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The question is often heard, “What about all the other religions of the world? Isn’t one religion as good as another?”
Few terms in the language of man have been so distorted and misunderstood as that of religion. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant described religion as “Morality or moral action.” Hegel, the philosopher who influenced Hitler’s thinking, said religion was “a kind of knowing.”
“Religion” has many meanings for many people. It can mean the sadistic symbolism of the Manson girls, who cut an “x” on their foreheads; it can be the rituals of Transcendental Meditation or the chants of various cults; or it can suggest quiet meditation within the comforting walls of a church.
Many people say rather proudly, “I’m not very religious,” but in spite of some of his own objections, man is a religious being. The Bible, anthropology, sociology, and other sciences teach us that people long for some sort of religious experience.
My major in college was anthropology, which the dictionary explains as a science dealing with the races, customs, and beliefs of mankind. I have also had the privilege of traveling extensively on every continent. I have found from personal experience that what I learned from anthropology is true: Man has naturally and universally a capacity for religion—and not only a capacity, for the vast majority of the human race practices or professes some form of religion.
Religion can be defined as having two magnetic poles, the biblical and the naturalistic. The biblical pole is described in the teachings of the Bible. The naturalistic pole is explained in all the man-made religions. In humanistic systems there are always certain elements of truth. Many of these faiths have borrowed from Judeo-Christianity; many use portions and incorporate their own fables. Other religions or faiths have in fragments what Christianity has as a whole.
The apostle Paul described the naturalistic pole when he said that men “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Rom. 1:23).
All false religions cut away parts of God’s revelation, add ideas of their own, and come out with various viewpoints that differ from God’s revelation in the Bible. Natural religion does not come from God, but from the natural world He created and that turned away from Him in its pride.
A false religion is like the imitation of high fashion. I’ve read that after an exclusive showing of original designs in one of the fashion centers of the world like Paris, copies will soon appear in the mass merchandising stores under different labels. The very presence of counterfeits prove the existence of the real. There would be no imitations without a genuine product.
God’s original design has always had imitators and counterfeits!
The Birth of Religion
How did all the religions of the world get started? A famous military conqueror from the past was able to state a truth, without realizing that he had charged right past the real Truth. Napoleon Bonaparte stated, “I would believe in a religion if it existed ever since the beginning of time, but when I consider Socrates, Plato, Muhammad, I no longer believe. All religions have been made by man.”
John Bunyan once said, “Religion is the best armor that a man can have, but it’s the worst cloak.”
When did man invent this maze of religion? It began with a couple of fellows who are rather well known. When Adam and Eve had their sons, we might have thought they would have been able to instill in both of them the importance of a right relationship with God. However, Cain wanted to do it his own way. He approached the first altar with his offering of “the fruit of the ground,” trying to regain “paradise” without accepting God’s plan of redemption. Cain brought what he had grown, the distinctive elements of his own culture. Today we would call Cain’s gift his attempt at salvation by works. But God never said we could work our way to heaven.
His brother, Abel, obeyed God and humbly offered the first of his flock in a sacrifice of blood. Abel agreed with God that sin deserved death and could be covered before God only through the substitutionary death of a guiltless sacrifice. Cain deliberately rejected this plan. God demanded a blood sacrifice.
The Bible writers knew that blood was absolutely essential for life. A person or an animal might get along without a leg or an eye. But no animal or man could live without blood. That is why the Old Testament said, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11).
Thus, the Bible teaches that atonement for sin comes only through the shedding of blood. “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22, NIV).
When we speak of the blood of Christ, therefore, we are saying that He died for us. Blood sacrifice underlined the seriousness of sin. Sin was a life-and-death matter. Only the shedding of blood could atone for sin. The death of Christ also underlined the principle of substitution. In the Old Testament a sacrificed animal was seen as a substitute; the innocent animal took the place of the guilty person. In the same way, Christ died in our place. He was innocent, but He freely shed His blood for us and took our place. We deserved to die for our sins, but He died in our place.
Because of Christ’s death for us, we can know His life—now and eternally. “Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things . . . but with precious blood . . . of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18-19).
When Cain chose to go his way, not God’s way of blood, something bitter happened to his heart. He began to hate his brother, Abel. Just as the true Christian believer will often not be accepted by those who have their man-made religion, Abel was not accepted by Cain, and this hatred festered until Cain killed his brother.
Pride, jealousy, and hatred have been in the human heart in all cultures and all ages. Many years ago when I was a student in Florida, a young man killed his older brother in a fit of jealousy. His father and mother had both been killed in an automobile crash, and when the will was read it indicated that the older brother had received two-thirds of an orange grove, leaving only a third to the younger brother. He became moody and depressed, angry at his deceased parents, and intensely jealous of his brother. Then the older brother disappeared, and about six weeks later his body was found tied with wire to the trunk of a cypress tree in a river.
Times haven’t changed. Millions want salvation, but on their own terms; they want to chart their own courses and devise all kinds of routes to lead to God.
If Christianity is true, it is not a religion. Religion is man’s effort to reach God. The dictionary describes religion as a “belief in God or gods . . . or worship of God or gods.” Religion can be anything! But true Christianity is God coming to man in a personal relationship.
The modern interest in the occult and in Eastern religions is indicative of man’s eternal search for God. We cannot escape the fact that man is instinctively religious, but God has chosen to reveal Himself to us through nature, conscience, the Scriptures, and through Jesus Christ. The Scripture says there is no excuse for a person not to know God!
In the Name of “Religion”
It’s no wonder that people say with satisfaction, “I’m not religious.” Extreme cruelties and great injustices have been perpetrated in the name of religion.
In China when my wife was growing up, frequently babies who died before cutting their teeth were thrown out to be eaten by pariah dogs. The people feared that if evil spirits thought they cared too much for the children they would come and take another one. They tried to prove their indifference in this crude way. “Religion” impressed Ruth as being grim and joyless, and often cruel.
I once saw a man in India lying on a bed of spikes. He had been there for many days, eating no food and drinking little water. He was attempting to atone for his sins. Another time in Africa I saw a man walk on coals of fire. Supposedly, if he came through unscathed, he was accepted by God; if he was burned, he was considered to be a sinner in need of more repentance.
In India a missionary who passed the banks of the Ganges noticed a mother sitting by the riverbank with two of her children. On her lap was a beautiful new baby and whimpering beside her was a painfully retarded child of about three. On her return home that night, the missionary saw the young mother still sitting at the riverbank, but the baby was gone and the mother was trying to comfort her little retarded child. Horrified at what she thought might be true, the missionary hesitated a moment and then walked over to the mother and asked her what had happened. With tears streaming down her cheeks, the mother looked up and said, “I don’t know about the god in your country, but the god in mine demands the best.” She had given her perfect baby to the god of the Ganges.
People have made human sacrifices in the name of religion. They have worshiped all types of idols, from brass monkeys to trees. In some of the Pacific islands, for instance, some of the islanders believe that the souls of their ancestors are in certain trees. Offerings are made to the tree, and they believe that if any injury occurs to the tree, some misfortune will come upon the village. They fear that if the tree were cut down, the village and all its inhabitants would inevitably perish.
In the name of religion, kings, emperors, and leaders of nations and tribes have been worshiped as gods. One English scholar wrote, “At a certain stage of early society the king or priest is often thought to be endowed with supernatural powers or to be an incarnation of a deity; . . . he is held responsible for bad weather, failure of the crops, and similar calamities.”1
An example of the class of monarchs worshiped as deity was the Mikado, the spiritual emperor of Japan. In an official decree he received the title of “manifest or incarnate deity.” An early account says of the Mikado: “It was considered as a shameful degradation for him even to touch the ground with his foot. . . . None of the superfluities of the body were ever taken from him, neither his hair, his beard, nor his nails were cut.”2
Many people will shrug at “religion” and agree with the philosophy professor from a prestigious American university who wrote: “The term ‘religion’ has come into use as a label for referring all at once to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Confucianism, as well as a great many other siblings, some of whom have proper names and some of whom do not, but all of whom are taken to be sufficiently similar to the seven mentioned here to make it useful to lump them together.”3
Can we really lump Christianity with every “religion” of the world?
Without Excuse
From the very beginning of time, “natural” religion was introduced onto the human stage as a substitute for God’s plan. The apostle Paul describes this phenomenon in his letter to the Romans, using references to images resembling birds, animals, and serpents to illustrate man-made religion. But this doesn’t describe all its forms. Today there are many new and more sophisticated religious expressions—especially at some universities—but they are really from the same root: man seeking God consciously or unconsciously.
Paul describes man’s corruption of God’s revelation: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. . . . For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom. 1:20-25).
Paul was simply saying that all men everywhere possess at least a primitive knowledge of God. Some people greet this idea with cynicism, which initiates the inevitable question: What about the pagans who have never heard of Jesus?
What about the pagans on Main Street, U.S.A., or the pagans at Oxford or the Sorbonne? God created all of us in His image; everyone is answerable to the light that He revealed to them. How can a just God condemn people who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel? The answer is in Genesis 18:25: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (KJV).
God’s nature will bear witness of a divine power and person to whom everyone will answer. On the other side, God’s justice will be exhibited against those who fail to live up to the light that He has given them.
In my lifetime, I have heard of many instances in which people have been given insight into the “eternal power and divine nature” of God, without benefit of a Bible or an evangelistic crusade.
In the mid 1950s, we held a major crusade in Madras, India. One man walked over 120 miles to attend these meetings. I was told that this man came from a village that had never had a missionary and, so far as anyone knew, the gospel of Christ was completely unknown. Yet he longed with all his heart to know the true and living God. He heard that a “guru” from America was going to be speaking, and his desire for God was so intense that he came and found Christ. Eight months later when Bishop Newbigin of the Church of South India (who told me the story) visited the village, he found the entire community had been turned into a church. Everyone had been led to Christ by this one man.
When we were preaching in northeast India in 1972, people walked for as much as ten days, carrying all their belongings on their shoulders, bringing their entire families from such places as Nepal, Sikkim, and Burma. We were told that a number of those people had never heard the name of Jesus Christ. They just heard that a religious meeting was going to be held and they wanted to come and see what it was about. Many stayed to find Christ.
I am convinced that when a man sincerely searches for God with all his heart, God will reveal Himself in some way. A person, a Bible, or some experience with believers will be used by God to reach the one who seeks.
A famous Bible teacher, Dr. Donald Barnhouse, told about a boat trip he had to take through the middle of Africa on a river. When he got into the boat, he noticed a chicken and thought it was probably for their next meal. After two or three hours he heard a roar in the distance and realized that they were approaching very turbulent water. The nationals who were rowing the boat steered it over to the bank, got out, and took the chicken into the woods. There they made a very crude altar. Preparatory to sacrificing the chicken, they chopped off its head and sprinkled the blood over the front of the boat. Dr. Barnhouse said he realized once more that even without a missionary and without God’s Word having been taught to those people, they knew a sacrifice was necessary.
So Paul says that God has seen to it that all people everywhere possess basic knowledge of Him, His attributes, power, and divine nature. Through what they can observe, and through their consciences, they can respond to Him if they wish.
But humankind has turned away from Him. Their minds did not love the truth enough, their wills didn’t desire to obey Him, their emotions were not excited by the prospect of pleasing Him.
What happened? What is still happening? Man suppresses the truth, mixes it with error, and develops the religions of the world.
Humanistic religions are often offended by biblical faith, which is the belief that accepts the Bible as the authoritative source of what sin is, and how through the life and atoning death of Christ, God can declare sinners “just.” Natural religion contains just enough truth to make it deceptive. It may contain elements of the truth, or high ethical standards. Some of its followers at times use terms which sound like the language of the Bible. The English scholar C.S. Lewis said that all religions are really a preview or perversion of Christianity.
Religion of man may have a very pleasant sound. Thomas Paine wrote, “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” While morality or “do-goodness” may win the approval of men, it is not acceptable to God, nor does it reflect His full moral demands. In fact, some of the crudest immorality in human history has had the approval of natural religion.
There is a great counterfeiter who adapts himself to every culture, even deceiving true believers at times. He doesn’t charge on the scene clothed in red and wearing a hideous mask but charms his way as an “angel of light.” This is how Satan operates. Thousands of people have entered churches without discovering a vital experience with Jesus Christ. The substitutes have been handed them in the guise of religious rituals, good works, community effort, or social reform, all of which are commendable actions in themselves, but none of which can gain a person a right relationship with God.
There are many people who say, “I guess I’m a Christian,” or “I try to be a Christian.” There’s no guess or “try to” in the Christian life. Even some of the great intellects of our time have not come to grips with this truth: The simplicity of the gospel can reach the mentally retarded as well as the geniuses.
The Compromisers
Where there is truth and error there is always compromise. Within some churches there is a movement to reshape the Christian message to make it more acceptable to modern man. A view held by many is that “the Christian churches have been, and still are, fountainheads of anti-intellectualism and opposition to critical thinking.”4
Books are written and sermons preached scoffing at the Bible and the basic beliefs of the Christian faith. One thick volume is called Bible Myths and the chapter titled “The Miracles of Christ” starts this way: “The legendary history of Jesus of Nazareth, contained in the books of the New Testament, is full of prodigies and wonders. These alleged prodigies, and the faith which the people seem to have put in such a tissue of falsehoods, indicate the prevalent disposition of the people to believe in everything, and it was among such a class that Christianity was propagated.”5
Time magazine, in a lengthy article on the Bible, said, “Questions about the Bible’s truth are nothing new; they have arisen from its earliest days.”6
I knew an archaeology professor at Wheaton College who was also studying at the University of Chicago. Frequently the Chicago professor would bring up some point to undermine the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. On each occasion the archaeology teacher would bring out some archaeological find which proved the authenticity of the Scriptures. At one point the professor at the University of Chicago exclaimed in exasperation, “That’s the trouble with you evangelical archaeologists! You’re always digging up something to prove us wrong and the Bible right!”
Archaeology has never uncovered anything that disproved the Scriptures.
Among some of those who are theologians but who fail to agree among themselves on which part of the New Testament to retain and which part to reject. Some of them seem to agree that the miracles were myths. They regard the resurrection as a subjective experience of the disciples rather than an objective historical event. They question that Jesus Christ was supernatural and reject any explanation that says part of His excellence came from the fact that He was God as well as man.
C.S. Lewis was baffled by biblical critics who would pick and choose among the supernatural events they accepted. “He wondered at the selective theology of the Christian exegete who, ‘after swallowing the camel of Resurrection, strains at such gnats as the feeding of the multitudes.’”7
The Deceivers
From compromise to deceit is a small step. All through the Bible we are warned about false prophets and false teachers. Jesus said, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. . . . So then, you will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15, 20).
Sometimes the “sheep’s clothing” is a clergyman’s robe. He may be a liberal or a fundamentalist. The liberal is like the Sadducees of old, denying biblical truth. The extreme fundamentalists, like the Pharisees of old, may accept sound theology but add so much nonbiblical material to it. Other times the clothing may be worn by someone with a string of degrees, who speaks with logical-sounding phrases. It’s difficult sometimes for a Christian to discern a false teacher, since in some ways he resembles the true teacher. Jesus spoke of false prophets who “show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24).
The person behind the Great Deception is Satan himself. He is crafty and clever, working in such subtle and secretive ways that no Christian should brag that he is beyond the assaults of Satan.
The apostle Paul warned Timothy, “But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13). He also warned the church at Ephesus, “Let no one deceive you with empty words” (Eph. 5:6); and again, “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14).
A woman who now leads hundreds of women each week in a Bible class in California said that for years her pseudointellectualism had her grabbing onto every “religious thought” that was presented. After accepting Jesus Christ as her Savior and being born again spiritually, she said, “I’m no longer a child . . . carried about by every wind of doctrine.”
This is a time when more false teachers will appear. We may be living in a time in history when this age may be drawing to an end. The apostle Peter said: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep” (2 Pet. 2:1-3).
When we realize that the heresies and the deceptions are secretly introduced, it should make us even more alert. The Sunday school, the Bible class, the pulpit, the classroom, and the mass media are being invaded en masse. Some of the terms of Christianity are even being used, for example, peace, love, and born again. Watch for the words which pepper secular literature and have entirely different meanings: messiah, a Christ, redemption, regenerate, genesis, conversion, mercy, salvation, apostle, prophet, deliverer, savior, a spiritual leader. Even great theological terms like evangelical, infallible Bible, etcetera, are rapidly losing their former meaning.
Thousands of untaught Christians are being deceived today, as are millions of people who are rejecting or ignoring the true Christ.
Deceivers with intellectual arguments which sound like the epitome of scholarship are beguiling many.
Paul is not gentle with the false teachers. He says, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars” (1 Tim. 4:1-2).
The Bible is very clear that many have turned away because they listened to Satan’s lies and deliberately chose to accept the doctrines of devils rather than the truth of God.
Back to Basics
Church members and spiritually thirsty non-church members have been hungry for a personal, vital experience with Jesus Christ. Many have been turning to other forms of worship in addition to the church service.
I wrote in my book World Aflame that “unless the church quickly recovers the authoritative biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the . . . church to find spiritual food.” This is exactly what has happened.
We now estimate that there are over two million prayer groups and Bible study groups meeting in homes and churches in the United States that were not meeting ten years ago. One of the great hopes we see is that denominational leadership is beginning to recognize this and promote Bible studies conducted on a lay level with adequate leadership.
Our own crusade preparation has revealed in recent years a far greater increase in actual home prayer meeting groups. In our most recent crusades we established a prayer group on every block in the city. The result is that thousands of additional prayer meeting groups are being held in connection with the crusades—in some cities as many as five thousand.
With nearly fifty million adult Americans having experienced “born again” religious conversions, I believe it is important to have a clear understanding of what this is all about.
An Old Cliché
Nothing could be more grossly wrong than the old cliché that “any religion will do, as long as you’re sincere.” What if the same line of reasoning were used with a baby? The mother would say, “I don’t have any milk, but I truly want my baby to be fed, so I’ll just put some coke or a little wine in the bottle. After all, they’re all liquids.” Ridiculous as that may sound, it is no more so than the old “sincerity” answer.
Who invented religion? Let’s go back to the brothers again. The two altar fires outside Eden illustrate the difference between true and false religion. One belonged to Abel, who made an offering to the Lord God from the firstborn of his flock. Abel acted in love, adoration, humility, reverence, and obedience. And the Bible says that the Lord held Abel and his offering in high regard.
His older brother, Cain, brought a bloodless, cheap offering to the altar, and the Bible says of God that “for Cain and for his offering He had no regard” (Gen. 4:5).
Was God being unfair? After all, didn’t Cain attempt to please God? Wasn’t he sincere?
This story was put in the Bible to teach us that there is a right way and a wrong way to make contact with God. Abel brought a sacrifice of blood as God had instructed: Cain made his vegetable sacrifice selfishly and superficially, disobeying God by coming without faith. When God didn’t bless his sacrifice, Cain killed his brother. Cain’s worship was empty religiosity, hollow as his whole life became. He left his family and walked the earth as a bitter man, crying out to the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear!” (Gen. 4:13).
Cain was sincere—but wrong.
Humanistic religion emerges under the very noses of great men of God. While Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the tablets of stone “written with the finger of God,” false religion was erupting in the camp of Israel. The people said to Aaron, “Come, make us a god who will go before us.” Aaron was carried along with the idea of a new religion and said, “Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” Out of this gold he made a molten calf and the people said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exod. 32:1-4).
Throughout time other idolatrous beliefs have eroded the foundations of truth. Whether ancient or modern, all have posed alternatives to the biblical way of approaching God.
Men and women may devise plans to satisfy their inner longings, but in the midst of all the “religions” of the world, God’s way is available in the Bible for all who will come to Him on His terms.
For the person who searches, the answers are available.