Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome. Our topic today is about two men who had two radically different messages and left two legacies that changed the world and still shape it today. Karl Marx and D.L. Moody lived at nearly the same time. Both saw poverty, suffering, and injustice around them, but they offered opposing answers to what was wrong with the world and how it could be changed. Marx looked to political and economic revolution and the restructuring of society. Moody believed the deepest problem was in the sinful human heart and that real lasting change can only begin when men and women know Jesus Christ as their savior.

But Moody did not ignore people's physical needs. Having grown up in poverty himself, he went into one of the toughest areas of Chicago known as Little Hell and began a Sunday school for poor children that expanded quickly to over 1,000 children and 300 of their parents. Moody's work and reputation spread way beyond Chicago so that even President-elect Abraham Lincoln learned about his Sunday school and visited them and spoke briefly. As a result, Moody himself was invited to many places to speak and went on to preach the gospel to over 100 million people across America and Great Britain.

Karl Marx's writings meanwhile began to shape political movements and governments around the world and his radical ideas continue to influence our culture today. What did these two men actually believe? Where did their ideas lead? My guest today is Dr. Erwin Lutzer, who is the pastor emeritus of the Moody Church, where he served as senior pastor for 36 years. He's the author of 70 books and co-author with historian Dr. Greg Quiggle of their new book Marx and Moody. Two contemporaries, two gospels, two tombstones, one choice. Join us for this edition of the John Ankerberg Show. Welcome to our program.

I'm John Ankerberg and today we're talking about two men in history. They impacted their times and they're still impacting us today. My friend that is sitting across from me is Dr. Erwin Lutzer and he wrote this fabulous book Marx and Moody. Do you know who Karl Marx was? Really? Do you know who D.L. Moody was? Really? For Christians that don't even know who D.L. Moody was. You've heard about the Moody Church in Chicago. It's world famous. My guest across the table here was the pastor there for 36 years. And today we're talking about the Communist Manifesto.

It's a simple little book. He wanted to be simple so people could understand it. But we're going to talk today about the six lies that you will find about Marxism in that book. We're going to read them to you and you'll see that they're a lie and I want you to know this. So let's talk about what Karl Marx was trying to do.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Yeah, and of course Karl Marx was a radical. He was trying to bring about change. There was a great deal of injustice in England where he was living as well as he had been in Europe. Namely, industrialization brought about a situation in which workers were exploited, paid very little, no safety net, and the owners, the land owners, the factory owners became richer and richer. John, today I have a copy of the Communist Manifesto here. Now this book looks rather thick, but actually only 40 pages of it are the Communist Manifesto.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Because the rest has to do with various essays related to it, etc. When I was standing at the grave of Karl Marx in London, I was reminded of the fact that he still rules much of the world from his grave.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: And the history of communism has been absolutely awful. Today we're going to find out why. Let's look at what the Communist Manifesto actually says. As I mentioned in the book, there are really six lies in this manifesto. Number one, it says that in this case the theory of communism may be summed up in a single sentence, the abolition of private property. Is that biblical? No. The Bible says you shall not steal. What Karl Marx said is this. Look, there are all these wars that are going on and all these injustices. If we had no private property and the state owned everything, then the state would make sure that everyone is treated equally.

Very important. Goes on to say, you are going to accuse us of doing away with individuality. So what you want to do is to leave behind rugged individualism for collectivism where everything is jointly owned. That's number one because after all there'll be nothing to fight about once you take care of the fact that nobody owns anything and you're going to be happy with that.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah, cuz you'll be equal with everybody else.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: If you'll be equal with everybody else and what that means is absolutely incredible. Secondly, he does away with all religion. And what he says is that the same faith that you have in God has to be transferred to the state. And that's why he wanted to abolish God. That's why communism closes churches. We don't want any rival to the state.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right. And God gives rules for living like don't commit adultery. Don't steal. Don't lie.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Right. And in Marxism all those are man-made in order to hold on to power. And number three is the family. Now why does the Communist Manifesto say that very clearly? It is because of oppression. Men oppress their wives, parents oppress their children. They took them to church. God was the ultimate oppressor. So take off all the oppression and everyone is going to live in happiness, in fairness. All the greed of capitalism is going to disappear and people are going to be very very satisfied. And then here's a very very important one.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Line number four.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: When I read this, I had to read it two or three times. There are besides eternal truths such as freedom and justice, etc. that are common to all states of society. But communism abolishes eternal truths. It abolishes all religion and all morality instead of constituting them on a new basis. It therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. Now let's talk. Here are parents who send their children to university and the parents come back and say, you know the children think differently than we do. Yeah, they sure do. Why? It has to do with truth.

You see Marxism is based on Hegel, who believed that truth was constantly changing. It was constantly evolving. So there was no fixed truth. It says we don't even take truth and put it on a different basis. Why? Because things may have changed tomorrow. So to the average student now in the university, truth is no longer something that is sought outside of us. You know when we are growing up, John, truth was outside of us. We might argue as to whether or not we attained it and how to attain it. But it was out there. Today truth has moved inward.

So it all depends on how I feel. You think for example of the gains made by the LGBTQ community. They're made on the basis of feelings. Well, I don't feel that this is right. I feel that that is right. And feelings have become facts. As a matter of fact, there are those who don't want to hang on to any truth at all. But we all know that if you say truth is constantly changing, of course you have to ask the question at least. Is that truth changing? You know in other words, everybody ultimately believes in some kind of absolute.

Dr. John Ankerberg: That's right. Yeah. One new idea comes in to the old idea and you have a clash. And you can decide one way or the other, but if you do it on feelings, the facts go down the drain and you end up with feelings. But then the feelings come into another idea and you have to look at that as feelings. So truth keeps on evolving and it's not eternal.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Parents should know that this is where progressivism came from. I mean it can be variously interpreted, but progressivism says there's nothing static. It's constantly moving along, but many students believe that truth is socially constructed. And truth is whatever the state says truth is because only the state really knows what truth is at this critical moment. So what you have to do is to have the ruling class killed and done away with so that everything, all wealth and lands and factories have to be captured and ruled by the state.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And they never tell you who the rulers of the state are until he comes to he says, when we the proletariat is out there and the proletariat because they're going to press so much by the bourgeoisie, the owners, the fact is out of them will come some that will be leaders cuz they've experienced how much they have been oppressed. But the fact is when this works out in Russia, you ended up with Lenin. And then you ended up with another fellow by the name of Stalin.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Yeah. Yes.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And if you Google it, you'll find out that those guys, the way they ruled, if you disagreed with them, 110 to 150 million people were murdered or killed.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: And that's the price to be paid to bring about a Marxist paradise.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Yes. And the truth constantly changes. Now you know there are so many people who when they read the Communist Manifesto, they like to read the very last words which say, workers of all lands unite. They miss apparently the paragraph before it. This is chilling.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes, it is.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling class tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. That is of course the working class. They have a world to win.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: And elsewhere Marx says, we will not apologize for our violence. In fact, we are going to make this revolution as violent as possible.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah, he says a violent revolution is needed to overthrow the existing order. And then you can establish the rulership of that proletariat, the guys that are the working class.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: And and they'll know how to rule with fairness and equity. Apparently it didn't dawn on Marx that when that happens, the thugs, the worst of humanity is going to arise to the top and they will be the rulers. You know I was in Russia in 1985. I was preaching in Russia as well as in the Ukraine and my interpreter told me, don't be too quick to judge. The reason we went to communism was because under the Czars life was so difficult. I mean they took all the wealth for themselves and it's a horrible story. But here's what's interesting.

Lenin comes along and says what we have to do is to have purges to purge all of the people who are in charge and we have to take over. Namely, as working men, as the proletariat, okay? The bourgeoisie in effect have to be put to death.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah, the bourgeoisie are the owners.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Yeah. And of course you don't know who you can trust. So you have all these killings and everything going on. Now later on as you mentioned, Stalin comes along. Lenin warns against Stalin and Stalin loved the word collectivism. What he talked about frequently in his speeches is taking the farms and making them collective farms. There is no ownership.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: What you need is

Dr. John Ankerberg: The state owns all of the land.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: The state owns all of the land. And so he argues for that. Now what happened is after Lenin even took over, his men would go on their horses to various farms and so forth, collect whatever they want and say it doesn't belong to you anymore. It now belongs to us. So they pillaged, they stole, they did all the things that were necessary to bring about the Communist revolution.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And when they had a grain harvest, what did the government do?

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Well, what Stalin did is he required that they give their grain to the government so that the government could pay its debts. And John, millions starved and the rich farmers, they got moved to Siberia or they were killed off because what you need to do is to have the proletariat rule. What the manifesto actually teaches is this that there is going to be socialism, which is going to be the revolution. And then once communism was established, it's the Communists who are the wisest who are going to rule. But you know we have to hurry on and talk about the sixth lie and that is a borderless world.

Dr. John Ankerberg: This is ridiculous.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: Why is it that communism wants a borderless world? Well, from their standpoint,

Dr. John Ankerberg: Right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: there should be no borders because again borders are very oppressive for one thing. They oppress the people. Everybody should be able to move wherever they want to move. And not only that, but remember it is just class struggles. Nationality doesn't matter. It has to do with social classes. And therefore people should be able to move wherever they want. There shouldn't be some kind of an identity over here. This is where it differs from fascism. Fascism is very nationalistic. You know we're talking now about Hitler and we're talking about Mussolini. In fact, Mussolini said everything within the state,

Dr. John Ankerberg: Yeah. And Mussolini, Mussolini, right.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: nothing outside the state, and nothing against the state. All institutions have to be wiped out unless they are under the direction of the state. That's why you have so many churches closed. Why? There can be no competition with the state. The state becomes God. Now here in the manifesto Marx and Engels are going to argue for not only open borders, but a World Bank because you see if the state is going to hand out money correctly, it's going to have to be unified in its currency. It's going to have to be unified in its borders.

We don't have time to go into it, but you know that the Bible does teach borders. God talks about borders. I might also mention that Jesus mentions citizenship twice. He's talking in various parables. So this idea that anyone has an inherent right to invade any other country without going through legal means is not biblical. But remember what we read. There was to be an overthrow of all existing social conditions. We're talking about family. We're talking about the economy. We're talking about borders. We're talking about God. So everything has to be overthrown. And it has to become very violent.

I want to tell the people now of course about D.L. Moody. And what's very important is for people to understand that Moody pointed people to God who could forgive sin. And I want to speak to somebody out there today. If you could talk to me, you'd say, Pastor Lutzer, I'm too great a sinner. Some of you may think you're not sinners at all. I trust that God shows you differently, but I want you to get an excerpt of D.L. Moody's sermon. And and I want you to notice how he would visualize things. That's why he was so effective.

Look at that Roman soldier as he pushed his spear into the very heart of the God man. What a hellish deed. But what was the next thing that took place? Blood covered the spear. Oh, thank God for the blood of Christ that covers sin. There was the blood covering the spear. The very point of it. The very crowning act of sin brought out the very crowning act of love. The crowning act of wickedness was the crowning act of grace and glory. What Moody is saying is this. We must realize that no matter how great the sin, there is forgiveness.

If Karl Marx had repented of his sin and his foolishness, if he had repented of that, he too could have been saved. We have no evidence that that happened. But God's grace and God's power. And what does it do? It transforms the human heart. It brings about what we call regeneration. And that's why Christians aren't willing to steal and to pillage and to kill because we realize we are subject to almighty God. If you've never received Christ as savior, if you've never come under the shelter of the blood of Christ and his sacrifice, would you do that right now?

It's the transforming message that this very confused world needs. Father, help those who are listening to say to themselves, I will not go the direction of humanism, Marxism, but I will follow Christ and thank you that he died for sinners just like us in his name. Amen.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Thank you, Erwin, for today. And folks, if you think that the six lies of Marxism are really crazy stuff, wait till you hear next week's program when we talk about Marxism comes to America. And it's a very interesting program because some very smart Marxists realized how conservative America is and why that was, including our belief in God and the family. And they decided they had to tweak it. They had to change it. They had to come in a different way to present their goals. And we're going to talk about how they did that next week.

So I hope that you'll join us. Now thank you for listening to the John Ankerberg Show. We're a listener-supported ministry and your gifts help us continue to share the gospel with millions of people worldwide. To learn more about our resources or to support our mission, visit jashow.org or please call us at 1 800 805 3030. If you're in Canada, please visit jashow.ca or call us at 1 866 746 5803 or you can subscribe to us on YouTube. Your support makes a difference in spreading God's word.