Are all religions the same?

Satan is very busy in India as elsewhere. He is doing His best to get it believed that all religions are practically one and the same, as long as their followers are sincere seekers after God. We are assured that sincere seekers after God will find Him, but it can only be through Christ. He is the Way. There are not several ways—the Hindu way, the Sikh way, the Mohammedan way, the Buddhist way, the Christian way—there is only ONE way. Christ says, “I am THE Way” there is no other.

A deceased celebrated London preacher made a very true remark. He was speaking about comparative religions, and added the significant sentence, “But remember, gentlemen, that Christianity is not one of them.”

Giving a lecture on “Comparative Religions,” the late Joseph Parker paused to say most impressively, “Remember, Christianity is not one of them.” Christianity is not a comparative religion, but a contrasting religion.

Every comparative religion is based on the doctrine of man being his own saviour, and therefore contains an appeal to the natural heart of man; Christianity bears witness to the utter ruin of the sinner. In this it stands alone. It cannot be compared. It directs attention to the blessed risen Christ of God as the only Saviour, and that in virtue of His atoning death on the cross, to which the Passover pointed forward, whilst the Lord’s Supper points back to it.

In these sadly degenerate days we hear of modernistically inclined missionaries doing the devil’s work, telling the natives of heathen lands, that they come out to make Buddhists better Buddhists; Mohammedans better Mohammedans; Confucians better Confucians; that there is good in all religions. Peter’s announcement sweeps all this wicked nonsense out of the way. In the matter of salvation our Lord is the only Saviour, and we cannot build a superstructive of Christianity on a foundation of heathen and devilish religions.

Our Lord stated the exclusivism of Christianity very definitely: “I AM the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father but by Me” (John 14:6).

Before leaving this chapter notice how in the latter part of it the exclusive claim of Jehovah is emphasised again and again. Beside Him there is "none else." The faith of Christ, and the Gospel which proclaims it, have today just this exclusive claim, as witnessed in such scriptures as John 6:68; John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Galatians 1:8-9. There are today men who would go to the Buddhist or Confucian acknowledging their religions as ways to God and only claiming that "Christianity" offers them a rather superior way. In so doing they bring themselves near to, if not actually under, the apostolic curse of Galatians 1:8, while they avoid the reproach that the Gospel brings. It is this exclusive claim, inherent in the Gospel, which provokes the opposition.

Answer to all this was not at all difficult. For, if, as we believe, Christianity is the sole and sufficient answer to the deepest need of the human heart, that need which even pagan idolaters could not but feel, and which their philosophers could not meet but only falteringly express; if, as one has said, "Paganism brought nothing to Christianity but aspirations frustrated, and yearnings unsatisfied," is it at all to be wondered at if God, in revealing that which alone could satisfy these yearnings, condescended to use, as far as He could, the terms in which these aspirations were expressed? As the late Editor of "Bible Treasury" has said, "The truth is that God in His grace, who knew the bewilderment of man's mind, not dissipated but deepened by philosophy, etc., either anticipated or answered these unbelieving reveries by the revelation of the truth. … Christ, true God and perfect man, is the revelation of God, which sets aside the corrupt Gnostic, the self-complacent Stoic, and the dreaming Platonist. If inspiration employed their language, it was in pitiful condescension to impart the truth of God in Christ, which brings to naught their vain, self-righteous and false ideas. " __

At Athens, it will be remembered, "the city wholly given to idolatry," Paul saw an altar with the inscription, "To the unknown God," and forthwith made opportune use of the incident. "Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." In a way these Athenians are a representative class. "In all things too superstitious," "excessively reverent of divinities," yet so little satisfied with those they had, that "to tell or hear of something newer" was their characteristic occupation, learned and philosophic as they were, they may be taken as eminently representative of what religious aspirations directed by human philosophy amounted to, or could achieve, in Paganism at its best. In what measure then was the true God conceived of, or any genuine knowledge of Him reflected, in anything within the compass of their elaborate system. The only element wherein the faintest reference to Him appears was that melancholy inscription seized on by the apostle — "To the unknown God." God the Unknown, felt after, indeed, even by Athenian devotees of divinities many; God the Unknown, a sense of whose existence no worship of false deities could obliterate, no specious philosophy explain away; yea, even while under the charm of Greek eloquence at its best, "at the sound of cornet, flute and psaltery, and all kinds of music," they bowed themselves at shrine erected, or image set up, in this city surrendered to idol-worship, God the Unknown at the long last they still find it necessary to admit at least into their Pantheon. Consciousness of Him cannot be quite shut out, nor drowned in clamour of idolatrous liturgy, whether Stoic pipe or Epicurean sackbut. But how humiliating the confession. "To the unknown God." This then the final exemplification, the summing up of all that was best, most worthy, in heathen philosophers, Alexandrian, Epicurean, Stoic, Sceptic, or any other; for that was all, that vague ascription of the fag-end of their homage, "To the unknown God," which out of the ruins of their idol worship even they could construct!

Take then that strangely significant altar inscription as the symbol of anything in the way of truth or knowledge of God classical paganism ever showed. Is there much to constitute it a formidable rival of, anything to entitle its being regarded as a valuable contributor to, Christian thought and doctrine? Why, rather, what have they in common? May we not see also in Paul's use of the occasion, his reference to their abject confession, and to the obscure statement of one of "their own" poets, an apt illustration of what the Spirit of truth may have done in adopting, or adapting, the diction of their philosophy to serve His own ends in setting forth that which met their every question, and made foolish their every dream? As has been said, this answer to the suggestion of Christianity's relation to the religions of the past prompts itself readily, and proves sufficient. And, really, the assertion sometimes made today that "Christianity was at first a mere development of Judaism, and that it was by combining with elements borrowed from the religions and the philosophies of the ancient pagan world that it assumed its final form" is best answered, as it has been answered, by the statement that, "Were we to see in Christianity only a synthesis of all the anterior religions, we should have in Christ only a composite idol enshrined in the last of the pagodas."

1892 105 It is not the part of wisdom to deny, but rather freely to acknowledge, that fragments of truth, more or less numerous, are to be found in the ancient philosophies and religious systems. Undoubtedly such are often accompanied by much folly, and perhaps seem all the brighter because of the surrounding darkness. Still they bear eloquent testimony to the fact that God created man upright, whatever his subsequent degeneracy through the fall. But when these philosophers stepped beyond the praise and vindication of morality, it is clear they encountered a serious difficulty, inasmuch as everything of what may be called a constructive character must obviously have been only so much speculation. In other words they could claim no authority, no "Thus saith the Lord," even if reason (which for the most part it did not) led them up to the conviction of a Supreme Being. Hence one great and broad line of demarcation between the heathen systems and Judaism, which was a revelation of God. The former, even where most incrusted with sound moral notions, when consequently they were at their best, offered, it is needless to say, no anchorage for the soul, being in truth but the surmises of men. Such were the doctrines of Stoics and Epicureans, of Socrates and Plato, and, in more remote antiquity, of Confucius. At their worst these systems were a conglomerate of poetical romancing, e.g. the mythologies of Greece, or they were the monstrous dreams of orientalism: the former beautiful, the latter grotesque, but both corrupt.

There it is, the unadorned truth, still more profound morally than chapter 1, in Christ revealing the grace of God to the utmost, God's glory in His person with man's ultimate deliverance, and thus of the highest moment to the salvation, well-being, and happiness of the believer. All comes out in plain facts, such as a child could take in, yet involving principles truer and deeper than any ideas evolved by the most philosophic of mankind. Herein lies an essential difference between revealed truth and all its rivals. Take Vedaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Lamaism, or aught else in India and the adjacent lands; take Confucianism, Taoism, Foism, in China; take Sabaism, Jovism, Fetishism ancient and modern: can any one of these systems allege a single fact as its basis? The religion of the Bible, Old or New Testament, Judaism or Christianity, rests on distinct realities, not on mere ideas of man's mind.

C.C. — All men have a testimony from God. They may not have heard the gospel preached, but they are not without a testimony from God. In the darkness of heathenism, a man who bows to that testimony he has, will not God hear that man?