(21) Eastern Religions

Okay, so we have there for starters, is life just a religious game? Who's going to break for us? In the end, if we get the cross in the corner pocket, is that just as good as getting the ankh in the side pocket? No. But that's one of the things we want to take a look at here this morning.

We showed this slide last week where we focused on the top part of it that shows the three major religions coming from this guy Abraham. Isn't that amazing? Here's this guy Abraham and three major world religions have some claim. And as we looked at the specifics last week, claim to some descendancy from Abraham, but different parts of the family tree, so to speak. Now we'll look at what is called Hinduism and Buddhism. And oddly enough, although that part of the world is definitely more populous, it's the religions that are descended from Abraham that are more numerous.

So a fascinating observation. We'll be looking at these, this group here. We showed this last week that the materialist view, and we certainly talked about that earlier on as we've met here this morning. We said that Eastern philosophy and religion are rooted in reincarnation. History is repeatedly cyclical. The repetition of the cyclical pattern is the primary pattern. The long-term, is this going somewhere, is the secondary pattern. It's around and around and around and around is the idea. It's kind of like a merry-go-round that goes on.

In Hinduism, the age of the universe, four trillion years. 8.4 million reincarnations before you get to be a human being. Round and around and around. And we've said that Christianity, and I would really widen that out to Christendom, Judaism and Islam, history is linear, so big difference in how the world is viewed. Christendom, Judaism and Islam all look at you got one life and at the end of that you're heading somewhere else. The Eastern world views you got multiple lives again and again and again and again and again.

Here is a quote from Siddhartha Buddha. Full name, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, an Indian prince. Through many a birth wandered I, seeking the builder of this house. Sorrowful indeed is birth again and again. Anyway, we'll take a look at Buddha in a little bit more detail. Let's take a look at our paper here. One of the things we want to point out, let's look on page 1, point 1.

God, if a part of the religion at all, and that's an important distinction, if a part of the religion at all, God is viewed as material, within the material universe. God, and the term is pantheism, pan meaning all. Theism, that God is within all the material of the universe.

Fundamental spirituality, basic spirituality in Eastern religions is viewed as non-personal. Personality is an illusion. That's more of a Hindu thought, but personality is an illusion. Personality in Buddhism is to be ended. That personality is viewed as a problem in the Eastern view of things, whereas in the Western view of things, God is personal. Personality is something good. In Eastern religion and thought, personality is ultimately to be wiped out, to be escaped from, to be lost.

God in the Eastern view is impersonal. Human life is viewed with a vast number of reincarnations. You're going to be reincarnated again and again and again and again and again. You're going to go through 8.4 million reincarnations before you become a human being and you might go backwards and probably will go backwards in that reincarnation cycle. There is a ranking of reincarnations and interestingly enough, although reincarnation is the general background of Eastern religions, how they rank different beings in that ranking of reincarnations is different, varies. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting. Yeah. And it depends on which part of Eastern religions, whether the monkeys, peacocks and cows are holy. But you're correct. Some of them do.

So there was a couple of guys that I hadn't seen them in years, but I had contact with them in years past. Ted Wise and Lambert Dolphin. They took a trip to India. They said when they got off the plane, they wanted to just scrub India. It's just, you know, rampant filth. But the point you bring up is at one point Lambert was out chasing, you know, some details about their trip, and Ted Wise was standing at a street corner next to the luggage. Well, a cow came up and started chewing on their luggage. Ted Wise, you know, nice enough guy, but he decided the right thing to do was to give that cow a punch in the nose. Started a riot, okay? Started an absolute riot.

But you'll find variations within Eastern religions as to how they look at it. It's typically Buddhism that tends more towards vegetarian and vegan type diets. You'll have in one part of Buddhism, well, they have certain dogs will be looked upon as a really high level. Another part of Buddhism, they will beat the dogs mercilessly because that's their condemnation to a lower reincarnation level. And so they just beat the daylights out of the dogs as a regular pattern because they deserve it from their past life.

And so you'll have these odd contradictions. Getting back to your point, they'll pick certain animals, but even within the broader context of the Eastern religions, which animal they'll pick will vary. And it'll sometimes almost be opposite, even though there's the same underlying philosophy.

Okay, morality and truth are not founded upon infinite holy character of a supreme and personal God, to whom we are accountable in one lifetime, but rather upon the impersonal and rigid principles of karma. Is there mercy in karma? How about that? Absolute mercy? Absolutely not. How about forgiveness? Do you get forgiveness? No. There is no forgiveness, no mercy in karma. We look at what the Lord has done in our lives and look at the forgiveness and mercy and count that to be a wonderful thing for which we thank the Lord greatly and repeatedly.

To them, there is absolutely no forgiveness, absolutely no mercy. You will, No exceptions. You will pay for every single thing you've done, no matter how long it takes. And the interesting thing is that your life should be merciful and gracious in order to reach the next level of reincarnation, and yet the religion doesn't teach that.

Yes. Buddhism teaches that you go through 18 gates of hell between each life. and testing you on different points of karma. So they've got a system as to how you go through this. It's kind of the Buddhist equivalent of purgatory, if you will. Okay, there are aspects of this worldview that have been increasingly marketed in the United States in the last, I've put a number on it, about 40 years approximately.

Here are some examples. Transcendental meditation celebrities, the Beatles, Donovan, Mia Farrow, that's kind of a and you know, decades past thing more than a current one. Hare Krishna used to be in a jacket. I know you may recall the member the saffron robes that they used to have and all the dancing around. These guys, you know, Hare Krishna, Hare Lama, Hare Hare, you know, and they're going around circles and, and begging everybody and trying to sell you, you know, yesterday's flowers.

And so anyway, there was all that kind of thing. The Hare Krishna thing, there's still Hare Krishna groups around the United States. A lot of them got into deep trouble because some of them got into gun running, abuse problems, kidnapping. There was some really bad problems with it.

Exercise and sports, yoga, tai chi, martial arts. Anybody had any, you know, yoga, martial arts, things of that sort? Yeah, yeah, it's popular. And I've had, you know, beginning judo, actually taught it when I taught high school quarter century ago. So yeah, there are things like out there.

And the other thing we're going to mention right below that is health, acupuncture, Eastern alternative medicine, medical approaches, diets, etc, that are Eastern. I'd make a quick comment, we don't have time to go into it. But I think that some people will look at these kinds of things and they'll say, don't have nothing to do with any of it. I think that what we can look at is there are things to be drawn from it which are not fundamental to the religious belief and actually may have some value.

It is somewhat like the meat offered to idols principle. Much of the meat in the marketplace in many of the cities and towns that Paul went to had been offered to idols and then they took it off the altar and sat down and, you know, took it to the marketplace and sold it. Some Christians would get really bothered by that, but ultimately, you know, Paul would look at it and say, it really doesn't matter because there's nothing about the meat that's going to bother you. Give thanks to the Lord and eat it, you know.

And there are instances like that in things like, you know, if you get some benefit from the yoga exercise or like I, you know, I had beginning Judo and, you know, I didn't get into the Eastern philosophy. The only acupuncture, the first acupuncturist I went to was definitely a Christian and he was a Christian neurologist, had no Eastern, you know, religious acts to grind. He just said, you know, this is why it works and it has nothing to do with the whole Eastern philosophy. So anyway, we can't spend too much time on that.

Books. Siddhartha is one by Herman Hess. It's one that is a fictional account that kind of gives the Eastern idea. Touch for Health has some Eastern ideas in it. The Divine Conspiracy is one that shows up in your Christian bookstore. Dallas Willard. It's basically Christian Buddhism.

And I noticed there was a copy over at the public library near where Nancy and I live. Movies. The Lion King. Anybody seen that? What am I talking about there? The Circle of Life. Basically it's life and death and life again. Star Wars. The Force. The Force be with you. The Force is this impersonal God that is everywhere. Ravi Shankar. Sitar music. Anybody heard sitar music or recall that from that era? Really weird stuff. I sort of, you know, sang some things that went along with that this last week to Nancy and she recognized it, but I won't do it because it's painful.

Okay, then how about, have you heard the song, Just a Little Talk with Jesus? It was done originally by Elvis Presley and performed by the Statler Brothers. You know, just a little talk with Jesus, real cute, it's got this little line in it, keep a little prayer wheel turning. The only religion in which there's a prayer wheel is Tibetan Buddhism. Interesting, why would you do that?

Anyway, New Age reincarnation celebrity is Shirley MacLaine, Sylvester Stallone, or a couple of them. Shirley MacLaine is probably more famous for that New Age view of things. Advertising, showing people in yoga, meditation, lotus postures, things of that sort.

Language. People now, if you say karma, they have some sense of what you mean. They may not understand it with all the right pieces of doctrine, but it's a word people use. How about mantra? Do you hear that? People will talk about somebody's theme or repeated thought or slogan. They'll call it a mantra. Nirvana is another one that's come out of there. Past life, next life. Yes, Merlin. Yes, here's another one that's come out of the Eastern world that's been sold in recent decades. The feng shui thing out of the East has been sold in recent decades.

How about among Christians? Have you ever heard a Christian talk about praying a wall of prayer, or a hedge of prayer, or bathing in prayer? Those are Eastern. That's not Christian. There's a couple of things. One, it is an imaging technique that comes out of the New Age. It is putting a focus on what we do versus who the Lord is. You notice that it's what we build and what we do and there's no mention about the Lord in it. It's from the Eastern religions where you are saved by yourself and another. It's what you make. It's what you envision. Okay, interesting. Okay, page two, which is on the backside hand out there.

Let's look at Hinduism. The idea is you've got a kind of a transition between this impersonal God who is infinite and eternal on one end, and then you've got human beings on the other, of which there are ten human incarnations, often called avatars. This will be Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, etc. So they'll take Jesus and, you know, he's just one of the avatars. The more you go over to the right-hand side of that diagram, the more you're getting into things that will eventually disappear, because in the ultimate, as my, years ago I used to have conversations by the hour with my friend Dr. Bhanu Dave, he used to teach religion over in India.

And anyway, I'd talk with him by the hour, and his way of expressing it was that what we see around us, this physical realm, is a dream of God, and when the dream is over, it will all be gone. That's his way of looking at the world around us. And so we simply have to do our part in ending the dream. That's his way of putting it. Jack? The way it happened, and we point out here, is about 1400-1500 BC, in that time frame, Hinduism got started. It was originally, and you notice that's about the same time as Moses, okay?

It was originally very much rituals and temples and things of that sort. There was a rebellion against that about the time of Daniel, about the time Daniel was in Babylon, okay? And then that's when it went into a lot of the meditation and things of that sort. there was increasingly, as that developed, more of a kind of a theologizing that went in the direction of an impersonal God. And if you think about where that come from, it didn't come from God himself.

We know that from scripture. So this is an invention that came about from the mind of man. It is a sin nature concoction. because I saved myself, it denies that somebody else can pay the price for me, I'm going to pay it myself, that's karma. The law of karma says I'm going to pay for wrongs of my own doing, myself, no mercy, no forgiveness, no flexibility, absolute rigid payment, absolute rigid accountability for what I've done wrong. It is all concocted out of the mind of man. Okay, here's the interesting thing.

Hinduism looks at the expressions of the subsidiary gods that have personalities and they number those about 330 million gods. One fellow who Nancy and I heard speak some time ago was an archaeologist that was doing some traveling and he was in a motel room and one of the carpenters who was from India came up and he had happened to note that this particular carpenter was doing a fire walk the night before. And he asked this carpenter, you know, aren't you concerned about hurting yourself? And the carpenter said, oh no, Govindra protect me. So it's just one of these 330 million gods. And so what frequently happens in Hinduism is that it reduces down to the visible aspects are frequently idolatry, doing odd behaviors because it proves my devotion to my God.

This is where you have the beds of nails, walking on fire and, you know, various odd tortures and putting your body in strange positions and things of that sort. some of the Eastern guys will do some amazing things. There was one fellow who laid down on a bed of nails. He had one place on his back that was bleeding. And so somebody said, do you have a spot right here that's bleeding? And he said, thank you, and the bleeding stopped. In other words, he learned to control his body to a very finite degree. So there will be emphasis on rather odd things that seem really strange, but to them it has to do with my devotion to my God. And so quite often it also breaks down to what really appears to be idolatry.

A friend of ours in Carson City worked for a software company there, and he had a Hindu lady who brought a cake in for some birthday, and when he was eating it, she let everybody become aware that she had devoted this cake to her Hindu goddess. So, very interesting, kind of like meat offered to idols, only it's a cake. So, anyway, it's one thing that's strange, while Hinduism has this idea of an impersonal God behind it all, the practical working out With 330 million gods, all kinds of diversity, because it depends on which god you happen to get connected up with. And so it will look, in practice, to be very diverse, depending on which god you get connected up with. Yes, Bob? There are Hindu temples. A lot of these gods end up being local. You know, this village will have this god kind of thing. Because you've got 330 million gods to choose from, there's a lot of choice. A lot of choice. And so, yes, they'll end up having temples.

People who really want to, you know, devote themselves to it will find some practice that's a part of that devotion. And, you know, it might involve fasting. It'll involve, you know, meditating by the hour. In the, you know, extreme cases, this is where you you find all sorts of odd behaviors, you know, people enduring excruciating pains to show devotion to their God, you know.

Well, they will have teaching in the temples and they will have, you know, because we have our swamis and maharashis and all that, you know, so you got all these different spiritual leaders and again, it's very diverse. Lots of diversity. So anyway, just to keep in mind, very diverse culture. We'll go into a few more interesting details on it.

Let's switch to Buddhism. Buddha's last words, everything that has been created is subject to decay and death. Everything is transitory. Work out your own salvation with diligence. Anybody seen the movie A Princess Bride? One of the things that is said to the princess, life is pain. Recall that one line? Life is pain, Highness. That's the first principle of Buddhism. All right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's get to the root of it.

Siddhartha Gautama Buddha was an Indian prince, and remember this sort of revolution that I talked about, lived approximately just after the time of, or about the same time as a contemporary of Daniel the prophet, only he was actually from India. And so Buddhism is an offshoot from Hinduism. And so you will find many things in it, though certainly some differences, many things in it that are similar, because it's ultimately an offshoot from Buddhism. It's like in Christianity, we've got Lutheranism. What's it an offshoot from? Catholicism. You have the Anglican Church. What's it an offshoot from? Catholicism. Then you have the Methodist Church. What's that an offshoot from? Anglican. So Buddhism is an offshoot from Hinduism, which is in rough numbers a thousand years older. Hinduism is a thousand years older than Buddhism. Basically, in Buddhism, the problem is life is pain. We have this cycle, this circle of life, samsara. which is going around birth and death and birth and death and birth and death and birth and death.

And so, in Buddhism, you're trying to escape that samsara by the Dharma, the teaching, and you are seeking to, and using a metaphor here, seeking to blow out, to extinguish the candle of desire. It is desire that is the problem. So to come to a place of not having any desire nor motivations in this life. So the person who then reaches this nirvana is one who is on the path out of the cycle of samsara. That's the idea. And Hinduism has a similar thing. Instead of nirvana, it's moksha. So a lot of things in parallel because they have common roots.

You have on page three the four noble truths. Life means suffering. This has often been stated as we've heard in Princess Bride, you know, life is pain, Highness. The origin of suffering is attachment. It is your connection to this world that is the problem. That's where the suffering is. Suffering is a problem, and your connection to it, that's a problem.

The cessation of suffering is attainable. You can do it. Are you saved by grace? No. And that's one thing. See, we talk about mercy, grace, forgiveness. Do they know those things? No. Do you see, like in the New Testament, Paul says twice in Ephesians 2, we are saved, The saving comes unto us, and it's a perfect tense, completed past action. Buddhism knows nothing of that, of this work. We are not saved because it takes place by God's doing upon us. We are saved only of ourselves, purely and simply. And salvation is not unto Christ, it is only escape from this.

And finally, the path of sensation of suffering, Excuse me, of cessation of suffering, enlightenment is eightfold. So we have below that the eightfold path of enlightenment. All these things, you've got to get them right. You notice that? Right view, right intention, right speech. And they've got a list of, you know, here's the things you don't do. So it's just like the Ten Commandments, you know. Yes? Yes.

Attachment to this world, attachment to the physical things of this world, ultimately, yes, because other human beings and your involvement with them are seen as a part of the problem. There is such a thing as marriage within Buddhism, but oddly enough, whereas we studied here this last summer, Ephesians 5, has marriage having this, it's got a temporal place but eternal significance.

And ultimately in Buddhism it has a temporary place but ultimately is snuffed out and there is no eternal personal significance to it. Because all the attachments that we have to this world are viewed as a problem. Matter of fact, the problem. The intent of Buddhism is to extinguish the candle of desire. That's using the metaphor to convey the idea.

So under this eightfold path, they have various additional things, and much of it is basically law. Law not given by God, but by insight of Buddha. By the way, you see these big statues of Buddha? They do not worship Buddha. they worship the concept of the Enlightenment. That is, they honor Buddha for that, so they don't directly worship Buddha in the sense of he is a god.

Now, one of the things we brought out, there are things that are in common between them because the two come from a common root. Hinduism and Buddhism come from a common root. Some of the things that are kind of conflicted with a lot of our modern viewpoints are these. A couple of the bullets we have there.

Women were considered of a lower level of reincarnation than a man. As a matter of fact, Buddha himself would refuse to discuss it because women weren't worthy of it. Is that what we see of Jesus Christ? No. No. Jesus would meet with Mary Magdalene there in the garden. And was it worth doing? Yes. Buddha would not discuss it. Modern Buddhism has tended to update it and find ways of tap dancing around it, but the reality is that Buddha wasn't even thinking that women were worthy of discussion so far as being saved from the samsara.

They've got to die and be reborn a bunch of times before they'll get there. It's a lower reincarnation. Then the point that we get that was brought up earlier was oddly, and depending on which portion of the expression you're talking about, you'll either have bizarre kindness towards certain animals or bizarre abuse. I mentioned in one brand of Buddhism where they just beat the dogs mercilessly because they're essentially sentenced to hell. And so they're looked at as demonic beings in a sense. And so you have to beat them mercilessly, and that's a good thing to do in that view, whereas another part of Buddhism would look at certain breeds of dogs as being a higher reincarnation.

You will have instances where, be very nice to this cow, but don't dare help that person over there, because, have you ever heard of the untouchables? A lower caste, and you do not You do not interfere with karma by treating somebody as outside their caste. If somebody is in terrible pain and agony, of course it's karma that did that. So you don't dare help them.

So you'll have these very odd confusions. Be extremely kind to the cow. One of the oddities was There was one man who was very poor. He had a wife and some kids and a very small farm. And a cow came in and started eating the little crops that he had to feed his family. But his Hindu belief said that he shouldn't do anything to disturb the cow, so his family starved. So this is the kind of mentality that kind of fits in. The high position of this cow overrides my taking care of the family. and to them that would be faith. Make sense? Oh boy, of course. Okay, let's take a look at some other things I think you'll find interesting.

The Silk Road was something we brought up during our early study of Ephesians and Colossians. From about the year 200 on into several hundred years AD, so for a period of over 500 years, There was trade between the Silk Road that went all the way over, and you notice the furthest extent was all the way into Korea. That was a network of trade that went into Europe and included Ephesus and Colossae and Antioch. As a matter of fact, the first contact with the Roman Empire was Antioch, which is the church that we see written of in the middle part of Acts. So it's very interesting. Here's the Silk Road, and it was from that trade which started about 200 BC, so two centuries before the first coming of Christ. Ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism were coming in to the Roman Empire. So from the Far East you've got a lot of Eastern religions and philosophies. Colossians and Colossae, by the way, was on the Silk Road network of trade.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men. And what is Hinduism and Buddhism? Tradition. It is tradition. It is law. It is absolutely law, with no mercy, no grace, no forgiveness, and you save yourself 100%, pure, plain and simple, no exceptions. It is absolutely mechanically rigid in those respects. According to the elementary principles, that's the stoichia. You've seen some of the diagrams and whatnot, earth, air, fire, and water. That's the stoichia. This is some of the ideas that came out of the Eastern realm and made its way into Greek philosophy and in the philosophy of the Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean. Here is a picture of the eastern hemisphere from space. Looking a little more closely, what happened to Thomas the Doubter? Here's the one who said, you know, here's the rest of the disciples and he didn't happen to be there and he said, I won't believe it unless I see the marks. Real interesting.

He went up to Syria and then went down, the record we have it, two different directions. The record we have it is he went from there and ended his life in Madras, India, in that region. The two records we have are one, written records saying that that's what happened. Two, if you go to the Christians, and there are a small number of Christians there, if you go to the Christians who still have churches there, and they say, who started this church?

They'll tell you it's Thomas. Thomas came. and gave us the gospel. Very interesting. So two lines of evidence seem to point pretty well in that direction. Here's something else. The apostles take the gospel to China. Recently, and this was only like in the last decade or so, a communist Chinese professor, Wang Weifeng, has said that he's found evidence of Bible stories on the tombstones in China before the end of the first century. So we don't have a lot of information as to how that got there. It may have been one of the apostles, or it may have been others that the apostles communicated the gospel to. But real interesting, and this isn't my claim or some Christian's claim, this is a secular professor who says, I find evidence of Christianity before the end of the first century in the tombstones that I see in China. Real interesting, I wasn't able to find more detail on it. And the main reason is I don't read Chinese.

So I'm not quite sure, but this was, pardon? Yeah. Yeah, good question. Here is one more. And that is, you look at it. if that's the case, that not only would the gospel have gone to India into Hinduism, but also would have gone into China into Buddhism. Yeah, Randy? Yes. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? It's like it's already been prepared. Yes. I'm glad you asked about that. He asked about Marco Polo. And let me make this distinction here.

There was Silk Road trade from about 200 BC into several hundred years AD. And then as the Roman Empire began to fall apart, the Silk Road trade fell apart and Europe dropped into the Middle Ages. And Marco Polo, during the same time as the Crusades, was one who kind of reintroduced the East to the West and began the trade again. So interestingly enough, centuries went by from the time that this Silk Road trade broke down until the time that it was restored and resumed. And Marco Polo is kind of the historical pivot point in that resumption. Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah. Yeah. So amazing. Here's another point. What would Buddha do? This is not a joke. There's a book out by that title. And the Buddhists have that sort of thing. And I bring that up for two reasons. One is, of course, what would Jesus do is a big thing. But the truth is that because Buddhism is very much a, this is the way to do it, and Buddha is the guy who showed you how to do it and what to do, and it's very legalistic, More so, I would say, actually, than Judaism. Because there is no sense of mercy and grace and forgiveness and things of that sort, that ultimately, what would Buddha do is a far more appropriate question than what would Jesus do. Because so much is pointed towards outward behavior and Buddha shows you the way and the right thing to do whereas Jesus gives his life for us and lives his life through us, a very different concept.

How about the what-if-I'm-wrong approach? Think about this if you're ever talking to somebody, and this is one that I presented to Banu Dave and he didn't have a good answer. If you talk to somebody who believes in reincarnation and you say, hey, let's just look at this both ways.

If I am correct, and you have this one life, and you don't get any second chances, and when this life is done, you're done here, and the rest of your eternity will be determined irreversibly based on your time window of opportunity. If I'm correct, then your belief is very dangerous and is a huge loss. If, on the other hand, you are correct, over millions of reincarnations, what difference does it make that I believed in one life? What will have been lost? So my belief is a far less risky belief than yours. Your belief, all things being equal, is extremely risky. Mine is not. So just from a risk approach, just a thought. Yes, there we go. Here's something else.

Jesus was extremely explicit in this verse, and I've expanded it from the Greek in order to get the idea across. What Jesus says is intense and profoundly exclusive. Jesus said to him, and that's based on the question that was put to him, I, being in fact God, this is the ego, a me, I am.

I am the self-existent one. I am the one who lives in the eternal present. I am the one who is deity. This is the same Greek words in the Greek Old Testament as where God responds to Moses out of the burning bush. Ego eimi. I am the self-existing one who lives in eternity. Being in fact God, in contradistinction to anyone else, am the singular way, the singular truth, and the singular life. No one comes to the Father, but that He comes through me exclusively. Notice that there's a coming to the Father.

In Buddhism, it's interesting, Buddha was asked about God and you know what his response was? That's how he responded. He just closed his mouth, wouldn't respond. Buddhism, there are some branches of Buddhism that have a belief in a sort of a God, but the difficulty is this. says that basically the issue of God's existence or non-existence is irrelevant, because the real problem is the samsara, the circle of life that we keep going about in, and we just need to escape it. That's the ultimate issue.

Whether there's a God or not is irrelevant to Buddhism. It was a reformer. It's interesting, in Buddhism, God is off to the side. If somebody says to you, all religions really worship one God, no. Buddhism just doesn't even care about God. It doesn't give a hoot. You ask somebody at this church, tell me about God, and there's a lot to say. You ask Buddha, and he just closes his mouth. So drastically different. Anyone who says that all religions are seeking the same God just doesn't even begin to comprehend. Think of this, here's Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace, now is there grace in karma? So here's just a shock contrast.

You have been saved. Now what does saved mean in Buddhism? You've escaped the cycle. So when we say escaped, or excuse me, when we say saved, and when the Buddhist says saved, they mean two different things, don't they? So isn't it interesting how, as we go through these verses, the meanings of the words are either, they just drop dead on the Buddhist ears, or they have an entirely different meaning.

By grace are you saved? Absolutely not. It's by your own work that you're going to be saved from that cycle of samsara. You, and it is entirely your doing. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Absolutely not. Every sin you will pay for. You. No exceptions. Nirvana or Moksha or whatever.

In Buddhism, there's this sort of spiritual nothingness. It's kind of like the ideal suicide. A person who takes their life is oftentimes hoping, well, gee, it'll be better, or at least this will be ended and there'll be nothing after that. It's ultimately a kind of an annihilationism. Annihilationism or a transition into the nothingness so that it's a full extinguishment of all connection and desire.

Pardon? It ends the pain. Yeah. So Buddhism is sort of an atheistic religion of spiritual suicide. Very strange. Oh, it is the principle of karma that is absolute. You say, who? That's the point of Buddhism. It's not a who. You'll pass through 18 gates of hell, but don't put personality on this. This thing is as impersonal as it gets. As a matter of fact, impersonality is the goal of both Hinduism and Buddhism. Yes. Right. It is the principle of karma that governs the universe. Absolutely no grace, no forgiveness, no mercy, not at all.

You are going to save yourself 100% and that salvation looks like escape and cessation and annihilation and a return back into the impersonal Spirituality, if you will. So that is salvation. Very different from, you will be with me forever. I in you and you in me, Jesus says, you will walk with me in white in Revelation. Jesus says, behold, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me. It's personal. It's intensely personal. Four different times we see four cycles in Revelation. the elders worshipping the Lamb. Four cycles, okay? And this is the introduction to eternity. Notice it's all personalities. In Hinduism and Buddhism, none of that. Escape from personality is what you're looking for. Personality is an illusion. Personality is what you want to leave and depart from. Personality is the problem in Hinduism and Buddhism. Those are all to end. Look at the rest of this.

Through faith, what's the faith in, in Buddhism? Yourself. Hinduism, what's the faith in? Ultimately, it's myself. Some would say I put my faith in my God and typically it's some lesser emanation from the ultimate being. that salvation is not of yourselves. How does that fit with Hinduism and Buddhism? Is it not of yourselves? It's absolutely of yourself, isn't it? That's Hinduism and Buddhism.

Salvation is absolutely of yourself. We have the exact opposite to proclaim. Salvation is absolutely not of yourself. It is a gift of God. Now, does God give you any gifts of salvation in Hinduism and Buddhism? No. First of all, Buddhism will say there isn't one and he's irrelevant anyway. And there's no gifts.

You're going to earn it all. You're going to pay for every error. Absolutely every one. No exceptions. What I call it is a karmic machine. You're going to get ground up in the teeth and the gears of this karmic machine. No exceptions. No mercy. No please. No thank you. The karmic machine will grind you up, forever, until you finally escape, trillions of years from the start.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, which is the exact opposite of Eastern religions, so that no one may boast. Hinduism has all these odd behaviors, the laying down on the bed of nails, a brand of cross between Hinduism and Islam called Sikhism. And in that, the big masters have been self-enflamed, where their bodies go up in flames while they're meditating in the temple. And this is considered some great honorable thing. Why? Yes. Yes. Now, so going through this here, you're on page four, some interesting examples.

You've got Sikhism, which I would characterize as a combination. And by the way, that's a, they probably both religions of Islam and Hinduism would gag at the thought. But as I studied, that's what I saw. And by the way, geographically, it's right on the, area where the two religions come together. So it's like somebody said, let's put this together and that's what you get. Shintoism, which is an animism. In other words, it's the spirit of the tree and the creek and the rock and the, you know, grass and that kind of thing with an Eastern twist.

Jainism is actually older than Hinduism. So Hinduism broke off from that and Buddhism from that. So basically, but it sees the universe as eternal, which by the way, is the same as the Greek philosophers. Remember Acts 17, Paul spoke with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, both of whom see the universe as eternal, same as Jainism. Confucianism is really a social philosophy conveying Eastern religion. It's the order of things, and this person has authority, this one has submission, that kind of thing, and so it's very much a social philosophy. Taoism, or sometimes called Taoism, A philosophy of worldview, we have the picture of the yin and the yang, and that principle comes from Taoism. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And so you think about it, it's just the working out of that philosophy, and you're decorating even. Yeah.

Astrology, interestingly enough, that is a pagan spirituality that is expressed both in Eastern and Western religion. Seems to have its core in Babylon and moved east into Hinduism and Buddhism. You know, the Chinese New Year, and they have the Year of the Cat and the Frog and the Llama and everything else.

But, and I'm joking, but anyway, a lot of that is based on the astrology that's mixed in with that. And like the karmic machine, there was actually, and we look at it as some sort of a little hobby thing, and I'm going to play around and dabble with it, the mindset that was behind that for a great many peoples of the ancient world was a dread of, I am locked into a certain fate by these astrological forces. And so anyway, the astrology that's been brought forward to us, you know, it's something you dabble with and play with, and some people get a little bit serious with it. But in the Eastern world and into the Western world, it was looked at as something, boy, I mean, I might try to change things, but the reality is this astrology has got my future locked in place.

I can't get out of it. In Ephesus, We showed pictures some months back that garland around Artemis of the Ephesians is the signs of the Zodiac. And so here they would appeal to Artemis to influence these signs of the Zodiac, these great influences, astral influences. So both the Eastern and Western world were impacted and continue to be impacted by astrology. All right, I'm going to jump ahead because I've run out of time to one last thing.

John 3.16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

How about that? It's not whoever by intensive discipline and doing all the right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right things. The eightfold path with all the right things that are on it. What's the answer? Believe in Jesus Christ. That's God's solution. Mercy. Grace. His work entirely, not mine. Forgiveness, of which the Eastern world knows nothing.

Amazing. We have a Lord who loves us dearly, phenomenally, and not a karmic machine. That's wonderful news. That's really good news. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. As we look at this, we can indeed look upon this life as not just something to escape, but an eternal opportunity and something that you will use, even the things that are difficult in this life, you have purpose for, you have use for. Everything that happens is of use and of value rather than something simply to be escaped. And Lord, how marvelous it is that we can look upon you for salvation and your forgiveness and mercy and grace and your love, rather than a karmic machine which would grind up so many millions without hope. And Lord, we just pray for wisdom, understanding, and insight in these things as you present opportunities before us. In Jesus' name, Amen.