He read a couple of books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and they made a big impression on a too easily impressionable man.
I have a strong suspicion that Mr. Dewitt will find his way back to the Lord after a couple of years in the wilderness, and he'll regret his foolish ways.
I hope and pray that you are correct!
Maybe; hopefully, this man will achieve Daniel 4:34 -
"And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation"
When you quit turning your back on God, you always find him right there next to you.
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.