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This article is a warning.

A difference with Dewitt is that unlike the Hitchens and Dawkins crowd, whose railing against God and equating all Christianity with militant Islam indicates a personal war against the God they deny (and moral authority), having been raised in the Bible belt and been part of it, Dewitt says,

“Religion does a lot of good, especially the loving kind, like at Grace Church.”

The reasons for his decline into atheism is not hard to surmise. It seems the man had a true conversion, and that God was confirming His word thru him with evidences following, but the just shall live by faith, which requires we live in such a way that we must see God act, and it must be tested, and this has two aspects, as seen in Heb. 11:32-40.

The one is believing God for help and deliverance and seeing it many times in correspondence to obedience to the Scriptures, defying in quality or quantity that this is mere coincidence or naturalistic, and the other is enduring in faith when we do not see deliverance as we wish. Some in faith turned back armies, and escaped the edge of the sword, and others had to seek refuges in caves, or were sawn asunder! Both saw deliverance and victory, but the latter must go thru the fire. As must the church of the living God.

And reading Dewitts testimony, i see that part of the problem was the word of faith theology which has no room for the latter, as he relates how one middle-aged woman in his church who was suffering from heart disease asked him anxiously: “How am I going to believe for salvation when I can’t believe enough to heal?”

However, this may simply may have served as a justification for his atheism, which really has it reasons in a spiritual declension resulting from not cleaving to God with purpose of heart, (Acts 11:23) and yielding to other affections,and or failing his own testing of faith when perhaps he did not see God moving as before, or seem as close.

Rather than persevering as seeing Him who is invisibly, as even Job could, and as the hymn goes, “when darkness hides His lovely face, i trust in His unchanging grace,” and taking a stand to trust God no matter what, he listened to the voice of the devil who is happy to give reasons to doubt and reject God, and knows our weakness, and progressively realized an “evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God” which the book of Hebrews (3:12) warns, this being the book he needed to esp. heed.

And i speak as one who cannot rationally deny the existence of God in the life of faith, even presently, but whose faith has been and is tested due to the above course, and can see how it can come about, and who must not be double minded but look in faith to the author and perfecter of faith, who shall perfect that which concerneth us(Ps. 138:8) as we rely on and yield to Him, denying self and more completely setting affection on things above.

Let us therefore pray for each other, and “exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin,” (Hebrews 3:13) which includes doubt.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The word of faith theology is insidious. It does lead to wrong conclusions, as that lady referenced indicated. I’ve had my own similar struggle with that kind of theology and the way that Satan can use it to attack one’s faith.

This poor guy is rejecting the wrong thing. He should not have rejected God because he couldn’t reconcile Him to his theology, but rather rejected the theology because it doesn’t reconcile with God (as revealed in Scripture).

This is what happens when one tries to intellectualize God. God and how He works cannot be reduced to a formula and we cannot force His hand no matter how much *faith* we work up within ourselves, or how much we are convinced that HE HAS to act in a certain way.

The practice of claiming certain verses and demanding that God perform in a certain way because of how we interpret them is doomed to failure and to destroy people’s faith. The main result is usually guilt and condemnation heaped on the person (like this lady) for whom God allegedly did not come through for her as she was told He would.

Name it and claim it theology is nothing but entitlement mentality, It leaves no room for God’s sovereignty. It is essentially self-serving, using God as a sugar daddy instead of letting God be God.

I think the secret lies in this comment:

All he had ever wanted was to be a comfort and a support to the people he grew up with,

When I became a Christian I wasn't interested in comforting and supporting people. Rather I was interested in knowing God. And I would suggest all Christians are like this. It is only through understanding God can we understand the depths of our depravity.

If all this person wanted to do was to comfort people, he should have been a Wal-Mart greeter. That is not the aim of a Christian but is a result of being a Christian. His decline into atheism, assuming he won't repent, is simply because he was never a Christian in the first place.

1Jn 2:19-21 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

As John states, it should be plain that he was not of us. If one wonders about testing themselves to see if they are in the faith, all they must do is ask themselves if they believe the promises of God and trust Him to fulfill what He has said.

Let us therefore pray for each other, and “exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin,” (Hebrews 3:13) which includes doubt.

Amen! And it is a "hardening" that happens which means it is a gradual process. You don't go from exalting in joy in fellowship with your Creator and Savior one day and slip into unbelief the next. The life of faith is an ongoing one that is fed and nurtured just as any other relationship is. A husband and wife, who tend to their marriage through love and self-sacrifice will rarely, if ever, wake up the next day and want out - and that's human to human. We have a Heavenly Father who is always there, always faithful, always loving and always forgiving and, though we may not physically see His face, we see His grace and touch all around our lives. The walk of life, the race we run, is one of endurance through the good and the bad times assisted by God's grace through the presence of the Holy Spirit within us bearing witness with our spirit that we ARE the children of God.

Everyone goes through periods of self doubt - I would question the sincerity of someone's faith who say he hasn't ever weathered them. It is part of being finite, mortal human beings. But, a well-tended garden is one that grows more lush and beautiful as time goes by and being well-tended means that there has to be pruning, as well. Just as gold becomes more pure the more it is tempered with fire:

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire —may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (I Peter 1:6-9)