I am James Hong and welcome to the Surpassing Value Podcast. The fuel and desire for this podcast was born out of a compulsion to flesh out what's been going on in the midst of an ocean of megaphones that may not actually withstand the test of scrutiny. As a signpost theologian, I will do my best to filter out the impurities and point people in the right direction.

For episode number 8, I wanted to continue our journey into Marxism. I last left off by quoting to you various portions of the 1963 US Communist Party goals. That was relevant because you were able to see how Marxism had influenced and fleshed out its principles into explicit goals. I'm going to quote to you some of them which were already quoted in the last episode, but just to kind of start us off.

And I quote, "Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for "socialism" and current "communist" propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize a need for intellectual maturity which does not need a religious crutch.

Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of separation of church and state. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis." At the last episode I left off with two questions.

In the event that you're thinking to yourself that 1963 is somehow outdated, I wanted to quote from the U.S. Communist Party of today, of today. This is from their website, quote, "The roots of the Communist Party extend deep into our nation's soil, even far beyond our founding in Chicago in 1919.

We build on the legacy of those who fought against slavery for the right to organize unions, for civil rights, and for women's vote and reproductive rights. We apply the scientific outlook developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others in the context of U.S. history, culture, and traditions. The need for the Communist Party is as great as ever.

Capitalism has cast billions of people around the world into poverty. It afflicts humanity with endless wars. It institutionalizes racism and women's oppression, denies youth the hope of a future, and fuels discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender people, religious minorities, immigrants, and people with disabilities. Capitalism pits worker against worker in a global race to the bottom.

Corporate interests wage a never-ending campaign to roll back people's hard-won democratic rights. Capitalism's insatiable drive for profits has poisoned the earth's land, sea, and air. Capitalism treats people and nature as disposable commodities in order to transfer the wealth of the planet to a handful of multi-millionaires. Our basic principles are rooted in today's struggles, informed by our history and experience, and guided by our scientific outlook and vision of socialism.

Our bedrock principles include the leading role of the working class in the struggle for social change. That working class unity is essential, and the fight against racism and for immigrant rights are essential to build that unity. In solidarity with working people around the world, we stand in opposition to U.S.

imperialism, the system by which U.S. corporations use their economic power, along with the political and military power of our government, to exploit workers, pillage the environment, and corrupt governments around the world, just as they do here at home." Much of the language that I quoted to you just now, do you see that in politics today?

Do you see that in politics today? And what I quoted to you, an ever-present dialogue in politics today. Now you can see, by connecting the dots, Marxism is much more present than we have been led to believe. It is not benign, it is not even neutral. This is an all-encompassing worldview that is completely at odds with what most people believe to be good.

It is completely at odds with the worldview of the scriptures. Socialism and communism share very little differences, if at all, if at all. It is for that reason, it is for that reason that one of the Communist Party's goals was, and I quote, "get control of the schools, use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda," unquote.

That's one of the goals. And then I quoted to you today's goals. And in today's goals, that has become the marching beat of what you hear on the news. And no, Nordic countries like Denmark and Sweden are not socialist countries. They are capitalist countries with a high safety net.

There's a huge difference. As I make these statements to you, I'm not trying to convince you to become a good Republican. That is not my goal here. As I stated to you earlier in the last episode, the dialectic that is presented, communism or socialism versus capitalism, that's the dialectic that is typically pushed on us by the culture.

And because that dialectic is pushed on us by the culture, many well-intentioned yet naive Christians believe that entering the discussion is not a prudent thing to do because Christians should not be overly engaged in politics. But I've embarked in this discussion, not necessarily for politics per se, although of course all of life touches some political arena to some degree.

But the reason I embarked on this discussion is because of what the Communist Manifesto explicitly states with respect to morality, not just mere politics. When that worldview espouses to destroy, to abolish the nuclear family, to take children away for indoctrination, that is far beyond just mere politics. Also, I'm just giving you the truth of the matter.

I am just giving you the truth of the matter. So as we approach this discussion, do not let the culture's version of what the culture wants you to believe the dialectic is to cast the picture of the framework that we should have. Let me quote to you again from Karl Marx, from the Communist Manifesto to prove my point.

"Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the state? Has it not preached in the place of these charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and mother church? Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heartburnings of the aristocrat." Karl Marx makes absolutely no qualms about wanting his ideology to infiltrate and blend it with Christianity.

No doubt, just like as he was stating, by playing on the Christian's desire to be compassionate and in most cases, to be intentionally ignorant. As I alluded to in the last episode, interestingly enough, Karl Marx and C. H. Spurgeon, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, these two figures occupied the same time and the same place.

They lived during the same time and at the same place. Did Charles Haddon Spurgeon have anything to say about socialism? Let me read to you a couple quotes by C. H. Spurgeon. "Did I hear a whisper that ministers are nowadays very broad and have given up the old gospel?

I know it and I am not surprised. The builders are the first to reject the chosen stone. Christ owes little to preachers, and some of his worst enemies are found in their ranks. Unconverted men are in too many pulpits and are seeking out many inventions to set aside the pure gospel, which exalts Christ Jesus.

Let them alone, the ditches gaping for these blind guides. Our Lord can do without them. He owes his victories to himself and to himself alone, and therefore he let the faith of his people rest in peace, for if they will have patience they shall see greater things than they have yet beheld.

Our text saith that it is not only the Lord's doing and marvelous, but it is marvelous in our eyes, which it could not be if we did not see it. We shall see and we shall marvel. Some of us may have passed away, but you who are younger may live to see modern thought obtain supremacy over human minds.

German rationalism, which has ripened into socialism, may yet pollute the mass of mankind and lead them to overturn the foundations of society. Then advanced principles will hold carnival and free thought will ride with the vice and blood which were years ago the insignia of the age of reason. I say that it will be so, but I should not wonder if it come to pass, for deadly principles are abroad and certain ministers are spreading them.

If it ever should be so, do not, O believers, for a single moment despair, but rest certain that the Lord is about to do a marvelous thing on the earth, and that he will lift up once again the stone which the builders have again refused and cause it to become more than ever the headstone of the corner.

Never dream of defeat; be calm amid all the din of controversy, for the hand which holds the gospel must win the victory. This is the Lord's doing, and we shall see it. In the early days of Christianity, multitudes of Christians were tormented to death because of their faith in Christ Jesus.

There was no excuse for it, for they had done no harm to the state. Christianity does not come into a nation to break up its arrangements or to break down its fabric. All that is good in human society it preserves and establishes. It snaps no ties of the family.

It dislocates no bond of the body politic. There are theories of "socialism" and the like which lead to anarchy and riot. But it is not so with the mild and gentle teaching of Jesus Christ, whose every word is love and patience. Charles Spurgeon saw beyond the dialectic that socialism/communism was merely political.

It is not just merely political. This worldview is antithetical to Christianity. I fear, less than any of you, there should be even the least measure of despising the one lost sheep. Because of the large and philosophical methods which are now so loudly cried up, I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian socialism.

If the wonders are to be brought in, in vast numbers, as I pray they may be, yet must it be accomplished by the bringing of them in one by one, to attempt national regeneration without personal regeneration is to dream of erecting a house without separate bricks. In the vain attempt to work in the gross, we may miss the practical result which would have followed working in detail.

Let us settle it in our minds that we cannot do better than obey the example of our Lord Jesus given us in the text and go after the one sheep which has gone astray. I would not have you exchange the gold of individual Christianity for the base metal of Christian socialism.

"For many a year, by the grand old truths of the gospel, sinners were converted and saints were edified, and the world was made to know that there is a God in Israel. But these are too antiquated for the present cultured race of superior beings. They are going to regenerate the world by democratic socialism, and set up a kingdom for Christ without the new birth or the pardon of sin.

Surely the Lord has not taken away the seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to Baal, but they are, in most cases, hidden away, even as Obadiah hid the prophets in a cave." They are going to regenerate the world by democratic socialism, and set up a kingdom for Christ without the new birth or the pardon of sin.

C.H. Spurgeon saw beyond the mere dialectic that is Marxism versus capitalism. He saw socialism, communism, Marxism for exactly what it was, and he spoke out against it. Spurgeon saw that it wasn't just a mere economic philosophy. Even Karl Marx, even he himself, stated that it wasn't just a mere economic philosophy.

Even he wanted to embed this within Christianity, and he wanted to fool the unsuspecting, or the ones who just don't care. And out of a very naive desire to do good and to be compassionate, one could easily fall sway to this deceptive philosophy. The very fact that I have more quotes by C.H.

Spurgeon that I'm not sharing with you should tell you something. If this isn't enough for you, take a look back upon history. What has been communism's history? What is it? Despicable Nazi Germany was responsible for the death of at least six million, probably six to nine million Jews, between 11 to 25 million people total.

And they are rightfully denounced for their despicable and heinous acts. But what about communism? What about communism? What has been communism's track record in the same plane of thought? Well, Kim Il-sung's North Korea resulted in the deaths of 2 million from 1972 to 1994. Pol Pot's Cambodia resulted in the deaths of 2 million in the 1970s.

Lenin's Stalin resulted in the deaths of 20 million between the 1920s and the 1950s. Mao Zedong's China resulted in the deaths of 65 million between 1943 and 1976. And I haven't even mentioned Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro or anyone from the country of Venezuela. Some have it at 100 million total.

100 million total died as a result of Marxism, communism. They are AKAs, believe me. They are AKAs, as I've just demonstrated. If you're ever interested in this subject a little further, I would suggest to you the Black Book of Communism, the Black Book of Communism. A benign or neutral worldview does not end in the deaths of millions of people.

It just doesn't. Now perhaps you're listening to this and you're not a huge fan of C. H. Spurgeon or history. I'm going to read to you another rather extensive quote, and I'm not going to tell you who said it. But at the end of the long quote, I will tell you who said it.

And internally, judge for yourself whether or not you believe this person before I tell you who said it. "I elicit your undivided attention as I attempt to discuss with you one of the vital issues of our day. It is a rather controversial subject, and yet I think it is the responsibility of the preacher to keep his congregation informed on the major issues of the day, to bring the kind of tenets of our gospel to bear on these various issues.

Now, this will not be the traditional sermon with a text, and you may feel when it's over that it's more of an academic lecture than a moving sermon, but I think it is important for me to discuss the question of communism with you, and so I am using as a subject from which to preach, "Can a Christian be a communist?" Now, there are at least three reasons why I feel obligated as a Christian minister to talk to you about communism.

The first grows out of the fact that communism is having widespread influence in the contemporary world. Like a mighty tidal wave, it has moved through China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and now has ruled within 90 miles of the borders of our nations. More than a billion of the peoples of the world believe in communism, and many of these people have accepted it as a new religion, and they are willing to surrender their total being to this system, a force so potent cannot be ignored.

A second reason that I feel compelled to talk about communism this morning is that it is the only serious rival of Christianity. The other historic and great religions of the world such as Judaism, Muhammadism, Buddhism, and Hinduism may stand as alternatives to Christianity, but for the most formidable competitor that Christianity faces in the world today, we must look to communism.

No one conversant with the hard facts of modern life can deny the truth that communism and Christianity's most serious rival. The third reason that I feel compelled to talk about communism this morning is that it is unfair and certainly unscientific to condemn a system of thought without knowing what that system of thought says and without knowing why it is wrong and why it is evil.

So for these reasons, I choose to talk about this troubling issue. Now let us begin by answering the question which our sermon topic raises, "Can a Christian be a communist?" I answer that question with an emphatic "no." These two philosophies are diametrically opposed. The basic philosophy of Christianity is unalterably opposed to the basic philosophy of communism and all of the dialectics of the logician cannot make them lie down together.

They are contrary philosophies. How then is communism irreconcilable with Christianity? In the first place, it leaves out God and Jesus Christ. Communism is avowedly secularistic and materialist. The great philosopher of communism, Karl Marx, based his total philosophy on what he called dialectical materialism. There was a philosopher by the name of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who had used what he called a dialectical system to analyze concepts and Karl Marx was willing to take Hegel's dialectic.

And then he studied another man by the name of Feuerbach, a German philosopher. This man was a materialist. And so he took the materialism of this man and added it to the dialectic that he got from Hegel and this is why his system is called dialectical materialism. Now what is materialism?

It says in substance that the whole of reality can be explained in terms of matter and motion. In other words, it says that the basic stuff of reality is the material stuff. Materialism says, in substance, that idealism is wrong when it talks about the ultimate reality of mind and spirit and all of that.

Karl Marx was a materialist and he believed that the whole of human history moved on driven by economic forces. This was his idea. There was no place in that system for God. And so from that moment on, communism became an atheistic system. And to this very day, it is atheistic.

It denies the existence of God. And if one goes to Russia, even today, he will find many of the churches filled on Sunday morning. And he will know that in spite of that, the Russian government has had a campaign against religion and against God and belief in God ever since the revolution in 1917.

So that no Christian can be a communist because communism leaves out God. It regards religion psychologically as wishful thinking, regards religion intellectually as a product of fear and ignorance, and it regards religion historically as an instrument serving the ends of exploiters. This is what communism teaches about religion. And so in a real sense, we disagree with this because we believe that history is moved not by economic forces, but by spiritual forces.

We believe that there is a God in this universe, a God who loves his children and a God who works through history for the salvation of man. Consequently, we can't accept communism at that point. A second reason that we can't accept communism is that its methods are opposed to Christianity.

Since for the communists, there is no divine government or no absolute moral order. There are no fixed immutable principles. So force, violence, murder, and lying are all justifiable means to bring about the millennial end. Lenin, the man who was something of the technician of communism, putting the philosophy of Karl Marx into practical action, said on one occasion, "We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, and lawbreaking, withholding and concealing truth." That the followers of Lenin have been willing to act upon these instructions is a matter of history.

For communism, the end justifies the means. There again, we can't go along with this. We believe that there are certain moral principles in this universe that are eternal and absolute. We believe that there are some things right and there are some things wrong. It's wrong to lie. It's always been wrong to lie and will always be wrong.

It's wrong to hate. It has always been wrong and will always be wrong. It's wrong to throw away the precious lives that God gives us in righteous living. It was wrong in 1800 BC and it's wrong in 1962 AD. It's wrong in Russia. It's wrong in China. It's wrong in India.

It's wrong in New York. It's wrong in Atlanta. We believe that there are some things right, eternally and absolutely so, and there are some things wrong. Then, we don't believe that the end justifies the means if those means happen to be bad. For we know that the end represents the means in process and the ideal in the making.

The end is preexistent in the means, and so destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends. Immoral methods cannot achieve moral goals. And so, we disagree with the ethical relativism of communism. In the third place, we have to disagree with communism because the end of communism is the state. I should qualify this by saying that the state in communist theory is a temporary reality, an interim reality, which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges.

Karl Marx talks of that day when there will be a classless society. The ruling class, or rather the workers, what he called the proletariat, will through the revolution take power from the ruling class, which were the producers or the capitalists. And finally, they will come to power and through their power, they will establish a classless society.

He says that while you are on the way to this classless society, that the state is the end. Man becomes only a means to that end. And if any man's so-called rights or liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. And so in the communistic system, you do not have freedom of the press.

You do not have freedom of speech. You do not have freedom of assembly. All these things are under the scrutiny of the state, which is manipulated through the party. And whatever the party says, that must be done. All the freedoms that are dear to us are denied. Man has to be a servant, a dutiful and submissive servant of the state.

The state is omnipotent and supreme, and so if one lived in Russia today, he couldn't just get up and make a speech against the communist party. If one lived in Russia today, he could not write a book saying certain things without the condemnation of the party. He may be searched and even killed.

You remember the great book that Pasternak wrote, and you remember the problems that he faced because there were within that book some things that they didn't like in Russia. It had criticisms of the system." If you are not convinced by what C. H. Spurgeon said, if you are not convinced of communism's objective historical record, will you perhaps be convinced from a sermon from Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.? That was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, let me say, theologically, I don't agree with many points of Dr. King's. My point in quoting him was this. There have been many people across the spectrum that have accurately diagnosed and explicitly called out Marxism, Socialism, Communism for exactly what it is, and they are all the same.

I'm going to say it again, the dialectic that's pushed, that it's Marxism versus capitalism, and therefore, we need not care as Christians, we need not care, that is completely false. Marx himself wanted to push that dialectic so that well-intentioned Christians would be fooled. We need to be sober. We need to be discerning.

I want to read to you 1 John 4, verses 1-6, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.

We are from God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Test every spirit to see whether they are from God." Colossians 2 says something similar, "We are not to be beholden by deceptive philosophies, the elementary principles of this world." And let me tell you, communism, socialism, Marxism, does not confess that Jesus is God.

In fact, it does the exact opposite. It is antagonistic to the Christian worldview, which is why they want to abolish the family, abolish organized religion, and embed themselves and masquerade around as some form of Christianity. Thanks for making it to the end. I'll continue to try to make the journey worth it.

To Him be honor, glory, and eternal dominion, James Harno. Amen. (upbeat music)