KARL MARX AD 1818-1883
Matthew 7:16-20 “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
When we look at the philosophy and ideas of these men it would be good to keep in mind the axiom that the Lord laid down in the above verse. Can a bad tree bring forth good fruit? Or, to put it in another way: Can bad character produce good results or good fruit?
According to Paul Johnson (a historian of the modern age), Karl Marx (born in 1818 in Germany), had more impact upon the minds of men and women than perhaps anyone else in modern history. His writings inspired men like Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro – just to name a few. It is said that the Roman Empire killed between 8-10 million people over a period of four hundred years, but these men (inspired by the writing of Karl Marx) killed far more than that in the 20th century alone. What will the 21st century hold?
Here is a man that did not deny the existence of God, but denied the supremacy of God, and thought of himself as god. Kevin Swanson brings out that when reading a record of his writings and personal thoughts one is struck with the language, words and actions of Satan himself. (Isaiah14:12-15; Matthew 4:10; Cain in Genesis 4:1-8 as well as Judas in Matthew 26:49) Looking back one wonders if this man was possessed by the devil himself.
When he was young he wrote in his poem called Invocation of One in Despair: “So a god has snatched from me my all, in the curse and rack of destiny. All his worlds are gone beyond recall. Nothing but revenge is left to me. I shall build my throne high overhead.”
What does Satan say in Isaiah 14:14? “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Pastor who was put into prison and suffered persecution under his government, wrote the famous book Tortured for Christ where he tells about his experience. In the late sixties soon after his release from prison I heard him speak in one of our Operation Mobilization conferences.
In his book Satan and Marx he said this about Karl Marx’s religious commitments: “Lunatcharski, a leading philosopher who was once minister of education of the U.S.S.R., wrote in Socialism and Religion that Marx set aside all contact with God and instead put Satan in front of marching proletarian columns. It is essential at this point to state emphatically that Marx and his comrades, while anti-God, were not atheists, as present-day Marxists claim to be. That is, while they openly denounced and reviled God, they hated a God in whom they believed. They did not question His existence, but rather challenged His supremacy. When the revolution broke out in Paris in 1871, the Communard Flourens declared, ‘Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom.’”
In a work called The Last Judgment Marx mocks God and in another poem called The Player Marx speaks in the first person and says: “The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain. Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed. See this sword. The prince of darkness sold it to me. For me he beats the time and gives the signs. Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.”
It would seem that Marx’s goal is destruction and we know from various New Testament verses that this is the agenda of the prince of demons who is known as Apollyon or Abaddon which is translated the “Destroyer.”
The weakening of the Christian West did not come about through one man. If there had not been the ideas of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant eroding the Christian roots there would probably not have been a Karl Marx. Again we see how idea upon idea or brick upon brick a fortress is built over a period of time – that needs to be torn down.
Karl Marx’s personal life was a disaster. Swanson, in his book Apostate says that out of the seven children by his wife Jenny and a child born from his maid, five died prematurely and two who out lived him committed suicide. His favorite daughter Eleanor married Edward Aveling, a Satanist known for his lectures on the “Wickedness of God.”
Marx’s life was filled with violent explosive arguments with his family that separated him from his mother as well as from his wife on occasions.
He blamed the Jews for the problems in the world and in an article in the New York Tribune he suggested the complete annihilation of the Jews. He felt that they were a cancer in society because through their organizations they had become so strong that they needed to be cut out of society. He also referred to the Slavic people as “ethnic trash” and prophesied that their very name will vanish.
In the weeklies ahead we will spend more time with Marx’s philosophy and influence, but what is amazing to me is how academia embraces him with such enthusiasm and wonder as one of the great philosophers and thinkers in the modern world.
Yes, he has been embraced by almost every country in the world. Looking back over the 20th century what can we say about the results: good or bad? If we are honest we need to choose the latter.