John Woodbridge Interview

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But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The Show’s Weekly Format and Guest Interviews

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we have a certain format here at the show. And Mondays you'll hear a sermon preached from Bethlehem Bible Church. I'm in First Corinthians now.

Tuesdays, I talk to Pastor Steve Cooley, and we deal with issues in the local church setting. Thursdays, I usually try to teach something positive like repentance or confession or the deity of Christ.

And then on Fridays, it's usually a critique of something or some examination of a Christian fad. But on Wednesdays, we like to have guests in the studio or on the phone—authors, writers, those who the Lord has used to influence evangelicalism.

And today is no different. Today on the phone, we have Dr. John Woodbridge, and he is the author of Hitler and the Crosshairs, subtitled A G .I.'s Story of Courage and Faith. Dr. Woodbridge, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio ministry.

Thank you so much, Mike. It's a personal delight. Well, John, I read the book. It took me about three days, but it took my 14-year-old son one day to finish. And so I thought, for that reason and many others, John needs to be on No Compromise.

Well, that's very nice to hear.

John is a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, where he is the research professor of church history and history of church thought. John, let's just start with big picture. Tell us the background of the book, and then we'll talk about some theological implications later.

But why did you and Maurice Pawsley write this book?

The Origin of the Book and the Letters Behind It

Well, a number of years ago, I was watching CNN and saw a runner at the bottom of the page in television that a rifle was up for sale, or a shotgun was up for sale, that had belonged to Adolf Hitler. And suddenly it dawned on me that when I was a young boy, about six years old, my father called me into his office in Savannah, Georgia.

He was a Presbyterian pastor. He said, I want to show you something. Well, first of all, I was scared that I had done something wrong. That's why he was calling me in, but it wasn't that. So I went to his desk, and he pulled out a pistol, and he said, John, this pistol belonged to...

And then he showed me some personal stationery of Adolf Hitler. I was six years old, and basically forgot about the story until I watched that CNN presentation, went into the kitchen where my wife was, and I said, how in the world did a pistol of Adolf Hitler end up in a Presbyterian pastor's home?

And she said, well, maybe, I think it's related to some fellow named Teen Palm. I wonder what happened to him. And my wife said, well, we met his widow, and we met his daughter, and we know them. I didn't remember this at all.

She gave me the daughter's telephone number. I called her up, and I didn't know who she was, and she said, oh, sure, I remember you, John. Your father led my father to the Lord. And that was wonderful.

And then she went on and said, when I asked her about Hitler and all that, she said, well, I don't know anything about it, but we have all kinds of letters. So Mike, the way things got started was, as a historian, I suddenly found out that there were all kinds of letters that might help us understand how in the world this pistol ended up in my dad's home.

How exciting was that, John, to think you were the first, quote-unquote, research person dealing with these letters, almost delving into private information that's not like these things, we're all on the internet.

Was that exciting when you first got that box of letters?

Well, it really was, and particularly when I, first of all, talked with my older sisters to see if I was just making stuff up, and they all had seen the pistol, and my dad had said it was from Adolf Hitler, but you're absolutely right.

We started to get letters, and particularly, we got a set of letters between my parents and Teen Palm and his wife, and they actually talked about the pistol. Then I knew, as a historian, that this really was something to work on, and I began working on the story.

Teen Palm, the Gospel, and the Dual Story of War and Redemption

Well, let's talk big picture, John. I think the public loves war stories. You have issues of life and death and right and wrong, heroes and villains. But what I particularly like is we get to understand Teen Palm and then your father, and the issues of Christ Jesus, sin, and redemption.

And so we've almost got a dual story going on here. Explain how that works.

Well, as it turns out, Teen Palm was not really raised as a Christian. He was an all-state football player from New York, was thinking about going into vaudeville. He was so talented. Went down to North Carolina State University where he played in a band, didn't do much studies, and more or less flunked out of school.

But he ended up coming to my dad's church right on the eve of World War II. My father was a Presbyterian pastor in Salisbury, North Carolina, and my father preached the Book of John. And for pastors and for Christians anywhere, you always have to remember just how powerful the gospel is, because Teen heard the gospel for the first time.

And he confessed Christ. His new wife confessed Christ. And when Pearl Harbor took place, my father and he were praying together. And then it was announced that we were at war and Teen went off to war.

But now he's going off to war as a Christian. And as it turns out, his faith helped him out, because ultimately, as far as I know, he's going to be probably the only American allied soldier who actually was sent on a mission, volunteered for it, to go into Munich, Germany, where people thought Hitler was to go and capture him or take him out.

Well, it's interesting, as Teen gets saved, John, do you think this is a fair statement or not? There are many people who are born, well, everyone's born a sinner, and they need to hear the gospel. Yet if our gospel presentation is God will really give you a good marriage and a good family life and some nice kids and you'll lead a moral, upright life, from all accounts, Teen seemed to have that life.

And so you can have a good marriage and nice children and do wonderful things for the country, like be a soldier. But unless you are forgiven, you are in big trouble, as it were. You need to be reconciled to Christ.

And so I like that idea that you could really have a nice young man, Teen. He seemed to have the world by the tail. Yet he was lost and without God in this world.

Mike, that's exactly right. He had very good looks, Hollywood good looks. He's an athlete. On one level, he had everything. And yet when he heard the message of John 3, that you must be born again, he realized he wasn't born again.

And I mean, for me personally, this is just another wonderful illustration of the power of the gospel, because the life of Teen Palm and his wife were absolutely transformed by that power.

Secular Interest, New World War II Material, and the Hitler Assassination Plot

I'm probably getting ahead of myself, John, but tell us a little bit about how the secular media is receiving this book by Zondervan. Hitler in the crosshairs, because there is a drama of war, but there's the drama of redemption, the sovereign God in the life of a man and his wife through a gospel ministry, your father.

And so this is not a book of Romans, an evangelical or doctrinal tract, but God is going to use this, I'm sure. How is the secular media received it so far?

Well, it's a very interesting reaction. One reviewer forgot about other content and just didn't want to hear about the Christian content. But otherwise, it's just been amazing. We've now been interviewed on secular radio and articles are appearing in the New York Post and in Canada and elsewhere.

And part of the reason for this is that honest, broker, secular people, they like to hear about somebody's life being changed. But more than that, I think, for many folks, because the book really is going out widely, is there's all kinds of new information in the book about how World War II ended.

Often we think that the war sort of ended when Hitler killed himself. But if you actually study the story as we discovered it ourselves, Eisenhower realized that until Hitler was taken out, the war wouldn't be over, even if you captured every piece of land.

And so there's an awful lot of new material in here about how the war unfolded. And also included in the book is an assassination attempt on Hitler in Munich that's just not known here in the United States.

Moreover, a story of Germans revolting against Hitler at the end of the war and actually being successful. Many of us know about the Valkyrie affair. But what you find in this book is something totally new about good Germans trying to take out the leadership of the Nazis even before the war ends.

And that's really new material for most people in the United States.

Mr. Gerngross's assassination attempt are close, too. It was new information for me. And I really liked that part of the story. And as I was reading the book, John, what I liked was this seemed to be, at least in my mind, and maybe I was trying to romance it too much, but I loved Dick Winters in the Band of Brothers.

And he was a leader and he was graced by God with common grace. And he could be courageous and a man of action. And he knew duty and loyalty. Yet he was not born again. He had not been saved by the grace of Christ Jesus alone.

And so when I read this book, I don't want to say it was a sanitized version of the Band of Brothers, although I liked it that I didn't have to tell my son, skip over these 10 pages because it was inappropriate.

But it almost reminded me, Tene Palm, of a Christian version of Dick Winters. Would that be a right assessment?

I think so. Tene was a man's man. He was extremely brave. He ends up with all kinds of medals in life. But you're right. The power of the gospel got a hold of him. And he will acknowledge in his letters, and there are wonderful letters between him and his wife, which makes it really a wonderful love story, where he attributes whatever he's able to do in terms of bravery to the Lord's help.

And then when the war finally ends, he writes to his mother and father and says, you know, the Lord protected me a thousand times. He was extremely grateful for the Lord. So you're right, Mike, when you read through his correspondence, the Christian element is huge.

And one of the things that we noted in doing the research, frequently the Christian element is left out of the stories of the people who fought in World War II. There's much more to be written on that topic.

Munich, Hitler’s Apartment, and the Gold-Plated Pistol

Well, we're talking to John Woodbridge, author of Hitler in the Crosshairs with Maurice Postley. John, let's walk through the story a little bit in terms of Tene going to Munich and bursting in the door, through the door where Hitler's apartment was.

Did he think Hitler could have been in there?

He surely did, because in the late April of 1945, the intelligence at Eisenhower received indicated that Hitler was not in Berlin, but he was rather in Munich and was heading up into the mountains of Bavaria.

And there he's going to take his last stand with people known as werewolves, two or three hundred thousand of them. So that the real problem for Eisenhower was that even after all the successes that they were having, it turns out they'd had to get Hitler.

And so Tene was with the 45th Division. They're outside of Munich. A revolt is going on by Gerengross against the Nazis, but the Nazis briefly recover. So Tene is sent on this remarkable mission with a few other people to go in and take out Hitler.

Hitler was assumed to be in his apartment. So you're absolutely right. When he went up the stairs, when he goes through there and once this is a suicidal, he thought he was going to meet Hitler face to face.

And then he goes in there. Hitler's not around. And then describe to our listeners what he did and then how he got the pistol and the.

Stationary. Well, he he's he's the leader of the small group that goes in. He breaks into Hitler's apartment, pardon me, into his office, picks up the pistol and other and some stationary leaves the place on his way out trying to get back to allied lines.

He is shot. And so there's a lot of bloodshed. And as it turns out, in terms of where the pistol is today, we know that some of the gun dealers who have had it in hand for a while say there's blood on that pistol.

So he takes Hitler's gold plated pistol, a gift that Hitler received for his 50th birthday. And then how did it get to America, then to your father? And then tell us the mystery. I think one of the great things about the book is you learn about the faith of a man as God has worked providentially and sovereignly and graciously.

You also learn about the inside with this insight with Gern Gross. And then there's a mysterious element as well, a mystery element. Walk us through that.

Providence, the Stolen Pistol, and the Mystery of Its Disappearance

Yes, a teen is shot. He recovers. The war has ended. He comes back to the United States and he finds in Salisbury, North Carolina, where my father had been. Our family had moved down to Savannah, Georgia.

So he was very close to my dad. He saw my father, you know, really as a person who had led him to the Lord and also his wife. So he came to his family, his wife came to our home and he gave the pistol to to my father.

We tried to figure out why he did that. You know, he almost could have had a little bit of a guilty conscience that he had taken the pistol. We just don't know the motivations. But I think probably it was because he really loved my dad.

In a sense, my father was a spiritual mentor for him. So the pistol then ended up at our home. My father was so proud of it. He he talked probably too much about it. Teen became a member of our church and my father's church in Savannah once again and so forth.

My father talked a lot about this. And what we didn't know is that there was a group of people called the Columbians who were pro-Nazi in Georgia, even after 45. And there's some speculation that somebody among them or other groups, they broke into the home in 1947 and the pistol was stolen.

Did you ever walk up to your father's office desk and pull out the pistol and play around with it, John? Now, tell us the truth.

Mike, the truth is, as a six-year-old, I was so stunned by seeing a pistol, I'd never been around one. I didn't play cops and robbers with it. I mean, I didn't actually want to. I saw it this one time and that was enough for me.

Well, it's interesting in the day and age of lots of children getting hurt with guns. And of course, I'm all for protection with gun ownership at home. But I remember growing up, my father was a Korean War veteran and he had a gun in the house and he simply taught me how to use it and said I was not allowed to touch it without him being around.

And we just never touched guns. And now maybe it's rebellious children, maybe it's a lot of other things. But I think I would have done what you would have done. And that is, my dad tells me not to mess with something.

I won't mess with it.

I didn't mess with it. So the pistol is stolen then and then the quest becomes what happened to it. Here, I want to pay a lot of tribute to the person who did an awful lot of hefty lifting on the writing and so forth, Maurice Posley, my colleague.

Maurice has won a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting. He worked for the Chicago Tribune for 25 years. And he did an awful lot of very wonderful research for this book. But he also worked pretty hard on trying to find out what happened to the pistol after it.

Was robbed. John, tell us a little bit about Tien's relationship with his wife and that specifically, I see many models of Christianity today manifest themselves in men. But there's a lot of effeminate Christian men.

And when I look at a man like Tien Palm, I thought this is a real man of God. You could still be a man's man, the Lord's man, and be kind and generous and loving towards your wife. And I think Tien is a good example of that.

Would you agree? I absolutely agree. He was a man's man. He was. I mean, if my sister saw him, said he was the most handsome man she had ever seen, particularly in uniform. But even though he was very, very able to handle himself physically and so forth in his relationship to his wife, he had such respect for her and he had such love for her.

We have an awful lot of the letters between Tien and what Tien wrote to his wife. And he so loved her and he so cared for it. I have to say, I've thought sometimes he's lifted the bar pretty high for some of us in terms of males, you know, what he said to his wife.

But his love was very, very obvious.

Reading History Through Providence

As a professor who deals a lot with history, I think it's a lot easier, John, for us to look back in time and see the providential hand of God. I think our charismatic mystical friends like to look forward and try to determine what God would do.

But to what degree do we as Christians read history, or how should we read history? That's a better question. How do we read history and notice the providential hand of God guiding it? Or does it just happen by reading history?

Well, I think there are two things to say. Number one is, from a technical point of view of being historians, it's always good to remember that we don't want to read history as if we already know what's going to happen at the end.

It's really important to go back and try to recover how history was actually lived. And that's one of the things we try to do in this book, and that brings an awful lot of new material to the forefront for people who are in World War II.

But secondly, I'm a very good person to the idea, and a biblical person, I believe, to seeing God's hand at work in history. And it would be very, very difficult not to see how, on occasion, things really were unfortunate that happened to Tim.

Bad things happened to him. But in some regards, and it's in the providence of God, these bad things actually prepared the way for him to end up coming to hear the gospel. And then, as it turns out, he's led to do things that turn him into one of the great heroes of the great generation.

And then ultimately, as you see in his life, I don't want to give too much of the story away, but towards the end of his life, he does another great feat for the U .S. government. But when he ultimately is about ready to die, he gives all the glory to the Lord.

He's always faithful. And so even though he becomes very ill, he knows the Lord is with him. And as it turns out, his favorite verse was Romans 1 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. And so he has a remarkable ministry of seeing a lot of people coming to the Lord through his faithful witness.

And he wasn't even a preacher, and that makes me encouraged because you don't have to be an evangelist with a capital E, nor do you have to be a preacher to be effectively used by the God of the universe.

D. A. Carson’s Gifts and the Pronunciation of “Genre”

John's book is Hitler and the Crosshairs, and it is a Zondervan book, an excellent book. I'd encourage everyone to pick up a copy. John, we've got about four minutes left. I know you have other areas of expertise.

Let me just ask you a couple of random questions. You are a colleague of D .A. Carson. Tell us something about D .A. Carson that would surprise us. Give me a little interesting story of D .A. Carson.

Well, there are a lot of interesting stories about D .A. Carson. I had the privilege of talking about him as a new book was dedicated to him at the Gospel Coalition. So I took it upon myself to tell some of those stories because Don is a very modest person.

But it turns out that not only is he one of the most incredible biblical scholars, he can do most anything. I mean, he's a tremendous singer. He's written songs that have been published. He's a pianist.

He's a wood person. And then we told the story of the Gospel Coalition. He also may be a locksmith. On one occasion, he drove me home from Trinity and I got we got home and totally messed up in one sense because I didn't have the keys to get into the house.

So Don said to me, don't worry, John. And he popped out of the car and I was pacing back and forth. And suddenly I saw all the lights in the house go on and the garage door went up and there was Don and he got into our home.

I don't want to exaggerate, but it must have taken about 30 seconds or a minute. And I thought, wow, he really is gifted. He may have some skill sets that we don't know about completely.

I have to clear up a controversial topic here at No Compromise Radio. I took a Hebrew's exegesis class with Dr. Carson, and he would always say the word genre. And I know he's a French speaker. He would always say genre.

And so I know you have received your doctorate from France and can speak French fluently. Tell me how you properly pronounce genre. As I would say, is D .A.

Carson right. When he says genre? Well, he may be in between what you just said, genre. You've just got to get that R and that nasal thing going, you'll be all set.

OK, good. Dr. Woodbridge, tell us, we've got about two minutes left. As you see evangelicalism today, Together for the Gospel, Shepherd's Conference, Gospel Coalition. How will we look at those type of, I don't want to call them, I guess they are organizations.

How will we see those 50 years from now?

Evangelical Renewal, Inerrancy, and Humility in Christian Leadership

Well, I think we'll see those particular movements as real renewal movements. And I'm particularly impressed by how many young people are involved in those meetings, people in their 30s and 40s. I do worry a little bit about evangelicalism itself.

I consider myself an evangelical, but I do wish that some of our leaders were more forthright about the inerrancy of scripture, emphasis on the gospel, and so forth. I was at the inauguration of Don Sweeting, the president of Reform Seminary.

He's a former student, and I defended the evangelical cause. There were some young Calvinists there. But I think the point is, we have to be very, very careful not to have a firefight emerge because a larger world would benefit from that.

How will people know we're Christ's disciples? By the love that we have, one for each other, but the love also has to be based on truth. And so just be very careful of what we say, but at the same time have to take a strong stand.

And that's where we need the Lord's grace and humility to be a faithful witness.

Well, we've been talking to Dr. John Woodbridge today, author of Hitler and the Crosshairs, Zondervan. What are you going to do next, John? Are you going to write another book like this that explores history?

Well, I'm working on several books. Colin Hansen and I just did a book called A God-Sized Vision on God Pouring Out His Spirit. So we just finished that, and Zondervan just published that as well. But theoretically, I hope it will happen.

I finished my part of the second volume of the news on Zondervan Church History that goes from 1300 to the present. So, you know, we're keeping off the streets. There's stuff to do.

Excellent. John Woodbridge, thank you so much for being on No Compromise Radio. Mike, I tell you, it's been a delight. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

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No Compromise Radio is a production of WVNE.