THE CULTURAL DEATH OF GOD! CAN HE BE RESURRECTED?

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Many have no clue on what is “really” going on in America, where the loud trumpeting voices of those with political clout hope to lead us, and why the “killing of God” is a necessity to achieve their long-range political goal. 

Be prepared for a startling eye-opener on why it is essential to kill God, where and when the plan was first conceived, and why. This article will give you the “whole enchilada.”

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THE CULTURAL DEATH OF GOD!
CAN HE BE RESURRECTED?

by
Janis Hutchinson 

They parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! (Isa. 3:9 niv)
The wicked strut about and evil is praised throughout the land.
The wicked are stringing their bows and fitting their arrows on the bowstrings.
They shoot from the shadows at those whose hearts are right.
The foundations of law and order have collapsed. (Ps 12:8 nlt)

 What can the righteous do?
(Ps.11:2-3; nlt)

Poof!—The lifestyle and moral values of Norman Rockwell’s America have disappeared!

Scott Ashley aptly said:

Watching what is taking place in the United States today is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The train has jumped the tracks, the engineers in the locomotive can't stop it, and the train's momentum makes the disastrous outcome unavoidable.(1)

 What happened to change America so drastically to what it is today?

In that bygone era, Christian values and morals were taken for granted as a way of living. The majority of people didn’t even need to attend a church, knowing those principles were simply good for society.

Many scratch their heads and wonder, “How did we get to becoming a culture that now . . .”

• mythologizes scripture as fairy tales
• restricts the verbal mention of God and in public biblical displays
• denigrates God’s absolutes and morals
• glorifies the idea that truth can be subjectively determined in the eye of the beholder
• allows the murder of babies by mothers, before and after birth
• demonstrates and parades blatant disregard for the sanctity of God-ordained marriage
• has churches convincing Christians to acquire “loving tolerance” for everything once regarded as immoral and sinful
• depreciates law and order
• uses political maneuvers to kill God in the public mind
• promotes secularism, atheism, a growing seduction to socialism . . . and more
  

Dostoevsky, was right . . . Without God all things are permitted!

Dr. Charles F. Stanley notes his concern. Does this apply to you?

The culture we live in is characterized by spiritual darkness. Sadly, even those of us who are believers become so accustomed to the dark that we feel neither shocked nor shamed by much of what goes on around us. Perhaps we see the sin but don’t acknowledge it as wrong, or maybe we just don’t notice it anymore.”(2)

Pay attention to what is happening!

Like the proverbial frog, we need to jump out of the pot before it’s too late . . . before our minds are too numbed and conditioned to make any efforts to combat what is happening.

or else . . . 

America is in big trouble . . . so are we
The thrust of this article focuses primarily on the strategical suppression of God. The reason is because all other societal evils stem from that. We see this in America’s tumultuous condition with its now-accepted immorality, violation of constitutional rights, political and media corruption, distortion of the truth, civil unrest, violence, and censoring of freedom of religion and speech under the guise of “political correctness.”

This is what happens when a nation and its government officials desert God. There is no longer a measuring stick, not only for morality but also for ethics. When corruption, unstopped, rears its head, politicians become unprincipled, the government deteriorates, and people’s voices, including Christians’ disappear. That is, all except for the loudest ones (the squeaky hinge always gets the oil).

But those loud, trumpeting voices are not always good. For example, militant atheists and secular humanists are zealously on the move. With their clarion voices they scorn religion, undermine all Christian insistence to truth and godly absolutes, promote lifestyles and beliefs in sharp contrast to Judeo-Christian values, and want to totally wipe out belief in the biblical God.

The suppression of God has, unfortunately, also altered the biblical thrust of many (not all) formerly evangelical churches. Fearing they will be censored and become victims of the naming-and-shaming “culture cancel” or lose their non-profit status, they have reverted to teaching little Bible, ignore the role of Jesus as savior, and give only “feel good” sermons—all in the hopes of not ruffling the waters of any militant organizations. They remain silent on today’s issues and what is at stake, almost as if nothing is going on “out there.”

The voices of the brave ones who have dared to speak out have impacted many. Here are examples (available on YouTube):

• the heroic homily of Father Ed Meeks of Christ the King parish in Towson, MD; (3)
  
• Dr. Robert Jeffress’ outstanding sermon, “America at the Crossroads;”(4) 
  and
  
• Dr. Ed Young’s “Culture Clash.”(5)

Unless the Christian community begins to be more vocal and influential where it matters about the realities of what’s going on, instead of keeping members encapsulated in a church bubble, the silencing of God will continue to successfully escalate. 

Could Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prediction become a reality? “We are proceeding toward a time of no religion at all.

His prediction is already evident in other countries, where no religion is allowed at all—and not because of the COVID-19.

According to the Pew Research Center, 62% of countries (31 out of the 50) in, for example, the Asia and Pacific Rim, are “using force” to suppress religion (Christianity and other minority religions) by inflicting “property damage, detention, abuse, and killings.” It’s also happening in other areas.(6)

In those claiming to be “full” democracies, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland and In Germany, there are “high government restrictions on religion.”(7)  The same has happened with Denmark and Sweden, the shining examples Bernie Sanders and OEC hold up as the models for “democratic socialism.”

What makes us think we will be exempt? Don’t think it can’t happen here. Similar to the frog in the pot, blissfully unaware of the degree-by-degree raising of the water’s temperature, corrupt ideologies and censorship creep in gradually, little by little.

“To be forewarned is to be forearmed,” so . . .

Let’s take a deeper look
In this article you will discover all the tactics of the enemy:

• how the atheistic suppression of God is detrimentally affecting today’s Christian youth
• the dangerous “Project 1619” infiltrating U.S. schools
• SIECUS’S (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) sex education agenda for schools, teaching graphic perversion, sex, gender confusion, and more
• how subversive political movements, intent on changing a culture works; it’s tactical planning, and deceptive strategies
• how the eradication of God began with the 1960’s “Death of God movement”
• why and how that “Death of God” cultural revolution successfully influenced future decades until it reached ours
• what happens when good men do nothing
• socialism’s appeal today and its designing dangers.

The effect of atheism’s suppression of God on today’s Christian youth

The Barna Report states the following warning to Christians:

Families, hoping to ensure “a vibrant, lasting faith in the next generation” will find that the “current state of affairs is not promising.”(8)

Why? The report explains that it is because societal ideologies are exerting a stronger influence on tweens, teens, and young adults than the traditional Christian teachings they are receiving at home or at church. (Wow—that’s saying a lot!) Even though raised in the faith, youth are successfully being indoctrinated into the atheistic and secular worldview. As a result, they are leaving the faith—many never to return.

Here are some statistics:

Three-fourths of the 80 million millennials from “Christian homes” in the U.S. who are influenced by today’s atheistic propaganda, leave their faith and church after high school, swayed to believe the following: 

• 68% disregard the reality of God and the Holy Spirit, including biblical accounts as all myths
• 51% percent view Jesus’ resurrection from the dead a myth
• 63% no longer believe Jesus is the Son of God (9)
  
• 60% leave Christianity by their early twenties (10)
  
• and . . .
• though “some” may return to the faith of their Christian parents, “69% will remain gone!” (11)

What is the goal of those targeting our youth? They want to bring about a different political system that will be easily accepted—a socialistic and totalitarian government. To achieve this, they must alter three things:

• change thinking patterns
• eradicate God and his values
• eliminate the principles of this country and its Constitution were founded upon

Why these three in particular? It is to eliminate any competitive loyalty to another entity that would stand in the way and compete with obedience to a totalitarian leader.

How do they plan to achieve this? They first start by educating the young. It is an age-old maneuver described in the Communist Manifesto, that explains how to gradually move people into socialism, and then a communistic totalitarian government. To coin a principle from Proverbs 22:6, they know that . . . when they are old, they won’t depart from it.

The Nazis in WW2 understood the same principle to reach their goal of dominance and obedience. Their early training of children produced obedience to the Nazi party and ultimately changed their country to something else. Of necessity, it had to eradicate religion so that it would guarantee all loyalty would be to the party, not God.

An example is how the Communist Party changed China. Undercover, they surreptitiously moved party members into significant institutional and government positions to begin re-educating the young in the schools to socialist and communist ideas. Presenting it in a favorable light, it destroyed 5,000 years of China’s culture. The people went from a belief in the divine to a devotion to the communist state.

This tactic far easier for the Chinese Communist Party (referring to the “Party,” not the Chinese people), than initiating an out-and-out war on the nations they want to conquer. This includes America.

The Epoch Times nails it down:

Communist China has engaged in a form of unrestricted warfare against the United States for the past few decades, engaging in a systematic penetration of our institutions and has built ties to pro-communist forces within our country. The Chinese Communist Party sees America as the biggest threat to its existence. Their only means of survival is to take over the United States and snuff out the beacon of freedom America shines on the world.(12)

Infiltration into U.S. school curriculums
Another contributing factor working against our young people is the large-scale invasion into the curricula of American schools with a purposeful distortion of American history, and breaking down the family unit and morals.

This is in operation now, foisted in the schools through four programs:

1. Project 1619
2. socialism’s atheistic worldview through Darwinian evolution
3. deficient student education
4. sex education, starting in kindergarten

Each one will be described separately:

Project 1619: Project 1619’s goal is to change children’s concept of America by presenting its history in a bad light. It does this by denying the principles of freedom and equality on which the nation and Constitution were founded. The Project grew out of an article on the subject of slavery published in The New York Times by two authors, after which the Pulitzer Center developed a package of lesson plans that allows schools to insert it into their curriculum.

Recognized by many as a “tool of political indoctrination,” the "Project’s" objective is to retrain children K-12 with a negative attitude toward America by portraying the constitutional framers, past U.S. presidents, and patriots as white racist supremacists who only started the Revolutionary War against Britain so they could ensure the continuation of slavery. It also wants to change the birth of the nation from 1776 to 1619, based on a boat that brought black indentured servant/slaves to the early colonists in 1619, suggesting that’s when slavery started (which is incorrect; it started in the 1500s. See endnote for more details)(13)

Newt Gingrich described Project 1619 as, "left-wing propaganda masquerading as the truth." Terms used by others: "displacement of historical understanding by ideology," "bad scholarship," "vilification of the United States’ founders," and “no factual accuracy.”

We can all agree that slavery was a terrible thing. But today’s leading historians say there are better ways to teach students about the ordeal of slavery than to denigrate America.

In rebuttal, President Trump established the “1776 Commission” on November 2, 2020, to push patriotic education in the schools. He stated that Project 1619 is a "twisted web of lies" and "a form of child abuse" that currently teaches systemic racism in U.S. schools.(14) He has also threatened to defund any schools that use Project 1619, and presently there is a bill pending by GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas to prevent schools from using it.

Atheistic worldview via the “Progressive Education Movement.” In America’s nineteenth century, John Dewey’s “Progressive Education Movement” was introduced. He admitted his goal. He wanted to “wean children away from traditional tutelage of parents, religion, and culture,” and use the schools to be “the vehicle of America’s socialist revolution.”(15) This is the same goal used on children by the Nazis and the Communist Party in China and other countries.

Dewey’s “Progressive Education Movement” (PEM) eventually gained control of the entire U.S. education system after years of controversial court cases. Samuel L. Blumenfeld and Alex Newman, authors of Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America's Children, describe today’s PEM as a “deliberate plan to change the nature of education in America,” so that the American people can “be easily led into a socialist system.”

The two methods are (1) Darwin’s scientific evolution and atheistic worldview, and (2) deficient education.

Darwin’s scientific evolution and atheistic worldview. This program was set up in textbooks under the banner of science and progress.

Its intent was to promote secular ideas about the creation of the universe that would negate God and exclude any Christian worldview. This would lead to enabling of loyalty to a socialistic leader—because following God would cause conflict and division.

Deficient education. Academic standards have been purposely lowered to make students less literate by dumbing down textbooks in American history, social studies, science, and other learning avenues. So states author Charlotte Iserbyt, former Reagan era Senior Policy Advisor in the US Department of Education, in her book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. “The main agenda is to make the people lemming-like so that they will follow the more ‘enlightened’ toward a global, godless, Marxist-like society, [in] incrementally tiny steps so that most people won’t notice.”(16)

The long-range goal of “dumbing down” is explained further by the Epoch Times:

Individuals with little knowledge and poor critical thinking abilities are unable to recognize lies and deception. Education plays an enormous role. Thus, when communist elements penetrate all levels of the education system, students become foolish and ignorant and thus vulnerable to manipulation.(17)

But that’s not all. Even more is infiltrating our schools.

Graphic sex education to start in kindergarten

Communism experimented years earlier with graphic and obscene sex education in schools. Its admitted goal was to “break down family, culture, morality, and nations,” emphasizing that “sexuality unrestrained by any moral standards were supposedly ‘healthy’.”(18) It proved effective. The communist party understood that doing that would make one more susceptible to be obedient to an authoritarian leader.

It has to begin in kindergarten and is now being pushed in America’s schools where they are now teaching children immoral values, homosexuality, sexual activity, experimentation, gender confusion, and more. SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) is the primary database for America’s educational system for this. Today, families who object are censored and maligned.

This disastrous agenda, according to Dr. Judith Reisman (international expert on human sexuality, and scientific consultant to four US Department of Justice administrations, the US Department of Education, and the US Department of Health and Human Services), will bring about “dark consequences such as cultural collapse,” and cause “unspeakable and often permanent harm, severely damaging children’s future that will last their entire lives.”(19)

How should this affect you?
It should raise an alarm, because the future of this nation rests in our young people. If you are one of the 168 million parents raising America’s 74 million children under the age of eighteen, or the 80 million American grandparents (4 million of whom are raising their grandchildren)—even those with already-grown children and grandchildren—this should seriously affect you. It should alert you to your responsibility of becoming involved in this concern by learning what you can do about it.

How does one begin, you ask?

The necessary first step
To begin with, it is imperative to become knowledgeable on the subject (the purpose of this article) and understand how to recognize the behind-the-curtain tactics of subversive maneuvers an enemy uses. This is so you can explain to your family specifically what is going on and prepare them with the truth; also, be able to suggest specific ways they can combat what the enemy is aiming for them. 

Through this article, you will gain a thorough understanding of the subtle mechanisms that slip in to radically change a culture, and comprehend where the clarion voices and influences hope to lead us.

Therefore, we will start with the following understanding:

How subversive movements work for change
A change in cultural morés never happens overnight. This is important to understand. It starts small. The sinister proliferation deliberately moves in at a snail’s pace with concepts that appear mild and innocent at first. Then, like a rolling snowball, becomes larger and larger.

Why so slow at first? Because all oppositional movements need a period of gradual maturation to introduce contrary concepts. It must allow time for people to mentally adjust to the eradication of traditional norms and values (especially Christian ones), and embrace different ones. Also, to gradually manipulate the people to accept it as a progressive move toward human “enlightenment.”

It would never work if new ideologies were dropped and forced on a society all at once. People would, without hesitation, reject it—like the frog who immediately jumps out if put directly in boiling water. The temperature for change must be turned up ever so slowly. If done right, people never realize what is taking place until it’s too late.

The ultimate goal of any adversarial movement (also goes for today) is to bring about change with complete indoctrination to a set of ideologies that, in the long run, will generate a godless society (a necessity) and diminish traditional American freedoms and rights. Even though it may take years to accomplish, it progressively provides the pathway to a new political system. In America’s case, socialism. Its admitted goal is a communist totalitarian government.

If the enemy (identified later) pulls enough strings of its charismatic puppet-pawns, the movement carries on to successfully influence the following decades. Then, each succeeding generation expands upon the new ideologies of the previous one, taking them a step further in more extreme ways, often oblivious to the prehistory that laid the groundwork.

When did this sinister plan start?

The start of America’s deterioration—the “Death of God” movement
It is absolutely necessary to present a historical depiction of the 1960’s “Death of God Movement” because it is the formidable movement that first initiated the rejection of God (although rumblings preceded it). Gaining strength, it mushroomed until it reached our generation, which has now embraced even more blasphemous ideologies—even to the point of legalizing them through the courts.

Historians say that that cultural revolution “marked a rupture as profound as that brought about by the Reformation!”(20)

You mean . . . THAT big? Why?

Because it was, as French theologian, Dr. Gabriel Vahanian stated, “the first attempt in recorded history to build a culture upon the premise that God is dead!”(21)

Here’s how it began with its evolving steps of change . . .

The “Death of God MOVEMENT”

The sixties Death of God movement, called “Theothanatology” (theos, Greek for God; thanatos, death), exploded in California, igniting a disturbing non-religious, albeit theological, uprising of cyclonic proportions, seriously altering society’s view about God and his morals.[i] (22) It was a shattering event.

Newspaper headlines at that time promulgated the breath-stopping proclamation . . . “God is dead!”

The new leftist “Death of God” cultural revolution hit with commanding power and was so momentous, that history tells us that no one expected Christianity to survive . . . it nearly destroyed believers’ faith. Private thinking among many was, “Maybe . . . just maybe . . . there really is no God. After all, he is invisible.”

Blood-red letters emblazoned the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue of Time magazine reflecting the mind-blowing pronouncement, asking: “Is God Dead?(23) Much of the populace responded with a determined, “YES!”

But as the death knell for God continued to peal, no one really “seriously” mourned—at least not enough to do something about it. Christians, along with other citizens of general morality, had no idea the long-range consequences and how it would affect America’s culture and their posterity, let alone the subversive forces behind it that planned to keep it going.

It’s only a passing “fad”
Many remained complacent, assuming atheists were simply on a personal media campaign to toot their horn and convince the public they were right. The “fad” would die out after a while (I was among them).

Unfortunately for the majority of Christians and pastors, much like the proverbial frog, they were content to sit in the cauldron of lukewarm water, not realizing the danger. All they needed to do was complacently sit and wait until it passed.

Why didn’t more lay Christians or pastors choose to speak out?
Besides believing it was a passing fad, a major reason was because they felt ill-equipped theologically to respond to the intellectual and persuasive arguments of the atheistic propaganda. Frustrated and ashamed, they grappled with the problem of how to prove the existence of God . . . even to themselves.

John T. Elson, Time magazine’s religion editor reflected this troubling concern in his famous 1966 article:

Is God dead? It is a question that tantalizes both believers, who perhaps secretly fear that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect that the answer is no, [making it] easy for the modern man to ask where God is and hard for the man of faith to give a convincing answer, even to himself.(24)

There were, of course, campaigns going on by evangelists with their usual preaching and calls to repentance, such as Billy Graham, Oral Roberts and others. But recorded accounts describe how the majority of Christians, including the clergy, just sat silently at home waiting for the fad to pass.

Unfortunately, the complacency and on-the-edge Christian doubters were so widescale it caused a huge drop in church attendance. Many churches ceased to function as a spiritual oasis and fewer individuals were requesting to enter the clergy, stated Jules Archer in his book, The Incredible 60s.(25)

Children were especially put at risk. Hugh McLeod, professor of church history at the University of Birmingham substantiated in his book, The Religious Crisis of the Sixties, that scarcely any parents were raising children any longer with a “basic knowledge of Christian beliefs and practices, teaching their children prayers, or talking to them about God and Jesus.”(26)

What happens when good men do nothing? 
Despite the preaching campaigns of Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and others, no other influential voices were heard from the Christian establishment to quell the tide—especially from evangelical theologians and pastors who could have joined the chorus and intellectually voiced a plausible objection.

Francis Schaeffer, speaking later in 1982, despairingly confirmed this: “In the last 40 years,” he said, “evangelical Christians who maintained a belief in a personal God remained silent, doing nothing.”(27)Because of this silence, he explained, it was easier for the anti-God ideology and its trends to mushroom into the years ahead and “set the pattern for the rest of the century.”28)

Today’s theologians, now looking back with 20/20 hindsight, see Christians’ non-action as the great illustration of what can happen when good men do nothing.

The revolution’s necessity to eventually expunge traditional biblical values and morals
At first, enthusiasts who joined the movement did not foresee it as a move to eliminate everything about God. Their initial intent was to create a more progressive society with more individual freedoms.

On the surface that sounded good. But the subtle forces of the movement, strategized by the power behind it, made them see the necessity to eliminate God’s “old-fashioned” morals and values. They became convinced that it was the only way they could be entirely free. How was this achieved? Through the presentation of secular logic by the enemy’s influential puppet-pawns.

Humanist proponents began exalting the power individuals had within themselves to become what they were “truly meant to be,” explaining that under the traditional culture’s “outmoded” morés, they couldn’t. If they intended to progress and achieve their greatest potential, they had to be “totally” free. This meant they needed to throw off all systems of belief they felt “controlled” them. This, out of necessity, had to include total rejection of organized religion and the Bible that contained God’s restrictive rules and absolutes. (29) Why? Because, as Dr. Callum G. Brown describes, all of it assaulted “the personal liberty of the people.”(30) 

Thomas J. J. Altizer, one of the movers and shakers (aka “Methodist apostate”), helped it along with his book, The Gospel of Christian Atheism, reinforcing the idea that mankind can never reach its fullest liberation and potential while God and organized religion exist.(31)

Through this rationale, devotees of the movement acknowledged that God was standing in the way of their evolutionary potential. They agreed with Nietzsche, who had said years earlier, that traditional beliefs in the Bible keep people’s enslaved minds in restrictive chains.(32) They needed to break those shackles!

After all, they didn’t really need God—they were smart enough to know right from wrong.

 They had the power to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without having to depend on any other source than their own innate talents and power to persevere toward excellence. Besides, they believed Friedrich Nietzsche’s earlier statement that God was invented by mankind.

All of it echoed Psalms 2:3, “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.”

Philosophers, radical theologians, and Hebrew educators, hop on the bandwagon

All new movements need charismatic voices to influence the masses. Therefore, joining the new movement were the puppet-pawns—prominent philosophers and radical theologians (the latter nicknamed “Christian atheists” because while they believe there is a God, he is absent from the world and does not intervene in individuals’ lives).(33)

Also joining were Hebrew educators. They maintained that while the Jewish Kabbalah stated God died after creating the world, he most definitely died at Auschwitz. In view of this, modern Jews could no longer nurture the idea of an all-powerful God at work in history, or embrace the belief they were the chosen people.(34)

With clarion voices and persuasive reasoning, their clout reinforced the idea that God’s annihilation and his laws, along with churches, was a progressive step toward personal evolution, through which self-actualization could be better realized and society improved.(35)  Many on-the-edge Christians were influenced. 

This led to the Human Potential Movement, initiated by Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization―a humanistic endeavor to find fulfillment without God. Many saw it as a “healthy narcissism.”(36)

The mass killing of God and the Bible’s rules of conduct was successful, and the Death of God movement escalated. To reflect their “freedom,” more anti-God practices were introduced:

A new definition of truth
The freedom to be their “true selves” by not being chained to a God had to, out of necessity, lead to a new definition of truth since God’s truths and the Bible were no longer in the picture.

Truth was now to be determined by subjective experience. Individuals could easily assess what was right and wrong. If a choice in one direction produced a “good feeling,” it had to be okay. This was the new reality that has carried forward into today’s culture. (37)

And how is that working? Chaos and unrighteousness now reign.

What happened then, and is happening now, is no different than what took place in Old Testament times. The Book of Judges (21:25) tells us that when there was no “king” to look to, “all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.”

The 60s movement projected the same. With God no longer their “king,” they did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

There was also another major change . . .

A new lifestyle
Since true freedom could only occur without God, this had to include sexual freedom because it was unnatural to suppress human passions. The hippie generation of the 1960s and 1970s was heavily influenced by the Beatniks, who celebrated non-conformity and were against marriage because it symbolized the “traditional capitalist culture which supported war.” So, sexual liberation and free love reigned. They lived in communes unimpeded by any laws, enjoying their sexual appetites, and feeling liberated from any religious censorship.

The Death of God Movement foreseen earlier by Nietzsche
What took place in the 1960s and pressed forward, was predicted by Friedrich Nietzsche in his earlier work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, from which the movement’s title, “Death of God,” was coined. Albeit he lived prior to the 1900s, he foresaw the eventual handwriting on the wall and predicted God’s death would happen. Believing that mankind had invented God in the first place, he felt people would soon recognize that fact and do away with him. He even identified the culprits who would kill him . . . “self-centered mankind.”

He also predicted that when they killed God, they would attempt to further prove his nonexistence by relying on science for all their answers about the universe, especially Darwinism. He was right.(38) Today, Darwin’s evolution continues in U.S. schools through Dewey’s Progressive Education Movement.

Nietzsche’s grim warning
At the same time of Nietzsche’s prediction, he was also concerned that when people begin believing there is no God, standards of Christian morality break down. He saw this as a detriment to society, noting that a new system such as the killing of God—even if God is not real—could bring out the worst in human nature. He was right. An example is the influence his book, The Will to Power, had on Hitler. Today’s continuation of the suppression of God may also explain America’s high crime rate.

 Further, Nietzsche predicted an additional catastrophe. . . nihilism!

What is nihilism?
Helmut Thielicke, a Protestant theologian, describes nihilism aptly as “Nothingness prevails and the world is meaningless.”(39) This necessarily includes non-being after death. 

The existentialist, Albert Camus stated that the struggle to deal with this new reality of a nihilistic and purposeless life was the most disturbing and challenging problem to solve in the twentieth century.(40) It threw many “disillusioned Americans down a nihilistic path into existential angst, catapult[ing] them into extreme anxiety, despair, and hopelessness.”(41)It affected both Christians and the movement’s devotees.

Nihilism’s effect on Christians

Doubt and existential despair
plagued many Christians

Nihilism was such an upsetting and staggering thought to anticipate, it was one of the reasons many Christians insisted on sticking to their faith. It was out of desperation. They had to keep convincing themselves over and over again, similar to the Wizard of Oz’s cowardly lion who kept repeating, “I do believe. I do, I do, I do.”

They feared that if they succumbed to the new thought-wave and entertained the possibility of no God, nihilism would plunge them into a hollow, silent world of meaninglessness and hopelessness and the idea of non-being at death was frightening. Further, there would no longer be any reason to believe the Bible as God’s Word . . . no point to prayer . . . and no power beyond themselves to rely on amid life’s trials. Worse yet, it would rob them of life after death. They would, as the author, James Leonard Park said “sink into the river of existential despair.”(42) No one wanted to experience that!

Nihilism’s effect on devotees of the movement causes a search for a spiritual substitute 
If God or heaven didn’t exist, and nihilism dictated a meaningless life, devotees concluded that spiritual fulfillment and a deeper meaning to life had to be found elsewhere. They must seek a “new” kind of religious experience without the God of the Bible, that could offer some kind of peace and purpose, at least in this life.”

Therefore, they began pursuing a “transcendent kind” of God.(43) He could be in any form and from whatever source―but definitely not the biblical God of organized religion with all its stifling rules.(44)

By 1978, a Gallup Poll reported 10 million Americans were into Eastern religions (Transcendental Meditation, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.).(45) At least 150,000 joined spiritualist churches that claimed to communicate with the dead; large numbers joined the Hare Krishna movement to chant and discover eternal bliss; others embraced astrology, ESP, reincarnation, Satanism, Scientology, and other pseudo-religious organizations.(46) They were all considered equally valid, believing they all led to some kind of a heavenly experience that would give them purpose and meaning—maybe even reincarnation.

While they found their own solution, Christians didn’t. They felt like they were helplessly drowning, going down for the last time. Was there any hope to offer them in the face of a God who might not exist and a nihilistic, purposeless future with no life after death?

The cavalry arrives!
In the late 1970s, there came a period of resuscitation for those caught up in the frenzied conundrum of God’s death. It rescued them from the fearful nihilistic abyss. Several Christian publications of near-death experiences entered the scene that seemed to confirm life after death—and if there was, that meant heaven existed and so must God!

Raymond Moody’s Life After Life (1975) revived the faith of many, even influencing non-Christians. The book’s accounts reassured and strengthened belief in heaven and in God, encouraging many to believe that death wasn’t the end.

Later, TV producers began featuring shows with religious themes, such as Highway to Heaven in 1984, and Touched by an Angel in 1994. They re-established and fortified the belief of many who were hungry for continued confirmation of God and a hereafter. Christians and non-Christian viewers flocked to vicariously experience the world of faith, angels, and miracles.

But, again, the enemy stepped in. Sales of religious books promoting deception skyrocketed.

An example is Neal Donald Walsch’s bestseller, Conversations with God, in which the author states that God “channeled” his words to the author (channeling is where the recipient acts as a vocal, or automatic-writing conduit for a spiritual entity, more often deceased humans). Walsch has God denying biblical principles, promoting sex outside of marriage, teaching reincarnation and pantheism, no absolute truths, no right or wrong—all in line with the culture’s advancing beliefs. Other deceptive books followed (see endnote).(47)

Although these books obviously strayed from orthodox Christian teachings, the public devoured anything that remotely suggested God existed because, after all, he was actually speaking to the authors! Therefore, life after death had to be real, and they were easily sucked into non-biblical beliefs and practices.

Finally, in 2008, Christianity Today published a magazine cover mimicking the blood-red formatting of the infamous 1960s Time cover with the title, “God Is Not Dead Yet.” (48)

This triggered Christian philosophers and theologians to finally come out of the woodwork and begin testifying for the existence of the true God. To combat and match the movement’s focus that looked only to science for answers, they used the teleological argument that the complexity of the universe demanded an Intelligent Designer because “something can’t come from nothing.”

Nevertheless, the Death of God’s new thinking pushed on into the coming years, and the enemy continued to pull the strings of more puppet-pawns. It has reached our generation with the same, even stronger, message . . . “The God of the Bible is dead and he must be eradicated from the public mind.” Eliminating God as a competitor is the perfect set-up for a godless socialism that can easily lead a nation into acceptance of a government with loyalty to a communistic leader who promises free benefits.

Who is the major ringleader behind all this?

The “head honcho” behind the movement pulling the strings

This may come as a surprise. The head-honcho in the sixties was not a charismatic leader or major organization. Those individuals only moved in later to further the enemy’s cause.

There is only one being powerful enough to set up an agenda this big and keep it going―the one whose sole objective is to steal, kill, and destroy. Scripture tells us that Satan prowls about seeking whom he may devour, deceptively promoting wrong to appear as right, and trying to kill faith in God by enslaving people in an atheistic and humanist culture hard to break from.(49) 

Unfortunately, in this rational and scientific age, Satan has been relegated to mythology and jokingly depicted in cartoons as a horned creature dressed in a red suit with a forked tail, hooves for feet, and carrying a pitchfork. Whatever he looks like in spiritual form, Satan is not imaginary and wields great power. Above all, he wants God and everything pertaining to him, totally eradicated. Since he can’t kill God directly, his only way to do this is to raise doubts about God’s existence and killing him in people’s “minds.”

Successful so far, he uses every tool in his arsenal to destroy public consciousness of God through his puppet-pawns and diminish faith in believers—and make them wonder if “maybe God might not be real after all.”

Today, he is employing his pawns not only in the schools but also in the political process to legalize the silencing of God and his morés. The following are a few examples:

• 1963: atheistic organizations moved into action to legalize the eradication of God in schools by prohibiting prayer and Bible reading
• 1973: abortion passed, convincing many they have the right to end a baby’s life
• 2015: legalization of same-sex marriages.
• 2015: promotion of “political correctness” to silence mention of God in public and displays, and keep churches subdued with threats of “culture cancel’s” naming-and-shaming, by curtailing freedom of religion and speech

God’s eventual judgment
Those promoting the above agendas have already been judged by God, and will eventually receive their punishment based on the following pronouncement by Jesus:

There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. (John 3:18-19)

God further gave the following warning through Moses, and although he is saying this to Israel, it is a principle of judgment that God operates by; therefore, it also applies to America. We can already see the fulfillment of some of them.

But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. (Deut. 28:15).

What are these curses? There are 13 long chapters in Deuteronomy that list all the horrific curses resulting from disobedience to God. Here are only a few:

• Plagues, diseases and ailments which cannot be cured
• enemies will defeat you
• the foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker
• you will suffer constant oppression and harsh treatment . . . and much more

After listing all the curses, he concludes:

 These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever.  If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. (Deut. 28: 46-48)

God warned us this would happen:

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! (Isaiah 5:20-25)

 Further, there is no doubt that the behind-the-curtain powers that God is allowing, are not through yet!

Enter socialism
Many passive Americans believe socialism (and communism) is only something that happens in faraway nations. They don’t realize it has already arrived at our doorstep and has gained a huge following.

The Epoch Times, well-informed on the subject, states:

We have communist China (CCP) at our gates, ready to take over. The CCP has carefully studied the U.S. system over the decades and now has successfully taken advantage of our open society and has infiltrated our country. (50)

Many who are chanting for “democratic socialism” have been given a rosy picture of it, influenced by those with political clout. They see it as the perfect system to do away with “greedy” capitalism, and as the perfect equalizer that will give everyone free health care and college tuition, cancellation of student debt, and much more. They fail to see how socialism, regardless of the title given it, negates individuals’ right to own private property, while the elite getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

“Would these millennials choose socialism,” asks Dr. Lee Edwards, a leading American historian, “if in exchange for ‘free’ education and ‘free’ health care, they would have to give up their personal property, such as their iPhone? They don’t recognize that much of what they enjoy in life is a result of capitalism and would disappear if socialism were to be implemented." (51)

They also fail to see how “democratic socialism” will be maneuvered to subtly move into totalitarianism with eventual denial of basic liberties, suppression of freedom of speech, a complete shutdown of churches, and punishment for any form of faith in God—all done by force if necessary.(52)

Socialism in democratic states slowly eats away at people’s freedoms through legislation, without them even noticing . . . leaving people gradually numb, oblivious, and accustomed to (the ideals of) socialism, all of which enhance the deceit. (53)

 “The younger generation,” states The Epoch Times, who yearn for a new kind of government “are deceived by the new guise [of socialism] that communism has taken on. The result is that they unknowingly walk on the road to ruin.”(54)

But enthusiasts insist, “Our socialism will never become like Cuba’s, Venezuela, China, or North Korea’s. Ours will be different!”

They need to wake up. Reports show that those countries practicing “democratic” socialism, started out comparable to the US with promises of an ideal society. But soon they evolved into a socialistic dictatorship. This eventually happened to Cuba, which began like America, but now it is one of the most “repressive societies for widespread abuses of political rights and civil liberties,” rated by Freedom House, which assesses the level of freedom in each country in the world.(55)

Venezuela proved no different. The people fell for deceptive rhetoric in the beginning (like what we are being given).

For example, Venezuela’s Presidential candidate, Hugo Chavez promised: “I want to help the poor. I want to help the people that don’t have the same resources that everyone does.” He made socialism’s equalization for everyone sound so promising with its welfare and easy handouts, free college and health care, etc. (sound familiar?) but it became a different story after he was elected. He changed the constitution to suit his goals, and the people soon found themselves forced into submission and robbed of liberties.

Andres Guilarte is a 25-year-old former citizen of Venezuela now residing in the U.S. after asking for political asylum, states:

“You could never imagine that [Venezuela] used to be a country like America. A lot of people used to say we were not going to be like Cuba. And right now, [Venezuela is] worse than Cuba. You could never imagine that such a great country . . . could dissolve to what it’s become. And what you think was never going to happen to you does. When I hear these politicians [in the US], I just wonder. That same dream [of socialism] that they are trying to sell is actually nothing more than a nightmare.”(56)

Dr. Diana Zhang (a pen name to protect her family members in China), is a staff writer for The Epoch Times. She immigrated to America thirty years ago. In her article, “I Grew Up in Communist China, Here’s My Warning to America,” she said the following:

America has become more and more like the socialist country [the Chinese] are trying to flee. However, we have long been on a slow, steady track heading for the same communist society that I once knew.(57)

The present puppet-pawns pushing for socialism, hold up Sweden and Denmark’s “democratic socialism” as examples, claiming only the rich are taxed 70% to pay for all the free benefits.

But the Manhattan Institute, after an in-depth financial analysis, says the math for paying such a huge debt in America doesn’t work out by taxing only the rich. Although the Democratic Socialists of America say they have a financial plan worked out, the Manhattan Institute still claims America will go bankrupt, and higher taxes will be needed, not just on the rich but everyone else. Figures show a $42,665 trillion dollar debt, with an additional $11.4 million federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. This doesn’t include the green new deal which can cost additional trillions of dollars to the federal deficit. And the financial deficit in the example countries lauded as examples for democratic socialism, besides taxing the rich, are now also taxing the middle class 60%. Americans simply don’t understand.

CONCLUSION 

This article has shown how ideologies that counter traditional principles successfully move in slowly to change a nation’s culture. America has arrived at where it is today because Satan and his atheistic and communist pawns began with the sixties “Death of God” movement to eradicate the Bible, its morals, and organized religion—all according to his agenda.

Now we are reaping the whirlwind!

Sound the alarm! The enemy descends like an eagle on the people of the Lord, for they have revolted against my law . . . They have planted the wind, and will harvest the whirlwind! (Hosea 8:1,7)

The twenty-first century is witnessing our nation’s terminal decline. Political factions have joined in forcefully to continue carrying out its anti-God ideologies.[58)

Can we save our nation? Will Karl Marx’s statement that God-believing churches have to go for man to fulfill his destiny be on its way to being fulfilled (59) We will continue reaping what we “allow” to be sowed—unless Christians rise up and do something.

We have a responsibility to bravely stand up and speak up (along with our billfold) against the immorality and the influences of atheistic socialism that are pervading America with its widespread destruction of the family . . . influences determined to annihilate God . . . and its fomenting of social disorder and attack on morality. All of it is ruinous to the foundation of any nation.

What we can do

• vote for candidates who embrace the principles America was founded upon, and avoid being swayed by any (often) false political rhetoric
• take the time to research a candidate’s past record for evidence of the principles they “claim”
• understand how the deceptions of socialism creep in
• pray for America, and for the President to fight for what’s right for the American people.

Also, by doing the following:

• pass your faith on in the existence and reality of God and his biblical truths to your family, and discuss biblical morals and America’s founding values and principles
• promote American democracy and its true history to combat what your children and grandchildren are being taught in school
• check American history text books and extra-curricular programs presented in your local schools to see if Project 1619 is incorporated
• think twice about socialism by understanding its long-range effects that lead to communism and a totalitarian government
• know what is appropriate for children in school, and combat graphic sex education and gender confusion for age-inappropriate children
• support bills designed to reverse previous rulings that favored anti-God, anti-freedoms, and anti-constitutional amendments
• Support those attempting to reverse the 1973 legalization of abortion
• fight against the “political correctness” extremes, with its Culture Cancel’s unfair “naming and shaming” censorship, and insist on freedom of religion and freedom of reasonable speech

Mark Levin stresses in his book Liberty and Tyranny, the imperative to nurture and shape the beliefs of our children and grandchildren with godly principles and core values America was founded upon in order to counteract the indoctrination they are receiving in schools and universities.

Parents and grandparents must take it upon themselves to teach their children and grandchildren to believe in and appreciate the principles of the American civil society and stress the import of preserving and improving the society. They will need to teach their offspring [what] threatens their generation’s liberty and prosperity, and to resist alluring trends and fads [and] indoctrination of their children and grandchildren in government schools . . . by conferring their knowledge, beliefs, and ideals on them over the dinner table, in the car, or at bedtime. If undertaken on an intimate, purposeful, and consistent basis, it will shape a generation of new conservatives.(60)

Are you getting the big picture?
Can God be resurrected and bring our nation back to its authentic values? Yes. because we have the power if we put our mind and heart to it. Having been given the big picture, armed with all this information and what we can do to help, we can produce amazing results in our nation’s next generation.

I get it now!

In my next blog, I will provide more suggestions on how to change the trajectory of society’s suppression of God by using three overlooked strategies God gave to Joshua to use with our children and grandchildren (even those already grown). It is an effective plan and one you may have never considered before. 

Notice of when I post that blog will be announced through my newsletter. If you wish to be included, go to www.JanisHutchinsonBooks and on the dashboard, click on “Subscribe to Newsletter.”

Until next time!
Janis

ENDNOTES

1. “The Only Thing We Learn from History Is That We Learn Nothing from History." Scott Ashley, Jan. 16, 2013. https://www.ucg.org/beyond-today/blogs/the-only-thing-we-learn-from-history-is-that-we-learn-nothing-from-history.

2. Dr. Charles F. Stanley, In Touch Ministries, Inc., Daily Readings for Devoted Living, December 2020, 9.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi1pHExl6Ug

4.  “America at the Crossroads.” Dr. Robert Jeffress, Oct. 22, 2017. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvl4wOoqqt0. (Sermon begins at slider 5:20.)

5. “Culture Clash.” TBN broadcast of winningwalk.org with Dr. Ed Young.

6.  “In 2018, Government Restrictions on Religion Reach Highest Level Globally in More Than a Decade.” Nov. 10, 2020. https://www.pewforum.org/2020/11/10/in-2018-government-restrictions-on-religion-reach-highest-level-globally-in-more-than-a-decade/

7. “Global restrictions on religion reach new high,” Mya Jaradat, Nov. 10, 2020. Pew Research Report cited at www.deseret .com.
8. “Parents and Pastors: Partners in Gen Z Discipleship,” Research Releases in Millennials & Generations, Barna Group, July 17, 2018, https://www.barna.com/research/parents-and-pastors-partners -in-gen-z-discipleship/. (my italics).

9. J. Warner Wallace, “Updated: Are Young People Really Leaving Christianity,” Cold-Case Christianity, January 12, 2019, http://coldcasechristianity.com/2018/are-young-people-really-leaving-christianity/; quoting from Josh McDowell and David H. Bellis, The Last Christian Generation (Green Key Books, 2006). LifeWay Research says that two-thirds of the 70 percent of all youth in mainline religions who said the church will not play a part in their adult lives return to “some level of church involvement in their late 20s or early 30s.” Nevertheless, the one-third remain lost to the culture.
10. Natasha Crain, “How Sunday Schools Are Raising the Next Generation of Secular Humanists” (blog), CrossExamined.org, January 20, 2019, https://crossexamined.org/how-sunday-schools-are-raising-the-next-generation-of-secular-humanists/.

11. Wallace, “Updated: Young People.” See also, Aaron Earls, “Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church as Young Adults,” LifeWay Research, January 15, 2019,  https://lifewayresearch.com/2019/01/15/most-teenagers-drop-out-of-church-as-young-adults.

12.  “With Our Election System Under Assault, Americans Need to Speak Up,” Updated: December 5, 2020. https://www.theepochtimes.com/with-our-election-system-under-assault-americans-need-to-speak-up_3605980.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-05-2
13. The political indoctrination tool of “Project 1619”: It is called 1619 to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony in 1619. (However, slaves were in the US before 1619.) It is already in use in school historical curricula in Washington DC, Chicago, Newark, and New York, with hopeful plans to teach it in K-12 schools nationwide using Federal funds. The 1619 Project’s content is rejected by prominent historians and other scholars as being full of “poisonous errors.” It built upon Howard Zinn’s earlier book, A People’s History of the United States, that crept into the American curriculum and influenced many. Its basic thrust was that Americans should be ashamed of their history, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was falsified when it states the nation was “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Rather, it was “conceived in oppression, born of oppression, and has always been dedicated to oppression.” (“Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America.” Robert M. Whaples. The Independent Review, Vol. 24, No. 4, Spring 2020); https://tinyurl.com/y36sxcmy.) 

14.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1776_Commission#cite_note-NPR-1; also, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-establishing-presidents-advisory-1776-commission/ 

15. “Revolution via Education” by Samuel L. Blumenfeld, nd. http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Articles/Revolution%20Via%20Education.pdf 

16. Amazon blurb on The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, by Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, September 1, 1999. 

17. How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World [hereinafter, Specter] Editorial Board of "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party," The Epoch Times, September 21, 2020.
18. The Epoch Times, reprint of excerpt from Specter. Nov. 5-10, 2020, p. A20.
19. “The Sordid History and Deadly Consequences of ‘Sex Ed’ at School,” Alex Newman (The Epoch Times Nov. 5-10, 2020) A20-21.
20. Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 265.
21. The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era, by Gabriel Vahanian (Publisher: George Braziller New York 1961). French Protestant Christian theologian who was most remembered for his pioneering work in the theology of the "Death of God" movement within academic circles in the 1960s. Cited at https://www.questia.com/library/342447/the-death-of-god-the-culture-of-our-post-christian.
22. The postmodern revolution questioned all previous assumptions of modernism, the prevailing philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that might hold back progress to the environment and the individual. Subjection to the traditional God was seen as restricting human potential.
23. John T. Elson, “Toward a Hidden God,” Time, April 8, 1966, cover.
24. Elson, “Toward a Hidden God,” 5.
25. Jules Archer, The Incredible ’60s (New York: Sky Pony, 2015), 164.
26. Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s, p 2.
27. Francis A. Schaeffer, “A Christian Manifesto,” People for Life (website), accessed July 17, 2019, http://www.peopleforlife.org/francis.html.
28. McLeod, Religious Crisis, 2.

29. Archer, The Incredible ’60s, 251.
30. “What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?” by Callum G. Brown; Journal of Religious History Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2010. Cited at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2010.00909.x
31. Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), quoted in “Christian Atheism,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism. “Every man today who is open to experience knows that God is absent, but only the Christian knows that God is dead, that the death of God is a final and irrevocable event, and that God’s death has actualized in our history a new and liberated humanity.”
32. Nietzsche’s life (1844–1900) is complex. For an excellent discussion of his life, see Claudia Pierpont, “After God,” New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/04/08/after-god.

33. Christian atheists: There are various forms of it, but in the context of this article, it is those who do not believe God is transcendent or intervenes in the life of individuals, but is absent from the world. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism.
34. “Death of God Theology,” Wikipedia, last modified May 29, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_God_theology#19th-century_philosophy.
35. Political nihilism was also in play. It advocated that no future improvement could be had without necessitating the destruction of all existing governmental, social, and religious orders. See “Nihilism,” All About Philosophy (website), accessed July 17, 2019, https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/nihilism.htm.
36. See excellent coverage of Abraham Maslow’s philosophy at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow#Self-actualization.
37. The quote marks indicate a paraphrase of Francis A. Schaeffer, “A Christian Manifesto,” address delivered in 1982 at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, http://www.peopleforlife.org/francis.html. Humanism was defined by Schaeffer as man being the measure of all things, who believes the ultimate reality of our world is “material or energy shaped by pure chance” rather than God.
38. Nietzsche’s life (1844–1900) is complex. For an excellent discussion of his life, see Claudia Pierpont, “After God,” New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/04/08/after-god.
39. Helmut Thielicke, Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1969), cited in Alan Pratt, “Nihilism,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed May 25, 2019, https://www.iep.utm.edu/nihilism.
40. Pratt, “Nihilism.”
41. Michael Shermer, “Is God Dead? Why Nietzsche and Time Magazine Were Wrong,” Skeptic Magazine, 1998, 17.
42. James Leonard Park, “Sinking into the River of Existential Despair” (website), March 28, 2004, https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/CY-HOPE.html.
43. There were other movements during this time, but the subject of this article is focusing on the Death of God movement.
44. New Age proponents, who sometimes promoted hallucinogenic and psychedelic drugs, felt humanity and the world would be transformed by those seeking spiritual and philosophical wisdom from wherever it could be found. They believed in spirit guides, channeling, and all theological perspectives as equally valid.
45. Gallup Poll, February 1978, quoted in Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy (New York: Putnam, 1980), 364.
46. Archer, The Incredible ’60s,” 166.
47.  Another example of a deceptive book was Norman Mailer’s, The Gospel According to the Son (1997), with Jesus supposedly speaking in the first person, and asserting the four gospels inaccurate, minimizing his own miracles, and verifying there was no hypostatic union of himself and God. There were also other books.
48. “God is Not Dead Yet,” Christianity Today, July 2008, cover.

49.  1 Pet. 5:8; 2 Cor. 11:13–15.
50. Specter
51. “What Americans Must Know About Socialism.” Lee Edwards, Ph.D. Dec. 3rd, 2018 https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/what-americans-mUSt-know-about-socialism
52. Specter
53. Specter
54.   Specter
55.  www.Freedomhouse.org/country/cuba. This organization is devoted to the support and defense of democracy around the world and employs an analytical methods to assess the level of freedom in each country in the world with a numerical ranking.
56. “Lessons from Venezuela, The Fund for American Studies, Vol. 2. Nd.
57. “I Grew Up in Communist China, Here’s my Warning to America,” Diana Zhang, The Epoch Times, Nov. 24, 2020; updated Nov. 25, 2020. https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-2020-election-a-test-for-our-freedom_3592552.html?utm_source=pushengage
58. “What was the Religious Crisis of the 1960s?” by Callum G. Brown; Journal of Religious History Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2010. Cited at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2010.00909.x
59. Elson, “Toward a Hidden God.”

60. Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto. Mark Levin (Simon & Schuster, Inc., Threshold Edition, 2009), 3.