Do All Roads Lead To Rome?
I t is rather fashionable in our day of tolerance and political correctness to say that it doesn’t really matter what one believes about God as long as one is sincere. After all, don’t all roads lead to Rome? Don’t all religions lead to the same God? I see a couple of dangers with this type of thinking: the first is simply the matter of truth. It is possible to be sincere but sincerely wrong. As a lady from Europe once told me. “All roads don’t lead to Rome. I know. I’ve gotten lost driving there.”—When it comes to God, the major world religions say contradictory things about God. Some say He is one , others that God is three-in-one, still others that God is millions of gods, or that we’re all God. Some say God is personal, and others that He is impersonal, etc. Logically speaking, they can’t all be right. With so many religions, and major differing views regarding God, who’s to say who or what God is really like? Which God will you meet after death?—What is God really like? Who’s to say?—There is actually a very simple answer. The only One who can say for sure who and what God is like is God. This is an important point to grasp. Only God can give the final word on Himself. Now, let’s suppose that one day a man stands up and boldly proclaims, “To clear up all the confusion about God, I want you to know that I AM God! (John 8:58). I am THE way, THE truth and THE life!’’ (cf., John 14:6).This gets into the verifiable. Anyone claiming to be Godwould be one of three things: psychotic with delusions of grandeur, a deceiver out to pull off the greatest hoax of all time, or he would be God. What if God chose to write Himself into His own story and become a man? This is the staggering claim the New Testament makes concerning Jesus (See: John 1:1-14; 8:58; 10:28-30; 14:7-9; 20:28; Philippians 2:6-11; Colossians 1:15-20; Hebrews 1:8). Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, the reliability of the witnesses, the miracles He performed, His character, and teachings all attest and prove He was/is who He claimed to be. There are nearly one hundred prophecies about Jesus’ first coming including where he was to be born (Micah 5:2), that he would die having his hands and feet pierced (Psalm 22:16; cf., Isaiah 53; Zechariah 12:10), and even the exact week and year He would die. (Daniel 9:25-26). To take a middle-of-the-road position concerning Christ is to totally fail to grasp the claims He made. Just as no one is ever half pregnant (either they’re pregnant or they’re not), in like manner, either Jesus is God or He isn’t. There is no middle ground. C.S. Lewis is right when he says, “ A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (From Mere Christianity ). If you’ve never considered the radical claims of Christ, I urge you to do so. Faith is only as good as the object of that faith. All the faith in the world, if it is based on a lie, won’t get you where you want to go. d
57
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online