The year was 1971. The song was John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It became the hymn for a secularist faith. Lennon’s creation imagined the state of the world stripped of all beliefs.
“Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us
Above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
Living for today. . .
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace. . ."
A catchy tune and a country fractured by Viet Nam and the hippie revolution catapulted Lennon’s “Imagine” to the top of the charts. While there is nothing wrong with a world of peace, love, and understanding, the problem is that Lennon’s solution is not the way to arrive there.
Unfortunately, The Freedom From Religion Foundation of Madison, Wisconsin, still lives in Lennon’s mixed-up utopia. While Americans, on the seventh anniversary of 9-11, were remembering more than 3,000 victims murdered by Islamist terrorists, the Freedom From Religion Foundation was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a full-page propaganda ad in the New York Times. Their ad blamed religion for the horrors of September 11.
The ad said “One of the lessons of 9/11 is that there is no greater source of terrorism, strife, bloodshed, persecution, or war than religion.” By “religion” they meant not only Islam, but Christianity. The ad went on to say, “The history of Western civilization shows that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons FREE FROM RELIGION.”
Chuck Colson replied to the ad in his Breakpoint commentary: “I don’t think the untold millions of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or Mao’s China would agree with such gross stupidity - unless by “social progress” the Freedom From Religion Foundation means innovations like Auschwitz, the Gulag, and World War II.”
Colson went on to say “the only thing that stands in the way of dangerous Islamo-fascism is Christianity. It has preserved an amazing degree of freedom, even freedom to bash your own country and the faith of its people. If the Freedom From Religion Foundation wants to test that proposition, maybe it ought to . . . try to run that same ad in any Muslim country. Good luck.”
Way to go, Chuck Colson. Satan still tries to convince people that there is no heaven, no hell, and this world is all there is. He is increasingly successful in tricking people in our own nation that Christianity is the problem. And that is why we must stand for the Lord Jesus - boldly and unashamedly - while there is still time.
The bits from the above song by Lennon and from the above ad by Freedom From Religion should be enough to propel us to pour ourselves into our upcoming revival. Dr. Danny Lanier will be preaching and Rev. Larry Black will be leading our music for the revival on October 5-8. Pray, commit yourself to be present for every service, and ask God who you can bring with you to High Attendance Day in Sunday School on Oct. 5. Let’s do all we can to further the Gospel.
A better song than Lennon’s “Imagine” is the recent Gospel song, “I can only imagine.” A more accurate worldview than that of Freedom From Religion is that of the Lord Jesus. He said in John 9:4, “We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work.”
Working with you for Him,
Bill Patterson
Posted on
Thursday, September 18, 2008
by Erica Sutphin