Questions No.4 Do all Religions lead to God

John chapter 14. Those who were present this morning, let me remind you that this particular piece of conversation in which our Lord is teaching his disciples occurred just before he gave his wonderful parable of the vine. John 14.

The disciples are alarmed because Jesus, they believe, but they don't really understand how, is going to be taken from them. And they've got so many queries in their minds. So the Savior ministers to them, do not let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my father's house are many rooms.

If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

You know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going. So how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

Philip said, Lord, show us the father and that will be enough for us. Jesus answered, don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, show us the father? Don't you believe that I am in the father and that the father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own.

Rather, it is the father living in me who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the father and the father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth.

Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the father and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the son may bring glory to the father. You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.

Amen. I didn't know how nervous I'd feel coming up here. Ruth's been up here before but we want to sing to God's glory and just pray that he will help us to do so.

And the first song that we'd like to sing you this evening is called Hallelujah Jesus and it tells how Jesus can turn our lives from darkness to light. He is the only way. I was once in darkness, now my eyes can see.

I was lost but Jesus sought and found me. Oh what love he offers, oh what peace he gives. I will sing forevermore he lives.

Hallelujah Jesus, Hallelujah Lord, Hallelujah Father, I am sheltered by your word. I will live forever, I will never die. I will rise up to meet you in the sky.

On the cross he suffered, on the cross he died. All God's righteous claims were satisfied. Jesus paid my ransom, through his death I'm free.

He is now so wonderful to me. Hallelujah Jesus, Hallelujah Lord, Hallelujah Father, I am sheltered by your word. I will live forever, I will never die.

I will rise up to meet you in the sky. Now I live for Jesus, now I praise your name. Thank him that he's every day the same.

Unto him that loved us, washed us in his blood. Unto him be glory evermore. Hallelujah Jesus, Hallelujah Lord, Hallelujah Father, I am sheltered by your word.

I will live forever, I will never die. I will rise up to meet you in the sky. Join in.

Hallelujah Jesus, Hallelujah Lord, Hallelujah Father, I am sheltered by your word. I will live forever, I will never die. I will rise up to meet you in the sky.

And our second piece, we've been thinking about harvest today and this song speaks of the second harvest, when Jesus will come to gather all who believe in him. Then he shall come, resplendent in his glory, to take his own from out this fell of knowledge. A joy at his appearing, holy at morn, to walk with him in one.

After this, I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands. What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. When I shall stand within the courts of heaven, where white-robed pilgrims pass before my eyes, when he shall call from earth's remotest corners, all who have stood triumphant in his might, to be worthy then to stand beside him at morn, to walk with him in one.

Let us pray. Loving God and Father, again we seek your face. May our minds be receptacles of your truth, and our hearts held captive by your will.

And will you drive us to the conclusions that Scripture reaches, not to any particular reasonings of the preacher, should they be different from what Scripture says. But let your word come through, as we review one of the most pressing questions. That confronts thinking people in the 1980s.

For the Saviour's sake. Amen. I'd like to congratulate my younger section of the TAB congregation from time to time.

During these last few weeks, I have on a Sunday evening been looking at some rather difficult topics. And one of the most rewarding things has been to see younger friends endeavoring to concentrate and to follow. This, I think, is good for you to be confronted with some of the great questions that thinking people are asking today.

And it's good for us as a church to be mature enough on a public service on a Sunday evening to address ourselves to them. Well, we have a very difficult question to look at from Scripture. And humbly and lovingly to seek to find an answer to tonight.

Do all religions lead to God? And obviously I have in mind, having raised that question, the Scripture that I emphasized in my reading earlier where Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. The problem that that Scripture poses, along with other related Scriptures, we shall consider in a moment or two.

The comment has been made that we are living in a global village. You may say, well, by my estimate, the world is exactly the same dimensions as it was years ago, though it's more populated. How therefore can it be the case that you could describe this sphere where we live, space, ship, earth, as being a global village? Well, for this reason, never has there been a time when people could move so quickly and in such large numbers around the world.

You might know of the word diaspora. That's a Greek word and it has to do with the dispersion or dispersal of the Jewish people centuries ago. And throughout the world, there were little pockets of Jews and some in great numbers like in Egypt and also in Italy.

But it seems today that in the 20th century, there has been a general dispersal of people around our globe. You can walk the streets of Southall this evening if you went up to London and possibly in some areas it would be exceptional to find a white man. You might hear the language of Gujarati, of one of the northern states of India, spoken more than our own language of English.

You could go to some of the areas, though I wouldn't recommend it, in Soho and find Chinese. A lot of folks who can speak that language are residents there. You can have the almost humorous experience of catching a train to Birmingham.

I'm not suggesting that in itself would be humorous, though some might argue for the case. And discovering on the public transport there what is known as a second-generation West Indian. If you heard him speak and you got your eyes closed, you'd think that he had the select accent of the Brums in Birmingham.

But when you open your eyes, you discover he's from the West Indies, but he's born in this country. You might go to the east end of London and there find a Pakistani able to engage in the Cockney accent as well as any other Londoner whose ancestry goes back generations. You see, we're beginning to live, have you got the picture, in a global village.

If you were to go to the Rhine in Germany, to the industrial belt there, you would find lots of Turks who've been imported as cheap labor into West Germany, where at one stage, at any rate, a few years ago, there was more work than the Germans could look after themselves. You might find yourself in Worthing Hospital and discover that a very beautiful lady who could perhaps have been featured in an advert for Singaporean Airlines is your nurse. And this lady, whose religious background may be completely dissimilar to your own, looks after the most intimate details of your nursing on that occasion.

You see what I mean? You're beginning to get the picture. We live in a global village. None of us, even in sleepy old Worthing, are divorced from the fact that there are people in the world that are different from us, different color, different language, different culture.

And when they move in here, we recognize some of the dissimilarity. Well, the question becomes relevant for us this evening. These people who've hit England, so to speak, and Europe, when they worship their God, are they worshiping the same God as we worship in the tap? You might not know there's a Buddhist monastery in East Grinstead.

At least there's a colony of Buddhists. I don't know what the folks in East Grinstead think when the Buddhists go on their little daily walk with their begging bowl around the Sainsbury's area. Maybe they don't go as far as that.

But when the Buddhist in East Grinstead worships God, is it our God? When the Muslim in the mosque, that massive affair that's been erected in Regent's Park or by the side of Regent's Park in London, when he worships Allah, is he worshiping our God? There are many Hindu in Leicester, I'm told, or I can't confirm. I hope it's wrong, that the church where Carey used to preach has now been turned into a Hindu temple. Well, there in Leicester, when the Hindus in all their numbers turn out to their several temples, are they worshiping our God? These are the questions that we have to ask.

Do all religions lead to God? Are we all saying the same thing? There are some who obviously believe that this is the case. If you were to ask them, are all sports the same? They would say, no, any fool knows that golf is different from football. But there's a ball that's similar.

One may be a little smaller than the other. And what about hockey and cricket? All these are sports. Are they not all the same? And you say, because you're initiated, you're enlightened.

Of course, they're not the same. They're completely different ball game, if you don't mind the pun. And to the reaction to the question, do not all religions lead to God? We're often informed today that the most tolerant opinion is that which says yes.

Tolerance is in, only in the area of Christianity, but it's in today. And let's face it, we must admit to the fact that religion has been the cause of many a problem, not only in our nation, but particularly in Northern Ireland. Well, I guess that is part of our nation and in the Middle East and so forth.

So if there should be a generous supply of tolerance, let it be in the religious concept, in the religious category. And we once had a very, very tolerant archbishop, not the present one of Canterbury, who said that he fully expected in the kingdom of God to sit down with atheists. Well, it seems a reasonable thing to say if you're a nice man and you don't really want to take issue with anyone else.

Tolerance is really in. It's very attractive in these days. Open up your cathedrals, let's have an interfaith service, find the lowest common denominator and let's move.

And there'll be many a non-church goer who will say that's common sense. But of course, the non-church goer never reads the Bible, though he's very articulate in expressing his opinion, having been formed through utter ignorance of what the Bible has to say. And what's more, this cry that all religions do perhaps lead to the same God is being heard in the most unlikely quarters.

Well, witness the listener. Obviously, by the look of puzzlement on the face of 95% of my congregation, you don't even know what the listener is. Well, the BBC puts it out each week and people like myself occasionally buy it.

And in the listener dated, where are we? 29th of October, 1981, one of the most prominent religious broadcasters, Gerald Priestland, had the transcript of his address that sounded forth from the BBC transmitters put into print under the title, Are My Muslim and Jewish Friends Second Class Souls? And the gist of the argument was, no, they're not. He, Priestland, is much more reasonable than men that he quotes, like David Watson, who mercifully got three good five-minute spots in on the BBC and talked some sense last week, an Archbishop Blanche of the Cathedral in York. But you see, the whole of this argument in this particular article seems to suggest that it's only reasonable that we should have a fresh look at religion and should get round what Priestland calls, though it's not a unique phrase, he didn't make it up, he's quoting others, the scandal of particularity.

What does that mean? Well, we just read it, John's Gospel. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes unto the Father but by me.

That's particular, that's exclusive. It's very difficult to drive any wedge in that argument. Priestland does his best, but he can only do it by distorting the obvious meaning of Scripture.

And then not only Priestland, I was reading this afternoon, a man who's becoming quite a favourite author of mine, just to see what he's saying, Carol Vigila. And if you don't know him, well, you would really, because his proper name is Pope John Paul II. And he says, commenting on a council that the Catholic Church held some years ago, the Second Vatican Council, and it's amazing that he should be saying it, at least suggesting it, in all fairness to him, that there is a possibility that the man who has never heard of the Lord Jesus Christ, or shall we say the good living Marxist, is in effect an anonymous Christian.

He realizes that this particular comment does pose some problems for the theologians and suggests that they unravel it and presumably contact him when they've sorted out the knot. So, maybe we will wake up in heaven and we will find that not only are we suffering with our Lord Jesus Christ, with Abraham from the patriarchal days, with Peter from the apostolic times, but also with Brother Karl Marx, who surprisingly, ultimately realized he was indeed a Christian of an anonymous nature, of course. Well, as I say, we're getting this sort of argument from the most extraordinary circle.

And it does seem to be a very tolerant one indeed. Mahatma Gandhi, who went to his eternal reward some years ago, said this, the soul of religion is encased in a multitude of forms. Truth is not the exclusive property of a single scripture.

I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus Christ. He is as divine as Krishna, Rama, Muhammad, or Zoroaster. Now, it seems so reasonable, doesn't it? Was the Mahatma right? Do all religions ultimately lead to God? Now, the problem, my dear young friend and older friend too this evening, is that I am not here to offer an opinion that I have endeavored to work out.

What I have to do as a convinced believer in the authority of scripture is to come to the word of God and see what that has to say about the authority of the Christian revelation as anticipated in the Old Testament and made more plain in the New. And when you go back to the Old Testament, you discover that the writers there who anticipated so often the ministry of the Lord Jesus are pretty dogmatic in their understanding of the nature and the character of God. There's one particular passage which is said each time the Jews meet in the synagogues, even to this day, in Deuteronomy.

It is called the Shema, and it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. And the gist of this is that outside of the Lord revealing himself to Abraham and thus by progression to the Jewish nation, there is no other God.

Now, that does seem to be a little bit exclusive, but far from apologizing as though Moses had made a mistake, Isaiah, living centuries later, makes it even more clear. Speaking for God in the 44th chapter of his prophecy, he says, This is what the Lord says, Israel's King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty, I am the first and I am the last. Apart from me, there is no God.

Well, Moses could have got it wrong, I suppose, and Isaiah could have got it wrong. But one thing that you have to agree to from the Old Testament is that the writers who compiled the various books really did believe in the exclusive claim of Judaism as being the revealer of the true and only God. One of the great heartaches of the prophets, the minor prophets and the major prophets in the Bible, was that so often the ordinary Hebrew didn't listen to what they had to say, and they made alliances with other gods.

You see, we're not living in a pluralistic society today. That big word means Muslim, Hindu and all the rest of the religions, as though this is something that's only been with us for a thousand years or two thousand years. No, go back three thousand years, four thousand years.

There were many options in the religious supermarket, but the Jews only bought one, and they rejected all the others. And well, at least the spiritual Jews did, and when the prophets saw other of their kith and kin even handling the goods in that supermarket, they got most incensed, most annoyed. Well, perhaps when we move into the New Testament, we find more elasticity.

But far from that, what we discover in the New Testament is that the revelation of God in the Old is made that much more clear and that much more exclusive. So, this great text of our Lord Jesus, which every evangelical Christian knows off by heart, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me.

There's no other way. There's no way around getting to the Lord Almighty apart from me. Now, if you were to read the whole context of that chapter, you would find that it is underlined on several occasions.

On one specific day in the life of Jesus, people who disagreed with him endeavored to stone him. Why? Well, you see, the Jews, the Jewish aristocracy, the priests, the influential people, they came along, and they thought that Jesus was claiming to be more than a man. He had said before Abraham was, I am.

The revelation of God is epitomized, is encapsuled in me. Now, that was blasphemy unless he was who he said he was. That's why they picked up stones and made to kill him.

But it seems somewhat miraculously, he walked away. Now, this whole idea that Jesus Christ reveals God is not only found in his teaching, but when you move on into the story of the early church, they believed exactly the same. Here is a man by the name of Paul.

He's a great ambassador for the early Christian church, the most remarkable of men that the apostolic community by God's grace threw up. He goes on many a trip, preaching in Asia Minor. Ultimately, he comes to Athens.

That's a great center of religion and philosophy. He walks down into one of the temples, and he sees altars to various gods, and one to an unknown God. I always think it's somewhat humorous that the Athenians were so concerned to get the right ticket, that not only did they have altars to gods that were known, but just in case they'd missed one out, they had one to the unknown God, so that he wouldn't pour down his wrath and vengeance, because he was jealous that he'd gone missing.

And Paul said, look, it's that unknown God that I've come to declare. Now, why did Paul get the backs up of the people in Athens? Not because he declared the unknown God. He declared the only God.

They didn't mind another one. It was just like a stamp collection, and no one minds getting another stamp, and the Athenians didn't mind another God. But when one God claimed to be the God, and none of the others existed, they were no gods or idols, then there were problems.

And Paul got into a great difficulty. Can you imagine the apostle coming to the Athenians in the way that some people have suggested that I should react today? Let's have a conference of all the religions, you know? You people who belong to the stoic branch of philosophy, you come along and let's talk. Those of you who are adherents of Roman gods, you come along and let's talk.

Let's all come together. Let's have a big interfaith conference in Athens, find the lowest common denominator, and I'll settle for it. But the apostle Paul wouldn't do that.

In fact, most embarrassingly, he wouldn't even do this as far as the Jewish people were concerned, who had rejected salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul said to them, there's only one means of salvation, and it is the cross. And he went so far as to say when he was writing to the Galatians, if I or even an angel from heaven came and preached another gospel, let him be anathema, let him be accursed.

There is only one gospel. It's applicable to the Jew, and it's applicable to the Gentile. There's only one means of restoring Israel.

There's only one means of restoring the Gentile, and it's through the cross. Now I could give you reference after reference after reference to buttress that statement which I have just made. The apostle was convinced as to the exclusive nature of Christianity.

So you see, when you gather together Old Testament teaching, the words of our blessed Lord, and add them to the emerging early church, you are driven to the conclusion that as far as the Bible is concerned, at any rate, all religions do not lead to God. Only one. In other words, the cross is not a roundabout into which all religions can can feed and spin round and round and round.

And it doesn't really matter whether it's Hinduism or the philosophy of Confucius or Judaism or any other religion that does not have the whole or even a particle of the truth. The cross is a pointer forward, and it's through the cross and only through the cross that one can ever approach Almighty God. And that is a scandal.

It's a scandal to quote Priestland again of particularity, and it makes evangelicals sound the most bigoted, pompous, big-headed people that there are in the world today. And if it was just for the sake of our reputation alone, one would feel driven just to be a nice person, to pool one's thoughts, and to settle for less than salvation through the cross. But you see, it's not our opinion that's at stake.

It's the very heart of the message of Jesus Christ. Either he got it all wrong, or he got it all right. And if he got it wrong in part as far as his exclusive claims to deity are concerned, then who knows what else he got wrong.

Well, you say, this does really sound very bigoted this evening. Are you saying that there is nothing at all in the great religious faiths of the world? Is there no good in them at all? No, I'm not saying that. Whenever you have men, and some of the followers of these great religions can demonstrate, can point to thousands of them, whenever you have men and women who are seeking after truth at that lowest level, there is obviously some good.

Man has an idea that there is more to this world than just nature around him, and so he looks for some explanation in terms of a god. Well, how are we as Christian people to handle, shall we say, Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism? What is our approach to be? Well, we can easily attend to the first one, Judaism. That's the quarry from which Christianity was hewn.

And our concern for the Jewish person is to thank God for the legacy that we have within Judaism that is so right, and so good, and so noble. And our attempt at winning the Jew to the Lord Jesus is not so much that that involves the word conversion, but rather the Jew discovering his own Jewishness. For Jesus Christ was a Jew, and the apostle Paul was a Jew, and the apostle Peter was a Jew, and they in no way thought that they had denied their ethnic religion, nor the responsibilities, nor privileges that were theirs by embracing the Messiah.

And our concern for the Jew, and for the restoration of these ancient people, is that they too might embrace what Paul and Peter embraced. And thank God for the beginnings in some small way of an easier attitude towards Christianity on the part of some Jewish theologians, to the extent I came across the delightful comment of one theologian from the Jewish ranks not so long ago, that if the Messiah, when he comes, turns out to be very much like, if not the same as Jesus, he for one wouldn't be at all surprised. So we can deal with our understanding of the Jewish religion in a very kind and sympathetic, indeed those words seem almost pious, in a very grateful fashion.

And when we talk about Islam, well, Islam is on the march today from, what was it, one mosque in this country in 1945 to 200 mosques in 1975, a mosque in Geneva, a mosque in Rome, throughout the whole of a continent it seems that Islam is on the march. And they've thrown up some rather unusual people, Gaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini and so forth. But don't point to Gaddafi and the Ayatollah as though they are the sole representatives of Islam because they might talk or they might turn to you and point to the Christian militia in Lebanon and what they did in the name of Jesus Christ.

When we pass criticism, let's pass our criticism fairly. There are many, many thousands of Muslims who are deep, sincere people searching for the Lord. You say when they worship Allah, are they worshipping the God of the Christian? I find that very difficult to concede on the basis that the Koran's description of God seems to me so different from the revelation of God in the Old and the New Testament.

He seems so impersonal, so soulless, and the religion seems to seep over with a fatalism that would be well illustrated by you catching a taxi in Cairo and watching the Muslim taxi driver go through the red light on the basis if it's Allah's will, I'll be safe on the other side. If it's not, I'd be hit anyway, so why bother with traffic lines? We approach the Muslim with sympathy and with love. He traces his ancestry back to Abraham through Ishmael.

He believes the Koran. He will read the Koran more times than most evangelicals ever read the Bible and often he will know the Koran off by heart. He will base his life on the five pillars of Islam and we have a respect, I do, for the Muslim who five times a day will turn towards Mecca and pray to his God.

I wished every evangelical Christian did the same and when I'm dealing with the Muslim I'll turn him to the passage in the Koran that talks about Jesus and ultimately I would try by God's grace to correct where I believe the Koran historically is wrong and I know of more than one Muslim scholar who has turned Christian as a result of that approach. What about the Buddhists? Well here we've got a different ball game completely. They don't believe in God.

They believe that ultimately the great pursuit of life is not to exist at all and that's not such an easy job because you've got to come back 500 times before you achieve nirvana, extinction, but the Bible says that eternal life is to know God and we were made to know God and to enjoy Him forever. So I got some problems with the Buddhists and the Hindu, well we're back in Athens, he's quite happy to accept the Lord Jesus with all the other hundreds of deities but when the Hindus have dealt with the caste system in India and all the problems that has brought that will give to Hinduism a much greater authentication and I'll tell you for starters they'll never do it because Hinduism is riddled with so much perversion and so much demonism and so we come back to try to round off the whole of our study this evening. In our approach to the question do all religions lead to God, we have to say no.

They don't all lead to God but all religions have within them groups of people who are extremely sincere and the Bible says if you seek me you shall find me, if you search for me with all your heart. Sincerity is recorded in heaven and then we've got the teaching of the apostle Paul in Romans 2 when he seems to suggest that the man who never hears of the gospel if he lives by the moral law will be judged by that law and not by the Christian law but I don't put too much emphasis on that because it seems to me that Paul's argument leaves only a very slender thread hanging for such a person ever to be converted. So what? So we come back to that great doctrine in the old and the new testament of the justice of God.

You say what about the millions in China? I don't know. Sometimes and I lie not, I'm awake at night thinking of the millions in India who have never heard compared with the thousands in Worthing who've heard and have rejected but I do believe that the God of the earth is a just God and no one will ever be condemned and censured to damnation unjustly. No one in heaven will ever point a finger at almighty God and say you acted in an unfair fashion.

When Charles Spurgeon was asked what he thought of the problem of the un-evangelized people of the world, would they go to hell? Spurgeon quickly remarked, my problem is not to do with the un-evangelized, my problem is this, can people who have heard the gospel and responded and don't tell others go to heaven? And that's an accent that needs to be often repeated here in the tab and in evangelical circles around the globe. Do all religions lead to God? No, they can't do. The concept of God of the Buddhist is so different from the concept of the God of the Jew.

The idea of making heaven in Islam is so different from the idea in Christianity. Christianity stands out uniquely in this respect. It is the only religion that says man was so hopeless that God in infinite grace moved towards him.

Every other religion starts with man moving towards God and in Jesus you see what God has done. He's come in person to reveal himself and he lifts man and he lifts woman and if there is any either of the sexes that ought to be appreciative to the work of Jesus Christ it is women and if you doubt that then catch a plane you women and go to Bangladesh and check the lifestyle that would be inflicted upon you there in an Islamic community as opposed to the lifestyle that you enjoy by God's grace here in Europe. God has moved towards man through Jesus Christ who is the way the truth and the life.

Christians are to preach that with all the energy that they have, not in a pompous fashion, in a humble and in a sensitive way and it's that Jesus that we point you to now as the only means of salvation.