"Every religious idea, every idea of god, even every flirtation with the idea of god is unutterable vileness..."
"Any person who engages in building a god, or who even tolerates the idea of god-building, disparages himself in the worst possible fashion...".
(Letter from Lenin to A.M. Gorky)
Communism is a faith, a creed. It is the great antagonist of the Christian faith. Communism and Christianity cannot coexist indefinitely in the same world. They are rival creeds and from the very birth of Communism the gage was down and war to the death was joined between these two faiths...
Yes, Communism is a faith. Its founder was Marx who wrote the Communist bible, "Capital". Its prophet was Lenin. Its current head is Khrushchev. It has its dogma and ethics. Its dogma is chiefly enshrined in the work, "The Manifesto of the Communist Party". And its theology is set down in the vast array of literature put together by Marx, Engels, Lenin and all the other theoreticians of Communism who followed them. Adherence to the teachings of such dogma is essential to being a Communist. Such adherence is the first and last test of a true Communist. Once powerful men in the party have been brought crashing down when it was shown that they had deviated, even slightly from the dogma of Communism. And witness the present conflict in the Communist camp over the question of inevitability of armed strife with the forces of Capitalism. Communism even claims to have its own ethics and morality.
"... The whole object of the training, education and tuition of the youth today should be to imbue them with Communist ethics. But is there such a thing as Communist ethics? Is there such a thing as Communist morality. Of course there is. Often it is made to appear that we have no ethics of our own; and very often the bourgeoisie accuse us Communists of repudiating all ethics... In what sense do we repudiate ethics and morality? In the sense that they were preached by the bourgeoisie, who declared that ethics were God's commandments. We, of course, say that we do no believe in God. We repudiate all morality that is taken outside of human, class concepts... We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat... We say: Morality is that which serves to destroy the old exploiting society and unite all the toilers around the proletariat which is creating a new Communist society... Communist morality is the morality which serves the struggle...". (Lenin: "The Tasks of the Youth League")
The struggle of the proletariat - this, of course, is nothing else but the ceaseless pursuit of power by the Communist party. And to what extent the "proletariat" has benefited from this struggle can be seen by casting an eye on the miserable condition of the people who must live under the rule of the Communist hierarchy.
Communist claims to deify the proletariat. Its god is the working class – the "toiling" masses subjugated in slavery to capitalism. Yet Communism is ruthless where the individual is concerned. It does not recognize individuals — only masses, masses to be manipulated and used for the ever-increasing power and glory of the party.
Communism is the religion of Satan. Its creed is the absolute negation of the Creator, the deification of matter; it is open war against God and against all that which is of God.
It was in 1917 that Communism took a firm foothold, politically, in the world. In the 45 years which have passed, how has Christianity reacted to the challenge from this dark power? Has it rallied, closed its ranks and engaged itself powerfully in the fight? Has it devoted itself to prayer and Christian work in order to stem the evil tide? Has it used every God-given advantage to thwart the strategy of Communism and beat it back into the infernal depths from which it rose?
Or has Christianity dawdled while the civilization built up over 2000 years was being undermined by the relentless masters in the Kremlin? Have so-called Christian people closed its ears to the pleas of true Christians leaders, allowed themselves to be beguiled, led astray and trapped? Has Communism made progress on all fronts while Christianity has barely been able to hold its own even in its very strongholds — the vaunted centers of "democracy"?
Well, let the facts speak for themselves. With its birth in Russia, Communism became heir to a sixth of the surface of the continents. It took possession of a twelfth of the population of the entire globe. This was already a tremendous advantage. But what has come to pass since then?
The world has passed through a second world war, longer, bloodier and more devastating than the first. Ruin, chaos, the uprooting of entire populations, the overthrow of governments - disruption such as the history of man has never known." Peace? There has been no peace since, only rearmaments whose destructive potential simply defies description. All the nations which took part in this war emerged with results for them far different from what they set out to achieve.
At the conclusion of this armed conflict Moscow emerged with the yoke of its slavery cast about eleven nations of Europe. Then it was the turn of China to pass under the domination of the Communist religion - vast China with its 650 million people, more than three times the population of Russia. This China has dedicated itself to Communism with a fervor that is demoniacal, a devotion which admits of no conciliation with any other force, a ruthlessness which finds expression in its hatred of God and its trampling underfoot of the sacred institution of the family and its enslavement of the human individual which God died to free.
Communism now reigns as absolute sovereign over a third of humanity. And it is giving itself with absolute dedication to the enslavement of the other two-thirds by every means at its disposal, by every lie, every species of trickery, by diabolical subterfuge, with a cunning and a resourcefulness which can only be the power of Satan himself.
By infiltration, military and economic, through its magnificently organized chain of command which leads right down into the very heart of the countries it is seeking to subjugate; through the complicity of those who have sold themselves to the Red masters, or of those elite who have been duped and hypnotized by the cunning voice of Communist lies; through all these means, Communism seems to be making headway on every front. And nowhere does it appear to have suffered or be suffering any reverses.
The seeds of this unholy faith have been planted in the hearts of the leaders of a number of young African nations. In South America and Central America, the oldest nations, with great masses of poor held in misery by a wealthy, heartless minority, present a ready prey for the Communist doctrine.
Already, at the very door of North America, we have seen Cuba burn its bridges with Christian civilization, become a Communist citadel whose professed policy is to export the "revolution" to the other countries of Latin America.
In Asia, after China, the Communists have taken over a half of Korea and Vietnam. Chinese guerillas, supported by Red China, seek to take over the remainder of these countries along with Laos and Cambodia.
And what of Indo-China and the great mass of India itself? And Indonesia which has adopted the policies and tactics of Communist aggression?
What of those countries which are supposed to be the very adversaries of militant Communism: the United States, Great Britain, France, and our own Canada? Are not the laicism, the preoccupation with Socialist ideas, the immersion of entire peoples in materialism, dread harbingers of what is to come?
Why is it that the very elite of our community, the learned men and women who inhabit, or who have come forth from our universities, are so often in the front ranks of those who parrot the Communist line, diluted though it may be? Why have so many fine minds (and they have made newspaper headlines over the past years) betrayed the lands that gave them birth to the monster which dwells in the Kremlin? This picture of brillant men, who should be the first to recognize the danger and evil of the Communist faith, allowing themselves to be made the mouthpieces for the Red credo is something so mystifying that it can only be explained by some other power than that exercised by human persuasion and the human mind.
The Red tide will not be turned merely by extending economic aid to underdeveloped countries. Il will not be reversed merely by filling men's bellies, clothing their nakedness or by providing the homeless with shelter from the elements. Communism will not be stamped out by regimenting the citizens under the iron-fisted bureaucracy of Socialism and State-controlled enterprise.
Communism has won victories because it is a creed, a faith, which has flowed into the spiritual vacuum left when men abandoned Christianity.
Certainly, men must be fed and clothed and housed and they would be if society were governed according to principles and ideals which were truly Christian.
But the most vigorous propagandists of Communism are not starving or naked. They are well-fed, well-clothed and decently housed. They are educated. Above all, they are inspired and driven on by an "ideal", by the dark spiritualism of Communism.
A hungry, naked and homeless man may support a Communist movement if it promises to provide for his wants. For these wants are his daily Hell and he will turn in any direction to find deliverance from it. But he does not by the fact of the satisfaction of temporal needs, thus become a genuine Communist.
A true Communist is a man who has given his mind and heart to the doctrines, morality and ethics of Communism. He has not done so because he has been fed, clothed or housed, but because his spirit has found, or thinks it has found, a principle to live by, to fight for and to propagate.
Man is essentially a spiritual being. He craves a faith, a creed. If he has lost, or never possessed, the faith in God, then he turns elsewhere.
The greatest propagators of Communism are as zealous for the spread of the Communist faith as are the most ardent Christian missionaries for the growth of Christianity.
How else, then, is Communism to be combatted except by Christianity and the powerful arm of Christianity, prayer? To be an effective opponent of Communism it is not sufficient merely to mouth the tenets of Christianity. For then a Christian becomes nothing more than "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals".
A Christian must have burning within him the fire of God's life - grace. And grace comes only through prayer. A Christian in working against Satanic Communism must have Divine aid. This comes only through prayer. The beginning of the end of Communism will come only when men return to the life of God whose vital link with men is prayer.
The Hammer and Sickle will be broken only by the power of prayer.