A CRUEL WORLD

by D. James Kennedy & Jerry Newcombe

The consequences that flow from unbelief are very real and very tragic...(they) flow as inevitably and as irresistibly from what we think, as water irresistibly flows through a broken dam. The Bible says that 'as he thinks in his heart, so is he' (Prov. 23:7). As people think in their hearts so will the world be in which they live. There are results that come from our thinking; and above all else, the greatest results flow from what we think about God.

MORAL RELATIVISM

With atheism there are no objective moral standards. Evolutionary humanism and all forms of various atheistic concepts have been trying for years to establish some sort of moral standard, and they have failed miserably. The Scripture says, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps. 14:1) and goes on to say that they have "done abominable works."

This is not to say that all atheists are immoral people. In reality, there are many nice people who are atheists, but their niceness is borrowed capital from Christianity; it is not because of their atheism, but despite it.

The existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sarte saw very clearly what would happen if we got rid of God--as he had done. He said, "[Without God] all activities are equivalent....Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone, or is a leader of nations." In other words, it doesn't matter if, when you see an old woman trying to cross the street, you stop your car and help her across, or whether you simply run over her. It doesn't matter whether you are Florence Nightingale or Al Capone--all activities are equivalent without God.

Thus when atheism takes hold of a society, moral relativism quickly follows. When moral relativism takes hold, then nothing is sacred and human life becomes cheap--as it was before Jesus Christ entered our world.

When you devalue God, you devalue human life. What kind of view of man is given to us by evolutionary atheists? Is man a noble creature with a noble origin and a noble destiny? Here is what the evolutionists say:

"A fungus on the surface of one of the minor planets" (Du Maurier)

"A hairless ape" (Schoenberg)

"An accidental twig" (Gould)

"A useless passion" (Sarte)

This is what man is to them. Next to nothing at all.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Once the evolutionary view of man was applied, appalling crimes against humanity began to be committed. The worst crimes were committed by the Communists, who felt they could build heaven on earth.

STALIN

As horrible and as inexcusable as the Inquisition was, it was rather like a tea party when compared with the purges of Stalin. It is generally agreed that the number of people Stalin killed was 40 million. Stalin persecuted the Church, sometimes ruthlessly. Dr. David Barrett says that in 1934, Stalin, "widely regarded as the Antichrist, attempted liquidation of the entire Christian church."

HITLER

Hitler, who hated God as much as Stalin did, had learned well from their mentor, Lenin, the father of the modern totalitarian state. Hitler was a total racist who wanted to remove from the world those he viewed as human bacillus. He killed Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Poles, and others deemed racially inferior.

The Nazis worked out a system where Jews and others were to be worked until they were no longer able to work, then they were to be exterminated. The first victims of the Holocaust were 70,000 people. By the end, 6 million Jews and 9 to 10 million others (mostly Christians) were liquidated.

MAO

It is estimated that Mao Tse-tung alone killed more that 70 million Chinese. In the first ten years after Mao's takeover in 1948, 24.7 million were killed in "purges, famines, deaths in slave labor camps." From 1959-1962, about 25 million were killed or were starved to death in the collectivization effort and its failure. Dr. Barrett calls this "history's most systematic attempt ever, by a single nation, to eradicate and destroy Christianity and religion; in this it failed. Thus Mao was responsible for killing about 72 million human beings.

Kennedy, D. James and Jerry Newcombe. What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? Nashville: Nelson Books. 1994. 224-238