I grew up in the 50’ and sixties in what I thought was a pretty peaceful time. I then lived in New Zealand. I was keeping a scrapbook on the Vietnam war because I was sure we were going to win it. My Father and Uncles all fought in the second world war, my grandfather in the First World war and my Pop whom I can remember, who lived to be over 100, came to NZ as a Redcoat to fight in the Maori wars. It was a surprise for me, as I matured, to discover the amount of genocide that spaned the century into which I was born. I used to think Hitler just wanted more power and land, the realisation of how he wanted to achieve his master race was an unfolding awareness. The big 20th century genocidal maniacs were motivated either by religion or by a desire to destroy religion. The atheistic regimes won hands down. They were practicing social Darwinism.

Over the last 100 years 28 countries ruled by atheistic regimes, governed by 89 avowed atheists like Stalin and Mao Zedong have been responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 40,472,000 and 259,432,000 human lives. That’s in 100yrs! Compare that to 1000yrs of Papal rule in Europe during the Middle Ages, where this antichristian power is estimated to have exterminated between 50 & 150,000,000 million Christian ‘heretics.’
Robespierre’s reign of terror during the French Revolution in the late 18th century established a state which was both anti-Roman Catholic and anti-Christian in nature. It was the first atheistic regime in modern Europe. It slaughtered by guillotine, and other gruesome methods, an estimated 300,000 people and promoted secularism and militant atheism.

The French Revolution, especially the Reign of Terror in 1793, would also inspire Karl Marx with the Communist manifesto. Marx told Frederick Engels in correspondences to each other: “There is only one way of shortening, simplifying, and concentrating the bloodthirsty death-throes of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new—revolutionary terror… Once we are at the helm, we shall be obliged to re-enact the year 1793.”
One of the most well-known ties to government mass murder is communism which caused the death of approximately 110,286,000 people between 1917 and 1987. Just 70 years!

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world. According to Christianity our biggest problem is sin. Yet the concept of ‘sin’ is offensive and ludicrous to many. This is because we don’t understand what Christians mean by the term. Sin is a wrecked relationship with God, with one another and with the whole creative order. “All sins are attempts to fill voids” wrote Simone Weil. We try and fill the void, but there is only one thing that will truly satisfy.