Debunking Religion: Or The Four A's And The Bible

“For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that are right. Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” —Isaiah 45:18–23

A few weeks ago, there came to me in my mail a little package of leaflets of such a blasphemous character that though I frequently receive similar leaflets and throw them into my waste basket, it occurred to me that it might be the mind of the Lord that, at this time, I should pay a little attention to them. A letter came with the literature challenging me to be an honest man, to stop preaching the Gospel of the grace of God, and to be frank enough to stand up in the pulpit and debunk religion.

This literature came from an association known as the Four A’s, the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, Inc. This society has its headquarters, as far as the earth is concerned, in New York, actually in hell. Its great object is to turn men away from faith in the Bible and in the God of the Bible. You know, of course, what an atheist is. He denies the existence of God as an agnostic denies that it is possible for us to know whether there is a God or not. The atheist goes the agnostic one better, or, if you prefer, one worse, for whereas the agnostic is at least humble enough to say, “I do not know whether there be a God or not,” the atheist takes his little telescope, looks all through the heavens, and then confidently declares, “There is no God because I have not been able to discern Him.”

There is a certain statement sent out by this particular society that I want to read. It is headed, “The Ten Demands of the 4A.” It reads:

“The United States not being a Christian nation and its Godless Constitution requiring a secular government, the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism demands:

1. Taxation of church property.
2. Elimination of chaplains and sectarian institutions from public payrolls.
3. Repeal of laws restricting the rights of Atheists and enforcing Christian morals.
4. Abolition of the oath in courts and at inaugurations.
5. Non-issuance of religious proclamations by chief executives.
6. Erasure of the superstitious inscription, ‘In God We Trust’ from our coins and the removal of the church flag above the national flag on battleships.
7. Exclusion of the Bible as a sacred book from the public school.
8. Suppression of the bootlegging of religion through dismissing pupils for religious instruction during school hours.
9. Secularization of marriage, with divorce upon request.
10. Repeal of anti-evolution, anti-birth control, and censorship laws.”

That is the platform of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism. I do not care to take it up point by point but I would have you notice that it ignores utterly the rights of all people in a country like the United States who believe in one true and living God. We often hear of the intolerance of Christianity, the intolerance of orthodoxy—but if you can show me anything among real Christians that compares with the illiberality of the liberals, I should like to know what it is. Who among Christians would think of trying to pass a law denying atheists the right to teach atheism to their children or denying them the privilege of having their children excused from public schools to attend certain classes. We do not deny them the right to teach anything they hold; but they would do their best to throttle any remnant of Christian teaching in this country.

Notice the real point of the whole thing. The atheist society exists for the purpose of delivering men and women from all moral obligation. One of the special points is the “secularization of marriage, with divorce upon request.” Another one, “The repeal of laws enforcing Christian morals,” and a third, “Repeal of anti-evolution, anti-birth control, and censorship laws.” In regard to the second point, I notice that the Church Federation has gotten into the atheist’s ranks. God have mercy on them.

The five fundamentals of atheism as laid down in this leaflet are:

1. Materialism—The doctrine that Matter, with its indwelling property, Force, constitutes the reality of the universe. Therefore, if this were true, there is nothing but that which is material in the universe. They deny everything spiritual and hold that man is simply a material creature and goes through the world like a beast and that is the end. You know whether that kind of teaching is likely to be conducive to public morals.

2. Empiricism—The doctrine that all ideas come from experience, and that, therefore, man can form no conception of God. Now this is one of the most remarkable statements I have ever seen. The Christian is the true empiricist because he has, by believing, learned that there is a true and living God. There is not a Christian, a real Christian, in the world but has experienced for himself the reality of God. Some years ago I was educating a few young Indians, and I had one young man who had never used a telephone. He had been rather afraid of it and did not just know what might happen if he got connected with it. One day he was at our house helping my wife with the gardening when a call came for him. I said, “Come here, son, they want to speak with you over the telephone.”

“Oh, Mr. Ironside,” he said, “won’t you take the message. I know I couldn’t hear anything out of that funny looking box on the wall.”

“Come now, just put the receiver to your ear and speak in the instrument and you will find you can hear.”

“But, Mr. Ironside, it is no use, I do not understand the telephone and it is impossible for me to use it, I couldn’t hear anything.”

“My dear boy,” I said, “you don’t need to understand it, just come and do as I tell you.”

Trembling he did so, and I said, “Now then, just quietly say, ‘Hello.’” He faced the phone and looked imploringly at me. I said, “Go ahead,” and he fairly shouted, “Hello!” and the next moment he almost fell off his chair, and wheeled around and said, “Why, Mr. Ironside, there is somebody at the other end!” “Yes,” I said, “and do you know what he is doing just now, he is wondering what is the matter with your end; go ahead and talk as though you could see him.”

My friend, Christians are people who have spoken with God, they have heard Him talk to them, and they know that there is “somebody at the other end.” You cannot make me believe that my experiences are dreams for they have to do with a living God. This is the most real thing in my life.

Some years ago, a man was giving his testimony in a Salvation Army street meeting. He had for years been a drunkard, down in the depths of sin but he was telling of the marvelous change that had come to him when he confessed his guilt and trusted Christ as Savior, and as he talked, an infidel stood on the street and shouted, “Wake up, old man, wake up, you’re dreaming!” The next moment a little girl pushed her way through the crowd and pulling the man’s coat tail she said, “Please Sir, please don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t wake him up. That man is my daddy and before he got this way, things were so bad at our house. He was drunk almost all the time; mother had to take in washing to keep us; we never had enough to eat and never had enough clothes to wear. Then this happened to Daddy and he is such a different man, he is such a kind daddy now. Mother doesn’t have to work any more; we have plenty to eat and nice clothes to wear. Please, Sir, if he is dreaming don’t wake him up. We like him so much better as he is.”

That man called it “dreaming,” but it is a blessed reality to be in touch with God. Think of the conceit, the egotism, the blatant ignorance of a man who professes to have a thinking machine in his head saying, “We are atheists and because of that, we are empiricists for that is the doctrine that all ideas come from experience, and no one has ever yet experienced God.” We deny that, and we affirm that millions have experienced God. They know Him better than they know any earthly friend.

3. Evolution—The doctrine that organisms are not designed, but have evolved, mechanically, through Natural Selection. Atheists cannot believe the Bible; they cannot believe that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” they cannot believe that God made all creatures after their kind but they have no difficulty in believing that organisms are evolved mechanically through natural selection, for the atheist holds for the doctrine of evolution. They hold these worn out old doctrines that reputable scientists everywhere have been repudiating for years. The atheist cannot believe in a special creation but he can believe that millions and billions of years ago a little bit of protoplasm in the depths of the ocean began to find within itself a desire to become something better and so it began to reach up and up and up until after many years it developed fins and a tail. Then as it swam around, a little fish, it said to itself, “I am not satisfied yet, I have an inward urge to rise higher and higher,” and as it kept on wishing, little legs began to grow out in place of fins, and one day it crawled out on the dry land, and then this little water puppy said, “Oh, this is glorious, but I am not satisfied, I must rise higher,” and so it kept on reaching up and up and up until in ten or twelve millions of years it became an ape in a coconut tree. By and by it said, “I am not satisfied; I must still go on and on and on,” and so it kept on developing, and one day it jumped down from the coconut tree, shed its coat of fur, became smooth-skinned, stood up on its hind legs, and lo and behold, an atheist! Just imagine, they have no trouble believing a fable like that but they are utterly unable to believe the simple testimony of the Word of God.

4. The Existence of Evil—The patent fact that renders irrational the belief in a beneficent, omnipotent being who cares for men.

It is very strange how the same thing looks to different people. The atheist confesses the existence of evil and because of its existence denies the possibility of a good God in the universe, utterly ignoring the truth revealed in the Word of God that sin having come in has marred God’s fair creation.

Of course the unbeliever says, “Why did God permit sin?” What is sin? It is not a kind of moral cancer that could be cut out of the race; it is not a mere disease. Sin is self-will, acting in independence of God. The determination on the part of God to create a being who could give Him free love and worship and service necessitated the creation of a being who could turn away from God, who could hate him instead of love Him, disobey instead of obey Him. God could have made us all machines. The universe has abundant proof of that. The birds make their nests today as their ancestors did years ago. There are creatures who pursue such a steady line that there is no such thing as deviation from that for which they were created. A naturalist has said, “I have studied birds for years and I want to say to their credit, and you will think it a reflection on the human race, that I have never known an unchaste bird. They pursue exactly the path for which God has created them.” God could have made man like that but there would have been no voluntary love, no choice of obedience; we would have been machines and that would never have glorified Him as the willing, loving obedience of a man or woman who definitely comes to God and consecrates his or her life to Him. The problem of evil is a problem; but God has solved it all for us.

5. Hedonism—The doctrine that happiness here and now should be the motive of conduct.

Not what is right but what will bring happiness! That is just the trouble with the human race everywhere. Men are suffering terribly, spurning the path of duty, taking the path of least resistance, going on in the things they imagine are the most likely to make them happy. The result is sin and wretchedness and misery from which God can and will save those who put their trust in Him.

The atheist objects to the Bible; he does not like that little Book; so he writes tons of literature against it. And it is remarkable how through the centuries similar attempts have been made to overthrow the Word of God. The Bible, if it were not a divine Book, would have been driven out of the world long ago. Millions of copies have been burned; it has been lectured against, preached against, and derided but last year there were more Bibles printed and circulated than ever before in the history of the world. When atheism is dead and gone, it will still be triumphant, for the Lord Jesus Christ said, “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). It brings enlightenment wherever it goes and yet the atheist hates it. Missionaries go to heathen tribes lost in darkness and practicing the most abominable rites, and read the Bible to them, and in a little while these things disappear. Did you ever hear of an atheist missionary society banding together and saying, “We will give of our money and dedicate our sons and our daughters to the causes of atheism and send them to the cannibals and to the heathen lands to carry the blessings of atheism and to bring light and liberty to the people?”

An infidel was shipwrecked years ago, on one of the Fiji Islands and when he learned where he was, he was in great distress for he said, “They are all cannibals here.” To his amazement when he met the people, he saw that they were clothed and some could speak a little English. They said to him, “You are in a bad way, we will look after you.” When he talked with the chief and asked what had made the change, he said, “The missionaries have come!” “Missionaries,” said the man, “why, we are giving up all that in England, you don’t mean to say you are taking up that fraud in the Fiji Islands?” He was being shown around the village and they came to a large pot of some kind. It looked like a big baptistry, and the man said, “What is that?” “That,” said the chief, “we keep as a memorial of what we were saved from. That was the pot in which we used to stew the bodies of our enemies for our cannibal feasts, and, my friend, that is where you would be now if it were not for the Bible that you despise.”

The Bible is working miracles everywhere and yet men hate it. And why do they hate it? Because of the sinfulness of their natural hearts.

I had an interesting experience while going to Augusta, Georgia. I was walking through the train and found a well-worn Bible lying in one of the berths. I thought, there is evidently a Christian here; I will look him up later. To my surprise, I found it was the colored* porter. He was sitting there when I returned from the diner. I stopped and looked at him and said, “You have a mighty good Book there.”

“Yes,” he said, “it is.”

“Do you read it often?”

“Yes, it is my meat and drink. I am preparing a little address to give to our young people in Atlanta next Sunday on the Seven Sayings of Christ on the cross.”

“What are you going to say about that saying, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’”

“That is the hardest one of them all,” he said.

“What are you going to tell them about it?”

“I do not know. Could you tell me what I could say about it?”

“I should like to tell them that I am the answer to that question.”

“I do not just get you,” he said.

“Well, Jesus said, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and I repeat, I am the answer to that question. He was forsaken because of me. He was bearing my sins, He was suffering for me. God hid His face from Him that he might never have to hide it from me.”

That black man’s face lit up, and he said, “Sit down and tell me more, Sir; you seem to know something about it.” I sat down and we talked for a long time and then he said, “Well, Sir, this has been a feast to my soul.” Then he told me that a little while ago he was coming down on that run and was reading, when a gentleman came along and looked at him as I did, and said, “What’s that?”

“The Bible,” he replied.

“Well, do you colored folk read the white man’s Bible? I shouldn’t think you would have any use for it. My name is Clarence Darrow. I am an atheist; I have no use for the Bible, and if there is any man on Earth should throw it away, it is the colored man. How can you have anything to do with it when you think how cruel the white man has been to your race?”

The negro answered, “Mr. Darrow, I have often thought of that and there is a verse in the Bible that explains it all. It is this: ‘These things must needs be’ and Mr. Darrow, I thank God for it all. My ancestors were wild heathen savages in the heart of Africa, maybe they were cannibals, but savage and ignorant at any rate, and, Sir, God allowed the white man, a wicked white man, to steal some of them away and to bring them from Central Africa to this country. I do not know how many generations back but He allowed their children to grow up and become slaves, and some of the white men were cruel and some were kind. Maybe some of them used the whip but at any rate they taught my ancestors to work, to hoe corn, pick cotton, and then to be clean, to be clean in body, to clean their teeth, and to keep their heads clean, and to give us the Gospel, so that we were changed completely. You know, I feel like taking off my hat to every white man I meet when I think that God allowed him to bring my forefathers to America that I might not be a poor ignorant heathen in the heart of Africa but that I might have the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, my blessed Saviour.”

Clarence Darrow said, “Well, I never heard anybody put it like you have. I should like to give you a little souvenir. I wish I had a little religious book but I do have a little book here that I would like to write my name in for you. I will have to think about what you have said; you have put things in a different way than anybody else.”

If you had said to this colored porter, “Are you an empiricist?” he might have said, “Is that something to eat?” But he did know the Lord Jesus Christ and he had experienced God.

Yes, the atheist hates this Book. I notice in this literature some of his chief objections. He says there are certain chapters, certain paragraphs that are not fit to be read in public and so the rest ought to be destroyed. I should like to look into an atheist’s library and see if he has any modern novels in it. I will guarantee if he is a literary man, I would find more unprintable filth in his library than I would find in all the Bible. Then you say, “You admit there are some things in the Bible that are filthy.” Yes, there are some things in the Bible that we would not like to read in public. “Then,” you say, “The Bible really is not a pure and holy Book.” Listen: I have at home a volume which I do not consult very much any more. It is called, “The Family Physician,” and there are a great many things in that book that I would not want to read in public but we found it a very valuable book when bringing up our family, and it helped us wonderfully especially when we were far away from a regular physician and could not get proper medical attention for our children. Why does it contain things that we would not care to read in public? Because it gives a faithful account of the diseases to which man is subject, and this Book gives you the spiritual diagnosis of men and women, and it is so terrible, so vile that you do not like to read it in public. But it is a mighty good thing to read it in private and ask yourself, “What about me; am I living in things like that?” If you are, turn to God and cry to Him for mercy.

Then, the atheists dwell a great deal upon the failures of some of the Bible heroes. They point to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Elisha. They poke fun at these men saying, “Adam was a miserable coward who threw all the blame for the apple difficulty on his wife; Noah was the first drunkard on record; Abraham denied his wife, debauched his hired girl; Moses—a murderer and confidence man.” They know all about these failures but do they know about the repentance of these men? One reason that I am sure that this is a divine Book is that it is so different from the ordinary books that men write. When men write about another and want to glorify him, they tell all his virtues and do not like to say anything about his faults. But in the Bible, it is as though God holds them all up saying, “Those are the kind of people for whom I gave my Son to die.” I am so glad for that because it enables me to preach the Gospel to the atheist. There are thousands of atheists who are drunkards and thousands who are adulterers, lascivious, untrue, liars, thieves, dishonest, scoundrels, and scamps but I can go to any atheist in the world and say, “Jesus died for sinners just like you and He will take you in, and save you and make you a new creature if you trust His grace.” David was a sinner, Lot was a sinner, Abraham was a sinner and God saved them. The very things that atheists object to in the Bible are the things that tell me it is the Book of God.

Some few years ago in San Francisco, I was walking up Market Street one Sunday afternoon when I found the Salvation Army having their street meeting. They had a large company, about fifty or sixty of them and five or six hundred people gathered around. The little Salvation Army Captain said to me, “Wouldn’t you like to give a message?” I said I would be glad to, and she said, “You testify as soon as this one gets through.” I stepped out and gave my testimony and spoke for about ten minutes. While I was talking, I saw a gentleman standing in front of me and he took a card from his pocket and wrote on it. When I finished, he stepped over and handed me the card. I looked at it and saw there was quite a little written on the one side so turned it over and saw that the name was Arthur Morrow Lewis. I knew that name; I had seen him advertised all up and down the coast. He was an agnostic lecturer. I turned the card over and read, “Sir, I challenge you to debate with me on the question ‘Agnosticism vs. Christianity’ in the Academy of Sciences Hall next Sunday afternoon at 4:00 o’clock. I will pay all expenses.” I read it aloud, and said, “Mr. Lewis, I am much interested in this. Now next Sunday afternoon I have a meeting announced for 3:00 o’clock but I think I could get through by 4:00 o’clock. But if I go there, I do not want you to pay the expenses; I will pay my part. But in order to prove that you have something worthwhile to debate about, I promise to go providing you will guarantee to bring with you two samples of what atheism can do. One man who was for years a down and outer, (I do not care what his sins were) until he heard you or some other infidel lecture against the Bible, and while listening new life came and he said, ‘From now on I am an infidel,’ and he found that having become an infidel he hated his sin; the old habits that bound him fell away, and he became a free man and now is living a clean good life. Then bring one woman who was once lost to everything good and sweet and pure and womanly but this poor wretched creature came into your meeting and as she listened to an attack on the Bible she was so helped and changed and encouraged that she rose to her feet and said, ‘From now on I am an infidel and therefore I must be pure and I must be clean,’ and she fled from that den of iniquity and rehabilitated herself in the confidence of society. Now, Sir, if you will promise to bring those two samples, I will promise to bring one hundred just such men and women who have been made new creatures in Christ Jesus.” Turning to the little Captain I said, “Have you any that I could get for my procession?” “We could give you forty and the brass band to lead the procession,” she said. I said, “I have forty already and I will scurry around and get the rest of my own hundred men and women to show you what faith in our Lord Jesus will do. Will you do it?” He looked at me and smiled as he shook his head and turning away he walked up the street as that great crowd cheered and clapped the preacher for they knew that he was right. It is only the grace of God that changes sinners into saints.

I want to give you an exhibition of what I have been talking about. I want to introduce to you Dr. Percy Reginald Deighton. (Here Dr. Ironside called a gentleman to the pulpit.)

Dr. Deighton’s Testimony

People who do not believe in Jesus Christ are looked at by the people who do believe. Like this: Many years ago, I was driving early in the morning and every nearly collided with an old lady with an old horse and buggy. I said, “Madam, where are your lights?” She looked down at me and said, “They’re where your brains are; I haven’t any.”

“As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). To give you my testimony, I will have to tell you a story. I knew the man about whom I am going to speak very well. Many years ago in England, there was a Presbyterian minister and he had a son who was incorrigible, and so the minister thought, “To save this boy I will take him to America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” They came to Indianapolis where the minister held a position in the church for many years. When the boy was graduated from high school, he went back to London, graduated from the Royal College of Music with honors, from the Royal College of Surgery with honors, but he was against this Saviour about whom Dr. Ironside has been preaching. Satan walked by his side everywhere he went. He became a drug addict. He came to America and was heralded as America’s greatest concert organist. He gave several recitals right here in Chicago. He finally went to practicing medicine. He met a beautiful girl, married her, had a boy who had just graduated from medical school when one day the telephone rang. The message was, “Doctor, you are wanted at the undertaker’s parlor.” When he arrived, there lay his wife and his boy, the result of an automobile accident. The shock almost wrecked his reason and filled him with hatred against God.

After this, the doctor went from bad to worse. He went to Hammond, Indiana, and from there they sent him to Michigan City penitentiary for fourteen years for peddling dope. As he went in, in went the sinner and the devil. He was pardoned in fifteen months and went to Duluth, Minnesota. There the federal government got him for forging prescriptions for dope and sent him to Leavenworth for two years. He came out a broken and discouraged man, and said, “I will go to Canada where the laws may not be quite so hard as in the States.” He worked at the General Hospital, Toronto, in research work for cancer. From there he was sent to prison for a year but still he would not accept this Saviour. He came back to Chicago and went from bad to worse until he became a bum on Madison Street, sleeping in the alley. Finally he asked to be sent to the Bridewell and was committed. He had been in three penitentiaries and one hundred jails and work houses and yet would not accept this Saviour.

I am the doctor that I have been talking about. I am the doctor who was the bum on Madison Street but finally this Stranger of Galilee reached down and picked me out of a seething cesspool of iniquity. I will be seventy years old next February and I have got it all over every one of you. I could hardly walk when I was saved. But I want to tell you, it is an awful thing to come to Jesus in the snows of your life with nothing but the husks and say, “Please forgive me, please forgive me!” He will forgive you but you have to be in earnest.

God took my wife and boy to wake me up but I did not wake up. I went down and down and down to the bottomless pit of hell. I have suffered but it was my own fault. I am perfectly well now, physically, and I think mentally I have “all my marbles.” The greatest privilege I have is to present to you this Saviour. Please do not go on without Him. Accept Him, and leave it all with Him, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). He will raise up a circle of friends around you that you never dreamed about and during this depression that is going on, He will take care of you if you trust Him.

My prayer is that you may all go down toward the glorious sunset of life Christians, unafraid, that He will let you live in the glorious sunshine of His smile.

Dr. Ironside stepped to the front and continued his address:

I should like to ask the A.A.A. what they could have done for a man like that? Here is a man who had pursued his course, turned his back on Christ and on Christian morals, despised the Word of God, and what did it do for him? It brought him to the brink of hell. What brought him back; what saved him? Faith in the Christ that the atheists despise, a confident assurance that the God that the atheist denies loved him and gave His Son to die for him.

I come back to you with the Scripture with which I began, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” In order that you may look and find deliverance, He has come out to you in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for you on the cross and we dare to say to you that if you trust this Saviour, He will do for you what He did for Dr. Deighton after all those years of wandering.

*Editor’s note: The term “colored” was once commonplace in the American society of Dr. Ironside’s day. The term was complex in meaning; however as used here, it was not meant in a derogatory manner.