A blast from the past

[Thankful Jane]

Over a year ago, someone presented me with a folder and said I might be interested in the contents. I opened it and couldn’t believe my eyes. In my hands was a full page spread from the Houston Chronicle dated April 30, 1977. I had never seen this article before. The person who gave it to me was in the Church in Houston at that time, and they happened to see the article when it was published. We, of course, were discouraged from reading anything but church materials, so it was a small wonder this person had seen the article. They told me that at the time they were somewhat on the periphery of the church life. They had saved the article. Last year they happened across it and decided to pass it to me.

I have scanned the two part article and posted it in a pdf below. (I had to scan it in four sections because of its size.) Here’s a little background: In my book (www.thethreadofgold.com, now available on our website to be downloaded as a pdf), I tell about a single sister that lived with us who was whisked away by her parents and deprogrammed. As you will see in the part of the article about her, she was from a wealthy Houston family. I had no idea that the account of her deprogramming/rescue had made it to the “Religion” page of the Houston Chronicle. The other part of the article is about the Church in Houston.

Ray Graver was the LC spokesman. His stated intent was to portray the LC as a normal church, not a cult. After reading the whole article, and noting the date on it, I just shook my head. This event, in this “normal” church, took place exactly 1 month before the elders in this "normal" church threw me into a pit, so to speak. This sister had lived with us for about a year. We, including two sisters who were living with us, were very upset when we learned her parents had taken her to have her deprogrammed. Isn’t interesting that in this normal Christian church not one of these normal Christian elders ever told us anything more about what had happened to her, nor did they tell us about this article, even when they knew full well we would never see it because we didn't read the newspaper? According to the article, they took some other members with them to the Houston Chronicle interview, but we were not in that number. None of these others who knew about it said anything to us, either.

How very strange that 30+ years later, God placed this in my hands...The verse comes to mind that says there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed ….

There is an interesting picture of the illustrious spokesman for the Church in Houston. Those who know him may agree with me that the photographer did a good job of capturing a classic Ray Graver expression.