Ep. 294 - Understanding Hinduism

Get on your knees . Somebody once said right , you want knowledge , go to school . You want wisdom , get on your knees . Somebody once said so . You get on your knees , you open up God's word and you ask God to enlighten , to speak . We go through his word , but is his word going through us ? We need to pause and have that Selah moment so that we will not .

We cannot be the same . We cannot go back to Egypt , to the way things used to be in the yesteryear and today is a new day . We are found meditating day and night , day night , day night , until it becomes muscle memory , regurgitating scripture . You know it's been said and , ray , you've said it once before as well .

Right , if you want to recognize a counterfeit , well , then you just need to know what the true bill looks like . Well , the same is true here . You may not know a lot about Hinduism . You don't need to necessarily know a lot about Hinduism when you know the real thing .

So you can counter it with scripture , which is living and powerful , sharper than any two-edged sword .

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son . Although I grew up in a Christian home , I never truly understood or believed that there was a God until recently , constantly digging for proof . About two years ago , I began my journey as a new Christian after I came across Ray's YouTube clips .

However , it wasn't until my sister encouraged me to listen to your family program that my faith truly began to blossom . She knew that humor is a great way to capture my attention and my son's too , so we started tuning in during our long daily school commute . Easy , your Impression of an Arab is our favorite . We can't stop replaying it along with Alan .

Basically , we don't know what we're doing , and God touches people . So thank you so much for that and God bless you . And a shout out to Naomi Nubia and her husband , who just gave Mark cards for us all .

The only thing I should have taught on was the evils of having three services , because that's what he has you ever get to the third service and you're wondering did I share this yet ? And you're like 30 seconds in .

You wrote the four Gospels , yeah .

And so we started it and we took some of our top videos and dubbed them into Hindi , which means it's not just subtitles , but it's actually voices . In Hindi , you have a character , it's like voice acting in a sense . Ray did his own .

You know , hinduism has kind of come a little more to the front burner in more recent days because of a popular figure in the political world here in the US , vivek Ramaswamy , a very well-spoken and articulate , young , dynamic politician .

He was running for president , and so it kind of brought it more into the forefront of , hey , what is this Hinduism thing about ? But it has been around , obviously , for a very long time . One of the interesting things about Vivek Ramaswamy is one of the pillars in his platform was that we need to get back to God .

Pillars in his platform was that , you know , we need to get back to god , and I always found it interesting because he would . He would position in such a way where , where you , you people would think , oh , he must be a christian . As if , though , he's talking about the same god .

But hinduism doesn't just have a different god , it has so is he hindu different gods . Yeah , is that what I said ?

Hinduism . I thought it was how to handle criticism , so I think I prepared for a different .

So Hinduism , let's kind of start off first on its scriptures and its's it's uh religious writings . Of course you have the vidas , you have the what are called the uh upanishads , through the uh uh agamas and the puranas . Those are kind of like their . Their main uh sacred piranhas are really efficient .

But you know , the thing about Hinduism is it's so open that it's kind of like this fluid system where anything can be incorporated . Oh , that's good and that's good , and we'll take this and we'll take that , and there's so much associated with it and related to it . Ray , have you witnessed too many Hindus in your time ?

They went over to India , spent some time there until their guru that they so respected started chasing the girls that were chasing the Beatles and it fell to pieces . They got disillusioned , except for George Harrison . But they put out a lot of songs , especially what was called the White Album , which was huge , and they were all about Hinduism , reincarnation .

So those who are listening today might say what do I need to know about Hinduism ? Well , you need to know a lot , because so many of today's people believe in reincarnation , which finds its roots in Hinduism , that as you come back again and again and again , it's a downward , hopeless spiral .

There's nothing hopeful about it and we need to know how to address it . And the way to address it is very simple . Firstly , you can get into an argument about , if you want , with people about reincarnation , but just ask them who's in charge of giving out the bodies , and they haven't got a clue . What were they in the last life ? They haven't got a clue .

What are they going to come back in the next life ? Well , they usually say a lion or something like that , not a cockroach . But Hinduism makes no rhyme . There's no rhyme , no reason . There are only two things in life that are sure death and judgment . It's appointed a man once to die . We've got an appointment to keep .

You can get out of a dentist appointment , but you'll never get out of the appointment with death . It's appointed a man once to die and after this , the judgment . So that's what's going to happen when people die . You're not going to come back as a lion or a turkey or a frog or a butterfly . You're going to stand before God in judgment .

And that's what you have to say to people who believe in reincarnation .

We'll talk about that a little more in a bit but that you know , people are unwilling to believe in certain doctrines within Christianity for different reasons , but yet they'll adopt something they have absolutely zero like observance of and even , yeah , the whole system of it . How does this work ? How about you Mark ? Many encounters with Hindus ?

Right Scripture is true . Jesus is the way , the truth and the life . Nobody comes to the Father except through him . So I can see how it's very offensive . But no , I have not come across a lot of Hindus . In the same way I have not come across a lot of Muslims here in Southern California .

Now that tide , I would imagine , is going to begin to change , as Muslims are semi-taken over the world , if you will .

Really , and I honestly , when I shared it , I completely forgot that we were even going to be talking about or not yesterday , sunday , my flight home Sunday , I completely forgot that we were going to be talking about Hinduism on the podcast this week .

But yeah , she sat right next to me , middle aisle , and I got to share the gospel with her Something that's interesting about sharing the gospel with Hindus I've also . The last time I shared the gospel with a Hindu person was a neighbor about five doors down from us .

But something that's interesting about sharing the gospel with Hindu people is that there's a lot of agreeability . So , you know , the Hindu people tend to understand some sort of need for salvation . They're open to accepting the teachings of Jesus , because most Hindus revere Jesus , but they revere him as one of many gods . And that's where the challenge is .

Is that when you'll talk about needing salvation , yeah , I'm in . When you talk about sin , yeah , I understand , I need grace . Jesus is Lord . Great Jesus died for your sins . Wonderful , like that's all easy for them to understand , to get to comprehend . But that just adds Jesus in their mind to a list of other gods that they revere .

Because , to a Hindu person , if you're looking to grow your business , you worship and pray to the God of wealth . If you're worried about your children's health , you worship and you pray to the God of health . If you , et cetera , et cetera , on and on .

It goes , and so Jesus just fits into a slot of other gods , and I think , in order to push past that in a meaningful way , I think that we need to focus on three things in a conversation when it comes to Hindu people , I think .

One , the doctrine of creation , to emphasize the reality that we worship that there's a creator-creature distinction , because in their worldview , gods are created .

There's no creator-creature distinction where , in the Christian scriptures , according to God , he is the creator of all things , he is the alpha and omega , and so we don't worship something that has been created , we worship the creator .

The second thing you need to focus on is not just that Jesus saves , but the Lordship of Christ , that Jesus is not just your savior , but he is the Lord of Lords , the King of King and the capital G God of lowercase g gods . And then , finally , I think , to focus on repentance and to focus it on like listen , to be part of this saving work of Christ .

He calls you to repent from worshiping false gods . That's what you were talking about , mark . That's a demand of Christ , the one true God , that you put away the worship of other gods . And I , for this woman that I talked to you on the flight , I use the story of Hosea and Gomer because I think it's a great example of of helping people understand why .

Why do I have to worship one true God ? And I know I'm kind of going along here , but let me just hit it real quickly . In that story of Hosea and Gomer , it's , it's , it's God going to Hosea , his prophet , and he tells him I want you to go into the land and marry this prostitute , gomer . And so he does .

You have to imagine what it was like for a prophet , someone who is probably pursuing purity with his whole life . You imagine like the homeschool kid that never kissed , that never dated , and then Jesus goes to him , is like , hey , marry a prostitute ? Like that's intimidating . You know what I mean .

But the prophet obeys , he trusts the Lord , he marries the prostitute . They have three children together , and then she leaves him to go back into prostitution . Imagine the devastation , right ? He's a single father now and God goes to Hosea and he says I want you to go back into the city . I want you to find her , gomer . And he does .

And he finds her and he says I want you to buy her back . And what the story says is that he buys her back for pennies on the dollar , which is the scripture's way of telling us that no one else saw value and worth in this woman anymore , because she was sold back into prostitution .

And he brings her home , he cleans her up , he sings this beautiful song to her , saying that you are going to be mine . And then God goes to him and he says Hosea , this is what it's like when my people worship other gods . They are my bride who turn from me , but I am not done with them .

They are my bride who turn from me , but I am not done with them . I am going to go buy them back , but not for pennies on the dollar , but with my life .

And of course he's referring to or he's it's a typology towards Christ , and so I think when we share the gospel with a Hindu person , that story really has the potential for helping them understand why Christ isn't just Savior but Lord of Lords and King of Kings .

Did you know she was a Hindu ? I mean from the beginning did you have the idea ? You did All right . So how did you broach the ?

Oh , what do you think about Jesus ? I asked for her opinion because everybody loves to share their opinion . So , rather than starting with let me tell you about Jesus , I basically said you tell me about Jesus . And that was the starting point of the conversation .

that govern it . It's really like a compilation of a bunch of different , diverse beliefs . There's no single founder of Hinduism . It's kind of a compilation , sort of a hodgepodge , of a bunch of different views that came from the East , really a fusion of different philosophies and traditions and things like that .

But they and of course we talked about their scriptures they have what's called kind of a henotheistic approach to worshiping God , and that's that they worship what they would say is a single God , that's Brahman , but they recognize that there's other gods , so this is like the main God .

There's other gods , and they recognize that there's other gods , so this is like the main god . There's other gods and they can take on different forms and manifestations , but they're all manifestations of Brahman's universal spirit .

So within that , and when you get into all these kind of borrowing type of approach to different beliefs , you get this sort of relativistic perspective on truth . Truth is relative and there's no such thing as absolute truth . But , Mark , that would be a contradiction to their own faith .

I mean , there are Hindus we know about in India that are persecuting Christians . There was a campaign I heard about not long ago . That was it was come back home where they were telling Hindus that had converted to other religions to come back home . That wouldn't exist if they truly believe that truth is is relative and there's no absolute truth .

In the Vedas it says that truth is mysterious , it's hard to find it's elusive . And because of that , you cannot look down on somebody else . What their truth is . Now , when you begin to have a Christian worldview with a Christian foundation , they will snub their nose at you when it gets down to it . Why ?

Because we innately know that there is a truth , that eternity is written inside of our hearts . It is highly demonic , it is very spiritual and the enemy will rear his ugly head in any way imaginable when Christians begin to speak up .

Right , so , yeah , there is a source of truth and they can't claim that there is truth and they come up against those who do say there is an absolute truth .

But , ray , one of the problems in that , I think , by way of perception , is people think well , if it's old , it must be new .

But , ray , this goes back to Babel , it goes back to Nimrod , it goes back to pagan religions that sprouted after the fall of man . So Satan's old and these theories that he gave people don't make them true , as we're talking about it .

They go about to establish their own righteousness , being ignorant of the righteousness which is of God . And all religion seems to trace itself back to man's quest for immortality , his fear of death . And that's what I like to address so often . And I had a delightful experience yesterday at a local college .

I can tell if a witnessing session is going to go or not . Go by the answer to this question that I ask people . It happened yesterday . I said to this guy what happens when people die , and he says I become worm food . I thought , okay , that's normal for a guy like this to say something like . That's the way they handle it .

And then I said are you scared of dying ? And he burst into tears Whoa , Absolutely . Broke down and said I'm so sorry , I'm sorry , I'm terrified of dying . And to me it was delightful in the sense that when a guy says no , when you're dead , you're dead . I think I've got a proud guy here right in front of me . This isn't going to go well .

He's not going to acknowledge his sins , he won't understand the cross because of that , but I'm going to do it anyway , because I've been told to preach the gospel to every creature . So this guy spent , I think , over 20 minutes with him and it was exhausting witnessing because he was caught up in a demonic realm .

There was such an intense battle going on , but it really epitomized the fact that God's written eternity on the hearts of every human being and Hindus , buddhists , muslims hearts of every human being , and hindus , buddhists , muslims , all of them are crying out because their fear of death .

Yeah , um , I've just finished a a very interesting video on richard dawkins , who's about to die . He's 84 or something like that , and he's talking about his own death and he's going to have one more tour of the us .

It's his swan song , which is what it's what you do before a final curtain , and I had him talking to Dennett , daniel Dennett , a very respected atheist who had just recovered from a serious illness , and he was talking about God , much to the horror of Dawkins .

Until that time , you're like a man at night going to jump out of a plane without a parachute and it's breathtakingly horrific and that's what should cause us to send missionaries to India and I think all you guys should go . We've done that right . Yeah , we did that .

It was so neat to get back to the US , but , yeah , my heart breaks for every person that's blinded by demonic religions such as Hinduism and Islam and all the isms .

Then you have what Romans talks about , and that's the worship of the creature rather than the creator , who is blessed forever , amen . I mean , I've talked before about how there's this one temple dedicated to rats , and people are sitting there , rats are crawling all over them and they're feeding the rats before they eat . Monkeys are like big time .

They're a big time problem in India . They're derelicts . They steal from people , they break into homes and cars . Can you eat rat meat into homes and cars , can you ?

but yeah . And then you see the cows right . They'll say we don't worship the cows , but we honor and revere them . But boy do they ever in practice right ? I mean , there's people starving and cows are walking around and , mark , that's kind of how things devolve you move away from worshiping the true creator and you end up worshiping the creation .

So , you know , if we have an absent , abusive father , we tend to think of God maybe not as abusive , but absent , distant , ready to be angry with us . If we come from a former religion , you know I've talked to converted Muslims who often think of God as also distant , and so we were talking about sort of . She came to me and was like man .

When you said that , I realized that I often think about God still from this Hindu perspective , which is that he's not available , not involved , aloof , too busy for me , rather than the beauty of what the gospel tells us , which is that he is a heavenly father who knows every hair on our head , that is sovereignly involved in every aspect of our lives , that

through the cross he means to have a relationship with us , that this is relational love that God is offering and participating in with his children , and that to her in that moment was just like this aha moment .

And so not only are we offering the gospel to our Hindu friends , I think we're also helping them understand the magnificent glory of God and the way in which he has loved us . To the person who's hesitant to talk to their Hindu neighbor , what better news , what better thing to talk about than to invite them into knowing God ?

You want wisdom , get on your knees . Somebody once said so you get on your knees , you open up God's word and you ask God to enlighten , to speak . We go through his word , but is his word going through us ? We need to pause and have that Selah moment so that we will not . We cannot be the same .

We cannot go back to Egypt , to the way things used to be in the yesteryear and today is a new day . We are found meditating day and night , day night , day night , until it becomes muscle memory , regurgitating scripture .

You know it's been said and , ray , you've said it once before as well if you want to recognize a counterfeit , well then you just need to know what the true bill looks like . Well , the same is true here . You may not know a lot about Hinduism . You don't need to necessarily know a lot about Hinduism when you know the real thing .

So you can counter it with scripture , which is living and powerful , sharper than any two-edged sword , it doesn't return void and it accomplishes what God wants it to accomplish .

I am the way , the truth and the life you know . And then you know all that we've been given in the foundation of our faith .

So which disciple was doing shorthand and taking down every single word ? Because there's over 400 words in that one prayer ? Wow , and we've got every single word . He said because the Holy Spirit gave it to him . Amen , that's good .

You have idolatry proper . And my question to you is because here's what I've always thought and we've said that we look in the Old Testament , children of Israel worshiping idols again like how stupid . It's a piece of wood , it's a piece of metal , it's gold , silver , whatever , but don't you think that there ?

is a real power behind these deities , because they're demonic because there's demonic uh , you know what are you smiling at ? Can I answer yes , oh boy , yep , yep , that's true , it's demonic . Thank you all . Right , moving right along , um , so the final thing here is dealing with the caste system within Hinduism .

That a lot of people don't really think about and that's because , you know , back in like 1950 , they sort of outlawed the caste system in India , but that is huge .

And , like you said , Ray , and we have to highlight this to make sure people understand it the ultimate goal of salvation within Hinduism is to exit that process of rebirth to where you become one Very Gnostic yeah , you become one with Brahman or whatever . But so that's where the casteism comes in .

If you're born into a certain family and you can only really have this sort of career because your family is cursed because of the karma or whatever , and then if you're born into a richer family , that means that you did well . So you have basically four different ones .

You've got the priestly and the educated class , Then you have the protectors or like the sort of you know more skilled workers . Then you've got those that are just doing the menial jobs and you've got merchants and they go down .

Then you have the Dalits , who are like outside of the caste system , that are , like they're called , the untouchables , and the stories I've heard of that .

And when this lady looked at the picture she just said because that was the cast , this time Rachel was mingling with the unclean . I couldn't believe the way , her reaction . But it's so against God's law which says love your neighbor as yourself .

And in Hinduism if you get run over by a truck , they'll leave you there because you deserved it , and you just keep getting run over by the truck .

I mean the equality that's found because of- .

And , whether I love to tell people , whether you realize it or not , if you advocate , if you're not a believer , you're not a Christian , but you advocate for equality and justice , you are advocating from a Christian perspective and because what I'm referring to , what you're talking about , is being image bearers of God , the reality that every single one of us are

created in God's image and therefore , because of that , we are due dignity and respect . Outside of that worldview of image bearers , you don't have equality . Outside of that you've got you know . You can look at atheism or you can look at evolution , which is survival of the fittest right .

Like , if you look at evolution , you would say , well , the strong will survive and the weak will fail . Or one of the things I like to say if you went to Socrates , who died 500 years before Jesus , and you said to Socrates , hey , everybody is created equally , socrates would be like , no , they're not . Men are bigger than women .

The strong are stronger than the weak . The rich are richer than the poor . The powerful are more powerful than the less powerful . There's clearly no in his mind . There's clearly no way that we are all created equally , and Socrates , in that moment , basically represents the rest of the world or the worldviews that are available to us .

It's not until Jesus comes on the scene , elevates women , demands respect for children and tells us the scriptures tell us that every single one of us are created equal . What makes you worth dignity and respect , it's not how smart you are , it's not how rich you are , it's not what you believe in , it's not how you vote , it's not the sex you are .

What makes you worthy of dignity and respect is the fact that you bear the image of God . And when you respect somebody in the caste system , when I respect my neighbor , when you respect somebody in the caste system , when I respect my neighbor , ultimately what I'm doing is honoring the image , qualities that they maintain of my Lord and Savior , amen .

It's not like in some societies you'll see things progressively change , but it was like no , no , because this is the truth . Let me highlight the truth and let me highlight it as the one who made you .

And when you have been delivered from the bondage not just of sin but also of lies and deception , and you see it , it's like the scales have fallen from your eyes and you're like whoa , everything changes . And so praise God for the truth that we're in . Friends , we hope you've been encouraged today .

Find a Hindu and share the gospel with them , because they too can be set free . All right , friends , don't forget the Bible's four gospels how to find everlasting life , reaching yeah , doing all that stuff and Living Waters .