Increasing Attacks on Christianity

Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, is just one indication of virulent antipathy to Christianity. Other similar titles such as God Is Not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens, The End of Faith by Sam Harris, and Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett are, like Dawkins' book, at the top of best-seller lists. When these all-out attacks by atheist writers are so popular it seems to some that the demise of Christianity, and biblical Christianity in particular, is not far away.

This impression is strengthened by the increasing violence perpetrated globally against Christians (of all hues, as well as biblical ones) by Islamic groups, Hindu extremists and totalitarian states. It seems that Christianity is the object of hatred as never before when, for example, "Islamophobia", "racism" and "homophobia" are widely condemned, while few objections are voiced to what someone has termed "Christophobia" - an irrational fear of Christianity and consequent attacks against it.

On the other hand, we may say that these attacks are an indication that Christianity is not the spent force that secularists, humanists, evolutionists, and atheists would have us believe it is. A spokeswoman for one publisher says that religion has been one of the fastest-growing categories in publishing in the last 15 years, and the rise of books by atheists is "the flip-side of that". "It was just the time," she said, "for the atheists to take the gloves off".

The wonderful fact is that, however ferocious and frequent the attacks of the foes of Christianity may be, they will not succeed in eradicating it. Christ Himself assures us that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church. Not only so, but Christianity will itself prevail. The Kingdom of Christ will expand until it covers the globe. The prophecy will certainly be fulfilled: "The stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (see Daniel 2:34,35,45).

NMR