1The title should not be a surprise to anyone who believes the Bible to be true. According to the Bible, any and every faith and religion that does not conform to the Gospel of Christ are not only false, but ultimately inspired by false spirits. Though Jeffrey Niehaus is specifically addressing the question of pagan parallels to Biblical religion, his point is relevant for this essay.
The parallels we have explored in this book are of this sort. We have concluded that they cannot be explained as cases of biblical dependence on ancient Near Eastern theology. We also conclude that they cannot be explained as coincidences, if only because the accumulation of such coincidences sooner or later strains credibility. Our belief need not be strained, however, because the Bible itself gives us the reason for such parallels. Passages sages such as Deuteronomy 32:16-19; 1 Corinthians 10:20; and 1 Timothy 4:1 tell us clearly enough that demonic powers and intelligences are behind false religion, and even behind false theology in the church. The activities of Satan and demons are not given much press between the covers of Scripture and deservedly so, since the Bible is primarily about God and his acts and his kingdom and not about the other side. On the other hand, Paul can write that he and the early church were not ignorant of the Devil’s schemes (2 Cor. 2:11). God in his wisdom has not left his people ignorant of those matters. At least, he has given his church the wherewithal, in the Bible and by his Spirit, to understand certain fundamental things about the Enemy and his ways. Demonic inspiration of false religion (which produces the sort of parallels we have considered, including the major paradigm in its pagan articulations) is one of the things that the Bible teaches quite clearly in the passages noted.2
All non-Biblical religions are inspired by lying spirits. That includes not only Hinduism, but Buddhism — a Hindu “heresy” — Islam — a Judeo-Christian “heresy” — post Biblical Judaism, and the thousand other religions and cults that do not confess Jesus as the One True Lord and Savior.
Jesus told us that Satan was a liar and a murderer from the beginning and He told the Jews of His day that they were Satan’s children (John 8:44)! They professed to be the children of Abraham and to worship the God of Abraham, but Jesus said they knew nothing of the true God!
Similarly, Paul — talking about false Christian ministers! — said that “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14), therefore his ministers present themselves as ministers of righteousness, when in fact they are demonically inspired liars (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). At present, I think we have to say that false Christian ministers abound — ministers who deny the fundamental truths of Christian faith and the Gospel, such as the Trinity, the full deity and humanity of Christ, Jesus’ virgin birth and resurrection, and salvation by grace through faith, or ministers who tolerate or promote abortion or the LGBTQ+ agenda. False ministers can be found in most denominations; they dominate many. The line cannot be drawn between Catholicism and Protestantism. It must be drawn between those who are faithful to Christ and the Gospel and those who betray Christ and the Gospel, by whatever denominational label they may be called.
Until the end of history, when Christ returns in judgment, there is a warfare between the Truth in Christ and the lies of the devil and his emissaries.
This hit me in a special way in reading a biography of Stalin, for Joseph Stalin exemplifies the demonically inspired servant of Satan. He himself was duped by Marxist folly and he created lie after lie to impose by force his false faith on whole nations. Robert Conquest, whose biography reveals the pathological fantasy of Stalin’s own beliefs and hopes, records in devastating detail the lies — gross and trivial — that enabled Stalin to ruin the Russian people, though not them alone.
In other words, it is not enough to speak of his brutality and the violence he employed to terrorize millions, though that is essential to his person and rule. Like Satan, he was a murderer. People submitting in abject fear to overwhelming force is wholly understandable. What continues to surprise me is that a murderous monster could lie his way to win fanatic devotion. Consider, for example, what Conquest reports about his funeral.
At Stalin’s funeral, the crowds were such that many were crushed to death. Andrei Sakharov describes the scene: ‘People roamed the streets, distraught and confused, with funeral music in the background. I too got carried away.’ Sakharov tells with shame of how he even wrote in a private letter then that ‘I am under the influence of a great man’s death. I am thinking of his humanity.’ He comments bitterly that though he soon lost this feeling, ‘It was years before I fully understood the degree to which deceit, exploitation and outright fraud were inherent in the whole Stalinist system. That shows,’ he adds, ‘the hypnotic power of mass ideology.’ The struggle to cure the political, economic, intellectual and psychological wounds Stalin inflicted on his own people (though not only on his own people) is still being waged in the 1990s.3
Stalin murdered perhaps 30 million people, oppressed countless millions more. His methods were simple — the very same that Jesus spoke of John 8:44, murder and lies.
But what does this have to do with Hinduism? Very much! In all human history, Hinduism has been one of the greatest of Satan’s lies, one that has brought oppression and suffering to far more people for a far longer time than the Soviet Union. Soviet oppression came to an official end after only 70 years. Hinduism has oppressed one of the most beautiful and intelligent races of mankind for thousands of years, deceiving with a hypnotic power far greater than any modern mass ideology.
Consider the paradox: How is it that India with its vast population and incalculable talent is economically inferior to the comparatively tiny island nation of Japan? It is not because Japan is rich in resources, for Japan has no resources to speak of but the Japanese people themselves. India, too, with its huge population is rich in the most important single resource necessary for economic prosperity — men and women created in the image of God.
What went wrong? In a word: Hinduism. The caste system of Hinduism — which is fanatically supported and imposed by Indian political authority — undermines the possibility of millions to freely develop and apply the talents that God has given them because caste rules prevent them.
Add to that the lie of reincarnation. This life and its trials and troubles are the result of karma from a previous life. No need to worry. You have another chance. Also, no need to show compassion for those who suffer because it is their karma. In fact, showing compassion for them might ruin their future, for they suffer in order to fulfill the debt of karma. If they suffer enough, they might have it better in their reincarnated future.
But above all this is the lie of “enlightenment” — the boldest and most absurd (where hinduism and Buddhism largely concur).4
R. C. Zaehner quotes Dasgupta
‘A totality of partless, simple and undifferentiated experience’: what does this mean? It means that man sees his deepest essence as being fundamentally identical with the common source of all things, and he can therefore say, ‘I am this All’ or ‘I am Brahman’. This is usually called pantheism: the soul feels itself to be coterminous with all that is and therefore with God: man is God: so‘smy aham, ‘I am He’. And again since He is All, I too am All. ‘Whoso knows, “I am Brahman”, becomes this All. Not even the gods have the power to prevent him becoming thus, for such a one becomes their own self.’ This absolute identity of the human soul with the godhead is attested in several passages in the Upanisads, and it is the very thesis of the Mdndukya. It is also basic to Sankara’s advaita (non-dualism) and to Saktism.5
Imagine swallowing the lie that says, “I am this All,” or “I am He,” or whoso knows “I am Brahman becomes this All. It may be that the “absolute identity of the human soul with the godhead is attested in several passages in the Upanisads,” but all the Hindu enlightened ones who proclaimed that “I am He” are dead, gone, and forgotten. Does anyone know the name of a single one of them?
By contrast, Jesus — a carpenter from the obscure town of Nazareth — said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Only Jesus can open the way to the true knowledge of God, because He really was “He.” How do we know? It was demonstrated definitively by His resurrection from the dead.
To the quotation above about Hinduism, add this:
The paradox of the theistic Yoga is that the contemplation of God in his perfection does not lead to any love of him or desire to unite with him, but rather spurs one on to emulate him in his total detachment from everything that is associated with coming-to-be and passing away, in his absolute independence, freedom, and isolation.6
If we believe — as Jesus taught us — that God is Father, Son, and Spirit, who fellowship in eternal love, we might not imagine that the goal is total detachment, absolute independence, and freedom, where “freedom” means utter and unqualified isolation. “Isolation” is actually part of the definition of hell — the very opposite of the Christian view of freedom and life. The Christian goal is total freedom in ecstatic eternal fellowship between God and man, and among men — in other words, “love.” How very different the Christian vision is from the Hindu vision!
So, what is my point? Am I writing just to say something like India and Hinduism are evil.
No.
I am writing to say that Christians should pray for India — for the Indian people to be released from their bondage to Hinduism, to pray for the Holy Spirit to do a work in this great nation to bring this great people to true enlightenment: the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.
- Hinduism is notoriously difficult to define. I take the following from the “others” as a working definition: “Others argue that while Hinduism does not denote a religion with clearly defined boundaries in a way that we might be able to define Christianity or Islam, it nevertheless denotes a group of traditions united by certain common features, such as shared ritual patterns, a shared revelation, a belief in reincarnation (samsara), liberation (moksa), and a particular form of endogamous social organization or caste.” The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, Gavin Flood ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003) p. 2. ↩︎
- Jeffrey J. Niehaus. Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology (Kindle Locations 1863-1871). Kindle Edition. ↩︎
- Robert Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 314. ↩︎
- R. C. Zaehner, Hindu and Muslim Mysticism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), “. . . the suppression of all ‘impurities’, which is even more characteristic of Indian mysticism than of Sufism, does not necessarily bring the mystic nearer to God, for neither in Buddhism nor in the Samkhya system is there any God whom one may approach.” p. 6 ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 8 ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 11. ↩︎