4 Major World Religions (Islam, Judaism, Hinduism & Buddhism)

Islam as Submission to Allah and the Islamic View of Jesus

Hello, in this video, we're going to be covering the four major world religions. That's Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And we're going to look at what these religions say about the person of Jesus Christ.

First, let's look at Islam. The word Islam means submission. Therefore, a Muslim is one who submits to God, who they call Allah. A Muslim, what they believe about God and how he is to be worshipped, it's all based on the teachings of Muhammad, who they regard as a prophet.

The Islamic creed is there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. Most historians believe that Islam originated with Muhammad's mission in Mecca and Medina. That would be at the beginning of the 7th century, although Muslims regard this time as a return to the original faith passed down by the Abrahamic prophets.

So they would say Adam, Noah, Moses, even Jesus are our prophets. So understand that Muslims will affirm many of the same characters and events that Christians and Jews would affirm, although they have a totally different take on it.

They say the Bible has been corrupted. For example, Abraham's child of promise, which Jews and Christians would say is Isaac, they say no, the child of promise, the favored child, is actually Ishmael.

So there's kind of two different lines where the Jews pass down from Abraham through Isaac and the Muslims say no, that's wrong, it's Abraham through Ishmael. Just letting you know about that. Basically, Muslims say that Muhammad started receiving divine revelation around the year 610, calling for submission to the one God.

There are basically two denominations today, if you will, of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia. The Sunni are the vast majority, making up 85 of all Muslims, and the split occurred in the first generation after Muhammad's death and was based on a dispute over who should succeed him as leader of the Islamic community.

Islam teaches that humans are born spiritually neutral. That stands in stark contrast to Christianity, which believes in original sin or the sin.

Nature.

But Islam says that humans are born spiritually neutral, therefore they are perfectly capable of obeying God and his commandments. Even after you've sinned, you're still neutral as a person, therefore the need for humanity is not salvation, it's instruction.

Hence, Islam has prophets and no savior. The five pillars of Islam are fundamental practices that are considered obligatory acts of worship for all Muslims. They are number one, the declaration of faith in one God and the prophethood of Muhammad.

Number two, the performance of five daily prayers. Number three, the giving of alms to the poor and the needy. Number four, the observance of fasting during the month of Ramadan. And then number five, the pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able to do it.

Islam does affirm that Jesus was a prophet, although they reject his divinity and therefore they reject the claim that he is the son of God. They do say that Jesus was born of a virgin, he lived a sinless life, he performed many miracles and that he even will come again at the end of history.

But Muslims do not believe that Jesus died on the cross. They claim that his image was imposed on someone else, so it only appeared that way. Muslims believe that the Bible has been corrupted and that's why they follow a different holy book known as the Quran.

In the Islamic system, there is a heaven and there is a hell and one is saved by worshiping God, Allah, properly and keeping his commandments. So in comparison to Christianity, it's basically a different Jesus, different holy book, different way of salvation.

Judaism, the Torah, and the Rabbinic Tradition

Next up is the religion of Judaism. Judaism, like Islam and Christianity, it is a monotheistic faith. So belief in one true God. Judaism developed among the ancient Hebrew people and is characterized by a belief in one transcendent God who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, and the Hebrew prophets.

Jewish people believe in the Torah, which was the whole of the laws given to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. So it's not just the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

It's that plus the oral tradition, the oral word of God. You see that even in the pages of the New Testament, where Jesus is disputing with the Jews over scripture and what is tradition, and they would say many of these traditions came from God at Mount Sinai.

Again, another difference between Judaism and Christianity. Judaism believes in the Ten Commandments. It's from the same book as Christians, so it's the same list of commandments. Orthodox Jews today believe that all of the practices in the Torah, if practical, they are to be obeyed today.

Conservative and Reform Jews, however, say that these ancient laws and practices, they have to be interpreted for modern life with inclusion of contemporary sources. So basically, one form of Judaism, the Orthodox Jews, that's more fixed, while the Reformed Jews, that religion continues to evolve and change over time.

Jews view Jesus as a blasphemer and a false prophet, and really that same hostility that existed in the first century, which led to Jesus' crucifixion, it still exists today, although not every Jew would feel the same way.

And remember, being Jewish, Jew can refer to both an ethnicity and a religion. So if someone is a religious Jew, they're going to reject Jesus. But if someone is ethnically Jewish, they may in fact be a Christian as Jesus himself was Jewish, as were his apostles.

I want to make one comment about Judaism, because most Christians would say that modern day Judaism, as we understand it, that is not the faith of the Old Testament. So don't be confused. Some people say, well, Judaism is the Old Testament faith minus, you know, the New Testament.

That's really not the case. Modern day Judaism, many would argue, is a corruption of the Old Testament faith. It's more the religion of the rabbis, more the religion of the Pharisees passed down over time.

Either way, like with Islam in the Jewish system, salvation is accomplished through the worship of God and through the keeping of the commandments. Although, many modern Jews don't actually believe in a heaven and hell.

Some believe in an afterlife, some don't. But nearly all Jews reject the idea of a place called hell. So just to recap, in comparison to Christianity, Judaism rejects Jesus as a different source of authority.

You know, the Torah plus the rabbinical writings and a different way of salvation. Next up is Hinduism. Hinduism is a pantheistic religion, not monotheistic, believing in one God. Hinduism is pantheistic.

So what does that mean? On the one hand, they will say they believe in gods and lesser deities, but at the same time they believe that God is all, he's in all, God is all in all. So God is in the rocks, God is everything.

So totally different way of thinking. Many people today, when they think of Hinduism, they get it mixed up with Buddhism. It's not the same thing. One, you could argue, came out of the other. There's a lot of similarities, but people will think of Hinduism, they know that cows are considered sacred, typically they're vegetarians and they're into meditation.

That's about all people know. But again, Buddhism and Hinduism, not the same thing. We'll talk about Buddhism in a moment, but Hinduism is claimed to be the world's oldest religion. I think every religion claims to be the oldest because we all say we go back to the beginning, you know, to the Garden of Eden, although they wouldn't believe in the Garden of Eden.

Story.

But every religion claims to be the truth. Every religion claims to be the oldest, but they typically among scholars, people will say that Hinduism is the oldest religion, over 4 ,000 years old. There are 1 billion Hindus in the world today, 94 of them live in India.

Because the religion has no one founder, it's very difficult to trace its origins and history. Hindus worship a number of different gods and minor gods, and they honor a range of symbols, including the swastika.

That's probably their most well-known symbol, adopted of course by the Nazis, but the Nazis altered it slightly. So if you see a swastika, but it looks different from the one adopted by Nazi Germany, that is a symbol of Hinduism.

So don't, you know, freak out when you see it. Doesn't mean the same thing as what the Nazis intended, obviously. Most forms of Hinduism are henotheistic, which means, and this can get confusing, because they will say that they worship a single god, who they call Brahman, but at the same time they recognize other gods and goddesses.

But remember, God is all in all, so it's just not God the same way we think of God. Hindus believe in the doctrine of continuous cycle of life, death, and reincarnation. So one of the key thoughts of Hinduism is called Atman, A-T-M-A-N, or the belief in the soul.

Basically, this is the idea that every creature, every person has a soul, but at the same time they are part of the supreme soul. So their concept of salvation is to escape this cycle of life and reincarnation.

So the way we would look at that, the goal within Hinduism is to cease to exist, at least as a person, as an individual. So Hinduism, along with rejecting monotheism, they also reject the idea of heaven and hell.

The goal, what they call salvation, is to be absorbed into the divine, to become one with the universe, which is God, because God is all in all. So again, totally different way of thinking. The Hindus will sometimes claim Jesus as their own, but they say that he wasn't the son of God, he was just a wise religious teacher.

So just to recap, Hindus have a different idea of who Jesus was, different scriptures, and a different concept of both God and salvation. Okay, finally, the fourth religion we're going to look at, Buddhism.

Most people agree that Buddhism developed out of Hinduism and is very similar. Buddhism is a faith that was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha. This faith was developed by him about 2 ,500 years ago in India.

As a non-theistic faith with no God or no deity to worship, some scholars describe Buddhism as more of a philosophy or a moral code. It's more like that than an organized religion. And because of that, there are some atheists who profess to be Buddhist.

You can be a Buddhist and an atheist because, again, the idea of a creator God or one true God is just not in their system. Many of the beliefs and practices of Buddhism revolve around the concept of suffering and its causes.

Buddhism has historically been most prominent in East and Southeast Asia, but its influence is growing here in the Western world. The religion's founder, Buddha, is considered an extraordinary being, but he is not God.

The word Buddha simply means enlightened. They recognize several different books or texts that they consider sacred, including the Sutras. Now, again, Buddhism is pantheistic, so there is no God. They believe in karma.

You build up karma for the next life. You come back. So it's reincarnation, and the goal is to escape the cycle of life, to escape reincarnation and, again, to basically cease to exist and be absorbed back into the oneness of the universe.

That's why you'll hear some people who are dabbling in Eastern religion. They'll call God the universe. Universe and God are like synonyms to them. Well, that's an Eastern idea. The path to enlightenment, according to Buddhism, it's attained by utilizing morality, meditation, and wisdom.

Buddhists often meditate because they believe it helps awaken truth. Buddhism encourages self-denial, therefore they are to avoid self-indulgence. Buddha's most important teachings, known as the Four Noble Truths, are essential to understanding the religion.

The Four Noble Truths are, number one, life is suffering. Number two, the cause of suffering is desire. Number three, the end of suffering comes with an end of desire. And number four, there is a path that leads one away from desire and suffering.

The Dalai Lama is probably the most recognizable figure in Buddhism today. Next to the Pope, he's probably the most recognizable religious figure on earth. The Dalai Lama is the leading monk within Tibetan Buddhism.

Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of a past Lama, not an animal, a religious teacher, that's what they call them, and that he has agreed to be born again to help humanity. So again, this is the idea of reincarnation.

There have been 14 Dalai Lamas throughout history. So, what do Buddhists believe about Jesus? They believe that Jesus was an enlightened man. He was an enlightened man, but he was not God, a wise and moral teacher, but not God's.

Son.

Again, as pantheists, they reject the idea of one true God, and like these other religions in comparison to Christianity, they have a different concept of God, different source of authority, different way of salvation.

The Exclusivity of Christ and Christianity as the True Faith

And the point being, all of that to say this, when people tell you that, you know, all religions are basically the same, my friends, nothing could be further from the truth. For example, Jesus Christ claimed exclusivity.

He claimed to not only know the truth, Jesus claimed to be the truth. Jesus claimed to not only know the one true God, he claimed to be the one true God incarnate. And Jesus, this is why he said in the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes unto the Father except through me. Jesus claimed to be the only way of salvation. So I hope you found this video helpful. These are the four major world religions. I do not include Christianity as a world religion because I believe Christianity is not a religion.

It's not something created by men. It is the one true faith, one true faith and the one true God going all the way back to.

The beginning.

In the book of Genesis, chapter 1, verse 1, God, in the beginning, he created the heavens.

And the earth.

If you want more information on Christianity, I hope you will subscribe to my channel. I have about a thousand videos talking about every Christian subject conceivable. I hope you will subscribe. Like the video.

Share it with others. Thanks for watching. And until next time, may the Lord be with you and have a great day.