Trump’s Call for “Unconditional Surrender” in Order to End the War

Before FDR blurted out in the Casablanca press conference that nothing but “Unconditional Surrender” would be accepted as an end to WW2 nobody in the entourage including Churchill had acquiesced to that idea. Indeed, it had not even been discussed.
The Military men knew that such a proposal meant that the War would now be extended as the Germans were now prompted to fight with the despairing ferocity like cornered rats.

One British Government advisor (Lord Maurice Hankey) took the time to look at the history back to 1600 (covering 15 British wars) of Unconditional Surrender as a condition for a war’s end. He found only one example and that was the Boer War and it didn’t work then and was given up when the Brits learned from the Boers that they would fight till Kingdom Come as opposed to Unconditionally surrender.

The only noteworthy example that Hankey found of Unconditional Surrender being invoked and accomplished was the Third Punic War. The Romans demanded the Carthaginians Unconditional Surrender and the Carthaginians told them to pound sand resulting in Carthage being razed to the ground once Rome finally conquered.

But Rome had planned to raze Carthage Unconditional Surrender or not.

Where did FDR come up with this idea and why blurt it out for the first time in a press conference at the end of a meeting with Churchill on the tactical and strategic priorities of WW II? Was FDR speaking for Stalin here? FDR was too much of a politician for anyone to believe he just unconsciously just blurted it out.

However, I have no problem believing that Trump is clueless about what he has put into motion by demanding Unconditional Surrender.

Rev. McAtee Takes Alienist Rev. James Norris to the Woodshed

Over at the E-zine Reformation 21, one Rev. James Norris inks the typical bilge that tends to flow from Alienist ink pens. I haven’t repudiated everything Norris writes there but I have refuted enough here to demonstrate that his putative reasoning is of the Swiss cheese variety, which is to say Norris’ reasoning is full of holes.

Rev. Norris writes,

“It cannot be denied that that there has been a small, yet growing trend in the church in recent years for some young men to embrace racist views. They go by various names: Kinists, Racialists, Race Realists, Familyism and use terms like “Natural Community.” These views may be summarized as a belief that different races have not only different physical characteristics, but moral, spiritual, and intellectual qualities which are immutable and that the white race or races have superior qualities and therefore they oppose interracial marriage and insist that society and the church ought to be governed by those whom they claim have superior intellectual, moral, and spiritual qualities. In short: white supremacy.”

James Norris
Ref21 Webzine

Bret Responds,

1.) Small but growing? Probably not so small but definitely growing, and frankly we are scaring the pants off the James Norris types in their denominations. Here is what is going to happen. Eventually, given the irrational behavior of the putative conservative clergy against what the Church Fathers have taught throughout Church/Christian history, there are going to be new denominations arise that leave the NAPARC churches to gnaw on the bitter roots of their alienism, egalitarianism, and proto-Marxism.

2.) The fact that exhaustive research has been done (see the book “The Bell Curve”) confirms that different intellectual qualities are normative among different races. To refuse to concede that is just a matter of making noticing differences a sin.

3.) Moral qualities being immutable are likewise testified to by observation. Not only by observation but Holy writ itself testifies that moral differences exist as Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, teaches that, “all Cretans are liars.”

4.) As to spiritual qualities differing and being immutable… Mr. Norris would have to explain exactly what he means by “spiritual qualities.” If by “spiritual qualities” Norris means that Kinists think that people from other races can’t be spiritual… well, that’s just a lie that Norris is spinning.

5.) This Kinist believes churches ought to be governed by the people group that they are comprised of. If it is a Korean church it should be ruled by Koreans. If it is a Hmong church that church should be ruled by Hmong. If it is a white Church that church should be ruled by whites.

6.) Speaking for myself, as a Kinist, I have always said that superiority and inferiority, in terms of differing abilities, will exist concurrently in different areas in different races. Although, I do believe that Christian whites have historically demonstrated that they are superior at building civilization than Christian non-whites. (Have there been any non-White explicitly Christian civilizations?)

7.) So, whites are supreme in the areas they are supreme in and other races are supreme in the areas they are supreme it. For example, white are NOT supreme in the NBA.

8.) As to interracial marriage … along with my Reformed Fathers prior to 1950 or so, I do agree that interracial marriage should be opposed by all wise Christians, though I have often consistently said that once a inter-racial marriage covenant is struck between two people who claim Christ the Church should do all it can to support that marriage short of allowing their children to inter-marry with the miscegenated children resulting from a inter-racial marriage.

____

“One matter that Ketcham and other Kinists repeatedly reference is something orthodox Christians need to face: There have been many Christians over the centuries who either held to racist views or who at some point said and/or wrote prejudicial remarks. We need to come to terms with this.

Reading Kinist literature, it quickly becomes apparent that appealing to authority is one of the primary arguments used to support their views.”

James Norris
Reformation 21 Webzine Article

Bret Responds,

1.) Not merely many Christians, but rather nearly all Christians before 1950 or so save for the Anabaptists and a handful of Covenanter nutcases. Nearly all of Church history is against people like Norris and the Alienists. Have any doubt? Just purchase a copy of “Who Is My Neighbor,” and “A Survey of Racialism in the Sacred Christian Tradition.”

2.) I would LOVE for Norris, or one of his Alienist compatriots to publish a book full of quotes from Church history that supports his egalitarianism and crypto-Marxism. Go ahead James … publish an anthology and show us your appeal to authority.

3.) Note what Norris has done here. He has accused Machen, Dabney, Thornwell, Luther, Calvin, Viret, Althusius, Turretin, etc. etc. etc. of being racist. The man has the cajones to indict pretty much all of church history. Only maniacs or madmen insist they alone are correct over all their Fathers.

____

“This highlights a fundamental error found that runs through the writings of many Kinists: they replace God’s covenants with race. For Kinists, many Old Testament prohibitions against marrying outside Israel are read not as prohibiting marrying outside the faith, but along racial lines, or some will simply claim that it’s both/and. Even if a token nod is given to covenant theology, it is done so in a way so that covenant texts can still also be applied racially, which they do in their opposition to interracial marriage.”

James Norris
Reformation21 Webzine

Norris’ reasoning fails here by not taking into account the books of Ezra and Nehemiah where the covenant is clearly also racial. There in Ezra and Nehemiah it is not only the foreign wives that are to be dismissed but it is also the covenant mixed raced children that are to be dismissed along with the foreign wives. If, as Norris errantly presumes, the problem with the marriages/children had only been about covenant God would not have required the covenant children to be dismissed along with the wives. Clearly, there was an ethnic/racial component to what is going on in Ezra and Nehemiah.

Perhaps, the most straightforward question that Norris’ silly argument needs to answer is, “How is it if in the Old Testament prohibitions were merely against marrying outside the faith, why were the Levitical priests forbidden from marrying outside the tribe of Levi?”

Alienists, such as Norris, argue that Kinists err by advocating for ethnicity/race over Covenant, but juxtaposing and contrasting covenant and ethnicity/race the way that Norris does, as if the Covenant stands naked apart from heritage, only eisegetically imputes to the Covenant the Jacobin/Marxist concepts of Egalitarianism and Propositional/Civic Nationalism. If Norris and his Alienist ilk were consistent with Norris’ line of “reasoning” and critique against Kinism as stated in the Norris quote above they would have to denounce infant baptism since infant baptism marries covenant with lineal descent.  Infant Baptism is consistent with Kinism which doesn’t abstract covenant from lineal descent as if the two or not intimately related, yet because Kinists are consistent here the Reformed Gnostic/Alienists like Norris find the consistent Reformed to be an offense to their neo-Marxist “Reformed” “covenant” theology.

Alienists have been warned repeatedly regarding their error. They have been reasoned with till the cows come home. Kinists have answered their same objections over and over again. We are at the point now where these vicious Alienists need to be recognized as anti-Christs. Mark them out and avoid them. They are egalitarians and crypto-Marxist.

Failure in Baptist Thinking


The baptism of infants, no doubt, presupposes that salvation is altogether of the Lord. No infant can be the Lord’s unless it is the Lord who makes him such. If salvation waits on anything we can do, no infant can be saved; for there is nothing that an infant can do. In that case no infant can have a right to the sign and seal of salvation. But infants in this do not differ in any way from adults; of all alike it is true that it is only “of God” that they are in Christ Jesus. The purpose of Paul in arguing out the doctrine of signs and seals, was to show once for all from the typical case of Abraham that salvation is always a pure gratuity from God, and signs and seals do not precede it as its procuring cause or condition, but follow it as God’s witness to its existence and promise to sustain it. Every time we baptize an infant we bear witness that salvation is from God, that we cannot do any good thing to secure it, that we receive it from his hands as a sheer gift of his grace, and that we all enter the Kingdom of heaven therefore as little children, who do not do, but are done for.

B.B. Warfield

Because baptism now replaces circumcision, it follows that every Christian who neglects to have his own children baptized in infancy, cuts them off from himself and from the people of God.  What an awesome sin of omission, then, is committed by some of our dear Christian brethren who refuse baptism to their own little infants and thus despise the sacrament of the saving grace of God!

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee

In the old covenant the first fruits belong to the Lord. The believer’s income belongs to the Lord. The believer’s children belong to the Lord. The meaning behind covenant is that we are God’s possession. Baptism is the New Testament covenantal seal, and sign that was the mark of God’s ownership placed upon every newborn child in the household. This is standard covenant theology. In the Old covenant the children went with the parents and the male child was marked as God’s property by circumcision. In the New covenant, which is more expansive, every child is proclaimed to be owned by God (God’s property) by the placing of the sign of the covenant upon the child.

The Baptists make hash out of the idea of a “new and better covenant” by insisting that while in the old and worse covenant children were included in the covenant community but now those children of believers are not in a covenant that is referred to as “new and better.”

The idea of being God’s property is the meaning of the sign of the covenant, and baptism is a covenant rite. When we fail to baptize our children we are proclaiming either that our children are NOT God’s possession or we are proclaiming that our children might not be NOT God’s possession until they decide first. However, by emphasizing that our children have to be able to make a decision for Christ before the Spirit of Christ is able to make a decision claiming our children sets the meaning of a completely gratuitous redemption completely on its head as Warfield notes in the opening quote. Reformed Baptists not bringing their infants for Baptism gives the contradiction between the idea of “Reformed,” and “Baptist.” In the words of Big Bird on Sesame Street, “One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you name which one?”

When we present our children for Baptism one hymn we might sing would go like this:

We give thee but thy own
Ordained by thy decree
The gift was given by thee alone
Your favor now we plea

And having now blessed us
We pour on them thy sign
And place in you our trust
For their lives as your design

Baptism is, above all else, the sign of the covenant. Being in covenant is the recognition that we and our children, our income and our possessions are the Lord’s. We are his possession and his property. If it is the case that we, the parents, are the Lord’s property then it only stands to reason that any children we have are the property of the Lord’s as well and so should be given the sign (Baptism) that is God’s brand that signifies His property.

To neglect to give the sign of the covenant to our children is an act of treason against God’s ownership. It is saying … “You may own us God but we will not obey you and give our children the mark that proclaims your ownership of your children.”

Baptists must repent but they need to be reminded that God delights in the repenting of His people. Embrace the Reformed … hold the Baptist.

DKQ

“I say that we are bound to love as ourselves, all those whom we must hold as our neighbors. But it does not follow that I am equally bound to everybody. For the husband is more bound to his wife, and the wife to her husband, and the fathers and mothers to their children, and the children to them, and the brothers and sisters to each other, than to strangers. For this reason, St. Paul says ‘Do good to all, but especially to those of your own household.’ If, therefore, it is a question of a Christian, a Turk, and a Jew, I am more bound to the Christian than the other two; and must let the others help themselves, if I cannot help them at all. Similarly, in the law of God, many things were permitted to the people of Israel towards foreigners, which were not permitted to them in their own nation, such as usury and other things.”

Pierre Viret
Reformer
Instruction Chretienne II – pg. 768-769

Viret teaches, that while we must hold all as our neighbors, that does not mean that all neighbors are treated in the same neighborly way. This means that there exist differing degrees of “neighbor.” This means that while we might use the word “neighbor” for our relation to people we come across in a casual manner, we must assign a ranking mechanism to the word neighbor so that some are 1st rate neighbors, while others are 2nd rate, and some are 3rd rate, etc.

Think about it … if everyone is a neighbor in the same sense of the word neighbor that means no one is a neighbor, just like if everyone is our friend then no one is our friend. These words lose their meaning if they are applied universally and without distinction.

Rev. Joseph Spurgeon and Rev. Jerry Dorris and others were just in error on this subject a few weeks ago when the subject of “neighbor” was being tossed about.

___

“He tells them the charge of his master had given him, to fetch a wife for his son from among his kindred, with the reason of it (v. 37-38). The highest degree of divine affection must not divest us of natural affection.”

Matthew Henry
Commentary on Genesis 24:29-53 – pg. 134

What is interesting in Gen. 24 is that Abraham sends his servant to secure a wife from among his people so that Isaac doesn’t end up marrying a Canaanite woman. Still, even though Isaac doesn’t end up marrying a Canaanite pagan he does marry a woman from his own kindred who did not reveal themselves to be particular believers in the God of Abraham. (Consider Rebekah’s pagan brother Laban and her niece Rachel who later stole Laban’s idols.)

This teaches the Kinist idea that marrying from among one’s own people is a priority vis-a-vis marrying outside one’s people group. Of course, we are commanded to marry those who are Christian but the above suggests that marriage should be between Christians who belong to the same people group.

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“The temper of some nations in more inclined to some vices than others.”

Matthew Henry
Commentary on Titus 1:12
Comprehensive Commentary – pg. 1360

Compare Matthew Henry’s statement (which is not unusual in the least in Church history) with the statement making the rounds in NAPARC churches,

“That the 221st General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church do on this solemn day condemn without distinction any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics and does on this solemn evening call to repentance any who would promote or associate themselves with such teaching, either by commission or omission.” 

It sure seems likely to be the case that St. Paul in the book of Titus 1:12f would be required to repent for what he said about “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” Sounds like Matthew Henry agreed with Paul as against the NAPARC Keystone Clergy.

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.