KATHARINE, the wife of Martin Luther, rushed into his study where the Reformer sat in gloomy introspection one day and declared, "God is dead!" She did this to awaken the great man to a realization that his worries were as unreasonable as her words, and the surprised move had its desired effect. Luther saw how preposterous was her declaration and how equally ridiculous were his worries. He leaped to the defense of the living God and declared that God cannot die and began to act like a man who believed in Him.
Today, four prominent theologians (they have been called Christian atheists) have announced, as Katharine did, that "God is dead." * They seek through this bizarre teaching to startle the world into a new search for the better life. If God is dead, they reason, then man had better take hold of himself and start living right.
Now Katharine didn't mean what she said, but apparently the quartet of young theologians concerned actually believe in the demise of God. Stop and think for a moment what it would mean if they were right.
If God is dead, then puny little man, the creature, has outlived his Creator. An "ailing" God could not survive the pressures of administration in a complex world. We are called upon to mourn the passing of the Infinite One. And little man has survived the Being who made him!
Unprepared to face developments in a world torn with tragedy and sin, the Lord God has "folded up." He couldn't handle a world gone wild with sin. So the child of God's creation has destroyed Him by his incorrigibility. Just how God died I cannot grasp from reading about the new philosophy. Perhaps it was with disappointment or a broken heart. God just wasn't big enough to deliver the world from its problems.
But finite man is still around, very much alive, and standing up remarkably well under the strain of it all. The implication of it is that man is stronger than God, his life more durable and resilient. Man is better prepared to live with himself than is God. Henceforth it would seem that man is to be in charge of this world. We have a new administration. Now we can sit back and see how the leaders of the human race will handle the gross situation. If man has survived his Maker, he should have insights that would enable him to see beyond the shadows to the sunlight. We can sit back now and see what this cold world is going to be like without God!
Heavenly Funeral Dirge
Just who man should worship from here on is not clear. The new theology sounds like a funeral dirge. They have torn down the image of the living God. Now the pedestal is bare or, worse still, we see enshrined there a substitute God—a dead God. Then whom shall we worship? To some minds the following alternative is suggested—there may emerge a "God above God" to take the place of the deceased One.
I have always understood the first law of all good religion to be this: "Something better is the watchword of life." But is a dead God better than a living one? God wasn't doing so badly! Man, however, was making a mess of things. If perhaps the old man of sin in human nature could die, it would have solved the problem. But, no, it is easier for man to destroy God than to mortify the deeds of his flesh and to be crucified with Christ.
What every serious student of human nature knows is that whether God has been proclaimed dead or alive, the bulk of humanity will go on worshiping the gods they have made for themselves—sex, salary, fleshly pleasures, money, and position. In all seriousness, isn't it just possible that the "God is dead" movement is really just another attempt on the part of idolatrous man to create a method for forgetting God that will justify man's selfish method of worshiping himself?
God's Obituary Notice
Really, my friends, there are some devastating alternatives to the worship of the living God that have been created by the new cult of the dead God. For with the death of God comes also the death of prayer, of faith, of reverence, of the church. This quadrangle of spiritual resource and power is now annihilated as much as the blessed Trinity or Godhead by the new blasphemy. Stop and think about it if you will. Man cannot pray any more, for if God is dead, there is no Supreme Being to hear and answer his prayers. Ancient Israel accused God of deafness because He did not hear and answer the prayers of a rebellious people. But the modern theologians have outdone apostate Israel of old. They have accused God of more than deafness; they have charged Him with deadness. They have obliterated the Lord who is the only hope of His people today.
But modern man stopped praying when his prayers weren't being answered anyway. It is easy to conclude that God is dead when the heavens have turned to brass over men's heads. But why does not God hear man's prayers? Because antinomian man has turned his ears from hearing the law. So his prayers have become abomination (Prov. 28:9). How can God help rebel man until he stops rebelling? "0 Lord God of hosts," prayed David, "how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?" (Ps. 80:4). The margin reads: "How long wilt thou smoke against the prayer of thy people?" Here is a picture of a God very much alive and a strong suggestion that man would perish in God's anger if he did not cease to break God's just laws.
So you see, when God does not answer man's prayers anymore—man, the rebel, the commandment breaker, obliterates bluntly the living God from his thinking by the neat expedient of an obituary notice! The antinomian philosophy succeeded in nailing God's law to a cross. Now they have pinned the Creator God on the nearby cross and destroyed Him. Dead law, dead God. Bury the law, forget it; bury God, forget Him too.
With God gone, faith goes also. It is not reasonable to have faith in the dead—no, not even in a dead God. A living God, yes; but not a dead God. Why believe in Him? The One whose promises suggested a substance to hope for is now dead and buried; the object of faith is gone.
Said Jesus with prophetic foresight, "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). A negative answer was implied. No, there will not be much faith on the earth except among those who have the faith of Jesus, who keep the commandments of God, and who hold to the testimony of Jesus. It is these people who proclaim the message universally, "Worship God" (Rev. 14:7). To them God is anything but dead. He is the living God!
Impotent as a Graven Image
With the Christian atheists abolishing God for us, who shall mankind have faith in? The figure of a dead God is even more disconcerting than a helpless wooden idol. An erstwhile deity is as impotent as a graven image. Neither can hear nor see nor feel nor understand—neither can they answer our prayers. "He [man] maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. . . . He falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand" (Isa. 44:15-18). With the demise of faith in God at the center of worship, man reverts to faith in himself, with self at the center. Humanity is hailed as God. This is unvarnished humanism. The cult of the dead God is an ideological mask that poorly conceals man's weak physiognomy. It is an old trick of Satan—putting man in the place where God should be as the Living One. It is the mystery of iniquity that has operated historically for centuries in fulfillment of the text of Paul that a man of sin should sit "in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2:3, 4).
There are many popes in the world—many heady theologians whose hearts have been lifted up and who have corrupted their wisdom by reason of their brightness, echoing the words of the first "star" to shine in his own light, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: . . . I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High" (Isa. 14:13, 14). But, alas, like Lucifer it will be seen that they are falling stars. "Thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms?" (verses 15, 16).
A Few Flowers on the Tomb
Really, when we stop to think of the "God is dead" philosophy, we wonder how a reverent theologian could have conceived the idea. A sense of the living presence of the Lord must have departed from these men. They have lost the sense of awe. And those who accept this sophistry of Satan will find that the hush of sacred happy moments in the still silence of the sanctuary of God will become a vacant memory. A funereal melancholy will come over the heart and the worship place where man before has grasped for healing silence. Henceforth going to church will be like going to visit the grave of our beloved dead to place a few flowers on the tomb. But there is no real communion, no restorative silence, as we find today in the worship of the living God, only depressing gloom.
For well over half a century irreverent philosophers and theologians have left us confused as to their ideas about God and His place in human affairs. The natural results of this agitation have been dim views of God as an ailing, sick, and hopeless deity. It is easy now to say that He is dead. But think of what this does to worship; what a gloomy, despondent outlook this presents toward the worship of God. And in this context, why worship at all? If there is no one to hear, no one to be praised, no one to hear our prayers, no one in whom we can have faith, why worship?
But let us return to reverence. With the loss of reverence and the suspension of awe for God and things holy come the loss of respect for all human authority. If God is dead, we respect Him no more. We expected God to live forever. He has let us down. He should be living; He should not be dead. What happened to Him anyway? Has the whole concept of God been a myth? How can God die? But He is dead. Those who should know say so. So respect for God goes "down the drain."
And if we have no respect for God, then why should we respect anybody? If the Supreme Being cannot be respected, is it possible to respect inferior beings? The unhappy consequences that could result socially, as well as religiously, do not make pleasant thoughts—loss of respect for police and civil authority, insubordination, lawbreaking, violence, chaos. The world has yet to see what will happen when a world takes God completely out of their reckoning.
The French Blood Bath
A moment's recollection provides an example of godlessness in history on a national level—the blood bath of the French Revolution late in the nineteenth century. Remember what happened when Frenchmen of Paris enthroned the goddess of reason, a common prostitute, in place of God. And men deified the symbol of their lusts and pride and unbelief. The Revolutionary Republic expelled God and the Bible from their thoughts. For three and a half years France was a proclaimed atheistic nation, and with this rejection of God the nation nearly died. This example in history was intended to teach the world what would happen when men dethroned God and excluded Him from their reckoning.
It is the sense of the presence of God in man's life that is the greatest deterrent to evil doing. Suppose that Joseph had been victimized by the doctrine of the dead God. He would have lost the sense of awe and reverence that abides with a man who dwells in God's presence. Potiphar would have lost his wife; Joseph would have lost his soul; and Egypt would have had no deliverer. "How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Gen. 39:9), said Joseph. The concept "Thou God seest me" restrained Joseph and kept him from the adulterous act.
Daniel and his three companions experienced a presence in the fiery furnace. Christ was there. The presence saved them as the presence of God still saves all who believe today.
Only the Ghosts of God
And all this is closely related to man's conscience. If faith, prayer, reverence, and hope are gone—if these strong arms of the church have become casualties of the "God is dead" teaching—then man's conscience is dead too. What voice will speak to man henceforth saying, "This is the way; walk ye in it"? It will not be the voice of God; it will be the voice of the impostor Satan. With only the ghost of God remaining to torture man with fear, the outlook is bleak. The ringing voice of duty and moral responsibility is silent. What hope is there now for clear guidance and direction? All who go down into the pit are silent: said an inspired voice. If God is dead, His voice is silent too. So conscience goes with faith, hope, reverence, love, and all life's best things. Spiritual restraints and duties no longer disturb or challenge man. Poor degenerate man is left now to degenerate even more. But there is one consolation. He can do what he pleases at last. Maybe this is what the Christian atheist really wants. At last man can have his own way. All the ties to duty and responsibility are broken. Freedom has come at last! But with what bitter results.
And if God is dead, what shall be done with the Bible? And what shall happen to the church of God? It is impossible to believe that God is dead if one believes what the Bible says. Divinity cannot die. It is God who casts death and hell into the lake of destruction (Rev. 20:14). Thus all things are under God's feet, that the Supreme Being may be all in all. Death and hell are made subject to the Mighty One. The picture the Bible paints of God is a picture of a triumphant God who lives after sin and sinners die. God the Creator survives; sinful man does not. And God's Son said, "I am Alpha and Omega." "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore" (chap. 1:11, 18). "Death," said Paul, "hath no more dominion over him" (Rom. 6:9).
We Might As Well Quit!
It is a living God we worship, not a dead God, and the church was ordained to proclaim the good news of the living God to all mankind. Let us not be recreant in this duty. But what need is there if God is dead? The new "Christian atheists" are actually suggesting that the church close shop, shut its doors, and go out of business. The stock in trade of the church is Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. If the Trinity is gone, our shelves are empty; our stock is sold out; we might just as well quit.
In conclusion I must say that I do not know who is holding the physical world together now if God is dead. But there is a togetherness in the atoms of the material world that suggests a continuing source of power and cohesiveness and life. Numerous scientists in reverence speak of this power as God. The new theologians have robbed these reverent scientists of their God. The secular scientists have been out-secularized by the so-called religious teachers of our time. False religion has betrayed its own confidants.
Satan has been trying to kill God for a long time. Said Jesus to His enemies, "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. . . . Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:40-44).
On the cross Jesus was murdered. He rose from the tomb and declared, "I am Alpha and Omega. I am he that Iiveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore" (Rev. 1:11-18). There will never be another cross for Jesus. There will never be another tomb or burial place. Death hath no more dominion over Him nor over His Father.
The Lord Shall Laugh
We must reject the new Christian atheism, the new blasphemy, with the words of the Lord Himself. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision" (Ps. 2:4). Men truly have become "vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man" (Rom. 1:21-23). "For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie" (2 Thess. 2:11), "who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen" (Rom. 1:25).
* See Time magazine, Oct. 22, 1965, p. 61.
