Marx
Renewing Your Mind
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Few philosophies in the history of civilization have promised more and produced less than Marxism. Today, R.C. Sproul considers the disastrous effects of Karl Marx's attempts to overthrow the religious and economic foundations of the Western world.
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Meet Today's Teacher:
R.C. Sproul (1939–2017) was founder of Ligonier Ministries, first minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel, first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine.
Meet the Host:
Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.
Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's probably been no philosophical system that has had such a rapid and radical impact |
| 0:05.7 | on people's lives in the history of the West and the East, then Marxism. |
| 0:11.3 | And yet at the same time, there's probably never been a philosophy that promised more |
| 0:16.7 | and produced less than this one. |
| 0:28.6 | Over the past few days, we've considered a number of philosophers and the consequences of their ideas. |
| 0:31.6 | And although you can find echoes of their thinking all around us, |
| 0:35.6 | today you'll hear the ideas of one man that |
| 0:39.6 | have more than an echo and can be heard almost every time you turn on the news or scroll through |
| 0:45.7 | social media. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham and welcome to the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind. |
| 0:52.7 | So, who was Karl Marx? |
| 0:55.0 | And what happened in his life that helped to shape his devastating ideas? |
| 1:00.0 | Here's Dr. Sprawl. |
| 1:04.0 | When we studied the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant, I said that the revolution in ideas that was precipitated by Kant's work |
| 1:13.3 | had greater impact on American civilization than our actual government revolution of 1776. |
| 1:22.5 | But if there's any philosopher whose thinking had a greater impact on the whole of Western civilization, and in |
| 1:31.2 | a short period of time, it would be that of Karl Marx. |
| 1:36.2 | I mentioned that when I was in high school, there were two billion people on the face of |
| 1:40.8 | this earth, and by 1965, the number of people who were under the regimes |
| 1:47.0 | of communist government and who lived behind the Iron Curtain were two billion people. |
| 1:53.2 | That is, the same number of people who populated the entire globe in 1957, just a few |
| 1:59.9 | years later, as the world progressed in its population, it reached |
| 2:04.9 | that same number of those who were under the tyranny of Marxist governments. |
... |
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