Apologetics Session 41 - Hinduism

Why Christian Truth Makes Sense Before Studying Hinduism

And it doesn't mean we're all gonna be Hindus after this lesson, you know, we're just gonna try to find out some major points about Hinduism. And really the heart of the matter is, is we want to be able to reach those who are in different positions in their life, they have different belief systems, but we want to have the ability to speak to them in truth and in love so that their heart would be receptive to the gospel message.

And obviously that's the Holy Spirit's work, but we're trying to get equipped so that we know some things that would be useful if we work with these folks, if they're our neighbors, if, you know, we run into them and we want to just be able to share Christ with them in an effective way.

Now, I will tell you this, this has been the longest and the hardest study I've had of all the studies that we've done so far because these Eastern religions are extremely complicated. And it's very hard to put a finger on this what, this is what it means or this is what it says.

It's very, very nebulous. It's hard to get a grasp on. So I'm gonna do my best to kind of put forth the information and, you know, I'll try to answer any questions. But the fact is, is I don't have anywhere near all the answers and I don't think any Hindu really does either.

So, but what I want to draw attention to first before we get really started here is Bob sent an email out earlier today. And what I appreciate about that email, I didn't even look at the email, but what you said in the email was, this is where man's mind can go.

Basically, if they're not led by God, if they don't have a word in their life, this is where man's thinking can go. And when we look at a religion like this, and we say, oh my goodness, you know, this doesn't make sense at all.

The Wisdom of God Versus Human Pride

I want to remind us of exactly why Jesus makes sense to us. So what I'd like to do before we get into Hinduism is read what the Lord says about our minds and our hearts. So if, I'm gonna, Phil, could you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter one?

And you're gonna read verses 26 through 31, Phil. We'll give you the big section. Nice and loud.

For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of no birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

And because of him, you are in Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that it is written,.

Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.

Okay, so we're not coming from a position of superiority at all over anybody. And the only reason we understand who Jesus was is because by his grace, he's revealed himself to us. So we need to understand that, because when we see some of the things we're gonna see tonight, it's very easy to get critical.

And I think what we need to understand is we could have been in just such a spot as them, unless God had been gracious to us. So let's start out and kind of, I'm gonna give an overview of all religions outside of Christianity.

I say they have four basic premises or four basic conditions that we can say is true of every single one. So they all have some sort of a sacred text, okay? Okay, we understand that. They all have something that they're kind of following.

But these texts are not like the Bible, however. Many of them are fanciful stories about mythical events and hypothetical situations. They're not usually grounded in historical events, nor are they concerned with historical accuracy.

The documents do not contain prophetic statements, which can be verified by the veracity of truth that we know that the scriptures do. And obviously, if there's prophecy that's inside of a book, such as the Bible, and we can point to it and say, well, that's never been fulfilled or that was fulfilled in an incorrect manner, we can say, well, the Bible's false.

But the other sacred texts of other false religions of the world, other religions of the world, don't even attempt to do those things. They also do not contain records of miracles that can be a document with any veracity, like the scriptures can.

So there's a huge difference between sacred texts that are generated by men. You know, and most people say, well, you know, the Bible was generated by men, too. Men, yes, we say moved by the Holy Spirit.

But there's all of these wonderful things we can point to, which Matt went through and we went through at different times about the manuscript evidence and the evidence for the resurrection and some of the miracles.

Archaeological evidence.

The archaeological evidence as well and the prophetic evidence is overwhelming that this is not just a book that we have in our hands. But many other religions just have a book that many times just one person created and just kind of wrote ideas down.

So they also make statements about Christ. All of the other major religions have some sort of a statement about Jesus Christ. Now, that's good for us because they testify that he was a historical person, which some people in this world still are unwilling to accept, which is amazing to me.

Even the other religions of the world accept this.

Even though they found tablets.

Right.

Right, it's amazing. But those other religions aren't gonna say that he was God Almighty in the flesh. They will say he's a prophet. Some say he is an avatar, and we're gonna talk about that tonight. Some feel like he was an angel and other things, but not the God of the Bible.

All of the false religions will have some sort of rulers and leaders, and not like Christianity does. Christianity, yes, has rulers and leaders. We have elders. We have deacons in the church. And for a time, we had apostles in the church, which had authority to produce doctrine and scripture.

But the other major religions of the world still have these leaders which claim authority over their followers. They can be gurus, swamis, prophets, priests, and still people think they're current-day apostles.

And many times, these leaders are very extremely controlling and many times, sometimes oppressive in a sense that they'll tell you, well, you can't marry, you can't work, you can't go here or there unless we say it's okay.

Very different from Christianity, as Christian leaders are shepherds of your soul, and they care for you. And they help you understand and try to guide you in the scriptures and guide you in your spiritual life, but not like the oppressive authority figures that you see in the other religions.

And then salvation. How do you obtain salvation? This is an easy way to tell the distinction between Christianity and other religions. Christianity is based upon the finished work of Jesus Christ and it is not by anything we do that merits favor from God or grace from God.

It is by his gracious choice that he gives us salvation through his son and his finished work. The other religions of the world all say, you've got to earn your way some way. You're either going to get to nirvana or some state of enlightenment, and that's going to be preferred.

Or reincarnated.

Well, reincarnated is not a good thing because you're trying to escape that. We're going to learn about that tonight.

Transmigration of the soul.

But you're going to do so by meditation or by following some rules, sacrifices, some other discipline that they tell you to follow and you'll get there.

Maybe.

Often very times there's not a clear path as to how you even get there. So I would say all false religions have these four basic premises. And so now we're going to jump into Hinduism. Now, Hinduism, I wanted to write this down because I would have thought that Hinduism in the U .S. would have been more than 1 of the population.

But that's what the stats say. And I was amazed by that. And you think like, well, gosh, is it even valid that we should study such a thing then? Because that's kind of a small, but 1 means 300 ,000 people are Hindus in New Jersey.

And quite frankly, I work with a lot of folks that are of that ilk. And so, you know, God

Are they from India, that area?

Yeah.

And follow still, you know, and it's like, well, the Lord certainly wants to reach these folks. So I think this is a good pursuit that we're doing tonight.

Yeah, even people that aren't Hindus still believe in concepts like reincarnation, even though they're not Hindu.

Well, there's a lot of bleed over to current day culture as to what Hinduism teaches as to what we've been taught as a society. And we'll talk about that a little bit.

Some of the new age stuff too.

New age, karma, that's all part of it. So with the things that I'm doing, I wanna say, well, where did this all start with the religions that I'm gonna go over? And Hinduism's actually hard to get a finger on.

It says it started somewhere between, and there's various dates for this. It's not just these two dates or between these two dates. Other documentation would say something else. But it started in this valley near Pakistan.

Many Hindus argue that their faith is timeless. It has always existed. But that's when we can date back to when there was a belief system and people started to follow it. Now, unlike any other religion, it's interesting, Hinduism really doesn't have a founder.

But it was kind of an amalgamation of many belief systems that came together in this one area. And it came about in this merger of these Indo-Aryan people migrated into this valley, so their language and their culture blended together.

And it was hard to even debate who had more influence over whom at the time. But these Aryan people, oh, we know what that is, right?

Hitler adopted it, yeah.

Yeah, and Ritchie knew exactly what it meant. What does it mean, Ritch?

The swastika meant good fortune, or the sun whisk, a symbol of good fortune.

That's exactly right. And I believe you'll see it in Hindu temples. The symbol is of good luck and of good fortune.

Although didn't Hitler, wasn't it tilted?

He hijacked it, yeah.

I don't know if it was.

He didn't turn it because it was more disturbing.

I think if you turn it, it's the same thing, though, isn't it?

No, you turn it like 30 degrees. Oh, 30 degrees, okay.

It didn't work too well for him.

Well, yeah, he had a different belief system, let's just say that.

The Ukrainians have adopted it.

So anyway, that's where that symbol came from. I didn't know that, getting into this. So the origins of Hinduism is very interesting in the sense that it's kind of this thing that kind of came all together with a bunch of various belief systems.

Hinduism’s Many Gods, Brahman, and Monism

Now, here's where it gets really interesting. What does Hinduism say about God? Well, that's a loaded question now, isn't it? Because Richie, it was mentioned, Richie's like a walking encyclopedia. He's like, well, some say 33 million, 330.

Richie said 330 million to me in the hallway. And then, you know, and some say 330. But it doesn't really matter because they will make up a new God for any situation or any thing. Like for instance, there is a God over every vocation that ever existed.

So if there's a new vocation that comes out, like let's say an IT person, you know, IT people didn't ever, used to exist, right? Well, there's a God over that now. And that's just the way it goes. But there's a reason they go this route.

And many people think, well, they're polytheistic or pantheistic because they worship many gods. But really the definition is more like pantheistic, which is the worship of kind of one concept of a God, but this God expresses himself in all these different other ways.

So when you see these 330 million guys, they say, well, it's really the one Brahman. Brahman is the word. And we're gonna have to be careful about that because there's Brahman, Brahman. Brahma. And you know, there's very similar words.

At the end, there's a whole glossary of terms in this paper and I'll send this out at some point. But let me read something here. It says, Hinduism recognizes up to 33 million gods, but many Hindus believe this vast number represents an infinite forms of God.

I mean, there's infinite gods out there that could be. God is in everyone and God is in every thing. That concept is known as monism, right? All is God and God is all one kind of a thing.

Which is why they have the problem accepting Jesus as, again, another form.

Yeah, they think he's a higher, they think he's an avatar of Jesus. Now here's another quote I got out of one of the documents I read. They believe that God is the absolute, a universal spirit. Everyone is part of God, the Brahman, like drops in the sea.

People worship manifestations of the Brahman, that's all these other gods and goddesses. People are God, but they are unaware of it. And that is the whole goal of Hinduism is to be enlightened. Now, enlightenment is kind of more associated with Buddhism, but you are supposed to understand that there is no real self, that you are Brahman, that everything is Brahman, and this world is an entire illusion.

The world doesn't even exist. The physical world does not exist.

Maya.

Maya, oh my gosh. You said you'd never studied this stuff, Richie, but.

In college.

Clearly, in college.

How many years ago was that? World Religions in College. World Religions in College, he remembers that from like, yeah, Maya is the word for illusion. And as I said, there's a glossary of terms at the back end of this.

Richie, get up here, will you?

All right.

So as I said, there's 330 million gods, but there's kind of some major ones. And what's interesting is there's kind of a triumvirate of these top gods, almost mimicking the triunity. Not really, but there's kind of an idea there of a triune, like, god-centered thing.

Although there's many, many other gods. So the Brahma god is looked at as the creator. Now, it's interesting, this, emeritus is an image, so when you see emeritus, it just means an image that has been revealed to us, which is one of these god-like forms.

So the Brahma god has four heads, seeing in all directions at once, symbolizing the four Vedas, which are the truths. These are the documents that supposedly were given to Hinduism. Those are the main documents, but there's also other ones, and we'll talk about that.

Brahma has four arms, carrying symbols of power, a goblet, bowl, scepter, and the Vedas, which are the documents. In Hindu creation stories, Brahma brings the universe into being. So supposedly he is the creator, although, as I said before, it is an illusionary creation that is here, and to some extent, we're illusionary as well.

We don't really exist. We'll get into that, but it's hard to get a grasp of. Now, Vishnu is the second god of this triumvirate, and Vishnu is the preserver, and Vishnu, they like a lot. They like Vishnu.

It says up there for Brahma, it says he's not worshiped by any Hindus today in comparison to the other two images.

Yeah.

Any idea why that is?

I didn't look into that. I just think that the creation itself is not a focus of Hinduism. Somewhere in here later on, and I may read it, I might not, but they believe that every four billion years, there's kind of a resetting or a rebooting of this illusionary form that we call creation.

So there's a world that we perceive, but it's not really here, and every four billion years, it gets reset.

They reboot the matrix.

They reboot the matrix. They update the software.

Control-Alt-Delete.

So the creation isn't really something they focus on, but it's what it comes down to, but Brahma is the name of that god who's supposedly in charge of that. Now, Vishnu is a much more popular god, and Vishnu, when you hear about avatars, usually it's a form of Vishnu made apparent to man, and they believe Jesus was a form of this.

They believe Krishna was a form of Vishnu appearing, and an avatar itself is sent, supposedly, by the gods to dissuade a particular time where evil is rising up in the world, and even though the world doesn't exist, and at some point, I'm gonna tell you that there is no good or evil either, so measuring things gets very hard.

Like, how do you distinguish that? But when these avatars come, and there's been many over the years, nine in particular that they talk about, but they'll say this avatar was given so that there is a quelling of evil during that particular time, like the things were getting really bad, and then the avatar came to help out.

So, Vishnu is the god of light and enlightenment, and as I said, appeared on the earth as avatars. We're gonna talk more about him in a second. Excuse me?

What does Vishnu teach?

I don't know.

I mean, I don't know. Some of these gods and goddesses are supposed to help you along with your spiritual life. I mean, you're supposed to be trying to get enlightened during your life, Rick, and you're supposed to try to figure out that all is an illusion and everything is Brahman, and these supposed gods that are out there are going to aid you in that, so they kind of take a role in that as well.

But it is extremely interesting. Some of the things we're gonna go over, as I keep going down, it gets deeper and deeper,.

Believe me.

Shiva's another god, and Shiva's the destroyer, and that he's part of this deal over here. Now, it's interesting, Shiva, it says, well, he's often pictured dancing and with four arms. Well, this one isn't at all, right?

So there's even different forms and images of the same god, you know? So, you're gonna love this one, because this is now from the Upanishads and some other things, the sacred writings, so additional descriptions of God.

God is at once infinite in form, immortal, imperishable, impersonal, and that's very important, impersonal. All-pervading, supreme, changeless, absolute, and indivisibly one, and at the same time, none of these.

Wow.

For God is beyond all thought and speech, okay? Him, and this is right from the Upanishads, Him, the Brahman, the eye does not see, nor does the tongue express, nor does the mind progress. Now, that sounds like the scripture almost, right?

Eye does not. Him we neither know nor are able to teach, so you can't be taught about the Brahman either, but somehow you're supposed to be figuring it out.

Right?

Different is he from the known and from the unknown. He truly knows Brahman, who knows him as beyond all knowledge. So the first step in knowing something is realizing you know nothing, and then maybe these things will be revealed somehow.

He who thinks that he knows, knows not. The ignorant think that Brahman is known, but the wise know him to be beyond knowledge. The Upanishads. So you can't know the Brahman. You can kind of only be absorbed into it if you figure out that there's nothing there, except this eternal existence that's impersonal, and you just kind of get morphed into it.

This is the hope of Hindus, to eventually break the cycle of reincarnation so that they can be absorbed into this overall Brahman and not go through the cycle. It's very confusing. And logically, from a Western mindset, we look at this and we say this really, a lot of this really doesn't add up.

But as I said before, unless God had revealed these things to us, we wouldn't see the rational reasons and historical evidence and all the other evidence we have for believing in the scriptures. Very interesting.

Do you think the appeal of this is that it absolves you of sin and having to, I don't know, maybe live by a code, and you just kind of try to be nice and hopefully you're taken up into the starship?

It's kind of like that. I would say so. There's not really a concept of sin and atonement, that kind of a, but there are codes, there are rules, and they try to accomplish things by being good people at different times.

Yeah, that's what I've witnessed with people who follow Hinduism, is that it's about good karma, it's about putting good energy out, to use new age terms, and good energy coming back, and you being rewarded.

Still being weighed in this concept, right?

We're gonna look at that pretty closely coming up here in a little bit, and find out how does that work itself out? Like how do I get good karma? That's very interesting.

True.

One thing that strikes me is that it shows how creative Satan is.

Yes.

Who's the author of Confusion? And Bob sent us something in an email tonight that was very similar in that there's very elaborate ideas and fanciful things that men have created in their minds to basically make a god in their image instead of the other way around, right?

Christ, Relativism, and the Hindu View of Jesus

So now what does Hindu say about Christ, Hinduism? I said before that they believe that Jesus was some kind of a guru or an avatar. And the interesting thing about this I bring out here is that, well, Jesus didn't teach anything about Hinduism, right?

He taught that he was the way, the truth, and the life. Very important. The truth. Because truth is all relative in Hinduism. There's not really one absolute truth. And that's another reason why I say Hinduism has pervaded, or the thoughts of Hinduism has pervaded our culture.

The New Age has adopted a lot of Hinduism.

Right.

And they say Jesus obtained his magical powers through his travels through Egypt and India.

Yeah, now could you imagine somebody believing in an all-powerful force that you had control over by, now I'm gonna take a shot of Star Wars here.

Go for it.

No, but the idea is.

The force be with you.

Yeah, you guys know what that's all about. Yeah, the force stuck from Hinduism.

It's the same thing.

From Hinduism, yeah.

Brahman is basically the force.

But I've always loved religions and people in general who wanna say that Jesus was a good teacher, a moral man, all that stuff. But if you actually look at his words, if he isn't the all-powerful God of the universe, then he was a lunatic.

Lunatic or a liar, when you say it's lunatic.

Because he claimed to be the only way to heaven, the only way to the Father, and he claimed to be God incarnate. And so you can't be both a good teacher, right, and make those claims if they aren't actually true.

Well, you would think that. But if you're a relativist, Jesus can still teach all those things and have his teachings be valuable because that's just another truth.

That's just another truth.

So they still view Jesus as a valuable guru, almost, as a teacher. But of course, we know that Jesus, the big difference between what Hindus believe about Jesus and what we do, he is a personal God with a will and affections and a plan for his creation.

God is separate from his creation. It's not all one big Brahman. He's outside of it. And he's not bound by the physical laws of space and time. Jesus taught that which was opposition to Hinduism. But as I said, they're not concerned with that.

They just think that's just another teaching that's out there and we can absorb that in as well. So it's, you have to be careful again with what you're saying because you could probably get a lot of yes, yeses again if you're speaking with a Hindu person because they believe kind of all things.

So.

I have a good friend who's a Hindu. And that's what I get. I get a lot of yes, yeses. They are entirely unoffended by Christianity. They think Christianity is great. It's just another form of religion to them.

Right, just another one of the many gods or appearances of Vishnu.

So they don't argue with you at all about, even if you were telling them, but Jesus said he was the only way. They would say, yes. Like it's just a lot of affirmation.

And they would probably say, maybe you'll have some bad karma for believing that, maybe, but that's okay. Yeah, because you're gonna get another shot at it next time around. So they have key documents.

As I said before, the key documents are not like ours for the reasons I said before. But I said there's the four Vedas and those are these right here. And then the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita are the two other ones, the big ones.

But there are 25 other or so documents. And Hindus do not necessarily study all of these writings at all. They pick and choose. And they could never look at any of them. They could just follow gurus if they wanted to.

But the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita are two of the main ones I hear mostly quoted. But the Vedas seem to have a more reverent,.

Position.

Are the authors identified?

I think it's a conglomeration of authors over years. And Rick, they don't have the kind of manuscript evidence that the scriptures do. So it was pieced together and whatnot from bits and scraps here. But when Matt was going through that and he was saying, well, yeah, you know, 30, 40, 50 years after Jesus was gone or the disciples were gone, we have manuscripts from that era.

But they're talking like hundreds of years, hundreds and hundreds of years before you start seeing the writings actually there. As you know, it's passed on mostly by word of mouth. So do we have the originals and that kind of thing?

There's a lot less information there on these type of writings than there would be for the Bible. Because Matt, when he went through that, it was overwhelming the amount of manuscripts that testified of the truth and the veracity of the scriptures.

Hindu Creation, Illusion, and the Cycle of Rebirth

Now, this is gonna blow your mind. What does Hinduism say about creation? I wanna read most of this. So the material, as I said before, the material universe is not the creation of a personal God, but rather a sort of unconscious emanation from the divine, from the Brahman.

So there's kind of like this concept that the Brahman has caused this illusionary just environment to exist. It's beginningless, and some would say endless, although there is this concept of a four billion year reboot.

It is unreal and illusionary. Am I a, as Richie would say, because the only true reality is Brahman. That is it. Hindus believe that the universe pulsates. This is the reoccurring and destroyed over periods lasting about four billion years.

The world is seen as a huge series of repeated cycles, each cycle being a near copy of the last.

Do you have any idea where they came up with the four billion years?

No, I did not dig into the particular

Just picked a really big number?

Like, just like an evolutionist. And obviously that wouldn't be provable by any sense. That was just somebody's concept that they had revealed to them. Maybe they think by a God, but there's certainly no evidence for that.

Man is compelled to play a part in this gigantic, illusionary, and wearisome universe. Life is seen as basically simply painful, full of distress, and it's only temporarily amassed by earthly pleasures.

That statement in itself is very interesting because the concept of earthly pleasures and goodness blows my mind because, really, there is no good or evil in Hinduism. So I don't even get the point where they would say you have good karma, because good karma is often associated with you have a higher standing, you have something good happen to you, but what is good?

Okay, you got a job promotion, you must have good karma. Why is a job promotion good? Well, how does that weigh itself in the scheme of things if you don't have a set of rules or a set of criteria to judge good and evil?

Very subjective.

Very subjective, but yet there's this still concept of good and evil, and that's basically because that's how we were all created anyway.

Do they get into the whole caste system and then the analogs related to Hinduism?

I touched extremely lightly on that because it's not as emphasized as it used to be, in part, and a lot of that has to do with Western influence, actually, because we view that as very cruel and very dehumanizing, biased in many ways.

Every generation, it gets lighter and lighter. I still see it, and it's still cropped up in some arranged marriages, because they do a lot of arranged marriages in India, where they won't intermarry between castes, but, and I have seen some deferential treatment because the guy who's my friend is part of the priestly caste.

Oh, the Brahmin caste?

Yeah, and so there are people that would defer to him as a result of that,.

Which I thought was. He would have a lot of power.

Yeah, and he's officiated wedding ceremonies and stuff like that, and officiated certain celebrations, but, so I've seen some of that in, say, my generation and the generation before mine, but the younger generations, because I know a lot of younger guys, too, they've almost cast that off, especially if they come from major cities, major urban areas in India.

Well, we're gonna, as we keep going through this, you can see why somebody who is in this system would be disillusioned and be very upset and kinda like, yeah, okay, I believe I'm gonna be reincarnated, so I just might as well make the best of my life now.

Don't they believe that if they behave well in this life that they will rise into a better caste?

Right, they'll keep on elevating until supposedly they get to a point where they would become enlightened, but why, because the measure of good and evil and prosperity in particular isn't necessarily defined as a good thing.

It's very hard to understand why they think they're gonna keep on elevating, elevating, elevating. We've still got that to go, so let's push ahead here. So you get the idea here that you're part of this unreality and misery, the human soul, the word for that is Atman.

They believe in sort of a human soul, but not really, because Atman is also Brahma, it's all one.

Atman and Brahman.

So the human soul is identical with the Supreme Brahman, and we really don't have a part in the Sauri universe. The Upanishad says Brahman alone is nothing else. He who sees the manifold universe and not the one reality, Brahman, goes forevermore from death to death.

So that's birth, reincarnation, or at least they think you are. You're not really being, because it's all illusionary, right?

Almost as if we're like a dream in God's head.

Right.

Do you remember when we were going through the prophecy, or not the prophecies, but the philosophers, and Descartes got to the point where he said, is there just a big cosmic joker out there who has made some illusionary world that I don't even know what's real or not anymore?

And we were talking about the sensory perception and all kinds of other things. And eventually he got to the point where he said, I think, therefore I am.

Cogito ergo sum.

Yeah, so this is kind of like where that goes. And yes, Rich knew the Latin for that.

Of course he did. Of course he did.

Of course he did. So Hinduism states that humankind is the Brahman, and the Maya or the illusionary universe has deceived us into thinking that each person is a particular. So you are not an individual.

There is no individual Joey or Dave or anybody else in this room. It is all Brahman. And somehow, even though we're all one, we as separate Atmans have to come to this realization ourselves so that we can figure out well really we're part of this big Brahman.

And so we won't go through reincarnation anymore. Very confusing folks.

Salvation Through Yoga, Meditation, and Karma

So do they have a concept of sin? Is Brahman all good? If therefore Brahman is all good, the Atman is all good too.

There is no concept of really good or evil. Although we're gonna get into how you behave now a little bit because how can you escape this cycle? What is eternal life? What is salvation? What is it all mean?