The famous King Ranch in south Texas has had some famous race horses over the years. They have won six Triple Crown Races……Two Kentucky Derbies, one Preakness and three Belmont Stakes. One of their Kentucky Derby winners, “Bold Venture” remains the only Kentucky Derby Winner to ever sire two other Kentucky Derby winners.
However, most of the horses they breed down there are what we call “Using Horses”, those that are bred to handle and work cattle.
My favorite and most faithful and useful horse ever was a mare from the King Ranch. Her name was “Suzie”, that I have mentioned earlier. I got her when she was still quite young. She could work all day long and still have plenty of energy and spirit. I bred her only one time (to my famous stud horse) and she produced a beautiful, Chestnut foal.
My Famous Stud House
She had incredible ability as a cutting horse. Have you have ever watched a cutting horse competition? At the big ones the money prizes for the winners are huge. They use a group of yearling cattle who want to stick together. Then the competitor horse eases into the group and selects one animal. It then eases it away from the group. As the yearling usually in desperate fashion tries to get back into the group, the cutting horse competitor faces the yearling and keeps it away from the group.
The judge of the competition grades the competing horses on how well they complete that task and how efficient and classical their movements are. When the yearling darts to one side, trying to get back into its group, the cutting horse bounces its front legs in that direction and then cuts the yearling off and back away from the group.
I have always thought that it looks really awkward when the horse has to bounce its front legs to the side to get into position to cut the yearling back off from the group. My Suzie never fooled with that bouncing of her front legs. She would just whirl quickly completely around to get into the proper position to keep whatever animal we were cutting out, away from the heard. I never taught her to do that. It just came natural to her. She was not going to let that animal get back into the heard, and I thought it was way more efficient for her to whirl around that way, also. However, you had better be seated well into that saddle or she would leave you in mid-air and on the way to the ground.
Ron Heading out on Suzie to Work. Notice Her Ears all Pricked-up and Ready to Work
On most cattle ranches in Texas we plant wheat or oats in the Fall. As this crop grows up all winter, it provides green grazing for the cattle in the winter months. We would then either let the cattle graze the crop out in the spring, or take them off if there was plenty of rain and let the crop grow up and harvest the grain in the early Summer.
On my 1,600 acre ranch near Denton one year we had a nice wheat crop growing on the plowed field way on the west side of the ranch. It was at least a mile from the ranch house and corrals across that big prairie-grass field to the wheat. You could drive a pick-up all over that grass field, but you had to be especially careful after a rain to avoid the many buffalo wallows in it. Of course, the wild buffalo were all gone, but they had left these fairly deep depressions where they had wallowed in the dust and the mud. Over the centuries they had carried off the dust and mud in their furry hides and left these deep depressions.
Anyway, one morning a cowhand and I were on horseback to take a herd of cattle across that prairie grass field to graze on the nice green wheat. We got them there and made sure that there was plenty of salty mineral for them. You couldn’t just put them completely on the green wheat without plenty of mineral or they would bloat and die. You needed salt in the mineral so they would not lick up too much of it.
So, we were coming back the mile across that prairie-grass field and admiring the Fall colors since that field looked down on most of the surrounding countryside.
Suddenly this huge bobcat jumped up right under our horses. I am sure it was there to get one of the several newborn calves. We would try to have the calves born in the early winter so that they could have access to the Spring grass at their maximum growth period, later.
Suzie just bolted forward and cut that big cat back. I had nothing to do with it. It was just instinct from her genes and training to cut an animal back that was running away at high speed. Then the cowboy’s horse cut the cat back toward us. This went on, back and forth for some time until that big bobcat just stopped and sulked right there in the grass. There were almost no trees in that big field.
I told the cowboy to stay right there with the cat, and I would go to the house and get a shotgun.
I got a 12 gage with high-velocity number 6 shot and came all the way back.
That cat had not moved.
I had never shot a high-velocity shotgun load from off of Suzie’s back. She was so dependable, that I am sure everything would have been all right. However, I eased out of the saddle to shoot from the ground. Whenever you dropped her reins to the ground, she would stay right there.
So, I walked toward the cat. I wanted to get as close as possible, since number 6 shot are not that large. When that cat saw me on the ground, and not on horseback……..zoom, here he came right at me. Scary! I shot him coming full speed, “head on”!!!
That dude was so big and impressive that I had him mounted. He made a nice addition to my Den.
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
Today is the university of D-Day. We must remember that very important event!!! Here are some words and pictures to help you remember:
Ron
The United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed by Imperial Japan, a Tripartite Pact partner with Nazi Germany and Italy’s Benito Mussolini
The turning point in the Pacific War was the Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942.
The turning point in Europe was D-Day, JUNE 6, 1944.
Over 160,000 troops from America, Britain, Canada, free France, Poland, and other nations landed along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast of France.
In his D-Day Orders, JUNE 6, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower sent nearly 100,000 Allied troops marching across Europe to defeat Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party:
“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade … The eyes of the world are upon you
… The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you …
You will bring about … the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe …
… Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely …
And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”
It was the largest seaborne invasion force in world history, supported by 13,000 aircraft, 5,000 ships with 195,700 navy personnel.
Prior to the invasion, Allies attempted to mislead the Nazis as to where the attack would take place.
The invasion was supposed to take place June 5, but the weather was so bad aircraft could not fly. General Eisenhower gave the risky order to delay the attack 24 hours to allow the weather and tide to improve.
The night before, Allied aircraft launched an enormous air assault on Nazi defenses, batteries, and bridges.
Then paratroopers were sent in behind enemy lines to cut off their supplies.
President Ronald Reagan stated at the 40th Anniversary of D-Day:
“Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause.
And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them:
‘Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do.’
Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: ‘I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.'”
President Reagan stated:
“40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon.
At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.
Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns.
The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
… The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades.
And the American Rangers began to climb.
They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place.
When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing.
… Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here.
After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.”
At 6:30am, Allied forces began landing.
Troops ran across the heavily fortified beaches of:
• Utah Beach • Pointe du Hoc • Omaha Beach • Gold Beach • Juno Beach • Sword Beach
Ocean water ran red with the blood of almost 9,000 killed or wounded.
In the next two and a half months, over two million soldiers arrived on the shores.
Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, and the Nazi war machine was pushed back over the Seine River
It was a major turning point in World War II.
Reagan continued:
“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next.
It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.”
Shortly after D-Day, on July 20, 1944, a courageous German resistance movement was formed which attempted to assassinate Hitler, but he survived.
Hitler retaliated by killing over 7,000 Germans.
President Franklin Roosevelt stated JUNE 6, 1944:
“My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation …
I ask you to join with me in prayer:
Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization …
Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard.
For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces … We know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph …
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom …”
FDR concluded his D-Day Prayer:
“Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice …
I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength … and, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee … With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy …
And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.”
FDR’s D-Day Prayer will be added to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., thanks to the tireless efforts of Chris Long of the Ohio Christian Alliance who initiated The D-Day Landing Prayer Act (S 1044).
A bipartisan bill was introduced in the House by Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson, introduced in the Senate by Ohio Senator Rob Portman, and signed into law in 2014.
As the memorial is to acknowledge prayer, Federal funds cannot be used to avoid lawsuits, therefore all funds for the project must be voluntarily given.
President Donald Trump read a portion of Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer at the 75th anniversary memorial event held in Portsmouth, England, with England’s Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, and other world leaders.
FDR stated in his D-Day Prayer that the war was “a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization.”
A Democrat, President Roosevelt shared his Christian nationalist sentiments during a Fireside Chat, April 28, 1942:
“THIS GREAT WAR effort must be carried through … It shall not be imperiled by the handful of noisy traitors — betrayers of America, betrayers of Christianity itself.”
FDR stated at Madison Square Garden, NY, October 28, 1940:
“WE GUARD AGAINST the forces of anti-Christian aggression, which may attack us from without, and the forces of ignorance and fear which may corrupt us from within.”
FDR stated in Brooklyn, New York, November 1, 1940:
“THOSE FORCES HATE democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy.”
FDR stated in a Labor Day Address, September 1, 1941:
“PRESERVATION OF THESE rights is vitally important now, not only to us who enjoy them, but to the whole future of Christian civilization.”
FDR addressed Congress, March 1, 1945:
“I SAW SEVASTOPOL and Yalta! And I know that there is not room enough on earth for both German militarism and Christian decency.”
Eleven months after D-Day, the war in Europe ended with an Allied victory on May 8, 1945.
FDR stated May 27, 1941:
“THE WHOLE WORLD is divided between … pagan brutality and the Christian ideal. We choose human freedom which is the Christian ideal.”
So, I am off in Afghanistan 5 years ago doing things that would be challenging for an 18 year old, much less an old dude like me. I am sleeping on the concrete back of those piled-up sandbags and doing things that I can’t tell you about.
Two of my faithful guards who stayed up all night guarding me while I slept on the concrete just inside that building back of those sandbags.
In late 2001 in the aftermath of 9/11 we wanted revenge for the attack on the World Trade Center. The obvious initial choice for President Bush and our military leaders was the terrorists who had planned the attacks and their training camps for such attacks that were located in Afghanistan.
The Special Forces and advisors that we sent in there put together what was called the Northern Alliance. It was really a collection of Afghan war lords let by Afghan General Dostum. They were being supported by US air power, but with a disadvantage. All military flights had to be launched from Uzbekistan or aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea. We needed an airbase at Mazar-I-Sharif, for our aircraft had to carry so much fuel to come from those far off locations that they could not carry much munitions. Taking that town was our first priority in that war. Winning the battle to take it was our first significant victory in Afghanistan over the Taliban.
Meanwhile, General Noor led 2,000 men of the ethnic-Tajik-dominated Jamiat-e Islami forces against the village of Ag Kupruk directly south of the city, along with six Special Forces soldiers and seven U.S. Air Force Combat Controllers who directed bombing from behind Taliban lines.
The Taliban had taken the city in August of 1998 and had held it ever since. The Taliban were condemned by the United Nations (for whatever good that did) for massive massacres of the civilian Shia population at the time. On November 2, 2001, Green Berets from Operational Detachment Alpha 543 and small elements of the CIA Special Activities Division were inserted into the Dari-a-Balkh Valley. Their role was to support General Mohammed Atta Nur and his militia. Together they fought through the Dari-e-Souf Valley and had linked up with General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his forces and ODA 595 and the CIA team supporting Dostum. They had also battled through an intersecting valley south of Mazar-I-Sharif.
On November 7 and 8, the Taliban were moving 4,000 fighters across the countryside towards Mazar-I-Sharif in preparation for battle to make sure they held the town. American big B-52 bombers bombed those Taliban fighters who were hiding, all concentrated in the Cheshmeh-ye Shafa gorge. That was the southern entrance to the city. This was one of the heaviest campaigns up to that point. The B-52’s wiped-out most of them. Nevertheless, the Taliban claimed they had infiltrated 500 fighters into the city to prepare for the coming battle.
What was really interesting to me was the US Special Forces guys saying how amazed they were to see those brave, intrepid Afghan fighters charging the Taliban tanks on horseback.
U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Air Force Combat Controllers in “The first American cavalry charge of the 21st century” with General Dostum and his forces of the Afghan Northern Alliance
It has been a long time since US military men charged in actual, real battle on horseback. After these outlying parts of the city were taken, as many as 12,000 Taliban combatants as well as members of alQaeda and other foreign fighters began to withdraw towards Kunduz. However, the fighting for the town was still fierce. At least 600 Taliban died in the battle.
And here is what was so fascinating to me about that battle. Just as the fighting for the town was beginning, A Mullah from Pakistan led approximately 900 Pakistani Muslim volunteers into the town to defend it. They were mostly only teenagers. They holed-up in the several buildings of the abandoned Sultan Razia Girls’ School and built up their fighting positions. Some officials from the town tried to get them to surrender but they vehemently refused. When they started shooting at Northern Alliance and US Special Forced, those guys shot back. And listen to this, all the while the battle was raging the Mullah was driving around in the school using a loudspeaker riveted onto a pickup truck and blaring out to his volunteers: “Those who die fighting for God don’t die! Those who go on jihad live forever, in paradise!”
It is for sure most of them are there, for our guys killed most all of them. And following the battle, United States Air Force Sgt. Stephen E. Tomat was awarded the Silver Star for crawling right up under the heavy firing and calling in an air strike on six vehicles and the school.
Also, approximately 1,500 Taliban were captured or defected.
We now had an airfield so that our aircraft did not have to fly so far to do battle and could carry many more munitions since their sorties were much shorter.
Following rumors that Taliban Mullah Dadullah might be headed to recapture the city with as many as 8,000 Taliban fighters, a thousand U.S. Army Rangers were airlifted into the city, which provided the first solid foothold from which Kabul and Kandahar could be reached.
Also, after the battle was finished, US Army Civil Affairs Teams from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion and Tactical Psychological Operations Teams from the 4th Psychological Operations Group assigned to both the Green Berets and Task Force Dagger were immediately deployed to Mazar-I-Sharif to assist in winning the hearts and minds of the inhabitants.
I was on the first commercial air flight from Kabul to Mazar-I-Sharif and spent considerable time there. That girls school was quickly rebuilt.
Students at the 2002 reopening of the Sultan Razia girl’s school after its destruction
I had several local friends in Mazar-I-Sarif who took me through the several private schools that they had started now that the Taliban were gone. I was able to visit with the young male students, but the girls were afraid to talk with me or even have their picture taken. They were still traumatized by how girls were treated by the Taliban. They were also afraid of what the Taliban would do to them if they ever come back. And I can understand, for in such a case, someone may tell on them and no telling the punishment they would face for having talked to an American male.
One of my prison boys (that I will tell you about later) was always wanting me to send him pictures of people that will inspire him. Recently I sent him a picture of some guys his very age of when I was in Mazar-I-Sharif. These guys and I really bonded.
I wrote the prison boy the following: “I am sending this picture to you, so you can see how bright and hopeful these young men are. The reality is that they are stuck in a city in the north of Afghanistan, and have not a chance in hell of ever getting out of there or having any kind of opportunity for any kind of a good life. Because of their crazy customs, most of them will never even get the wife they want, because it would cost them $4,000 to $5,000 for the payment to her family, and they will never have that much. I had one of the older ones email me recently. He and this girl were deeply, desperately in love. But her family was giving her to an ugly old man who had the money to pay them for her. Can you imagine how desperate my young friend there felt. He loves her so very, very much, and she is going to that ugly old man for as long as he lives.
“You can also imagine how intensely and desperately they desire to be in the U.S. and have all of the opportunities that you guys have. I want you to look at their faces and into their eyes and solemnly promise me and yourself that you will live a successful and special life when you get out from back of that prison fence, since they will never have the chances and opportunities that you have.”
And as you read this I sincerely, no desperately, solicit your prayers for these particular boys. I can’t tell you all that we went through together that will keep us bonded for life.
So, I went through all of this about Afghanistan as just background to tell you about a U.S., black soldier that I met there. He looked so whipped and beaten-down that I just asked him: “What in the world has happened to you, fella?”
He said: “Man, you won’t believe what happened to me yesterday!!!”
So I said: “Tell me about it.”
And here is what he related……………….He said that he was out on patrol in his hum-vee and had gotten ahead of his unit. He decided to stop and wait for them. He was right on the edge of this little village. He said that this darling little girl came running across the street and just smiled up at him. He said he didn’t have any candy to give her, so he just gave her one of his water bottles.
Then at that moment, her father came running across the street. He grabbed her by the hair, reached for that curved knife that the men carry in their belts and just cut her throat right there in the street.
The soldier said: “Wow”, that he grabbed his weapon and wanted to “blow the bastard’s ass off right there!!”
But the soldier knew what would happen to him if he did. So, he dared not do it.
Now that black soldier has no visible wounds, but I assure you that he is wounded for life. Do please pray for him. God knows who he is. He really needs your prayers. God’s Spirit Power can comfort him.
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
Folks, I’ll bet you do not know the real history of the name “Wayne”. I am sending you this is so you will always know…………………
General “Mad Anthony” Wayne raised a militia unit at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and participated in the invasion of Canada.
He fought in the Battle of Trois-Rivières, and led forces at Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence.
“Mad Anthony” Wayne
“Mad Anthony” Wayne fought at Brandywine in 1777, then harassed British General Howe as his troops marched towards Pennsylvania.
In 1778, Wayne attacked at the Battle of Monmouth.
He fought at Germantown, and quartered the winter at Valley Forge.
In July of 1779, when General George Washington asked if he could capture Stony Point, New York, Wayne replied:
“Issue the orders Sir, and I will storm hell.”
Wayne then led a well-planned and executed stealth, bayonet-only night attack and captured Stony Point.
In relaying the victory, Wayne wrote to Washington:
“Dear Gen’l, — The fort & garrison with Col. Johnston are ours. Our officers & men behaved like men who are determined to be free.”
Wayne was later awarded a medal by the Continental Congress.
Wayne led Lafayette’s forces in the 1781 Green Springs action and led a bayonet charge against British Lord Cornwallis’s troops in Virginia.
After the Revolution, Wayne was recalled by Washington to fight a British and Indian confederacy in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794.
Major William Eaton, who later fought the Barbary Pirates, wrote of General Wayne:
“He endures fatigue and hardship with fortitude uncommon for a man of his years. I have seen him, in the most severe night of the winter of 1794, sleep on the ground, like his fellow-soldiers, and walk around the camp at four in the morning, with the vigilance of a sentinel.”
Twenty-three different cities and monuments were named after “Mad Anthony” Wayne across the US.
But I’ll bet you did not know about the following:
“Mad Anthony” Wayne’s courageous reputation was the model for actor John Wayne. That is why he was given the name Wayne. Hollywood wanted to create a courageous character like “Mad Anthony”. But they never dreamed that he would become literally just like “Mad Anthony” Wayne!
John Wayne was born MAY 26, 1907.
His given name was Marion Mitchell Morrison, grandson of a Scots-Irish Presbyterian veteran of the Civil War.
He played football for U.S.C. and worked behind-the-scenes at Fox Studios.
Raoul Walsh, director of film The Big Trail (1930), first suggested his screen name be “Anthony Wayne” after Revolutionary War general “Mad Anthony” Wayne, but settled upon “John Wayne.”
He became an Academy Award winning actor for portraying cowboys and soldiers in action western and war films, appearing in over 200 films, and holding the Hollywood record of starring in 142 films.
John Wayne’s career took off when director John Ford cast him in epic western films such as:
· Fort Apache (1948); · She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949); and · Rio Grande (1950).
John Wayne became an icon of the U.S. Armed Forces for depicting the strength and sacrifice of American military personnel during World War II, Korea and Vietnam:
· The Flying Tigers (1942); · The Fighting Seabees (1944); · They Were Expendable (1945); · Back to Bataan (1945); · The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949); · The Flying Leathernecks (1951) · Operation Pacific (1951); · The Longest Day (1962); · In Harm’s Way (1965); and · The Green Berets (1968).
These films had the international effect of publicizing America’s military might and moral values, as demonstrated when Japanese Emperor Hirohito visited the United States in 1975 and asked to meet John Wayne.
So, Folks, our national heroes of today have become so weak and mushy!!! I contend that we need more men like Mad Anthony Wayne and like John Wayne!!! Just look at some of the things that John Wayne said about our society and our country:
Wayne stated:
“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”
“All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be some place else.”
“Life it tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.”
Regarding socialism, John Wayne stated in an interview, May 1971:
“In the late Twenties, when I was a sophomore at USC, I was a socialist myself – but not when I left.
The average college kid idealistically wishes everybody could have ice cream and cake for every meal.
But as he gets older and gives more thought to his and his fellow man’s responsibilities, he finds that it can’t work out that way – that same people won’t carry their load.
I believe in welfare – a welfare work program. I don’t think a fella should be able to sit on his backside and receive welfare.
I’d like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living.
I’d like to know why they make excuses for cowards who spit in the faces of the police and then run behind the judicial sob sisters.
I can’t understand these people who carry placards to save the life of some criminal, yet have no thought for the innocent victim.”
Wayne also stated:
“Government has no wealth, and when a politician promises to give you something for nothing, he must first confiscate that wealth from you — either by direct taxes, or by the cruelly indirect tax of inflation.”
“I would think somebody like Jane Fonda and her idiot husband would be terribly ashamed and saddened that they were a part of causing us to stop helping the South Vietnamese. Now look what’s happening. They’re getting killed by the millions. Murdered by the millions. How the hell can she and her husband sleep at night?”
“My hope and prayer is that everyone know and love our country for what she really is and what she stands for.”
On MAY 26, 1979, the U.S. Congress awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal and President Jimmy Carter, who later awarded John Wayne the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, stated:
“I have today approved … a specially struck gold medal to John Wayne. For nearly half a century, the Duke has symbolized the American ideals of integrity, courage, patriotism, and strength and has represented to the world many of the deepest values that this Nation respects.”
Ronald Reagan said November 5, 1984:
“I noted the news coverage about the death of my friend, John Wayne. One headline read ‘The Last American Hero’ …
No one would be angrier than Duke Wayne at the suggestion that he was America’s last hero.
Just before he died, John Wayne said in his unforgettable way, ‘Just give the American people a good cause, and there’s nothing they can’t lick.'”
In his album, America-Why I Love Her, 1977, John Wayne stated:
“Face the Flag, son, and face reality.
Our strengths and our freedoms are based in unity.
The flag is but a symbol, son, of the world’s greatest nation,
And as long as it keeps flying, there’s cause for celebration.
So do what you’ve got to do, but always keep in mind, A lot of people believe in peace … but there are the other kind.
If we want to keep these freedoms, we may have to fight again. God forbid, but if we do, let’s always fight to win,
For the fate of a loser is futile and it’s bare: No love, no peace … just misery and despair.Face the Flag, son … and thank God it’s still there.”
Yes, Folks, today we need more men like Mad Anthony Wayne and John Wayne!!!
Also: If you would like to watch the Jesus Film, get yourself all prepared to watch a wokderful full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed …………….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.htm
I sent a post about Russia previously. In it I described how I finally discovered why I was supposed to go. However, here I wanted to describe to you a little of what it is like in a government-controlled system of Socialism from really personal “hands-on- experience”. I don’t want you to have to go, but since it is now being so pushed upon us, I really think you should know a little of what it is actually like.
More on Russia
I just had the overwhelming compulsion that I was supposed to go to Russia . My father and I had sold the Russians several groups of Santa Gertrudis cattle, but I did not need to go there. They always came here for those purchases.
Also, in the early 1970’s most people from here were not especially welcome there. If you drew a chart of Russia ’s meanness and their efforts to take over the whole world in the name of Communism, that would have been the time when the graph of meanness on the chart would have been at its peak. But I thought I should go.
Even though we had sold them cattle, you didn’t just apply for a visa and go on your own. That would have caused all kinds of suspicion and consternation. But I found a way (or was shown a way). There was a man from Houston who was getting together a small group of people to go to Russia for a “Cultural Tour”, mostly to listen to the Russian symphony orchestras and to particularly watch the Russian ballets. Russia had a long history in these areas and Communists were still proud of those traditions. In fact, in those days there, that was some of the only entertainment that they had.
So, my wife and I joined this cultural tour. A few of the people were from Houston and a few were from Dallas . We were to go to Moscow and St. Petersburg (called Leningrad under the Communists).
When you fly across Russia you realize just how huge that country is. As we were flying for hours and hours, I was thinking: How in the world could the Germans ever think they could conquer a place this huge.
In the early days of the 1970’s one of the first things you learned was that almost nothing had been built since the Communists took over in 1917. Most of the municipal buildings used by the Communist government are old palaces and the homes of formerly very wealthy people from pre-revolution days that have been converted to other uses. Even the main department store in Moscow was a converted palace.
The hotel where we stayed in Moscow was directly across the street from the huge Red Square . It and the room’s furniture were pre-1917. Our room even had a grand piano in it from those days.
Red Square with the Kremlin on the Right
Another thing that you had heard about and were now experiencing was that the government and the KGB controlled everything. They did not even check any of our luggage or belongings upon entering the country.
Their attitude was that if you brought in anything that you shouldn’t, they would know it because of their tight control. The floors on our four-story hotel were not very large, only a few rooms, but at the head of the stairs on every floor was a tough looking lady at a desk who just watched everything. Just for spite, I started leaving my room key with her whenever I left. She just kept it for me. She never said a word.
Another thing that you learned was that nothing worked. There was a small leak in my bathroom under the sink. I was told by the economics’ head of the US embassy in Moscow (with whom I had a most interesting visit) that I could come back years from now and that leak would still be there.
He was quite ready to go back home since he had been there almost two years and was scheduled to soon go back home. However, he was willing to spend time with me to answer my questions. One of my first questions was: What are those large white things along the railroad tracks that you see as you fly over the county………they look like little white mountains.
He said: “That is fertilizer.” And I said: “No, Man, fertilizer will turn to a solid if it his stored out in the open like that.” He answered: “Yes, it has; that is why they look like little white mountains. In effect it is.” Then he explained that the government wanted to aid agricultural production in their plans, so they just ordered it sent to the countryside with no thought of how it may need storage.
He explained many other things of how their system does not work. One was about their grain. The US and other countries were feeding them, mostly with enormous shipments of wheat. The grain ships were lined up in the Russian ports, waiting for many, many days to be unloaded. This was causing much consternation among the people shipping the grain since they were being charged high prices by the day for those ships. So, there was great pressure to get them unloaded. The economics fellow explained that the train would roll up there in the port ready to be loaded with grain. The man with the big hose to blow the grain in would open the top of the box car. He would look down and there would be open slats in the floor of the car. He would say: “I can’t put grain in here. It will all drain out before you go 20 kilometers.” The train master would say: “Look, my job is to get this train back to Moscow by Thursday. Put it in!” So, he would.
The economics dude even told me about the little things where the government screws things up. He said all over Russia they eat lots of cabbage and cheese. Every housewife has this little flat grater that she grates or shreds these things with. Since their kitchens are so small and compact, the grater fits flat and neatly into a special little drawer. But the “all knowing” government planners decided to improve on this. They designed a big stand-up, four sided grater with four different sizes for shredding the cabbage and cheese. It caused a huge, overwhelming push-back from the housewives across the country. There was no place in the kitchen to keep it. It was totally “in the way”.
In many other ways he explained that the biggest problem in the whole country and the Communist system was how to get spare parts where they are needed and when they are needed. But I said that they seem to be getting their spare parts out to their agricultural areas. I wanted to know why that was working when spare parts were not available most anywhere else.
He said: “I studied that, because I wanted to know that myself. So, let me explain.”
He said: “You know that the country has just recently gone to an 8 hour work day”. And I said: “Yes.” Then he explained that if you work in a factory in a city like Moscow , it does not matter that there is and 8 hour day. You come when they tell you to and you go home when they tell you that you can. But he explained that with central government planning, they have never learned how to schedule train crews on the trains. A train gets a crew and it just goes until they have done their 8 hours. They pull over onto a siding and wait until it is time for them to go again.
So I say: “What has that got to do with spare parts for the farmers?” Then he explained that they were trying to break out new land way up north in the really cold country to increase agricultural production. Whether it will work or not, they are sending most all their new tractors and combines and such up there. So, when they are parked on those sidings, the local farmers slip on there at night and get their spare parts. He said that when they get up north to their destinations, they are just skeletons.
Before I left for Russia , I procured a letter from the Chairman of the House Agricultural Committee, Bob Poage. Poage was the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee from 1967 to 1975, until he was removed from his position by the House Democratic Caucus. The Caucus considered Poage to be too conservative and he was replaced by Tom Foley. Since he was from my home-town of Waco, he was happy to give me a letter introducing me to the Russian government and requesting a meeting with the Russian Agricultural officials.
I was requested to meet with the Russian Ag officials at 9:00AM on a particular morning. It was not that inconvenient since the hotel that I described was right across the street from the Kremlin. I got lost trying to find the particular building inside the Kremlin for my meeting. As a result, I wandered around in some of those huge rooms (where I was not supposed to be) that were at least a hundred yards long filled with a plethora of government central planners. I don’t know what they were doing, but they were all sitting at desks, planning something.
Finally, they found me and got me to the right building, and the right room. In those days when there was a meeting with someone from outside the country, they had and interesting custom or rule. There was a requirement that a worker from a factory be present. He may not know what was going on, but he was required to be present. There were quite a few people there around that big, round table; and much to my delight the veterinarian who had come to Texas and bought our Santa Gertrudis Cattle from us was there. He was now head of all Animal Husbandry for the whole country.
He had come to our ranch in particular since he knew that the last time we showed our cattle, we won all eight national Santa Gertrudis shows across the US……..Kansas City, Denver, Dallas, Houston and the others. He knew that we had taken particular delight in beating Winthrop Rockefeller’s cattle from Morrilton , Arkansas and the Governor of Texas’s cattle from his ranches at the big Houston show.
I asked him why he liked the Santa Gertrudis breed so well above the other breeds, since it was the only true breed to ever be developed in the US up to that time.
So, he told me a most interesting thing about them. They were developed on the King Ranch in Texas . They are bred to withstand the heat. That is why they are so popular in the hot parts of South America and South Africa , both places to which we have sold them from our ranch. When they are judged at the shows by the animal husbandry professors from universities in the US , they want them to have very loose skin to better withstand the heat.
He said they were putting them way up in Siberia . That they would grow a long coat of hair in the winter (probably from the Short Horn’s from Ireland that is in their DNA). Then he said that in the summer there would be some really hot days in Siberia that would devastate other breeds, but that these would shed all that hair off and do well in the heat.
They served the obligatory tea and he and I recalled some of the great times he had enjoyed in Texas . One, neither of us would ever forget. They landed their plane in Waco with which to load their purchased cattle and fly them off. They bought mostly bulls for breeding, but since they were flying them out, they did not need to buy 2,000 pound bulls. They just took half-grown ones to save weight and space. They could already tell what they were going to look like when they were fully grown. So, the young bulls were to go up this chute into the plane, turn left and go into individual compartments made of heavy netting to keep them stable on their long flight.
On the last shipment that they bought all was going quite well. Every animal went up the chute, turned left from the back door and into his assigned place….until the very last bull. He did not turn. He went straight through the side of that plane and made the neatest round hole you ever saw. We had to phone back to the ranch and have a cowboy come with his horse and rope him down at the end of the runway.
This got the Vet/Government Official deep into recalling his wonderful times in Texas …..the BBQ and big steaks; the camaraderie, his new cowboy hat gifted to him, and everything else. I know what was happening. Compared to the grayness and oppressiveness and absolute boredom of Russia , he was getting carried away feeling once again the freedom and openness of the US and Texas in particular.
In that vein he went on to say: “You know those last cattle you sold us. When they grew up into magnificent animals, I showed them all over Eastern Europe as the greatest cattle we had ever raised in Russia .” That is when someone kicked the heck out of him under the table.
In the documents that the founding fathers of our country wrote, they mention “The Pursuit of Happiness”. Have you ever considered what they meant by that. In the founding documents of our country those words seem a little odd and out of place………”Pursuit of Happiness.”
In Russia , the purpose and meaning of those words became vividly clear to me for the first time. In those days in Russia and even up until today. Very few people ever smile. There is no such thing as what we would call happiness or joy. Our founders wanted us to have the opportunity to have the ability to accumulate even a miniscule amount of wealth by working hard for the advancement of our children and our family. We sometimes call it just “getting ahead”. Just the ability to pursue that creates real happiness. Those founders knew that. That is why the put those words in there.
But in a Marxist or Socialist system that is never possible. You get your head up a little bit, and it is whacked back down. In that system it really doesn’t matter how hard you work. If you are courteous and try to please your customers, you are not going to get ahead or advance in your company. So, no one is courteous and rudeness to customers is the norm. It is really true. No one is happy in a Socialist system. They just go around with their heads down in a state of glumness. Maybe that is why alcoholism is such a desperate problem there.
When you are standing in those long lines trying to get whatever you need, you are not thinking of who is behind you or in front of you, you are concentrating on getting as much as you can for yourself to just survive.
They kept me in the Kremlin for hours. It turned out that most of those guys at that table were not agricultural people at all. They were high level analysts who wanted information from me. They wanted me to tell them about our US “management system”. See, it is not Communism or Socialism that does not work. It is “central planning” that does not work. A county may be called Communist or Socialist, but under those systems it is necessary for the government to plan most everything, and I promise you……..that just does not work. Bureaucrats can never make a government owned business run like an entrepreneurial owner can.
The example that I use to explain it is the US war effort of WWII. The smartest people we had went into that effort. They were well motivated to “win the war”, and they knew, one way or the other, they would not be in those jobs forever. But those who were there and involved can tell you about all the snafus that happened. They got parkas for the arctic down into the tropics. They got mosquito nets for the tropics up into the arctic. If you were a military officer needing to make a system or project work, you had to have one of those Master Sergeants who knew how to go around all the rules and regulations to get the spare parts or other equipment that you had to have.
He traded things like booze and special items with other Master Sergeants and got the job done. We made twice as many trucks and other vehicles as we needed, just to get the ones that had to be there to the right places at the right times. I could go one and on with those stories. They are legion. But the point is that if central planning would not work well for an effort as specific as the war effort with all our good intentions and motivation, and sharp people determined to make things work. Just imagine what it was like in a place like Russia that was being centrally planned with bureaucrats who had little motivation or incentive, not really that sharp, and knowing that they were stuck there for their whole working life at their boring jobs.
Since everything works in the US , at least relative to how it was over there at that time. They thought we had this amazing “management system”. They wanted to learn about it from me, as I am sure they had quizzed others on the subject. You know the answer: It is the “guiding hand of the market” that Adam Smith so eloquently described in his writings, like in his famous book The Wealth of Nations. It is the profit motive in Capitalism that makes things work in the US and gets spare parts where they need to be when they need to be there. It may not be perfect, but it is light years ahead of a country run by central planning. And there is a “pleasantness” involved with Capitalism. In your effort to make a profit you must please your customers. You must create “pleasantness” for them if you want to get ahead. It evolves into and an atmosphere of what I call “joy” compared to the grayness and selfishness of Socialism with its necessary central planning.
China was one of the poorest countries on the planet, but when Deng Xiaoping went to Singapore and the leader of that wealthy little place explained the principals of Capitalism to him, he went back and abolished the central planning of government over businesses in China . They have since created more wealth in a shorter time than the world has ever seen. It is just staggering. And even now, their business community is way freer than ours with all its many regulations.
When I first went to China in 1980 before it had really “opened up” and everyone had to wear the same drab, grey clothing to all look alike, no one smiled. There was no happiness. But now, “wow”, with the chance to actually create some wealth for you and your family, they are some of the happiest people on the planet. And their sales people in the stores couldn’t be more courteous.
I tried in those hours in the Kremlin, but could not get through to them. They had no conception of how an economy can work without being planned.
I was quizzed in China in the early 1980’s by the same level of officials in Beijing on the very same subject. They thought we had this incredible management system running our government. I actually had them read Adam Smith. The Chinese were way more flexible in listening.
In our larger corporations, I have been surprised to find that they have positions called an “Expediter” in their different departments. He is there to get around all the red tape, and requisition requirements, and all the bureaucracy that builds up in any big organization that is planned from the top. The executive in a big company who has the most adroit “expediter” on his staff becomes the hero leader who gets promoted. That is why small businesses are the real backbone of any capitalist society.
They are run by one boss who keeps his finger on everything and makes everything work. That is why your favorite restaurant is so good; the owner is there every minute it is open to make it all work and make sure the food is special. When the business or restaurant gets too big for one boss to handle it all, and it becomes necessary to start delegating supervision to regular employees and central planning takes over, efficiency and quality go down in most cases.
So when the liberal and even Socialist professors at most of our state universities and many private ones too, are teaching their students how great things will be when the government starts running things, they don’t have a clue about the real, ultimate result of such policies. The most recent example of a county which has tried central planning is Venezuela . It was one of the world’s most prosperous countries just a short time ago. Now it is a disaster. The same is true of Cuba , which has been so poor and backward for so long.
If those professors would just go there and visit among the people, they may realize that what they have been drilling into their students for years and years would only lead to extreme poverty and chaos if it were tried, as they so ardently advocate. The same would hold true for our politicians who so fervently advocate the same Socialist policies.
Our US health system is severely criticized by those who wish to change it to be totally government controlled. But all those doctors and dentists seeking to make more money, and all those pharmacy companies seeking to make drugs to cure diseases and genetic problems so they can make more money, may not have created a perfect system. But it is envied by most every other country. Would you really want to live under a health system that was centrally planned…….totally planned by fallible people?
Anyway, I tried to get through to those analysts in the Kremlin, but they were so steeped in central planning that it was impossible. We parted ways with them still thinking I was hiding my knowledge of “our great US management system” from them.
When you left Russia was when they went “all out” to inspect what you may be taking with you. They did little inspection when entering, because they figured that they had such close surveillance of everything that they would know if you had anything forbidden.
So, upon finally leaving, they went meticulously through everything I had, particularly my hand-carried bag. For some reason they did not want you to take any rubles out of Russia. Sure enough they found a few that I wanted to take back to show people. So they had me go cash those in and receive back US currency.
Also, they found a few pieces of Christian literature in the very bottom of my black handbag. I had passed out much of such to the churches that I visited, but had overlooked these few. They took me up to a KGB office and interrogated me about whether I had distributed other such literature for the longest time.
Just before I left for Russia, my mother had given me a book to read on the trip by a famous evangelist about how he had been smuggling Bibles into Russia. When they found that with the picture on its cover of the Russian cycle, not with the hammer through it but a Christian cross through it. Wow! They just went “ape”! They seized it and took it and copied every page.
And sure enough, a few rubles that I had forgotten fell out of those same pages. That was “enough”!!! Those KGB operatives threatened to hold me and keep me from leaving on my flight. In their “grasp” you feel so helpless and defenseless.
However, they knew that I had that letter from Congressman Bob Poage. And the knew that I had those meetings in the Kremlin with the Russian Minister of Animal Husbandry and other officials. So, at the last minute they let me go and catch my flight.
And folks, believe me, when that plane finally passed the line where it would need to go forward instead of turning back into Russia should it develop engine trouble, everyone in our group breathed a great sigh of relief, especially me. It is really hard to describe the deep-down feeling one gets to pass into freedom and escape from the feeling of oppression one has in a government-controlled system where you are just helpless!!!
I have written about the head of the Rangers who informed me that he had taken care of and protected me all of my life.
Some of the other Rangers that I have known just seemed bigger than life. There is a popular saying about the rangers, that the local authorities call Austin and urgently appeal for help because of a huge riot that is happening. Austin sends one ranger. The local authorities are just shocked, since they were expecting a big contingent of lawmen. Then the Ranger is asked why more lawmen were not sent. He says……”Well, there is only one riot”.
But I actually knew and spent some great times with the lawman who helped the Texas Ranger from which that saying started. It really happened. He was one big, tough dude. Some of these old lawmen have an authority about them that you can just sense and feel.
My lawman friend was never more that a Deputy Sheriff for Dallas County, but he was so useful to the Texas Rangers that he was rather adopted by them. They used him on so many of their operations across Texas.
This fellow was still stationed in Dallas when Dallas had its one and only huge race riot. It had been going on for many days. There was all manner of destruction. Several people had been killed. The Dallas police were just at a stand-off from all that was going on along Hall Street. Hall Street was the center of the riot. Gunfire was coming from the buildings along it, and the Dallas Police were not about to go in there.
The Dallas authorities wired Austin for help from the Texas Rangers. They sent one ranger and he immediately conscripted my friend as his partner. When the Ranger got to Dallas, the Dallas authorities expressed their dismay that many more should have been sent. That is when the Ranger who was standing beside my friend said: “Well, it is only one riot.” I got my friend to tell me exactly what he did.
He and the Ranger quickly saw that everything about the disturbance was centered along Hall Street. In those days there was no TV, but everyone religiously listened to the radio. He said that he went down to the local radio station (WFAA) and asked to make a special broadcast. He went on the air and said that he and the Ranger were going to walk down the length of Hall street tomorrow at noon. He said that: “if any shots were fired at them from a building, they were going to set that building on fire, and that they were going to kill every single man and woman that come out of that building.”
Sharply at noon the next day, they put their shotguns on their hips and walked the entire length of Hall Street. No shots were fired and the riot was over.
It is the custom in Texas that when a prominent law man retires, he is appointed as U.S. Marshal for most of the rest of his life. This happened to my friend.
When Lyndon Johnson got his Great Society Program passed by Congress, the anti-discrimination laws were good things, but there was an immediate over-reaction to them. For a short time, a few very aggressive blacks thought that they could just get away with anything and no one would touch them. It was at this very time that a criminal case was scheduled in the Court House in downtown Dallas.
A group bragged that they were going to storm the Court House and stop this trial. At this “interesting political time” the Dallas Police were reluctant to interfere with this group, but they knew that they should not allow a criminal trial to be stopped by a mob. Their solution………to call out my lawman friend who was now a US Marshall in retirement. He agreed to come down to the Court House and “keep order”.
He showed-up with his badge pinned prominently on his khaki uniform and took his station at the court room door. Like I mentioned, some of these old lawmen just have a real authority about them. You can tell that they are just “not going to be moved”. The mob showed-up also. But when this big old lawman with his innate authority said to the leader of the mob: “Son, you just stand over there!”. The mob did not set one foot into that court room.
However, there was one story that he refused to talk about, no matter how much we implored him too. Bonnie and Clyde were considered rather romantic figures by the public until they shot two Texas Highway Patrolmen to death just northwest of Dallas. It turned out that one of those highway patrolmen was this lawman’s best friend. He took it very personal. He swore and oath that he would not eat another bite of food until he shot both Bonnie and Clyde to death.
He was only 29 years old at the time, but he found out that the lawman, Frank Hamer, who was a former Texas Ranger, was planning to ambush the couple on a back road near the town of Sailes at Bienville Parish, Louisiana. The Methvin family who lived near there had been taking care of the outlaws for nearly a year.
My friend grabbed his 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle and headed straight to Louisiana. That ambush was actually filmed with quite clear photographic results. I have seen the film. It shows the 1934 stolen Ford V-8 Deluxe climbing the hill to the ambush. It also shows my friend in his white hat standing up and getting in by far the most telling results with his powerful BAR. After his long “fast” he enjoyed a great Louisiana dinner that night.
When my son, Mike, was about 14 years old, I decided to take him down to hunt ducks in the marshes along the bay north of Brownsville. We got all packed and headed south on a Thursday morning. We got as far as Kingsville (the home of the King Ranch), and it was getting late and time to spend the night. After a restful night in Kingsville at a local motel it was time for breakfast the next morning.
When you are out traveling like that and needing breakfast in a town in Texas that you are really not acquainted with, there is one rule that will never fail you in getting the best breakfast. There will probably be 3 or 4 places in a town that size that are serving breakfast along the highway. What you want to do is pass them all by that have 2 or 3 cars in front and stop at the one with a large number of pickup trucks in front.
In Kingsville we quickly found the eating place with a whole bunch of pickups in front. We went in and took our seat among all those farmers and ranchers. At one big table across from us was a whole group of rancher looking guys who were animatedly talking with this much older fellow with a most interesting dark brown leather coat on. His coat was obviously very well worn, but I had never seen a leather coat just like that.
Just as we were finishing breakfast, the ranchers finished also and all walked out, leaving the old fellow with the leather coat just sitting there. You could just tell that the old fellow had much character about him just as his coat did. So, Mike and I decided to go over and sit down with him.
It turned out that he was a retired Texas Ranger with a long, long career behind him. I am sure when he was younger, he would not talk much about his exploits, but now that he was really old and a young 14 year old was sitting there, Mike and I got him to relate some of his many exploits and stories. He had worked solo all along the Texas border, mostly protecting the ranches there from predator outlaws crossing the border.
See, the Texas Rangers were started to protect the first settlers in north central Texas from the Comanches. When most of the Comanche raids were suppressed, the Rangers were disbanded soon after the Civil War. Then in the early days of the King Ranch, it was losing so very many cattle to the predators coming across from Mexico and stealing cattle and horses that Richard King persuaded the Governor of Texas to re-establish the Rangers in 1874.
Mike and I were enthralled with some of the stories that this old Ranger related to us. And I had actually read about one of them.
See, my mother was a famous Bible teacher and speaker. When she would be going to speak to a large women’s group, she would leave me at the nice public library in Waco. It was in what had formerly been a large home made of fine white stone.
In the really early days of Texas, they had designated Austin as the capital, but there was little structure across the state and no news papers. Those early settlers felt the need to write-up and record the significant things that were happening…….mostly Indian raids. They would write up the happenings, most times in great detail, and send them in to Austin. Some years later in the early days of the University of Texas, the school took all those hand-written tales and published them. For some reason, the library in Waco wound-up with the whole published compilation. I have never seen it anywhere else.
So, I would spend hours and hours reading those tales while I was “parked” there in the library. I remember one where these three farmers were riding back home to Groesbeck and were caught by a small band of Comanches. One of them was shot by an arrow in the shoulder, one was not harmed, and the third was shot from his horse. The first two were able to escape, but when they looked back as they were racing away, their friend was totally surrounded by the Indians.
In two days, a few settlers returned to the scene to recover his body. To their amazement, they found him sitting-up braced against a tree. He had been scalped by the Indians, but he was still quite alive. He had taken off his boot and put his sock over his head to keep the flies away from his exposed brain. They took him back to their community, and in the report that I was reading, they felt that he was for sure going to live.
Anyway, when the old Ranger was telling Mike and me one of his stories, I realized that I had read every detail of it in the Waco Library. It seems that he was following a small herd of cattle that a group of Mexicans had stolen and were taking back to Mexico. He caught-up with them just as they were crossing back into Mexico, but what made the situation so complicated was that a contingent of Mexican Federales was right there at the river to escort the rustlers back into Mexico.
They had about 3/4ths of the cattle across the river when the Ranger came upon them. He pulled out his Henry Rifle from its scabbard and (in Spanish) ordered them to: “Put those cattle back across the River” (Poner ese ganado de nuevo a través del río). The Captain of the Federales explained that: “You are only one man; we are many. We will kill you for sure”. The Ranger explained: “You may do that Captain, but I will get at least two of you bastards before I die. Who wants to be the first two bastards to die right now?” (“Puedes hacer eso, capitán, pero conseguiré al menos a dos de ustedes bastardos antes de que muera. ¿Quién quiere ser los dos primeros bastardos en morir ahora?”)
The Federales put all those cattle back across the River and not a single shot was fired.
At just that week, Mike was writing a report for his English class about the Texas Rangers. I don’t have tell you that he got an A+ on the report.
As I mentioned elsewhere in this book, I was good friends with Bunker Hunt. He was a most interesting man. He really kept his thoughts quite simple. He was also very self-effacing. Even when he was considered one of the world’s richest men, being with him, you would never have guessed it if you did not know about it.
Nelson Bunker Hunt
He had one trait that was very important even “consuming” to him. He wanted to know for sure what had happened in history and what was happening now. He like many of us, heard all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories. Bunker wanted to know absolutely for sure which or if any of these were really true.
My first contact with him was just after my return from Russia that I have written about in this book. As I mentioned, few Americans had spent time in Russia after the Communists took over. In those early 1970’s when I was there, Russia was probably at what would have been considered the peak of its “meanness” and program to achieve world dominance.
Bunker had me spend almost 4 hours with him and his wife and his fine son one evening. He had me show all the colored slides that I had taken there and tell him about every story concerning the events of the time I was there. I asked him: “Why do you want to know all this?” And he answered: “Ronald, I want to know all about them and I don’t want to go myself!” So, I went through it all for him.
Since he wanted to know all the “for sure answers” he would pay large amounts of money to people who he thought may have the real answers to come and brief him. Many of them, most people may have never heard of, but he would find them. However, especially when some of them were fairly famous and important, it would occur to him at the last minute that it was going to be rather awkward for them to be speaking just to him. So, at those occasions he would invite a handful of folks to come and hear the briefing with him. I was one of the ones he would call.
To make this “come alive” for you and make this more real for you, let me give you just one example: FDR was a most unusual and interesting man. Many think that he was a Socialist or at least had those leanings. Surely some of his policies and attempted policies would lead one to believe that. But whatever his Marxist “leanings” were; he for sure had an extremely conservative side to him also. One reason that I know that was that during most all of his tenure in the White House he kept this very conservative retired army general right there with him.
This general, long dead now, had a daughter who was still living. Some of the things that she knew about, like what we now call the “deep state” so consumed her that she never married. But her father had confided everything that he knew to her. Bunker paid her to come and brief him and he asked me to be there.
I shall never forget some of the things she told us at that briefing. Here is just one………. Right at the end of Roosevelt’s tenure, shortly before he died, he attended the Yalta Conference.
There were four major conferences during WWII. Yalta was the one where Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met there in the Crimea and decided that they would demand the unconditional surrender of Germany, and they made plans for what the world would look like after the war…..how it would be split up.
The general’s daughter said that the morning after the President had gotten back from the Yalta conference he walked past the general’s desk and threw this file down on the general’s desk. It was the full file from the Yalta conference.
He said: “General, see if we can live with this.”
The general shot back: “Mr. President, tell me what you think, first.”
Roosevelt said: “General, I was so sick, I don’t even know what happened there. Just let me know if we can live with it!”
The general went over the whole file that night and reported back first thing the next morning.
He said: “Mr. President, we absolutely cannot live with this!!!”
So Roosevelt said: “Well go see if you can undo it.” And he added: “I will give you personal letters from me.”
The general went straight to London and met with Churchill.
Churchill was quite cordial. Churchill told him that he could change anything there but one. Churchill was adamant that he wanted to keep Hong Kong for Britain.
However, you did not just go to Moscow and walk in and see Stalin. It did not matter if you had a letter from the President of the US. The general went to Moscow and tried to get an audience with Stalin several times with no success.
But the general had heard that Stalin would work and stay-up most all night and then sleep much of the day. The general never could explain to his daughter or even to himself why he had taken his old army uniform with all its medals and ribbons with him all the way to Moscow.
He put that uniform on, took the personal letter from Roosevelt, and showed-up at the door of the Kremlin at 3:00 in the morning. At that hour there was no one there with much authority. The officer that was there read the Russian copy of the letter and just took the general straight through to Stalin.
Stalin just burst out laughing. He said: “You are a man after my own heart! You know how to ‘operate’ and get things done!”
Of course, the general got nowhere with Stalin, though he really tried. Stalin now had the promise of the east half of Germany and most all of eastern Europe. He was not about to give any of that up.
Before we left, Bunker had one more question for this lady, and I shall never forget her answer.
At that time the KGB had taken over Nicaragua and was on the verge of taking over the rest of Central America and then Mexico. The liberal groups in New York were helping them. Bunker asked her: “Why are ‘those people’ helping the Communists; they are business people. They like to make money. That is not good for their businesses at all.” Bunker was not prejudiced in the least, but he really meant Jewish businessmen in New York.
And the general’s daughter answered: “Bunker, you just don’t realize how totally seductive it is to think you can achieve absolute power.”
I was also friends with Bunker’s father……Mr. H.L. Hunt. He was so dear, and bigger that life, and just “something else”. Have you ever known of anyone that was married to three different women at the same time.
H.L. Hunt at the Peak of His Power
I used to go up to his office and sit with him for as long as 2 hours at a time. He would pull that brown paper sack out of his desk (which you have probably heard about) and have lunch right there. It was usually just dried apricots and pecans. It was just him and me, though a few times Bill Harris showed up briefly.
Be patient with me while I tell you about Bill Harris.
I first met him at Baylor. He was on our famous Debate Team with me. Every Spring the Team would have an annual party where the freshman debaters who qualified were inducted into the Debate fraternity, Phi Kappa Delta. On two Springs the annual party was held at our home at Rainbow Lake. Everyone went fishing and had a big meal and a great time.
The Baylor debate coach, Professor Capps and his wife were famous all over America. Baylor and Notre Dame were considered by far the best two teams in the country. Baylor debaters had a big advantage, for at the debate tournaments when teams from other schools drew Baylor as an opponent, they felt frightened and at a disadvantage.
At one of those parties, everyone headed straight for the lake and piled into the several little boats there to bass fish. Poor Mrs. Capps was too slow. She did not get a seat in one of the boats. She had to fish off of the floating pier where one would expect little to no success. She put on this huge, ugly old fishing plug and cast it out just into the open water off the pier.
Mirabile Dictu, she hauled in the largest bass that was caught in that lake all year. Was she ever a proud lady.
Anyway, Bill Harris came to those parties.
He was a nice looking, fine Christian young man. He was not like the other guys. He had this amazing knack of injecting himself into any place or situation that he desired. So, he said to himself: “Instead of just getting a job like the other guys, I think I will go where the ‘power’ is.” Well, the most powerful man in America at that time was Lyndon B. Johnson………the powerful Leader of the United States Senate.
Bill Harris went up to Washington and actually become an assistant to Johnson. I think he was officially listed as a member of the Senate Office Staff, but he was close to Johnson.
Then after Bill was pretty much finished with Johnson, and Johnson had decided to be on the Ticket with Kennedy as Vice President, Bill Harris said to himself: “What shall I do now? I have been where the power is. I think I will now go were the money is.”
The richest man in America at that time was H.L. Hunt, so Harris came back to Texas. He had a few tasks to finish first, but he did actually become a personal assistant to Mr. Hunt.
He did all kinds of things for Mr. Hunt, even taking care of Hassie sometimes. OK, be patient with me again. I had better tell you about Hassie.
Do you know what the Oedipus Complex is? That is a term that Sigmund Freud gave to us to describe the event when an oldest child will develop a monstrous competition with their same sex parent. Mr. H.L.’s oldest son was named Hassie. When he came back from the war, he did act a little strange sometimes. He probably had what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Upon his return, he went into the oil business, too. He was really brilliant and good at it. He was finding way more oil than his father over in Mississippi. They developed a monstrous Oedipus Complex with each other. They say that the two of them would actually wrestle on the floor in the office.
Well, Mr. H.L. was not in the habit of ever losing. And he for sure did not lose this battle.
Hassie was being treated at Green Oaks Psychiatric Hospital in Dallas, but it did not seem to slow down his oil finding ability or his business acumen.
Do you know what a lobotomy is? That was a new procedure at the time where they would sever the nerves between the two front lobes of one’s brain from the rest of the brain. It was done to only the worst psychiatric patients…….the very worst and most dangerous. The person would then revert to the mentality of a 3 to no more than a 4 year old. I don’t think it is even done now
I don’t know exactly how much Mr. H.L. knew about it, but he had heard that it would make a person more tractable and manageable. Hassie did display some violent tendencies. His father had him sent to a State of Texas mental hospital. They didn’t know what to do to help him.
His father then had Hassie taken to the Mayo Clinic. Mr. Hunt expressed that it was his “hardest decision ever”. They gave Hassie what they described as only a partial lobotomy. When Green Oaks heard that it was being planned they just had a fit, trying to stop it, but to no avail. So now Hassie was somewhat incapacitated for life and required supervision 24/7 for the rest of his life but had no more “violent tendencies”.
Hassie Before the Operation
It is my opinion that Mr. H.L. had a severe guilt complex about it for the rest of his life. When I would be sitting with him in his office, it seemed like no more than any 15-minute period would go by that he would not mumble something to himself about Hassie. I heard him mumble many times: “You know Hassie never was the same after he came back from the war.”
After Mr. H.L.’s first wife died, Miss Ruth became his wife and moved into the big house with her son, Ray Hunt, Helen, June, and Swanee……all later becoming incredibly successful. She did acknowledge that Mr. H. L. was their father. Miss Ruth was such a lovely lady. She would come up to my home at the ranch to have dinner. After dinner she dearly loved to sit in front of our big fireplace and listen to music.
Mr. H. L. in Later Life
Home of Mr. H.L. that He Called “Mount Vernon”on Ten Acres near White Rock Lake in Dallas
Toward the end of his business career, Bunker Hunt (the son with Mr. H.L.’s first wife) became closer and closer to the Lord. When they were making the Jesus Film in Israel they found that it was going to take way more money than they had anticipated. Dr. Bill Bright came to see Bunker. I am not sure if Paul Eshelman was with him or not. Anyway, Bunker gave them one million dollars to finish the film.
Later, he would host weekend conferences across the country to help Campus Crusade raise money for evangelism and to finance teams to show the Jesus film all across the world. I attended many of those and saw a most curious thing at one in California.
Bunker became famous for accumulating all that silver as you have heard. People started saying that he and Herbert were trying to corner the silver market. The US Government and the “Deep State” allowed other countries to sue Bunker over it. They would have never allowed that to happen to someone more “liberal”.
To my knowledge and from what his nephews told me, it was never his plan to corner the silver market. He was just buying silver in massive amounts because he thought it was a good investment and a hedge against where the dollar will for sure someday have to go when the “big resent” happens. You know that we can most probably never come close to repaying all the debt that our country is accumulating.
Anyway, at the Christian Conference in California, an interesting young man showed up. He was driving a big new Rolls Royce and had a “trophy girlfriend” with him……not all that compatible with a Christian Conference to raise money for evangelism.
What was so curious was that Bunker would be earnestly talking with us about something and just walk over to the young man and put his arm around his shoulders. He would never say anything to the young man or stop conversing with us. And after awhile he would just walk away.
I made it a point to visit with the young man and get to know him. He had driven all the way down from Seattle where he lived.
At that particular time, silver had just about reached its peak. Bunker looked so smart and prescient. Also, on Wall Street and at other financial centers of the world, so many people were so very curious and wanting to know……..who or what entity was buying all this silver for Bunker. They had to be making a killing with all the commissions.
This was the man. This explained Bunker’s unusual, unconscious affection and feeling of closeness to him. The young man told me that very early on, when no one was interested in silver, he was one of the only individuals who had become bullish on it. He had only read about Bunker and his wealth, but he flew down to Dallas and walked into Bunker’s office and gave him his “pitch” on silver, and Bunker bought it. This young man was the one who had made all those silver purchases for the Hunts.
In the years after that, I would give Bunker reports on the millions of people who were finding God and getting saved into Heaven through seeing the Jesus film……..as I am sure others were telling him also.
On one occasion I told him that it had to be the most important thing that he had ever done in his whole life, for sure, for sure. I told him that he would meet literally millions of Christians in Heaven that would be so grateful to him in my opinion.
Do you know what he said? He said: “Ron, I am so glad for all those results, but to be perfectly honest, at that point in my life, giving that piece of money was like flipping a dime to the shoe-shine boy.” Wow! God works in mysterious ways.
45 minutes north of my house is a large kid’s prison. It is for youth ages 12 through 19. Most are ages 15 through 17. It is called the Gainesville State School, but believe me, it is a very secure prison. It is complete with the high inward curving electric fence and razor wire. Every vehicle coming out is scanned underneath with mirrors on poles to make sure no one is escaping in the undercarriage.
The worst of the worst are sent there. It is under the auspices of The Texas Youth Commission, an agency of the Government of Texas.
This prison is rather unique in that each youth is confined to his own individual room. In almost every case it is the first time these youth have stopped “running on the streets” and been confined to a room where they can think about their life and where it may be headed.
For the past 20 years I have had the privilege of presenting the Gospel to each youth that comes into that facility. In most cases, I see them two at a time in private, glassed-in rooms. When presented properly in a high- quality fashion after much prayer by several people, almost every one makes a decision to accept Christ and have God in their life.
If you ever wondered whether there really is a God out there, if you could be with me and see those kinds of boys just change right there in front of your eyes and pray with tears in their eyes, you would know that there had to be something there other than just my words to cause such a change. It amazes me every single time.
Seeing them two at a time seems better than singly, since making a decision about God in front of a peer tends to cement the decision and make it more meaningful.
I usually see between 10 and 12 each week, though more on some weeks. If I have to be gone, like out of the country, I must “double-up” on the days until I have caught-up with all who have come into the prison while I was gone.
I follow up with a letter to each boy. I include several stories with each letter. They love the stories, especially ones with an emotional message. In the Appendix of this book I have included a long list of the stories that they like best.
Some of these prison boys have experienced things that I will never experience, but from whom I have learned much. Some of them claim to be Devil Worshipers, but it is usually to gain attention from their peers. However, I have met a few there who have delved deep into “the real thing”. And what is interesting to me is that, without exception, every one of them has renounced Devil worship. When I have asked them to explain it to me, they all say pretty much the same thing. They say the Devil is powerful, and it is logical to assume that if you give yourself over to worshiping Him, he will take care of you on this earth. No. They say that the farther you go with the Devil, the more bad things happen to you. When they finally realized this, it caused them to flee from the whole thing.
I have literally thousands of letters from these youth, mostly thanking me for introducing them to the real God and telling me how their life has changed. Also, I thought it would be helpful to you for me to include in the Appendix, and below, approximately the same words that I share with these youth that God uses to convict them and guide them to make the decision to accept Christ. Without being dramatic, I honestly believe that God showed me just the right words.
If you have someone that you want to help make that same decision, I encourage you to try those same words that are in the Appendix, and shown below. Of course, God does all the saving, but it can be such a privilege to be the one saying the words. (Approximately the same words shared with each youth over the past 20 yeas is included here.)
Approximately the Same Words Shared with the Prison Boys:
It is really boring in here for you guys; would you like me to stretch your brain a little?
OK, ?
What if the sun were 1/2 the distance to the earth than it is now? It could have been.
Yes. It would be about 850 degrees F. out there. Everything would be burned up.
But the sun could have been any distance…… so close that we are burned up, or so far away that we all would be frozen to death. Just a small fraction of its present distance either way and we would all be dead. Makes you wonder how it got in that perfect spot.
If we are going to stretch your brain we are going to have to make it a little harder!
What if the moon were 1/2 as close to the earth as it is now? It is not hot or cold; it is going around the earth like a big rock.
Yes, it would look a little larger, and it would look a lot brighter at night.
What else does the moon do for us right now?
When the moon goes over the ocean (and 75% of the earth is ocean), it pulls the water up a little. When the moon goes down, the water goes back down. This makes the tides in the ocean. Without the tides we would have no currents in the ocean. Without them both, the scientists tell us that almost no rain would fall upon the earth. They help with evaporation and get the clouds over to us.
But if the moon were 1/2 as close as now, the tides would cover the highest mountains on earth twice a day. A 2,000 foot wall of water would sweep across us twice a day. It would wipe away all buildings, trees, people, everything. Soon, even all the land would be washed away.
So the moon is just the perfect distance to keep us alive with rain, but not kill us with the tides. But it could have been any distance.
Are you staying with me? Shall we continue?
It is a little over 24,000 miles around the whole earth. Yet, it takes 24 hours for the earth to make one revolution. When you divide 24 hours into 24,000 miles, you find that we must be traveling 1,000 miles per hour at this very moment…..about the speed of a rifle bullet. It does not feel like it does it? But we are. When you get up about 35,000 feet in a plane and hit that jet stream where the air that is going with us sheers against the other air that is not, then you know it!
So…..what if we were only going 1/2 that fast, say 500 miles per hour? That is still fairly fast.
Well, yes, then every day would be 48 hours long. So what would that be like?
You know how hot it can get in August in your home town at about 4:00 in the afternoon, over 100 degrees F sometimes. What if on a day like that you had another 24 hours of sunshine before the night came?
It would get up above 200 degrees. All the crops would be burned up. It would catch the roof on fire….boil the water right out of the swimming pool.
And in January when that north wind whips through your town, you know how cold it can get at about 4:00 in the morning. What if, on a day like that, you had another 24 hours of darkness before the sun came up? It would get 100 degrees below zero. You would all freeze.
So…..it seems that the earth rotates at just the perfect speed for us to be alive, but not be burned up or frozen.
But it could be rotating at any speed. It happens to be rotating at just the perfect speed for you to be alive.
When we look out the window on a sunny day, the sky it looks what color. Sure, it is blue. Why is it not pink or green or black or white. It just looks blue. Let me explain it to you. The earth is surrounded by the atmosphere. And it is only 5 miles thick and then it is all gone. 5 miles is nothing out is space, like a little egg shell around the earth. When you look through those 5 miles it looks blue. When you get outside the 5 miles it looks black You have seen those pictures that the Astronauts take, always black back of them. Why does it look blue to us?
You are looking out through our atmosphere that surrounds the earth like a lovely blanket. We breath the oxygen in it and the trees breath the carbon dioxide. Actually, it looks blue because the sun is reflecting off the blue ocean and reflecting up into that atmosphere. We are called the blue planet.
But the scientists tell us that if it were just 10% thicker, its weight, plus the present atmosphere would crush us to death. You have 15 pounds of pressure on every inch of your body right now. It would not take much more to bust your bones.
But do you know what would happen if it were just 15% or 20% thinner? That is what is interesting to me.
There are thousands of meteorites that are trying strike the earth every minute. Your mom called them “shooting stars” when you were little. Right now they just barley burn up before they get to us. The friction coming through the atmosphere burns them up. A few get through, but not very many. But if that atmosphere layer were thinner, they would most all get through. They would wipe us out like bombs and bullets. Most are not much bigger than a very small pebble, but if a pebble hits you at 25,000 miles an hour, it blows your ass off, or something off.
But the atmosphere could have been any thickness. It happens to be the perfect thickness for us to be alive.
I can give you a 100 more like these, but if you solve mathematically for the probability of just these four arranged perfectly for us to be alive. You get over 150 billion to one that they could not have all happened together by accident at the same time.
If one is honest, the only answer one can honestly come to is that there has to be an Intelligence that guides all of this…..an author. You can call that God or whatever you wish, but it has to be there.
But indulge me just one more….one of my favorites:
The earth goes around the sun at a perfect angle of 23 degrees. That is what gives us our seasons. Without them, most crops would not grow.
It takes one year to go around.
The scientists tell us that if the earth ever got even two degrees off this perfect angle (either 21 or 25 degrees), vapors would move north and south from the equator and the ice caps at the poles would move all the way down to the equator…..the whole earth would turn to a block of ice.
Just two degrees…..you would think that it would wobble that much.
In fact, they think that it got off just 1/2 degree a few times in history, and that is what made the ice ages that you studied about in school.
Yes! There has to be an author…..an Intelligence that holds our life in the palm of His hand. That is the only conclusion that a truly honest scientist can draw. The mathematics are too overwhelming to say that we just adapted to these conditions. The Intelligence that is the author of this universe some of us do call God!
I have a group of friends down there in another dorm. They like to ask me tough questions. They say: “given what we have studied about the earth and the rest of the universe, we know that there has to be a God; but tell us, why did He make people? He did not have to make people.” They are just messing things up. Why didn’t he just stop with the bees and animals and the butterflies?
What would you tell them?
Here is what I told them: I said…..”Can you get a picture in your head of the one time in your life when the feelings between the people in your life were the very, very best? Maybe it was Christmas time. You were just a little guy. Your grandma had a big turkey cooking in the oven. They had all of those presents under the tree for you. It was really nice! You knew it would not stay that way. Things would get messed up. You would really wish to freeze those feelings just as they are in your ‘picture’ and keep them that way all of the time.”
I told them: “God made people to have those same feelings between Himself and them, only 1,000 even 10,000 times better…..through all of eternity.”
Then the boys said back to me: “That is great. We love that, but we have been reading the Bible and we have looked around out in the free world and we know that compared to the perfect purity and mathematical correctness of the Intelligence that runs and controls this whole universe, people have become so messed up, so dirtied up, so filthy compared to the perfect purity of the Intelligence that runs this universe….. There is no way that man can be with Him as He planned.
“Every man is too dirty to come into the presence of such purity.”
And I told them…..“that is correct. That is why God had to make a way to clean us up. He sent His only son to die for our sins as a way to cleanse us so that we could be able to spend eternity with Him.”
However, the boys had another question that I thought was really interesting. They said: “Man if God is so smart that He could make this whole universe; if he is so smart that he could make our bodies as complicated as they are………like your eyes take in light images, flip them upside down, send a chemical message to your brain, and your brain sends an electrical image to your legs and tells them to run because you saw a bear chasing you……otherwise that bear is going to eat your ass off, man”. So I said OK, dudes, I know how smart God is……….What is your question?
They wanted to know: “Well, if God is so smart that He could create the whole universe and the people in it…..why didn’t He just make all the people to be perfectly good and always make the right and perfect decisions? Then Adam and Eve would not have messed up. The Devil would have no power, for we would always make the right decisions. Then it would be like Heaven on earth…..you would not need any fences, any locks on your door, no police, no prisons.”
One boy even said, “You would not even need to wear clothes.” And I laughed and said, “Why?” And he said, “Because, no one would have any bad thoughts.” And I said, “well, that is right.”
“So, why didn’t God do it that way? He could have. Then everyone would be in Heaven with Him as He planned.”
So, how would you answer the boys? Why didn’t God do it that way? He could have.
Yes, I answered it, and here is my answer to them. I asked them: “What if you had a girlfriend, and all that she did, and all that she could do was just what your mind thought for her to do….and nothing else.”
Oh! I got some big grins. They could think of “lovey” things for this girl…..fantasy things.
Then they thought some more, and said: “No! That would not work!”
And I said: “Why?”
And they said: “Because that would be like having a robot or a machine for a girlfriend. What makes the magic and the feelings between me and my girl is that she chose me, though she could have chosen some one else………. and I chose her, though I could have chosen some one else.” That is what makes the ‘feelings’………..with no feelings there is no fun!
Oh, then the light went on in their heads!
The question was…..”Why didn’t God just make us to always make the perfect decisions?”
Because (just like with the girlfriend) He had to make us so that we could either choose Him or not choose Him, or (just like with the girlfriend) the fantastic relationship and feelings that He desires with us through all eternity could not be there. God could not get feelings back from a robot!
And the whole history of man is that he has chosen most everything but God!
I don’t know how it is in your town or where you have been “hanging out”, but it appears to me that God made people with a big, huge empty place down inside of them.
I am sure that it was His original intention for His Spirit Power to come into people and fill-up that empty place and make them feel full. But when that big place down inside is empty, it really eats on guys and drives them.
And most of your and my friends out there are not just running around; they are racing around trying to fill that empty place with something…..they think that if only they can get enough money, enough sex, the right wheels to ride on, enough good times and play, enough drugs. ……then that empty place will feel full. Some think if they can just have a wild enough good time, it will fill up the empty place. But it doesn’t. Some think if they all get together in a gang it will fill it up. But it doesn’t.
But the Living God created us and put the empty place there. Only He the Living Person of God can fill it and make you feel full!
I would like to propose to you that there are four Spiritual Laws. They exist just as sure as there is a law of gravity, but they are spiritual laws.
The First Law is ——-
That God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
The Second Law is ——
Man is sinful and separated from God. Thus he can not know and experience God’s love and the wonderful plan that He has for your life.
As we discussed earlier, God is so perfectly pure and man has become so dirty, man cannot get to God on his own merits. Jesus said no man has or will live a good enough life on his own to stand in God’s presence. However, God did not give up on us.
The Third Law is ——–
Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
God actually invaded human history in the form of a man to bridge the gap between the Perfect God and sinful man. How his dying on the cross and shedding his blood to wash us clean enough to be in Heaven, and then rose again on the third day to conquer death for all time is the greatest mystery of the universe and the crowning , supreme gift of all time.
Yet, some still have trouble understanding the necessity of being washed clean. Let me see if I can think of an example to make that “cleaning-up business more clear for both of us?
I know!!! The first time that I went to China , years ago, they gave me a banquet in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square just as they did for Nixon and Kissinger. It was so formal and fancy……… probably more so than going to dinner in the White House in our country. They had real linen table covers, real crystal glasses, plates painted with real gold, ivory chopsticks inlaid with gold. That dinner had 22 different entrées. Just one was a whole roast pig for each table of eight people. You would have had a great time there. You are probably a “professional eater” like I am. I hated to leave.
But the next day I had to be traveling on a train across that part of China . Suddenly, a young man came and sat beside me and wished to converse in English which he had been studying. See , China back then was still a Communist country. Everyone at that time was back of the fence there. They did not want you having a bible. They did not want any churches. The government controlled everything. Every family got only one baby. No more. So a person did not ever know they were hearing the truth, and I was probably the first outside person that he had ever met.
Any way, after a while he got his courage up and said to me: “I believe that there is a God.”
And I said: “Oh”, for I did not want to get him into any trouble. I knew he was not supposed to believe that.
Then he said: “I believe that God’s Spirit can live in a man.” And I thought, wow, you have learned a lot over here without a bible or any such thing.
Then things not really serious, for he said: “Can you and will you show me how to do that?” He wanted God’s Spirit to come live in him and fill up his empty place.
It was getting noisy where we were and there was a Communist lady in her uniform trying to listen, so we moved out between the cars on the train like in a spy movie.
And wow, God’s Spirit did come into the young man. It was an incredible thing to see as he just changed right there in front of my eyes and shed great tears of joy. I wish you could have seen it.
Of course, only God’s Spirit could have changed him like that. Certainly, just my words did not. However, what helped that Spirit get through to him was one little story that I told him. I do think that God really put the words of that story directly into my mouth so that he could understand. If you wish, I will share that same little story with you.
OK, I asked him if he had ever been “camping”. Then I said: “Oh, you wouldn’t know what that means, that doesn’t translate into Chinese.” However, he quickly said: “I have a master’s degree in English, certainly I know what going camping means…..you sleep out in the woods under the trees, you cook your food over a wood fire, you catch a wild pig and you roast him and eat him.”
So I said: “OK. Let us assume that you go camping for two whole weeks. You sleep out under the trees, you have a great time, you catch your wild pig and roast him and eat him. He is really good.”
And he said: “Oh, that would be fun, and I could get away from that dorm and all those guys where I live at college.”
Then I said: “But the whole second week that you are there, you really begin thinking how great a shower would feel and clean clothes. You start just dreaming about them.
“You stay the whole two weeks; you have a great time, but by now you are really dirty and you smell really bad, and it is time for you to go back. You start the long walk back to the dormitory where you live with your friends. You have had a grand time, but all the way back you are thinking and dreaming about how wonderful that shower and those clean clothes will feel.
“Finally, you arrive back and you see that all of your friends are getting on this bus. They are all dressed-up, fancy. You ask what is happening and they tell you—–’Oh, we have been invited to a banquet in The Great Hall of the People…..It is the chance of a lifetime for us. We have been getting ready all afternoon…..getting our hair combed just right, getting our shoes shined, and our ties on straight.’
“And you say: ‘Yes, you fellows really look great.’
“And they say: ‘Haven’t you heard!’
“And you say: ‘I haven’t heard anything. I have been out in the woods for two weeks!’
“And they say: ‘You were invited to this banquet too!’
“And you say: ‘No!’
“And they reply: ‘Yes! But it starts in just 15 minutes. We are already late leaving. Look!!! The bus is leaving right now. Jump on! You must go! It is the chance of a lifetime! You don’t have time to change or have a shower or get cleaned up. Hurry, hurry, hurry!’”
Oh! How could you go to such a beautiful banquet with all of those dressed-up people as dirty and smelly as he was. Those bad-ass Communist guards would never let you through the gate.
But the young man saw what I was trying to show him. Don’t you see. God has prepared Heaven like a great banquet for all of us—-for all of Eternity. He wants all of us to be there. But how can we be there in such purity and splendor—-as dirty and filthy as we have become? No matter how much He might love us, it just could not happen. But that is what the Forth Law is about.
Thus, The Forth Spiritual Law:
We must each one, individually receive Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. Then we can be in Heaven with Him, and know His love here and the wonderful plan that he has for our life here.
It is not enough to just believe in Him. The Devil believes in Him, but the Devil will not be in Heaven. Jesus called such a decision “being born again”…..having our souls washed clean. He did all the “work” for us when He died on the cross. But we have to each one individually accept it like accepting a contract.
Here is a person. The dots represent all the things in his life. The chair represents the throne in his life…..who is king, who is in charge, who is boss? This person is like most people we know…..his self is on the throne. He is in charge of his own life. I don’t know whether he is doing a good job or not. He believes there a God. He prays sometimes. He even goes to church sometimes. But as far as his life is concerned; he is in charge, and God is outside.
However, Jesus said in the back of the Bible (Revelation 3:20): “Behold, I stand at the door of every man’s heart and I knock”. He will not break the door down or force His way in, but you can open the door of your heart and invite Him in. His Spirit Power can come in and change your whole life.
That is what this second person has done. He has asked God to be on the throne of his life. And the things in his life are now getting arranged around God. His self is still there, but it is not running things, not in charge, not in control anymore. He will still sin and mess-up sometimes, because he is still trapped in a human body…..but he is on a new and different road now.
Which one of these two people is you, ?
Which would you like for it to be?
If you wish to be the second person, and ask God into your life, and really be born again, you can do so right now. I would want you to very be serious, and plan for a turning in your life.
OK, I will pray for a few seconds, and then I will say some words that you can repeat after me, quietly, but out loud, straight to God, if you really mean them.
“Father God, we come before you now. And as it says in your Holy Book, if we meet here in Your Name, Your Spirit Power will be right here with us, and we know that this is true, for You do not lie. Father God, this young person wishes to come now and ask you into his heart and life. He wants his sins to be forgiven. He wants a turning in his life. He wants to be washed clean. He wants to be saved into Heaven, and he needs your Spirit Power living inside him to help him. So, he is going to come now, Father God, and quietly say these words, to You:
‘Lord Jesus, I need you. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Right now I open the door of my heart and receive You as my Savior and my Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins, and for giving me eternal life. Now Lord, just take control of the throne of my life, and make me into the kind of person that you want me to be.
This was one of the most incredible men who ever lived in the United States. He so loved this country, and spent his life trying to make sure it stayed on the right course.
He was born October 8, 1890 and named Edward Vernon “Eddie” Rickenbacker. When he was still quite young, he raced four time in the Indianapolis 500. They called him “Fast Eddie”.
When the First World War broke out he was sent to France and since he was such a famous driver, his first assignment was to be the driver for General Pershing. However, he wanted to get into the action, and got transferred to the Air Service. Whatever organization Rickenbacker entered, he soon “went to the top”. And he soon became commanding officer of the 94th Aero Pursuit Squadron. Germany’s Red Baron was dominating the skies there, but his squadron was responsible for destroying 69 enemy aircraft, the highest number shot down by any American squadron. Flying over 300 combat hours, Eddie Rickenbacker personally shot down 26 enemy aircraft, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his exploits.
He wrote a book about his flying activities in that war. It is called Fighting the Flying Circus. Here is just one little excerpt from it: “… three-quarters of an hour of gasoline remained … and no compass. Then I thought of the north star! Glory be! There she shines! I had been going west instead of south ……Keeping the star behind my rudder I flew south for fifteen minutes, then … found myself above the River Meuse…….. picked up our faithful searchlight and ten minutes later I landed …..As I walked across the field to my bed I looked up …..and repeated most fervently, ‘Thank you my God!'” Eddie was a very Godly man!
In his flying exploits he miraculously escaped death so many times. In his book here is what he wrote about those times: “I want to make it clear that this escape and the others were not the result of any super ability or knowledge on my part. I wouldn’t be alive today if I had to depend on that. I realized then, as I headed for France on one wing, that there had to be something else… I had seen others die, brighter and more able than I. I knew there was a power. I believe in calling upon it for aid and for guidance. I am not such an egotist as to believe that God has spared me because I am I. I believe there is work for me to do and that I am spared to do it, just as you are.”
When he came back to the US, he started his own automobile company. Before he sold it, he created many technological innovations such as the first four-wheel brake system. As I mentioned before, whatever he tried, he would go right to the top.
In 1927 he bought the Indianapolis Speedway where he had once raced. He then went to work for Eastern Airlines and then actually bought the whole company.
The Great Depression was about over and the country was healing, but when Franklin Roosevelt became president, his anti-business, Socialist policies put businesses back in a tailspin. Rickenbacker violently opposed those Roosevelt New Deal policies as creating a “socialized welfare state,” which drew criticism from the liberal media. Yes, they were liberal even back then. In fact, Roosevelt’s administration even ordered NBC Radio not to broadcast Rickenbacker’s remarks.
When Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court, Eddie knew that such would destroy our Democratic Republic, just like it would now. He went on an all-out crusade to stop it. He recruited enough Democratic Congressmen to succeed in stopping it.
He wrote way back then: “Freedom is not a physical object. It is a spiritual and a moral environment … The evil of liberalism is its emphasis on material things and its disdain for the spiritual and moral resources that we call liberty. The liberal would sweep aside the constitutional restraints upon government in a blind rush to supply food, clothes, houses and financial security from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave for everybody …”
Rickenbacker explained that liberals view people collectively, while “… the conservative knows that to regard man of a part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.”
He went on to add: “A government that is large enough to give you all you want is large enough to take all you own first.”
In 1942, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson asked Rickenbacker to go on a special mission to the Pacific to inspect our military bases. Flying from Hawaii to New Guinea to meet with General Douglas MacArthur, the plane’s inadequate navigational equipment resulted in them being hundreds of miles off-course. Out of fuel, the plane ditched in the ocean, October 21, 1942.
For 24 days, in almost hopeless conditions, Eddie Rickenbacker and seven others drifted aimlessly on the open sea. Lt. James s Whittaker wrote a book about their ordeal. He wrote that they shivered wet all night but baked in the burning sun all day, and fought off sharks. When all seemed lost, they pulled their three little boats together and had a pray meeting. They recited the Lord’s Prayer together and then Private Johnny Bartek got out his Testament and Col. Adamson read from the 31st through the 34th verses of the sixth chapter of Matthew: “Therefore, take ye no thought, saying: What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For these are things the heathen seeketh. For your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
Rickenbacker was deeply impressed by those verses and told all there that God was going to take care of them. They would have all given-up if he had not kept encouraging them. However, things became so bad that Lt. James Whittaker wrote: “Col. James C. Adamson … suddenly raised himself over the side of the raft and slid into the water. Quick as a flash, Rick had him.”
Rick, as they called him, was not going to have any quitters among them. He had them read that passage from Mathew again, and suddenly a big sea gull came and started flying above them. They all prayed that it would land so they could eat it. Sure enough, it landed right on Rickenbacker’s head. They had food from the sea gull, and used part of it for bait to catch fish with a hook that they fashioned from a keyring.
Whitaker wrote that they prayed again and that I looked over to the left. A cloud that had been fleecy and white a while ago now was darkening by the second. While I watched, a bluish curtain unrolled from the cloud to the sea. It was rain – and moving toward us! Now everyone saw the downpour, sweeping across the ocean and speckling the waves with giant drops.
Rickenbacker shouted out thanks to God. And Whitaker wrote: “Another minute and we were being deluged by sheets of cold water that splashed into our parched mouths and sluiced the caked salt off our burned and stinging bodies. We cupped our hands to guide the life-giving rivulets down our throats …We soaked and wrung out our shirts until all the salt was washed out of them. Then we saturated them again and wrung the water into our mouths.”
Eventually a Navy ship found them in that empty part of the Pacific.
Rickenbacker began radio broadcasts to encourage the people of our country. He wrote in another book: “I pray to God every night of my life to be given the strength and power to continue my efforts to inspire in others the interest, the obligation and the responsibilities that we owe to this land for the sake of future generations – for my boys and girls – so that we can always look back when the candle of life burns low and say, ‘Thank God I have contributed my best to the land that contributed so much to me.'”
Eddie Rickenbacker died July 23, 1973. Jimmy Dolittle, of the famous Dolittle’s Raiders, spoke at his memorial service at Key Biscayne Presbyterian Church.
Now my friends, please be patient and read what Eddie Rickenbacker said about the very times we are in right now……………………………….
World War I fighter Ace Eddie Rickenbacker, who owned the Indianapolis Speedway and Eastern Airlines, wanted to repeal Woodrow Wilson’s 16th Amendment Income Tax, stating:
“When Woodrow Wilson told us of the evils of concentrated power, less than 9% of our entire national income was enough to keep all of the federal and local governments going …
(By 1960, taxes took) one third of all our earnings, and the Federal Government … spent 70% of that …
The entire gross income of every American is subject to complete Federal confiscation …”Rickenbacker continued:
“Every time the liberals discover a brand new misinterpretation of the Constitution,
every time they invent a new way to circumvent the constitutional limits of the Federal power,they pile up more power in Washington at the expense of individual liberty across the land …
Instead of advocating freedom, modern liberals are striving to pile up the power of government in Washington.”
On the other side of the world, Vladimir Lenin’s plan to institute socialism included eliminating business owners who could challenge his power.
He is credited with saying:
“The way to crush the bourgeoisie (middle class) is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
So, are we now at that point in the United States ???
While in China with Chinese Intelligence 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 if 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.
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. 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.
Monument to Miss Moon, Defaced by the Cultural Revolution but not Destroyed.
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.
Mrs. Cauthen, Meeting the Old Men Who Were Baptized by Her Father s
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.
Picture of this Service by Bruce Moon
After all the performances the pastor of the church delivered a sermon where they 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.
New Pastor of Miss Moon’s Old Church, showing a Picture of Miss Moon on Display in this Office
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 acres) 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 in 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.
True Texan Tales 