It is with great trepidation that I write at all about the burial of my mother, brother and daughter. Madalyn, Jon and Robin lived together in a godless state of atheism for decades. The three of them made up a totally dysfunctional and isolated home. They had virtually no friends outside themselves. The proof of that isolation was the reaction of their "friends" to their disappearance in 1995.

One of my mother’s employees moved into her house after her kidnapping but before she was even dead, and began to sleep in her bed. Her close "confidante," Ellen Johnson, immediately flew to Texas from New Jersey and set up a new Board of Directors to take over the property and bank accounts of the family’s atheist organizations. Not a single "friend" reported any of the three missing to the police. In fact, Ellen Johnson accused my bother, Jon, of theft in documents she filed with the Internal Revenue Service to justify missing funds from one of the atheist organizations.

With this in mind, imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from Ellen Johnson’s Texas attorney. He informed me that Ellen Johnson wanted the remains my mother, brother and daughter. In a press release Ms. Johnson stated that I "did not deserve" to have the remains.

Ms. Johnson apparently does not understand that no one can "own" remains. She actually saw this as a contest between her and myself as to ownership of the remains. When I heard about her planned "memorial service" in Florida at the annual Atheist Convention, I came to a fast understanding that this was a fund raising effort. She planned to raise money "to fight Bill Murray" and then raise money for a "memorial". It is most likely that the amount raised would be about one hundred times the amount spent. I believe Ellen Johnson is a student of the Jesse Jackson School of Fund Raising.

Before Ms Johnson’s threats were received, I had placed a standing letter with the FBI to release the bodies to a funeral home in Austin, Texas. The owner of the funeral home was a friend of Rev. Jim Abington, at whose church I have preached in Austin several times. I also sent a standing letter to the funeral home director to carry out my wishes as to the disposition of my family’s remains.

My instructions were based on the following reasoning:

1. My mother, brother and daughter had lived together in the same house in Texas for decades.
2. My mother, brother and daughter were tortured and murdered together in the same Texas motel room.
3. My mother, brother and daughter were buried in the same common grave in Texas by their murderers.

Considering these facts I came to believe that the three of them should be buried together in Texas.

Since my mother had numerous times indicated publicly that she wanted to be cremated, I ordered that those wishes be carried out. I then ordered that her ashes and the remains of my brother and daughter be buried in the same vault in a Texas cemetery. To stop the curious I had ordered that the grave be unmarked for the present time.

During the week of the 19th of March while the atheists were still threatening lawsuits and the like, the remains of my mother, brother and daughter were delivered to the funeral home as per my instructions. When I was notified of the delivery I made arrangements to fly to Texas for a burial on Friday, March 23rd. My mother was cremated on March 22nd about the time that my flight was arriving in Austin.

On the morning of the 23rd a small group of witnesses I had assembled from the law enforcement community accompanied me to a small peaceful cemetery near Austin, Texas. The ashes of my mother were placed at the head of the vault. My brother’s remains were placed in the center and my daughter’s were placed at the foot of the vault. Several small bags containing their last earthly belongings, and their clothes they were murdered in, were placed along the side of the vault.

I briefly spoke to those assembled. As per my mother’s wishes, made public on several occasions, there were no prayers said "over" her. My mother had stated that she wanted no one to pray for her after her death. I would not have done so anyway, because of my beliefs as a Baptist. As an evangelical, I do not pray for the dead. Baptists believe that upon death the fate of the soul is sealed. The deceased person is in Glory with God, or in Hell. In either event, prayer is fruitless at that point. There is no hope other than through Jesus.

The group removed themselves from the area to a part of the cemetery reserved for infants, with an Angel overlooking the tiny graves. It was there that Pastor Abington said a prayer for the remaining family members and for the law enforcement officers who had worked on the case and suffered emotionally as a result.

One of the law enforcement officials was close to tears on several occasions. The details of the last days and hours of my mother, brother and daughter were so brutal that even men accustomed to violence were emotionally shaken.

After the prayer, several of us remained to watch as the lid was placed on the vault and the vault lowered into the ground and covered.

I will say once more that no one can be sure of the spiritual condition of my mother, brother and daughter the day they died. That last day they were bound and gagged with duct tape, unable to speak, only able to think. In those hours or even in the days before, did they have a change of heart and turn to Jesus? Only when we reach Glory will we know the answer to that question.

The atheists have had annual conventions for at least one hundred years in the United States. My mother, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, was the first to actually call them atheist conventions. The atheist organizations did not even call themselves "atheist" prior to 1963. Most had, and still have, names such as the American Rationalist Association and Freethinkers of America. There is also the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the American Humanist Association. All of these and several others pretend that their collective lack of belief is intellectual in nature.

I believe it was 1961 or 1962 that I attended an American Rationalist Convention with my mother. It was, as I recall, in St. Louis which for many decades was the capital of atheist thought. Immediately my mother saw the profit potential and shortly thereafter she began to host her own conventions. Some years she had them and some she did not. They were always held at Easter because of the symbolism and because she was born on Palm Sunday. For her these were as much birthday parties as they were atheist conventions.

There were practical reasons for holding the atheist conventions during Easter as well. By practical I mean profitable. Hotel and convention facilities are dirt cheap during Easter and Christmas when people traditionally stay home.

When the current President of American Atheists, Ellen Johnson, fired my mother’s Board of Directors and grabbed the assets of American Atheists, one of the first mistakes she made was to try to hold a convention at a time other than Easter. Satan just would not help her and the convention she held in Washington, DC was a bust. The demons that help these conventions be such a success work best during the Holy Days of the Church when they can best blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

The next "post Madalyn" convention was held in a small town in New Jersey. That didn’t seem to work well either. Now Ms. Johnson is back on formula, holding the atheist conventions in resort cities during Easter. This year the atheist convention is at a resort hotel in Orlando, Florida.

This year’s atheist convention was scheduled to be one day longer so as to include a "memorial service" for Madalyn Murray O’Hair on Thursday, April 12th. My mom’s 82nd birthday would have been April 13th had she not been murdered. Ellen Johnson had threatened to sue to get the body so she could cremate and presumably parade it around at these atheist conventions. I don’t know if she planned to charge for a viewing or not.

I can’t quite get the concept of an atheist memorial service. When my brother was asked several years ago before his murder what he would do if our atheist mother died first, he said that since "dead meat is dead meat" he would probably "throw her in a dumpster". Little did he know that both her body and his would be dumped in a shallow grave and set on fire by one of their atheist employees.

The question remains, why a ceremony at all if atheists truly believe there is no God and that "dead meat is dead meat?" This year’s theme at the atheist convention is the "atheist family". Apparently the atheists are going to tell America how to run a family the "right way" without God. Have we not seen enough shootings and bombings at public school to have a full understanding or what happens in the absence of God and His Word?

Ellen Johnson and her atheist followers will control the liberal media in Florida during Easter. Unless there is some major disaster or a war breaks out, there will not be much to report other than the atheist convention. The media will play up the atheists all over the front page!

I will, as usual, run a large newspaper advertisement addressed to the atheists during their convention. This year the ad will appear in the Orlando Sentinel on Saturday the 14th in the middle of their convention. So far the funds have been raised for a one-fourth page ad. If additional funds are made available, the size of the ad could increase up to a full page. Advertising in the Orlando Sentinel is extremely expensive, about $239 an inch!

Some pastors have volunteered to stay overnight in the atheist convention hotel to be available to witness to the atheists. In addition to this and to the advertisements, I will make myself available to all of the same radio and TV programs on which the atheists present their case against God. I will be on those radio and TV shows to tell about His faithfulness and His mercy to us all.

Rarely do I see an atheist saved at one of these conventions. However, I do get letters years later from former atheists who tell me that what they heard made them think about the reality of God. Many of those who write to me have become Christians. At displays such as those put on by the atheists in Orlando this year, we can only hope to plant seed. Many times it takes years for the product of that seed to be harvested by Jesus. Please pray continually that the scales of Satan’s deceit over the eyes of the atheists would be removed so that they may see the truth of Jesus Christ.

I rarely write in this journal about one of the major aspects of my ministry. About twenty-five times a year I speak at fund raising banquets for Christian schools. So far this year I have raised money for Christian education in states as diverse as Georgia and Vermont. Most recently I spoke at an event in Dixon, Illinois, the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan.

I do not merely "speak" at these fund raising events. The Religious Freedom Coalition has a Christian school fund raising package available. For a set fee to be paid to the ministry, a Christian school is furnished a fund raising manual which I have written over a period of years. The manual is in a perpetual "draft" state as I am constantly adding to it.

For more than fifteen years I have spoken at fund raising events for Christian schools. During that time I have seen everything that can be done right and everything that can be done wrong. After seeing many fund raising disasters I decided to write a manual that hopefully would almost guarantee a successful event.

Once a Christian school contacts the ministry and books a date, the administrator is sent a copy of my fund raising manual. During the months leading up to the event I make myself available by phone to the administrator to answer questions and give advice. In the last month before the banquet I will do newspaper interviews and radio shows promoting the event.

The Dixon, Illinois banquet for Faith Christian School was a good example of what happens when a school not only follows the ministry fund raising manual, but does so with enthusiasm. The school administrator, Jack Grimm, worked on the project tirelessly.

Three weeks before the banquet which was held on Saturday, March 31st, I did an interview with the daily newspaper and it was carried on the front page. In the meantime the school managed to sign up thirty-eight table sponsors. By the time I did the last radio show to promote the event a few days before hand, it was already sold out. There were nearly four hundred at the banquet held at the Brandywine Conference Center in Dixon.

The school received pledges of over $17,000 that night. When that amount was added to ticket sales and sponsorship fees, the school grossed almost $30,000 for the evening. Faith Christian School has one hundred and eighty students. For a school that size $30,000 is a great boost to the budget. The news media was impressed. Sunday morning the Dixon Telegraph carried a very favorable front page story about the fund raising banquet.

The previous week a school in Manchester Center, Vermont with only seventeen (17) students that followed our program raised $12,150! It is rare for any school that follows the ministry fund raising program to raise less than $10,000 for their school event if it is the first time they have tried a fund raising banquet.

Although all the dates I have in 2001 for Christian school fund raising events are allocated, there are still dates available in 2002 and 2003. More details are available on the program at www.wjmurray.com or my office may be contacted at (202) 543-0300.

As you may know, both my wife Nancy and I are avid runners. In fact, this April 26th we will run in the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, TN. Despite my travel schedule I run six days a week and enter numerous races. Several years ago I got the idea that there should be at least one annual pro-life run. Most runs are for some type of charity. There are numerous breast cancer runs, AIDS runs and even missing children runs. But, there are no pro-life runs. I approached the Right to Life Committee with the idea and they said, "Sounds great, start one." It is a huge task.

This past March I was scheduled to preach at a church in Pataskala, Ohio near Columbus. In talking to the pastor I learned that he too was an avid runner. In fact he had actually done the "Ironman". In the Ironman event, contestants have to swim 2.4 miles, bicycle 112 miles, and then run a 26.2 mile marathon. I agreed to meet him at 7:00 AM Sunday morning before church and run with him and some of the members of his church. We ran about seven miles in an hour through the beautiful Ohio countryside before the service.

During our run together I mentioned to him my idea of a pro-life annual run. It turns out that Pastor John Hayes actually has a member of his church who is an officer in a company that organizes competitive races for charities! So, the first annual pro-life run is now in the preliminary stages of organization.

For now we are calling the race the "Let Them Live" 5K and 10K. The race will feature a 5K run which is about 3.1 miles and a 10K run which is about 6.2 miles. We also plan a 1 mile fun run for kids. The proceeds from the event will go to pregnancy crisis centers. As of now the race is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, September 23rd.

We may have church teams! The average of the top five times from a church team would be used to determine a first, second and third place team. There would be awards and trophies for all top runners. We will get national publicity from this!

We will hold the first race in Ohio because of the central location, but I hope to one day hold a pro-life race in Washington, DC. Please be in prayer as the planning for the tentative date of the race in September goes forward.

The following tragic story from the San Francisco Examiner illustrates the horror of the abortion war against the innocents, a war which now claims the lives each year of millions of babies. It also shows the muddled thinking of those who support and rationalize this mass killing. Although the case only came to court this year, the story began in October, 1997 when a 28 year old woman identified only as J. B. went to her local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic for an early term abortion. All seemed to go routinely, but after she went home the woman kept calling the clinic to report that she still felt pregnant. The clinic nurse dismissed these claims because she had, after all, seen for herself the bloody, mangled little body that was J. B.’s baby.

J. B. persisted, however, over weeks and then months. Finally the nurse agreed to give her a pregnancy test, which to everyone’s surprise was positive. In fact, J. B. was now 6 months along in her pregnancy, at a stage when some premature babies can survive. Still determined to abort, she went to another clinic that did late term abortions, where to her horror she was shown a sonogram of a baby who was missing an arm and a leg. It was determined that she had originally been carrying twins. Only one was killed in the first abortion, and the other twin, though horribly wounded, had somehow survived even though missing some of his limbs. This time, since it was a late term abortion, the process took three days to abort the second twin.

Although rid of the babies which she had thought would cause her so much trouble, J. B. now found herself an emotional basket case, filled with remorse and unable to work or have any relationships with men. A sympathetic jury awarded her almost $700,000.00, although the amount had to be reduced because a California law limits malpractice awards to $250,000. I don’t mean to downplay the young woman’s suffering. She undoubtedly did find it shocking to see the image of her mutilated child, and I believe she was truthful in saying that it now causes her anguish to even to be around little children, especially twins.

What I found ironic was the jurors’ attitudes. They were highly sympathetic to J. B.’s emotional pain and suffering, but there was no apparent understanding that the whole tragic story originated with her own actions, and with a society that casually condones abortion. The whole blame went to Planned Parenthood, and the fault found with them was not their role in helping to destroy millions of babies. No, the terrible crime they were guilty of was not being efficient enough with their machinery of death. Women want to go in for a quick, routine procedure, a clinical, emotionless removal of some bothersome "fetal tissue." By letting a young victim escape the abortionist’s knife with his life but not all his body parts, Planned Parenthood failed to make abortion a routine procedure. They forced a young woman to confront the reality of having destroyed her own two children. That’s what the jury found so unforgivable.

It is odd that a man who spent years in a Communist prison camp because of our nation’s stand for freedom in Asia, wants to ban free speech in America. Yet, Senator John McCain is fighting for legislation that would ban Americans from participating in the election process. McCain’s "campaign reform" would in fact gag pro-family groups and individuals.

Under McCain’s free speech ban, organizations such as the Religious Freedom Coalition would be barred from running issue ads for thirty days before a primary and sixty days before a general election. Pro-family and pro-life organizations would be banned from running ads that pointed to the voting records of pro-abortion candidates.

Example: We would not be able to run an advertisement in a newspaper or on TV stating that Senator Ted Kennedy wants to force churches to hire homosexuals, even though this is a true statement.

McCain’s "campaign reform" bill is actually an "incumbent protection act". Columnist George Will said McCain and other incumbents "...simply want to tilt the system even more toward the protection of incumbents..."

The liberal media love McCain because his "campaign reform" legislation would give them unlimited power. While organizations like the Religious Freedom Coalition, Christian Coalition, Right to Life and Family Research Council would be banned from running ads during the election, the liberal "news" media can say whatever they please.

Under McCain’s grand scheme of things, only the candidates and the parties would be allowed to purchase advertising. Do we really expect the candidates to tell the truth about their records? McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform is actually a gag order on the American people. This is wrong. The people have a fundamental right to come together and participate in the election process.

If McCain’s political gag law does pass into law, I truly expect the Supreme Court to find it unconstitutional.

When legislation such as McCain’s "incumbent protection act" comes before Congress your voice can be heard. But, who do you write or call and what is the most effective way to put forth your opinions?