Disputations on the Teaching of "Spiritual Salvation" Concerning World Religions and Non-Christian Cults, Pt 1

 A Introduction
I have studied the subject of world religions and non-Christian cults.  I would suggest the apparent references Halverson's The Compact Guide to World Religions and House's Charts of Cults, Sects and Religious Movements.  These are heady reference tools to learn about the doctrines of non-Christian religions.  I have learned a great deal of information.  I hope this is helpful to a Christian or a person who wants to learn more on the doctrine of non-biblical teachings in light of the Bible.

Thoughts on the World Religion on "Animism"
1.  If Animists are worried about "offending local spirits" they will not be contritely focused on fearing the Blessed and Holy Trinity, or contemplate their own sinful nature in light of the Bible's teaching of total depravity and radical corruption!

2. Animists believe that God us unknowable, but if what the Bible teaches is true and God's people can really know Him in a personal relationship in holiness and godliness and faith and repentance?

3.  I recommend to Animists in a spiritual sense to trust the Blessed Trinity, but what if they want to trust their "spirits"?  There needs to be an spiritual awakening to Christ and His Word.  If you do not know Christ, you have a stoney heart of unbelief.  You need a new heart of felt need for Christ to trust Him alone.

4.  Animists should know that God's people are His children, justified freely by His grace, freed from damnation, secure in God's love, holy and blameless, free from spiritual slavery and sealed by God's Spirit.  If you fear the "local spirits" you are actually worshiping them, but you ought to fear God alone: His name is Jehovah and He is one God revealed in three distinct persons: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Thoughts on the World Religion on "Buddhism"
5.   Have you considered the God of the Bible concerning those who follow "Theravada Buddhism"?  That is, the God of the Bible is a personal God who is self-existent not abstract!

6.  Have you thought on the God of the divine Word instead of an abstract void (that is Nirvana) and the "Buddha essence" instead of the personal God of the written Old and New Testament?

7.  Do you realize that the spiritual solution concerning the "Theravada Buddhist" is not the illusion of self but we suffer because of the consequences of sin?

8.  The "Mahayana Buddhist" thinks the same as the "Theravada Buddhist" concerning the "spiritual solution" of man's spiritual nature, but don't you realize through a simple "introspection" that we have rebelled against a holy God?  Surely God's goodness can be seen in His glorious creation!  We have sinned against a holy God and have provoked Him to anger, but it is only through Jesus Christ as the only God-man that rescues us from spiritual sin.

9.  Why do you trust in "self-reliance" rather than on God and total reliance on Him alone?  I suggest to you that you have a nature of rebellious idolatry and arrogance!  That is, your own heart has led you astray and the master of the fallen ones who is Satan.  You ought to repent of your own personal sin of "self-reliance" and accrue karmic merit, meritorious rituals, emptying of the mind, understanding the Buddha-essence within and resting on the merits of Bodhisattva.  You have been misled!  You ought to trust the unified merit of Jesus Christ alone as your only Savior and Lord.  I suggest to you that there is no other reliable or credible merit than that of Jesus the great and awesome God and Redeemer!

10.  Why didn't Buddha claim to have a unique relationship with God like Jesus if he is to be trusted?  Why don't you consider that Jesus has a special and unique relationship with God?  Jesus considered the existence of God essential because He intercedes on behalf of the sinner, but Buddha did not consider God's existence important or essential.  Buddha believed God's existence did not believe God's existence would give him the spiritual ability to be rid of human suffering.  If we are to understand human suffering, we ought to turn to the only God-man!  Jesus suffered in behalf of all His people alone.  There is no better example to comprehend human suffering than to behold King Jesus.  He suffered for redemptive purposes alone!

11.  Do you understand that Buddha and Jesus cannot be compared as spiritual equals?  We ought to already know that Buddha claimed to "point to the way" of escaping human suffering and entering into enlightenment, but Jesus claimed to be the ONLY WAY to have everlasting life!

12.  Buddha taught that a person had to take away the desire of suffering to eliminate suffering, but Jesus taught that a person should have the right desire to eliminate suffering.

13.  We ought to understand that there is multiple "bodhisattvas." However, don't you understand the divine Word that there was a single incarnation of God the Son in the Person of Jesus Christ alone?

Thoughts of the World Religion on "Confucianism"
14.  Why do you think man's nature is morally good when the infallible Scriptures say that man is "not good" and "not righteous"?

15.  If there is a "transcendent root of man's goodness" why did Jesus say that no one was "good" but God alone and not man?

16.  Why shouldn't we be rooted in a personal God who cares about human suffering?  I suggest to you that our suffering is because of our rebellion of moral laws.  However, suffering is also sometimes the displayed work of God to manifest miracles through His divine and awesome Son.

17.  If no one can know God, why did Jesus explain the theology behind God?  If no one can know God, how did Jesus Christ pray to the Father in behalf of the apostle Peter so his faith fail not?

18.  If God is impersonal, how did the Second Person of the Trinity become man in Jesus Christ as God Incarnate?

19.  If God is silent why does He have a written Scriptures of special revelation?   It is true that God concerning spiritual salvation or redemption is silent in terms of His Son in general revelation (that is, His glorious creation) but He is not silent about the holy matters of God in the Old and New Testaments.

20.  If you have a conscience you understand that you have "bad thoughts" in your minds, and doesn't that tell you that you are no good?  If humanity is good by nature, how it is that he steals?  How it is that he murders?  The inspired revelation of the divine Word says that if you have broken one commandment of God in His Word, you have broken them all.  Does this not speak to your "mortally woundedness" in a spiritual sense?  God had to destroy all mankind because they were totally corrupt in ancient history regarding Noah's global flood!  I suggest to you that a simple investigation of your own heart will tell you that you are not good.  If you "feel" good it does not mean you necessarily are "good."  People that do what seems to be "good" is a "civil righteousness."  That is, man's alleged "goodness" is corrupted with sin!  Sin is a total and spiritual offense against God. 

21.  If Confucius never saw someone love another, how can man be good by nature?  I suggest to you that Jesus is Somebody who loves His own to the uttermost!  Jesus proclaimed that we love our neighbor and to love our enemies.  I have to say that the reason why Confucius said he could not attain to love was because he was not born from above!  I suggest to you that the only way to love is to be born from above.  It is true that the reprobate love their own, but this is of the sinful nature and a display of "civil righteousness."  Civil righteousness will never make anyone right with God in our broken relationship.

22.  If the mind falling into evil does not mean man is not good, how can you change your evil if you once embraced whether it is "forced" or "allowed"?  If we are by nature good, why do the Scriptures give us the Golden Rule?  We have a goal to do good but we can't carry it out.  I suggest to you it is because we are made in the "image of God."  However, we have spiritually rebelled against a holy God.  We need reconciliation and redemption and salvation.   We do not have this by nature because we are no good.  We need Jesus' forgiveness and cleansing and divine grace! 

23.  We have a "broken" relationship with God because of the fall of Adam.  That is, we are in "original sin."  It means we have a corrupt nature. We make evil choices.  The only way to restore our "spiritual relationship" with God is through a divine Savior, Advocate and Mediator!  It cannot come from "human effort" but through God's merciful call.

24.  The God of the Bible is a God who speaks.  That is, He speaks in His written Word alone.  He reveals His special revelation to us that Jesus is the Savior and Lord whereby we are right with God.  It is only through His imputed and accounted righteousness in His unified merit through faith alone that we will stand right with God.  Confucius did not offer forgiveness.  However, Jesus offers forgiveness through Himself alone.  Will you turn to Jesus now and be forgiven?  Be reconciled to God!  It is through and in Jesus!

25.  No one can save themselves through personal goodness.  No one is saved through humanity's goodness.  We are in need of the divine righteousness of Jesus Christ alone.  You ought to trust Him by faith alone because of grace alone.  We can't be right with God by our own attempts. 

26.  It is true that God is silent in general revelation and in special revelation He is a speaking God.  This may help the "Confucian" to understand the two theological concepts.

27.  We proclaim a humble declaration that you can be right with God through Jesus as Savior in a personal relationship with God.

28.   If you understand that God is both transcendent and immanent, why don't you seek to understand the God of the Christian Bible?

29.  If you practice ancestral worship, have you not considered it idolatry in light of God's "holiness"?  I suggest to you that if you understand the absolute holiness of God alone as "set-apart" you will give up worshiping spirits because it is contrary to the special and unique holiness of God alone!

Thoughts of the World Religion on "Hinduism"
30.  How can God be "impersonal" as the nature of Braham if the one true God of the Bible is personal?  Have you not read that God is a personal God?

31.  If we have a divine nature in the law of karma, why does the inerrant Word of God say that you are a man and not a god?

32.  If reincarnation is true, how did Jesus Christ rise from the dead and enter heaven?

33.  If being "liberated" is realizing that the self is an illusion and as Halverson says concerning Hinduism "that only the undifferentiated oneness of Braham is real" (pg. 90), why does the infallible Scriptures say that being "spiritual free" is to know God and His only Son?

34.  If karma does not affect our relationship, have you not considered that sin has caused a spiritual wall between you and God?  

35.   Why do you embrace the "law of karma" if it does not truly offer forgiveness?  Jesus says "come to Me" in Matthew's Gospel of chapter 11: why don't you come to Jesus?  He offers complete forgiveness.

36.  God is three persons and one God.  That is, His person can be realized in the human mind of a sinner.  Sin is the rejection of the holiness of God and alienation to Him.   You need to confess your sins to God and be forgiven through Jesus alone to enter into eternal fellowship with Him.

37.  Gandhi said to study the life of Jesus and to not study His life was "incomplete."  I would recommend to the Hindu to read the Gospel of Luke and John.

38.  Why don't you look to Jesus and focus on Him alone?  He will save you if you ask Him.  He is gracious and He will "cast out" none who come to Him by faith alone?

39.  I suggest to the Indian that Jesus can be your Savior and you may be proud of your national heritage.  You may suffer because you know Jesus, but you will join a great cloud of witnesses.

40.  If there are many paths to God, why does Jesus say that He is the only way to the God the Father?  I suggest to you that other ways to God is unacceptable in a spiritual sense, because only Jesus is spiritually and divinely credible and reliable to believe.

41.  If Jesus is not unique, how did He perform various miraculous signs that is divinely preserved in John's Gospel?  Jesus is not the same as Mohammed or Zoroaster, but He is the unique Son of God.  A former Hindu sees the profound and unmistakable separation between Jesus and other teachers.

42.  If you must pay for your own karmic debt, have you not read that Jesus pays the spiritual debt of all of His people through the Cross alone?

43.  There were not "ten incarnations" concerning animals and humans, but Jesus is God's incarnation alone!  This would be a divine between "Vishnu" and Jesus.

44.  Why trust the Vishnu if the history is not essential?  Why not trust the divine historicity of Jesus in the OT and NT of the Christian Bible?

45.  If the Vishnu's incarnations was the ruin of evil-doers, have you not considered the divine love of Jesus to seek and save the lost?

46.  Why would you trust an avator that pointed to a way, when Jesus pointed to Himself as the only way?  I suggest to you that Jesus is the divine Son of God.  You ought to trust Him alone!

47.  Have you not considered the unique resurrection of Jesus Christ in comparison of the avators?  The avators in the Vishnu died, but Jesus rose from the dead and destroyed death.  Hinduism does not teach a bodily resurrection, but Jesus defeated death through His triumphant resurrection.

48.  If you are a Hindu and have a problem with the violent death of Jesus, have you considered that it happened because of the "wages of sin"?

Thoughts of the World Religion on "Islam"
49.  If you deny the Holy Trinity, have you not read that it is taught in the inerrant Scriptures?  If God is a singular unity why is He displayed in the OT and NT as three persons almost on every page?

50.  If humans are good by nature, why do you mistreat women and murder innocent people?  I suggest to you that the Bible declares that human beings are radically polluted and evil continually.  You have not obeyed the "law of God" but you have disobeyed it.  You solely need the complete righteousness of Jesus Christ alone through faith alone.

51.  If sin is simply rejecting right guidance, why has sin caused spiritual death?  Why has sin caused rebellion against God?  Do you not realize that you are desperately wicked and who can understand your wicked heart?  I suggest to you this is the Bible's teaching in its special revelation.

52.  If the standard of spiritual salvation is someone's good deeds, how you not considered that your good deeds are completely tainted with sinfulness and depravity?

53.  If Jesus is merely a major prophet, how do you realize the Bible's teaching of Jesus as God the Son?  I suggest to you that the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ alone.  It is not enough to simply honor the virgin birth and miracles of Jesus.  You must explicitly trust in Him alone for spiritual redemption.

54.  The Quarn is filled with errors, but the Bible is divinely inspired. 

55.  I don't mean to be critical to Islam, but I want to share with you the Gospel of God.  It is all about forgiveness, grace and divine righteousness.  I suggest to you that you need a divine covering for your sins.  Doing good works will not save you.  You need the righteousness of Jesus alone.

56.  You can trust the Bible because the Quarn says you can!  It says "the Book" is "authoritative" and credible "revelations" from God (Surah 2:136; 4:163).

57.  We do not worship three gods, but one God revealed in three distinct persons. The Trinity does not consist of the God, Christ and Mary (Surah 5:116, Ali).  The Holy Trinity is the teaching that God is one in unity and three in person.  That is, God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

58.  God did not have physical relations with Mary to "beget a son" (Surah 19:34-35).  Ironically this is the teaching of Mormonism that the Father had physical relations with Mary, but it is not a teaching of biblical Christianity.  Jesus is eternally begotten of the Father which means He is the eternal Son of God.

59. If you reject the Cross of Jesus, you also reject the divine remedy by which you are spiritually saved.  The Cross of Jesus paid the spiritually debt of God's people alone.  

60.  The Quran does not deny that Jesus was crucified but only by the Jews (Surah 4:157-158).   However, Muslims deny His crucifixion and believe God took Jesus to heaven.  But the Romans killed Jesus, and we also see that ultimately God crushed His own Son to bring about redemption.