying to look like I belonged there as best as I could. I was not stopped, and just as Mary finished her prayer, I was standing by her side.

Folks, please believe me. That floating descent was no accident!!!

Preface

Under Chairman Mao Zedong the Chinese people suffered greatly.  He was a total dictator and not only repressive, but capricious as well.  When he died and his surviving leaders were thrown out, Deng Xiaoping became China’s leader.  Below I describe how he was heading China toward much more democracy and freedoms.  He hand-picked China’s succeeding Presidents who were also leading China into more democracy and freedoms. 

Upon Deng’s death, Xi Jinping was elected President.  He proceeded to change the Chinese Constitution and make himself a total dictator for life.  There is not indication that he will ever be repressive like Mao, but no one is sure just where he will now lead China.  However, since China is such a very major player in the world’s economy and the #1 consumer of oil and most other minerals.  And since China has such a huge influence upon the US and the US economy, it is really important to know all about Xi Jinping.  If you will read the info that I have provided below, you will understand much more about him and his close relations with the US in his past life.

China Now

I have written earlier about how Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore very soon after becoming the new leader of China; and how he brought back to China the freedoms that he saw among the ethnic Chinese there and the policies as respects the freedom for businesses that Singapore’s famous leader, Lee Kuan Yew taught him.

I mentioned how he granted freedoms first to the farmers and how they became rich.  The freedoms eventually were granted to all of the different groups across China and the people did become rich in great numbers.  Never in the history of our planet has so much wealth been accumulated in such a short time.  I would go there and visit with regular common folks as respects assets.  I would come back two years later and they would be worth 100 and 200 million US dollars.  It was amazing.

When Deng told them to “go get rich” they did.  Even the military officers were getting rich.  I could hardly believe the sight of Chinese Army trucks delivering goods to Wal-Mart.  Finally, they had to ban Chinese military officers from being in business.  That is when so many of them resigned their commissions and left the Army to peruse their businesses instead.

Even though Deng gave businesses freedoms, left over from the Communist system they still had all of this monstrous, stifling system of regulations.  You needed to get permission to do most anything.  However, as you probably know, just an average Chinese has a really high IQ.  You have probably observed how on occasion just an average Chinese will get permission to live here and bring their children.  The child will speak no English upon arriving, but in only two years he will be the valedictorian upon his graduation from one of our high schools.

It did not take these clever Chinese long to learn how to deal with this plethora of stifling regulations.  If you were going to start a business or build a building or even a cluster of high-rise buildings, you just made it part of your budget to allocate the money needed to pay whatever official needed to be paid to get that specific permission.  It just became their system.  Since the municipalities there own most all of the land, you had that as part of your budget also, to pay that municipal official for permission to buy the land you needed and to get a very fair price for it.

Another part of this system was taking whoever you needed the favor from out to a fabulous dinner.  I have been to many, many of those dinners.  They were usually at lavishly outfitted restaurants in one of their many private upstairs paneled rooms.  They were always at one of those huge, round tables with the whole center part revolving.  You eat at only a small space between the big revolving part and the edge.   The more lavish the dinner, the more exotic the food.  On my last trip to China I ate eleven different kinds of snakes. 

They nearly always start with turtle soup, and the whole turtle shell must be showing.  Literally tons of turtles are being shipped to China out of the Port of Houston.   Most are being trapped along the whole length of the Trinity River and other rivers leading into the Gulf of Mexico.  It is quite a thriving business as long as the turtle population lasts.

These dinners will have a vast array of different foods.  Toward the end, they serve different fruits.  Finally the main ending soup of the meal is served.  That signals the end; when the soup comes.  They don’t serve desert.

However, these meals do not constitute the end of the evening.  The host and principle guests all go to one of the big facilities owned and run by the hospitals in that particular city.  There you are met by male and lovely female greeters garbed in hospital clothing.  The women are ushered off to the right, and the men to the left.  You go down a stairway to a huge shower room.   There are all manner of steam baths there for taking off weight, but for the occasions I am describing, each male host and guest take a shower.  Then they are ushered

into another room where a young man scrubs down their body to take off all the old skin.  After you survive that, you go back and take another shower.   You are then issued a sumptuous terry cloth robe and are ushered upstairs to a private room where you meet the ladies in the same type of robes.  These rooms have a long line of massage tables where beautiful, tall Chinese young ladies lay you down for a fantastic full body massage. 

The ladies then discuss lady things, and the men discuss sports and sometimes business.  I just wish they would all be quiet so that I could enjoy that massage in peaceful quiet.

If the hosts and hostesses of the evening think you have already had massages earlier in the week, they take the whole party to another kind of facility.  It is not run by hospitals, but it has private rooms for each such party.

You enter that room and there is a long line of very comfortable recliner chairs.  In front of each chair is an oak bucket that is filled in the bottom with small round river rocks.  You sit down, and the bucket is filled with very warm water and different kinds of herbs.

At that point a very beautiful young lady takes off your shoes and proceeds to bath and massage your feet.   I have timed these, and they usually last at least two hours.  She knows so very many ways to pleasure your feet.  You would think that after two hours this would “get old”, but I have never wanted her to quit.

But, the evening still does not end there.  The hosts and hostesses and guests all travel to one of the special Chinese Tea Houses.  There you all sit together in a fairly private room.  At the head of the little room is a lovely young Chinese lady who goes through their elaborate tea ceremony and continuously serves tea to everyone in their special, small tea cups.

At this point, the women continue their lady discussions and the men get down to their real business.  After about two hours the tea party is over and everyone goes home.

99% of the Chinese, other than the country and farm dwellers, live in high-rise buildings in what we would call condos.  If you want to build such a condo or office building in Dallas or Atlanta it takes at least two to three years to get all the permissions and zoning that you need.  If you live in California or New Jersey or New York it takes 6 to 7 years in most cases.  In the “payoff system” the Chinese developed, you were finished with all permissions and land purchase and zoning in only 2 weeks in most cases and ready for construction.  Anywhere in the world wherever this kind of accelerated, freedom of business activity has existed, amazing growth and enormous wealth creation has developed.  China’s GDP growth under most of Deng’s tenure was 10 and 12% and more, per year.

I pass no judgment on the “pay-off for permission” system that they developed.  It was their system under all of Deng Xiaoping’s tenure of leadership.  Toward the end of his life he appointed new Presidents, but everyone knew he was still the boss.  His reign lasted from 1978 until his death in 1997.  The last Presidents that China had before its present one were appointed by Deng after he went into semi-retirement.  They pretty much continued Deng’s policies on increasing freedoms for the people.  The first was Hu Yaobang.  He allowed even more freedoms.  Next was Jiang Zemin who was still controlled by Deng.  Then they had Hu Jiantao who was groomed by Deng for the job.  He served until the present President/Chairman, continuing Deng’s policies.

On March 14, 2014 Xi Jinping became the President of the People’s Republic of China.

President Xi Jinping was born in Beijing on 15 June 1953. He is the second son of XiZhongxun and his wife QiXin.  After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 by Mao Zedong, Xi‘s father held a series of posts, including propaganda chief, vice-premier, and vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress. 

However, Mao Zedong was just like Stalin, who he patterned his life after.  He was always suspicious of those under him and continually purged them.  Sure enough In 1963, when Xi was age 10, his father was purged from the Party and sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, Henan Province.  Then in 1966 that horrid Cultural Revolution broke out. 

Student militants ransacked the Xi family home and one of Xi‘s sisters, Xi Heping, was killed. Later, his mother was forced to publicly denounce his father, as he was paraded before a crowd as an enemy of the revolution and was put into prison.  Without his father’s political “shield”, Xi was sent to the countryside like so many others to work on a farm in a little village near Yan‘an in Shaanxi Province.  Life was so severe and oppressive as so many others experienced, that he ran away to Beijing.  But they found him.  He was arrested and sent to a work camp to dig ditches.  He worked diligently and became boss of his production team.   When asked later about this experience by Chinese state television, Xi recalled, “It was emotional. It was a mood. And when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could not be realized, it proved an illusion.

He continued to advance there “where he was planted”.  From 1975 to 1979, Xi studied chemical engineering at Beijing’s Tsinghua University as a “Worker-Peasant-Soldier student“. There engineering majors spent about one-fifth of their time studying Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong thought, doing farm work and “learning from the People’s Liberation Army”.

From 1979 to 1982, Xi got a job as secretary for a fellow who had once worked for his father, GengBiao, the then vice premier and secretary-general of the Central Military Commission. At this job Xi got some military background and experience.  Then in 1985, as part of a Chinese delegation to study U.S. agriculture, he stayed in the home of an American family in the town of Muscatine, Iowa. This trip, and his two-week stay with a U.S. family, is said to have had a lasting impression upon him and his views on the United States.

He continued to “climb the ladder” in the Communist party and the political establishment.  Then in 2007 he was ranked above LiKequiang on the 9 man Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, a sure indication that he was gong to succeed HuJiantao as China’s next leader.  In 2008 he became Vice President of the Central Secretariat and also in the same year he was put in charge of preparations for the 2008 Olympics held in Beijing.

In 2012 he traveled to Ireland and Turkey and to the United States again.  He visited with V.P. Joe Biden and  President BarackObama, but he insisted on that trip that he go back and visit the family in Muscatine, Iowa that he had lived with years before.

I read a translation of Xi’s inaugural address to the nation at the People’s Party Congress in the Great Hall of the People upon his becoming the new President of China.  He stressed a few things directly and specifically.  He promised to immediately and completely do away with the “pay-off system” that had become a Chinese business norm, and to do away with the multitude of “permissions” demanded by Communist Cadres on businesses.   I was greatly heartened by this.  I hoped that he would drift toward a democratic system as Deng and his picked successors had been doing.

One reason that I was hopeful of this was that Xi’s daughter, XiMingze, had just returned from getting her degree in the US at Harvard.  Xi’s first wife wanted to go and live in Britain.  He did not, so they divorced.

He then married the beautiful PengLiyuan who was one of the most popular entertainers in all China.  She is a celebrity soprano.  XiMingze is their only child.  She attended Harvard under an assumed name.  They say that only 10  people knew her true identity.  She majored in Psychology and English.  She crossed the podium at Adams House for her degree, the same dorm that housed Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger, at age 22.

No one knows how much of an influence she may be on her father.  I am hoping that she may be an influence for tolerance and freedoms in China, but it does not look that way.

After his inaugural address, Xi immediately started to crack down on any payoffs.  However, his big mistake as respects business, is that he stopped the payoff system without stopping the red-tape of all the permissions demanded of businesses first.  Gone were most all the lavish dinners, the different massage treatments and the trips to the lovely tea houses.

In his inaugural address he has promised to purify the Communist Party.  This turned out to be a purging of anyone who may be even the slightest threat to his power.  This was easy to do.  Since everyone was getting payoffs, he could easily purge anyone by showing that they had been taking money for permissions.  He called this purging program “Tigers and Flies”……. Meaning that he would not only get rid of the big officials that he did not want, but a multitude of little people.  He purged former Central Military Commission vice-chairman XuCaihou, former Politburo Standing Committee member and security chief ZhouYongkang and former HuJintao chief aide Ling Jihua.

So much of the power in China rests with the many municipalities and their leaders.  Xi initiated the formation of “centrally-dispatched inspection teams”. These were essentially cross-jurisdictional squads of officials whose main task was to gain more in-depth understanding of the operations of provincial and local party organizations, and in the process, also enforce party discipline mandated by Beijing. 

Many of the work teams also had the effect of identifying and initiating investigations of high-ranking officials. Over one hundred provincial-ministerial level officials were implicated during a massive nationwide anti-corruption campaign. These included former and current regional officials (SuRong, BaiEnpei, Wan Qingliang), leading figures of state-owned enterprises and central government organs (Song Lin, LiuTienan), and highly ranked generals in the military (GuJunshan).  In June 2014, the Shanxi provincial political establishment was decimated, with four officials dismissed within a week from the provincial party organization’s top ranks. Within the first two years of the campaign alone, over 200,000 low-ranking officials received warnings, fines, and demotions.  And in China a clean-up is not like here, many of these people were just shot.  I would come back to China and ask about a former friend, only to be informed that he had been shot dead by firing squad.

In consolidating his power, Xi formed several new commissions.  A new National Security Commission was formed with Xi at its helm.   The Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms…….another ad-hoc policy coordination body led by Xi…….was also formed to oversee the implementation of the reform agenda.   Termed (“comprehensive deepening reforms”), they were said to be the most significant in 25 years.

Xi also became the leader of the Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Information, in charge of cyber-security and Internet policy.   He has also formed a multitude of working groups with himself as each group’s leader.

In 2013 at the Communist Party’s Third Plenum they created the National Security Commission of the Communist Party of China, another body chaired by Xi. This is believed to have ultimateoversight over issues of national security such as combating terrorism, intelligence, espionage, ultimately incorporating many areas of jurisdiction formerly vested in others. 

Xi has been really active in all Chinese military affairs.  He has taken a direct, hands-on approach to military reform.  In addition to being the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the leader of the Central Leading Group for Military Reform founded in 2014 to oversee comprehensive military reforms, Xi has delivered numerous high-profile pronouncements vowing to clean up malfeasance and complacency in the military, aiming to build a more effective fighting force. In 2014 he held a conference of all of China’s top military officers to re-emphase the principle of “the party has absolute control over the army”.  One university professor in the US who closely studies China’s military says:  “Xi has been able to take political control of the military to an extent that exceeds what Mao and Deng had done”.

On 21 April 2016 Xi was named commander-in-chief of the country’s new Joint Operations Command Center of the People’s Liberation Army.  That puts him as head of all military affairs for China.  Another military affairs expert in the US says:  “Xi not only controls the military but also does it in an absolute manner, and that in wartime, he is ready to command personally”.

Finally in an ultimate stroke of consolidating power, in March 2018, the party-controlled National People’s Congress passed a set of constitutional amendments including removal of term limits for the president as well as enhancing the central role of the Communist Party.  Then on 17 March 2018, the Chinese legislature reappointed Xi as president, now without term limits ……….President for life.

Xi claims that all this concentration of power is so that he can better the country by streamlining the cumbersome government bureaucracy.   For instance, he caused the whole legal system to be changed “for more transparency in legal proceedings, more involvement of ordinary citizens in the legislative process, and an overall ‘professionalization’ of the legal workforce.”   It was stated that “the reform of the legal system was needed because it had been perceived as ineffective at delivering justice and affected by corruption, local government interference and lack of constitutional oversight.” 

Xi caused the Plenum to announce that “market forces” would begin to play a “decisive” role in allocating resources. This meant that the state would gradually reduce its involvement in the distribution of capital, and restructure state-owned enterprises to allow further competition, potentially by attracting foreign and private sector players in industries that were previously highly regulated. This policy aimed to address the bloated state sector that had unduly profited from an earlier round of re-structuring by purchasing assets at below-market prices, assets which were no longer being used productively.

He even caused the one-child policy to be abolished, resulting in a shift to a two-child policy from 1 January 2016.

All this sounds great, but his dogmatic thoughts about “anti capitalism” and his other highly Marxist thoughts have been actually inculcated into their current Constitution.

Communism did not enjoy an immaculate conception in China.  Rather, it was grafted onto an existing ideological system…..the classical Chinese dynastic system.  China has an unusual veneration for the written word, and acceptance of its value for teaching principles about life and systems.  China’s veneration of the written word causes stories, histories, and teachers to have great moral authority.  As a result we are seeing Xi making his claim to be the true Revolutionary Successor of Mao.  Xi’s language of “party purity;  criticism and self criticism”; his obsession with “unity”; his attacks on elements of “hostile Western liberalism”, “constitutionalism” and other variants of ideological “subversions”……..this is all Marxism-Leninism as interpreted by Stalin as re-interpreted by Mao.

So, we have this new leader of China, with highly concentrated power who can take the country in most any direction……toward liberation and freedom for the people, or as a despot holding on to power through coercion and total thought control of the people.

I suggest that we sincerely pray for him to take the course that God would have him to, for the benefit of the people and for him to allow policies that will lead to the Gospel being further spread across that huge diverse country.

P.S. This is to all my many friends in China who read these stories ……………这是向所有读过这些故事的中国朋友问好。 请，请，如果您不介意，请给我发电子邮件并告诉我有关您的信息。我的E-mail地址是………..ronald82@verizon.net

This is an excerpt from my 400+ page book.  I sent part of it out to you two years ago, but the plethora of people reading these stories in China did not get to see it.  And because they want to see it, I am herewith sending an edited version of it again.

 Ron

Shandong Province

While in China with Chinese Intelligence and the group of graduate students from Dallas Baptist University, I wanted to visit and see the area where Lottie Moon had ministered.  So, they agreed to take me there.  At that time there were no flights to Yantai, the main prefecture city.  There were no fast trains, either.  We had to take a really slow “local” that made many stops and took two nights.

That coastal area of China is famous for its seafood, and I can attest that it is really great.  But we were there in January and it was really cold.  What tourists come there, come in the summer.  We had to wear really warm clothing, for the hotels and restaurants are just not prepared for hosting people in the cold winters there.

 The Chinese authorities that I met there had never heard of Miss Moon.  Neither had the Intelligence people.  I tried to tell them how famous she was and what an influence she had been there.  I pitched it that if we found the church where she had worshiped, it would make that whole area a better tourist attraction.  As a result, after I had left, the Chinese authorities did research and found that it was all true.  They even discovered that The Baptists had established a Christian Seminary in the area.

 Baker James Cauthen started the Seminary there.  In 1939, Dr. Cauthen and his wife, Eloise, went to China as missionaries before the country fell to Japanese invaders.

Later he was executive secretary and then executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board from 1954 until he retired at the end of 1979.  The number of Southern Baptist missionaries increased from 908 to nearly 3,000 under his leadership. The number of countries where they served grew from 32 to 95. The Southern Baptist Convention is the nation’s main Baptist body, with more than 15 million members.

The evangelist Billy Graham called Dr. Cauthen ”one of the greatest missionary statesmen in all American church life.”  The last time I heard him speak was at a colloquium in Williamsburg Virginia in 1976.  (A convention is a gathering together of churches; a colloquium is a gathering together of universities.)  As Chairman of the Board of Dallas Baptist University I went to the Colloquium of Baptist universities that was held there to commemorate the Bi-Centennial.  It was dangerous to go to hear Dr. Cauthen speak.  When he finished, you were ready to pack your bags and just leave for the foreign mission field.

Anyway, that night in Yantai the Chinese said we were to leave early the next morning for Penglai and visit Lottie Moon’s church which they had found. 

Late that night I got a telephone call.  Like who do I know in Yantai?  It was Eloise Cauthen, Dr, Cauthen’s widow.  She had come back to Shandong Province to “teach English” where she had been as a missionary way before WWII and where she had been reared, since her father had been a missionary there too.  She had heard somehow that we were going to Penglai the next morning and she wanted to go too.  She said that she had been able to go there and had driven by the church but was never given permission to go inside its gate and wall.

Certainly, I was happy to welcome her, and she was there bright and early the next morning.  She had a helper that had been sent with her to Yantai by the Foreign Mission Board to take care of her as they were to “teach English” there.  However, in my opinion, Mrs. Cauthen was in better shape than the helper.  She looked great, all dressed in a fur coat and beautiful fur hat.

We boarded a little bus that the Chinese had provided.  On the drive it was so interesting to visit with Mrs. Cauthen and hear her recollections of that area where she had been reared, and where she had returned with her husband in 1939.  She said that she had visited the Baptist seminary buildings which were now a Chinese school.  She said that she had even found her old piano which was still in use in the school.

We arrived in Penglai and as we went over the bridge spanning the river there, they pointed out the back of one of the church buildings that backed-up to the river.  We turned left and went down a long lane of really old Chinese houses all jammed together with no spaces between and with their old-style tile roofs.  We then turned left again into an open area in front of the main church sanctuary.

Of course, I wanted to be sure this was the real, authentic place.  In one of Miss Moon’s biography’s there was a picture of a large commemorative arch over the old road to the church.  It was a famous icon, for that area: The commemoration of a famous Chinese General from generations past, named Ji Qi Guang.  Sure enough, just beyond the open space, over the old road was the big Arch.  I knew we were for sure there, in front of Lottie Moon’s church’s sanctuary with its steeple and cross on top of that .

Mrs. Cauthen and I walked up to the gate.  There was a small arch over the gate with a Christian cross built into the keystone of the arch.  The hollow space of the cross was completely filled with stones that had been put there by the Cultural Revolution young people.  You have probably read about it.  

When Chairman Mao was afraid that he was going to be deposed, he started it.  It was one of the most gruesome times in modern human history.  These passionate teenagers took over the country to “cleanse it” as they called it.  They all carried one of Chairman Mao’s little red books.   Or, to give its full title, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong”.  It contains 267 aphorisms from the Communist Chinese leader, covering subjects such as class struggle, “correcting mistaken ideas” and the “mass line”, a key tenet of Mao Zedong Thought.  It is dated May 1964.  It is estimated that between 800 and 900 million copies were printed world-wide by 1967.

Hitler and Stalin were branded as mass murderers.  What they did was nothing compared to Mao’s Cultural Revolution.  Articles in History Today say that over 45 million people died under Mao.  Many were starved to death, many were murdered, and many committed suicide.  People had their jobs, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. 

It is not merely the extent of the catastrophe, but also the manner in which many people died: between two and three million victims were tortured to death or summarily killed, often for the slightest infraction.   One article in History Today describes how when a boy stole a handful of grain in a Hunan village, local boss Xiong Dechang forced his father to bury him alive. The father died of grief a few days later. The case of Wang Ziyou was reported to the central leadership: One of his ears was chopped off, his legs were tied with iron wire, a ten kilogram stone was dropped on his back and then he was branded with a sizzling iron tool – punishment for digging up one potato.

Anyone who was a teacher or any kind of professional or even known to be educated was sent to the countryside to do menial labor on farms.  So very many died there from starvation and abuse.  All schools were closed for several of those years.  When it finally ended, students who were now past college age did not know whether to go back to school or skip going back.

When you ask a Chinese who lived through that period, they will say, “I don’t know for sure what kind of government that I want, I just know that I never want anything like that again,” as I mentioned earlier.  Another thing that it did that I also mentioned briefly earlier is that by wiping out all religion for that whole period, it created a spiritual vacuum that is now being filled by Christianity in many cases.

Anyway, back to Penglai and Miss Moon’s church.  Like I said, the Cultural Revolution people had filled the Christian cross on the arch over the church’s gate with pebbles, but it was still quite visible.

We went through the gate and before we reached the door to the church, there just on our left was a fairly large obelisk type monument.  It had inscriptions on all sides.  Even though they were not in Simplified Mandarin,  Mrs. Cauthen could read them.  This was a stone monument commemorating Lottie Moon and her Girl’s School.  Mrs. Mrs. Cauthen and I just stood there in amazed silence, thinking the same thing.   The Cultural Revolution kids destroyed everything like this, for sure.  We both acknowledged out loud that only God Himself had preserved this monument to Lottie Moon because of all her dedicated, Godly work and all that she and her memory stood for.

The inside of the church was all wood and very clean.  It had been meticulously cleaned in anticipation of our arrival.  The lectern was still there on the raised dais like ready for a sermon.  The chairs for the choir were all in place.  The pews were there, but they had all been moved back, for the local Chinese had been using the building to store sacks of cement.  That was because it had the best roof in town that did not leak.   We could still smell the cement which must have been moved out the afternoon before.

After looking around, Mrs. Cauthen went back outside.  However, I went upstairs and looked through the class rooms there.  I am sure these were used by Miss Moon so many years before.  Many still had their little small sized chairs.

I went back outside and through the gate, and there was Mrs. Cauthen surrounded by a group of really old men who lived in those old row buildings.   I took a picture of her in her fur hat conversing with them.  She told me that they had related to her how her father, Wiley B Glass, had baptized them, many years before.

The Mayor of Penglai had us to lunch with other dignitaries of the town.  They patiently listened as I encouraged them to preserve the church and to become acquainted with who Lottie Moon had been.  I assured them that many Baptists from the US would want to visit, for I knew how important tourism would be to that poor area.

We went back to Yantai and took a train on to Jinan, the capital of Shandon Province, and then on to Shanghai from where we could catch a plane to the south part of China to Guilin where we could finally warm-up.

I do think that my exhortations to the Authorities in Penglai and also Chinese Intelligence there had an effect. 

For, that church in Penglai now has a fine young pastor and is thriving.  It is totally filled on Sundays and other days.  In the church office they have two book cases filled with mementos of Lottie Moon and several pictures of her from those days.  They dug them up from somewhere.

But what is really amazing to me is that every August they now hold a big celebration service in her honor.  I think the tradition started in 2012 to honor what they called “the 100th anniversary celebration of Lottie Moon’s heavenly journey”.  Different choirs come in from churches in all the surrounding communities, each dressed in their own distinctive robes.  Women even act out scenes from her life as they sing and ask God to mold their lives as “Mu La Di” (the name they use for Lottie Moon) would want them to be.  All through this service and the singing and the sermon that follows you hear the words “mu la di xiong di jie mei”, which translates “Miss Moon, my older sister”.

Bruce Moon is a fine Christian fellow who has taken many summer mission trips to China to teach English in their universities.  His wife does amateur genealogical research and found that he was actually distantly related to Miss Moon as her fourth cousin “twice removed.”  In 2015 while he was teaching in Beijing he got a three day weekend.  He wondered if anyone in Shandon Province remembered Lottie Moon.  He was able to book a fairly fast train straight to Yanti and a bus on to Penglai where he had reserved a room.  On Saturday morning he asked the people in the hotel if they knew about this church.  He had a picture of it on his cell phone.  By now Bruce’s Chinese was fairly good.  When he asked at the front desk about a “jiao hui” (church teaching meeting) or “jiao tang” (church teaching building) he got no response.  Then when he showed them the picture they and the taxi driver there all said “Ji Qi Gong” the name of the famous General for which the arch had been built there over the road at the site of the church.

Bruce was able walk the few blocks straight there.  He found the General’s arch and he found the church.  Since it was a Saturday morning he figured no one would be there, but he heard singing from the sanctuary.  He figured it must be a children’s choir practicing.

The gate was locked from the inside, but there were two men just inside that opened it for him.   He saw the monument to Miss Moon that he had already heard about, then went on inside.  Much to his amazement there were over 400 people there.  Through amazing co-incidence (or as he later figured “God’s timing”) he had arrived on the one day of the year they were commemorating the memory of Lottie Moon.   All the different choir’s were there in their different colored robes and the resident choir up front with their white robes.  He said they had a large screen-projection up high in front honoring Miss Moon. 

After all the performances the pastor of the church delivered a sermon where the said “Mu La Di” many times. Then he and the congregation sang “Jesus Loves” me, and a woman’s group sang two more songs.  The finale was Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” sung by the massed choirs.

On his way out, Bruce showed the pastor his passport with the name of Moon on it and explained that he was actually related to her.  The pastor took him up to the church office and showed him all the old pictures of Miss Moon and her girls.  There was even an old picture of the Moon home back in Virginia from the early 1800’s.  Bruce had no idea how they got that. 

 So, because of Miss Moon’s remaining influence, her old church (Wulin Shenghui Church of Penglai) has recently been designated as a nationally protected historical and cultural site by The State Council of the People’s Republic of China.

 In 2001, a new hall was built covering an area of 4,089 square meters (1 acre) with a capacity of more than 1,400 people at one time. The membership has now grown to more than 4,000.

 Lottie Moon’s Church Today with the old fence torn down and the New Buildings
So, Miss Lottie Moon’s tradition and influence lives on there on the coast on Shandong Province in China.

Just as an example, here is a recent picture of 176 new Christians being baptized at one service of that church.  In China they do not baptize laying down, but kneel beneath the water as Jesus did in the Jordan River.