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BLASPHEMY CHALLENGE
J. Michael Shannon tells how some young people put up a web site to encourage atheism. The site invited people to dare God to send them to hell. More than 400 young people took the challenge. People who took the challenge received a free copy of documentation that promotes atheism, entitled "The God Who Wasn’t There." Shannon tells how one man filmed his declaration in the back of a church during a worship service. The site, www.blasphemychallenge.com, is the brainchild of filmmaker Brian Fleming, and founder of the web site "Rational Responders."
NO ATHEISTS IN THE WATER
David Harrell wrote a book telling the story of his father, Edgar Harrell. Edgar was one of the 300 survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, the last US ship sunk by enemy contact in WW2. 600 of the 900 men who survived the ship's sinking were stranded in the water for five days - many with only a life vest - all facing thirst, hunger, injuries, dehydration and sharks. They all came face to face with fear and their own mortality.
Edgar testifies of those days alone in the ocean, "Clearly there were no atheists in the water that day. Gone was that damnable attitude of pride that deceives men into thinking that there is no God, or if there is, they don't need Him. When a man is confronted with death, it is the face of Almighty God he sees, not his own. We were all acutely aware of our Creator during those days and nights."
(David Harrell, “Out of the Depths,” Xulon Press, 2005, 112-113).
Dr. Jess Moody once wrote with biting sarcasm,
"What do aged atheists have to talk about, as they sit around waiting to die? Do they discuss the legacy of morality, decency, integrity, and spiritual sensitivity they have given to their children? Or the good atheism has done the world: the hospitals, orphanages, and the elevation of women...? And when the sun is sinking low, and when the conversation for the wheelchair atheist begins to lull, they can joyously contemplate their future. There is so much for an aged atheist to look forward to."
GOD SETTLES HIS ACCOUNTS
An atheist farmer often ridiculed people who believed in God. He wrote the following letter to the editor of a local newspaper: "I plowed on Sunday, planted on Sunday, cultivated on Sunday, and hauled in my crops on Sunday; but I never went to church on Sunday. Yet I harvested more bushels per acre than anyone else, even those who are God-fearing and never miss a service." The editor printed the man’s letter and then added this remark: "God doesn’t always settle His accounts in October."
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EASTER IN AN ANTI-GOD RALLY
During the early 1920's, a Communist leader named Nikolai Bukharin was sent from Moscow to Kiev to address an anti-God rally. For an hour, he abused and ridiculed the Christian faith until it seemed as if the whole structure of belief was in ruins. Then questions were invited. An Orthodox Church priest rose and asked to speak. He turned, faced the people, and gave the Easter greeting, "He is risen!" Instantly the assembly rose to its feet and the reply came back loud and clear, "He is risen indeed!"
(Dr. George Sweeting, Today in The Word, September 1989, pg. 8.)
NIETZSCHE AND CHRISTIANS
Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, said of Christians:
"Look at whom they worship. Look at this God whom they worship. How foolish and imbecilic to follow one who died, and then to claim that that death is victory! There is foolishness and there is foolishness. There is madness and there is madness, but to call death victory is the ultimate madness of all. This is a pathetic deity and he is followed by a pathetic people."
Paul says those people who believe like Nietzsche are "perishing."
(From a sermon by Ed Sasnett, Nothing to Add, 6/2/2010)
SPIRITUAL ATHEIST?
Let’s think about this. Good equals Godly? Good equals spiritual? How exactly does being good and being spiritual parallel?
I give a man on the street a warm meal and a place to stay. That’s a good thing. How is giving a man a warm meal and a place to stay a spiritual thing?
It’s not a spiritual thing. It is a good thing. It is a thing we as Christians should do, in fact, it is a thing that we as Christians are called to do, but it is not a spiritual thing. I mean, if an atheist does exactly the same thing, if an atheist gives a man on the street a warm meal and a place to stay. Is the atheist now a spiritual man?
A spiritual atheist is an oxymoron.
You see, an atheist can do all the good in the world. An atheist can be the best man in the world, an atheist can achieve doing the most good ever done for human kind in the history of the world. But, all the good in the world will never, ever make an atheist a spiritual man. An atheist who does all the good in the world will never know God by doing good. He is an atheist after all, he imagines that God doesn’t exist.
Now hear this. Are you ready?
Being good, will not make you a spiritual man or a spiritual woman either. Good people don’t go to heaven. Good people are not spiritual people.
If I don’t lie, or cheat or steal. If I love all I meet, and if I am generous with the poor. Even if I exude kindness in all I do. None of this will get me into the kingdom of God, and like the atheist doing good, all those things will not make me a spiritual person.
Good works, being good, helping others is not what makes us know God, for a Christian good works are the result of knowing God.
BREZHNEV'S WIFE DEFIES ATHEISM
As Vice President, George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev’s widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev’s wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband’s chest. There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that li...
HAWKING GIVEN A RESEARCH POSITION
Stephen Hawking, the world’s most famous atheist, was welcomed last Sunday to a new research position in Waterloo by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. "You could say he is drawing a picture of God," said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in his introduction of Prof. Hawking. He compared him to Newton and Galileo as people who radically moved our understanding of the universe, and to Thomas More as "a man for all seasons." Another individual described Prof. Hawking as an "entrepreneur" in the tradition of Einstein, whose research unleashed a flood of "value creation." "We are at the point where new ideas are needed if we are to secure our future," he said.
(Joseph Brean, National Post • Monday, Jun. 21, 2010. From a sermon by Matthew Kratz, The Wisdom of God, 6/25/2010)
HOPE NEEDS A FOUNDATION
A little over a month before he died, the famous atheist Jean-Paul Sartre, when trying to resist strong feelings of despair, would often say to himself, "I know I shall die in hope." Then in profound sadness, he would add, "But hope needs a foundation."
