With all of the different religions, how can I know which one is correct?

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.

Here, then, we are furnished with the true secret of discerning God's way. It may seem very difficult, in the midst of the troubled sea of Christendom to steer one's course aright. So many conflicting voices fall on the ear. So many opposing views solicit our attention, men of God differ so in judgment, shades of opinion are so multiplied, that it seems impossible to reach a sound conclusion. We go to one man who, so far as we can judge, seems to have a single eye, and he tells us one thing; we go to another man who also seems to have a single eye, and he tells the very reverse. What, then, are we to think?

N.B. — Would the Saviour be likely to cast men upon Sacraments for eternal life, knowing well that priests of every brand, in their sectarian zeal, would be disposed to repudiate as false the Sacraments of all others? With the conflicting claims of Greeks, Romanists, Anglicans, etc., before him, where is the simple inquirer to find certainty? God be praised, we are not driven to investigate the rival claims of all these in order to obtain eternal life. The Word of God and the Christ of God are both available for us all. In these our souls may safely confide.

We continue with Acts 4. In the morning a goodly number of Israel's religious chiefs assembled together in Jerusalem, and having set Peter and John in the midst, they demanded of them by what power or by what name they had made the lame man whole. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit in accordance with the Lord's promise in Matt. 10:19-20, no longer timorous but divinely bold, forthwith indicted his interlocutors most solemnly. To the people he used the language of persuasion, but not to the leaders. It was in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, "whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead," the crippled man had been made whole. The position is here plainly stated. Men crucified Jesus; God raised Him. Men were thus in open conflict with God. Not ignorant men, mark; but the clergy of God's people, the public expositors of His holy Word. Further, Peter said: "This is the Stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner." Religious teachers, whether in Judaism or in Christendom, are builders; constructors of that which will either abide or perish, as the Lord may judge by and by (1 Cor. 3:9-17). God's foundation stone is Jesus; upon Him alone can men safely build. But Israel's leaders had treated Him with contempt. God's answer to them was the exaltation of His Son. God has now made Him the Corner-stone of a new structure; the office of Peter's antagonists was therefore gone, however fiercely they might contend for it. Our apostle made a magnificent finish of his defence: "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Every man is thus shut up to Jesus for salvation. He who rejects Him does so to his eternal ruin.

The Name and power was that of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom they had crucified and whom God had exalted. Psalm 118:22 had been fulfilled in Him, and Peter proceeded to widen out the testimony from that which was particular to that which is universal. The power of the Name was right before their eyes in the particular case of the lame man healed: it was no less potent for the salvation of men universally. The physical healing of the man was just a sign of the spiritual healing which the Name of Jesus brings. The despised Jesus of Nazareth is the only door into salvation.

The difference is this. In the religions described by this book, man becomes God in heathen belief. In Christianity alone do we have the sublime conception and the glorious fact of God becoming Man for the purpose, as Man, of making atonement for His creatures’ sin, and in ascending to heaven, when once His work was done, and remaining Man for ever, though never less than God, from all eternity to all eternity. God and Man—one Person—first in the world His hands had made, and then in heaven.

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.

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.

Two things seem to operate markedly in such cases: (1) A deep sense of sin and guilt, giving the strong urge to seek God's forgiveness; and (2) a conception of God far removed from that of the heathen religions, attracting them to trust the Saviour of sinners. Christianity stands out in vivid contrast to all other religions in that it alone offers a Saviour to sinful men. It was no wonder that the late well-known preacher, Joseph Parker, when giving a lecture on contemporary religions, paused impressively, saying, "Remember Christianity is not one of them." No, it stands altogether by itself in its own divine glory.

Love and righteousness, which are the two great pillars of the Christian faith, are lacking, at least one or other of them is, in every other religion under the sun. You just inquire whether what I say be true or not. You are surely well acquainted with the mythology of the heathen. Was there much holiness in it? You know pretty well that nearly all the gods of the Greeks and the Romans were deified lusts. Who was Bacchus? Who was Venus? You know they were but deified lusts. Holiness was not there. On the other hand, where was love? You get Jupiter, a thoroughly vengeful deity; and Mars, the god of war. These are but samples of the many gods of the heathen, in every case the creation, in men's minds, of what they thought God must be, and in their religion either love or holiness was lacking. If they allowed lust, they did not judge sin. If they judged sin, there was no love. Now the charm of the gospel of Christ is that, while God is Love, He is also Light; and while He judges sin unsparingly, He loves the poor sinner infinitely. Before the day of judgment has come, when He must judge sin eternally, and the unforgiven sinner bear the fruit and consequences of his sin, His own blessed Son has come into this scene, and in love has died on the cross. His work done, atonement made, and redemption accomplished, He has been raised from the dead in righteousness for our justification. The claims of God have all been met. God's righteousness and hatred of sin have been met in the judgment of the cross. "He who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." And now the worst sinner who looks to Jesus as his Saviour, is saved.