Jews' origin for all man's religions

"Every religion found among mankind has its origin, in some particular way, in the religion God gave Israel.

"It’s a fascinating thing when you study it through. Study Islam, Hinduism . . . I was reading through the Bhagavad Gita, one of the Hindu holy books, and I’m in this one passage thinking, ‘Wow, man, that’s Leviticus!’ You say, ‘How’d they know about that?!’ Well, it got out.

“You watch Islam. Ramadan is here and they make the pilgrimage. Well, three times a year, every Jew had to go back to Jerusalem, make a pilgrimage. Deuteronomy 16:16. It was required of them. Not just once in a lifetime but every year.

“The Muslims pray toward Mecca. Well, where did Daniel pray toward? Jerusalem. Why? That’s where God’s temple was.

“You look at all that corrupted stuff out there . . . Israel, who had the ‘pure religion,’ as the Bible calls it, corrupted their religion with the false and it’s a screwball kind of a thing where, ‘I’ve got the real thing and you’ve got the fake thing, but I like your fake thing, too, so I’ll bring your fake thing into my real thing and corrupt my real thing, and now both of us don’t have anything worth having!'

“They just swap things around and that’s why II Kings 17 says about Israel that they worship Jehovah and serve Baal. You say, 'How do you do that?!' Well, go to any church in America today and you can see it happening. Go to a Catholic church, Orthodox church, Catholic-sympathizing Protestant church, which is pretty much everybody, and you see all those kinds of things.

“I just had a conversation with a brother who's dealing with people in his assembly about the Lord’s Supper; they're glued to doing it in the traditional mini-Protestant Mass form and they think it’s an absolute requirement it be done that way. I’m thinking, ‘You know, even if I thought what they wanted to do was right, making it an absolute requirement is exactly the opposite of what I Corinthians 11 says to do.’ You think, 'Where’d that come from?' Tradition gets a hold on you.

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“God says in Isaiah 1:13-15 [13] Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
[14] Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
[15] And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

“When He says there ‘you spread forth your hands,’ that’s how the religions pray. You know why people do that when they pray? It’s, ‘Pour down the blessing, Lord!’ Have you ever watched a Catholic priest do the Mass? Why do they do that?

"You ever watch the Charismatic folks on the TV? Why do they do it? They haven’t got a consciousness of God living inside of them. Why do you want God to drop you something if you understand He lives inside you? ‘What’s He dropping down? He’s in here!’

“Things that you do mean things. People say, ‘Well, Paul says over in Timothy to lift up holy hands.’ Well, as soon as you get holy hands, lift them up, but until then, understand that’s a figure of speech. That’s not talking about the posture of your hands. I’ve looked at most of you all’s hands and they aren’t that holy.

“By the way, people use this passage in Isaiah 1 to say, ‘See, God really didn’t want Israel to have all that bloody religion.’ Yes, He did. He gave it to them! He just wanted them to do it in faith, not make a religious system out of it; not have ‘idols in their heart,’ as Ezekiel says.

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“If we had forever to study, we could go back to Ezekiel 36 and see how the land had been polluted and made unclean by the blood of the idolaters and offering the children to Molech. All that blood of idolatry, He takes them out of that land for the 70 years so the land can have rest.

“In Isaiah 1, when He says, ‘So is this people,’ He’s talking about Israel and every work of their hand; everything they’ve done in their religion is unclean, unacceptable.

"Talking to the nation Israel, He says they’re spiritually Sodom and Gomorah: '[10] Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.' The Book of Revelation calls them that.

“The nation Israel is in an absolute condition of rebellion. He calls them that at the end of verse 2. Isaiah 1:4 says, '[4] Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.'

“That’s His description of them spiritually before they go into captivity. Haggai is telling them, ‘You’re still in that spiritual condition.’

“Isaiah 1:11 says, [11] To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.

“The problem isn’t that God didn’t give them commandments and instructions about burnt offerings and so forth; it’s that they’re not bringing them in faith. The Book of Leviticus says ‘if any man will.’ They made a religion out of the sacrifices.

"He says ‘bring no more vain oblations.’ They’d developed the Jew’s religion into a vain religious system. Jesus said, ‘In vain do you worship me, teaching doctrines of men.’ ”