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Attracted to communism in his youth, he spend a few years in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, which turned him into an anti-communist.
In his 1969 book Jesus Rediscovered, Muggeridge brazenly rejected Christ’s virgin birth, deity, miracles, prophecies, and bodily resurrection. He theorized that some “body-snatcher” stole Jesus’ body. Following are some excerpts:
“To imagine this deity having a son in any particular sense, and this son to have been born of a virgin, and to have lived on earth for thirty years or so as a man; then to have died and to have risen from the dead is, as far as I am concerned, beyond credibility" (Jesus Rediscovered, Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1969, p. 95).
"Christ's mother, Mary, conceived him out of wedlock but believed, when an inner voice, or angel, told her that her pregnancy was divinely ordained" (Jesus Rediscovered, 1969, p. 1).
“I even prefer to suppose that some body-snatcher, accustomed to hanging about Golgotha to pick up anything that might be going, heard in his dim-witted way that the King of the Jews was up for execution. Good! he thinks: there are bound to be pickings there. So he waits till the job is done, finds out where the corpse has been laid, drags the stone away and then, making sure no one is watching, decamps with the body. What a disappointment for him! This King of the Jews has no crown, no jewels, no orbs, no scepter, no ring; he is just a worthless, wasted, broken, naked body. The man contemptuously abandons the body to the vultures, who in their turn leave the bones to whiten in the sun -- those precious, precious bones!” (Jesus Rediscovered, pp. 56, 57).
By 1974, Muggeridge professed to be a Christian of sorts, but he was never sound in the faith. He still denied the divine inspiration of Scripture as well as Jesus’ miracles, prophecies, and bodily resurrection. In his 1975 book Jesus: The Man Who Lives, which was supposed to be his Christian testimony, Muggeridge said it is likely that the events of the resurrection, such as the empty tomb and the stone rolled away, could not have been caught on camera, and he continued to propose the wicked body snatching theory.
“The story of Jesus as recounted in the Gospels is true to the degree that it can be, and is believed; its truth must be looked for in the hearts of believers rather than in history... Looking for Jesus in history is as futile as trying to invent a yardstick which will measure infinity" (Jesus, the Man Who Lives).
“I like to think the loaves and fishes were refreshments which one person had prudently brought, and then, under the inspiration of Jesus' teaching, offered to help meet the general need; whereupon others followed suit, so that it turned out there was plenty for everyone, and even some basketsful to spare” (Jesus, the Man Who Lives, pp. 53, 54).
"As for Jesus' apocalyptic utterances--all imaginative minds are prone to them, as equally to utopian fantasies. A heightened consciousness of human imperfection points to the imminence of some cosmic catastrophe, as a heightened awareness of human potentialities points to the possibility of living happily ever after" (Jesus, the Man Who Lives, p. 94).
“It may equally be doubted whether, if television cameras had happened to be set up at the entrance to the tomb in which Jesus was laid, they would have recorded the removal of the stone which sealed the tomb, or the emergence from it of the risen Jesus” (Jesus, the Man Who Lives, p. 183).
Not surprisingly, Muggeridge had no testimony of the new birth, stating that his “conversion” was a “lifelong journey.”
In 1982, Muggeridge converted to the Roman Catholic Church. He said his conversion was inspired by the example of Mother Teresa.
In spite of Muggeridge’s unbelief and heresies, Billy Graham invited him to speak at the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. He was presented as a true Christian and no warnings were given.
In February 1978, Muggeridge spoke at at the National Religious Broadcaster’s annual conference, again presented to this major evangelical forum as a true Christian.
That same month, he was also featured as a speaker at the Religious Education Congress of Laity, a Roman Catholic organization devoted to “break through the traditional barriers between liberals and conservatives.” He said, “Conversion means waking up in one form or another to accept reality in place of fantasy.” He did not mention the gospel of Jesus Christ. He closed his message with the pitiful statement, “I hope that explains conversion--its all I know about” (FEA News & Views, May/June 1978).
Modern evangelicalism is shot through and through with heretical thinking, and even those who are biblically sound to some degree are dangerous bridges to rank error.
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