Frequently Asked Questions I, Do All Faiths Lead to Heaven?

What ran over my dogma? Okay, wait, take the phone guys just in case. I want nothing to happen here. All right, let's ask the Lord right now to redeem the rest of the morning and grab your outline out of your notes and we're gonna jump right into this. Lord, we thank you today that we can take a serious look at an important truth, but at the same time realize that we are all learners and on this journey we need wisdom and we need the illumination of your Holy Spirit to make sense of how we need to respond in these days in which we find ourselves. Thank you for your word of truth in Jesus name. Well, one of many byproducts of the tragedy of 9-11 along with of course greatly increased security and the rise of patriotism and heroism and so on has been the increased awareness about different religions around the world and particularly here in the United States. Folks, most of us really were clueless before the attack about what other people believed and how strongly they believed it. And if you push back for just a moment, it's fascinating to me that the entire current outbreak of terrorism is not really based on, you know, a war about oil. And it's not about geopolitical kinds of maneuvering. It's about what some different religious groups think their God told them was to be their right. And here we are embroiled in a global sort of conflict about something that goes back to spiritual values. Now in America, we've really struggled to keep an open dialogue between these various faiths, but it's hard for us. I want to show you just a little diagram here. I hope it came out okay. Here's the reason. Take a look up here on the map. This is out of U.S. News and World Report just two weeks ago. I won't go into a lot of detail, but up in the right-hand column, you can see over here on either side, 84% of us in America call ourselves Christian. There's about five and a half million Jews, about four million Muslims, about two and a half million Buddhists, and down we go. And so, you know, the great majority of people in this nation call themselves Christian, and very few of those 84% know much at all about these folks. But I want to say up front that 70% of the world is not Christian. 70%. There's a huge dichotomy in terms of our understanding, and that's what I want to look at today. The media has really worked hard at creating a sense that all faiths are important, and certainly they are. But they've gone one step farther and tried to begin to communicate that sort of all faiths are the same, and we all kind of want the same thing, don't we? We all sort of want peace of the world, and we're all against this, and we're all for that, and I'm not really sure that that's true. Now next week, I'm going to talk in specific about the Muslim faith, and I'm going to talk in specific about some of their beliefs and why we need to understand them. But today, I want to zoom out just a little bit, a little more broadly, and talk about some of the other religions of the world. And you know, relax, this is not a comparative religions course, but it will give you a little bit of an understanding of why it is that the rest of the world doesn't understand us, and we don't really understand them to some degree. And may I just say as I talk about the fact that billions of people do not know Jesus Christ, do not claim to hold the same convictions that we do, the fact that we as believers hold firm to what Jesus said, look at the top of your outline, as the most important statement about the way to heaven is a stumbling block to most of the world. Look at it. These are the words of Jesus, John 14. I am the way, read with me, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me. Now, you know what? That's an incredibly important statement. And it seems to me that the most intellectual and sometimes folks that perceive themselves as the most rational find that to be the most offensive statement that Jesus made. And they're challenging it more and more these days. In the last 12 to 15 years, the post-modern movement, most of you, by the way, aren't really very clued in as to what I'm talking about when I mention post-modernism. I'm going to talk about that in succeeding weeks. You need to understand that there is, it's a behind-the-scenes thing, folks, but it is at work, eating away at the core values that we hold. As citizens of this country and members of the kingdom of God, we need to understand it. And if you don't, you're likely to find yourself all of a sudden ambushed by the reality that the things that you valued the most are no longer embraced and affirmed. I want to talk about just a few myths. The first one is that all religions are basically the same. All religions are basically, how many of you had a conversation with somebody in the last six months? And they start out, or somewhere in the conversation, you're talking about faith and religion. They say, don't all religions pretty much believe the same thing? I mean, we're all kind of going up the same mountain toward God. How many of you have had a conversation like that? You know, that's disappointing. If you haven't had that conversation, it tells me one thing, you haven't had conversations. Because people, that is the number one response that I get every time I enter into a dialogue with someone about knowing God. They say, well, you know, hey, you believe your thing, and I believe my thing, but we're pretty much all in the same path. I want to challenge you folks. Listen to me, please. I'm gonna be a little bit just blunt here. I didn't say this last night. Look around, and we're grateful to see some of you here worship, but we're losing the war. We're losing it. Don't do too much of this. We're losing the war. There are more Muslim converts in the world today than Christian converts. There are more people drifting away from God than drifting to him. We got to get up. We got to wake up. We got to realize that something's wrong, and part of it is we're just not engaging. We're not meeting people at their point of understanding. All religions are not basically the same at all, and if you don't understand that, you're clueless. And you're gonna get crushed when you get into a conversation with somebody. Most religions are extremely different, and you need to be able not to say, well, I guess they really are. You need to be able to say, wait a minute. That's not true. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are monotheistic. That means what? What does monotheistic mean? One God. Now we believe in one God expressed in three persons, and that's going to become next week a very important part of our doctrine. I'll challenge you to think about the Trinity this week, and see if you really understand what you believe about the Trinity. On the other hand, the Eastern religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, these, by the way, there's a, you know, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but there you go with a Hindu temple. There's Buddha, and there's one of the emblems of Shintoism. All of these are polytheistic religions. They believe in multiple gods. There's over 300 million Hindu gods. When I was in India, I saw, I saw anthills decked out like little temples to worship the gods that were in the anthills. Shintoism believes in multiple gods and ancestral worship as well. All religions are the same. No, they're not. Hinduism and Buddhism, they believe that the fundamental problem isn't sin against the Holy God. They believe that it's a profound ignorance and blindness and confusion regarding the true nature of reality. And so in those religions, listen, you don't need salvation. You need enlightenment. All religions are the same. I don't think so. In fact, the more you look at it, the greater the divergence, and to propose that all religions are the same distorts what they actually do teach, and it's very patronizing. Imagine how a Muslim or Hindu feels when they're told, hey, hey, we pretty much all believe the same thing. No, we don't. In Eastern religions, they believe in a cycle of life. Life just keeps going on, and you come back in a different form. In our faith, we believe it's given to man once to die, and then the judgment. That's a huge difference. In other words, everything about eternity is at stake in the 20, 50, 80 number of years that God gives you to live on this earth. So myth number one, all religions are basically the same. Not true. Number two, the real struggle in today's world is with atheism. Those atheists, they're really fighting to keep our rights. Let me just say, the world has changed in the last 20 years, friends. Let me read a quote to you from Dan Clendenin in one of his articles in Christianity Today. For 200 years, Christians have defended their worldview against the attacks of atheism that argued all religions are false. How ironic that we now face the opposite extreme, a theological pluralism that claims all religions are true, and that's what we're battling against. This is, we're all pretty much on the same sort of path here, and hey, and when you play this out, and here's where logic has to enter in. If you logically just extend that out, then the Hindu widow who is burned because her husband dies, well, you know, that's just, that's every bit as valid as the Muslim who gives alms every day and prays five times to Allah. Or the sisters of charity of Mother Teresa are no more virtuous than the followers of Heaven's Gate cult that perished a few years ago. Pluralism, it seems, is more a way of simply affirming a different truth. And by the way, I want to come back to John 14 so I can just say this to you. It just came on me like a ton of bricks this week. When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, those three components are incredibly important together. You can't separate any one of them out, and the whole move of post-modernism is to pull truth out of the equation and say, well, there is no real truth. It's all sort of, you know, it's truth as you know it. It's truth as it works for you. No, it isn't. Truth is in a person, and his name is Jesus. Therefore, the way is in a person, the way to God the Father. And therefore, and very interestingly, most importantly for now, the life is in a person. Those three things, we need to keep them as part of one integrated understanding. Most folks who hold to the claim that all roads lead to heaven haven't really investigated any of them. And our poorly reasoned responses generally don't convince them that they've even got anything to worry about. Really, the pluralist is a function of the desire to be above truth or to define truth in his own terms. And if you follow that logic, he's just simply saying what was said all the way back to the days of Adam. I am like God. And in fact, because I'm the one who determines truth, I am God. It's the innate nature of man. It's his fallen nature to be like God. Now, let me say before I go on and share just briefly why we need to affirm the uniqueness of Jesus as the way to heaven. I want to say this and say it very sincerely. We need to approach people of different faiths with respect and honor for the fact that they're engaging in an attempt to understand God. We all see things the Bible says through a mere dimly. And some of us think we know more than we really do. Does it strike you as interesting that Jesus turned to the centurion in Matthew 8 and said, I've never seen faith in Israel like I've seen in that man. And he wasn't a follower of Jesus or a Jew. Does it strike you as strange that Jesus, or in Acts chapter 10, the Lord sent Peter to find Cornelius, who was not a follower of Jesus, but he was a God-fearing man? I mean, we have a way of sort of compartmentalizing someone and say, well, if they don't believe it this way, then, hey, they can't possibly be right. There's no room in my approach right now for arrogance or some kind of smug self-assuredness that we have it downright and you better listen to us. In fact, 1 Peter 3, 15 and 16 in the very bottom of the outline says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you, to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect. So I want to put that as a backdrop. We don't all know how God works. I'm going to come back to that in just a moment. Now, let me share with you why I believe that Jesus has a unique claim on how we find our way to God's perfect will for our lives. The third myth, all religions have an equal handle on truth. All religions have an equal handle on truth. You know where that comes from, I believe? Part of it comes from the good old American thing that all religions have equal protection under the law. How many of you are glad that's true? I'm glad that's true. I am glad that the Hindu can pursue his or her religion with the same freedom that I can pursue my Christian. That's a marvelous quality about our country. But you know, the problem with that is, some people play that out to me, well, because all religions have equal protection under the Constitution, they're all equally true. And that's where I diverge just a bit from that opinion. Mike Royka, who is a very well-known columnist at Chicago Tribune, was commenting on this in a sort of a tongue-in-cheek way in one of his columns. And he said, you know, I come here as a member of the Church of Asylumism. He said, let me tell you what we believe about things in the Church of Asylumism. We believe that millions of years ago in a distant galaxy, there lived an advanced civilization of aliens. And one day they were having a dinner party and some of the aliens came over and ate some veggie dip and the veggie dip was tainted. They got infected by a virus and the virus scrambled their brains. They tried to cure these folks, but they couldn't find a cure. So they decided to find an uninhabited planet and use it as an asylum where they could roam free and act goofy. He said that that planet was Earth and we're all descendants of those aliens. He said, you want proof? You doubt it. Just read history books and tell me if this planet isn't one big loony bin. Now he's making a joke. Why? Well, think about it for a second. If Roy Coe wanted to start a Church of Asylumism that proclaimed that that's the truth, he could do that in this country. He could get tax-exempt status for the Church of Asylumism. He could start his own church. He could proclaim it. He could start his own colleges. He could teach this thing. He has that freedom. But would it be equally true? Of course not. So why do we embrace the extraordinarily validated claims of Christ? Well, let me share with you just four and I, you know, this could be a couple of messages in of itself. But let me just, if someone's saying to you, well, why do you believe Jesus is really who he said he was? I mean, why do you believe it so strongly? Here's four things. The first one, very powerful one. One you need to never forget is the prophetic fulfillment of Jesus when he came to this earth. Now folks, remember that the Bible is in the historical document. It's not just something that somebody put together some years after the fact. The fact that it endured 2,000 years of coming together is a unique event. Do you know that there's about, there's approximately 30 prophecies about Jesus' birth, life, death, and his mission that were fulfilled, and they were fulfilled in the exact way that the Bible said they would be. Now, I know when I was sort of investigating Christianity and trying to figure out just really, I mean, someone said something 500 years before and now it's coming true. Well, things like, for example, when Jesus rode into Bethany on a donkey, that was prophesied. And he was going to ride into Jerusalem, rather, as king, from Bethany on a donkey. And I said, you know what, he probably read that somewhere and said, well, this is what the Messiah is supposed to do. So I'm gonna find myself a donkey and I'll fulfill the prophecy. He kind of maneuvered his way into that. Then I said, I read where it said, rather, that in Micah 5 that he was going to be born in Bethlehem. So I'm thinking, how did he maneuver where he's gonna be born, you know? That's kind of a tough thing to do. Did you know that hundreds of years before the Romans ever established crucifixion as a form of death, it was prophesied that his hands and feet would be pierced. But not a bone in his body would be broken. And on and on I could go. Recently, some students of scripture, who happened to be very computer savvy, tried to figure out the odds in calculating that these 32 prophecies could come to pass randomly about an individual. And their conclusion was, it is mathematically impossible that these 32 things could converge in a lifetime without there being some design behind it. Fulfilled prophecy of the life of Jesus. Incredibly convincing argument. Number two, not as dramatic, but equally powerful, to me, is his unprecedented character. You know, and with most, what happens with most celebrities, and most politicians, and most people that get under the spotlight? What happens the closer you look into their life? What do you find? Usually there's some stuff in there that you don't want people to know about. Usually there's some things that happen that really were an embarrassment. But it's interesting. The farther that Jesus went on, the more people were drawn to him. John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus and walked with him for a while, said, in him there is no sin. Later, Peter wrote in his epistle, he committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth. The only way to arrest him was to create a false charge. And Pilate even knew then that he was creating something that wasn't true. He couldn't find any fault with him. Amazing character of life. The third thing were the miracles that he performed. Jesus validated his claim of divinity by performing miracles that had never been seen before. The healing of people who were profoundly afflicted. Even raising some from the dead. The deliverance of those who were bound up. Natural miracles, where he stilled storms and did things that had never been seen before. And Jesus did these miracles. Restoration. Creatively. Miracles over nature. He did them wide open so everyone could see. He didn't go off into some cave and do some things and come out and say, well, I just did this. Come check it out. And by the way, these things were authenticated and validated by historians other than biblical scholars. And people who said, well, it's just in the Bible and I don't believe the Bible. Challenge that, friend. Say, well, have you done your homework? Have you read Josephus? No, I've never read Josephus. He's a non-biblical author who says, yeah, there's evidence that these miracles had taken place. Same thing about the final and most important validation of who Jesus was, and that was his resurrection from the dead. Oh, man. Why am I a Christian? Because no one else ever came back from the dead to validate their claims. Not Buddha. Not Mohammed. Not Joseph Smith. Nobody else. Someone said to me, hey, if they found the bones of Jesus somewhere in a tomb, and they did all these studies, and they proved that these were the bones of Jesus Christ, would you still be a Christian? No. Paul said, if Jesus is not to be raised from the dead, then we of all people are to be the most pitied. Wow. But he is raised from the dead. And the fact was he was viewed by 500 witnesses. And how do I know that that was true? Because the people that hid in fear, you know, and locked their doors for fear of the Jews and the Romans, later became bold in his name because they had encounters with him. Yes, this Jesus is raised from the dead, and that's why we can believe and affirm that he is who he said he was, the way, the truth, and the life. Now, the fourth myth is this. Well, you Christians are arrogant when you say that Jesus is the only way to heaven. But the pluralists and postmodernists of our day simply argue, well, you know, you're arrogant, and your position's outrageous. You can't possibly believe that that you have the only way. That's just chauvinistic, and absurd, and politically, and theologically, like, well, it's just disastrous. But we've already established, haven't we, that it is not reasonable or logical to say that the two, or three, or five, or ten major religions of the world all basically believe the same thing. That's an illogical statement to me. That's, if some of them, if something's right here, it can't be wrong there, and still be the same thing. And so people say, you know, they say, well, you Christians are exclusivists. I mean, you just, you shut people out. Now, here's, this is very important, because you see, that creates a stumbling block in their head. They say, well, I couldn't believe in an exclusivist religion that cuts out other people. No, it doesn't. Show me in the Bible where it says no one else can come in but just certain people. In fact, the opposite is said. Whosoever will may come. Actually, the Christian faith is very open, and the claim that we have the answer to the fundamental problem of mankind, his sinful nature, is not arrogance. It's demonstrated by the evidence of transformed lives. How many of you had a baby, think back now, in your immediate family, or extended family, that when that baby was born, he or she had jaundice? Let me see your hand. Jaundice. Now, jaundice is a fairly common occurrence. It's sort of a liver reaction, and your skin gets yellow, and you know, the whites of your eyes get a little yellow, and you know, at first, I know the parents at first think, oh, they have jaundice, and sometimes parents get really concerned, but the good news is, it's a very treatable disease, and doctor comes out, and he says, now your baby has a little jaundice, and there's a scale, and all that kind of thing, and they say, now, all you have to do is take that baby, and put that little baby under a certain kind of light, and over a couple of days, the skin will absorb that light, and it creates a chemical biological reaction that clears up the jaundice. Now, what if a parent said, you know, doctor, I don't like that way. I want to take my baby home. I just want to scrub that skin, and get that yellow out of there, put some drops in their eyes. What would the doctor say? No, that's not the way it works. This is the way it works. This is the only way it works, and the parents would say, that's arrogant. That's not the only way. I know it's the only way. Well, because we've seen it demonstrated and proven. Well, I'm just going to ignore that. I'm going to do it my way. Now, what is that? Let me ask you. Yeah, that's arrogance, and it's foolishness as well. Unfortunately, that's how many people, listen, when they hear of this sin problem of human nature, and by the way, every honest person knows they're not perfect. And they don't know what to do with that, and you tell them, well, this is the way. You're not saying, well, this is the way, and I have it, and you don't. You're saying, this is the way. God, by his mercies, included me, and he extends his mercy to you. I invite you to join with me. If they say, well, that's not the only way. There's other ways. You just might want to say to them, hmm, well, show me the evidence. And this is where you win. I mean, you win the battle of logic, if you're willing to stand your ground. Don't be just, don't cower away in fear, just because somebody says something. Go to 401, and understand a little bit of the way that you can relate to people, and share with them, so that you can find yourself confidently helping someone to see the blindness. The Bible says that there's a blindness over the eyes of unbelievers, and we have to pray that, and share that away, so that they can see the glorious grace that's available to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Friends, becoming a Christian's, I mean, listen, it's not exclusivist. It's inclusivist to those who will come. I see it like two country clubs, if you will. One country club says, hey, if you want to come and join our club, then you've got to pay these dues, and do these things, and wear this kind of stuff, and show up this way, and so on. And in the end of the whole day, you know, we'll decide if we want you or not. And there's a lot of religions that say, if you do these things, and don't do those things, and show up here, and do that, and say this, then we may include you. And by the way, many of those religions don't tell you until you die. Isn't that kind of a lousy deal? Most of the religions of the world I've studied, operate under the function, and function under the the basic premise of do, do, do, do, and then maybe you'll get it done. The Christian faith, the Christian, if you will, country club, I'm cautious about using that, because it's not really a country club, but the Christian family says, no, we're members because it's been done, D-O-N-E. It's been paid for. Jesus purchased our admission. And because he paid the price, I don't have to wait until the day I die to know I'm accepted. I know today. Friend, if you're here, and you know, there's just some question in your mind. It's okay to have questions, but listen, you can continue to pursue, and come to a point of understanding more about this relationship with God after you've opened to receiving the grace that he extends to you. It's really not arrogant to act upon evidence. It's just wisdom. And so as we conclude today, I just want to say this, in closing, about the millions and millions of people who do not know Christ. Two things. Remember my call to theological humility. The Bible says, my ways are not your ways, says the Lord. We know that God's here for people who say, well, I just couldn't believe in a God who would consign millions of people who never heard about him to hell. Listen, we don't know what God's going to be doing with people who never heard. We make room, even the most exclusivist, if you will, in our own minds of people. We make allowance, don't we, for the five-year-old who is tragically taken by a disease. What do we say? Even though that five-year-old never really consciously, or three-year-old if you want to make it, never really opened and understood who Christ was and accepted. What do we say? Will he or she be in heaven? Of course. But what about the mentally challenged person who doesn't understand intellectually at all about God? What do we say? Well, we make, what about the Old Testament saints? Did they ever call upon the name of Jesus to be saved? Do you think Moses will be in heaven? You see, so what I'm saying is there are categories that we all make room for, and I just want to say to you, likewise, there are categories of people out there that I would say, I'm going to entrust to God that he'll make the final determination, and it's a lot bigger than I'm able to put my head or my heart around. I trust in the character and the nature and the mercy of God. Now, on the same hand, I want to say, that doesn't then just exonerate me from going out and evangelizing. In fact, and see, that's the danger of it. You can say, well, hey, in the end, God's gonna work it all out. Well, in the end, God is in control, but he says to you and to me, go out and make disciples of all nations. You see, it's incumbent on us, because we need to know that we've done everything we can to share this grace, because we don't know what that outcome will be, but we know that Jesus said, you go and do it. That's why we send people all over the world from this church. Has our mission team returned from China? They're back in town. Bless you guys. It's so awesome to see people out there. We have people, and I'm going to talk about this next week, in Hindu countries right now, and in Muslim countries right now, serving Jesus. People who, people who are sacrificing, people like Martin Burnham. Put his picture up there, would you please, Scott? This is the family you probably heard, who perished. Actually, the husband died, and the wife was injured, after a year of trying to take the gospel to the Philippine Muslims. Radicals, extremists abducted them, and he was killed in a rescue attempt. And when I see and hear things like that, it just embarrasses me a little tiny bit, when I say, man, it's really hard for me to share my faith with, you know, my golfing buddy, or my partner at business. Why? Well, because he's, you know, he doesn't want me to cram it down his throat. Don't cram it down his throat. Love him, but be willing and ready to give an answer for the hope that you have on him. All roads do not lead to heaven. Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me. And he says to us today, all of us are commissioned to go invite others to join with you in this journey. Let's stand together. Lord, I thank you for your word, and I thank you for the promise of being able to affirm your grace towards us, and to be able to share that grace with those all around the world. Help us to affirm as we prepare for communion now that you rule today above all powers, all authorities, that you remain this day the way, the truth, and the life. As we worship the Lord together, the ushers, sorry about that, the ushers are going to be preparing, and I'm gonna invite you to open your heart in just a moment to receive communion together. Let's worship. Above all.