Do All Roads Lead to God?

Hi this is breathing welcome to the Salvation Army's words of life hi for the Salvation Army and words of life. I'm Bernie, Dick, and I'm cerebellum.

We hope you been enjoying the series called skeptics welcome this week can discusses the question.

Do all roads lead to God as an interesting question believe that we all have this God -shaped vacuum that is within us that we have this desire right for higher power. If you well I would say that you know we know as believers that the only 1 True Rd. is through Jesus Christ.

The Bible clearly says that no one can come to the father except through Jesus you will again.

Here's another tough one on pack, but I promise you as you listen to the rest of this episode you will hear someone so eloquent, so as Capt. Camargo unpacks for us to make an offer and I want to invite you to check out another show brought to you by the Salvation Army heartbeat is a one minute show about real life heartbeat touches on topics ranging from finances and prayer, dictating, and mental health support to us only began feeling like my life was on auto pilot. The alarm goes off ready for work out of the morning rush to get home. If you are looking for a short message of hope to challenge you and brighten up your day. Subscribe to heartbeat wherever you get your podcast or visit Salvation Army downcast. For will good morning again. I hope that it has been helpful for you to understand that God does care when it feels like he doesn't. I hope that you can wrestle with God over these issues and I hope that you give yourself permission to say to him.

God is not fair, David, off it obviously did.

That's why we've entitled this group of shows skeptics welcome because not always do we understand at first glimpse what true reality is, sometimes we need God to his over the head. Sometimes we need for us to wrestle with it for a while and one of the questions that was sent in by someone was this idea. Do all roads lead to God. Now, at the risk of being controversial. What if I said yes. Okay. Hear me out. Don't don't turn the show off. I need to explain because I do believe that all paths do lead to God, but only one makes that final leap to actually get you there. Paul writes in Romans chapter 1 verse 20 for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what is been made so that men are without excuse. General revelation creation itself. All the nations of of the world at some point had some type of God concept simply because they understood there's no way they could have creation as it is and not believe that there is someone who designed it all and so no one is without excuse for looking for God, and many of those paths originally shown are us trying to wrestle with. What does that God then look like.

In fact, when God appeared to Abraham it's different then when God appeared to Moses, they had a different understanding as they continue to have their encounters with God and then finally when we encounter Jesus we see God in a totally different way from even the Jewish understanding of what they saw in the Old Testament so all paths. Eventually, maybe even lead to Jesus.

Maybe I should say it that way.

Jesus is the greatest story never told. And then not only that, the cross, the tomb, the risen Savior, but this divine appropriation of the Holy Spirit that God now dwells in the believer that not only do we have this eye view of God that this understanding of what we see in the design.

But now we actually have the internal presence of God himself inside of us. However, the Holy Spirit cannot enter that which is not first redeemed by Christ. No other religion has a solution for the sin problem of human error of the human propensity to continue to choose self-preservation which ends up in chaos, which ends up in people being hurt. It's only God who can come in and change the believer's heart and he does it through this idea of sacrifice and through this idea of bringing new life regeneration through the Holy Spirit. See sacrifice of self is necessary for us not to have the chaotic world that we live in daily, we must be marked with the cross, for in that our spirit is sealed and we are consecrated made a hole we are returned to God's image, because his presence now again resides in us the true tragedy of the garden is not the sin, it was the loss of connection. God's spirit was with them and fellowship and they turned their back on that fellowship for their own self initiative. As we read through Genesis you will continue to see story after story that continues to lead to more and more chaos, eventually leading to the destruction of the entire earth in chapter 7 through nine of Genesis so someone might say I find comfort in meditation for someone who might be a Buddhist or studying other ancient religions. The truth is that that only gets you so far, self actualization doesn't deal with the issue of redeeming the self. The self must be sacrificed in order for God to redeem the soul. And once that redemption comes. We are then regenerated by his Holy Spirit, making us whole. The other way religions deal with this issue is that they sort of mandate that God allows you based upon your works. While what we know is our our works are failures. I don't know about you but I sometimes feel like I failed more often than I succeed. Not that that's the way we should live. We are to be named for holy lives, but the truth is if I am relying upon my works to get to heaven there is no way I'm getting through Jesus offers us this grace. If you've ever played golf. There's this gentleman agreement that if the parts that you have to make are the same distance and one of you can make it then you both get the shot as it is and I said to the guy weight but but I can't make that shot but he said, but because I can. We both get the point that I understand that concept but I'm understand the concept of grace. Where Jesus can just come in and pay the penalty for my sin and I get to have his mercy and grace either, but that's the way it works. Which brings me to this topic of what I get so much peace from doing this other thing I think one of the tragedies of the Protestant Reformation is that in our desire to elevate certain things, especially Scriptures which ought to be elevated in everybody's mind, we let certain things and practices go because we saw them as possibly part and parcel with what we were reforming one of those topics is the issue of meditation. Now people will say that meditation works for them and my thought is, it probably does.

I mean how many of us probably need a little sleep To go along. You know some some just some soothing music to help us go to sleep sometimes.

Or maybe put us in a peaceful mood you meditation is a practice of God. If you go all the way back to Psalm chapter 1 you'll see there meditate on the Scriptures day and night.

The difference between other religions and the practice that we have of meditation is where actually meditating on the Scriptures, not on emptiness or just nothingness that there is something upon which we can concentrate and bring our lives in focus with God's will. Everything I see I see other religions who are very good at their expectation of worship and evangelism. Take the Jehovah's Witnesses. For instance, like every Saturday they are out knocking on doors trying to evangelize people and how many of us Christians sit in our own houses on Saturday and do our own thing. So there's lots of these types of practices that happen in other places that were actually borrowed from Christianity from our faith, but they work in other practices Unitarians in their practice of love for all Mormons with their idea of practice of mission and family importance for Judaism and the issues of human dignity and inspiration. Christianity is all of these and more, so we don't have to give up Jesus in order to have these other helpful practices in our life. It is interesting that we don't have a lot of conversion to from other religions in the Bible we don't have those stories that we do have ones from those who were converted from Judaism, but that sort of a natural one because of it was their Messiah. We do have the Roman centurion who believe says this surely is the son of God. We also have the centurion which Peter is invited into the house and he begins to explain all these things and the centurion and her whole household is baptized in the book of acts you do have Paul there at Athens again with the unknown God, let me tell you about him and then you have him again with King Agrippa and King Agrippa says do you really think that in such a short time, you can persuade me to believe the truth is King Agrippa. It actually is swayed a bit by Paul, but he is not convinced by Paul's logical arguments.

He is convinced because he sees Paul's attitude and his life and what he's been through and his passion, and I wonder when we're thinking about this idea of how do we help people who might be in a different religion or how do we help people understand that Jesus is the way to God is are we practicing that in our own life like are. We can't convince people in an argument that Jesus is the only way if somehow our life doesn't emulate that ideology is a people are convinced by the way you live your life.

How are you living your life that you challenge this week will be back next week to talk about the Bible and what specifically can we believe about the Bible to be true and will see you then. As we continue to talk on skeptics welcome God blessed the Salvation Army's mission doing the most good means helping people with material and spiritual needs to become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army visit Salvation Army USA.org to offer your support and love to hear from you. Email us at radio@uss.salvationarmy.org or call 1-800-229-9965 or write us at PO Box 29972, Atlanta, GA 30359 tell us how we can help share prayer request or share your testimony.

Would love to use your story on here. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes favorite podcast store and surely give us a rating to search for the Salvation Army's words of life. Follow us on social media for the latest episodes extended interviews and more. And if you don't have a church home. We invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center will be glad to see you this is Brandon.

Join us next time for the Salvation Army's life