What the Bible says about light and seed

The True Light "In him, (the Lord Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world,…the world didn’t recognize him." John 1:4,9.

The Good Seed and the Weeds “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seeds in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. Matthew 13:24,25.

Saturday, January 7, 2023

The Christian religion is distinct from other religions

While there are some similarities, the distinctions between the gods of major world religions are far greater than those between individual men and women. The adherents of competing religions take very seriously the identifying attributes of their deities. Thus, it is not generosity but a cynical trivialization of that which is vital and sacred to suggest that the gods of all religions are the same. It is an affront to Muslims to insist that Allah is the equivalent of the many gods in Hinduism; or to tell a Christian that his God, who gave His Son to die for the sins of the world, is the same as Allah, of whom it is specifically stated that he has no son.
 
To say that all religions are the same denies the meaning of language and is an insult not only to the followers of these religions but to intelligence itself. The difference is particularly glaring when it comes to Christianity. It stands alone on one side of a theological chasm, with all other religions on the other side—a chasm that renders any ecumenical union impossible without destroying Christianity itself.
 
One cannot deny, for example, the irreconcilable conflict between the belief that Christ died for our sins and rose again(which is the very heart of Christianity) and Islam’s blasphemous claim that Christ did not die on the cross, much less for sin, but that someone else died in His place. To sweep such differences under an ecumenical rug (as Roman Catholicism, and specifically Vatican II, seeks to do) is not kindness but madness.
 
Nor is it possible to reconcile the claim of all non-Christian religions that sin is countered by good works with the Bible’s oft-repeated declaration that only Christ, because He was sinless, could pay the penalty for sin, and that to do so He had to die in our place. Of course Christ’s claim, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6), is the strongest possible rejection of all other religions as Satanic counterfeits.
 
The...Second Coming of Christ,is a belief which is unique to Christianity and separates it from all of the world’s religions by a chasm that cannot be bridged by any ecumenical sleight-of-hand. Muhammad never promised to return, nor did Buddha, nor did the founder of any other of the world’s religions. Only Christ dared to make this promise, and only He made it credible by leaving behind an empty tomb. That undeniable fact is reason enough to take seriously His assertion that He would return to this earth in power and glory to execute judgment upon His enemies.