World Religions and Cults: Fact from Fiction

When William Carey landed in India, he witnessed a most barbaric practice called sati. Dr. Ameeta Singh writes:

“In November 1793 William Carey of the Baptist Mission arrived at Calcutta. After nearly six years in the spring of 1799, he saw a widow burning one evening. It was in a place thirty miles away from Calcutta.

He tried to stop the ceremony and to reason with the widow and the Brahmin priests. "I talked till reasoning was of no use, and then began to exclaim with all my might against what they were doing; telling them it was shocking murder. They told me it was a great act of holiness."

Carey was greatly agitated, and decided to take action against this barbarous act of sati.” (Singh, “The Role of Missionaries in Abolition of Sati Custom in India,” found at www.iosrjournals.org)

Carey believed it was the church’s role to spread the truth of God! It is because Christianity is unique; there is no other faith like it. What makes the Christian faith unique?

May be it is found in the words of Augustine of Hippo or the Rev. Billy Graham.

AMG’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, Cults & the Occult: Tough Questions, Clear Answers Is Christianity Unique?

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and beautiful; but I never read in either of them: “Come to me all who are weary and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Augustine of Hippo

“There are many religions in the world, but only one Christianity, for only Christianity has a God who gave himself for mankind. World religions attempt to reach up to God; Christianity is God reaching down to man. Billy Graham

This morning is another installment in our series on Apologetics or defending the faith. We seek to answer the questions that the world is asking. The question for this morning is “What about cults and world religions?” First, I’d like to say that despite popular opinion...

All religions DO NOT teach the same thing.

I have heard some say that all religions teach the same thing: of love and service, etc. etc. But this statement is made by those who fail to realize the uniqueness of the Christian faith, nor do they understand their Bibles.

I say this because every religion in the world has content relating to belief and practice. It is just plain false to say that they all teach the same thing. They, in fact, do not.

God does not believe that all religions teach the same, or He would not have delivered His people from the pagan and polytheistic culture of Egypt. Nor would He have made these statements in Exodus 20:1-5 where God instructs the people of Israel in the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20:1–5 ESV

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, ...

Things did not get easier for God’s people once inside Canaan. They were surrounded by nations that believed in many gods and held practices that were barbaric. For instance, the Philistines sacrificed their children to the god Dagon and believed in committing gross immorality so as to appease the gods.

In the church at Colosse, false teaching had infiltrated the fellowship. As one commentator puts it:

There were false teachers in Colosse who were telling the people that the Christian faith was incomplete. They were teaching the Colossians to worship angels and to follow special rules and ceremonies. Paul wrote to the Colossians to oppose these false teachers. He reminded them that Jesus is supreme over everything, that His death is all we need to save us from our sins, and that through Him we are free from man-made rules.” (NIV Pew Bible, 1984).

That’s just like human nature, isn’t it? That which we don’t understand, we add to it. But in doing so, we discover that Jesus + anything= nothing. Jesus + nothing= everything. Secondly...

False religions and cults are part of the world’s deception.

In referencing the multiplicity of religions of the world, someone once quoted Ecclesiastes 1:9

Ecclesiastes 1:9 ESV

9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.

We can apply this to false teaching. Satan seems to recycle his lies and repackage them in different ways.

The apostle Paul called it for what it was when he said in What are doctrines of demons in 1 Timothy 4:1-3

1 Timothy 4:1–3 ESV

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

Anything that is not fixed square on the revealed word of God is full of lies. And sometimes lies and truth are mixed together.

For instance, Paula White, an advisor to our president, would say she believes in Jesus, and yet she is steeped in the prosperity gospel. This teaching says that if you have enough faith, you will be healthy and wealthy, hence the name “health and wealth” gospel. She has become rich at the expense of others, all in the name of a false version of Christianity.

We minister in a world where there are false religions from without and heresy from within. Everyone is a theologian to one degree or another and the world that operates according to it’s own belief system. It much like how poet Steve Turner puts it like this in his satirical poem. Again, this is what the world espouses:

“We believe there’s something in horoscopes, UFO’s and bent spoons;

Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammed and ourselves.

He was a good moral teacher

although we think his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,

at least the one that we read was.

They all believe in love and goodness.

They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation

(Is Jesus the Only Way? - C.S. Lewis Institute).

No, God has said, “My truth shall stand.” and such truth will set men and women free. Therefore...

The church has the responsibility to present the truth.

It is the church’s role to be the moral and doctrinal conscience to the world. We are to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Jude 3

Jude 3 ESV

3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

This is just one way that we are lights in a dark place.

It has also been said that the church is the only organization that does not exist for itself. It exists for a world that is lost and on its way to a sinner’s hell. It exists even at the risk of persecution in all forms.

So why am I sharing this? Because I think we must recover the true sense of what it means to be Christian- doctrine and ethics.

So there are many indicators and signs of cults and false religions. Consider the following:

One indicator of a false religion/cult is the use of extra biblical authority in the way of writings or a prophet. This can be Joseph Smith of the Mormons, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians or Ellen White of the Adventists. There is no such thing as “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.”

Paul said in Galatians 1:8-9

Galatians 1:8–9 ESV

8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

In the days of Moses, God told His people...

Deuteronomy 4:2

Deuteronomy 4:2 ESV

2 You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.

There is not “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” There never was and there never will be.

Another indicator of false teaching is some other way to heaven besides grace alone through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone. According to your handout, you will see that all of the cults have an alternative system of how one is reconciled to God. It is usually through some type of rigorous effort or ascetic practice. For Buddhists, this means becoming vegan, shaving your head, changing your name and cutting off all ties to family. For those already in the religion, alms are paid so as to increase the positioning of your loved ones in the afterlife.

Christianity denies all these vain efforts. It places our hope squarely on Jesus Christ.

1 Timothy 2:5 ESV

5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

But Christianity teaches that reconciliation with God is through the work of Christ, made evident in one’s repentance from sin and faith in Jesus. Acts 2:38-39

Acts 2:38–39 ESV

38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

And, and that is a work of God.

John 6:44 ESV

44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.

What is the cult’s or religion’s teaching about Jesus. Is He the only begotten Son of God? Or is he just a man? A good person? A prophet? Islam does not believe that Jesus is the Son of God because they cannot reconcile the fact that God would allow His Son to die such a disgraceful death.

And yet Philippians 2:5-9 tells us:

Philippians 2:5–9 ESV

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,

Make sure you are following Jesus as revealed in Scripture; not a tradition, a fad or a charismatic leader.

The Bible only mentions “Christian” four times. It mentions “disciple” well over 200 times. I think that Christians and disciples should be synonyms. But we know that it is not used in this way today.

Christian can be a tag for someone who

loosely believes a few things;

belongs to a political party;

born in a particular country (Greece);

Or something else that is far from what Acts associates with the term.

But in Acts it is identified with

being persecuted;

preaching the gospel;

receiving the hand of God;

believing prayer;

and trusting in Jesus.

It is a person who belongs to or follows Jesus Christ.

Hold what the church has taught for centuries in high regard.

My daughter attends Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is a second semester Junior and has to start taking her electives, to round out her program.

Being a PK, she decided to take a class in religion.

The professor recently said that believing Jesus was 100% God and 100% man was a paradox. For him, somehow believing what the Nicene Creed teaches since 325 A.D. is nonsensical.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end (found at The Nicene Creed).

And yet this is what Christians have always held to, even before 325 A.D.- that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Conclusion

Jesus said of Himself in John 14:6

John 14:6 ESV

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

C.S. Lewis is known for many quotes, but this one may stand out from the rest. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, Christ]: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”