By Elizabeth Prata
We read in history of the great missionaries like John G. Paton, the great preachers like Spurgeon, or the great theologians like Jonathan Edwards. Those are edifying reads. It’s good to know about those who went before us to bring the Gospel, their efforts and trials on behalf of Jesus.
But for every Paul preaching in Philippi, there is a demon-possessed slave girl following and shouting. (Acts 16:16-18). In other words, satan is going to combat, try to thwart, and oppose every single move of God that he can, he and his myriad of fallen angels turned demons.
Just as there are great men of God, there are great men of satan. Of course, we know of some already, Germany’s Hitler, China’s Mao…and the ultimate man of satan, the future Antichrist. But beyond the famous evil men, there are others you may not know of.
There was a superstar in the 1800s named Robert Ingersoll. He lived from 1833 to 1899. He was a lawyer, a writer, and a spectacular orator during the latter part of the century. Did you know there was an organized, liberal movement called Golden Age of Freethought? Sparked by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution (of course) and scientific advances of the day. The movement went from about 1860+ or so (Civil War era) to 1914, or WWI. It touted ‘science’ and ‘reason’ instead of religion. It was the first movement that separated the two.
The Golden Age of Freethought Movement proposed the separation of church and state and pushed women’s rights, to name two we are still dealing with today. The era began a massive expansion of those and other secular ideas. Robert Ingersoll was a prominent advocate in this movement.
His signature feature was opposing God. He didn’t believe in Him, to a pronounced degree, and he spent the latter part of his life campaigning across the US for people to release themselves from the limiting thought of religion. He was dubbed “the Great Agnostic”.
As he traveled the country advocating for secular ideas and denouncing God at every turn in his speeches. His skill at speaking was unparalleled, as noted by the Elmira Telegram in 1890-
“He is always thinking and always at work, and as a result as a writer and speaker he is never uneven or uncertain. He had highly developed the faculty of thinking upon his feet and is one of the best of extempore speakers.” The Elmira Telegram, Sunday, March 16, 1890.
In his time, I can’t state enough how colossal of a celebrity Ingersoll was. He was dubbed the nation’s foremost agnostic and orator. Crowds of up to 50,000 people filled the largest auditoriums.
Auditoriums bursting with audiences clamored to hear him and his ‘ideas’. It was really the first time someone had dared to oppose God so publicly and to bring to the secular world lectures delivered with such outstanding skill. Audiences could not get enough. This article said, “for by the time he began speaking, many Americans were confirmed lecture addicts, hooked on hearing speakers of whatever persuasion.” It reminds me of the verse in Acts 17:21–
(Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)
As Ingersoll grew in stature and became known for his hatred of Christianity, Ingersoll was opposed for a time by prominent Brooklyn preacher T. DeWitt Talmage. The two of them had a series of back and forth lectures and essays. Talmage, a devout minister, fervently rejected Ingersoll’s secular hatred of Christianity. Talmage had become outraged by Ingersoll’s lectures that questioned the divine inspiration of the Bible and contemptuously mocked religious orthodoxy. Here is one small part of Ingersoll’s reply to Talmage-
First, what is the origin of the crime known as blasphemy? It is the belief in a God who is cruel, revengeful, quick tempered and capricious; a God who punishes the innocent for the guilty; a God who listens with delight to the shrieks of the tortured and gazes enraptured on their spurting blood. You must hold this belief before you can believe in the doctrine of blasphemy. ~Ingersoll’s Lecture on “Blasphemy”
Detractors accused him of “oratorical witcheries.”
In his speeches, Ingersoll accused God of all manner of crimes. And then, he developed his greatest schtick of all. The Five-Minute Challenge. After spending time in his lectures denouncing God, he would state to the enraptured audience, that if there is a God he challenged Him to strike himself dead within five minutes! Ingersoll would take out his pocket watch and count down each minute. The audiences grew still, then tense, then unbearably overwrought and near panic. Reportedly sometimes women would faint. Some would rush out of the room into the cool night air of the street.
At the end of the five minutes, Ingersoll would snap his watch shut and exultantly claim that ‘there must be no God, I am still alive!’
As the story goes, at some point this all was related to an influential English congregationalist minister across the Atlantic Ocean to a Dr. Joseph Parker. He calmly rejoined-
“And did the American gentleman think he could exhaust the patience of God in five minutes?”
For all Ingersoll’s violence against Christianity, Ingersoll was noted as a compassionate family man, loving and viewed even as noble. He was light years ahead of his time in speaking for the abolition of slavery, against cruelty to animals, racial prejudice, and lynching. People liked him. Rather than a man with flinty disposition and weaselly eyes to be avoided, he was jovial, relaxed, and kind. Opposition to God comes in all forms.
The Elmira Telegram ended their lengthy sketch of Ingersoll’s life this way- “Of a certainty, the man who could write such words as these has a heart that beats warm and true. Granted that Robert Ingersoll’s influence on his generation has been on the whole harmful, … [but] For this, and for his manhood, his morality, his benevolence, his broad and unfailing humanity, let none refuse to do him honor.“
Harmful indeed. There was no way to avoid saying that, even in a biography as promotional as that one in the Elmira newspaper of long ago.
And yet, we Christians can end it this way-
It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31).
Upon a relaxing summer day, pleasantly visiting his son-in-law’s home with the family, Robert Ingersoll had a sudden heart attack and drew his last breath. Immediately after, he drew his next breath when he faced the very God he had so long campaigned against, denied, mocked, and blasphemed. And so he learned of his dreadful mistake, and will be re-learning it forever and ever.
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:20-25).
the-end-time.org 