Why can't religions coexist peacefully?

History and experience show that nothing so sharply divides and breaks up nations and families as a difference in religion. On the other hand, nothing will so powerfully cement nations together as unity of religion, be it false or true. Religious unity will go far to establish a political unity. Nebuchadnezzar, apparently recognising these facts, attempts to secure a political unity by setting up a religious unity. To this end he uses his great power to force upon all nations a state religion under penalty of death for those who will not conform.

There is no such hatred as that embittered by difference in religion, and especially where the claim is exclusive and divine. The gospel gave occasion to this in its most concentrated form; for it first had to make its way where God had really given peculiar privileges, which it was quite right to maintain in all their value as long as He owned the people to whom He had given them. But the Jewish people slighted and abandoned them, killing the prophets who pressed their infidelity and apostasy on their consciences, as they crowned their guilt when outward forms seemed orderly, but real unbelief and enmity to God were laid bare, by the ignominious rejection and death of their own Messiah. But evil is insatiable, and even the cross only whetted their rancour against the witnesses of divine grace. They "drove us out."

In Nebuchadnezzar, we see an intolerant persecuting power setting up an image and requiring universal worship. Those who feared God refused to worship and as a consequence were cast into the fiery furnace. In the earlier stages of Christian history, persecution and idol worship were prominent features. In the hey-day of the power of Romanism, image worship was rampant and those who refused to bow were put to death. When in turn Protestantism gained the ascendancy, the persecuting spirit was still in evidence. Anglicanism persecuted Dissent and there were the martyrs of the Covenant. Then when the descendants of the Covenanters came into power, the same intolerant spirit asserted itself and so it has ever been in the history of man. Right down through the centuries until recent times, orthodoxy has been intolerant of the existence of that which it deemed heterodox.

(Vv. 2, 3). The Lord's warning prepares them not only for persecution, but for religious persecution. The disciples of Christ would be put out of the synagogue, involving the loss of all fellowship whether in the family, social or political circle (John 9:22). This religious persecution would proceed from religious motives. "Whosoever kills you will think that He does God service." Hence the greater the sincerity, the more ruthless the persecution. But this persecution would proceed from ignorance of the Father and the Son. And thus it has been with every form of religious persecution. It has been truly said, "As it was with the Jews who persecuted Christians, so with the Christians who have persecuted Christians. Things have been done 'to the glory of God,' and 'in the name of Christ,' of which He who looks down from heaven would only say, 'They have not known the Father nor Me.'"

But men rejected the Prince of peace. "Depart from us was men's cry to God before the flood" (Job 22:17); the cry was the same when the Son came to earth. Since the Son was the revealer of the Father, the rejection of the Son involved the rejection of the Father also. "They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father" (John 15:24). This explains the Saviour's words in Matt. 10:34: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." His mission was peace, but men's refusal of Him has made peace impossible, and they have to suffer the sword instead. When the Lord Jesus thought of the consequences to men, He wept, saying: "if thou hadst known … the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes" (Luke 19:42). And so it has become true of men everywhere: "the way of peace have they not known" (Rom. 3:17).

"And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." Thus has it ever been; the Cains have persecuted and murdered the Abels. At all times, man and his religion are the same; faith and its religion are the same: and wherever they have met, there has been conflict.

Another thing that doubtless drew forth the enmity of the people against the Christians, was the aggressive character of Christianity. When any one is converted to the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ, he naturally desires that others shall share in the blessing. It has always been so, and we may be sure that the Roman converts were always pleading with their relatives and friends that they were not really gods which the people worshipped; for they now knew the only one true God and His Son Jesus Christ. Their gods could not save them.

The chief corner stone unites two walls at an extreme angle. We know what an acute angle, as it were, existed between Jew and Gentile. The exclusive Jew despised and outside Gentile. The Gentile nothing loth returned the bitter feeling in full. There is no feud so deadly as that of a religious character. We have seen a wave of a anti-semitism sweeping over Europe. Gentiles murdering Jews by the hundreds of thousands, nay, by millions. Never in the history of the world have these divergent peoples been brought into harmony till the church of God came into existence. It is to the glory of God that these warring elements have been fused, and brought together in happy fellowship. Only as Jew and Gentile come under the power of the cross of Calvary are their prejudices melted. The following Scripture shows how this truth is emphasized:

Once the Gentiles were fenced off from the Jews, but now the middle wall of partition is broken down in the cross of Christ. Christ Himself, the peace of all saints, has made both Jew and Gentile one. In His own flesh, on the cross, Christ abolished the enmity. He has made the two, separate and naturally antagonistic, in Himself into the one new man (Eph. 2:11-22). Let us go to the bed of the Jordan, where the feet that bare the ark of the covenant stood firm, and meditate upon God's ways. There is a wondrous power of uniting heart to heart in the consideration of Christ suffering for us all; in His making through His death His people into the one new man. Religious enmity, that awful element of dividing power, is slain, by the sight of Jesus dying alike for all.

If the ONE new man were better known in the power of the one Spirit, less would be seen of the enmity and division of religious antagonism which belongs to the old man.