Apologetics Session 41 - Hinduism

Cornerstone Church

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going to try to tackle Hinduism tonight. And it doesn't mean we're all gonna be

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Hindus after this lesson, you know, we're just gonna try to find out some major points about Hinduism.

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And really the heart of the matter 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.

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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 we run into them and we want to just be able to share

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Christ with them in an effective way. Now, I will tell you this, this has been the longest and the hardest study

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I've had of all the studies that we've done so far, because these

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Eastern religions are extremely complicated, and it's very hard to put a finger on this is what it means or this is what it says.

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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,

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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

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Hindu really does either, so. But what I want to draw attention to first before we get really started here is,

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Bob sent an email out earlier today, and what I appreciate about that email,

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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.

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If they don't have the Lord 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.

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I want to remind us of exactly why Jesus makes sense to us.

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So what I'd like to do before we get into Hinduism is read what the Lord says about our minds and our hearts.

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So if, I'm gonna, Phil, could you turn to First Corinthians chapter one?

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And you're gonna read verses 26 through 31,

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Phil. We'll give you the big section, nice and loud. For consider your calling, brothers.

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Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

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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.

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God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.

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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.

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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.

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And the only reason we understand who Jesus was is because by his grace, he's revealed himself to us.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So they all have some sort of a sacred text, okay? Okay, we understand that.

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They all have something that they're kind of following. But these texts are not like the Bible, however.

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Many of them are fanciful stories about mythical events and hypothetical situations.

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They're not usually grounded in historical events, nor are they concerned with historical accuracy.

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The documents do not contain prophetic statements, which can be verified by the veracity of truth that we know that the scriptures do.

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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

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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.

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They also do not contain records of miracles that can be documented with any veracity, like the scriptures can.

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So there's a huge difference between sacred texts that are generated by men, and most people say, well, the

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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

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Matt went through, and we went through at different times about the manuscript evidence, and the evidence for the resurrection, some of the miracles.

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Archeological evidence. The archeological evidence, as well, and the prophetic evidence is overwhelming that this is not just a book that we have in our hands.

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But many other religions just have a book that many times just one person created, and just kind of wrote ideas down.

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So they also make statements about Christ. All of the other major religions have some sort of a statement about Jesus Christ.

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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.

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Even the other religions of the world accept this. Even if they found tablets, right? Right, it's amazing.

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But those other religions aren't gonna say that he was God Almighty in the flesh. They will say he's a prophet.

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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

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God of the Bible. All of the false religions will have some sort of rulers and leaders, and not like Christianity does.

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Christianity, yes, has rulers and leaders. We have elders. We have deacons in the church.

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And for a time, we had apostles in the church, which had authority to produce doctrine and scripture.

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

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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.

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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.

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And then salvation. How do you obtain salvation? This is an easy way to tell the distinction between Christianity and other religions.

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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.

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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.

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You're either gonna get to nirvana or some state of enlightenment, and that's gonna be - Or reincarnated.

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

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

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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.

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And so now we're gonna jump into Hinduism. Now, Hinduism, I wanted to write this down because I would have thought that Hinduism in the

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U .S. would have been more than 1 % of the population. But that's what the stats say.

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And I was amazed by that. And you think like, well, gosh, is it even valid that we should study such a thing?

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Because that's kind of a small, but 1 % means 300 ,000 people are

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Hindus in New Jersey. And quite frankly, I work with a lot of folks that are of that ilk.

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And so, you know, God. Are they from India, that area? Yeah. And follow still, you know.

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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.

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

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Hindu. Karma. Well, there's a lot of bleed over to current day culture as to what

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Hinduism teaches as to what we've invented as a society. And we'll talk about that a little bit. Some of the new age stuff too.

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New age, karma, that's all part of it. So with the things that I'm doing,

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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.

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It says that it started somewhere between, and there's various dates for this. It's not just these two dates or between these two dates.

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Other documentation would say something else. But it started in this valley near Pakistan.

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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.

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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.

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And it came about in this merger of these Indo -Aryan people migrated into this valley, so their language and their culture blended together.

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And it was hard to even debate who had more influence over whom at the time. But these

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Aryan people, we know what that is, right? Hitler adopted it, yeah.

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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.

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

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Although didn't Hitler, wasn't it tilted? He hijacked it, yeah. He didn't turn it because it was more disturbing.

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I think if you turn it, it's the same thing though, isn't it? He turned it like 30 degrees. Oh, 30 degrees, okay.

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It didn't work too well for him. Right, yeah. Well, he had a different belief system, let's just say that.

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The Ukrainians have adopted it. So anyway, that's where that symbol came from. I didn't know that, getting into this.

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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.

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Now, here's where it gets really interesting. What does Hinduism say about God? Well, that's a loaded question now, isn't it?

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Because Richie, it was mentioned, Richie's like a walking encyclopedia.

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He's like, well, some say 33 million, 330. Richie said 330 million to me in the hallway, and some say 330.

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But it doesn't really matter because they will make up a new God for any situation or any thing.

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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

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IT person, IT people didn't ever used to exist, right? Well, there's a

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God over that now. And that's just the way it goes. But there's a reason they go this route.

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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

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God, but this God expresses himself in all these different other ways.

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So when you see these 330 million guys, they say, well, it's really the one Brahman.

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Brahman is the word. And we're gonna have to be careful about that because there's

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Brahman, Brahman. Brahman, Brahma. And there's very similar words.

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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.

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It says, Hinduism recognizes up to 33 million gods, but many Hindus believe this vast number represents an infinite forms of God.

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I mean, there's infinite gods out there that could be. God is in everyone and God is in every thing.

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That concept is known as monism, right?

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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.

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Yeah, they think he's a higher, they think he's an avatar of Jesus.

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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.

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Everyone is part of God, the Brahman, like drops in the sea.

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People worship manifestations of the Brahman, that's all these other gods and goddesses. People are

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God, but they are unaware of it. And that is the whole goal of Hinduism, is to be enlightened.

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Now, enlightenment is kind of more associated with Buddhism, but you are supposed to understand that there is no real self.

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That you are Brahman, that everything is Brahman, and this world is an entire illusion.

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The world doesn't even exist. The physical world does not exist. Maya. Maya, oh my gosh.

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You said you'd never studied this stuff, Richie, but. In college. Clearly. In college. How many years ago was that?

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World Religions in College. World Religions in College, he remembers that from like, yeah, Maya is the word for illusion.

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And as I said, there's a glossary of terms at the back end of this. Richie, get up here, will you?

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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.

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Not really, but there's kind of an idea there of a triune, like, god -centered thing.

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Although there's many, many other gods. So the Brahma god is looked at as the creator.

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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.

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So the Brahma god has four heads, seeing in all directions at once, symbolizing the four Vedas, which are the truths.

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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.

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Brahma has four arms, carrying symbols of power, a goblet, bowl, scepter, and the Vedas, which are the documents.

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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 degree, we're illusionary as well.

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We don't really exist. We'll get into that, but it's hard to get a grasp of.

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Now, Vishnu is the second god of this triumvirate, and Vishnu is the preserver, and Vishnu, they like a lot.

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They like Vishnu. It says up there for Brahma, it says he's not worshiped by any

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Hindus today in comparison to the other two images. Yeah. Any idea why that is?

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I didn't look into that. I just think that the creation itself is not a focus of Hinduism.

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Somewhere in here later on, 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.

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

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They reboot the matrix. They reboot the matrix. They update the software, control off the leap.

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So the creation isn't really something they focus on, but it's what it comes down to.

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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, and they believe

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Jesus was a form of this. They believe Krishna was a form of Vishnu appearing.

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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,

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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?

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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 that things were getting really bad, and then the avatar came to help out.

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So Vishnu is the god of light and enlightenment, and as I said, appeared on the earth as avatars.

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We're gonna talk more about him in a second. Excuse me? What does Vishnu teach? I don't know.

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I mean, I don't know. Some of these gods and goddesses are supposed to help you along with your spiritual life.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Shiva's another god, and Shiva's the destroyer, and that he's part of this deal over here.

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Now, it's interesting, Shiva, it says, well, he's often pictured dancing and with four arms.

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Well, this one isn't at all, right? So there's even different forms and images of the same god, you know?

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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.

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God is at once infinite in form, immortal, imperishable, impersonal, and that's very important, impersonal.

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All -pervading, supreme, changeless, absolute, and indivisibly one, and at the same time, none of these.

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Wow. For God is beyond all thought and speech, okay?

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Him, and so then this is right from the Upanishads. Him, the Brahman, the eye does not see, nor does the tongue express, nor does the mind progress.

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Now, that sounds like the scripture almost, right? Him we neither know nor are able to teach, so you can't be taught about the

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Brahman either, but somehow you're supposed to be figuring it out. Different is he from the known and from the unknown.

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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.

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He who thinks that he knows, knows not. The ignorant think that Brahman is known, but the wise know him to be beyond knowledge.

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Upanishad. 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.

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This is the hope of Hindus, to eventually break the cycle of reincarnation so that they can be absorbed into this overall

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Brahman, and not go through this cycle. It's very confusing, and logically, from a

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Western mindset, we look at this and we say this really, a lot of this really doesn't add up.

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

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Very interesting. Do you think the appeal of this is that it absolves you of sin, and having to,

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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?

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It's kind of like that. I would say so. There's not really a concept of sin and atonement.

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But there are codes, there are rules, and they try to accomplish things by being good people at different times.

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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.

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Still being weighed in the scales though, 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?

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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.

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Yes. Who's the author of Confusion? And Bob sent us something in an email tonight that was very similar, and 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?

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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.

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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.

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Very important. The truth, because truth is all relative in Hinduism, there's not really one absolute truth.

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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.

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

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Yeah, now could you imagine somebody believing in an all -powerful force that you had control over by, yeah,

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I'm gonna take a shot at Star Wars here, that's what I'm trying to get at. Go for it. No, but the idea is, The force be with you.

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Yeah, you guys know what that's all about. Yeah, the force stuck from? Hinduism, it's the same thing. From Hinduism, yeah.

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You know, 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.

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But if you actually look at his words, if he isn't the all -powerful

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God of the universe, then he was a lunatic. Lunatic or a liar. Because he claimed to be the only way to heaven, the only way to the

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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.

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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.

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That's just another truth. So they still view Jesus as a valuable guru, almost, as a teacher.

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But of course, we know that Jesus, the big difference between what Hindus believe about Jesus and what we do, he is a personal

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God with a will and affections and a plan for his creation. God is separate from his creation.

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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.

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Jesus taught that which was opposition to Hinduism. But as I said, they're not concerned with that.

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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

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Hindu person because they believe kind of all things. So - I have a good friend who's a

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Hindu and that's what I get. I get a lot of yes, yeses. They are entirely unoffended by Christianity.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Yeah, because you're gonna get another shot at it next time around. So they have key documents.

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As I said before, the key documents are not like ours for the reasons I said before. But I said there's the four

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Vedas and those are these right here. And then the

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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.

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They pick and choose and they could never look at any of them. They can just follow gurus if they want to.

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But the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita are two of the main ones

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I hear mostly quoted. But the Vedas seem to have a more reverent position.

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Are the authors identified? I think it's a conglomeration of authors over years.

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And Rick, they don't have the kind of manuscript evidence that the scriptures do.

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So it was pieced together and whatnot from bits and scraps here. But when

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Matt was going through that and he was saying, well yeah, 30, 40, 50 years after Jesus was gone or the disciples were gone, we have manuscripts from that era.

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But you're talking like hundreds of years, hundreds and hundreds of years before you start seeing the writings actually there.

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It's passed on mostly by word of mouth. So do we have the originals and that kind of thing?

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There's a lot less information there on these type of writings than there would be for the

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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.

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Now this is gonna blow your mind. What does Hinduism say about creation? I wanna read most of this.

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So the material, as I said before, the material universe is not the creation of a personal

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God, but rather a sort of unconscious emanation from the divine, from the

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Brahman. So there's kind of like this concept that the Brahman has caused this illusionary just environment to exist.

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It's beginningless and some would say endless. Although there is this concept of a four billion year reboot.

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It is unreal and illusionary. Amaya, as Richie would say.

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Because the only true reality is Brahman. That is it. Hindus believe that the universe pulsates.

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Now 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.

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Do you have any idea where they came up with the four billion years? No, I did not dig into the particular.

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Just picked a really big number, like. No, I don't know. Just like an evolutionist. And obviously that wouldn't be provable by any sense.

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That was just somebody's concept that they had revealed to them. Maybe they think by a

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God, but there's certainly no evidence for that. Man is compelled to play a part in this gigantic, illusionary, and wearisome universe.

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Life is seen as basically simply painful, full of distress, and it's only temporarily amassed by earthly pleasures.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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In part, and a lot of that has to do with Western influence actually because we view that as very cruel and very dehumanizing bias in many ways.

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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.

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Oh, the Brahmin caste? Yeah, and so there are people that would defer to him as a result of that.

33:58

Which I thought was. He would have a lot of power. Yeah. A lot of sway. And he's officiated wedding ceremonies and stuff like that and officiated certain celebrations, but, so I've seen some of that in say the, 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 like major cities, major urban areas in India.

34:26

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 kind of like, yeah, okay,

34:38

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?

34:49

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.

35:04

It's very hard to understand why they think they're gonna keep on elevating, elevating, elevating.

35:11

We 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

35:24

Atman. They believe in sort of a human soul, but not really, because Atman is also

35:29

Brahma, it's all one. Atman and Brahma. So the human soul is identical with the supreme

35:35

Brahman, and we really don't have a part in this sorry universe. The Upanishad says

35:41

Brahman alone is nothing else. He who sees the manifold universe and not the one reality,

35:51

Brahman, goes forevermore from death to death. So that's birth, reincarnation, or at least they think you are.

36:01

You're not really being, because it's all illusionary, right? Almost as if we're like a dream in God's head.

36:08

Right. Do you remember when we were going through the, 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?

36:27

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

36:32

I think, therefore I am. Kodjito Yagoslom. Yeah, so this is kind of like where that goes.

36:39

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

36:47

Brahman, and the maya or the illusionary universe has deceived us into thinking that each person is a particular.

36:57

So you are not an individual. There is no individual

37:02

Joey or Dave or anybody else in this room. It is all

37:08

Brahman. And somehow, even though we're all one, we as separate

37:15

Atmans have to come to this realization ourselves so that we can figure out, well, really we're part of this big

37:22

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

37:28

So do they have a concept of sin? Is Brahman all good? If therefore

37:35

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?

37:47

What is eternal life? What is salvation? What is it all mean? We've talked about reincarnation a little bit, but being released from the cycle of reincarnation is the goal.

37:56

Release from the cycle is achieved through yoga and meditation, and that's increasing your karma.

38:04

And this can take many lifetimes. Final salvation is absorption or union with the

38:10

Brahman. So really you cease to exist. What do you meditate on? Anything, a fixed object, one of the gods, anything.

38:21

And yeah, a dream, it could be anything. There's not really a prescribed way, but if you continue to practice the art of yoga and meditation, then you will get to the point where you realize there is no self, it is just Brahman.

38:39

And then once you do that, then you will be achieved and absorbed. You won't be reincarnated anymore, but you will die and be absorbed into the

38:46

Brahman. You were talking earlier how this got into pop culture and stuff in the Star Trek. It really,

38:53

Star Wars, I mean, it reminds you of the Borg for Star Trek. The Zord, yeah, yeah.

39:00

Resistance is futile, they're all, there's no one mind. That was Star Trek. That was

39:05

Star Trek. Yeah, that was Star Trek, yeah. Not Star Wars. Star Wars was the Force. Yeah, Star Wars was the

39:11

Force. But how it's infiltrated into pop culture. Right, oh yes. Absolutely. The whole idea.

39:16

But even in Star Wars, when Jedi die, they become one with the Force and come back as Force Ghosts.

39:22

There you go. Oh yeah, they never die. So is that the reincarnation? No, no, no, that's the absorption.

39:28

So, I can see why in the hippie movement and all the drugs of the late 60s and 70s when they were looking for deeper consciousness and LSD and all that,

39:42

I can see how they grasp onto a lot of the Hinduism with that whole drug movement.

39:47

Right, the Beatles and all that. Because you always heard they were, well, we're seeking higher consciousness. That's why we're doing drugs.

39:54

I remember listening to a story of one of the hippies from that era who got caught up in this and eventually was one of the

40:01

Calvary Chapel guys. And he said he sat for weeks. And, you know, because deprivation was part of it.

40:08

Have you ever heard, like Aaron Rodgers right now is doing this deep cleanse thing. This is this kind of same thing.

40:15

It's like you were entering this extra spiritual realm because I'm debasing my body and things like that.

40:22

Well, back in the early 70s, one of the Calvary guys was caught up in this.

40:27

And he went, this was before he was saved. He went over to India and he waited weeks to see this guru. And there were thousands of people wanting to see this guru.

40:36

And he said he stood in a line and they were all one by one going up and they're hoping to hear some words of wisdom or spiritual enlightenment from this guy.

40:43

He says he finally got his turn. He finally came up to the guru. And the guru went in his ear, he blew in his ear.

40:50

And then he just said, you know, you're next. You know, keep the line going. And that's when he realized.

40:57

He said, that's when he realized, what am I doing? Yeah, he realized, what am I doing?

41:03

Like, you know, it doesn't make any sense. But as we said before, we have good news to bring to folks who are in this system.

41:14

We have good news and we have love for people who would be trapped by their own belief system and wanting to set them free.

41:25

So, this is about the sin thing. If one has been bad, he can be reborn and pay for his past sins.

41:34

There's kind of an idea of past sins, bad karma by suffering. So the concept is like, okay, you've been kind of bad.

41:42

You haven't done what you're supposed to do. That's very nebulous, is about, you know, what you've done and what you haven't done.

41:49

What standard did they use to determine good and bad? Well, I'm gonna read a few things down here right now. But suffering in a new life is going to pay for your bad karma in a previous life.

42:03

So there's some very interesting questions about this. Okay, when does the human soul begin? Well, based upon everything

42:08

I said so far, they're really, some say it's beginningless, but then there's this four billion year reboot.

42:17

And there's also, is there a human soul at all? Because there's just this

42:22

Atman. They call it an Atman, but really that's part of the Brahma. So how are there all separate

42:28

Atmans in each one of us, but yet we're all not separate but one?

42:37

Very hard to answer these questions. Now, since there is no Hindu God that judges or has authority over creation, how does a person determine if he has good or bad karma?

42:48

Who's making that determination? Who's the one that says, you were bad, now you're gonna come back as an ant?

42:57

Yes, I have heard that said in some of these things that I've read, that sometimes it's you.

43:03

You yourself determine because you know if you've been good or bad. So again, very subjective.

43:08

This is a man's morality. Very subjective. We always have a high opinion of how good or bad we do, right?

43:15

Some say it's Vishnu. Some say, in the Hindu religion, they say it's Vishnu and he decides, but it's honestly not very clear about who determines whether you're good or bad or not.

43:27

Seeing the news. Yeah. Oh. He's got a list. Yeah.

43:33

Check it twice. You're nice, yeah. Yeah, because again, we'd be in the same spot. So how does a person who has accumulated much bad karma actually get free from reincarnation?

43:44

Because how are you gonna overcome this bad karma that you've created? Well, you have to recognize suffering. You have to replace earthly desires to be one with God, the

43:55

Brahman. Like, think like there's just the Brahman. Remember God throughout the day by stating his or her name.

44:03

So that could be any of the gods, I believe. Recognize God or the Dharma, which is teaching, in everything around you.

44:10

So it's just kind of like this concept of just having this mental mindset of there's nothing really here.

44:17

I'm all just part of the Brahman. And that's where I wanna end up going. But you do see interesting things like this.

44:23

Giving up intoxication, giving up the need to control others, living a simple life, giving up ambition and ego.

44:32

But that's where it gets interesting because it's like, well, there's this concept of self -denial and selflessness we've throughout this.

44:40

But how does that blend with good karma and the caste system? Because the caste system is, you have a higher position in life.

44:48

You have a higher wealth and prosperity, which basically means you're the top dog, not the bottom dog.

44:54

So the whole concept of climbing up the tree really disagrees with many of the things that say good karma.

45:01

And if you're ambitious and you don't get that promotion, you think it's bad karma. If you do get the promotion, you think it's good karma.

45:07

But you're ambitious enough to go up to the promotion first place. So I'm gonna bypass that last one.

45:14

How is worship performed here? There's many and various ways.

45:19

So some wear orange robes, shave their heads. Some bow down to statues and idols. Gurus can be very demanding of their followers.

45:31

Disciples can meditate on a word, phrase, or picture. As Rick said before, what do you meditate on?

45:38

Yoga involves meditation, chanting, postures, breathing. And basically, this is the root of where we're gonna get the

45:45

New Age movement. And Ivan's gonna cover that in more depth in a couple of weeks.

45:52

There are 16 Hindu sacraments. Now, you don't necessarily have to perform them, but this is just another opportunity to do something in order to kind of achieve a deeper spirituality.

46:06

There are four paths or forms of life, which are the different forms of yoga. Yoga of action, yoga of devotion, yoga of meditation, yoga of intellect.

46:17

So you can pursue one of these four things, or maybe, I guess, you could do it in a combination. But some of these things are supposed to, again, release you and give you greater enlightenment.

46:26

How does this overlap with sort of popular yoga that we see in Western society?

46:32

Hatha yoga. Well. Which is more exercise, right? There's a lot of,

46:39

I'll say, spiritual nature. I have never seen a yoga, because I wanna do yoga, because I'm old and I'm stiff, and I need to be flexible, right?

46:47

But every single class I've ever seen always involves this meditation and chanting stuff.

46:56

And it's not really, it's hard to get a class that's just stretching. So it's still a very big part of that whole concept of yoga.

47:05

We had a meditation person come to a leadership conference once for us.

47:11

And he had everyone close their eyes and start focusing on things. And I used the time to just pray.

47:17

Because, you know, what else am I gonna do? But yeah, I can see that.

47:24

Go back up just a second a little bit. What you're meditating on. Yeah. Meditating on a word, phrase, or picture.

47:34

I mean, there has to be some qualification there. I don't think so.

47:39

It's more like emptying your mind kind of thing. Right. Like when we talk about Christian meditation, or meditating on the word, or something that's in the

47:48

Bible, or meditating on God's creation, we are thinking about something that is tangible and that is true.

47:58

And we want that thing, God, to affect our lives. And this particular concept,

48:05

I believe it's more like an emptying of your mind to the point where you're not fooled by this illusionary world anymore.

48:11

And you just realize that there's a oneness that exists for all reality.

48:17

And we're part of it, but we have to realize that really everything around us is an illusion. But you get a choice as to what picture you're gonna focus on.

48:26

Any way you wanna do it, you can do it. Now you get points too. And maybe you could go up to another caste and be more popular and have more prosperity and blah, blah, blah.

48:35

Which doesn't make any sense because we're supposed to be selfless. But that's the way it is. So, but I said, probably as a

48:43

Western culture, the caste system has been substantially dismantled.

48:48

Although, there's still this concept that all human suffering is deserved. So that's why, you know,

48:59

Hindus for generations had been known as so cruel, especially over in India, because they could have cared less about somebody who was homeless, you know, dying on the side of the road.

49:10

It's like, well, you got, you know, that's because you have bad karma. That's your karma. You know, that's your fault. You know, in a previous lifetime, or maybe even this time, you deserve what you were getting.

49:19

So that concept does not deal well for human compassion. Right, right.

49:25

But yet there's also this concept of ahismet, which is not injuring another.

49:32

That's interesting. And that means you don't do harm to another, which is kind of their view of love and compassion.

49:39

But it goes beyond this because it means not harming someone also through word or thought. But that's not quite what

49:46

Christian compassion is, right? Because Christian compassion is to benefit another, love and action that will benefit one another, not harm someone, but actually going the extra mile, you know, doing the extra thing to help someone in need.

50:03

Those are names to say, like, you shouldn't kill an insect because it might be killing somebody's grandmother. There's that concept too.

50:09

Yeah, you don't kill animals. Animals are all, any animal can be saved. The cow is an example, but there are other animals that are sacred as well.

50:16

Okay, so. Totally screwed up. But there is this concept of selfless charitable deeds as well, which is called dana.

50:26

And examples of that are in karma yoga. So it's a mishmash of ideas because sometimes you're supposed to be helpful to the poor.

50:33

Sometimes you're supposed to ignore the poor and say they got what they deserve. Who's defining the good karma and the bad karma?

50:40

Very confusing. So there's, I have a summary here, and we've talked about some of the problems.

50:51

I'll read the couple of things as we go over here, and then I want to play just a short video. So one of the problems with Hinduism, the statement that all is an illusion.

51:01

Well, this was, we said this was posed by Descartes as well. But the problem is, is one can't know the world is an illusion who does not know what is real.

51:10

There has to be some sort of a baseline, some sort of a concept that lets you perceive that everything around me is an illusion because there's reality as well.

51:22

So knowing the real is a prerequisite for knowing what is not real. And that's kind of a circular thing that they get into.

51:31

It's the red pill. Yeah, I was going to say, do they think they're living in some sort of matrix where the blue pill and the red pill?

51:37

Well, the red pill is, well, which one is real? The red pill makes you believe in reality. The blue pill is you stay in the dream.

51:44

Well, the red pill is figuring out that all is an illusion. So that's the red pill. So the matrix, okay.

51:50

That's right. And that's how you tell the difference. Now, we talked about pantheism.

51:56

Monists deny the validity of sense knowledge because it's like all is one and one is all.

52:05

And they say the senses tell us that there are many things, our senses tell us that there are many things that they are physical.

52:12

We believe there's a table right here, right? I can knock on the table. I can feel it. I can see it. But the monists must deny both of the pieces of information about reality, meaning, oh, but the denial of the senses is actually self -defeating because one could not know the senses were deceptive without the senses telling us this, meaning that everything that comes into us is basically sense perception.

52:39

Now, we got back into this with the philosophers because some of the philosophers would say, well, yeah, but that doesn't include your mind.

52:47

You know, your mind is separate from your senses and your mind can imagine and dream things without. But in reality, the monist expects us to trust our senses when we look at their books or listen to their lectures until we understand them.

53:02

But they fail to recognize that while knowledge is more than sensation, meaning we could just, you know, have something that we, the concept in our minds, it begins with sensation.

53:13

Everything in the mind was first in the senses except the mind itself. So we know more than sensation, but we do not know the world without sensation.

53:23

So the concept that the senses do not speak to us about what is out in the universe in reality really doesn't hold up.

53:34

And we talked about this back when we talked about, you know, what is truth? Is there truth? Can we be certain, you know, that things in this world are true?

53:44

Are there absolute truths? And they would deny that there are, except the

53:50

Brahman. The Brahman is the only - No, I'm saying less than one in apologetics. Oh, less than one in apologetics, yes.

53:57

So again, Hinduism is a form of relativism with no moral attributes. And again, that too is self -defeating because one cannot avoid all moral absolutes without affirming the moral absolute that there are no moral absolutes.

54:11

Self -defeating. You know, and they can't claim that the ultimate reality goes beyond all good and evil unless there is a moral principle by which to measure good and evil.

54:29

So you come down to the circular arguments, but it comes down to there is a standard. There is something that is out there that measures good and evil.

54:37

And they do measure good and evil all the time based upon concepts that we have as human beings, like the good karma, bad karma thing.

54:45

But they don't really acknowledge that. And they don't acknowledge that when they say good karma, they're stepping into all of these things that we know as human beings, that being prosperous is much nicer than not, or being kind is much nicer than being wicked to someone.

55:04

They acknowledge those things, and yet they really don't say that there's good and evil.

55:10

So it's very confusing in many ways. So there's a lot of questions here that I think would be good to ask a person who is in that belief system.

55:29

And we had a list of questions before that. There's a glossary of terms back here which might be helpful or might not.

55:37

But I didn't mention this before, but if you've seen this before, here's your third eye. And we've talked about the 16 sacraments.

55:44

We've talked about the four paths of life. But there's also these nine, or wait a second, it's seven.

55:49

Yeah, the chakras. Yeah, the chakras that you focus on. And they're all described in here.

55:56

And you meditate on these things as well. And if you've heard

56:01

Diwali, which is probably important for us to kind of hear that, because it's being pushed as something that we want to have as a public holiday, right?

56:10

Have you guys heard that? Diwali lights. Diwali lights. Well, it is a festival of lights held in October, November for Hindus.

56:16

It's a five -day thing. And it's associated with this god called Lakshmi, Lakshmi. Lakshmi.

56:23

Yeah, okay, thank you. And she is the goddess of prosperity. So why are we talking about selfless and self -denial when we are worshiping a god of prosperity who can give us wealth and status and things like that, that we're worshiping her in this time, which is called

56:46

Diwali? Very difficult to really understand all of where this is going.

56:56

But I think understanding even, like what we've gone through tonight, as far as the confusing aspects of it, if you were a

57:06

Hindu, like what would you do? What do you do? What is right and what is wrong to do?

57:15

It comes down as like it almost doesn't matter. How can they not be confused? Right. And some of these videos here, we probably have time to just watch one, but some of these are longer, some of these are shorter.

57:29

But this video right here, this is a testimony of a high -ranking Hindu priest which came to Jesus.

57:37

Now his doctrine isn't quite right on some things, but he was transformed by the power of Christ.

57:42

And he felt, like as he was going through all of this teaching, and he was a high -powered guy, he was flying private jets all over Europe and all over the

57:50

United States. He had established places of worship in like Czechoslovakia and in Switzerland and in London and in Spain and all these places.

58:03

And he kept saying to himself, there was something testifying in his heart that this was not right and it was not real.

58:11

But he was so ingrained in it, and he was making a lot of money, and he was getting a lot of popularity.

58:21

A lot of people were bending down to him. It's hard to break that cycle when you're getting that much applause and that much notoriety.

58:31

But he knew it was false. Kept on doing it for a long time. But at some point, he said he actually walked into the

58:39

Vatican, and he saw the paintings on one side and on the other side that portrayed,

58:48

I think, I can't remember exactly what it portrayed, because I haven't been to the Vatican. The 12 stages of his time in the

58:54

Vatican? It was, yeah, I'm not sure. It might have been the life of Christ on one side and something about John the

59:02

Baptist. I don't remember exactly. But it was like, nobody told him anything, but it was like, there's something true about this.

59:09

And he kept pursuing it, kept pursuing it. But he kept doing his Hindu thing, too. But eventually, he said, this isn't real.

59:18

And he gave his heart to Christ. This is like a 30 -minute video. It's pretty interesting. Praise God. And he now goes around and testifies to big audiences about, and big audiences who are

59:30

Hindus, about why he came to know Jesus. He sure, wasn't Ravi Zacharias high in the caste system?

59:37

I don't know. I don't know. I always thought he, maybe he was converted at a very young age,

59:44

I don't know. But this video here is, so the big question is how can we reach someone who's ingrained in these systems?

59:58

And, well, I hope I have the right video up. I think I, yeah, this is the short one.

01:00:08

So I'm gonna start at like one minute. So this is a Ray Comfort, Living Waters video.

01:00:16

Comics like this, now the question, can you give me a tip on how to evangelize specifically to Hindus and Sikhs?

01:00:24

Well, we went to Europe and preached in 13 countries in 13 days to let people know that this principle of using the

01:00:32

Lord and the knowledge of sin, addressing the conscience, works on any nationality, whether Hindus or Sikhs, every single person.

01:00:40

One, they have the work of the Lord written on the heart, the conscience bears witness, so you entamplate the conscience. And two, they have a

01:00:47

God -given will to live, no matter what nation. Everybody, there's a human being, wants to live forever, they all fear death.

01:00:53

So when you say to someone, do you think there's an afterlife? You're tapping into that will to live and their fear of death, which is the same thing.

01:01:01

So when you meet a Hindu, just say, hey, give me your thoughts on the afterlife. And when they share their thoughts on the hopelessness, the spiral of reincarnation, which is just hopeless and depressing, and then ask them if they think they're a good person, and almost certainly they will, and then take them through the commandments as you would anyone else.

01:01:19

And then trust God, as you share the gospel, that it will be the power of God's salvation, because God is faithful not to watch over us forever.

01:01:27

I hope that helps. So that wasn't a long video, but it makes it easy for us, in some sense, to then to witness to anyone, because he's right.

01:01:45

The law of God is written on every human heart. It's just that they try to suppress it, and they try to push it down.

01:01:51

But if you talk about not stealing, not committing sexual sin, not having lust in your heart, not committing murder, not lying, those things are trigger points, because everyone knows that they haven't measured up to those things.

01:02:12

And it gives you a foothold, and it gives you the opportunity then to share that there's a way out.

01:02:20

There's a person, there's a man, who gave his life for the sins you've committed.

01:02:27

And I'm not very good at this. I watch these Ray Comfort videos. I listen to guys like him, and guys like him back there who are out there kind of honing their craft, and they're a great encouragement to us.

01:02:40

But that's the point of doing all this, with each other and for each other, that we'll have the good news to share with those who are in these systems.

01:02:49

And the fact that we know a little bit more, maybe, about these systems, I think is gonna help us just care for the people we see more and more and more.

01:03:00

So I hope that was an encouragement to kind of go through it. Buddhism is gonna be very similar next week, but it will be a little bit different.

01:03:07

So some of the terms might be useful as Richie, just go to Richie if you need to know a term.

01:03:15

Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Eightfold Path. Now notice we did not mention

01:03:20

Nirvana. So a lot of people think Hinduism is Nirvana. It's not, it's Buddhism. So kind of getting some of these things straight is good.

01:03:29

I think one thing is important for us to realize, Hinduism, they have these laws and everything they can't live up to.

01:03:41

We can't live up to the law either. And yet we have an answer because we depend on Christ who suffered so that we can have eternal life.

01:03:56

How many times can we say amazing grace, right? In our lives, it doesn't get old. And I was telling somebody.

01:04:06

It's not a human effort. Yeah, it's not a human effort. But when we first came to Cornerstone, Jeff was preaching in Acts.

01:04:13

And he, I didn't remember where he was, but he said, I am not going to apologize about preaching grace.

01:04:21

I'm gonna preach grace today. And I'm gonna continue to preach grace because grace is what

01:04:28

God has given us. And we don't deserve it. And I was like,

01:04:33

I'm so alone here. Because I was like, yeah, there is holiness, there is sanctification.

01:04:43

And we all need to work towards being more like Jesus in cooperation with the spirit because obviously that's his work as well.

01:04:57

But just to realize the grace that's been given to us is just such a beautiful thing. And it gives us a humble heart, obviously, to reach out to those who don't know him.

01:05:06

Any other thoughts on tonight? We didn't earn it. We don't deserve it. Good summary.

01:05:14

Very good summary. Any other thoughts? Or would somebody like to close in prayer? Thank you.

01:05:26

Well, God, I thank you for this day. I thank you for all these brothers who've come out to learn about other religions,

01:05:34

God, and how distinct and unique Christianity is from all of them, how it provides proof of the

01:05:46

God -man Jesus who actually lived. It provides us with confidence and the ability to know that it is reasonable to believe what we believe.

01:05:58

But also, Lord, it shows how we're incurably sinful and can only be saved through the grace, the free gift of grace that was given to us,

01:06:10

Lord. I just, I thank you so much for this preparation. I thank you for this time and these brothers who've come out to learn,

01:06:20

Lord. And I just pray that you would bless us this week, bless our travel home, God, and just bring us back together again to learn more about you and your word.