One Way!

Jude 1 (The Message)

 ^17-19But remember, dear friends, that the apostles of our Master, Jesus Christ, told us this would happen: "In the last days there will be people who don't take these things seriously anymore. They'll treat them like a joke, and make a religion of their own whims and lusts." These are the ones who split churches, thinking only of themselves. There's nothing to them, no sign of the Spirit!


There are at least 22 different major religions

1. Christianity: 2.1 billion
2. Islam: 1.5 billion
3. Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism: 900 million
5. Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
6. Buddhism: 376 million
7. primal-indigenous: 300 million
8. African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
9. Sikhism: 23 million
10. Juche: 19 million
11. Spiritism: 15 million
12. Judaism: 14 million
13. Baha'i: 7 million
14. Jainism: 4.2 million
15. Shinto: 4 million
16. Cao Dai: 4 million
17. Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
18. Tenrikyo: 2 million
19. Neo-Paganism: 1 million
20. Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
21. Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
22. Scientology: 500 thousand

 The number of members are debatable, but they are accurate as far as ordering the religions. Christianity claims the most members at just over  2billion. But, if you add up the other religions they have over 4 billion members. These are 4 billion members that are not Christians and in many cases are Anti-Christian. Many of these religions are very new. With the onset of the internet you can just google any one of these 22 religions and many others. I think we can say that we are in the last days. Certainly if you look at these religions and their beliefs you can see they were created by the whims and lusts of their founder. I'm not going to criticize these religions specifically but they are, none-the-less, interesting.

As I said many of these people are anti-christian and they act in  a way contrary to our faith. We have some of these same types of people inside our churches. They claim to be Christians, but they are in it for themselves. They take the Bible and twist it to say what they want. They twist things to limit, restrict, and judge their fellow believers.  They think of themselves and don't care who they hurt to get their way. They hold others to a higher standard than they live. On Sunday at church we talked about how non-christians hate dealing with Christians. Many times we are the worst examples. Many times we are rude, overbearing, judgmental, and generally unpleasant. Our greatest Christian "Witness" is not what we say or do inside church, but how we act outside church.

In many ways we have developed are own religion. We have so twisted the true Christian Faith, that we can hardly recognize it as Christianity.  This verse emphasizes one of the most important principles of Christianity, "We must think of others before we think of ourselves."  I really  think this is one of the distinguishing factors of our Faith.  We are to think of others before ourselves. Yet, this is one of our weakest points. In order for us to even hope to convert any of these 4 billion + people that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, we have to change the way we treat people. We have to put them first over ourselves. We need to sacrifice like Jesus. We may even need to sacrifice ourselves. We need to love others first!

We are in the last days.  We need to share our own faith but more importantly we need to model it and it's differences from the others. We worship the true God. We can not forget there is only one way to eternal life, that is through Jesus Christ. Our Faith is special, we need to act like it!

Dear Lord, Forgive us for not representing you as we should. We are not good examples of your love. Help us to change that. Help us to put our faith into action by loving people more than we love ourselves. Amen!