As
a woman from India was quoted reporting on the event in a PBS show, “There's
loud chanting and people are singing and getting very excited about the
midnight hour, and we're getting ready to welcome Krishna. As the midnight hour
approaches, we dim the lights. The priest comes out and actually brings a live
baby in a cradle, carrying him on his head, depicting how it truly happened
with Lord Krishna.”
*****
Every
pagan religion holds up the idol of prayer and it often involves rituals with
chanting.
When it comes to the Buddhists, Jordan explains, “They have the prayer wheel
you spin and it’s sort
of like the TV game show where you spin the thing and where it stops you get
the money. It’s just
that. Their god, by his divine reaching down, stops the wheel right where it
stops. That’s the
heathen praying.”
*****
When I lived in New York City, I once talked to a bright,
good-looking woman inside the Times Square Starbucks (51st and
Broadway) who swore to me that she was saved the moment God gave her the
special gift of speaking in tongues.
When I explained to her that the Apostle Paul makes clear in the
Bible that only men were ever empowered to speak in tongues, and that there
always had to be an interpreter present for it to be authentic, she backed off,
saying for her it was “prayer
language” and
something that “came out
of the anguish of my heart,” given
to her by God for only Him to interpret.
I immediately thought, “Well, if God knows every thought a person has, as the Bible tell
us, why would He need to listen to some unintelligible gibberish, created by Himself and caused to be suddenly blurted
out from her, so that He could know the ‘anguish of her heart’?”
When I told this 40-something woman she was engaging in mysticism
and that Satan had her duped by getting her to focus on sensory delight and
supposed supernatural experience as a “sign from God,” she
practically bolted for the door. She was so angry with me the people at
surrounding tables stared to see what was going on!
*****
Jordan, who says he’s read the Koran cover-to-cover four times, once had an encounter with a neighbor who is Muslim.
When Jordan said he had some questions he wanted to ask about
specific verses in the Koran, the neighbor simply responded, “You're not supposed
to read that. You're an unbeliever. You got no right to read the Koran! It's
the Holy Koran. Unbelievers are not supposed to read the Holy Koran!”
Jordan
explains, “He and his family don't read it either
but they hold it up.”
In
the Sikh religion, their holy book is called the Adi Granth (comprised of 6,000
hymns written by six gurus) and it is actually physically worshipped!
“In the home as well as the temple the
Granth is treated with reverence, given its own shelf, and usually placed on a
cloth or cushion before being used,” writes Karen
Farrington in her book, “The History of Religion.”
“Above it there will be a canopy,
further emphasizing its holiness, and the reader will use a fan or chauri to
prevent any flies or dust from landing on it.”
*****
Jordan
said he was once inside a Sikh temple in India where “they've
got this big room you go into and there's this little tent-like structure and
inside it is a wagon holding their book.
“And the book's as big as one of these
tables. I asked a guy, ‘Well, what does that book teach?’
and he said, ‘I don't know, we can't read it.’
I said, ‘You mean you don't know how to read
it?’ and he said, ‘No,
we can't read it.’ They're not allowed to read it!
“At night they take the thing and put
it over in a little closet on the side of the room and worship it. Their book's
hidden from them.”
“I appreciate the Bible; God wrote His
Word and said, ‘Oh earth, earth. Hear the Word of the
Lord. Get a hold of it!’ And He put it in your language so you
can read it and understand it. The Bible is an accessible book.
“I asked my neighbor once, ‘Which
Koran do you read?’, knowing there are about 30 different
versions of them. And if you read one version and it says something you don't
like, you can say, ‘Well, that's a bad translation,’
because the Koran can't really be legitimately translated.
“Newberry's probably the greatest English scholar in Arabic the Western world's produced, and he produced a copy of the translation of the Koran, but he doesn't call it a translation; he calls it an interpretation because, as he says in his introduction, ‘The Koran cannot be properly translated. It can only be understood in Arabic.’
“You hear people say that about your
Bible. That's religious hoodley-doo, but they don't think they can understand
it. God provided His Word to be understood translated. It's just as much His
Word in the translation as it is in the original language. You know that from
verses in the Bible, where you see a verse translated from one language to
another and it's still God's lWord when it's translated and there are verses in
the Bible that demonstrate that to you.”
*****
We’ve all seen TV footage of the Shiite self-flagellation ritual where grown men run together in the street, chanting prayers to Allah as they whip themselves on the back so that blood’s running down.
In
their religion that has to do with chastising and punishing themselves in order
to get the attention of their god, something that originated with Baal
worshippers in I Kings 18.
In
the Old Testament passage, it says they “called on the name
of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no
voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.
“And it came to pass at noon, that
Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking,
or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must
be awaked.
“And they cried aloud, and cut
themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed
out upon them.
“And it came to pass, when midday was
past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening
sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that
regarded.”
(Editor’s note: I’ve been under the weather with a tenacious sinus and ear infection. New article tomorrow.)
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