The One True God?

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
If there is one true God, why has he revealed himself in different ways? Why are there so many paths explaining this one true God?
Especially as the way it relates to where we are born or geographic location. Different cultures have different paths to God.
I'm trying to figure out why the one true God would do this.
He even gave different names for himself to the various tribes and villages with each having different laws and requirements to worship him.
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
To start with, how many people believe there is only one true God?
How many believe this one true God is the same God the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Protestants, Catholics, Native American Religions, Methodists, and Pentecostals worship but God has revealed himself differently to each group?
 

ambush80

Senior Member
If there is one true God, why has he revealed himself in different ways? Why are there so many paths explaining this one true God?
Especially as the way it relates to where we are born or geographic location. Different cultures have different paths to God.
I'm trying to figure out why the one true God would do this.
He even gave different names for himself to the various tribes and villages with each having different laws and requirements to worship him.

Keep on asking those questions my good man.
 

gordon 2

Senior Member
If there is one true God, why has he revealed himself in different ways? Why are there so many paths explaining this one true God?
Especially as the way it relates to where we are born or geographic location. Different cultures have different paths to God.
I'm trying to figure out why the one true God would do this.
He even gave different names for himself to the various tribes and villages with each having different laws and requirements to worship him.


Well... my wife reveals herself to me differently than to her friends. She really likes them. No just kidding about the wife.


I suspect that God isn't friends the same way with everybody and He takes into factoring differences in time and people are fickle to various degrees. But I'm only guessing. If God appeared to you today as a catholic priest, would you give him the time of day? Maybe? I don't know. If God appeared to me as a millionaire, would I give him the time of day? Maybe. If God appeared to me as Jesus... ah?
 
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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Or if God appeared to me as a Hare Krishna at the O'hare. Perhaps as a poor tramp on the street. Maybe as a female lesbian priest!
I think you are on to something.
 

gordon 2

Senior Member
:D
Or if God appeared to me as a Hare Krishna at the O'hare. Perhaps as a poor tramp on the street. Maybe as a female lesbian priest!
I think you are on to something.

:D I have to laugh.

I think Paul has the best answers to your questions here. There are others in current social science for example with claims that God, gods and religions is instinctive or part of our cognitive process which seeks to organize things and find order. But Paul simply says man is spiritual.


I personally think that the absolutes in our lives such as justice, freedom and love is God talk to all the peoples of the world, because all the peoples of the world suffer for not having these and it is part of their inner talk. So if a Hindi has a religious, spiritual social or cultural narrative with more than one god, I'm not certain that as it is with me he or she in reality knows only one "God" with all the so called gods revealing mine. Same thing with the budda, where some unnamed consciousness is God but not named and their " kindness" is as a part of our understanding of love in the spiritual sense.

I must think of the Good Samaritan who was a religious nobody compared to others who knew the "true God" of Abraham, yet is an example set before us of what is good in Mark.
 
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gordon 2

Senior Member
Good in my quest for "Light."
Not for my righteousness. Lack of atoned by Jesus.

That's why I like Jesus so much.
Did Jesus die for the Hindu?

What is "light" by any other name? A life force? Jesus? The outlook of some outcome of some scientific enquiry? A slogan to flatter the mind? A meditation, a mind absorbed in a poem?


 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Light is the truth which is Jesus or comes through Jesus from his Father. Jesus is the way.
In what way is Jesus the way? Must the Hindu believe Jesus died for his sins?
Why would the One True God make this requirement of a Hindu who has never heard about Jesus?

Maybe this is what the Freemasons have been teaching for years. To believe in this "Great Architect" which is the Creator or One True God.
He has just revealed himself differently to the tribes and nations of the world..
 
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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
We, as Christians believe and according to our Bible, that God can manifest himself in different forms to include a bush and a human.

Can this one true God reveal himself as Mother Nature to the Wiccan or Native American? Perhaps as the Sun to the Pagan?

Do ya'll see the One True God revealing himself in nature when you go hunting & fishing?
Do Hindus go hunting & fishing? They might be missing this great reveal.
Burning bush = campfire?
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
If it is up to the One True God to reveal himself to the Totally Depraved, what is our mission? No one can come to Jesus in Heaven unless it has been granted him from the One True God. Can God grant Jesus an African tribesman? One who has been revealed by God to be granted?

Is there a difference from a totally depraved American who has heard the Word than from a totally depraved African tribesman that has never heard of the Word?

Isn't one worse than the other in terms of God's judgement?
 
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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
I was thinking of all of Gods little children being saved because of their ignorance. Children must reach a certain age before being held accountable.
If this logic applies to all of God's creation, then will their ignorance grant them salvation?

2 Peter 2:21
It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.

Do they know of God by his revealing and yet aren't as ignorant as I think they might be?
 

TTom

Senior Member
I have no specific text to back this up, no specific earthly teacher, I have only the meditation I have done, and the things revealed to me during prayer and worship.

God (with thousands of names) entrusted a part of the truth to the various religions of the world. Unfortunately most religions believe they got the whole truth. Our charge is to overcome the hubris and piece together the various pieces into a whole again.
 

Day trip

Senior Member
If there is one true God,

why has he revealed himself in different ways? Why are there so many paths explaining this one true God?


Especially as the way it relates to where we are born or geographic location. Different cultures have different paths to God.
I'm trying to figure out why the one true God would do this.
He even gave different names for himself to the various tribes and villages with each having different laws and requirements to worship him.

Do you doubt that their is one true God? There is God, not one of many, not even one true God, there is God.
He is evident in every single aspect of his creation. He is the constant, the variation is our perception of him.
Their is one truth. Different cultures use their own experiences and knowledge to try to explain their own understanding of him. THEY name him. THEY interprete their understanding into the laws and requirements.
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Do you doubt that their is one true God? There is God, not one of many, not even one true God, there is God.
He is evident in every single aspect of his creation. He is the constant, the variation is our perception of him.
Their is one truth. Different cultures use their own experiences and knowledge to try to explain their own understanding of him. THEY name him. THEY interprete their understanding into the laws and requirements.

I'm not doubting that there is only one God and his son Jesus Christ.
There is a great mystery between Christ and his Church that hasn't happened yet. It could speak of a great unity as two becoming one is used as a comparison.
There is a lot of mystery in the relation of natural things and spiritual things.
Maybe we will all be as one.
 

Harbuck

Senior Member
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Light is the truth which is Jesus or comes through Jesus from his Father. Jesus is the way.
In what way is Jesus the way? Must the Hindu believe Jesus died for his sins?
Why would the One True God make this requirement of a Hindu who has never heard about Jesus?

Maybe this is what the Freemasons have been teaching for years. To believe in this "Great Architect" which is the Creator or One True God.
He has just revealed himself differently to the tribes and nations of the world.
.

This way of thinking is dangerous. ^^^^^^^^^^^

John 14:6 (KJV)
6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

John 3:5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
 
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Harbuck

Senior Member
God refered to the followers of these other beliefs as heathens

Jer. 10:2
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

Joel 3:12 (kjv)
Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

So your saying that heaven will be full of what God referd to as heathens?

If so how did they get there if the only way to the father is through Jesus? and what about being born of the water and the spirit?
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Jer. 10:2
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

Joel 3:12 (kjv)
Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.

So your saying that heaven will be full of what God referd to as heathens?

If so how did they get there if the only way to the father is through Jesus? and what about being born of the water and the spirit?

Those verses are about other nations. Nations that worship idols, charms, and the supernatural.

Don't learn the practices of the nations

Do not learn the way of the Gentiles

Do not start following pagan religious practices

I'm following you as Jesus being the only way. What does it mean that Jesus is the only way? I've always thought that it is true Jesus died for everyone but that "everyone" had to know that Jesus died for them. Everyone must "believe" that Jesus died for them.
My question is; How does the one individual tribesman know that Jesus died for him unless it is revealed to him somehow?
What if we don't reach him before he dies? Can God reveal Jesus and grant salvation at his will? Why would God who can give salvation to whom he wants, let this individual die without ever knowing about his son, Jesus?
Does God reveal Jesus to others Himself? After all Jesus did die on the cross. The sacrifice has been accomplished.
If people here in the US are totally depraved and can't come to Jesus without being called, how does God expect the Hindu to be called?
Many people believe that God has revealed himself to the whole world through nature etc. This is why the whole world has morals and knows right from wrong. They have been enlightened. Then again what does this speak of depravity?
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Will the one true God give everyone in the whole wide world a shot at salvation before they die? To include individuals that died before us? To include the Hindu that is blinded by his indoctrination and geography?
Speaking of indoctrination, will it keep Christians from gaining salvation? To include the Trinitarians vs the Oneness believers?
Everyone in the whole world has been blinded to the "Light" to some extent. This is due to some or total depravity. Our eyes must be opened by God. Does God elect the Hindu?
I'm asking if God opens the eyes of the Hindu? The Mormon? The Methodist? The Oneness Pentecostal? The Elected Primitive Baptist?
The Freewill Baptist?
 
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