Regarding an Angel's Flight: The vast saga of one man's search for the truth - and of those who tried to stop him

Regarding an Angel's Flight: The vast saga of one man's search for the truth - and of those who tried to stop him

by W. Milton Timmons
Regarding an Angel's Flight: The vast saga of one man's search for the truth - and of those who tried to stop him

Regarding an Angel's Flight: The vast saga of one man's search for the truth - and of those who tried to stop him

by W. Milton Timmons

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Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781414034645
Publisher: Author Solutions Inc
Publication date: 01/08/2004
Pages: 704
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.55(d)

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Regarding an Angel's Flight The vast saga of one man's search for the truth - and of those who tried to stop him


By W. Milton Timmons AuthorHouse Copyright © 2004 W. Milton Timmons
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4140-3465-2


Chapter One 1933

Austin Victor Adams was born on January 20th.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30th.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover, to become 32nd president of the United States on March 4th.

Austin was the son of Ada Sue and the Reverend Barnabus Shybee Adams, whom everyone called "Barney." Although Ada Sue was of Dutch ancestry and Barney was fourth generation Anglo-German, their baby had a slightly Semitic look, with black curly hair and large, blue-gray eyes. Barney never had any doubts about his paternity, but it always annoyed him when friends and neighbors viewed their son with raised eyebrows. It had been a difficult birth and the doctor told Ada Sue she could never have any more children, so she focused all her attention on her only son, leaving her husband feeling neglected and somewhat resentful.

"You know, I got a funny feelin' this ain't no ordinary baby," she told Barney a few months later. "Just look at them eyes. See how he watches everthang we're doin'? I swear I think he understands ever' word we say."

"Aw, you fuss over 'at kid too much," Barney grumbled. "You gonna spoil him rotten if you don't watch out."

The Depression was world-wide, brought about by rapid industrialization and a doubling of productivity, but without concomitant adjustments in the economic system or a reduction in population - which, in fact, had doubled during the last half-century to stand at two billion. This led to over-production of goods on one hand, and a surplus of workers on the other, who couldn't afford to buy the goods because machines had taken their jobs. But even before the crash of 1929, the competition of man versus machine had depressed wages to starvation levels - leading, only twelve years earlier, to the Communist Revolution in Russia. Karl Marx had concluded that the only solution to this economic paradox was to eliminate the distinction between owners and workers by putting the means of production directly into the hands of workers. Religion, he said, was just a propaganda trick for keeping the masses subservient to the establishment. Many intellectuals and world leaders regarded this an accurate description of the problem, as well as a feasible solution, so Communist Parties sprang up all over the world, intent on overthrowing the moribund capitalist system.

But those who disagreed with socialism formed opposition parties, sometimes taking the hysterical attitude that anything favored by communists must necessarily be works of the devil.

Benito Mussolini had created his Fascist Party to suppress communism in Italy and create an alternative mechanism for stimulating the economy.

Adolf Hitler modeled his own Nazi party after Mussolini's Fascists.

In 1932, the republic of Austria had been overthrown in a military coup, enabling Engelbert Dollfuss to join the right-wing movement by establishing himself as chancellor of a Roman Catholic dictatorship - which then permitted him to outlaw all other parties and jail or execute anyone who opposed his policies.

All three dictators said that communism was not a cure for the Depression but, on the contrary, one of the causes that had prolonged it. Then Hitler dreamed up the additional idea that Jews, the traditional scapegoats, were the instigators of communism.

In America, the entire banking system had collapsed; one fourth of the work force was unemployed and another fourth was engaged in agriculture, barely subsisting on their own produce. Those who did have jobs could scarcely survive, and when they tried to unionize, they were brutally attacked by police, who regarded them as communist agitators. Similar situations prevailed in other industrialized nations, and desperate people everywhere were looking for a savior - anyone - any plan - no matter how extreme.

Unlike Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt was not an ideologue, but a pragmatist. He assembled a group of the most brilliant scholars available to make suggestions about how to get the economy rolling again. Prohibition was repealed and the "New Deal" began. If the Republicans wanted to call it socialism - well, they could call it anything they liked - as long as it worked.

Japan was ruled by Emperor Hirohito, the 124th descendent of the Sun Goddess, Amateraso, who created the world 2,563 years ago. The emperor was referred to as "The Son of Heaven," and to look at him would cause blindness, they said. The "Rising Sun" flag was his portrait.

As the Chosen People, Japan had a sacred obligation to bring enlightenment and True Civilization to the rest of the world. Soldiers were taught that to sacrifice their lives for the emperor would guarantee their immortality. So they dutifully extended their culture to China, via the imperial army. Chiang Kai-shek, however, firmly declined their offer in Southern China, while Mao Tse-tung defended the North. Japan had been warned by the League of Nations to withdraw from China, so they withdrew from the League of Nations instead.

The German parliament granted Hitler dictatorial powers, which permitted him to begin open persecution of Jews and secret construction of concentration camps. In Mein Kampf, and in all his speeches, Hitler concocted a melange of eccentric racial theories to support his contention that communism was a Jewish/Satanic plot to destroy the world, and his grand plan was to establish a new version of the Holy Roman Empire, which he referred to as the "First Reich." The Bismark Empire was the "Second Reich," and his "Third Reich" was intended to purify Christian civilization and restore Germany to its rightful place as ruler of a unified Europe.

Although the chancellor claimed to be a devout Catholic, he obviously admired the heretical author Martin Luther, because he immediately began implementation of that cleric's recommended policies. In 1543, Luther had written a treatise called "On the Jews and Their Lies," in which he said that all synagogues and Jewish schools should be burned, their houses destroyed, holy books confiscated (along with their money), and that they be covered with pitch and brimstone as they are "driven like mad dogs out of the land..." In fact, "We are at fault in not slaying them." If this were not done, Luther told the ruling princes, then "we partake in their abominable blasphemy and vices, deserving God's wrath and being damned along with them. I have done my part. Let every man look to doing his."

In Mein Kampf, Hitler echoed these sentiments:

"(We) ... have a sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's Will, and actually fulfill God's Will, and not let God's Word be desecrated.

"For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's Creation, the divine will."

By which, of course, he meant the Jews. Later, Hitler made a speech in Düsseldorf in which he expanded on these ideas:

"I say my feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by only a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to the fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison."

"And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress which daily grows. For as a Christian I also have a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see it work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week it has only for its wage wretchedness and misery, when I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people is plundered and exploited."

The fact that he referred to Jews as capitalist exploiters in one breath and then condemned them as communists, seeking to destroy capitalism in the next, didn't seem to bother his followers in the least. Centuries of anti- Semitism had conditioned Christians to blame the Jews for all their problems, so this was simply the latest in a series of pogroms against heresy which went back even before Luther. Jew bashing was a traditional way of relieving frustration.

The German hierarchy of Catholic bishops had nothing but praise for this knight in shining armor who would "slay the dragon of atheistic communism and purge the world of decadent liberalism," while the Catholic Center Party voted to abolish the Republic entirely.

Hitler began an enormous rearmament program, in open defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. But the Allies were too weakened by the Depression to do anything about it. Besides, Western industrialists were more than happy to finance an anti-communist.

The Nazi government took over all means of communication and declared a new "Kultur Kampf" against the intellectual elite. Avant-garde art was condemned as depraved. Modern symphonic music - at least anything more recent than Wagner - was similarly damned. Jazz was forbidden as "nigger music." All Jewish and Russian composers and conductors were banned. Jewish personnel were fired from all government positions.

Women were told their only proper role in life was taking care of the three Ks: kinder, kuche, and kirche (children, kitchen, and church).

Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code was more broadly interpreted to make homosexuality a capital offense, and the roundup began. Stormtroopers with shaved heads and hobnail boots prowled the streets, beating up Jews, blacks, foreigners, homosexuals, Gypsies, intellectuals, trade unionists, feminists, republicans, and other such degenerates.

After establishment of his Fascist Party in 1928, Mussolini had obtained the blessing of the Vatican with a concordat the following year - which the American Catholic press unanimously endorsed as the model toward which all governments should aspire.

In Spain, the monarchy, along with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, had been ousted by a popular election in 1931, and the new republican constitution had provided for separation of church and state. But loss of church power, especially the traditional power to control education, was infuriating to Catholics - leading them to create an opposition party.

In East Texas, oil was discovered.

The Adams family lived in an old frame house on the outskirts of town, about three miles from Barney's church, the River Road Baptist - in a town where the majority belonged to the First Baptist. The congregation couldn't afford to pay Barney a salary, but they did supply him with a parsonage which had been willed to the church by an old widow. Barney had no formal education or training in theology, but his father and grandfather had been preachers, so he carried on the family tradition while making ends meet by working as a carpenter and house painter.

This area of East Texas had been hard hit by the Depression, but when oil was discovered, the region began to flourish again. The State Teacher's College had been established here before the turn of the century and, other than petroleum products, that was the largest single source of income for the town.

The countryside was a pleasant mixture of pine forest and open, rolling hills. Located near the Big Thicket area, there was plenty of wild game for Barney to hunt, plus many lakes and ponds for fishing.

On July 20th, Germany signed a concordat with Pope Pius XI in which Hitler secretly agreed to put tighter restrictions on divorce, to make atheism, Freemasonry, birth control, nudity, and "obscene and immoral literature" into criminal offenses; abortion was to be elevated to a capital crime; and publicly, the Catholic Church was to be given official status by supporting it out of tax revenues. The church already had concordats with Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden, but under the Weimar Republic there had been strict separation of church and state; so when a Catholic dictator gained control, they saw their opportunity to reestablish hegemony throughout central Europe. Under the treaty, Catholic clergy were to be part of civil service and the church was to be protected as a public corporation. Catholic theology departments were to be established in every state university, and catechism was to be taught in all public schools - with special emphasis on "the inculcation of patriotic, civic, and social obligations in the spirit of Christian faith and the moral law." All teachers of religious instruction had to be approved by the local bishop who, in turn, required approval by the Nazi party. In exchange for these privileges, the church only had to refrain from criticizing Hitler, and at all Sunday services and other state supported religious festivals, public prayers had to be offered for the welfare of the Reich and the Fuehrer. Although the treaty itself was not secret, its exact terms were never published for fear of antagonizing the Lutherans, who constituted about one third of the population; and as a further sop, part of the compulsory church tax was to be shared with the Lutheran hierarchy.

After signing the concordat, Hitler said that only with a strong and unified Christian Church could he save the world from atheistic communism. "We need a nation of believers," he said, eventually coercing all the squabbling Protestant sects under the umbrella of the (Lutheran) "German Evangelical Church" - whose clergy included some of his most zealous supporters.

Partially in response to the extremist philosophies of the communists on the Left and fascists on the Right, a committee of Unitarian ministers published The Humanist Manifesto, written by thirty-six of the world's most famous scholars. It attracted no attention at the time but would gradually gain influence over the years.

In October, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations.

But Barney Adams knew little of what was going on in the world. Much of it was either ignored or misrepresented by the American press. Besides, Barney's reading ability was limited and he didn't buy newspapers anyway. He obtained most of his information from the radio and his friends.

Their house was creaky and sagging, but spacious - a low budget Victorian style of architecture - which kept Barney busy with constant repairs. It was white clapboard, with one turreted front corner and a gallery that curved around the bay windows, ending at a side door to the master bedroom. This veranda was occupied by a porch swing and a couple of cane-bottomed rocking-chairs in which the preacher and his wife often sat on summer evenings. Ada Sue had hung a few potted plants between the fluted columns, complimented by earthen pots of greenery along the bottom of the balustrade. A dirt path welcomed visitors, marked on either side by rows of whitewashed bricks delineating pansy beds, up to the luxuriant purple hydrangeas banked against the porch. The house was crowned by a weather vane over the turret, and on any given afternoon a motorist would most likely see Ada Sue watering her flowers or clipping the waist-high hedge which surrounded their property.

Texas 104 ran east and west behind the house and intersected with Main Street about eight blocks to the east. They had a large back yard with an oak tree in the center and a swaybacked garage facing an alley.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from Regarding an Angel's Flight by W. Milton Timmons Copyright © 2004 by W. Milton Timmons. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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