Matthew 13:58 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.
Atheist Hitchens skipping prayer day in his honor
The writer best known to believers for his 2007 book “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” has esophageal cancer, the same disease that killed his father. He is fighting it, but the 62-year-old Hitchens is realistic: At the very best, he says, his life will be shortened.
For some of his critics, it might be satisfying to see a man who has made a career of skewering organized religion switch sides near the end of his life and pray silently for help fighting a ravaging disease.
He has an opportunity: Monday has been informally proclaimed “Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day.”
“I’m perfectly sure that there is nothing to be gained from it in point of my health, but perhaps I shouldn’t even say that. If it would do something for my morale possibly it would do something for my health. We all know that morale is an element in recovery,” he said. “But incantations, I don’t think, have any effect on the material world.”
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I hope he turns and is healed. I truly do. But the position he has placed himself in makes it so very unlikely, even when the truth spoken in the Word he despises become so very personally real.
Genesis 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Aha! Someday I’ll get the hang of things. The above report is truly sad; but then again it is an opportunity for Christianity to respond with the love of Christ with our prayers, and, Lord willing, someone wiithin reach will be able to bring Christ’s Word of recincilliation to this poor man. With all that’s going on in my poor bald head this week I am thinking of the rich man and poor Lazarus. We are certainly rich with Word and Sacrament at our constant disposal; he is mightly poor in faith and knowledge of God. At the end of this parable we the rich will be at Abrahams side; I pray this poor man does not at the last call to us form the depths of hell having been dumped at its’ gate.
Amen, Larry.
Phil,
You and I have clashed on this many times, but I will say it again, because I simply grow tired of the hubris (not just yours) that seems to exude from too many preachers, pastors and priests (regardless of Christian confession) with regards to speculation on one’s eternal lot following the exit from this life. Work out your own salvation (seautou) with fear and trembling, St. Paul adamantly exhorts us. Where are we working out our salvation by constantly going on tirades about who is going to heaven and who is not? Answer: we are not. God saves whom He wishes. It is His decision, not ours. Let’s try to have a little humility. I remember I once posited to you the very hypothetical situation of your entry into the heavenly realm. There you encounter a person whom you knew was a staunch agnostic/atheist in the earthly life. Would you dare go to God and tell Him he made a mistake, that He violated His own Scriptures or would you simply say “Glory to God for all things?” The phrase used by Evangelicals of “Once saved, always saved” is as ridiculous as assuming that “Once damned, always damned.” Again, we may be moved by pity that this man has not seen and heard and taken in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but he may well yet and it may only be a fraction of a second from his departure. But he still may remain hard of heart. Either way, it is not for you or for anyone else to worry about it.
Chris-
Your point is that God can hypothetically save anyone.
My point is that God has revealed how he saves.
Your point robs Christ of the glory due him for being the sole savior of all.
Phil,
You write” You[r] point robs Christ of the glory due him for being the sole savior of all.” No, it does not. If Christ is saviour of all, then how does His possible saving of all somehow diminish his glory? You and people like you are always trying to safeguard the glory of God. Such is exactly how heresy begins, by men trying to safeguard the glory of God. For the Docetists, there was no logical explanation about how God could die on the cross for such would deprive God of His being God and thus His glory, so they invented the false doctrine that another Christ was substituted on the cross or that Christ merely “appeared” to die. The Arians were worried that a Son of God who was of like substance with the Father would rob the Father of all His glory so they came up with the formula, homoiousion. This is how heresy and deviations from the faith begin, by men worrying so much that not sufficient glory is given to God. Indeed, to all God be glory. But when you start questioning Him on whom He chooses to save and presumptuously claiming to know what is in everyone’s heart, then what have you done except apply for God’s position? Again, quit worrying about Mr. Hitchens.
Chris-
I place my trust in what is revealed. You prefer to swim about in the mystery of God. Much more heresy has resulted from your pursuit than mine.
Phil,
You are wrong. Heresy has resulted far more from people taking what has been revealed and twisting it to their own pursuits. You need only look at the myriad of so-called “proof-texts” that heretics such as the Arians, Nestorians, Donatists, Adoptionists, etc. have employed to justify their heresy.
I trust in the compassions of God which is of far greater comfort to me, and should be to you, than categorizing God who cannot be categorized. You seem to exult in that categorization and you dare accuse me of hubris!
Chris