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T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
June, 1936
neighborhoods. The young man asked help to win back two boys of twelve years who had been bribed to leave his Sunday Bible class to attend the atheist school near at hand, a group meeting in a private home. The Junior Atheist League has an active program for boys and girls. Their local branches are formed in all places where leaders can be secured. Special stress is laid on the formation of these branches in high schools. Students will thus be enlisted in organizing what they call “ Damned Souls Societies” during college years. Thus they will be trained for effective work in combating the influence o f the church. Good times, picnics, outdoor trips, and similar inducements, are the baits held out to the boys and girls. A little lad of six years came into our office the other day to sell shoe laces. W e thought we would have a chat with him and cheer him up a little, he looked so poorly clad. Did he want any such thing? Not he! W e offered him a Gospel to take home. Manly, engaging, with a wealth of possibility in his vivid little face, he told us with oaths, until we gently asked him not to use the words, that he had no use for Gospels. Further, he added that he hated the One we called God. His mother had told him that when he grew up, he was to fight against Him, and he added the words, unaware o f the terrible blasphemy, “ I’m going to knock his block off when I ’m a man.” Then he cut short our appeal by showing us money he had earned, and gloriously walked off with his head in the air— a young rebel against authority, against “ religion,” a sample o f our coming citi zen! Who is to blame? We who know Christ are guilty if we are indifferent. F ighting w ith S piritual W eapons Oh, that all true Christians may be alert to the real issues today! It is the enemy of Christ, Satan, who is behind all these attacks upon the atoning work o f Calvary. Let us seek that our boys and girls and young people may be equipped for this warfare. W e must surround _our Christian young people with prayer as they meet the forces o f atheism,. And w e must give them practical and adequate help in the Biblical prob lems that arise to trouble them. W e must be as active in helping young people to accept the Word of God as atheists are active in destroying faith in this Book. God has raised up a host o f scientific men, Christians o f true scholastic standing, who willingly help in the effort to aid college students and other perplexed individuals. D eadly O pposition — How C an I t B e F aced ? Much as we rejoice in every precious soul that has been led into faith in the Son of God, we must warn the Lord’s people that the new atheism is today more powerful and more insidious than ever before. We praise God that in the Lord Jesus Christ and His return as King, we hold the key to world problems today. Nothing can defeat Calvary’s message, but the appalling thing is that thou sands o f our young men and women are being drawn into a vortex o f infidelity by what can only be termed the “ unawake” attitude o f many Christians. The text comes to me, and I include myself in the sorrowful admission, that “ while the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept,” for until eight years ago I had no idea of what was going on in the ranks of the enemy of Christ. We need to recognize the sad fact that many present leaders in atheistic circles have had at least some contact with the Christian church. How is it that we have failed we as Christians, to introduce so many who are now atheists and say they were once church members, to oui Lord Jesus Christ?
The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism received a charter in 1925. Five times a similar charter has been sought in Canada—we pray God it may never be granted, and are watching out to cut across the application every time. We praise God for authorities in many cases sympathetic to our Christian faith. But never theless, the activities of the atheists have increased under various disguises. Q uiet and P ersistent P ropaganda What are the methods employed? Members o f the new atheist cult visit hospitals, even in some cases help peddlers to propagate atheism as they go from door to door. In almost every well-known school and college in the world there is an atheist member; they have atheist workers in Christian organizations; they have atheist mem bers attending churches to offset any appeal from a Christian pulpit. Every one o f these statements can be proved up to the hilt. The Second Annual Report of the A .A .A .A . states: “ We have representatives in the principal nations o f the world . . . the 4-A seeks to establish branches in every com munity . . . the holding o f large meetings is not necessary. The silent individual propaganda with the use o f 4-A lit erature is the hardest to counteract.” Many are the influences working to tear down the faith o f youth. A fter one of the big confer ences attended by three thousand young people under Christian auspices, a writer in one of the atheist organs described the program of that con ference as valuable because it helped multiply the doubts o f the young people. Many months ago, Charles Smith, President o f the 4 -A ’s, declared, “ W e are going to undermine the churches—we are just getting started.” As long ago as 1926, Wha f s What quoted Professor Shorey, for thirty years the head of the Depart ment of Classics in the University o f Chicago, as saying: “ The commonplaces of modern liberalism are inculcated weekly in all the literary reviews without exception, and in at least ninety-nine out o f one hundred o f all university lectures and addresses. W e never hear anything else.” A Secretary of the A . A. A . A . wrote: “ W e don’t care what they call themselves as long as they knock the fear o f God out of people and tell the truth about the cess pool of Asiatic superstition, the so-called Holy Bible.” The shelves o f school libraries are packed with adverse teaching (the works o f brilliant but atheist writers), and the emphasis on all hands — with a few exceptions — is against a Calvary-bought salvation, though in many cases “ religion” may be upheld. The following is a survey sent me o f one university’s shelves : Books— favorable to evolution, 83; opposed to ‘evolu tion, 0; supporting atheistic evolution, 29; upholding theistic evolution, 3; noncommittal, 51; discrediting the divine inspiration of the Bible, 42; sustaining its inspira tion, 0; condemning Christianity and the church, 17; contending for them, 1; denying the deity of Christ, 12; representing Him as the Son o f God, 0. A th e ism ’ s P rogram for C hildren But the attack is not merely upon young people of college age. Let us remember that years ago there were 1,700 known atheist Sunday-schools in Canada and many more in the United States. Statistics now give as a very conservative number 4,000 atheist Sunday-schools in Canada. They are o f course “under-cover” societies, run ning in many cases as “ social clubs,” “ camps,” and the like. A woman and a young Christian man called in the same week from different districts in Toronto, to report a new atheist Sunday-school begun in each o f their separate
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