A number of religions on the planet today claim absoluteness. Judaism for several thousands of years has claimed to be the supreme religion, the only revealed religion of the truth from God to man. After God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He then made an exclusive covenant with the nation Israel; no other nation has known such a covenant. In those days in order to find favor with the true God, man had to come by way of the religion of Israel. If he was not born into the nation of Israel, he became a proselyte (initially seen in Exod. 12:43–49), taking on the way and manner of Israel’s living. In fact, all other nations were viewed as vile and cursed.
In Ephesians 2 Paul declares to the Gentile Christians that they were without hope and without God being alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. Romans 11:16–20 also declares that the Gentile world was not originally part of the olive tree blessed and anointed of God. Even at the outset of the New Testament, Christ made it clear to His disciples that they were only to go to the house of Israel and not to the Gentiles (Matt. 10:5, 6). Christ even went so far to say to the begging Syrophenician woman, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs” (Matt. 15:24–27). Certainly the world of the Gentiles is clearly addressed in Romans 1:21–32. But Israel was the appointed nation of absoluteness; only through this nation would any hope of salvation and reconciliation to God be found.
The Death of Judaism’s Absoluteness
In the New Testament when Christ brought the new wine of Christianity to Israel, the Jewish Christians believed it had to be placed in the old wine skins of Judaism. Such Jewish Christians were called “Judaizers” in early Church history. These Jews had professed to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, but they also believed that the Gentiles should come to Jesus as Messiah and Saviour through Judaism. These Judaizers believed every Gentile male had to be circumcised and enter into salvation through the keeping of the Law (Acts 15:1).
In the light of this spreading heresy, the apostle Paul defended the Gentiles’ right to become a believer in Jesus as the Christ solely through the grace of God. This was the burden of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:11. Paul was strong in his belief about this gospel of grace at this Council, as revealed in Galatians 2. Paul circumcised Timothy in Acts 16 because he was half-Jew, believing this would help the testimony of Timothy before the Jews. However, when Titus was pressed to be so by certain Jews (Galatians 2), Paul refused to have this young man cir-cumcised, for Titus was a full Greek. Paul also was defending the biblical gospel as resolved at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.
The Judaizers believed in the absoluteness of Judaism, even to the point that any concept of salvation, including salvation through Christ Jesus, had to come through the absoluteness of the Jews’ religion. By the time Jesus came to earth, the religion of the Jew was dead and in a state of apostasy. Paul knew that Judaism was dead, and the evidence of this was the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. Its absoluteness was now in apostasy, no longer in God. Jesus’ death destroyed the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, making them one new man in Christ.
For the first time, the “true” religion appointed by God was now presented universally to the “whosoever will.” Christ absolutely declared that this new wine of salvation through Christ alone is the only way to God, putting to death the old wine skin of apostate Judaism.
Christianity—the Appointed Absoluteness
This newly ordained religion called Christianity stepped forward in history, and its gospel was preached as the only way to God. It declared that Christ Jesus was truly the Son of God, co-equal with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, as one of the distinct members of a Trinitarian God. This second member of the Trinity (designated as the Son) was sent to this earth; while maintaining His deity, He took on a human essence, nature, and body, and lived among mankind some thirty-three years. The four gospel writers give careful witness to His incarnation, His virgin birth, His sinless life, and His powers of miracles, signs, wonders, and works. They also declare His death, burial, and resurrection from the dead, with many infallible proofs of His resurrection, and His ascension into heaven where He presently reigns at the right hand of God the Father.
Beginning with the Book of Acts, the rest of the New Testament presents that Life that was lived on earth and announces to the world that Jesus is the only Saviour, the only Redeemer of mankind, the only God-Man that the world will ever know. The Gospel of Jesus Christ clearly and emphatically presents Him in absoluteness of truth: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Christ Jesus Himself announced in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” This, as well as the rest of the Scriptures, sealed Him to be the only way, the absoluteness of truth before God, and the Fountain of Life. Christianity now declared itself to be the only true religion through which all must come to its gospel to be accepted by God.
Christianity—Absoluteness in History
In the early centuries this absoluteness of Christianity brought severe persecution upon it as a religion. Although Rome permitted a pluralism of religions, no religion could stand in absoluteness against the State. Furthermore, all religions must include the religion of the State, of Caesar worship. Rome demanded once a year that all people of the Roman Empire go to a local temple and give a pinch of incense on the altar while simply declaring, “Caesar is Lord.” Whatever religion an individual desired was permitted as long as Caesar was acknowledged. But Christianity refused to include Caesar; it declared that Christ was Lord alone; it refused to give any glory to any man or to any other religion. No compromise of its absolute dedication to Christ could be permitted. Christians believed in the absoluteness of this Christian religion so completely that they were willing to go to Rome’s arena and face the lions or to burn at the stake in martyrdom for this Gospel of the God-man, Who is alive forevermore.
As the centuries passed and another Roman religion arose, Roman Catholicism, the Remnant who continued to believe in the absoluteness of the Scripture’s presentation of Christ Jesus were willing to face the Inquisition, the excommunication from the institutional Church, and even martyrdom by the Christian apostasy of Rome. As the former Roman State claimed absoluteness, so did Roman Catholicism within the apostasy of Christianity.
True biblical Christianity defies all religions, including its own apostate Christianity; it will not bend nor bow, nor include anything in competition with its Lord and Saviour. Presently Roman Catholicism is pressing for pluralism in order to establish herself an acceptable religion among all other religions. All other religions are calling for their own acceptance in the forceful drive to Interfaithism. Nevertheless, true Christianity, though it lives in a world where other religions exist, refuses to accept, adhere, or even respect any other religion. Its absoluteness must be maintained—but it will be costly.
The End-time Pressures for Pluralism
Let us recall the twofold principle of pluralism presented in the first article: Pluralism believes that all religions must be able to dwell together in harmony and not permit any of their distinctives to interfere with their peaceful co-existence. It promotes toleration of all religions. But at the same time pluralism is adamantly opposed to any religion that declares itself to be absolute, the only true religion. This destroys even the existence of the power of the State.
An enigma at this time in history is the religion of Islam that is most adamant about its absoluteness, even to the point that it is willing to kill everyone who denies its absoluteness. It is conquering by the sword in many countries while in places like the United States it is conquering large numbers through its false, peace-loving façade. The demographics in major countries of Western civilization have now announced that Islam is a growing force of potential takeover. When it reaches a certain point in numbers, such countries will then feel the terrorizing force of Islam’s conquest. Islam is determined to rule the world as the absolute of not only religion but also government and law.
From a different perspective, Christianity conquers through biblical love and the proclamation of the gospel. Christianity reveals that God seeks to conquer the heart through Christ rather than by sheer force. This is how Christianity has truly survived the centuries of persecution and the powers of hatred against it. Today, of all the religions on the planet, Islam despises with a dark and satanic hatred the two religions of Judaism and Christianity that profess with equal word their religious absoluteness. Islam knows there is no threat of life and limb from these two religions; Islam is the open religion of hatred, while Judaism and Christianity are the open, professing religions of love.
Though there are other religions in the world of great numbers, Islam being the largest, has always had an intense, singular hatred for Judaism and Christianity. To some extent Islam has some identification with these two religions. The common ancestry of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is Abraham. But Islam is against Judaism because the latter religion declares to be the offspring of the covenant of Abraham through Isaac rather than through Ishmael, the son rejected. Islam refuses to acknowledge that the covenant was given to Isaac and thus to the Jew. As for Christianity, it came from the womb of the Jew and declared that Jesus was the promised Messiah as well as being the Son of God. Thus Jesus being the Christ is infinitely greater than Mohammed and rejects all the claims of Islam. Any religion that declares itself to be absolute must denounce all other religions. Christianity denounces Islam; Islam denounces Christianity. Christianity’s sacred book the Bible denounces Islam, and Islam’s sacred book the Koran denounces Christianity and Judaism. Islam, in the End Time has truly set itself the goal of global conquest, to destroy any form of pluralism of religions, and to become the singular world religion.
Christianity’s Claim to Absoluteness Diminishing
In order to survive in these troubled and aggressive days of spiritual and moral darkness, public Christianity has come to believe it must leave its position of absoluteness and ecumenically become one of the many. Modern Christianity has led the way with present-day ecumenicity as well as encouraging Interfaithism. Present-day Christianity has denounced the Bible, its book of revelation, as being a myth and outdated, and opened the door of doctrine to become a melting pot of all the other religions.
Several years ago Billy Graham, viewed as spokesman for Evangelical Christianity, announced to Robert Schuller (of the then-famed Crystal Cathedral) his belief that there are other roads to God and that there will be others from different religions that make up the body of Christ. This sad declaration from probably the most influential man in Christianity in the past century, along with other compromising and world-conformity statements, has brought about the public death of Christianity causing it to be assimilated into the rest of the religions of the world.
The Mega Churches around the world have done away with the “absolutes” of Christianity in order to make it more compatible to the world’s beliefs and philosophies. Christianity is no longer distinct from the rest of religions. In fact, there truly has been an intense subversion within the last 150 years of Christianity to destroy its absoluteness and bring it down to simply another religion. The increased emphasis upon “God’s love” in contemporary Christianity has destroyed its truth of existence and redefined its purpose. Modern Christianity has become nothing more than a religion for the social assistance of humanity.
In spite of these compromising facts, the world still hates Christianity. The number of killings of Christians and burnings of churches are on the rise around the world. The Devil knows what true Christianity is; he knows it is the rival religion to His ultimate absoluteness that will rule in the Tribulation Period under the Antichrist. He will even use an absoluteness of a false religion at this time, such as Islam, and later his own religion (2 Thess. 2:4) to rise up against the absoluteness of Christianity with the hope to destroy it. According to biblical prophecy the world will not tolerate the absoluteness of true Christianity, for it condemns man and all his works; it condemns the world, it condemns world governments, and it condemns all other religions. This world is rising now and making Christianity a terrorist religion that must be annihilated.
Christ Jesus warned about this increased hatred of the world against the saints; and yet, the very nature of Christianity makes it vulnerable to any reaction. We are sent forth “as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16). We must carefully read from time to time the words of the Lord in Matthew 10:17–42, as well as the words of Christ on Tuesday evening of Passion Week on the Mount of Olives (Matt. 24:2–14). Note what Christ declared in these verses:
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another (24:9, 10).
Whenever Christianity compromises its absoluteness with the world and with other religions, it gains a little breathing space of toleration. But even the religious whore of Revelation 17 who rides upon “the beast out of the sea” will finally be burned and consumed. Any form of Christianity, simply because of what it is identified with, must ultimately be destroyed by the Devil. For the very Name comes from the name that is to be above every other name, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Public Christianity has basically destroyed itself from within. Only from within where its core absolutes reside could it ever be sustained. Its separation from the world, from the flesh, and from wicked men was the guardian principle of its existence. It has sought to be accepted and become like other religions. It has denied the very heart and soul that God gave to it. The Church today has become a by-word; it now is rising and being mocked by the world for its compromises, its changes, and leaving its very foundational identification. The world knows this; the Devil knows this. Only the Remnant of Christianity have maintained allegiance to the absoluteness of Christianity, and such fidelity of belief and living has cost many lives throughout history, and it will cost many more.
May the Lord help us in this End Time to “Forward the Faith,” to “earnestly contend for the Faith which was once delivered to the saints,” and to live that faith daily, no matter the cost. As ministers of the Gospel of Christ, we must be true to the proclamation of this message and not diminish its word one whit. Any change in the message destroys its power. The maintenance of its absolute message will enable and empower the saints to overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil.