Category: Book Recommendations

Review of Grace Halsell’s “Forcing God’s Hand”

Grace Halsell was a journalist who also spent time as a LBJ speechwriter. Her worldview was decidedly classically liberal. She rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of the world. In her book she laments losing the friendship of Iphigene Bertha Ochs Sulzberger, wife of the publisher of the New York Times. Halsell complains about Iphigene’s praising of Grace when Grace was championing the cause of the putative underdogs in the US during the civil rights era and yet when Grace started to champion the cause of the Palestinians, by reporting the terror of the Jews, Iphigene Sulzberger (a Jewess herself) decidedly and hypocritically pulled the plug on their friendship. This loss of friendship was because of the subject matter in Halsell’s book, “Forcing God’s Hand.”

The reason for the title of the book is Halsell’s discovery, upon investigating Dispensationalism, that the Dispies believed that by their actions and work they could force God’s hand on the matter of the return of Christ. Through various interviews, as pursued while she was on trips to Israel as led by Dispie tour guides, she learned that the true Dispie believers genuinely believed that if they pursued certain avenues, like returning Jews to Israel, and like supporting and funding the re-building of the Jewish third Temple, the Dispies could shoe horn God into sending forth the Messiah.

In this book, Halsell exposes the looney tune nature of Dispensationalism by letting the Dispensationalists tell her about their beliefs in their own words. Halsell then probes gently with questions about their answers to, once again, reveal these people majored in brain disease while attending Dallas Theological Seminary or by reading Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, Hal Lindsey, Lewis Sperry Chafer, C. I. Scofield, etc.

Believing Dispensationalism is more difficult than believing Soviet narratives about WW II.

Halsell is clearly a liberal herself and would hate the Reformed faith but for different reasons. She clearly expresses that she cannot believe in a God of wrath. She is at her worst when she travels down these paths in her writing. She’s at her best when she just allows the Dispies to say stupid things. For example,

“Standing, overlooking the Meggido valley, Clyde, a traveling companion, explained to me that this was the site where Christ would lead the forces of good against evil. ‘Two-thirds of all the Jews will be killed,’ Clyde said, citing Zechariah 13:8-9. Pausing for some math, he comes up with nine million dead Jews. ‘For two hundred miles, the bl00d will reach the horses bridles.’

When I express concern over this scenario, Clyde, explains, ‘God is doing it mainly for his ancient people, the Bagels. He’s devised a seven-year tribulation period mainly to purge the Bagels, to get them to see the light and recognize Christ as their savior.’

But why, I ask, would God have chosen a people — ‘God’s favorite’ as Clyde says – only to exterminate most of them?

‘As I said, God must purge them,’ Clyde says. ‘He wants them to bow down before His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.’

But, a few will be left? To bury their dead?

‘Yes,’ Clyde tells me. ‘There’ll be 144,00K who are spared. They will convert to Christ.’

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand – p. 81

Over and over again in this volume, Halsell lets the Dispies hang themselves by their own words. The odd thing for the reader of Halsell’s volume is the amazement found in the inability of the Dispie’s to hear what they are saying. The lack of self-awareness is dumbfounding. 

Halsell, admits in her book that upon writing this book she was a different person than the person who worked for LBJ. She even faults LBJ, in the book, for lying to the American people about Israel’s attempt to sink the USS Liberty. Halsell, is an example of a liberal who was mugged by reality and whose worldview was severely altered by being mugged. As mentioned above she loses the friendship of many of her former friends because of her Worldview change. This worldview change is noted in the pages of her work,

“By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics Israelis use again Palestinians.”

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand – p. 117

“What is the message of the Christian Zionists? Simply stated it is this: ‘Every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God and should be condoned, supported, and praised by the rest of us.’

‘Never mind what Israel does’ says the Christian Zionists. ‘God wants this to happen.’ This includes this includes the invasion of Lebanon, which killed or injured an estimated 100K Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians; the bombing of sovereign nations such as Iraq; the deliberate methodical brutalizing of the Palestinians — breaking bones, shooting children, and demolishing homes; the expulsion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims from a land they have occupied for 2K years.

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand
Published 1999

“Indeed, I hold that Christian Zionism threatens not just the lives of Palestinians and other Arabs, but the very existence of the US. Because of the cult of Israel, we have become a nation that does not have its own Middle East policy, but the policy the government of Israel tells us to have.”

Grace Halsell
Forcing God’s Hand – p. 126
Published 1999

For readers who have a pulse, it is easy to see the application between what Halsell was seeing and writing about almost 30 years ago and what we are seeing today as the Jews commandeer our foreign policy in the current war we are engaged in as a client state of Israel.

I highly recommend reading Halsell. I also would advise another volume that covers some of the same ground, “Against our Better Judgment,” by Alison Weir.  I found myself being a sympathetic reader and I found myself saddened that Grace never stumbled across Biblical Christians. It is clear she was a stranger to Biblical Christianity though in the book she reports a conversion experience when she was a child.

Book Review — “Lies My LIberal Teacher Told Me”

Completed … “Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me,” by Wilfred Reilly.” Reilly does a good job at quick overviews of various strains of the Cultural Marxist DEI PC narrative that has the white people in this nation under its sway. The summ effect of Reilly’s book is to give white people especially the ability to easily disassemble some of the major myths that are used to make white people feel guilty for their past. Along the way Reilly, often using a statistical approach, reveals the lies that are sold as “everybody knows this is truth,” as inflicted by secondary Government school teachers to University Professors.

Many of the sources that Reilly cites are from books that deal uniquely with the issue being covered in a particular chapter – and are books that I myself have read in the past. For example, in Reilly’s chapter that overturns the lie that Sen. Joseph McCarthy created a witch hunt atmosphere which was completely manufactured, Reilly appeals a great deal to M. Stanton Evans’ book, “Blacklisted by History.” Another example is Reilly’s appeal to the book “White Cargo” in order to overturn the lie that teachers tell that somehow black slavery was a uniquely heinous crime committed by White Westerners against the sons of Africa. “White Cargo” was one book I read years ago that made Reilly’s argument easy to navigate through. Still, having all these resources referenced in one place in order to overthrow the lies of the cultural false narrative is quite helpful.

Along the way Reilly skewers other assorted lies besides the ones touched on above. Reilly deals with the common lie taught that the Indians were noble savages who were spoiled by the arrival of the white man. Reilly deals with the lie that the 1960s counterculture was an Aquarius Utopia that advanced the happiness of nubile women who freely gave themselves in multiple and random sexual encounters. Reilly pulls back the curtain and reveals a wee bit of the flotsam and jetsam that became of many in that generation because of the lie that the Sexual Revolution was great for women and Hippies were the good guys.

Next up Reilly exposes the nonsense that somehow white people need to be ashamed of themselves for the clause in the US Constitution that held that black slaves were only to be counted as 3/5ths of a person for taxing and representation purposes. In this chapter Reilly still presupposes that slavery was wrong (a view I do not share) and argues that the 3/5ths clause was a mercy pursued against slavery as pushed by opponents of slavery. Reilly argues that by insisting on a 3/5ths clause that the Northerners were insuring that the South would NOT get the upper hand in voting in the US House and in the Electoral College by having a greater population count that would swamp Northern numbers. By only counting each slave as 3/5ths a person Southern power was cut and so in Reilly’s reckoning that was a good thing.

The chapter I learned the most from was his chapter defending European Colonization as a net positive for those peoples who were colonized. Here Reilly argues that the advancements in technology, education, medicine and legal infrastructure has to be considered in the consideration of whether or not Colonialism was a good or bad thing. Reilly makes it clear that this lie that all Colonialism was only evil all the time is one of the main lynch pins of Marxist thought that is used against the White European. So contentious is this issue that Poli-Sci Professor, “Bruce Gilley” work supporting the positive good of Colonialism has caused a major uproar in this field of study with attempts to ruin Gilley merely because he dared suggest that colonialism was a positive good. Reilly, also, in this chapter notes that colonialism has been pursued throughout history and that the Western White man is hardly uniquely guilty (if guilt is to be assigned at all) of somehow being uniquely evil in his colonial work. This chapter, for me, was worth the price of the volume.

The chapter I disagree the most with was the chapter that defended dropping the Nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don’t think Reilly has done his research here. Reilly argues the traditional case that the dropping of the bombs saved American lives that would have been cost with an invasion of the Japanese homeland. However, other works suggest that the Japs had already agreed to the very same terms of surrender that were finally presented to them after the bombs had been dropped. In other words, we could have had the Jap surrender before the bombs being dropped on the same terms that were achieved before the bombs were dropped. So, this chapter left me unconvinced that the dropping of the Nukes on the Japs was not evil and unnecessary.

Next up is the lie that White flight in the 50s-70s was cause by racism. Reilly argues that this can not be sustained and that it was a matter of white flight being due to an uptick in the socio-economic status of White people during that period.

If you are new to these issues it would be a good book to get ahold of. I have a niece, for example, who I wish would read this volume but I suggest she is so far over the falls now that she can’t be rescued. This book is important because of people like my niece have bought into many of the lies that this volume unravels and have organized their lives consistent with those lies that they were told by their teachers.

“Banner Of Truth” Not Being Truthful … Or “Orwell Saw It All Coming”

In December I posted the following quote from J. C. Ryle.

“The dwelling-places of the earth’s inhabitants are curiously divided. The world is not made up of one people or one colour. God by His providential ordering has separated the earth’s inhabitants into distinct nations, languages, and races, each with its own peculiar characteristics. These distinctions have existed for centuries, and have been preserved in a most remarkable manner. No climate, no teaching, no misfortune has ever succeeded in obliterating them. The negro is still black, the Red Indian is still red, and the Chinaman is still yellow. Nothing seems to account for these things but a miraculous interposition of God.

…

Let us beware of giving way to the modern notion that there is no such thing as God’s providential arrangement of the nations, and that the present attempt to amalgamate all nationalities and races, and to denationalise and unchurch people, is wise and politic. God has divided the world into separate nationalities, climates, languages, and churches, and it is the height of mischief to try and break down the divisions.”

~J.C. Ryle
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Matthew 24

Today, a friend of mine showed up in the comments saying that he owned a hard copy of Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels and that the quote I have above was not in his volume and asking me if I were confused.

That set me on the task of tracking down the quote. I traced the quote back to where I picked it up. I picked it up from my good friend and famous artist, Dan Brannan. I wrote Dan and asked him where he got the quote and together Dan and I went on a search and destroy mission to figure out where the problem was.

I soon learned that this book was published by “Banner of Truth Trust.” I immediately recalled that Banner of Truth had a past reputation of dropping material down the memory whole. That is Banner of Truth had been caught years ago editing out material from the work of A. W. Pink’s “The Sovereignty of God.” I immediately wondered if they had done the same to Ryle’s quote since it has the flavor of controversy about it.

In the meanwhile Dan was digging around in PDF’s online and discovering that despite Artificial Intelligence (GROK) giving him the quote above and the page number it was on in the Ryle volume he could not find the Ryle quote in available PDFs online.

Dan went back to GROK and asked … “Hey GROK, what gives? Why are you telling me that this quote exists — even giving me the page numbers — and yet when I go to the PDFs you have linked to me, the quotes are not there?

GROK wrote back;

” The specific passage on racial/national separation in the commentary on Matthew 24:1-7 appears to have been omitted or edited out in some later reprints and digital versions for sensitivity reasons in the 20th/21st centuries.

The full, unedited passage (including references to distinct races like ‘the negro,’ ‘Red Indian,’ and ‘Chinaman,’ and the warning against ‘amalgamating’ races/nationalities) is present in certain historical editions, particularly those published before widespread modern editing. However, it is not in most common public domain PDFs circulating online today.”

Some Praise For The Prophet Of Leaky Dispensationalism

Years ago I did a deep dive on Dispensationalism. I read over the course of time;

“Prophecy & The Church” – O. T. Allis
“Wrongly Dividing the Truth” – John Gerstner
“The Incredible Scofield & His Book” – Joseph Canfield
“Life Of Edward Irving: Fore-Runner Of The Charismatic Movement” – Arnold Dallimore
“Understanding Dispensationalists” – Vern Poythress
“Pre-Wrath Rapture of the Church” – Marvin Rosenthal
“House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology – Bahnsen & DeMar
“The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” – O. Palmer Robertson
“Dispensationalism: Rightly Dividing the People of God” – Keith Mathison

These are the ones I remember. I know there were other titles I can’t remember now. I also read many books arguing for Covenant theology in general.

Because of this study I’ve been adamantly opposed to Dispensationalism in all its expressions. Gerstner goes so far as to say it is heresy. Allis’ work is perhaps the most devastating to this “theology.”

It is because of this foursquare opposition to Dispensationalism in all of its varieties (even of the so called “leaky Dispensationalism variety”) that I find it difficult to join in with the legions of Baptists and others who are now mourning the death of John MacArthur.

That is not to say that I am not a little bit saddened. It is to say that my sorrow is not anywhere near where it was when Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Martyn Lloyd Jones, Van Til, Gordon Clark and others died.

As it pertains to MacArthur I respected his stand against Charismania and anti-nomianism (even though he fell into neo-nomianism in opposing anti-nomianism). I saluted MacArthur when he took on the Church growth movement and tore it apart. I saluted MacArthur when he refused to qualify his opposition to sodomy and other tough issues like the absolute requirement for a known Jesus Christ in order to be redeemed. These were issues that many other guys like Tim Keller or Billy Graham or Robert Schuller were constantly trying to nuance to death. To MacArthur’s credit he did not do that. I saluted MacArthur when he warned his Seminary students that it would be hard sledding in the ministry given all the opposition that they would have to spend their whole lives fighting. I could identify with that one. Of course, MacArthur stood against California Gov. Newsome during the Covid issue in Newsome attempt to keep the Churches closed. MacArthur was one of the few who did so. That perhaps, was MacArthur’s greatest moment.  In many respects John MacArthur was a man who could be admired because of these qualities.

I also admired him a wee bit because my Father-in-law admired him. Rev. Anthony Lombardi owned series after series of MacArthur’s taped sermons. I have that collection now sitting in my office. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to one. I always believed that I had better things to read or listen to, but my Baptist minister Father-in-law was smitten with John MacArthur. That stands to reason though since they were both Baptists and they were both Dispensationalists and they were both more than a little put off by the seeker sensitive movement.

For myself, I only ever read MacArthur’s book on Charismania and his two books on Lordship salvation issue. I thought Richard Gaffin’s book was better on the Charismania issue and I thought Mike Horton’s book was better on the antinomian issue. Also, several of the Puritans put faith in justification and faith in sanctification in a far superior way to MacArthur’s take. Still, that MacArthur was willing to take on the issues spoke in his favor, even if he didn’t get it completely correct.

Also, MacArthur clearly helped thousands upon thousands of people through his preaching, and writing. That is a good thing.

However, having said all that to honor him, I do pray that ministers who embrace leaky dispensationalism as did MacArthur did not will no longer be a presence in the Church today. I say this because I do not think Dispensationalism is a proper understanding of Biblical Christianity. I think the theology of that school is a hindrance to the furtherance of the  Christian faith.  It is sub-Christianity. If you read Allis and Gerstner they would say it is anti-Christianity.

Remember, it was MacArthur who boldly told his legion of followers that “We lose down here. Get over it.” This pessimism is a direct result of MacArthur’s leaky Dispensationalism. As long as the clergy believe that the Church and the Christian faith will be defeated in space and time history that defeat will become a self-fulfilled prophecy. The Church doesn’t need more clergy like MacArthur who not only believes this but who still think that the eschatological clock is tied to modern Israel and that we have an obligation to support Israel and is still looking for the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt. These characteristics of Dispensationalism need to be eternally put to rest.

So John MacArthur served his generation and now has been gathered to his fathers. We praise him for his strengths while not ignoring his weaknesses.

 

Of Burning Flags And Fascist Solutions

I noticed today a post on TwitteX of a foreigner (Visa Student) burning an American flag. In that context people like Andrew Isker was insisting that such a person be sent back to where he came from.

I understand the sentiment and agree that said person should be given the heave ho. But I agree with qualifications.

First, I have no problem with burning the American flag, as such, my issue wasn’t with the burning of the American flag itself but my problem was with who was burning the American flag.

Allow me to explain.

The American flag is a symbol and I have, with reluctance, determined it is a symbol of destruction. It was the American flag that was flown when the original American republic was destroyed in 1865 as the nation was transformed, by Lincoln’s war from a Federal Republic to a Unitary Nation State. My attitude towards the flag is similar to the old captured Confederate soldier who was told that if he took an oath of loyalty to the US flag he would be released from his Yankee captors. His response was classic;

“Sonny, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with that rag.”

The American flag likewise is largely responsible for the end of Christendom in Europe with America fighting to destroy old Europe in
WW I, the Versaille Treaty, and WW II, as the American flag led the way in shattering Christendom in Europe. In both wars America and her flag should have stayed at home. The American flag guaranteed that there would not be a negotiated peace after WW I, thus perhaps giving old Christendom the opportunity to rise from the war’s ashes. The American flag was at Versailles guaranteeing that per Woodrow Wilson’s “Peace” that WW II would break out again in twenty years, with the result that all the shards of old European Christendom was completely obliterated.

“This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.”

French Marshall Fernand Foch
Supreme Allied Commander
Response to Versaille 

The American flag was on those planes that murdered countless civilians in the firebombing of civilians in WW II. The American flag was present on the planes that dropped two Atomic Bombs on Japan after Japan had already accepted the peace that was finally implemented after the dropping of the two bombs. The American flag was present during the Bolshevik Revolution providing coverage for the Communist Reds in their warfare against the Nationalist White Army.

Similarly, it is the American flag that owns every abortion since 1973.

So, I think that is a pretty good case of not having any problem with the American Flag being burned on principle.

However, when it is a foreigner who is present on a Student Visa burning the American flag that is a different kettle of fish because that student is burning it in support of policies that if taken up would make me want to burn even more American flags.

Yet, people may find it odd that in spite of all this I love America and Americans enough to write all this. Mine is not a blind hatred of all things American. Mine is a hatred of all the unrighteousness that the flag is associated with. We, as Americans, have not been a God-fearing people for a very long time and because of that why should I want to defend the symbol that stands for a Christ-hating America?

Now a word as to the cure for all this. Increasingly, we are seeing younger Christians understanding that the America of the post-war consensus to be an ugly failure. More than a few are advocating that what America really needs is a good old fashioned National Socialist Government. Quotes like,

“National Socialism is merely the politicization of Christianity.”

Or

“Hitler was a Christian Prince.”

Or

“Race is real. Jews are evil. Whites are supreme.”

Are deeply problematic. Some of these statements just are not true. Some of these statements lack the requisite nuance. Reformation in America is not going to come via embracing National Socialism or variant forms of Fascism. The answer to an Cultural Marxist America that deserves to have its flags burned is not National Socialism where;

“All is within the state, nothing is outside the state, nothing is against the state.”

In such an arrangement the State becomes God walking on the earth. In such an arrangement we can say that “in the state we live and move and have our being.” Being ugly in a different way is not the answer to being ugly in the way we are now.

The answer to our current ungodly liberalism is not Stone Choir’s advocacy of National Socialism. Instead we could pursue a social order theology where the State, like all the other institutions in society, is merely one institution among many operating in a Christian society. The National Socialism idea that all must operate in the state and per the state is anti-Christ because it makes the State to be the norm that norms all norms. It will do no good to insist that in National Socialism the State only does what the Volk wants because it is the state that is determining what it is the Volk want.

America is ugly. As such burning American flags in protest of America’s real ugliness leaves me undisturbed — and that even if I could never bring myself to burn a flag. The answer though is not to slingshot in another ugly direction by supporting a State centered answer informed by Marxist categories.

We need a return to Biblical Christianity that because it embraces the theological idea of the temporal one and many as a reflection of the eternal one and many can provide both unity (in a common faith) and diversity (as each social institution orders itself consistent with God’s Word). This means a sovereignty that is not unitary in the State or any other cultural institution in the society. This means all cultural institutions are allowed to flourish in the sphere wherein they were designed to flourish. The Christian state flourishes in the state sphere. The Christian family flourishes in the family sphere. The Christian church flourishes in the church sphere as each and all together operating consistent with Christ’s sovereignty. This is the idea of diffuse law orders operating under God’s law in one society.

For those who want to  pursue the ideas about how society should reflect the idea of the One and the Many should read;

Colin Gunton — The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity / The 1992 Bampton Lectures 
Rushdoony — The One and the Many
Law & Revolution — Harold J. Berman (Two Volumes)