Militant atheists caricature Christian belief, reducing it to something childish and abnormal. They seem unable to grasp anything of God’s being, or the necessity, scope and kindness of His love. Here is the work of Christ, and how His love may be tasted and proved.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor  life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,  nor things present, nor things to come, nor  height, nor depth, nor any other creature,  shall be able to separate us from the love  of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

And our subject is ‘Finding the Astonishing Love  of God’. What a theme this is, ‘The love of God,  which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ A sublime theme, an amazing theme, a very beautiful theme,  incomprehensible really, the extent of the love of God is such. The love of God  revealed through and in Jesus Christ our Lord  and Saviour. Now, leading militant atheists  try to describe the biblical message of  salvation in order to bring it into ridicule  to make it sound absurd and they rehearse some  of its elements but they shrivel them down  and they understate them and  they make them sound ridiculous.  ‘God has made a mess of creation’ or words to  that effect, ‘He has produced sin in the process.  So God wants to preserve or salvage something and  has sent Christ the Son of God into the world.’  And then they use terms like ‘And then God  the Father beat up Christ the Son on a cross.’  For what good reason? ‘And having worked  out his anger for his own folly on that,  then people who choose to live  according to the way of Christ  or to follow his whims they are the special  ones the saved ones.’

And you’ll get various  descriptions along these lines which totally  understate every point and you wonder whether  the writing and the militant atheists you  wonder whether they even remotely grasp the biblical plan or way of salvation or whether  they do this deliberately, and unwitting people  hear them – well, the plan of God is ridiculed and  made to look so trivial and absurd and childish,  and so they reject it and disbelieve. But  that’s what’s going on and everywhere as  you know I don’t have to tell you this you see  the videos and the statements and the books and  the quotations of the leading atheists. Some of  them are more polite than others, some of them  affect a scholarly presentation, others cannot keep  the hatred of God out of their voices.