ustxtxb_obs_1983_03_25_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

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CALL TOLL FREE 800-424-2463 Personal Service Quality Insurance ALICE ANDERSON AGENCY INSURANCE & REAL ESTATE 808A E. 46th, Austin, Texas 459-6577 Reveley Memorial Services Simple Funerals Austin Information: 441-7500 Ronnie Dugger: “Heard’s accounts of the Bees in hiding are the pure gold of real history.” Bryan Woolley \(Dallas Times “It ought to be right beside the Alamo books.” “The Miracle of the KILLER BEES: 12 Senators Who Changed Texas Politics” by Robert Heard Honey Hill Publishing Co. 1022 Bonham Terrace, Austin, Texas 78704 $7.95 plus $1.03 tax and shipping not make a decision for the Lord. To the best of my knowledge, she still has not. Though I have continued to send her materials, I have never gotten a response. She will receive this book, and if she reads these words maybe it will, bring back memories to her.” I ,don’t doubt it. A happy Christian is not likely to miss the silver lining in such a set-back. God put Mr. Ziglar on the airplane for a purpose, and if that purpose was not to save the soul of his fellow passenger, why then it must have been to provide him with a message that can be of immense value in his ministry. As he explains, “In my talks around the country I often use the football analogy, and many people have said it was an eye opener for them. It has also helped to clarify my own thinking.” It has had the same effect on me. TO TURN from the bright, brave world of Mr. Ziglar to the grim horrors described by William J. Murray in My Life Without God is to be plunged into the negativism against which Mr. Ziglar has so effectively warned us. Mr. Murray, though he would qualify as a Christian under Mr. Ziglar’s standards, is by no means a happy one. His unhappiness is understandable when one considers that his mother is Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the most hated atheist in America, a woman who, if even half of what Mr. Murray says is to be believed, is one of the most thoroughly unpleasant human beings to have come along since Aleister Crowley. Mr. Murray, like Mr. Ziglar, is a firm believer in the physical existence of Satan. Mr. Ziglar, however, has apparently never actually met the fellow. Mr. Murray is far ahead of him in this “There has to be a God because there certainly is a devil. I have met him, talked to him, and touched him. He is the personification of evil. He is . . . my mother.” \(He is also a number of other people, but Mom is the main culprit. Mr. Murray has run with a very bad lot from Mr. Murray has some evidence to back up his charge. Her birth, for instance, “had a bizarre element. Grandmother swore years later the Mother had been born with an unusual, dark membrane covering her whole body. It resembled a black shroud ‘, She is given to insane rages that end in vampire-like attacks: “She laughed at me, and as I reached to fend her off, she sank her teeth deeply into my arm. I cried out in pain, and as she recoiled, the blook began to ooze from several puncture wounds. Grandfather . . . took me to the doctor for a tetanus shot.” She can also kill with her thoughts: After a fight with her father, she screams at him, “You old bastard! I hope you drop dead.” He promptly does \(on a trip she “got her wish,” she says, “Well, I’ll be. Where’s the stiff?” One could go on, but you get the picture. Mrs. O’Hair has counterattacked by dict. She has also claimed that he’s just another religious nut. The latter charge may have some merit. Certainly, Mr. Murray’s explanation of how he became a Christian is not calculated to convince one that he is operating with a full deck. The details are vague, but they apparently have something to do with a reading of Taylor Caldwell’s Dear and Glorious Physician and a dream in which a “great winged angel” appeared before him clutching a sword, the tip of which touched an open Bible. He woke up and rushed out to an all-night discount store where, under a stack of porno magazines, he found a Bible. The rest is history: “I drove to my apartment and read the book of the Bible written by the great physician, Luke. There I found my answer not the book itself, but Jesus Christ.” These could be signs of religious lunacy, but if so there are a lot more nuts running around than I care to think about. I tend to think that Mr. Murray is intelligent enough that he’ll soon tire of spending his time with the likes of Mr. Ziglar. One hopes that he will then realize that there is a middle ground between mindless fundamentalism and whatever madness it is that drives Madalyn Murray O’Hair. He could do worse than to start with a careful reading of the following observations by Jonathan Swift, a rationalist who had a life-long distrust of religions based on emotionalism and devoid of all intellectual content: Then has this Madness been the Parent of all those mighty Revolutions, that have happened in Empire, in Philosophy, and in Religion. For, the Brain, in its natural Position and State of Serenity, disposeth its Owner to pass his Life in the common Forms, without any Thought of subduing Multitudes to his own Power, his Reasons or his Visions; and the more he shapes his Understanding by the Pattern of Human Learning, the less he is inclined to form Parties after his particular Notions; because that intructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubborn Ignorance of the People. But when a Man’s Fancy gets astride on his Reason, when Immigration is at Cuffs with the senses, and common Understanding, as well as common sense, is Kickt out of Doors; the first Proselyte he makes, is Himself . . . A Tale of a Tub THE TEXAS OBSERVER 21