We desperatly need more men like this right now. 

                                        Eddie Rickenbacker – Bigger than Life

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 94^th 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.'”

One woman wrote in after listening to one of his radio broadcasts:  “We listened to your radio broadcasts and now we know why you were saved, as we have needed someone in this good country of ours who was not afraid to speak their convictions …… The history of our country shows that in every crisis God has always produced a man strong enough for the time and we feel strongly that you were the man for this time.”[RL1] 

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 ???

Ron

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I do think that my exhortations to the Authorities in Penglai and also Chinese Intelligence there had an effect. For, that church in Penglai now has a fine young pastor and is thriving.  It is totally filled on Sundays and other days.  In the church office they have two book cases filled with mementos of Lottie Moon and several pictures of her from those days.  They dug them up from somewhere.

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

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

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

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

After all the performances the pastor of the church delivered a sermon where 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. 

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. 

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. 

And If you would like to watch the Jesus Film, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed ……….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，让自己准备好看一部完整的电影，然后去这个网站，真的很幸运……………… ttps://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

If you have ever been involved with Southern Baptists, I am sure you know about Lottie Moon.   She was a missionary to China in the late eighteen hundreds.  Southern Baptists have the largest foreign mission effort of any group in the world.  They raise almost all that money each year at Christmas time.  It is called the Lottie Moon offering in honor of Miss Moon.

She was one of the last of the great Southern ladies.  She was so fluent in Latin and Greek that she was offered a full Professorships at Harvard to teach Greek.  That was a great honor and opportunity for a woman in those days as it would be today.  She was also courted by some spectacular gentlemen wanting to marry her.  However, she turned it all down to go to China as a single lady missionary to join her sister who had recently gone there.  She sailed from San Francisco on September 1, 1873.

 She wound up in Shandong Province in the town of Penglai, just up the coast from the larger prefecture city of Yantai.  Life was not easy in China in those days, especially in that cold sea-coast area.  She was under five feet tall.  Now days, most foreign missionaries get to return home every five years, but not in those days.  She stayed for so very many years.  However, she was forced to leave for Japan for a short time during the Boxer Rebellion in China, but returned to Shandong Province.  She also returned home to bring her sister back just before Christmas in 1876.  She did not have enough money to go back to China, but the Baptist churches in the area of her home got the money together for her to sail again for China on November 8,1877.

Two biographies have been written about her.  If you want to be inspired concerning real service to God, I would encourage you to read one of them.  The last is called The New Lottie Moon Story.  For most all those years there she ran a girl’s boarding school headquartered in her residence with some classes meeting in the church she attended in Penglai.   But she regularly took trips into the interior teaching the Gospel.  Travel was really tough over the unimproved roads there.  Most of the time she used a Shentze.  It was a basket enclosed by curtains and hung on poles between two donkeys.  To say the least, it was not a comfortable way to travel.  At other times she would travel in a chair suspended from poles carried my men called bearers and hired at very low cost.

She would stop at homes to teach the Gospel, mostly to groups of women.   Life in the homes in the cold, wet countryside of Shandong Province revolved around the kang.  It was a clay covered tunnel about three feet off the dirt floors.  It varied from a few feet to five or more feet wide.  It was hollow and heated usually from an opening to the outside by burning sticks and brush and sometimes coal.  In a large room it would run down the center of the room.  In a small room, it may take up the whole room.  In her writings, Miss Moon described how she would teach the bible while sitting on the kang to keep warm.  I have stayed in those farmhouses in Shandong Province on January days.  We would eat off a low table with all sitting on the kang.  Also, as honored guest on those occasions, I would get to sleep on the kang at night.  It is the primary source for heat in those country homes, as it has been for thousands of years.

In her girl’s schools, Miss Moon taught the girls strict manners just like in the old South in the US.  As part of their lessons, the girls were taught to memorize and recite whole sections of the bible.  She wrote that some girls could recite the whole New Testament book of Mark and of Mathew.

Penglai went by the name of Tengchow in those days, but it was a rather formal and dreary place.  However, it was under consular authority and safe for foreigners.  

Penglai was also a coastal city, like Yantai and for many generations was a naval headquarters.  It has a large harbor that is dug out and still has the huge gates that could be closed to protect the old Chinese wooden ships after they had entered the harbor.

Just before the year 1885, Miss Moon began to hear about an area 120 miles inland called P’ingtu.  Although it was an agricultural area, it had a walled city by the same name.  No explanation has ever been found why, but the people in that whole area most all felt that there must be a real god and they were hungry and even anxious to know about Him.  There were different vegetarian sects there which were anxiously open to knowing the Gospel.  They were all seeking the real god that they just knew must exist but did not know how to find Him.

 Miss Moon went there to visit for a month and eventually moved there.  Previously, she had never been more than 50 miles inland.  Living inland as a foreigner she had no official protection.  The US Consul in Tengchow really frowned on any foreign women going inland.   She was the only foreigner there, but she could not resist the hunger of the people there to know about the real God.  She first made friends with the people individually in their homes, and then began to spread the Gospel to that whole area.

Her letters back to Virginia were distributed to Baptist churches all across the Southern States.  Such results of the Gospel being planted there in that foreign land were thrilling to the Christian people of the deep south.

Eventually, young college age girls would go and stay with Miss Moon during summers.  She was such an inspiration to them.  One of my favorite stories about Miss Moon happened on one of those summer evenings.  It was her custom to read the bible and explain the scriptures to the young ladies and have prayer before bedtime.  On this particular evening as Miss Moon was reading from the bible, the girls stopped her.  They asked:  “Miss Moon, what translation of the bible are you reading from?  We have never heard it expressed in those particular words.”  Miss Moon looked up a little confused, and then showed the girls that, as was her custom, she was reading directly from the Greek texts and translating to the girls straight from the Greek.

She stayed in that area of Shandong Province for the rest of her life, becoming a big influence on the people there.  Finally in 1912, being quite ill, she got passage on a ship back to the US.  However, she died aboard ship shortly after leaving on December 12.

Her letters back to the US were such an inspiration to the churches that she was a major influence for Foreign Missions to the whole Southern Baptist Denomination.   Under her name they raise most all their budget for foreign missions every year…..a big influence on the whole world.

See the next follow-up story about China next week……….”Shandong Province”.

And If you would like to watch the Jesus Film, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed ……….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，让自己准备好看一部完整的电影，然后去这个网站，真的很幸运……………… ttps://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

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After the trip to China just described, I worked with Chinese Intelligence for 22 years.  But before you question whether that was “good” or not let me explain.  Shortly after 1980 the Chinese authorities were still determined to know about the United States’ “management system”………just like the authorities in Russia wanted to know.  

Since central planning of a huge economy by government bureaucrats has never ever worked, and things in the U.S. economy work so wonderfully well, they assumed that we had this magically wonderful system as I have explained previously.  Since Dallas is a well-known business center, they sent one of their bright young intelligence operatives to Dallas to find the answer to our system. 

He enrolled in Dallas Baptist University to get a Master’s Degree in Business.  Since I was on the Board of Trustees of the University, he came down to my office to meet me to gather his “intelligence information”.  I wanted him to know our Capitalist system, so I was happy to co-operate.  I actually had him read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations so he could learn about the “guiding had of the market” that works so well under the freedom of Capitalism. 

We became good friends.  However, he had been tasked by the Chinese Authorities with another task.  They wanted to know about these Christians.  Why do they want to come to China ?  Are they a danger?  Should we let them in?  Do they want to overthrow the government?  That is why he had enrolled in Dallas Baptist University , since it is a Christian school.  He eventually sent reports to China that Christians were the most honest people that they would find….that Christians were the ones who could be the most trusted. 

When China first opened-up there is no telling how many evangelical types wanted to go to China a be a missionary.  There would be a Pentecostal pastor in Arkansas who had two churches there.  He would feel that he needed to go to China and convert the people.  China got a plethora of such requests.  So many of such folks asked for permission to go there and teach English as a cover for their real mission. 

My Chinese “Handler” was gracious enough to show me the response of his superiors.  It went something like this:  “Let them come and teach English.  We need the hard currency they will bring.  They are not going to hurt anything.  We will watch them.” 

In 1989 I went to China with my handler and a small group of Master’s Degree students from Dallas Baptist University .  At that time it was still necessary to fly to Hong Kong, take the train to Guangzhou , and then fly to where ever one wished to go in China .  We wished to fly directly on to Beijing .  Right away I learned that there are certain advantages to a centrally planned and managed government if you are one of the “insiders”. 

We were tired and wanted to get on to Beijing , but all the flights were full for the next several days.  Those of us from the US thought what a bum situation that was.  However, that was when my handler opened his wallet and pulled out this little card.  I could not read the Chinese on it, but it looked very “official”.  The airline folks promptly bumped  off enough people on the next plane leaving Guangzhou and we promptly boarded and took off.   Not good for regular Chinese citizens and tourists, but great for those in authority. 

In Beijing I met with some of China ’s top authorities.  This would happen at banquets that I would host for them.  One of the most interesting was one where I hosted a banquet for the fellow who was over all of the many minority people groups in China.  It was at one of those typical big round tables.  He had brought many of his top aides.  As at many such business dinners we had the big, common hot pot.  This one was not electric, but coal fired with a big flue on top.   The servers would bring in all kinds of meat thinly sliced and rolled into many small rolls……beef, pork, mutton, goat meat, dog meat, monkey meat, snake, and no telling what else.  The Head of Minorities was from one of the minority provinces, Guangxi.  His home was in Nanning , the capital of that province where I subsequently stayed many times.  He gave permission for the Jesus film to be put into several of the many minority languages spoken in Guangxi. 

At this dinner, the hot pot was unusually large.  It had a complete circle filled with boiling water around its base.  People would take turns putting the different meats into the pot to boil and then take it out with their chopsticks to eat.   However, they would take turns dipping their cooked meat into a big pot of extremely hot/spicy sauce to “out macho” each other.  I really detest this macho stuff that some Chinese men do.  So I broke all precedent and decorum and just dumped the whole bowl of the super hot sauce into the common circle of boiling water. 

That stopped all the macho stuff, and as it turned out, greatly pleased the Head of Minorities since he did not like all the macho stuff either. 

On this trip, we were there just a few months before the student takeover of Tiananmen Square.  Deng Xiaoping was the absolute ruler of China from 1978 until his death in 1997.  Late in his life he had others take the title of President of China, but he was still the boss.  He had lived for 5 years in Paris , France .  On that trip he passed through Singapore in1920.  However, soon after taking over as the leader of China , he visited Singapore again in 1978. 

On his trip to Singapore he had a full schedule of activities.  However, his first activity was to meet Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore.  Lee lived until he was age 91 and did not die until 3/23/2015 after governing for 30 years.  Deng was so impressed with want Premier Lee had done to build that little country into one of the most prosperous places in the world, that he just canceled all of his schedule and spent almost the whole time with Premier Lee, learning how he had done such a fantastic job.  One reason that he was so interested was that Singapore was almost totally populated with ethnic Chinese.  They had most all come there as uneducated coolie laborers, but now they and their decedents were wealthy, sophisticated people. 

Lee showed Deng that his main secret was to give business-people and most anyone wanting to go into business almost complete freedom…….as few restrictions as possible on starting and operating a business.  What Deng saw in Singapore was such a revelation to him that he went back to China , determined to do the same thing there.  He decided to implement these freedoms in stages.  His first stage was to start with China ’s farmers.  When I was there in 1989, the farmers had just received their first freedoms.  They were setting up markets in all of the towns and cities across China and were getting rich.  Later, Deng told everyone to “go and get rich”.  And now, amazing wealth has been amassed across the country.  China will soon have more billionaires than the US according to Forbes Magazine. 

On that trip we visited a farmer’s co-op in Shandong province which was not only selling their agricultural products for good profits, they were generating the electricity for that whole area, they had all manner of side businesses, they had their own private planes, and were even charging money to show other farm groups how to do what they were doing.  I will give more information about the results of  Deng’s new policies and their influence on China later. 

On this trip, I really wanted to meet Bishop Ting, who was over all Christian activities in China.  His office was in Nanjing where he was head of a large seminary and where he was training new Christian pastors and was printing bibles to distribute across China .  That printing operation was called Amity Press. 

Before I left for China for that trip, my friends at Campus Crusade (like Dr. Bill Bright) told me that I would not get to meet him, since they had not gotten to meet him.  I was told the same thing by Billy Graham’s folks.  But they each told me that if I did get to meet him:  “Would I please ask him questions that only he would know the answers to…….like, ‘Is there any Christian activity at all in North Korea.’” 

We visited Nanjing , and found that Bishop Ting (he had once been an Anglican Bishop before the revolution) was quite shielded for some reason.  It did seem that it was going to be impossible to meet him.  

In China the Shanghai Language Institute is one of the primary places where Chinese Intelligence people are trained.  If a Chinese ever tells you that is where he went to school, you can be sure that he is probably with their Intelligence Service.  Well, my handler called one of his former classmates from that institution that he knew now lived in Nanjing .  Amazingly she happened to have the private phone number of Bishop Ting.  Bishop Ting was contacted and agreed to meet us the next day out in front of his Seminary in front of anyone who may be shielding him.

Of course, I was concerned about how I could ask him the sensitive questions that those in the US had requested of me with official Chinese interpreters in attendance.  There was no worry.  Bishop Ting has a Master’s Degree in English from Boston College.  My English will never be as good as his.  He welcomed our little group warmly and ushered us into his office at the Seminary.  Since he had been out of the country to speak at certain meetings, he was able to give us essays that he had written concerning his speeches at those places. 

His one primary theme was that the United States did not need to send missionaries to China, that Chinese pastors could get the job done with just some support and backing from the US.  He iterated that there had only been a small number of Christians before the revolution, but that there were many, many thousands now….that they were doing a fairly good job of evangelizing.  And he did express his burning desire to see all of China won to Jesus.

Not knowing anything about my handler who was there, present, Bishop Ting urged him to return to China and help to win China to Jesus. 

He showed us through the Amity Press where they were printing all kinds of bibles for China ….millions.   He also showed us through the art department of the seminary.  There the senior professor drew one of those popular Chinese vertical paintings showing a bond between their Seminary and Dallas Baptist University.

See the next follow-up story about China next week……….”Miss Lottie Moon”.

Also:  If you would like to watch the Jesus Film also, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed…………….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，让自己准备好看一部完整的电影，然后去这个网站，真的很幸运………. …………https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

In the Summer of 1980 China had just been opened to outsiders.   The people there all still wore those grey baggy clothes……everyone the same.  If one was privileged to be able to “dress up” it had to be in one of those Mao suits.  There was no style, no color as respects clothing.   Except for a very few cars, all local transportation was by bicycle, just hundreds of thousands of them in each city.

Just about the only Americans that the Chinese had seen were a few retired professors and doctors, no American young people.  But in the late summer of 1980 a handful of us along with Campus Crusade took 350 young people into China .  They caused a huge sensation.  Most of them had been following up in places like the Philippines behind where the Jesus film had been shown the previous summer.  They had been starting bible classes and bible study groups, discipling new converts, and even starting new churches. 

We, along with some of the real “tigers” at Camus Crusade wanted to know what the Christian situation was in newly opened China .  Were there still Christians?  Were there any Christians in places of authority?  Were Christians welcome there?  Was there any persecution of Christians?

We were very surprised to find all manner of Christians is very high places.  We found no persecution, anywhere.   And since we came openly as Christians, we were welcomed in the most extra-ordinary manner.

You may know that one of the most important buildings in all of China , right on the west side of Tiananmen Square , is The Great Hall of The People.  It is where the Communist representatives from across the county meet to “elect” their new leaders, and where their new Five Year Plans are announced in convocations.  It could be described as the very inner-sanctum of the Communist Party.

Much to our amazement, because they wanted to show that Christians were welcome, our whole group, including the 350 young people were given a grand banquet right in the Great Hall of The People.  Many of the top Chinese Authorities were in attendance and welcomed us in a welcoming line of introduction.   The food was most grand, some of the best in Beijing .  The tables were typical Chinese, big and round and with their usual large revolving centerpieces.  I co-hosted a table with the official who had been over what we would call the American Desk of their State Department when Nixon and Kissinger went there to help “open-up” China to the outside world.  I think we were the first Americans to receive a banquet there in The Great Hall of the People since the one for Nixon and Kissinger.

I did fairly well with the protocol with my co-host at the dinner.  One of my major tests was when I was supposed to reach way up to a platter being held overhead and offer him one of those slippery sea-urchins with my chopsticks.  I am sure that it was only with God’s help that I got it safely down to his plate without having it squirt out onto the table.  My only snafu was when I had dropped two grains of rice onto the table next to my plate.  He watched those two grains for the longest time before he finally picked them up.  He went on to explain that his grandfather had trained him like others in China to never leave a grain of rice on the table.  It had to do with knowing about all the starving people across China in the past who had no rice.

The Chinese loved to hear our young people sing.  After the dinner for the longest time we sang all the US patriotic songs and Christian songs that we could remember, like God Bless America, Jesus Loves Me, How Great Thou Art, and even The Lord’s Prayer………right there in the very inner-sanctum of Communism.  I don’t know if they knew the meaning of any of the words or if any were interpreted for them, but the Chinese officials smiled and clapped the whole time.

The Chinese official that co-hosted the table with me that I described earlier was most interested that I had spent

time in Moscow in the Kremlin.  I had described to him how much the Russians wanted me to tell them about our US “management system”.  He later met with me outside the building beside the hedges around the building where I tried to explain how free market capitalism is our “management system”……how we really don’t have any secret plan or system.  Just like in Russia , government central planning for a whole economy by the bureaucrats under Communism, nothing works.  Spare parts if they exist at all seem to never get where they are needed.  Later, I had some of China ’s top leaders actually read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in which he describes what he calls “the guiding had of the market” under the freedom of Capitalism.  It gets spare parts where they are needed and makes everything in the economy of a nation work beautifully without any planning.

We knew how these young people are so motivated to share the Gospel with others.   We did not want to cause any problems, so each one of the 350 was given only one little book of The Four Spiritual Laws to take into China.  I thought that it was so neat that each was printed inside of bright red covers, just like Chairman Mao’s little red books had their red covers, and which were carried by the young people that plunged China into that awful Cultural Revolution.  That was where every teacher of professor or even what would be considered an educated person was banished out into the country to work in the fields and was so severely persecuted.  Hundreds of thousands died.  Many books have been written about what an awful time it was.

One of the results of it was to purge the entire population from any kind of overt religion or even spiritual philosophy or political thought across China .  In 1980 and later if you would have the opportunity to engage the Chinese in any kind of political discussion, the answer was always the same:  “We are not sure what system we really want in the future, but we are absolutely certain that we never want anything like that Cultural Revolution again.”  It is my  opinion that it created such a spiritual vacuum that it made a wonderful opportunity for Christianity to fill that vacuum.

Still testing things in China , we asked for something really bold.  We asked for permission from the very top authorities “to hold a prayer meeting on top of the Great Wall of China to claim China for Jesus”.  Much to our surprise we were given that permission without changing any of those words in the request.

At that time there were no tourist facilities at the Great Wall.  There was not even a good road there.  One took a special train there.  It stopped at the wall and then waited until your group was ready to return.  The distance is only 50 miles, but the train traveled fairly slowly and passes parts of other walls which were built way before the present one.

On the trip there I met a most interesting young man on the train.  His father was one of the top officials in Beijing .  He had learned English fairly well, and was already in Graduate School . but he really wanted to go on this trip to the Wall with all those American young people.  He did remark something about what he called the “interesting spirit” that these young people seemed to have.  I told him that we were going to have a “special meeting” on the Wall and encouraged him to attend and observe the “meeting” and tell me later on the return trip what he thought about it.  I even asked him to see if he could feel anything at that “meeting”.

We went about a half mile east along the wall and climbed up to one of its highest parts.  Every so often along the Wall there is a rock tower built for the guards who were stationed there.  We held our prayer meeting on the east side of one of those towers which loomed above us.  Some great and powerful prayers were offered by the young Campus Crusade leaders.   They prayed earnestly for the Gospel to spread across China in the future, which is now happening.

On the return trip that same young man came and sat down beside me.  I decided that it was a great opportunity to share the Gospel with him.  I got out my one copy of the Four Spiritual Laws that was printed in Chinese and started explaining it to him.

He got so interested that the noise where we were on the train began to bother us for what was becoming a very intense conversation.   We decided to go out between the cars on the train where we could be alone.  This train was so well made that the spaces between the cars were closed-in with glass so it was fairly quiet.  When we got to the part where it was time for him to pray the prayer to ask God into his life, he stopped.  He said that maybe he had done so many wrong things in his life that he should not pray that prayer.

It was at this critical juncture that I needed to say just the right words to him, and I am totally convinced that God put just the perfect words into my mouth.  I have since shared those words with hundreds and hundreds of my prison boys, and they are very effective and achieve amazing results with God’s leading.

So, 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 masters 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 you were.  Those Communist guards would never let you through the gate.”

But the young man saw what I was trying to show him.  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 some times, 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.  Amen.’”

The young man did pray those words.  Chinese men never cry, but he had big tears in his eyes.

I told him that I wanted to give him a bible.   I went back several cars to a group of young people.  One fellow had a nice, leather bound bible.  He was running short of money and was quite willing to sell it to me.

When I returned to the car where I had left the young man, he was gone.

I went forward through two or three cars and found him right in the middle of a group of Campus Crusade kids.  They had been observing him and had figured out what had happened.  They were already in the midst of discipling him.  I gave him the bible and left.

If you would like to watch the Jesus Film also, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed……… https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，准备好看完整的电影然后去这个网站，真的很特别 ….https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

I have written about a bunch of amazing people in this book.  Most of them have already died. 

Many were so close to God, and God used them to do some amazing things for Him.  

Now I want to tell you about one who is still very much alive as I write this.  

It is my opinion that God has tasked him with warning us about and to immediately prepare for what can only be described as an absolute catastrophe if we don’t prepare for it.  

First, let me show you my good friend’s credentials: Dr. Peter Vincent Pry:Executive Director of the Task Force on US National and Homeland Security,He served in the Congressional EMP Commission as Chief of Staff,The Congressional Strategic Posture Commission,The House Armed Services Committee,The CIAAuthor of “Blackout Wars” and a Plethora of Articles and Studies.

To show you about where his heart and thoughts are let me quote for you a few paragraphs from him.  I am writing this on May 1, 2019.  He wrote the following only last week and it was put in a national publication this morning: 

“The Age of Science boasts Reason has triumphed over Faith, and God is dead. Christianity is hounded from the public square, is silenced, or worse mocked and despised, in our schools, modern art, and entertainment.“Christianity and its child Western Civilization are thought so shameful among “intellectual elites” they would brainwash us into their new faith that is secular humanism, replace Christ with Marx, suborn individualism to collectivism, replace thought with “group think,” confuse the just society with “social justice,” and abandon free markets and free nations for the tyranny of socialism and globalism. 

“Is Mankind better served by reviving, or at least understanding, Judeo-Christian values that built and sustained Western Civilization for 2,000 years, until the 20th Century — or by the new “religion” of secular humanism that worships false science and the technocratic state, that dominates society and governments in the 21st Century? 

“Western secular humanists and socialists will vehemently protest they have nothing in common with the USSR, Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela — even as they embrace atheism and Marxism, shout down and mock the religious, and pretend to subscribe to objectivity and “science” in order to achieve “social justice.” 

“All totalitarian movements start this way, promising a Worker’s Paradise, delivering concentration camps and doomsday. 

“ Let us hope and pray for the resurrection of God’s law and Christ in the hearts and minds of men.”

Do you know what an Electro Magnetic Pulse is?  The last one to hit the earth as it zapped out from our sun happened when Charlie Goodnight was only 23 years old, September 2, 1859. 

Just a relatively small nuclear explosion high above the central US would also cause one.  You would not feel it.  You would not even see it, unless you were looking straight up over the central US when the relatively small nuclear device was detonated 70 to 72 kilometers up in the stratosphere.  However, the pulse would fuse any two pieces of metal that are close together…..like the firing pin in most guns, all electronic devices, the ignition system in any car made after 1973.  In an instant most all cars on the road stop and all parked cars will not start.  All planes in the air go down.  But most of all, our entire electric grid is wiped out.  And this happens from the east coast to the west coast and from central Canada to Mexico City, most likely never ever to return in our lifetime. 

Will this ever happen?  I met with a select group in our State of Texas Capital a few months ago.  There were several analysts from the CIA there as well as knowledgeable National Security Analysts and Engineers, and Military Officers.  Many of us have read the only good book written about EMP, One Second After.  The author of that book, William R. Forstchen, was even there.  Texas State Senator Hall was there too.  His previous job as an Air Force Officer was to shield our large missiles from EMP.  These folks were adamant that there is no other threat as likely and probable to happen to the US as this threat.  Forget global warming.  The following information is from………. Peter Vincent Pry, Ph.D. and Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security.  He was many years at the CIA and knows more about EMP than most anyone. 

He absolutely expects it to happen.  He is almost what I would describe as frantic about it.  It will happen from one of three ways: 

(1) Iran or some other rogue nation will get hold of a nuclear device, sail into the Caribbean on a tramp steamer and launch it with a cheap Scud missile of which Iran has plenty.  They really don’t have to aim it well, just get it up somewhere over the central US.  It does not need to be a really big one like a hydrogen bomb, just a small atomic one.  The Iranians are just salivating about this.  They could then fight us with swords like the Muslims of old. 

(2)  North Korea has two satellites traveling several times a day from southwest Texas up over the Central US.  The CIA analysts and Dr. Pry said that each weighs between 250 and 300 lbs.  They say that they are sure that one or both have a nuclear device in them.  They don’t need a spy satellite to weigh that much.  If they don’t have such a bomb in them, the North Koreans can easily put up another satellite that does. 

(3) We are way over-due for such a major pulse to hit earth from the sun.  It has happened regularly in earth’s history.  Dr. Pry says that the last big one was on Sept. 2, 1859.  We did not have an electric grid then, but we did have telegraph lines. The entire existing telegraph system was fried and wiped out.  It even traveled down the rail lines and warped the rails wherever they curved.  All those warped rails had to be replaced.  An EMP of that same magnitude from the sun very narrowly missed the earth in the fall of 2012. 

Dr. Pry says that conservatively 30 million or more people in the US would be dead in 30 days.  However, the CIA analysts say 90% of the US population will be dead in 30 days.  Without electricity they would not have water.  But you say, I know where to get water from surface sources.   Yes, but the tens and tens of thousands of people going to those same sources would have it so fouled that it would not be potable for most folks.  The CIA analysts there told me that they keep a little back-pack in their cars, mostly filled with water purification tablets.  When I asked why, they said that when their car stops wherever they may be, they just want to try to be able to get back home. 

Forstchen called his fiction book about the result of this happening to a small US community, One Second After, because it all happens in just one second. 

No more electronic devices of any kind would exist.  All bank records are gone.  Everything stored in every computer, even in the cloud, is gone.  There would be no more communications, no cell phones, and certainly no TV or radio.  In that one instant, we would be plunged back into the 14th Century. 

Most folks don’t realize that our electric grid is tied together and dependent on a few massive, extremely heavy transformers.  They are so heavy that they are very hard to transport to the strategic sites where they are needed.  They can only be manufactured by hand.  They are not made in the US; they are made in Japan and in Germany.  These would all be “fried” with an EMP.  It is doubtful then, if ever they could be replaced. 

In 2001 Congress established a commission to study the danger of an electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of a high-altitude nuclear weapon. It concluded that while there would be no blast effects on the ground, critical electricity-dependent infrastructure would be rendered inoperable. The commission’s chairman, William R. Graham, has noted that several Russian generals told the commissioners in 2004 that the designs for a “super EMP nuclear weapon” had been transferred to North Korea.   While a regular nuclear bomb will achieve an EMP, the Russians have been perfecting certain ones for maximum EMP effect. 

Recently the news media reported how a North Korean medium range missal was destroyed in mid-flight.  They expressed their confusion about why it had been destroyed when it was operating successfully.  Dr. Pry told me that the media did not understand that this was a test of how one of their missals can go up to deliver an EMP nuclear device and be exploded at just the optimum height for an EMP blast. 

I wrote an email about this subject to some of my friends.  I mentioned the two North Korean satellites and how their paths carry them up over the Central US every day.  Someone got that email to Lou Dobbs.  You have probably seen him on Fox Business News on his weekday broadcasts each evening.  He read it on his program, verbatim……word for word.  And if you have watched him, you have seen how when something strikes him as very cogent, he will look right into the camera and comment on it. 

On this occasion, when he got to the part of my email about the North Korean satellites, he looked right into the camera and said very earnestly:  “Why in  the world haven’t we shot those two things down!”In late 2017, just before Kim Jong-un became involved with President Trump, he made an interesting statement. He said publicly, directly to the United States through a translator:  “If you people don’t stop messing with me, you are all going to live like dogs!” 

As a proud American, I hate to admit it, but until we at least get our electric grid hardened, maybe we had better listen.  

At that conference in the Texas Capital all those important people from across the US had come all the way down to Austin, Texas.  When I asked them why they were there, they had a very practical answer.  They were most all desperately anxious for us to get our electric grid hardened to withstand such a magnetic pulse before it is too late.  They don’t want to see 90% of the whole US population dead in their homes and in the streets.  They expressed that they are in effect, hitting a stone wall in trying to get the grid hardened. 

They said that since Texas is the only state with its own grid, and since as they put it:  “Texans are tougher, more energetic, and in our opinion more apt to do it than anyone else.  “We are here to try to get you to do it as an example to for the rest of the nation.” 

On July 9, 1962, the US launched a Thor missile from Johnston Island, an atoll about 1500 kilometers (900 miles) southwest of Hawaii. The missile arced up to a height of over 1100 km (660 miles), then came back down. At the preprogrammed height of 400 km (240 miles), the 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead detonated.  We wanted to test one of our nuclear warheads so high up that no damage or results on the earth were expected.It was called Operation Starfish, and all hell broke loose.  

From this explosion, we learned much more about EMP than we had ever known before. There were not many satellites up at that time.  But the EMP fried the insides of the 6 satellites above that area at that moment and caused many others to fail later. 

Even though it was way higher than the 30 to 40 miles which are optimum for EMP effect, it fried most of the telephone system in Hawaii, damaged the electric systems for hundreds of miles around,  and wiped out most of the street lights in Hawaii.  If Hawaii’s electric grid had not been so underdeveloped and analog, it would have been totally destroyed instead of just badly damaged.  

Congressman Bob Hall desperately wants Texas (at least) to harden its electric grid against an EMP.  Here is what he sent out to his constituents recently in an email report: 

There was a time when life without electricity was the norm. By the 1930s, the majority of people living in larger towns and cities enjoyed the luxury, but only 10 percent of Americans who lived on farms or in rural areas had electric power.  In 1936 the Rural  Electric Administration was created to bring electricity to rural areas. No longer a luxury, electricity is now considered to be essential to life. A resilient power supply is essential to sustaining economic prosperity. 

A prolonged power outage today would result in a complete breakdown in the fabric of society as we know it. Without power, communications systems would go down, creating a chaotic response to the situation. While limited locations would have access to temporary generators, as the on-site fuel for those generators is expended, replacement services would be at a standstill. Pipelines and transportation systems would be immobilized. Medically fragile individuals with dependency on machines would be some of the first victims. Those who depend on life-saving medications would be next as diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, currently controlled by medication, become death sentences. Then, as clean water supplies are compromised and waste water treatment plants are overwhelmed, diseases commonly associated with third world countries would become prevalent. 

While Texas history with hurricanes, wildfires, ice storms and critters has made the state well-prepared for short term outages of power, there has been no significant planning for a catastrophic long-term loss of the electric grid that could be the result of cyber, natural, or man-made causes. The very idea that a single event causing the loss of the electric grid could plunge the entire nation back into a time without electricity, cell phones or the internet is so overpowering that it is easier to ignore the threat than to plan for it. 

At that conference in Austin, their one plea was to try to get us to harden our electric grid against an EMP.  It is not that hard or expensive.  The CIA folks and the military folks and Dr. Pry were here in Texas to plead with us to harden our grid as an example for the rest of the country, because Texas is the only state in the US with its own independent, separate electric grid as I have written.  They estimate that it will only cost $13 per person.  And my main purpose in bothering you with all this is to implore you to do whatever it takes to get our grid hardened; the grid for the whole US.  There are two companies standing ready to do it. 

I asked Dr. Pry what he intended to do when an EMP hits us.  He said that he intended to die along with everyone else, but then said, with tears in his eyes, that he just hoped that his grandchildren and great grandchildren would be able to survive. 

Dr. Pry has only 4 other people to whom he sends his most private emails.  I have promised him that I would continue to pray for him.  He knows that God has entrusted him with the task of alerting our nation to this peril, and he does feel the burden, all the time. 

I encourage you to please pray for him, also.  This threat is not some theory.  It is for real!!!   

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Are you are interested in what is really happening in Ukraine?  I get intelligence from sources that you probably have no access to.  So I wanted to share with you how the Ukrainian Military is really stopping the Russians, and killing thousands of them.  It is not coming from the shoulder fired tank busting missals we sent, though they are helping a little.  The shoulder fired missals that the Japanese have sent them which totally envelope a tank in flames seem to be better, though both require fairly close contact with the tanks..

The Turks furnished the Ukraine military with 20 TB-2 drones.  Each one weighs 1,400 pounds and is propeller driven with a 40 foot wingspans.  They go out over 100 miles and circle around for 24 hours if necessary until they spot a likely target.  Each one carries what the Turks call an “MAM”.  These are 14 pound highly accurate guided missals.  The Russians have not been able to shoot the TB-2s down.  They fly low under the Russian radar, and are seldom even seen on radar when they are not flying low.  First thing, they destroyed most all of the Russian air defense capability, and many of the Russian’s SAM missals.  They are extremely effective at destroying tanks and trucks and even trains.  You may have heard how many Russian Generals have been killed.  These TB-2 drones diligently scope-out the Russian encampments and then target the command posts of Russian officers.  

These drones are manufactured in Turkey by the Bayraktar Company.  And it looks like that the Turks have given their latest models to the Ukrainians which use Turkish and US satellites for navigation.  And in the last week the Turks have sent more of them.

 Here is a picture of one below being rolled-out for duty:

Ron

Intelligence Report:

It was an open question, in the days leading up to Russia’s wider invasion of Ukraine on the night of Feb. 23, whether Ukraine’s small force of Turkish-made TB-2 drones even would survive the first volley of Russian missiles.

Nearly a month later, it’s apparent the TB-2s not only survived—they quickly flew into action. Today Ukraine’s killer-drone fleet arguably is its most potent force.

TB-2s belonging to the Ukrainian air force and navy in recent days have dismantled whole swathes of Russia’s front-line air-defense network and now relentlessly are smashing Russian tanks and supply trucks.

And with credible reports that Turkey has sent fresh shipments of drones, it’s possible Kyiv’s drone campaign is just beginning.

Back in 2020, Azerbaijan’s small fleet of TB-2s was instrumental in that country’s victory over Armenia in a short but violent territorial war. Drone history might be repeating itself in the much bigger war in Ukraine.

Ukraine acquired its first TB-2 in July 2021. By February this year the navy and air force reportedly possessed around 20 of the 40-foot-wingspan, 1,400-pound, propeller-driven drones armed with 14-pound, laser-guided Smart Micro Munition missiles, whose Turkish acronym is “MAM.”

It was unclear whether the TB-2s and their ground stations and operators would survive the air strikes and missile barrages that preceded the Russian ground offensive.

But they did. In fact, it seems the drone force suffered no major losses as it dispersed from its permanent bases, such as Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, to smaller facilities likely concentrated in the country’s west.

It took a few days for the TB-2 operators to set up their gear and prep their drones for ops from austere sites, possibly including little-used civilian airstrips. Once they did, the drones opened an ever-widening aerial offensive. By March 20, foreign observers had confirmed—via photos and videos—nearly 60 tanks, air-defense systems, helicopters, supply trucks and trains that had fallen victim to TB-2 strikes.

In fact, the actual number of drone kills undoubtedly is much, much higher. We don’t know the real total because Ukraine doesn’t want us to know where and how often its drones are striking. “In an effort to attract as little attention to its operations as possible, very little footage of TB2 strikes over Ukraine has been released,” noted the analysts at Oryx blog, a leading source of open-source intelligence.

The drone campaign has expanded in stages. First, the TB-2s went after the short-range air-defense systems protecting Russian tank formations and supply convoys. The drones have plinked no fewer than 10 SAM launchers, including Buks, Tors and a Pantsir.

“Once they were free of Russian air-defenses, the Ukrainians … began deploying their TB-2s for their other two important tasks—for reconnaissance and for close-air-support,” wrote Tom Cooper, an author and expert on the Russian military. Stripped of their air-defenses, Russian tanks and supply trucks are easy pickings.

“In the Kyiv area, they have mauled many of Russian armored formations; in the south they have directed massive and precise artillery barrages on the Kherson airport and the [Russian] units besieging Mykolaiv.”

TB-2s also lobbed MAMs at several field headquarters. The effect on the Russians has been profound. “TB-2s are also wrecking the Russians’ nerves,” Cooper wrote. “We’ve seen several videos shown entire Russian [battalions] turning around and fleeing after losing only a few vehicles to TB-2s.”

There don’t seem to be major limitations on where the TB-2s can strike within the Ukraine war zone. Kyiv has released videos depicting drone strikes as far south as Kherson and as far north as the Kyiv suburbs.

The distance the drones are flying seems to hint that Turkey provided Ukraine with the latest version of the TB-2 with satellite-communications capability, as well as access to Turksat satellites. The alternative is line-of-sight radio, which can take a drone out to just 100 miles or so.

Russia’s longer-range SAMs—S-300s and S-400s—still are intact. But for a variety of reasons, they’re powerless to stop the TB-2s. For one, the TB-2 operators appear to be flying their drones at low altitude, below the horizon of long-range radars, until it’s time to attack.

Low flight prevents wide surveillance, of course. But the TB-2 appears usually to avoid detection even when it does fly high.

This makes sense. The TB-2’s small size and modest horsepower means it’s quiet, not overly hot on infrared sensors and also hard to detect for many radar operators. It is, in its own way, a stealth warplane. Flying mostly at night helps, too.

The same stealth qualities that protect a drone from air-defenses also allow it to loiter, undetected, over a stretch of highway for 24 hours at a time, silently waiting for the Russians to roll past.

The TB-2 isn’t invulnerable, of course. But unlike a 12-ton MiG-29 and its pilot, the drone is easy to replace. The Russians claim they’ve shot down lots of TB-2s, but there’s photographic evidence of just one wrecked drone.

In any event, Ukraine clearly still has most of the TB-2s it had at the start of the war, plus any additional airframes it got from Turkey in the last few weeks. The stable—or even growing—drone force, plus the steady degradation of Russian air-defenses, could mean that Ukraine’s drone campaign might actually escalate in coming weeks.

In a heady 44 days in late 2020, Azerbaijan’s 10 or so TB-2s knocked out no fewer than 567 Armenian tanks and other vehicles. It was a potentially decisive contribution to a winning campaign. Ukraine has even more TB-2s and has worked out highly effective tactics for them.

The doubt that hung over Kyiv’s nascent drone force on the eve of the Russian attack is gone. The TB-2 is a fearsome weapon. And in the hands of skilled and creative operators, it’s wreaking havoc on the Russian army in Ukraine.

Along the east coast of Central America there is a very unusual group of people.  There are over 300,000 of them and they are all black.  They live in villages’ right against the ocean.  There are some in Nicaragua , some in Guatemala , a few in Belize , but most live in Honduras .  They mostly live off of food from the sea…….fish, crabs, oysters and also cassava root.  And they have a most unusual language.  Many languages like Latin, Spanish, and even Arabic have male and female endings for their words.  However, in the Garifuna language the male and female are totally different words.  That makes it a really hard language to master. 

The history of these people is so interesting.  There were many tribes across West Africa over the centuries, but by far the fiercest were the Ashanti .  They lived deep in the forest in what is now central Ghana .  They were quite wealthy, deriving most of their wealth from raiding neighboring tribes and selling slaves to the Muslims. 

The British conquered and subdued all of the tribes across West Arica, but not the Ashanti .  They were so fierce that they were never scared or “cowed” by the British rifles or cannon.  The Ashanti were never conquered until the British were able to bring in modern machine guns in later years. 

Occasionally, though, from the early 1600’s to the middle 1600’s the slave ships would wind-up with a few groups of Ashanti on them.  They would be captured by Muslims coming around to that part of Africa and raiding inland to capture slaves.  But that is when certain slave ships “messed-up”.  Like I said, occasionally a ship would get some Ashanti on them.  Those Ashanti warriors would either take over the ship or die trying, and were apparently often successful.  They most all wound up in the islands off the coast of Venezuela, mostly on St. Vincent by sailing there or drifting there.  Those that were taken to Jamaica didn’t stay, not the Ashanti .  They captured boats and sailed or rowed west to the same islands. 

Most all slaves brought to the Caribbean on these ships were men.  The plantation owners wanted strong workers.  Thus the Ashanti who got to St. Vincent and surrounding islands were mostly all men.  So they just married the local, indigenous women.  That is how their language developed.  The men spoke one word for an object or action, and the indigenous women spoke another. 

For a time, the Afro-Caribbean Garifunas lived peacefully alongside French settlers who reached St. Vincent later in the 17^th century, until being exiled by British troops in 1796 and eventually shipped off to Roatan, one of the Honduras Bay Islands in the Caribbean Sea .  After successfully developing a healthy crop of cassava, a mainstay of traditional Garifuna diets, on Roatan, Garifunas branched out to the Caribbean mainland to establish fishing villages.  According to one source, the Spanish agreed to transfer the Garifunas from Roatan to the coastal mainland of Honduras , effectively consolidating their claim on Roatan and the other Honduras Bay Islands . 

Garifuna culture is closely identified with music and dance.  Garifuna music styles are known for their heavy use of percussion instruments and distinctive drumming, which combines the beats of primero (tenor) and segunda (bass) drums.  Garifuna drums are typically made from hollowed-out hardwoods such as mahogany or mayflower that are native to Central America .  

Punta, an evolved form of traditional music played using traditional instruments, is the most popular and well-known genre of Garifuna music and dance.  Punta lyrics are typically sung by Garifuna women and often relate to one gender or the other.  Energetic punta dancing has been described as “consciously competitive.” 

On one mission trip I did a one day clinic just for the Garifuna.  It was one of the most fun clinics that we have ever had.  They were so very grateful too, for the attention paid just to them. 

In a coastal town about and hour from San Pedro Sula where our medical teams often stayed I met a young missionary named, David.  He and his wife were originally from Arkansas .  He wandered around Central America for some time seeking what he thought God wanted him to do.  

When he encountered the Garifuna people he became intrigued that no one had ever learned their language.   There had been many Catholic missionaries in past years, but none had ever learned the language. 

So David decided that he should learn their language and be the first missionary that we know of to them other than the Catholics years ago.  When I met him, he had a new small church and was working on mastering their language.  He even had a radio show in their language.  It had a really large audience of Garifuna, mostly because they found it great fun to hear all the mistakes that he made trying to speak Garifuna on the radio show. 

David asked if he could show the Jesus Film in Spanish to the congregation in his new church.  It was on the same night that I had the electrical trouble with the old bob-tail truck, so I got there only at about the end of the showing. 

David and I visited afterward, mostly discussing these interesting people.  I asked him what would happen if we ever got the Jesus Film into their language.  He was overwhelmed at the thought.  He said thousands and thousands of them would find God and come to know Jesus and be saved into Heaven. 

I came back to the US and called Paul Eschelman about it.  As I mentioned earlier, up until that time we thought that the Jesus Film only had to be translated and produced into 89 languages.  However, Paul had discovered that words like “love” and “forgiveness” only have real meaning in a peoples’ heart language, not just the 89 trade languages that are mostly spoken around the world.  

Paul agreed to do it, and what was so interesting time wise, was that this would be the first making of the film into a “heart language”……….Garifuna.   

So we started making plans.  To save money it was decided to only lip-synch Jesus’ words in the film and have a narrator talk over the other parts.  They had done it that way before, and the way it turned-out, it really did not make that much difference.  So I really only needed to get two Garifuna speakers to California . 

David selected the two that he considered the most appropriate that could also speak fairly good English.  I went down to Houston to meet their plane to make sure that they got on the right flight to Los Angeles . 

We did real well until we got on the driverless rail train that circles the Houston Airport .  When that voice came on with no driver, I almost lost them, but finally got them on the plane to LAX. 

I had coached the folks at Campus Crusade who do the Jesus Film about how these Garifuna live mostly on a protein diet of fish and cassava.   We did not want them to get sick and delay the translation project, so the Campus Crusade folks had a diet all prepared for them.  

About two days later I got a call from California .  The Crusade people said that they had it all prepared what the two Garifuna speakers were to eat, but that all they wanted to eat was cheeseburgers.  I asked if they were doing OK on cheeseburgers, and the answer was “yes”.   So I said:   “Just give them cheeseburgers.”  

So, the Campus Crusade film team finished the Jesus Film in the Garifuna language.  It was now time to take it there for its Premiere.  

Paul Eshleman liked to go to as many premiers as he could manage, and he for sure wanted to go to this first one in the first Heart Language as he called it.  We coordinated with the young missionary down in Honduras and set a date.  I also recruited a really fine Christian oil man to go along with us too, Bob Foree, Jr.  His father had been on the Board of Dallas Baptist University with me when I was Chairman of the Board.  Uncle Bob, as we called him was one of the first Texas oil barons.  He was the one who drilled the well that off-set Dad Joiner’s that established the East Texas Oil Field. 

Previously when we were down in Honduras and speculating about getting the film into the Garifuna language, I had lamented to the young missionary, David, what a shame it was that we did not have a bible in their language to go along with the film.  David said, “Man, you can forget about that.  It is not even written”. 

In those days it was really hard to get a phone call back to the US from that part of Honduras .  David lived in the town of Tela on the east coast.   That was the town where United Fruit Company had once had its headquarters that I mentioned before.  To get a call out, you usually had to get an operator recruited to set up the call and then call you back when she had it all ready.  So, when you got a call from there it was usually to announce something really major……like someone had died or something. 

Three days before we left, I got a phone call from David.  I was so worried that he was calling to report some tragedy had happened.  Instead he said, “Ron, you won’t believe what has happened.  This lady has walked out of the jungle up in Guatemala and come down here with a bunch of bibles in the Garifuna language.”  I said, “How can that be”?  David explained that she had started with Wycliffe Bible Translators 27 years ago to put a bible into the Garifuna language.  With Wycliffe they had a rule that you are supposed to stop if you lose your partner, and even though she lost her’s, they let her stay on in their compound and finish.  I later learned from the Wycliffe people that if you can start with a language that has never been written, and put it into written form for the first time, you can use the phonetics of the language.  In this way, when it is done correctly, the speakers of that language can learn to read very easily. 

Just consider this timing.  This lady shows up with bibles she started on 27 years before, just one week before the premiere of the Jesus Film in that language.  You can call it a fortuitous coincidence.  I call it the amazing timing of God. 

David wanted the first showing to be in a Garifuna village down the coast from Tela.  Many Garifuna lived there, but it was so remote that it could only be reached by going over the mountains with great difficulty in a four wheeled drive vehicle with a very high center.  We loaded the generator and projector and film into a dugout canoe with an outboard motor and all piled in as a preferred way to go.  

We finally reached the village, and beached through the surf.   It was amazingly beautiful.  All the ground was covered with a vivid green grass that only grew about an inch high and appeared to be perfectly mowed in all directions.  The whole place was shaded by tall coconut palms, and there were beautiful little waterways meandering through the whole village. 

We rested in hammocks until it got dark.  We brought food for dinner, but one of the kids in the village caught a big iguana to roast for us. 

As was expected, they were just amazed to have a film in their heart language.  Like we did with the Hispanics, we showed it on a big white sheet so they could sit on both sides of the sheet for viewing.   You could just feel God’s Spirit there permeating the crowd. 

The lady from Maine who had spent 27 years translating for the Garifuna a Bible into their “heart language” wanted to be there for this first showing of the film in this very remote village.  David’s wife was able to get her there over the treacherous mountain roads in their 4-wheel drive jeep. 

There is that part in the film where Jesus has Peter throw out his net on the right side of the boat and Peter and his fellow fishermen bring in so many fish that the boat is just filled.   Wow!  That caused a huge commotion among those fish conscious Garifuna.  There is another place in the film where this cute little girl looks right into the camera and says some words.  The folks in California had her use a special idiom that is unique to the Garifulna language.  The crowd just couldn’t stop laughing at that. 

At the end when the film gives you a chance to ask Jesus into your heart and life, most all the crowd sincerely wanted to do so.  With one of the English speaking Graifuna translating, Paul Eshleman himself did the counseling, and those people were so filled with God’s Spirit that they did not want to stop.  They wanted to start a Christian church, right there.  David promised to come back and help them do exactly that.  

By now the surf and waves were much higher, but we managed to get back to Tela safely, although at some Campus Crusade meetings later, Paul accused me of trying to drown him that night. 

We showed the film several more times to different Garifuna groups, but the last showing in La Ceiba was the most dramatic.   La Ceiba is farther down the coast from San Pedro Sula and Tela, toward Nicaragua .  It has a port and limited commercial air service.  It also has a large Garifuna population, concentrated on its western side.

We arrived fairly early before dark and had plenty of time to set up the big white sheet/screen and get the projector and speakers well positioned.  We selected a big open soccer field for the showing. 

The lady who translated the bible into Garifuna went with us.  She brought a supply of those bibles. 

I was fascinated watching her visit with a large group of mostly Garifuna children.  She was teaching them to read their language right there.  But those kids kept looking at her mouth.  They just could not believe that their language was coming out of this very white lady’s mouth.  She was originally from the State of Maine , and she was very white from being closed-up inside all those years doing the translation. 

While waiting, I kept going over and over in my mind that she had started translating 27 years before, and here she was at what turned out to be a crowd of Garifunas at one of the premiere showings of the Jesus Film in their language with her just finished bibles.  This would be the primary place and optimum time for their distribution, and their printing had just been finished on time for this occasion after 27 years.  I just know that was God’s plan working as I mentioned before. 

The showing was a huge success with hundreds of children sitting right up front on both sides of the screen.  I don’t know how many prayed to accept Christ and come forward for counseling, but it was hundreds.   Paul and David handled the counseling.  The young man with the blue shades who spoke Jesus part in this version of the film was also there and helped with the counseling.  He had acquired these treasured blue sun-glasses while in California. He had gotten much closer to the Lord as one would expect after living those weeks in California with those wonderful Campus Crusade folks. 

As we were finishing up late that evening, I saw something that I had never seen before and have never seen since.  Paul Eschleman, standing out in that field, broke down in a wave of tears.  Sure, there had been a lot of pressure counseling all those people, but that was not why.  Later he told me. 

Paul had thought that the young man with the blue shades would go on and pastor some of the Garifuna groups.  He had expressed a desire to do so, but out in that field, in the dark, he had asked Paul how much money Paul was going to give him to do it.   Maybe it was because of the occasion and all those people accepting Christ, but that just devastated Paul.  Paul had assumed that the young man had higher or deeper motives in his heart. 

A year later I was back in Tela, two days in advance of another medical team.  With the help of the only local doctor we needed to select the optimum sites for the clinics.  That afternoon after the doctor and I had finished, I was walking back to that compound that had formerly been the headquarters for United Fruit.  It was now a hotel/resort on the beach where we stayed so many times and was great for housing the medical teams with its great food and contiguous beach as I have mentioned.

I hope Paul reads this.  I know he will be thrilled and gratified to find that this dude had “really come around” after all. 

But, unfortunately, there is more to this story.  Before we left for the States, I said to the group:  “We had better be careful.  We all know how powerful the Devil is.  He has had a strong hold on these people for many generations.  And here we are down here breaking his hold on them.”   He will not be pleased! 

Little did I know! 

When we arrived back in the Dallas airport Paul got the message that his daughter had been overcome by a strange infection and was dying.  It later took Billy Graham, his whole staff, Dr. Bill Bright and a host of Campus Crusade folks to pray that girl back from death. 

The fine Christian Dallas oil man had told us on the trip how thrilled he was that his wife had finally recently conquered years of alcoholism.  He had been praying for her for years.  But she was not there to meet him at the airport.  She was drunk again and passed-out on the floor at home. 

And my wife was not there to meet me.  She had run off with a homeopathic doctor to Oklahoma with our four children and filed for divorce. 

Welcome home from ministering to the Garifuna! 

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The Take-up Reel

On about the third medical team trip down to Honduras, I got this neat idea.  After our labors in the heat and humidity all day and from the pressures of the mass of people, everyone is just exhausted at the end of each day.  However, as I have related several times, we want to show the Jesus Film on the night where we have had the clinic that day.  But like I related, everyone is so tired at that point.  I send them back to rest-up for the next day.  When we are staying at the old United Fruit compound in Tela, they can refresh in the nice clear waters of the Caribbean and they can get rehydrated with the great limeades they serve there made from the local limes. 

Since Onelia and I have to stay at the clinic site without all those amenities, I thought it would be a great idea to have someone like an electrician go with us on the trip and be in charge of getting all of the electricity set up, and other preparations for showing the film.  Then it would be great for him to run the projector and change the reels and keep the speakers working and set up the string of lights for the people to come out of the dark and stand under who wanted to make a decision to have God in their life.  So, before we left I called the pastor of the church that was to sponsor that trip, and asked him to recruit an electrician from his church or from his community.  I volunteered to pay his way.

The pastor understood and recruited what he said was just the right man.  I called back three different times before we left to ask if the man was bringing extra extension cords, extra wire to splice if necessary, adaptors in case we needed to go from 220v to 110v for the projector.  And I particularly wanted to know if the man had practiced with the projector we were to take and knew everything about running it and changing the reels.

The pastor assured me that it all had been taken care of.  On the third call, the pastor said in exasperation:  “Ronald, just don’t worry about it.  He is ready!”

On this trip we had a whole day to get everything ready for the clinics.  Everyone prepared for their assigned tasks.  A local carpenter had made nice reclining chairs for the dentists which worked great.  However, that morning the pastor and the electrician fellow came to me with this dark look on their faces.  After all the fellow’s preparation and my exhortations, he had forgotten to bring a take-up reel for the projector.

You can’t show the film without a take-up reel.  The 16mm film has four reels.  You run each reel onto the take-up reel and then run it back onto its original reel.  If you have only one take-up reel, you run it back right there and have 3 intermissions during the showing for the people to go to the bathroom or discuss what they have just seen.

I said that:  “You must find one!  Make one of you have to!  I have paid your way down here just for this!   Do something!  David has invited all the black Garifina people in this area to his church to see the film tonight in Spanish!  We have to show it!”

That afternoon I asked them if they had one.  They said they had scoured the whole town without success.  I had told them to check with the two local theaters, but they said that the equipment at the theaters was all 32mm and would not fit.  They said that they could not find anything to make one with.  I had suggested that they check with the manager of our hotel facility, but they found him of no help.

That was the afternoon I had promised the group of doctors and nurses and dentists that I would take them off to the village where our clinic was to be the next two days.  It was also the evening that the truck stopped in the village and miraculously started again.  So, before I left with those medical folks standing up in the back of the truck, I told the electrician:  “You have got to do something!”

Several hours later, when I got back to Tela, I drove straight to the new Garifuna church after dropping off the medical folks.  Mirabile dictu,  they were just finishing the film.

Of course, I was anxious to know what had happened, and this is what the young man related to me after the film was finished:  He said that as it was getting late in the afternoon and time to leave for the church; he still had no take-up reel.  I said: “But you were going anyway!”  He said: “Yes, but I was praying like I had never prayed in my life.”   He said that just as he was reaching down to the handle of the car door to open it, the manager of the hotel called to him from up at the office and motioned for him to come over.   He went over and the manager said:  “Tell me once more what you are talking about.”  So, the young man explained.  He said that the manager then got a chair and pushed it over to the counter where you check into the hotel.  The manger then crawled up onto the counter and stood up.  He reached along the wall, way up to the ceiling.  The young man said that there was a space between the edge of the ceiling and the wall. 

The manger reached up into that space on top of the ceiling and pulled out and old take-up reel all covered in dust and cobwebs.  It must have been left by the United Fruit people years ago.  The manager had been reaching up there for some reason long ago and had felt of it there.

You can say that this was a very fortuitous coincidence.  But the young man and I considered it and all the timing involved, an overt, miraculous act of God.

If you would like to watch the Jesus Film also, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed…………….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，让自己准备好看一部完整的电影，然后去这个网站，真的很幸运………. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

I first met Joanne at a big political function down in Austin.  Everyone who was “anyone” was there, including President Johnson.  She has always lived in Houston.  Her name was Joanne King then; though she later married the wealthy Bob Herring, Chairman of Houston Natural Gas, and became Joanne Herring.

Even at that early time she was already considered the “hostess with the mostess” in America, the ultimate hostess.  Men in Houston would bring their lunch to the office so that they could watch Joanne’s TV chat show at noon.  They just got uplifted by her incredible personality.

Her parties were already legendary, some lasting for several days with different events over the several days.

I was having a real struggle at that time.  I had already moved into that big house on the ranch; but needed to get a trust finished with US Trust Company of New York to obtain proper title to most all the rest of the 1,600 acres.  US Trust would not complete the trust unless I could acquire the mineral rights to the land that were in the name of another person.

That house and land had originally been put together by a gunfighter from out in west Texas named Jim Christal who got his leg shot off and had come to Denton to pursue a different profession.  He became quite successful and not only had that house and land; but built a fine house in town.  He bought sheep from Ireland which had gold colored hoofs, and named the Ranch, The Golden Hoof Ranch.

After he died, a very wealthy oil man from east Texas sold all his holding in east Texas and bought Jim Christal’s house and land and continued the name, Golden Hoof Ranch.  Before he died, this fellow and his black-haired daughter completely redid and expanded the house.  I heard many tales about her and her beautiful black-haired daughter.  They say that her husband went off on a trip to South America and was mysteriously killed, and that she immediately married the ranch manager.  

What I eventually found out was that this ranch manager was the one who still owned the mineral rights.  I heard all manner of tales about how mysterious and reclusive this fellow was; and he was no where to be found.  Not to be dramatic, but I really thought that God wanted me to have this place.  Yet, I had no idea how to find this fellow and try to get those mineral rights.

Right about this time, Joanne called and really wanted me to come to one of her “super parties” that she had planned.  I don’t know why, but I definitely felt compelled to go.

She had brought many of her friends over from Europe for it………like Princess Pia, and Princess Panatelli.  The Baroness Di Portanova was there and even Princess Barbara von Liechtenstein; of the family from which the Country of Liechtenstein gets its name.

The first function was a dance at a big home in Beaumont.  I did not stay at the hotel where most of the others were staying, so Joanne came by and picked me up at my hotel in her limousine.  She never received any money for her popular TV show.  Instead she asked for a permanent limousine and driver, and three trips to Europe per year.

A lovely black-haired lady named Julie Stienhagen was the owner of the home in Beaumont.  I was told that her husband controlled much of the gasoline trade on that part of the Texas coast, but that they were not real close. 

In fact, he never showed that whole weekend. 

That house had three stories plus a basement and a wine cellar below that.  The third floor was mostly a large dance floor, reached by elevator.  I dutifully visited with those people.  Some were quite interesting; but a most unusual thing happened. 

Julie took a small group of us on a tour of the house.  I know what déjà vu means, but what happened to me there on that night in that place was way more intense.  It was like the furniture and the pictures and certain other things in that house were totally familiar to me…….like I just knew them.   It was so intense that I called back to Dallas while I was there to try to explain it to two different friends, but it sounded so ridiculous that I just cut off the attempted conversation.

Finally, we headed back to Houston.  What I had never understood was that I was supposed to be Joanne’s date for the whole affair. 

The next day Barbara von Liechtenstein wanted me to take her through NASA.  She was right there in Houston and had heard so much about it.  So, I happily offered to take her there.  It is hard to describe how gorgeous that young lady was.  The guys who work at NASA have seen all manner of fancy folks….dignitaries, famous politicians, heads of governments, and a plethora of beautiful lady movie stars.  However, I don’t think they had ever seen a lady as gorgeous as Barbara.

Guys were walking into walls while looking back at her, dropping tools on their feet, and just staring at her.  She became quite a spectacle and caused quite a stir, but I am sure that she was used to it.

Then, that night, there was a dinner and a dance at a disco.  At that moment in history, a disco was really a quite new and novel thing.  I mostly sat-out the evening, for I had found a most interesting friend.  He had come over from Ireland and was the President of the Castle Preservation Society of Europe.  He was not nearly as boring as that title sounds.  He was really quite young for such a title and so much fun.  Also, he raised cattle and was very interested in the Santa Gertrudis cattle that I raised.

The disco wasn’t very large, and Julie Steinhagen was dancing right in front of us and kept motioning over and over for me to come join her.  I was having such a good time with my Irish friend that I didn’t go.  Finally, she came over and sat down right in front of me, and looked me straight in the eye and said:  “Please don’t think that I am being forward and that this is some kind of ‘come-on’, but there is something about you that is so unusually familiar that I just have to know why.”

She wanted to know all about me since she was feeling this strange “familiarity” with me.  She knew that we had never met, but she kept trying to understand why she felt this closeness to me.  We went through that I was from Texas, and near Denton, and when I finally got down to the exact location of that house where I now lived on the ranch.  Julie nearly fainted.  She was the black-haired daughter of the black-haired women who had previously owned the house.  The special room in the house’s upstairs with its big picture window that looked out across the country-side, the door out to an outside balcony, and the pink tiled bathroom with its special fixtures…..That had all been Julie’s room.

Now I found out the answer to the so strange déjà vu episode from the evening before in Julie’s home.  All that furniture and those pictures had all been her mother’s and had all once resided in my home on the ranch.  Also, maybe that explained why Julie felt such a familiarity to me.  Strange.

It turned out that Julie was the one person in the world who knew where her stepfather could be reached and who had leverage over him……..the guy who still owned the mineral rights that I needed to close on the land.   She said she would have him call me.   However, after two weeks I still had not heard from him.

I called Julie and told her that.  She said, very firmly:  “OK, he will call you!!!”  Very early the next morning he called.  He said that he would meet me at 6:30 AM the next morning in at motel on I-35.  We met, I gave him a check for $60,000 and had the mineral rights to the whole property.  It seemed like a waste of money at the time, for everybody knew that there was nothing under the land but a thick layer of very hard black shale rock.

Many years later, after my friend George Mitchell at Mitchell Energy showed the world how to frack that hard shale and get out hydrocarbons, $60,000 seemed like a bargain.

So, Joanne was not just a party girl and a TV darling.  Her father, who owned a big construction company and was the consummate outdoorsman, made sure that she learned to ride and shoot at an early age.  When it actually looked like our country may go Communist or had the threat of being taken over by the Communists, a large group was formed to oppose such.  They were called the Minute Men.  Then the Minute Women were formed and trained in gorilla tactics and how to handle automatic weapons.  Joanne became a Minute Woman.

She continued her “social activities” and  entertained people like……….arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi; the former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat; King Hussein of Jordan; Princess Grace; and the Shah of Iran  and other “such” at her and Bob Herring’s 22-room mansion in Houston.

Later, the rulers of Pakistan wanted Bob Herring to come and drill for oil there.  They even wanted him to be their Consul in the US.  Since he did not wish for that job, he suggested that they give that job to his wife, Joanne.  That was rather awkward for Muslims to give a woman such responsibility, but they did it anyway because of their desire for Bob Herring’s help in drilling for oil.

She took the job quite seriously.  When General Zia (Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq) took over Pakistan by force, she went over to meet him.  He was so “taken with her” that she became his main foreign advisor.  They say that even when he was in an important Cabinet meeting, he would immediately stop to take a telephone call from Joanne. 

By now, Bob Herring had died, but she stayed very interested in that part of the world.  Her main motive was that she did not want the Russians to take over any of it.  Of course, this coincided with US interests also, and why the US kept giving so much aid to Pakistan.

Then the Russian army invaded Afghanistan and took over the whole country.  Afghanistan had always been a “little brother” to Pakistan.  No one in the US seemed to be doing anything about it.  This was “some disturbing” to Joanne.  She decided that she had to do something about it.

A whole bunch of really brave and tough Afghans moved across the border into Pakistan to try to oppose the Russians’ taking over their country.  I have a good friend in Afghanistan that I have stayed with two times who moved his whole family across the border.  He was not going to live under Russian rule.

That brave group called themselves The Mujahideen, and started their ten year war against the Russians.  I met three of them when they came to Dallas to try to raise money for their cause.  They showed us a graphic film of a group of them going all the way across Afghanistan, traveling by night, and blowing up the electric transmission towers outside Kabul.

Joanne went over there right away and met their leaders and pledged her help.  Of course, she would have charmed the socks off them just like she did General Zia, if they had worn socks.  But she charmed them anyway.

Right off the bat, she recognized their disadvantage.  No matter how brave and motivated they were, they only had small arms and a few mortars.  This was no match for the Russian tanks and ground strafing fighter planes and especially those awesome, fierce Russian attack helicopters.  Surely you have seen pictures of them.  In the last Rambo movie he captured one and used it back against the Russians.  In the scene that was supposed to be in Afghanistan in the movie, when all seemed lost, the Mujahideen came on horseback and rescued him.

Joanne tried all manner of her contacts in the US for help; but was getting no where.  Finally, she tried the “Wild Man” legislator in the US House of Representatives, Joe Wilson.  His district was in was East Texas.  He was considered, rather accurately, a boozer and a womanizer.  And he was no match for Joanne.

She conscripted him to actually go to Pakistan and meet the leaders of the Mujahideen.  They put him on horseback and took him all around and pleaded their cause.  Joanne succeeded.  Joe Wilson just became captivated by them and the just cause of their war against the Russian military.

If any of this seems familiar to you, then you have seen the recent Movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War”.   It is very historically accurate.  Julia Roberts had not made a movie in over 3 years, but she changed her hairdo to look like Joanne’s and played the part of Joanne in the movie.  I saw it a few years ago on a big 747 on a flight to Hong Kong.

Joanne and Charlie Wilson both knew what it would take for the Mujahideen to win and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan.  They had to be able to shoot down those strafing fighter planes and particularly those fierce attack helicopters.   The one, optimum weapon that would do it was the shoulder-fired Stinger heat-seeking missile in the US arsenal. 

Charlie went on what could only be called a crusade to get them for the Mujahideen.  He had no luck with our State Department or our military.  No one wanted to let those “get out of our hands” for fear they may be used by terrorists to shoot down airliners.  Charlie then tried pressure from the US Congress. 

It is a “long story”, but he finally succeeded.   The CIA helped him get them to the Mujahideen. 

When that first big, mean Russian helicopter was zooming straight in, firing rockets and 30 calibers attacking the Mujahideen, one of them bravely stood there out in the open.  That little rocket whooshed off his shoulder, headed straight for the front of that mean Russian helicopter.  It exploded and went down in flames, and as they say in East Texas:  “Those Russians just couldn’t stood that!!!”  As it got worse and worse for them, the Russians did leave Afghanistan for good.

And it really happened, just like in the last scene in the movie, the CIA gave Charlie Wilson one of those Stingers’ to hang on the wall above his desk in Washington, DC.  It was a commemorative, victory moment.

The last time I was with Joanne was years later in Houston at one of those Here’s Life meetings hosted by Bunker Hunt to raise big money for evangelism and to fund showing the Jesus Film in parts of Africa and India.  I sat between Joanne and her “tough” father at the first night’s dinner and program.   Last thing on the program was Dr. Bill Bright.  His staff only wanted him to make a sincere appeal for money.

I hosted a luncheon for Campus Crusade in Dallas where I had invited a bunch of Dallas businessmen.  Dr. Bright was the speaker, and his staff only wanted him to make a similar appeal for funds.  Not Dr. Bright.  If he was going to speak, he was going to present the Plan of Salvation and invite people to find the real God for their life.  In spite of his staff, he did, and asked all of the businessmen to leave one of their business cards on the table when they left, and to put a check mark on the card if they had “prayed that prayer”.

When we got back to my office, I was amazed at all the cards that had been checked.  And Dr. Bright exclaimed to his staff:  “See there; see those checked cards.  That’s my thing……..That’s what I do……That is what I live for!!!”

In Houston that night, he did the same thing; like only Bill Bright can present the Plan of Salvation.  And so help me, right there beside me, Joanne prayed to accept the Lord and ask Jesus into her heart.

In that movie, “Joe Wilson’s War”, in typical Hollywood fashion, they have Joanne “sleeping around”.  But let me tell you…….that was the Joanne before she became a real Christian!!!