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Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

The Major Message of Scripture

As Father in Heaven, as we consider the major message of the Bible, we ask that your angels would come near.

I'm going to have James post these notes so you can get these notes as well afterwards.

But if you do take notes, it does help you remember.

There are 12 major organized religions in the world.

Turn to the person next to you and name a couple religions.

I wanna hear the mixed multitude speaking.

What would the Near Eastern religions be?

Far Eastern religion, Confucianism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism, and then the non-organized religions.

Here they are organized for us to look at.

As a matter of fact, there's not too many of those.

In fact, they're very, very small amount compared to the major religions.

And that map that I showed you, you could actually put your cursor there and it would tell you the percentage of religion in each country.

Now what are the beliefs of the various religions about salvation?

The doctrine of salvation is not just Christian.

Lots of religions believe you can be saved by following their religion.

So, Astrianism from Iran, there's still a small group of these folks left.

The individual struggles against evil and wins.

So you struggle against evil through your own power and you win.

Judaism, from Israel, if you belong to the nation and are faithful you have salvation.

Christianity, salvation is a gift from God in the here and the hereafter.

Islam, Mecca, continual practice of the 5 pillars of Islam.

You really never know for sure because someone else is making that decision so you don't know or you never know for sure if you kill someone for the faith.

And Hinduism, elimination of evil until you're a pure and you merge through reincarnation cycles with the Brahman.

So you actually come to a higher and higher caste.

The highest form before you get to Brahman is a cow, which is why you do not kill or eat cows.

And there's also restaurants like Happy Cow.

Holy Cow, Happy Cow, all I can say is, wow.

So then Sikhism as well, is same as Hinduism, but it's repeating God's name as a mantra and loving mankind it's basically Hinduism without the caste system.

So it's Hinduism without the caste system.

Social conformity and harmony will lead to a heaven on earth.

This is why science never already developed in these countries because it was all groupthink and harmony and so they never really would disagree with each other.

So science did not originate or propagate in India or China, only in places that would say we're not going to create a new god in our pantheism to answer the question.

We're actually going to look at the evidence.

Japan, the Emperor is God, and people are children of the gods or the emperor and the ancestor worship.

This is why when Hirohito, you know, surrendered during World War II, that was a big deal Because God, God beat.

And this is 1 of the reasons people are not interested so much in the weak gods that were weak back then.

All Desire is the root of pain and suffering.

So if you get rid of desire, no pain, no suffering.

So meditation, you kind of disconnect, you empty your mind of all desire and everything else.

Western meditation is focusing on filling the mind with something that thereby empties the mind from other things.

So Eastern meditation is emptying the mind until you reach the state of nirvana.

So Taoism is a way of thinking about life, it's a philosophy that balances the forces of the yin and yang.

And if the yin and the yang is balanced, then you are saved.

And then of course, the non-organized religions, paganism, man manipulates the spirits with various incantations and rituals, voodoo, witchcraft, all these things would happen in paganism, the druids and whatnot, many different neo-pagan religions cropping up.

It's not a majority in any country, but it's gaining ground in the United Kingdom again, and in Ireland, and in Scotland, and across Europe, and even in Hawaii, people are saying, let's go back to our roots that, they don't go back far enough, but they go back to these roots.

So paganism, and the way to be saved is through incantations, manipulations, curses, and don't think this is not real.

I mean, right here on this campus, we've had quite a number of people this last year that we've had special prayers of deliverance to get out of these very real spiritual struggles.

Mankind in atheism is the highest form of life.

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The Major Message of Scripture

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