by Charles Alligood


(This article was first published long before Facebook, Twitter, and Sermonaudio.com.)

It has been said that for the first ten to twenty years after Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848 that very few people were converted to communism by it. Before the end of the 19th century, however, millions succumbed to the philosophy espoused by this little pamphlet.

Another revolutionary, Thomas Paine, used his pen to promote personal philosophies in life. In the formative years of our nation he was considered a patriot. His treatise, Common Sense, evoked immediate response in the Colonies and helped provoke them to throw off the imperial rule of England.

One of Paine's last works before his death was a treatise on religion entitled Age of Reason.

An unbeliever of the most blasphemous sort, he wrote: “Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression all the books that are now extant in the world, I would not take it for my rule of faith, as being the word of God, because the possibility would nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout the greater part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by his name.”

Of our Lord, Paine said: “Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or any thing else. . . . The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground. The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told exceeds every thing that went before it. . . . It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The [resurrection] story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it.”

He continued: “It is not the existence, or non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretense (Luke, chap. i., ver. 35), that 'the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.' Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterward marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost.”

Age of Reason likewise prompted an immediate response. It became the preeminent writing of the Deists of the 19th Century. Bible believers, however, saw its author for who he was—an infidel.

Within the past few weeks, a local Episcopal church published a newspaper advertisement which depicted Christ praying at Gethsemane. The bold headline cried out: “Considering the fact that Jesus doubted, why can't you?”

I sighed with disbelief, “How can a pastor be so spiritually blind as to allow such blasphemy?”

Regrettably, the influence of Marx, Engels, and Paine remains with us today. And it is found quite often in the pulpits of America!

As a Deist, Thomas Paine revered Jesus as a moral man and a teacher. He did not believe that Jesus was an able Redeemer and Savior of sinners. He did not see Jesus as the Christ, the very Son of God, truly man, but truly God.

Marx and Engels, though of Hebrew descent, denied the Bible and the very existence of God.

I can readily see the connection between these men and liberal Episcopalians. The Episcopalians have, through their advertisement, preached a Jesus palatable to the tastes of the Deists and many Communists alike.

I don't know what influence for evil the advertisement will ultimately have. I pray that it will be none. But, as a preacher of the Gospel I must face two facts.

First, infidel philosophers of the past and the liberal church of our day have used whatever means they have had at their disposal to disseminate their message—a little tract, a small booklet, a newspaper advertisement, a seemingly insignificant letter to the editor. What a path of spiritual destruction has been laid out by these simple and small publications!

Would to God that we as Bible-believing Baptists would be as ardent in publishing the Gospel of the Grace of God as the Devil's crowd is in publishing lies! Why can we not use up every opportunity to speak of the glories of Christ? How faithful have we been in publishing and disseminating tracts and booklets? By writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper we could declare the truth of God without paying a cent for printing!

Second, we must admit the likeness of modern-day Baptists to the liberal Episcopalians, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, and Frederich Engels.

To preach an Episcopal Christ who is a doubter, or a philosophical Christ who is not divine, is no more blasphemous than preaching a Baptist Christ who is unable to save sinners!

We cannot be faithful to God and preach His son as less than the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings—as one who is in bondage to the will of man—as a savior who is unable to save sinners. If the entire world opposes us, we must preach the Christ of the Scriptures.

Throughout history we find two things that the Devil, the Deists, the God-deniers, the Liberals, the Modernists, and cowardly Baptists have hated—the fact that God is an Absolute Sovereign and the fact that His Word is absolutely infallible.