Which Religion is True?

Chapter 2

Why Only One Religion Can be True

Many people argue that all religions are basically the same; just different paths to the same goal.

It will be proved later that all the religions based on the existence of God differ from each other. Can they all be true, even though inspired by the one supreme God? Or can they be true because they are inspired by competing Gods who offer different kind of salvation to their adherents?

The fact that all these different religions exist on one earth, and yet the earth is not subject to cosmic chaos that could lead to its destruction any minute by being thrown out of orbit and crashing into other astral bodies points to two or more competing gods working on earth but being unequal in power. One is greater than the others and capable of preventing the earth from being thrown into chaos. There appears to be one supreme God working on earth. And yet the other god or gods seem to be working against Him. So there appears to be competition between the gods on earth, unless the supreme God is allowing the other god to work on earth for some great purpose. This issue will also be addressed later.

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that all religions are true religions, just different paths to the same goal: salvation. The reason is obvious. The goal is different in each religion. Salvation offered by each and every religion is different from that offered by the others. This will be proved shortly from the scriptures of the various religions.

Each religion in its scriptures claims that the God they worship is the one true God, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe, including man. But if the one true God has created every human being on earth, why would He promise different kind of salvation to different peoples?

Some can argue that all religions are true religions and that their adherents will receive the salvation offered by that religion. But that is a ludicrous idea.

It is unreasonable to believe that the true God will offer different salvation to different human beings when all human beings look and function alike, think alike, have similar desires and aspirations. In the author’s family he is the only Christian. His brothers and their families are all Sikhs, and all his cousins on his mother’s side are Hindus. Do you believe when each of them receives salvation, it will be different for each member of the family? Such a belief is irrational. His brothers are of the same race, born to the same parents. Clearly the one true God is not going to offer different salvation to each of them.

Consider Catholicism, Protestantism, or Islam. Each of these faiths has adherents of all races, white, black, oriental looking and mixed races. And most of humanity belongs to mixed races anyway. All these faiths offer the same salvation to each adherent who qualifies for salvation. Clearly different salvation is not going to be offered to adherents of each of these religions based on race or nation. Hinduism and Sikhism also do not offer different salvation to their adherents based on race.

There is another religion, that of the Germans or Gnostics that claims the existence of multiple gods, and sheds light on how they view themselves in relation to all other peoples. The following is a quote from a book titled “The Gospel of Judas”, edited by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer and Gregor Wurst with Commentary by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman makes this statement on pages 84-85:

“Traditional Christianity has taught, of course, that our world is the good creation of the one true God. But this was not the view of the Gnostics. According to a wide range of Gnostic groups, the god who created this world is not the only god and in fact is not even the most powerful or all-knowing god. He is a much lesser, inferior, and often ignorant deity. How can anyone look at this world and call it good? Gnostics saw the disasters around them – the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, famines, droughts, epidemics, misery, suffering – and they declared that the world is not good…

“Some Gnostic thinkers explained this evil, material world by expounding complicated myths of creation. According to these myths, the ultimate divine being is completely removed from this world, in that he is absolutely spirit – with no material aspects or qualities. This divine being generated lots of offspring known as aeons who, like him, were spiritual entities. Originally this divine realm, inhabited by God and his aeons, was all that existed. But a cosmic catastrophe occurred in which one of these aeons somehow fell from the divine realm, leading to the creation of other divine beings who therefore came into existence outside of the divine sphere. These lesser divine beings created our material world. They made the world as a place of entrapment for sparks of divinity that they had captured, to be placed within human bodies. Some humans, in other words, have an element of the divine within them, at their core. These people don’t have mortal souls, but immortal souls, temporarily imprisoned in this capricious and miserable realm of matter. And those souls need to escape, to return to the divine realm whence they came.

“The myths narrated by the various Gnostic groups differed widely from one another in many of their details…But their overriding point is clear: This world is not the creation of the one true God. The god who made this world – the God of the Old Testament – is a secondary, inferior deity. He is not the God above all who is to be worshipped. Rather, he is to be avoided, by learning the truth about the ultimate divine realm, this evil material world, our entrapment here, and how we can escape.

“I should stress that not everyone has the means to escape. That is because not everyone has a spark of the divine within them: only some of us do. The other people are the creations of the inferior god of this world. They, like other creatures here (dogs, turtles, mosquitoes, and so on), will die and that will be the end of their story. But some of us are trapped divinities. And we need to learn how to return to our heavenly home.”

Thus the German nation believes that salvation is only for them because they have the divine spark in them whereas all other humans are like animals. When they die that is the end of their story just like cats, dogs or mosquitoes. Their belief, however, has been the cause of much cruelty practiced by them throughout their history. It also explains in practice how the Germans interpret their national anthem. The first stanza is translated into English as follows:

“Germany, Germany above all, above all in the world,
When for protection and defense, it always takes a brotherly stand together.
From the Meuse to the Memel, From the Adige to the Belt,
Germany, Germany above everything, Above everything in the world!”

Though the song was originally written to help unite the various German states into one, in practice now the Germans mean Germany ruling over and above all people of the world. They initiate world wars to try and take over the world. The coming Third World War will be no exception.

The German god seems to be promising them rulership of the earth above all peoples.They do not seem to realize how irrational their belief is because they can mix with other races. Does their religion mean the Germans who are of mixed race will not qualify for salvation? Origins of the German race seem to indicate that their original ancestor Asshur, grandson of Noah and son of Shem married a white woman from among the daughters of Japheth who had married an oriental looking woman. So every German is of mixed blood. And the rest of humanity has descended from Noah as well. They can believe whatever delusion they want to believe in.

People can also change their religion and do. Would God offer such people salvation based on the previous religion or the new religion? Or can we pick and choose what salvation we want?

Moreover, in one family there can be adherents to different religions. Would they all receive different salvation based on their beliefs and be separated from each other for eternity? Then one could change one’s belief. Would that person then qualify for a different kind of salvation based on current belief? Clearly this is all confusion. But if only one true Supreme God exists, then He cannot be the author of this confusion.

Do you know that all religions based on a belief in God believe that salvation is only for the good and faithful among the adherents of their religion and not for any others? If the true God is the Creator of everything, then God’s plan to offer salvation to humanity is a colossal failure, because according to the criteria for salvation in all religions, only a tiny fraction of humanity will qualify for salvation. Hindus, however, believe all of humanity could potentially qualify for salvation, except that they will continue to go through the cycle of births and deaths as 8.4 million creatures until they qualify. However, Hinduism has failed to take into consideration the fact that in the nuclear age all life could potentially be destroyed. That would certainly end the cycle of birth and death. Hinduism has also not taken into account the fact that certain species are extinct. So should the number of different creatures that one’s immortal soul will be born as be reduced from 8.4 million to some lower figure? Again there is no proof that such a thing ever happens to the supposedly immortal human soul. More on this later!

Clearly the theories that the one true supreme God (if only one exists) will offer different kind of salvation to different human beings according to their religious beliefs, or based on their race or nationality, or that salvation is only for a tiny fraction of humanity adhering to a particular religion are not rational. They do not make sense. If one God is the Creator of all humans, then He will not offer different kind of salvation to different humans, and if He is Almighty He would certainly have a plan to offer salvation to all of humanity with the potential for most to qualify to receive salvation. The only reasonable belief is that He is going to offer one kind of salvation, and one kind only, to all of humanity.

If the only reasonable belief is that if there is one supreme God and He will offer the same salvation to every human being, then the only rational conclusion we can draw is that only one religion can be the true religion, because all the others differ from it in the salvation they offer.

Gods of Different Religions

We still have to consider the issue of other gods offering different salvation to their adherents. Happily there is an easy resolution to this issue. We will see that the gods of the 3 major religions, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity/Judaism (because both claim the same holy book, the Bible, as their scriptures; though Judaism adheres only to a part of that book, but that part includes the account of creation) claim that they are the Creator of the universe and everything in it. There can be only one Creator of everything. He can be the only true God. This leaves 3 possibilities for looking at these 3 religions.

a) The one true God had nothing at all to do with what is contained in the holy books of each of these religions and they are the philosophies of mere men. But since each of these scriptures directly quote one claiming to be the Creator, we cannot accept this explanation lightly. And we have begun with the premise that a Creator God exists.

b) The true Creator God inspired all these religions and is offering different kind of salvation to adherents of each of them. But we have just concluded that this does not make sense. This would be a recipe for disaster, and we have proof of it in the past about 6,000 years of human history in the wars over religion. A true Creator God would not create a creation designed with seeds for unending conflict in it.

c) The third possibility is that there is only one true supreme God who is the true Creator and the other two are diabolical liars. He has inspired only one true religion and the others are counterfeits of a diabolical liar or liars.

In summary, since the earth is stable and not subject to chaos and instant destruction means that it is controlled by one supreme God, even though another god or gods appear to be competing against that supreme God. The one supreme God would not inspire different religions offering different kinds of salvation to various parts of humanity. The only right conclusion we can draw is that there can be only one true religion inspired by the true Creator God. All others have to be counterfeits.

The issue to resolve then is which is the only true religion, and which ones are counterfeits? That requires an examination of the claims made by the gods of each of these religions that they are the Creator and how they prove their claims.

But first we must look at the evidence whether the three major religions differ from one another or not in the salvation they offer.

Back to Contents

Copyright © Church of God Message. All rights reserved.