Other Faiths

​

At the start of this page I said alternatives to Christianity would be shown to be invalid as I went along. Primarily this is because the one unique thing about the faith is Jesus Christ - no other belief system has Him and most of them expect us to earn our salvation by the things we do, or don’t do. Jesus disqualifies these, because His way is diametrically opposite. We have nothing to do because He did it all for us. Jesus is unique in history:

​

• There are dozens of Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah/Christ, all of which were fulfilled in Him, with some of them - including the manner of His birth and death - that were completely outside of His control to bring about. No-one else in history has come anywhere near to doing this. See here for an excellent brief look at the reasons to believe the Old Testament, which, along the way, also confirms the validity of the New Testament.

​

• He said that He would be killed, but He would come back to life again. Then He did it, with hundreds of eye witnesses who confirmed that He did. No-one else in history has come anywhere near to doing this.

​

• He promised that when He ascended into Heaven He would send the Holy Spirit to be with those who love Him, and the day it first happened transformed terrified disciples into bold preachers of the message He gave them, with miraculous healings and signs to prove the message was true. No-one else in history has come anywhere near to doing this.

​

• Even our calendar has been changed as a huge part of the world calculates the year from the time He was born. No-one else in history has come anywhere near to doing this.

(Of course, it may not have been exactly the year 1 A.D. or 1 B.C. when Jesus was born (there is no year 0), as there is slight confusion over this. The point is not the accuracy of the year but the fact that we now date it in this way.)

​

Having said this, let me conclude by briefly explaining why alternatives to Christianity fall short. One way of doing this is by seeing how the different faiths can account for the others.

​

Islam

Islam calls Jesus a messenger of God, but it rejects the message He brought, so it is self-contradictory: Jesus said He was the Son of God, who died on the cross for us, but Islam denies these things:

​

That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";--but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.

4:157, Yusif Ali. (Quoted from here. This English version used is the Usuf Ali Translation of 1985. http://quran.com)

​

Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." But He was speaking of the temple of His body.

John 2:19, 21

​

Never has God begotten a son, nor is there any other god besides Him. Were this otherwise, each god would govern his own creation, each holding himself above the other. Exalted be God above their falsehoods!—Qur’an 23:91

​

...do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'? If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him."

John 10:36–38

​

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

1 John 2:22–23

The way Moslems get around this contradiction is by saying that all the writers of the New Testament were lying, and Jesus never made such a claim. Is this really tenable, though? All the Apostles of Jesus were either martyred or imprisoned for what they were saying, and no-one would suffer in this way for something they knew was a lie. Would Islamic suicide bombers kill themselves and others if they knew the promise they would be given dozens of beautiful virgins in paradise for doing so was untrue? If they knew that actually those who murder are destined for Hell?

​

But… murderers… shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

​Revelation 21:8

Of course not! Neither is it valid to claim the Apostles of Jesus deliberately lied about the One whom they had been following for over three years. How can people, who lived hundreds of years after Jesus, know better what He taught and believed than those who lived with Him for over three years and heard hundreds of His sermons? People who were so sure about what He had told them that they were prepared to die in the most appalling ways for it? In fact Peter specifically tells us:

​

For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

2 Peter 1:16–19

​

“…how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they killed by hanging on a tree. Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.”

​Acts 10:38–41 (Emphasis mine.)

​

As we have seen, the Koran says Jesus did not die on the cross and rise again from the dead, but Peter here tells us he was an eyewitness to these things.

​

Additionally, John, who with Peter was one of the 12 original disciples of Jesus, also tells us he is simply repeating what he has seen and heard himself:

​

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

1 John 1:1–7

​

So Islam has no logical answer to the teaching of Christianity. On the other hand, the Bible has one for the claims of Islam:

​

…For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

2 Corinthians 11:14

​

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.

Galatians 1:8

​

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world… the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

1 John 4:1–3; 5:19

​

It points out that the enemy of God and man is able to masquerade in a form that can appear to us to be from God Himself, and deceive us into accepting what otherwise we would not. There are many very fine and sincere people who accept the Islamic faith (and there are many who do the most appalling acts against their fellow men in the name of Islam too, of course!)  since they all bear the image of a just and loving God to the same degree as the rest of us; but as a Christian I have to say I believe they have been deceived into serving the one who deceived the first man and woman in the garden of Eden.

​

Some Other Faiths

There are other religious faiths that believe there are many Gods, but cannot account for the One True God of the Bible. (This is not the place to go into the doctrine of the Trinity, but in brief the One God reveals Himself to us in three different forms: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.) They therefore dispute what Jesus taught:

​

Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Mark 12:29

​

On the other hand, the Bible shows that these ‘gods’ are, in fact, a part of the forces of the enemy, and should be ignored:

​

You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you.

Deuteronomy 6:14

​

For the LORD is great and greatly to be praised; He is also to be feared above all gods.

1 Chron 16:25

​

Thus you shall say to them: "The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens."

Jeremiah 10:11

​

For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things,

1 Corinthians 8:5, 6

​

...in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience…

Ephesians 2:2

​

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12

​

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

1 Peter 5:8

​

Religious beliefs that involve reincarnation are also invalid, apart from anything else because more people have been alive at the same time during our generation than have ever lived in the entire history of the world. So there are not enough previous lives for everyone even to have had just one, although often those who promote the theory claim to have had several. The Bible teaches we have just one life.

​

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment…

Hebrews 9:27

The choices we make in this life determine our eternal destiny. We do not keep on coming back if we got it wrong previously and have another chance to get it right.

​

The false memories of previous lives, I believe, come from dreams and/or the spirit forces previously mentioned. They may appear to be real, but this is an illusion. As an example, my daughter, for some years, believed that I had thrown her up in the air when she was very small and her head had become stuck in the branches of a bush that was growing over our heads in the porch of our house. We called for the fire brigade, and then they all stood around drinking tea and laughing at her before they bothered to get her down. It was only when she was much older that she became prepared to believe that it was a dream and had not really happened - she knows me and knows I would never have acted in this manner. Other examples, on public record in the UK, are the innocent people wrongfully accused of child molestation as a result of the false memories of their supposed victims.

The human mind is very susceptible to deception, which is why it is essential we have something outside of ourselves on which we can rely as a source of absolute truth. The Bible says:

​

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

Proverbs 14:12

​

Millions of people have read the Bible and proved it to be reliable. I have spent a lifetime poring through it, (I will be 77 this year) and with all my heart I recommend it to you. It is certainly the case that there are some intellectuals (and others) who have read the Bible and dispute its validity. It cannot be understood fully by man’s intellect, though.

​

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty… that no flesh should glory in His presence.

1 Corinthians 1:27, 29

​

This being the case it is obvious that in order to understand it fully, one needs something more than intelligence.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

​Ephesians 6:17 

It is the Holy Spirit who reveals these things to us; so if you wait until you understand everything before you take the steps I mentioned earlier, you will wait forever. The way we come to God is perfectly logical and understandable; but it is only after doing so that the Holy Spirit comes to live within us in order to teach us the truth:

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you… But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things…

John 14:16, 17, 26 

I began this page by pointing out that God is both just and loving. His love for you is far greater than you can ever imagine in this life; but as you begin to experience His loving presence in your life after turning yourself over to Him in the way I described, you will never regret it!

​

INDEX

​