Do All Religions Lead To God?

[hobie]

It gets very confusing with all the different religions and claims that this or that belief or ideas from various movements that they have the path that leads to God, so is it. But when you hear a Christian religious leader or teacher claim that all religions lead on a path to God, that raises questions. Scripture is clear that is not the case. We find it in John 14...

John 14:6

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Jesus declares that the only way to God is through Him.

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[Gustave]

Scripture speaks of having the right God & the right Gospel. I think all main world religions have some truth but the fullness of truth is definitely Historic Christianity - that's my .02 cents on the subject.

[Gregory Matthews]

Some religions have a very distorted view of God.  

[hobie]

13 hours ago, Gustave said:

Scripture speaks of having the right God & the right Gospel. I think all main world religions have some truth but the fullness of truth is definitely Historic Christianity - that's my .02 cents on the subject.

Well, the devil is very good and can make it 99% truth and one percent the poison in the well much like the Holy Flesh movement that got even into the Adventist church.

[Gustave]

15 hours ago, hobie said:

Well, the devil is very good and can make it 99% truth and one percent the poison in the well much like the Holy Flesh movement that got even into the Adventist church.

There's one I've never heard of LOL! 

[Gustave]

I just looked it up and this interests me greatly. 

Quote

The term Holy Flesh movement is a derogatory term given to a brief but controversial religious movement within the Seventh-day Adventist Church from the late 1890s till 1901. They sought a physical demonstration of the "spirit" and shouted and prayed and sang until someone in the congregation would fall, prostrate and unconscious, from his seat. When the subject revived, he was counted among those who had passed through the "Gethsemane experience", had obtained holy flesh, and had translation faith. Thereafter, it was asserted, he could not sin and had obtained a form of immortal assurance. The doctrinal teachings of this movement regarding the nature of Christ's humanity is that he took the nature of Adam before the Fall. Holy Flesh movement - Wikipedia

If this is accurate this would indicate that there was, within Seventh-day Adventism, a group who believed that Christ "COULD NOT SIN". Based off what I know of Ellen White's teaching on this particular subject I would imagine this movement was immediately identified as heretical within the Church. 

[Gregory Matthews]

I do not have a major disagreement with the Wikipedia statement.   Yes, it is clear that EGW denounced it.  EGW was not the educated theologian that we might want to see today.  She spoke on a more common level.  I do not believe that her denouncement had anything to do with whether or not Christ could sin. 

The question that I have relates to whether or not that view has any relationship to the so-called Last Generation Theology that is held by some Adventists today.

[Kevin H]

All salvation comes from God's gracious attitude towards us through what Jesus did for us. At the end of time God will treat everyone the same. God will show up in all his beauty, love, glory, and overwhelming event. Some will find this event to be heaven, others will find this event to be hell. Like when the divinity flashed through Jesus when cleaning the temple (at least at the second cleaning.) People ran in two directions. The money changers were running away, while the children, poor and lame were running to him (and remember Jesus had a whip. How often do you find children running with joy to someone holding a whip? Yet, this is what happened when Jesus showed his "wrath".) Only this time there is no place to flee as God's glory fills the whole world. 

Everyone is born with a few things: Different levels of intelligence, cultures, environments, points in history. We all have in us two attitudes fighting. One is our deepest desire, to want to love the world on an honest basic, to be fair, to love the world as Jesus has loved it. Fighting this is a weaker, but often placed in power in our lives, a disposition to think we are for ourselves by making less of the outside world. A disposition to esteem ourselves more highly than others, to serve self, to seek the highest place, to manipulate or try to manipulate others especially through things such as criticizing, complaining, blaming,  nagging, threatening, punishing, rewarding to control.  We also seem to have been born with our temperaments, two out of five possible love languages, two out of five possible apology languages, and our attachment styles. 

The Holy Spirit works with every person, pointing them to the character ("name") of God as our personal friend (God the Son). All religions have varying amounts of truth and superstitions. People make choices of reaching out to or rejecting the character of God as our personal friend, through the two principles of somehow reaching out to what or whoever may be out there and from this to love their neighbors as themselves. 

The three monotheistic religions have available WITHIN their framework a looking beyond the forces of nature to the creator. The two based on the Bible have even more truth available to them, with of course the Christians open to study the Bible with the insight that God the Son came and lived among us, and additional insights from records of his life and insights from those who directly witnessed seeing him, including seeing him after the resurrection, or records of people who had direct connection to these witnesses. Protestantism has a mindset of reading the Bible and making the Bible the final authority. And Seventh-day Adventists have the great controversy philosophy (which archaeology has pointed out was a big issue for the ancient world where the Bible was written, but which we have lost sight of in culture.)

Now, just because we have more information available to us does not mean that we are allowing them to affect our lives and thinking. People with less information may cherish what they understand while people with more information may ignore it. All may be drawn away by traditions and superstitions. 

From this I cannot say that all religions lead to God; but God and Satan both have people in all religions.  The big issue is HIS CHARACTER, Who HE is, What he did for us. The Holy Spirit working on our hearts to point us in the direction of the character of God as personal friend, and from this to God being the great power and ultimate authority. 

Sadly, too many Christians turn the salvation through God's gracious character and who HE is, to salvation through being a Christian, salvation through the religion. The false thinking that a Jew, Muslim or other cannot be saved because they are not "Christians" That they have not said the right things about Jesus and give the history lesson about what Jesus did for us. Anwar Sadat was raised by his mother and grandmother with a simple faith of trusting in Allah. In college he got into a more complex nationalistic political form of Islam. Yet, he still had a love for God. He spent so many hours in prayer that a callus formed on his forehead. When he lost the 1973 war, he felt responsible for all the deaths. He turned his back on the more complicated political version of Islam and turned to the simple faith of his mother and grandmother. He realized that he needed to forge a peace with Israel. 

At Camp David, there were three men of faith and prayer, a Muslim, a Jew and a Christian. They stopped their work at prayer times and were able to work out a solution. 

In Psalm 23:5 it says that the Lord prepares a table in the presence of enemies.  To the ancient world this means forgiveness and reconciliation. After Camp David was arranged, a table for the enemies of Egypt and Israel meet for the reconciliation meal. Now, people wondered about a personal event in this feast. Sadat and Golda Mier had totally hated each other on a personal level. They had never mentioned the other by name. Sadat would only call her "That Old Lady" and she would only call him "That Egyptian."  Yes, there was the table of forgiveness for the politics of the two governments, but what about these two individuals?

In the receiving line, as these two bitter enemies came face to face, Mier said "Mr. President, what took you so long? At these words Sadat just started laughing, and Mier just started laughing. The hatred they had for each other melted. (I don't remember for sure but I believe that I read/heard that they made a joke about the names they gave each other.) The table of forgiveness became not only political between states, but was also personal between these two individuals who remained friends for the rest of their lives. These actions were accepting and reflecting the character of God the Son, and coming to the power of God the Father through God as personal friend. They are saved through how they accepted the character of God the Son. (and as you look at Sadat, the impact of God upon his life, and how he decided to stand for the right even though it lead to his martyrdom, indicates that he could have well have reached what Ellen White describes as last generation perfection.)

Dr. Chan was a Buddhist dentist living in Cambodia. When he heard that the Khmer Rouge came to power, he threw his glasses off his face and stomped on them on the floor, ran home got his family and moved to a part of Cambodia where no one knew who they were and they pretended to be ignorant illiterates. Eventually they were able to go to a refugee camp in Thailand. There were Baptists working in the camps to help the refugees and shared the story about Jesus.  The Chan family converted from Buddhism to Christianity. Later they came to southern California where there were Seventh-day Adventists helping the refugees, and they decided to learn more about Seventh-day Adventism and decided to become Seventh-day Adventists. One Sabbath at church, one of the women who were helping the refugees noticed that Dr. Chan's body tightened and went pale. He started shaking and ran out of the church. She went after him to find out what was wrong. She found him on the lawn of the church just shaking and repeating the words "It's him! It's him..." As he was asked what was wrong, Dr. Chan replied "You may find this crazy, but as a child I knew that I had a special friend. Now, I could not see him nor hear him, yet he has always been just as real to me at my friends who I could see and hear. I believe that he helped me to remove and trample on my glasses. I believe that he lead me and my family as we looked for someplace we were unknown, and that he lead to Thailand and finally to the United States. Even though I became a Christian in Thailand, today, for the first time in my life I realize that this special, life long friend of mine is Jesus!" 

Religions can be a help or a hindrance, but from all religious beliefs (even secularism and so called atheism -- I have not come over this document's words anyplace else for me to absolutely say that it was by Ellen White, but I came across it in the EGW vault at Andrews, and I believe that it was written by Sister White, but this document placed "atheists" into two different groups. One was labeled, infidels. But the author also gave a second group of atheists labeled "Honest Doubters" and that heaven has room for the "Honest Doubters." Whether the writer was Mrs. White or not, I agree with that document.  There is the issue of faith that transcends religions. When you read about the Norwegian revivalist Hans Nielsen Hague, or the  character of World War I German ace Oswald Boelcke, and how World War I ace Manfred von Richthofen responded to Boelcke's Christlikeness. The Roman Catholic actor Bob Newheart and Jewish comedian Don Rickels were both men of faith, and they felt a special friendship based on their shared love and devotion to their family and to God. They would join each other in worshiping in both Church and Synagogue and recognizing both Christian and Jewish holidays. Herman's Hermit's lead singer Peter Noone had been a devote Catholic. He met a lady who was a devote Jew. They fell in love, and felt that a large part of their relationship was their shared love for God. They have had one of show business longest and happiest marriages. When they decided to marry, instead of just running off, Peter petitioned and received permission from the Church to marry her without her converting to Catholicism (One article I read said that he asked the Pope for permission, but I have not seen that since, only his getting permission from the church.) and they worship in both the Church and Synagogue, and they have a daughter they raised in both the church and synagogue.   

[Kevin H]

A Muslim followed the Lord. Please pray for Ahmad Al-Ahmad's recovery in an Australian hospital. A true hero!

[Gustave]

2 hours ago, Kevin H said:

A Muslim followed the Lord. Please pray for Ahmad Al-Ahmad's recovery in an Australian hospital. A true hero!

Absolutely a true hero! 

[Gregory Matthews]

Kevin, I have no ideal as to how long it took you to prepare and write you post above.  I thank you for it.  It serves a real purpose.

[hobie]

On 12/14/2025 at 10:45 PM, Gustave said:

I just looked it up and this interests me greatly. 

If this is accurate this would indicate that there was, within Seventh-day Adventism, a group who believed that Christ "COULD NOT SIN". Based off what I know of Ellen White's teaching on this particular subject I would imagine this movement was immediately identified as heretical within the Church. 

Not sure how you got to that...

[Joe Knapp]

There are many in our church who believe that we have the truth, and that only people who fit a certain mold will be in heaven. 

Philippines is about 80% catholic. Probably more in my area. There are MANY devoted catholics here. I have had the opportunity to visit, get to know and observe.  The faith and dedication to God that some of these people have is humbling. They don't have the truth we have, but they have the faith the bible talks about. Complete trust in God. 

Sometimes, we are not so smart as we think we are. 

[Kevin H]

On 4/14/2026 at 5:48 AM, Joe Knapp said:

There are many in our church who believe that we have the truth, and that only people who fit a certain mold will be in heaven. 

Philippines is about 80% catholic. Probably more in my area. There are MANY devoted catholics here. I have had the opportunity to visit, get to know and observe.  The faith and dedication to God that some of these people have is humbling. They don't have the truth we have, but they have the faith the bible talks about. Complete trust in God. 

Sometimes, we are not so smart as we think we are. 

As I understand it, God has always had a special people who have been open to a larger amount of the truth and have a job to help others increase their growth. We can call this "The Remanant Church." Now, this does NOT mean they are uniform. Sadly too many are looking for a type of church unity and perfection that the church had ONLY ONCE, Maybe TWICE in all of her history. The one time that we know of was Adam before he took a nap, and MAYBE Abram before he met Sari.

Abraham and his followers (We think too much of him alone, but he was a tribal chief) were THE Remanant church, but did did not mean that he did not have room for Melchizedek, and we find others who had a good relationship with Abraham that could well have been salvational to them. (As well as a kindness where archaeology and word studies indicate that despite his helping those like the king of Sodom, that he did not see them as having a good relationship.) In the story of Jonah, we find that the Phoenician sailors (The Phoenicians would flirt with monotheism from time to time, even without becoming outright Yahwehists.) who had a special relationship with the Yahwehist nations were converted to Yahwehism, They joined the remanant church. But the people in Nineveh were converted to "God" and we find the entire Assyrian Empire becoming monothiests, but worshiping the god who the Assyrians believed to be the most high god. This made them better and kinder people until eventually that generation passed and an aposticy eventually occured. The Lord took this as worshiping of the one true God.  (The story of Jonah and the Leviathan gives a wonderful study on the role of the Remanant Church and others.) We have Naaman the Lepper who joined the Remanant Church, and took some earth from Israel to kneel and pray, but asked for the one exception to kneel in helping his king in the king's worship. We would dissagree with Elisha, Elisha SHOULD have said that Naaman needs to tell his king that he is worshiping in the wrong religion, worshiping a demon and to bring enough dirt for his king to kneel to worship the God of Israel, otherwise he is lost... We don't like Elisha's message of allowing Naaman to support religions freedom. Another powerful lesson on the job of the Remanant Church. 

As we look at the old Yahwehist religion (Judaism came from Yahwehism just as Christianity came from Judaism.) there appears to be two denominations. One based more on the book of Leviticus and the priesthood of Aaron. The other based more on the book of the Law (which became Deuteronomy) and focused more on the priesthood of Moses through maybe one of Aaron's other sons. (and even among these two there appears to be a bit more northern and southern influences as well as various degrees of feelings for the royal houses.) Christianity seems to have variations between James and the ministry to Jews, and among the ministry to gentiles the more Peter views and the more Paul views, with John preventing those two views from breaking into two very different religions, but remaining aspects, maybe as far as denominations within one overall group. 

So we find in the Bible evidence for God having a "Remanant Church" with room for growth and differences. This church is how God is reaching out to others,