...the souls of them that were slain for the word of God...

These souls are the martyrs who died because of their beliefs.  They cry out to the Lord "How long" because they are waiting for God's justice, which comes at the end of time, and the wait, for them, seems long. As Peter writes, "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day" (2 Peter 3:8).  They are told to wait even longer until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled, that is, until the full number of martyrs has been reached. This is a matter of importance both for the martyrs themselves and for those who put them to death, because it is the proof of their character.  If the end comes before a martyr makes his stand, then he is cheated of his glory.  If the end comes before an evil person carries out his murderous acts, who can call him a murderer?

This wait is also necessary, so that the condition prophesied by Peter can be fulfilled, "Scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning ..." (2 Peter 3:3-4).  This is the test of the Lord: To see who remains truly faithful and obedient even over a great expanse of time. In order for this test to be meaningful, the gospel of Christ must first be disseminated throughout the world, and then it must come to be perceived as passé.

This has already happened. The world is so full of the Christian message that now one Christian sect attempts to proselytize another.  But the world has already heard this message and grown tired of it--the 'good news' of the gospel has ceased to be news, and its message no longer brings joy because it is not seen as scientifically possible, and so is not believed.  Some have lost faith because the wait, as they see it, has been too long and they feel abandoned. Still others have been bold enough to live according to their own rules, and have persuaded others to follow them, regarding the wrath of God as if it were nothing.

We have even come to the point that even children know something of the following passage from Karl Marx' Introduction to his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law:

The profane existence of error is discredited after its heavenly oratio pro aris et focisa has been disproved. Man, who looked for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and found nothing there but the reflection of himself, will no longer be disposed to find but the semblance of himself, only an inhuman being, where he seeks and must seek his true reality.

The basis of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being encamped outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma.

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.

Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.

And every smart aleck can quote Friederich Nietzche's assessment in Thus Spake Zarathrustra that "God is dead."  When first proposed, these were disgraceful and outlandish views, now they have become mainstream and have been broadcast to all the world.