Now Nephi makes a prediction which was fulfilled in the lifetime of this present generation. Nephi said men pretending to be ministers of the gospel will preach that since Christ has performed his great mission the power of God is now conferred upon mankind so there is no God in heaven any longer. They will claim that there once was a God, but there is no God today because God has allowed man to become his own God. He has conferred upon man the right and responsibility to ordain his own destiny and create his own system of values.
What a shock to traditional Christians to have Time magazine announce this new theory that God is dead and we can now worship “the great humanity divine.” In other words, man is now God and the original Creator has left humanity to his own devices. This theory of so-called Christian atheism was concocted by Reverend Thomas J. J. Altizer of Emery University in Atlanta, Georgia. He literally fulfilled Nephi’s prophecy and the “God is dead” cult swept like a wave among the cynical elements in higher education. Students and faculty at some universities wore huge buttons declaring “God is dead.” At that time I was lecturing in New England where the fad had really caught on, so I had a large button made up of my own which said: “My God is alive. Sorry about yours.”