"The high priest said to him, "I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ,the Son of God."Mathew 26:63-65
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied. "But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, "He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy."
When Jesus said He was the "way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6) and that no one comes to God except through him, he was consciously setting off a relentless worldwide battle.
Although Jesus, who was also called the Prince of Peace, said He came to the world so that we might have life, and when leaving this world to meet the Father He has given his followers His peace (John 14:27), He has also made it clear in Matthew 10:35-37 that, in order to actually there be peace and life in the world, it was necessary first that a distinction between the children of God and the children of the world was done:
“For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'
"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Obviously Jesus was not here allowing His followers to declare a holy war against the infidels, or to set about any kind of persecution of their opponents. He said only that this distinction would happen naturally, through the freedom of choice of each man, because whoever does not take his cross and follow Him is not worthy of Him. (Matthew 10:38).
How is it possible however, in a world with such a cultural diversity, that one single religion can become so absolutely hegemonic among so many all others? If it is difficult to conceive of this hegemony within a single nation, how to expect that people with histories and cultures as essentially different from the history and culture of the Jewish people would be willing to recognize Christ as the one true Messiah, the Savior of the world? How to accept the fact that God has singled a historically insignificant nation, born from long struggles against the enemy nations around her, out of so many greater nations of her time, to be the cradle of the spiritual redemption of the world?
The idea of facing a single valid choice can be daunting and unsettling for most people in our time, raised in a culture which main feature is the multiplicity of choices. However, God revealed himself to mankind only once, through Israel, and that is why Christianity is the only true expression of this revelation. Christianity is the first and only true spiritual teaching, revealed by God to the world. God spoke to the world through men, who wrote down His redemptive message under the inspiration of His Spirit, and not inspired by any philosophical ideas or by any spiritual beings, as happened with the world's religions.
There are two kinds of faith: the unstable, sterile and subjective human faith, and the genuine faith that produces conversion of life and salvation, which is freely given by God to those who sincerely seek Him. This true faith is available to all who humble themselves before God, acknowledging His sovereignty and perfect will, and their total dependence on Him:
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (1 Peter 5:6)
Christianity has accomplished, over the centuries, the wondrous feat of becoming a universal religion, professed not only in Western countries, but in many countries of the East as well. Many would quickly attribute this hegemony initially to the political imposing of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire by Constantine and, later, by the Roman Catholic Church, at the height of its power. Although this is partly true, and unarguably many "conversions" to Christianity were due to mere political reasons (as in the case of Constantine himself), or to social motives, as still happens today, it is also undeniable that Jesus’ Gospel has produced, since the dawn of Christianity, many significant conversions, motivated by a genuine expression of faith.
Most people are typically familiar only with the dark ages of the Roman Catholic Church, but not with the benefits bequeathed by Christianity to Western civilization. Thomas E. Woods, who holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, M. Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University, retrieves this memory in his How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Regnery, 2005). Woods reminds us that Christianity was responsible not only for most of the ethical foundations that shaped Western civilization, but also for the first steps of science and of the academic teaching institutions, for the fundamental principles of law and for the first charitable institutions. The merit of the hegemony achieved by Christianity throughout history however, should not be credited to the efforts of the Catholic Church, whose methods were often questionable, but to the power of truth inherent in the Christian doctrine.
Most people discuss religion the same way they talk about philosophy; that is, based only on superficial knowledge. Few people take the time to deepen their knowledge of the many religions of the world and of the history of Christianity. The spiritual ignorance of man leads him to instinctively reject the idea of the Christian hegemony. Regardless of the ideological conflict caused by the Christian Gospel, which points out the natural human tendencies, produced by self-centeredness and hedonism as forces in outright opposition to spiritual salvation, man has always rejected as absurd the notion of the existence of an absolute truth. Thus, the Christian exclusivity, intrinsic to his own doctrine, is always regarded with distaste by the followers of other religions and also by those who claim not to profess any religion.
However, this antipathy is largely misplaced, since at no time a true Christian or Christian church claims to be himself the "bearer of truth", but that the gospel of Christ and all the Scriptures are the expression of the absolute truth concerning the spiritual life, as revealed by God to his prophets. Understanding this truth is an ongoing enlightenment process that every Christian undertakes in their spiritual walk. On announcing the Gospel, the Christian is not being narrow-minded, arrogant, intolerant, he is only accomplishing the so-called "great commission" given by Christ to His disciples, as written in the Gospels of Matthew (28:19), Luke (24:47) and Mark (16:15): "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." What might be questionable, therefore, is the way this evangelistic mission is carried out, but not evangelism itself.
Furthermore, the natural man, still in his spiritual immaturity, is unable to grasp the fullness of the nature of the biblical God, which from a humanistic and materialistic worldview appears to him like an unjust, arrogant, inconsistent, discriminatory and cruel God. Anyway, how could a God who claims to love the world to destroy his own creation, condemning people to eternal suffering and deny salvation to those who have not heard of Christ? Even the mere idea of a personal God sounds narrow-minded for most educated individuals, who prefer the complex notion of God as present in Eastern religions; as an abstract Being, absolutely inaccessible to human reason, a kind of energy that permeates all the creation.
According to those religions, Christ was just one of the many high spiritual masters who came to the world to teach men one single and same path of spiritual fulfillment. Well, this is absolutely not true. The path Jesus pointed out to men is essentially different from all other spiritual paths taught by the spiritual mentors of the religions of the world. Actually, Jesus did not teach a spiritual path, but he said He was himself the path and that no man could reach God unless he was led by Him (John 14:6). This means that even if one of the great spiritual masters had taught exactly the same teachings of Jesus, yet these teachings could not save a single one of his disciples. Only Jesus had the power not only to teach, to heal and to set the people free from the bondage of evil; but above all, the power to forgive sins and to save the broken, because only He is the Savior.
The human-centeredness and pride prevent those who abhor the one true God, revealed to man through Israel, of recognizing that it is because of the hardness of their heart that they have become unable of understand the nature of God and his truth, revealed to man through the Scriptures. The same human pride, which prevented the Jews from recognizing Christ as the so long awaited Messiah, has always been, after sin, the greatest barrier between man and God. As Paul said:
"And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." 2 Corinthians 4:3-4
Most people see Christianity through the facades of their churches, and judge it by what they see behind them. However, the thousands of existing Christian denominations are not the true expression of Christianity. The true Church of Christ on Earth is formed by his approved disciples, which are scattered amid those denominations, in the midst of false Christians. Even if a particular church were composed only of authentic Disciples of Christ, it would not be perfect. It would still have many flaws, for the simple fact that it would still be composed of human beings. The Christian is not sanctified in a single day. Just like the understanding of the message of God in Scripture, which is a continual learning, thus preventing any particular Christian denomination of claiming to have reached the full understanding of Truth; the sanctification of every Christian is also an ongoing process, which will only be completed in the spiritual world, when they can reach the full stature of Christ.
Christianity is an entirely different path in its essence, from the other spiritual paths shown by the religions of the world. There are three basic concepts in Christianity, among others, which make it a doctrine absolutely unique and distinct from all other spiritual doctrines: the principle of the spiritual fall of man, the principle of sin and the principle of one single life for every individual. These principles essentially contradict the teachings of other religions, that mankind is not irreparably doomed to spiritual death because of sin, but only separated from the Unity or from the Dao, to which they must return. Christianity also states, contrarily to the other doctrines, that every man lives a single life, after which comes the judgment of his works and his resurrection, and not an indeterminate cycle of existences, along which he would eventually evolve to perfection.
Christ says that only who believes in Him can be saved. This means that we can not, by our own means, to achieve our spiritual fulfillment, but only by God's grace through the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus, we receive salvation and take hold of the eternal life that only Him can give. This is a completely strange concept to all other religions, who claim that the individual must build, through his works and the devotion to their gods, the path of his own spiritual freedom. It is clear therefore that the common idea that all paths lead to God is absurd. Either is Christ who reconciles man with the Creator or are the world's religions that lead man to God. This is a realization that brings in a high existential, cultural and even political stress, and therefore the human ideology that rules the world prefers to ignore it, insisting on the isonomy of all religious creeds.
This ecumenical, universalistic and conciliatory attitude however, will not stand for long. Christ demands of every man to decide on a position with respect to their spiritual life. There are no uncompromising positions, the choice is clear: with or against Christ, as He said: "He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters." (Matthew 12:30). To believe that Jesus is the only way to God means believing in the whole Bible. One cannot believe some things in it that we like but not in others, which we dislike. One cannot mutilate the Gospel as do many spiritual and ecumenical doctrines. Either we believe God is powerful enough to preserve the integrity of his message throughout the centuries, in spite of human interference, or we become atheists, agnostics or even worse, take false spiritual paths or still, as many do, make up our own God and our own customized religion.
The Kingdom of God has already come to the world and in the end times the angel of the Lord will harvest the fields and set apart the weeds and the wheat. The citizens of the Kingdom of God will reign with Christ, but the citizens of the world will perish by their own choice, with the Prince of this world.
