Chairman’s Report November 20, 2014

Post Card Program Rolls on to Success

Quarter of a million distributed – Our efforts to stop our government from sending guns and money to Islamist fighters who are killing Christian men, even beheading young Christian boys and taking Christian women and girls into sex slavery, has reached a milestone. Back in August I authorized a “post cards to Congress campaign” as an experiment. We mailed a set of three post cards pre-addressed to congressmen and Senators, to about 30,000 concerned Christians. In an accompanying letter, recipients were asked to sign the cards and mail one each to their two Senators and congressman. The cards demanded that no more of their tax dollars be sent by our government to the Sunni rebels who want to kill and enslave the Christians of Syria.

The program has been an amazing success, as can be gaged by responses from congressional contacts and comments received directly at our office. The only small glitch that has arisen so far is the number of cards that were returned directly to our office, although they have helped the success of the program as well. Thousands of signed cards to congressmen and Senators were received at our office along with contributions to assist in continuing the program to put pressure on Congress.

Every signed post card returned to our office was re-mailed to the appropriate congressman or Senator!

Collecting the signed cards at our office, sorting them and then mailing them to congressmen and Senators was an unexpected task, as the original plan was to have the actual constituent mail the card. Rather than spend 49 cents per card we sorted them at our office, put them in batches into envelopes with a cover letter signed by me, asking the member of Congress involved to treat them as if they had been sent directly to their office.

When a member of Congress receives a card such as this one, the vast majority respond directly to the constituent. I have already received dozens of notes from people who have received letters in response to the card they signed. Often the member of Congress has awkwardly attempted to explain why he voted to authorize the Obama administration to give half a billion dollars in cash and heavy arms to these “moderate” gangs of murderers who kill and terrorize Christians (and some of whom we now know have deserted and defected.)

If you mailed the pre-printed post cards either directly to a member of Congress or to my office and have not received a reply, please call the local office located in your state and ask why you are being ignored. One way or the other, all three of your elected representatives in Washington, DC should have responded to you, hopefully with a positive response. The best response, of course, is for all of them to respond by telling you that they will never again vote for funds to arm and train the Sunni fighters who were instigated by Saudi Arabia’s totalitarian Sunni royal family. The war in Syria is not our war; this is Saudi Arabia’s war!  Donations received at our office from those mailing the cards have funded the printing and mailing of tens of thousands more cards. We are now at 250,000 mailed and we may be able to go past 300,000 this month. A great big thanks to all who are helping!

Christmas for Refugees Goals Being Met

Full funding for Lebanon achieved!  – A great big thank you to all of the supporters of the Religious Freedom Coalition who have helped with the Christmas for Refugees program! Sufficient funds for the 1,000 Christmas meals initially planned for Iraqi and Syrian Christian children in Lebanon have been received and placed in a dedicated account.

The full program cost for the meals, transportation for the children and a box of food for each child to take home to his or her family is $41,000. The majority of the cost is for the food boxes for the children’s families. The funds are being wired to our associate ministry in Lebanon as certain guidelines and goals are met. A local administrator who reports directly to our office on the progress of the program has been hired and has begun on the foundational work. Every dollar of the $41,000 required has already been moved to Wells Fargo bank, in a special account we use solely to wire funds to various projects overseas. (URGENT UPDATE: Because of security concerns another $8,500 is needed for Lebanon. Please help today!

Our ministry partners in Lebanon are still pushing me to increase the program to at least another 500 children, but this cannot be done as yet, because we do not have all the funds needed for the children’s Christmas program in Jordan. I diverted all of the Christmas funds to the Lebanon program first, because it is quite a bit more complicated than the program in Jordan. The distances are greater and the travel can be more dangerous there.

The program in Jordan is still $22,000 short of the $35,000 needed, but I am confident we will have all funds by Thanksgiving Day. I know that the supporters of the Religious Freedom Coalition will fully support the efforts to help these Christian refugee children. When we achieve that goal and have all funds for the current plans I will make an appeal on social media such as Twitter and Facebook to raise another $20,500 for 500 more kids in Lebanon. You can help today! Donate now to help a refugee child have a Christmas dinner.

These programs are not without risk! The ministries and churches involved are endangering themselves by publicly hosting these Christmas dinners for Christian children. None of the ministries or churches will benefit other than spiritually. All involved are doing this work only to show Christ’s love to these children and their families in their time of great distress.

As I have mentioned in earlier letters, Syria was not a third world nation. Syria had an advanced modern society with a huge middle class; most Christians were educated, with good, often professional, jobs. Now, thanks to the Saudi royal family’s mercenaries, many Christian refugee families are living on dirt floors without heat in winter. The children for the most part are unable to go to school, although one of the ministries we work with is operating a school in Lebanon, running three shifts a day to try to educate as many of the children as possible.

My point is this: The Christmas dinners are not really about food; they are about the hope that comes through the birth, ministry, death on the cross and resurrection of our Savior. The children will not merely be fed, but they are to have an hours long program of Bible stories, activities, and Christmas hymns the children once sang back home in Syria or Iraq. Many of these children’s families fled Iraq for safety in Syria and built new lives there, only to have the Saudi royal family foment more hatred and Islamic violence in Syria. For a day, these children get back the church lives stolen from them. It is worth the risk for all those involved. I will personally attend some of the dinners in both Jordan and Lebanon to encourage the children and volunteers.

William J. Murray at the gate of Auschwitz which read “Work makes freedom,” but the only freedom those who entered ever received was death.

A Witness to Hell on Earth: Last week I walked through the gates of two of the most notorious hell holes on earth, the same gates that over a million Jews walked through to their deaths at the hands of a madman bent on establishing his concept of utopia on earth.

Some background: a good friend of mine and a fellow author, Jerome Corsi, visited the Auschwitz death camp and discussed the experience with me in depth this past January. At the time, he was writing a book on the historical and spiritual aspects of the Battle of the Bulge during World War II, and the visit to Auschwitz was part of his research. At the same time, I had just begun a new book on the evil attempts to establish utopian governments, such as those of the Communists and Nazis. Corsi told me that in order to really understand the evil that these utopians were willing to perpetrate to reach their goals, I needed to visit the death camps. I didn’t have the time or opportunity.

Dr. Corsi’s book, by the way is No Greater Valor, and is now in print and at Kindle. My new book, Utopian Road to Hell is due to be published in mid-2015. I have a chapter that, because of recent events and revelations, I must rewrite.

It happened that this October I was speaking at an event in Washington, DC in defense of Israel’s right to exist, at which the keynote speaker was Governor Mike Huckabee. He mentioned in his remarks that day that he had escorted two groups of pastors to visit the death camps and was going to take a third group in November. I did not ask Governor Huckabee to take me on his next trip; I just happened to mention to his daughter Sarah, who was sitting next to me, that I had been told by someone that I had to visit these death camps someday to understand the true evil of the collectivists and central planners.

Two days later I received an invitation to accompany Governor Huckabee as his guest on his next trip escorting a group of 100 pastors. It was obvious enough to me that the Lord had destined that I visit these places at this time, regardless of the schedule I have for the rest of the year — which was already arduous. Following Mike Huckabee around is in itself an arduous task, as we will wind up at the Reagan Ranch in California where he is to deliver a major address. I am literally writing this Chairman’s Report while airborne between the visits to the death camps in Poland, the halls of the British Parliament in London and Ronald Reagan’s ranch and Presidential Library, along with Governor Huckabee.

The experience of visiting Auschwitz and Auschwitz 2, known as Birkenau, was so emotional that it is very difficult to write about. A total of 1.5 million human beings walked through these gates to a hell on earth. Many did not die in the gas chambers but were kept alive on starvation diets to work with toxic chemicals and do manual labor until they were too weak to work, and then they were killed. They arrived in cattle cars and were kept in sheds designed for horses. I kept my composure until I arrived in a room full of children’s shoes the Russians had found when they liberated the camp. As I am still travelling with Mike Huckabee, I will write a full report on the mission with him at a later date.

The Elections

No noticeable changes – Numerous people have called and written to me asking how much can be done now that the Republicans will control both the House and Senate beginning in January. The answer for the vast majority of people outside the beltway is that there will likely be no noticeable changes. That is because although most voters who kicked out the liberals expect big changes, the reality is the Founders of our nation designed a government in which sudden change is somewhere between difficult and impossible. Only one third of the Senate is elected every two years, as a deliberate way to slow things down and not let the heat of the moment change the entire direction of the nation.

Sadly, in the last half of the 20^th Century both Democrat and Republican controlled Houses of Congress have given the presidency more and more power, until it is nearly imperial in nature. The President of the United States now has more power to act without congressional approval than did King George at the time of the American Revolution. King George actually had to ask Parliament for funding for the war against the Colonies. President Obama can just bomb any nation in the world he wants to, or he can sign death warrants without trial, even against American citizens — and yes, he has done that.

Bottom line: the Senate under Harry Reid has passed virtually no laws, other than ObamaCare, in the past six years, not even a budget bill. This has allowed Barack Obama to make all the decisions and use Executive orders to “fundamentally” change America. When the Republicans take over the Senate in January he will simply ignore them and rule by executive orders, in great part due to the powers given the office by past Republican controlled Congresses.

For me the change will be much more noticeable than for voters and those outside the Beltway. There is a saying here: staff is policy. In January hundreds of liberals who work for Senators and control the committee activities will be out of work. They will be gone from the Senate offices and replaced by hundreds of young conservatives who will spend their spare time volunteering for conservative organizations.

Budget bills will once again be passed and included in them will be pro-life riders and amendments. To block those, President Obama will have to veto the entire bill and explain to the American people that he wants babies aborted so badly that he is willing to shut down a whole section of government. Change will not happen fast. It will develop slowly and many voters, probably including you, will be dismayed and discouraged by the apparent lack of change.

This is a great nation, the third most populous in the world with a huge government bureaucracy. It is like a great ocean liner, not like a ski boat. The evil that takes just years to do can sometimes take decades to undo. We still have not “undone” Woodrow Wilson’s income tax, Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” or Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” The nation still suffers from those presidents’ actions and will suffer for years to come from President Barack Obama’s  wars on the unborn, traditional marriage and our Judeo-Christian heritage. Our true hope is in Jesus and we must keep our eyes on Him, or today’s politics will overwhelm and destroy us.

William J. Murray, Chairman
Religious Freedom Coalition, 601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW #900, Washington, DC 20004 * (202) 742-8990