QUOTE OF THE WEEK [SUNDAY 8 JULY 2012 TO SATURDAY 14 JULY 2012]

QUOTE: Peter's Journey Back to Faith [Atheism Aside: Peter Hitchens' Journey to Faith Monday, December 27, 2010 (Originally broadcast July 23, 2010. ) by Dale Hurd CBN News Sr. Reporter]

In his book, Peter said his return to Christianity was a process over many years. He writes about a moment in his journey back to faith when, as an atheist, he genuinely feared God.

It was when he gazed on Rogier van der Weyden's painting "The Last Judgment," which shows the terror on the faces of those condemned to Hell.  

"They've obviously just heard the last trump," Peter said. "And one of them was actually vomiting with fright."

"And it just came through that I might be judged. And I was scared. I still am," he revealed. "One of my reasons for my change is that I am scared. But then again, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." 

AUTHOR: Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is a British columnist and author noted for his traditionalist conservative stance. He has published five books, including The Abolition of Britain, A Brief History of Crime, The Broken Compass and The Rage Against God. Hitchens writes for Britain's The Mail on Sunday newspaper. A former foreign correspondent based in Moscow and later Washington, Hitchens continues to work as an occasional foreign reporter, and appears frequently in the British broadcast media. He is the younger brother of the late writer Christopher Hitchens.

In 2010 Hitchens was described by Edward Lucas in The Economist as "a forceful, tenacious, eloquent and brave journalist. Readers with long memories may remember his extraordinary coverage of the revolution in Romania in 1989, or more recently his intrepid travels to places such as North Korea. He lambasts woolly thinking and crooked behaviour at home and abroad".

Hitchens, a former atheist, is a member of the Church of England and an advocate of moral virtues founded on Christian faith and institutions such as marriage, which he argues have since the 1960s been undermined by social liberals and cultural Marxists. Hitchens defends the use of the Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer and King James Bible. Of the latter, he has written "it is not simply a translation, but a poetic translation, written to be read out loud...to lodge in the mind and to disturb the temporal with the haunting sound of the eternal".