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One is not here intending to give a detailed account of what one has described as Eastern Religions, that is, the religions of India, China and other nations East of Palestine. The teachings and practices of these religions can be found elsewhere. The intention is rather to comment on these religions to show what they stand for. |
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What Satan does is to either add to or take from the truth. In Genesis 3 we find that Satan used the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to lead man into sin; saying something which was true but additional to what God had said, but also denying something that God had said. He said that Adam and Eve would be as gods (Genesis 3:5), which was true (Genesis 3:22), but denied that they would die, which they did (Genesis 5:5). |
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What this would teach us is that what we find in these Eastern religions is not unmixed error. The elements of truth we find in them are often what leads men to follow them, with the result that they swallow the error with the truth like a child taking a pill (in this case poison) with a sweet. |
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Hinduism |
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This religion is said to be the world’s third largest religion and was estimated to have 800 million adherents in 1997. It is perhaps the oldest of the major religions and is considered to go back to 1,500 BC. It is sometimes thought of as more a culture than a creed. It is more a matter of what people do than think. It has no founder, prophets, set creed, nor ecclesiastical or institutional structure. However it has religious literature (the Vedas) and a caste system and various rites. It is a religion of many gods which makes it an idolatrous religion. The chief gods are a triad: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Paul speaks of the gods of the nations as demons (1 Corinthians 10:20). See also Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:34-39. The flood is thought to have occurred between two and three thousand BC, so that it appears that man soon after that fell into idolatry as we learn in Romans 1:21 et seq. Abraham’s progenitors had fallen into idolatry (Joshua 24:2) and it was this kind of thing that Abraham was called out of (Genesis 12:1). Hindu so-called holy men |