Hinduism.

Buddha was originally named Siddhartha Gautama. He was raised in the Hindu culture. His father was a king. He was raised in great luxury, sheltered from the outside world. But he found his life of luxury meaningless and abandoned it along with its comforts to seek enlightenment. Except, he didn't abandon all of his former life. The reincarnation beliefs of Buddhism were directly borrowed from Siddhartha Gautama's childhood religion of Hinduism.

Hindu worshipers believe in many gods. Followers pick the gods they will worship. Many choose the gods they have created with their own hands. The history of the Hindu religion is chaotic but appears to indicate that they once believed in the one true God, and their many statues were but representations of His attributes. Over time, the statues came to represent little gods under the one God, until finally the statues were believed to be inhabited by a god or actually became a god.

In this belief system it is thought that everything in the universe is God. Hindus reject the Christian concept that God exists outside and independent of the universe. But the universe had a beginning. Science clearly confirms this point. At the moment of the big bang, time and space also began. The cause, the Creator — God — must exist outside of the universe. This is a basic doctrine of Judeo-Christian belief and the evidence supports it. The universe is clearly not God.

Hindu culture is also heavily based on the caste system. This is highly contrary to western thought. In the caste system, the social position that you are born into determines what your life will be like. You cannot climb above the class that you are born into, because your birth position was determined by your past life. So if you are poor, you deserved it. If you are the son of a rich ruler, you earned it by your past deeds. The only hope for the masses in the Hindu culture is to acquire a better rebirth by good works, devotion to a god made with their own hands, or through knowledge in a manner similar to Buddhism's enlightenment.

Viewed from a Biblical perspective, Hindu believers worship the creation (originally seen as attributes of God) and not the Creator. By creating their own gods in the form of wooden and stone statues, Hinduism violates the first and second of the ten commandments: Thou shalt have none other gods before me and Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. Hindu beliefs are not proven wrong just because they are in direct opposition to Muslim, Jewish, and Christian teaching. However, it has been shown that the universe is not God. It is also just as obvious, to all but the Hindu believer, that wooden and stone god statues cannot help anyone attain Nirvana. The Hindus, under their system, must try to work their way to eternal bliss on their own. Since no one can be perfect enough to earn eternal peace, the Hindus have developed a system that offers them multiple lives to reach this goal, a noble but meaningless effort.

What the Hindu people think they need is to be reborn into a higher class so they can be served, giving them more time to work on their need for perfection. But isn't it the rich, the powerful, and the religious leaders who have held them in bondage to the caste system? What the people actually need is to be born again as a servant. There is no more noble a class in life than that of one who gives his life to serve another. Even more, the people need a perfect servant who will allow his works, devotion, and knowledge to be counted in place of their own imperfect deeds and actions, one who even while they still reject him, will give his very life to gain their eternal life. What the people need is Jesus Christ.

New Age.

A modern offshoot of Hinduism is the New Age movement. There is a scene in the movie “Out on a Limb” where Shirley MacLaine stands on the beach before the ocean and declares, “I am God!” That is the very essence of the New Age religion. Picture it in your mind. One can almost hear the ocean in defiance pounding the shoreline insisting that the waves, and not this little person, are God. Meanwhile, the sun beats down on the waves causing the water to evaporate, so the sun might claim it is God. Still, the air holds the water, collecting it into huge clouds, and then blows the clouds about with its mighty winds. So the air might be God, except that the earth's gravity eventually overcomes the air and pulls the waters back down in a mighty storm. The earth then could be God, for out of it life springs forth in abundance, including the flowers, the birds, and Shirley. The earth, however, would remain lifeless if not for the air, the waves, and the sun.

Any of these things might be claimed as God, but they are not. All of them together might be thought of as composing the whole of God, but they do not. It should easily be seen that all these things have limits, even when combined. God is not limited. Beyond the limits of space and time the eternal one looks at the creation of His hands and quietly declares through it, “I am that I am.”

Many people in the world fall into the error of New Age thought by worshipping things that are not God. The earth is not God; it is His creation. Crystals are lovely but they cannot hear your prayers. The stars are glowing nuclear furnaces. They are not gods who guide our lives. Mediums cannot get in touch with the dead. The telephone psychics so popular today cannot tell the future. At best they have vivid imaginations, or are con artists. At worst satanic angels are guiding them. Either way, all these things are tools of death, because they cannot save your soul. Material possessions, money, power and authority are other gods that are common to man. These things are of no value when faced with death.