Overview

I was not raised particularly religious, so throughout my life, I wandered through a lot of the philosophies of this world. There are a lot of explanations for the nature of our existence; some of them more-compelling than others.
In the end, I’ve come to realize that there is an objective-truth, and an objective-truth-giver. If there is one, object truth, what do I make of all of these other things I’ve run across?
In my opinion, there is exactly one Truth, and then there are countless, creative marketing campaigns put on by the enemy, to speak to every kind of person from every walk of life. I started to brainstorm this over a period of time, and I see it like this:

To clarify a few things, let me explain these in more detail:

God – The Way, the Truth, and the Life

No one is being asked to just have random, blind faith. I spent a lifetime of wading through the nonsense and false information, constantly looking for the Truth. I’ve come to the understanding that, by an enormous margin, Christianity is solidly the truth – firstly backed by Facts and Logic. After that, I started my road down having a personal relationship with God, and that’s when things really got cemented.
If you come to understand this to be the Truth, then you can take the Bible at its’ Word, literally. So what does it say?

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” –John 14:6 (NKJV)

This makes it sound like the ONLY way to God, is through the belief of Jesus. Which is true! And just to confirm, when Jesus was about to be crucified, He double-checked with God and asked if there was ANY other way humans could be saved:

“saying, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.”” –Luke 22:42 (NKJV)

So this confirms it: if there was any other way for humans to be saved, presumably it would’ve been done. Jesus is the only way. If there is exactly one Truth out there, then everything NOT that Truth is being derived from someplace.

Satan – Everything else…

The goal of the Enemy is to stop humans from accepting God’s gracious gift. To do that, he will trip-up, impede, and distract people as much as possible. I’ve come to understand that he has many different, creative approaches to do this, to appeal to just about everyone.

Marketing campaigns:

I really struggled with how to best categorize these things, since some kind of fall into multiple categories. With that said, the point is really to convey how the Enemy organizes his marketing campaigns to appeal to people of all kinds – all to either distract, disrupt, or misdirect believers.

• Christian-like, but corrupted: this is where you start from Christianity, but mutate it just-enough to discourage people into leaving the faith, or corrupt it enough so that the believer isn’t saved because the Word has been too distorted. Typically this falls into a few sub-categories:
  • Prosperity vs Legalistic – this is either being far too liberal or far too conservative to the point where you are no longer practicing Christianity. This is being far to inclusive and forgiving versus being far too restrictive to the point of no longer being Biblical.
  • Progressive Christianity – this is the concept of only the good stuff from the Bible, everyone is welcome to continue sinning, etc. God just loves you and wants to you to be happy and free. This is Christianity so watered-down that it’s no longer Biblical and is just meant to keep people distracted and feeling good. This is NOT the message of the Bible – when we come into faith, we’ve got work to do! “Work” here, meaning that we have turn from sin, get educated on the Word, and help others become saved.
  • “Works” based religions – this is the unbiblical concept that what you do in this life, can somehow get you into Heaven. The Bible is extremely clear on this: we are saved through faith alone, by grace alone, through Jesus alone. This is a work of the Enemy because this A) is going to discourage some people to leave the church and B) for the ones that stay, they do not believe they are saved because of Jesus alone, thereby (potentially?) lose their salvation. Many religions preach this although it’s simply not correct.
  • Other false teachers – the Enemy has worked to create custom Bible translations and change just enough to discourage some people, and/or to undermine the believers salvation. We all need to be diligent! See: What about Bible versions? and Discernment.
• Non-Christian, false religions: this is a variety of views that still give the believer “hope” that there is a higher power (fulfilling that innate desire), but it simply redirects that attention to some OTHER answer; some other god. I’ve categorized these, thusly (in alphabetical order):
  • Aliens as gods – this is the concept that benevolent aliens exist and want to help us. If aliens do exist, they will necessarily be significantly more-advanced, and will certainly be a plan from the Enemy. There is no part of what we know about God’s plan which includes alien interaction, and He shared a lot of prophesy about the future.
  • Government as gods – this is the concept where people begin to treat governments as gods, really – capable of dispensing righteous justice, and fixing all of the woes of man. Politicians too, are held to inhuman standards of excellence and morality which just isn’t realistic. You’ve seen where politicians are held to god-like standards and expected to literally be perfect humans. While people are trying to get government to righteously rule the people, they are not pursuing the actual Truth.
  • Nature as god – this is like the Wicca, Gaia, or most native American/indigenous viewpoints that “Mother Nature” is really an impersonal deity, but is still quietly benevolent, if we just work in harmony with nature.
  • Pantheism – this is the concept that everyone is part of the universe, therefore we are all gods and capable of god-like abilities if we can raise our awareness and/or eventually ascend.
  • Polytheism / Paganism – this is the concept of worshipping, specific, often-fickle, temperamental, and egotistical gods who need to be appeased.
  • Satan as god – I argue there is an overt and covert angle to this. The overt part is the Church of Satan – just admit that’s with whom you align. The covert side is where well-meaning believers believe in a God-like deity who they think is the God of Abraham, but is really just Satan. Without calling them out, you can always tell them “by their fruit”. Who claims to worship God, but harms and kills people? This is what I could call the covert side of people unwittingly worshipping Satan.
  • Specific person as god – this is your typical “cult” scenario where a human claims to be a god, and he/she has followers. These tend to be short-lived.
  • Technology as god – this is also sort of “self as god” because things like Transhumanism, and the coming Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) in the year 2042 dictate that either we will merge with machines and become immortal. Or, an ASI will come about, cure all disease, and become our benevolent leader.
  • Universe as god – this is a vague term and I think is a bit of “Law of Attraction” and a bit of pantheism. This is concept that the universe itself is an impersonal deity to whom you can fellowship, because it’s generally benevolent. Think “I asked the universe to send me this person!”
• New Age / Pro-Deity / Pro-Spirit World: this is just generally the concept that there is a spirit world, in that spirit world there are helpful spirits, and there are various tools and techniques to operate in that realm. From watching a lot of testimonies from people who practiced this, and who converted to Christianity – it would seem that this is real, except there is not a single “good” spirit in this realm. It’s ALL of the Enemy’s workers. At best, the Enemy keeps the person distracted and away from the Truth. At worst, the person ends up falling and actively working for the Enemy and/or trapped by the Enemy. This is dangerous stuff for your soul.
• Pro-Self: this is generally the concept that I am going to determine my own destiny. I don’t need God (if He exists), and can do it on my own. I break it down like this:
  • Anti-theism – this is where people know God exists, but are offended by it, and actively fight against Him by attacking His followers. Think: your typical militant “atheist”
  • Atheism – this is where people claim to not believe the evidence for God and therefore take their life into their own hands.
  • Self-Help, Vision Boards, etc. – this is generally the “empowerment” and “self-help” movement that really disregards / ignores God. It’s all about focusing on you, and leveraging everything you can to determine your path in life. God does not factor into the equation.
  • Machiavelli – this is the concept of following Machiavellian principles. This is based on the author Niccolo Machiavelli’s book “The Prince” (circa 1500) where he describes a way of living where you do everything purely in the service of your own needs. If there is no God, there is no morality, so do whatever you want to get whatever you want.
• Nature of Reality: this is generally the ideal of considering that the reality that you know, is really fundamentally different and not the obvious reality that you observe day-to-day. For example:
  • Simulation Theory – this is the idea that life isn’t actually life. Instead, we’re living in an incredibly-detailed simulation. Perhaps it’s something similar to the Virtual Reality suits that exist today, except far more advanced. If we’re living in a simulated reality, then we probably don’t need to worry about God, because none of this is real, right?
  • Multiple dimensions – there are a few different takes on this, but it’s generally the concept that “you” exist in multiple dimensions, so what you perceive is either based on your vibration/frequency and/or there is the concept that since you live in multiple realities living out every possible outcome of every atom in the universe, it doesn’t really matter what you do in this reality. Again, if you are deep down this rabbit hole, you are not pursuing God and His will for your life.
  • Flat Earth – this is the concept that earth is really a flattened disc with the “south pole” being the outer edge. That means that there is a big conspiracy then, by the people who “run” this flat earth. That means then that we already have a god-like overseer, so no sense looking any farther.
• Agnostic / Apathy: this, I think, is one of the Enemy’s favorite places to get someone because they are handled and out of the way. Why care about God? Who cares, there’s not enough information out there anyway. These people are out of the picture, not-saved, and not causing the Enemy any trouble.
• Nihilism: this, I assume, is the Enemy’s top favorite – when a person loses all hope. Perhaps this person worked their way through all of the labyrinths above, and saw all of the flaws. Finally, they just gave up. If you come to the conclusion that all of these things are false AND you have not found the way to the Truth, that is deep level of despair. Because after all, if God did not exist, this existence, everything you know, every relationship you have – it’s all truly, truly meaningless. If the Enemy can get your thinking here, you are not-saved, not causing him any trouble, and you’re probably pulling others down into your pit of despair too.

With all of that said, this is just the Enemy’s schemes for distracting people about the nature of God, and the nature of salvation. The Enemy also works in all kinds of ways to mess up all kinds of things in life – primarily because he hates God, and wants to ruin God’s plans for us.

What about Afterlife?

Another facet of interest in your journey might be: what about the offer of afterlife? If you have a religion which can help you in this life, that is nice, but what about the afterlife – if there is one? Well, that gets interesting. With a few, small exceptions – Christianity is the only religion that talks about, never mind freely offers you an everlasting, eternal afterlife.
Let’s take a closer look. First, here’s a snapshot of the worlds religions (circa 2010):

And here’s my understanding and summary of these and others’ view on a living afterlife:

This isn’t necessarily a reason to believe Christianity is true, but it is notable that it’s the only religion and worldview really making this offer and it’s offered freely. It takes into account that we are sinful by nature and cannot do good works – this offer is based on belief. Again, in my own studies, I looked into this and found the conclusion to be notable.