[Darris McNeely] It’s been one year ago that two Muslim terrorists, two brothers, entered the offices of the Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo, the militant atheist newspaper, and killed twelve people. They’re marking that anniversary this week with a commemorative issue of Charlie Hebdo, and on the cover of this issue, they have an image of an old man carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. Actually, it’s not an old man – it’s a depiction of God.  The headline reads this: “One year on, the killer is still on the run.” From their point of view, the newspaper’s editorial point of view, the killer is God.

And that represents the view of militant atheism today when it comes to explaining war, terrorism, and the clashes that we are seeing today. They blame it on religion. And not just Islam but all religions. And so, we have here a very interesting story that is playing out because this even impacts the society within Paris. Of course Paris has had another terrorist attack in November of last year where more people were killed, about 130 people in that particular attack, and it’s got the entire city on edge.

But last year, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, all people came out, all faiths came out to support the newspaper and in shock and horror at what had taken place. And this year, with this cover depicting God – and therefore all religion – is to blame for the problems, others feel slighted as a result. What this really does show is that atheism, in its purest form, does blame religion for the world’s problems, both great and small.

I’ve been doing a research and writing a Beyond Today program that we will tape later here called “The End of Atheism” and we will show in that that there’s going to be coming a time of even greater turmoil and upheaval in our world, where even atheists will become believers for a period of time and bring about the end, or near-end, of atheism. And yet we haven’t seen that. And evidence of this particular approach here with this newspaper is quite interesting to note.

It is also interesting, in the wake of last year, last January’s massacre, the subscription rate to this magazine jumped and skyrocketed when it had just been barely edging along. Now it’s gone back to more normal levels, just a little bit above the pre-massacre levels. Atheism is a faith. And as people, in a sense, flocked around to that in the wake of this tragedy, now things have gone somewhat back to normal and people have gone on with their lives, the interest and perhaps the support or the circulation of this newspaper has gone back.

The same thing has happened even nationally with other large events. The 9/11 tragedies, America brought out a great wave of enthusiasm and support for religion. Church attendance went up, but a few months later, church attendance was back down to the pre-attack levels.

Life goes on. Life has gone on even here for the faith of atheism. And yet there’s a very important point for us to note. God is not the cause of this, but God has the solution. And so, again, “a fool says in his heart that there is no God.” It’s important that all of us understand the true God, His true ways, and be prepared to understand not only events like this and terrorism that’s taking place in the world today but what these and other events will lead to in the future, to keep ourselves from ultimately being deceived in a time of great deception that lies ahead.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.