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Lesson 86

PRESENT EASTERN RELIGIONS (Part 1)

Of the Orient, the great East, do we now make a brief survey as to present "heathen" religions, the basis for Satan's demon-saturated control of the people of India, China, and the isles of the Pacific.

More than one and a half billion persons of earth's two and a fifth billion inhabitants do not even pretend to be Christian. They live mainly outside Europe and North America and South America. Of every 100 persons on earth about 70 do not profess to be Christian, and of these 70 about 16 are classified as Confucian and Taoist. Most Confucians and Taoists live in China.

Taoism is mainly a modification of the demon-worship of the ancient Chinese Nimrod-religion, with borrowings from Buddhism, another type of demon-worship. Taoists take their name from the teachings of a southern Chinese philosopher, Lao-tse, who is reputed to have lived about the time the children of Israel were held captive in Babylon, though present-day Taoism has very little connection with what Lao-tse is supposed to have taught.

Modern Taoism has monks, priests, high priests, and, on top of a high mountain in the province of Kiangsi, a pope entitled T'ien-shi, the "Heaven Master". The Taoists worship a great number of demons and also believe in the "trinity", Lao-tse being the second person of it. They believe in the "immortality of the soul" and that the souls of the dead can bring good or evil to the living; they worship many gods, including their ancestors; they are devoted to the search of a means of changing the base metals into gold and prolonging man's life on the earth

forever; they believe they can foresee or foretell future events by means of figures or lines; they believe they can communicate with the spirits of the dead; throughout the land of China they offer sacrifices to their idols representing the demons, just as the ancients did on the plains of Shinar and in the lush valley and delta of Egypt; they believe in a "purgatory" with ten courts. Taoism has temples and monasteries. While Taoism has spread over China, so has Buddhism, and most Chinese people profess both; but whether they profess both or just one of them they are also Confucians. In fact, in most of the temples in China all three, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, are practiced, and the same priest will perform the rite of whichever one the worshiper requests.

Confucianism as well as Taoism teaches ancestor worship, which ancestor worship preceded both of them. Though Confucius (551-478 B.C.), from whom Confucianism takes its name, counseled people to have as little to do with the spirit demon gods as possible, he was canonized A.D. 1, and A.D. 1907 the empress of China raised him to the highest class of demon gods of China, ranking him with the deities Heaven and Earth. Confucius being dead, the demons are the ones that get such worship. At the village of Küfow, Shantung, where Confucius was born and where he and his descendants are buried, there is a temple of Confucius where a descendant of his, called the "holy Duke King", worships with appropriate ceremony three times a year and exercises other demon-worship in connection with that temple. Confucius was concerned with proper conduct. He wanted to regiment the people by regulating everyone's conduct, even specifying the position in which one should lie while sleeping. He did not claim to originate any teachings, but merely to co-ordinate the older teachings to aid the people to return to them. He is credited with recording the words, "What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others." Confucianism has been modified by Buddhism, but much less than Taoism has.

Confucianism has even spread to Japan; the Japanese are still Confucian whether they practice Shinto or Buddhism.

Of every 100 persons on earth about 12 are Hindus. Hinduism is the chief religion of India, and exists there divided into many sects. Caste is common to all sects of it; all Hindus are divided into many castes or hereditary classes from which they cannot rise. Should a Hindu violate the customs or rules of his caste and be put out of it, he does not drop into a lower caste, but is without caste, an outcaste, and, thereafter, no longer has any ordinary social rights. He is considered untouchable, and if a man of caste so much as crosses an outcaste's shadow, he is thereby defiled. There are said to be fifty million such outcastes in India today. Hindus believe in transmigration, that is, that at death their soul continues to live and is re-born into either a higher or a lower caste or class, or as a beast.

Hindus are taught to aspire to attain nirvana, or release from future transmigration of the soul. The upper classes or castes of Hindus think of nirvana as the extinction of the torment of desire and the attainment of complete peacefulness in reunion with Brahma, whom they consider the Creator but whom they worship but little. (There are only two temples devoted to him in all India.) The lower castes think of nirvana as a riotous existence of joy in some other world. Orthodox Hinduism teaches that the way out of transmigration and the attainment of nirvana is by the torment of desire through various physical exercises and direct communications with the gods (demons).

In India there are many Hindu temples and images. The Hindus believe there are 330,000,000 different gods and goddesses. That means more demons than worshipers, there being only 254,930,506 Hindus.

Hindus believe that some of their gods, especially Vishnu, come to earth when men need them and materialize as men or animals to save humanity from extreme peril. They are looking for a new materialization or incarnation of Vishnu as a man called Ivalkin to save man from his present misery.

Phallic, or sex, worship is closely associated with Vishnu as well as other Hindu demon gods.

The system of Hindu philosophy most widely known in "Christendom", mainly through travelers' tales, is Yoga, a branch of the Sankhya system. Both systems teach that the soul continues transmigrating until it learns the absolute distinction between soul and matter and that then the soul attains nirvana. They differ in that Yoga recognizes the existence of a Supreme God, whereas Sankhya does not. A further difference is that Yoga adds the teaching that an ecstatic vision of the Supreme God (a foretaste of nirvana) may be had and miraculous powers may be obtained by a system of mortification of the senses. This mortification consists of fixing one's mind on one idea, or any other such practice, which allows the demons to take possession of one and make him have such ecstatic visions and miraculous powers, such as lying on spikes without injury, walking on embers without being burnt, and so forth.

Thus, strange as these religions of the East appear to those in the Western world, it is clearly observed how Satan and the demons have reached new heights to keep their control over the minds of men lest haply they might worship the great Father of Spirits, Jehovah.