Why are there so many religions? Do all religions lead to God?

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.

The God unknown at Athens, as everywhere else among the nations, the apostle first made known, as the maker of the world and of all things therein. Even this man soon gave up. He heeded not the evidence of His everlasting power and divinity in the world of creation. He forgot the traditional knowledge which all had at first, weary of glorifying Him, and unthankful for His mercies. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into nature worship, and next into deified humanity if we so may call the chief object of their adoration invested with sex and the like human properties. The multiplicity of religions attested the loss of the one true God: no splendour of image or of temples could hide but only publish the imposture. How circumscribe the Omnipresent Lord of heaven and earth within man's work?

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). He is the only Saviour—not Mohammed, not Buddha, not Confucius. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

People may think this only another way of really serving God (v.31), as though Confucianism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Shintoism, Mormonism, Christian Science, etc. are only alternative styles of worshiping the same God. but all of these are absolutely false and opposed to the worship of God as revealed in His beloved Son Jesus Christ. Such religions can sink into such a low state that people dare to even burn their children in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. Though some of these do not go that far literally today, yet by teaching unholy doctrines to their children, they are virtually sacrificing them to the flames of hell!

Man has truly been called a religious animal. He is the only part of God’s creation that has a sense of God. That sense may be perverted. Man may not like to retain God in his knowledge, but on refusing the true God he must invent a false god for he cannot get on without a god. See the old Egyptians as they worshipped the bull, the cat, the ibis, the beetle. How true it is “they … changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Look at the heathen idols in India, more in number today than the dense millions who inhabit that peninsula; look at China with its heathen temples, at Japan, Africa, the Islands of the sea. Recall how in this country we once worshipped Woden and Thor and many another false god, to which our very names for the days of the week bear witness.

Such is the mental condition of man. The idea of One God was not suddenly lost at the first; but, man's mind not liking it, the truth became fainter in each successive generation, and at last was completely swamped in the flood of gods many and lords many which spread its devastating waters over the whole world.

The diversity of nations gave the heathen of old, as it gives the unbelieving now, occasion to deny the unity of the race. But God made of one (blood) every nation of men to dwell on every face of the earth, whatever local traditions aver, whatever the dreams of early poets or of later philosophers or geographers. Man readily forgot himself, as well as God. If God was unknown, so was man's origin and creation: the very formula of si deo, si deae, betrayed his ignorance. Religiousness is natural even to the most corrupt of mankind; faith acceptable to God is supernatural. Superstition suits the devil not less than scepticism. Neither pleases God, who never left man that left Him, as he was justly banished by Him but not without the testimony of creation without and of conscience within.

Hence the apostle by the simple statement of divinely attested facts sets aside alike a multitude of independent deities and of independent nations derived from these Satanic impostors. He asserts one true God and one common race, whose fears, with independence of God and self-centring confidence in man, and means of effecting it in direct opposition to God's declared will, brought on dispersion by the different languages in their lands, after their tongues, their families, and their nations. For up to the deluge mankind was but one community, and, whatever their growing corruption and violence, no strange gods were set up against God. Nor had God inaugurated government as a human institution having authority from Him. When He did, it was left neither to fate nor to chance, but He determined the seasons, and the limits of their dwelling. Job 12:23, etc. from early days shows how distinctly this was known by those who had the fear of God; and Deuteronomy 32:8 goes even beyond what the apostle declared to the Athenians.

When the first nations settled down in their lands, they threw off the knowledge of God which they had inherited from Noah and his sons, and they plunged into idolatry. Rom: 1:28 says, "they did not like to retain God in their knowledge." Their conceptions of deity, under the deceptive influence of Satan, sank lower and lower. First, "they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man"; soon, they set up beasts, then birds, and even creeping things. The worship of the serpent became popular. It was not naked savages who thus plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss of folly; for the ancient kingdoms of Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt (amongst others) possessed much learning. It is impossible for men to rise morally above the level of the gods they worship; accordingly beast-worshippers soon became beastly themselves in practise. Rom: 1:18-32 should be carefully pondered for it is God's sad description of the depths of vice and folly to which men descended when they turned their backs upon Him. Let moderns beware in their increasing godlessness.

The resemblances are equally striking, and bear witness to the fact that the sinful tendencies of poor fallen man in all ages are just the same. By the God of Heaven Nebuchadnezzar was granted much power and glory, so at once he used it to glorify himself in this gigantic golden image. Many different peoples were under his sway, each with their many gods, whom they worshipped. Now let them, while retaining their local deities, have a kind of 'super-religion,' which would have the effect of binding them together under his sway. Hence the cry of the herald, beginning, 'O people, nations, and languages.'

But the world, yet again, would not retain God in its knowledge, and, in its various national divisions, worshipped devils; for man must have some god.