How do I know that Christianity is the one true faith, and that Buddhism,
or Hinduism, or any other religion isn’t the "right one?"

I have received a couple of questions which are pretty
similar to this one. Below I have included two similar questions and the
answers I gave. After these two questions/responses, I will add a few
additional comments.

J. O.

How do we know that Christianity is the right religion to be…Because
there are other religions that have a Bible and different gods…. So how
do we know Christianity is right?

This is an excellent question. I think that Christians often do
not take the time to ask this obvious question. This can leave us
unprepared to answer questions that will eventually come up, sometimes at
the most vulnerable times in our lives.

I would say that Douglas Jacoby has done a better job of answering
this question than I will ever be in his book "True and Reasonable" which
is available at www.dpibooks.com Let me give you a short version of the
answer anyway, and you can get and read Douglas’ book at your leisure.

I would also suggest that you read a detailed outline on other
religions I have at my web site. This can give you a snapshot outline so
that you can understand the theology and scripture of the major world
religions. Click on OtherWorldReligions

One could approach your question by comparing the theology of
different religions and showing that Christianity is the "best" religion
because it involves a loving God, grace and so forth. To some extent, this
is begging the question. Even if Christianity was the most attractive
religion, that would not make it be truth. The bottom line is that you
should be a Christian because the Bible is God’s inspired word. All other
religions are false religions and their founders are false teachers
because the Bible is the one and only inspired word of God. The Koran is a
nice book, but it is not from God. The same could be said for the Vedas
and Sutras (scripture of Hinduism), the Ganth (Sikkhism) and so forth.

Let us look at how I know that the Bible is the Word of God. At
this point, what you really should do is pick up a copy of Reasons for
Belief: A Handbook of Christian Evidence which is my book on the subject,
available at www.ipibooks.com, but since you do not have it, let me make a
couple of points and refer you to a couple of articles. I know that the
Bible is the inspired word of God because of fulfilled prophecy,
especially messianic prophecy. According to the Old Testament, the Messiah
had to be born in Bethlehem, be raised near Nazareth, be betrayed for
thirty pieces of silver, be killed in Jerusalem in about 33 AD, be
crucified, have his clothes gambled over, be pierced, and so forth…. All
of these amazingly specific prophecies came true, despite the fact that
many of most of them were outside Jesus’ control. The only explanation I
know of is that the Bible is inspired by God. You can read more about this
in the article MessianicProphecies.

Many many other proofs that the Bible is from God could be quoted.
The historical and archaeological accuracy of the Bible
HistoricalandArchaeoligicalevidence , scientific evidence which supports
the Bible ScientificEvidence, evidence for the miracles of Jesus and
especially the resurrection of Jesus TheResurrectionofJesus. Please do
some looking around. Do not accept easy answers. Consider carefully the
scriptures of other religions, even if it means finding them and reading
them for yourself. This is an excellent question. The answer is worth
putting some time into it. Please ask me more questions if you are not
finding the answers you need.

A second question:

Many people follow religions, based on some sort of Bible, as if a god
would choose to give us something to know he existed. All religions have
doubts, loopholes, seeming contradictions. You’ve said before that a
whole college degree could be devoted to simply the interpretation of the
Bible (among other aspects of religion). Faith doesn’t just exist, it has
to be found, and some people can’t find faith simply from hearing about
Jesus. They simply do not possess the ability. They would have to dig deep
into it- and I know you can agree with me that no one knows. No one really
knows if God exists. We hope that our scriptures are really God inspired
against all doubts, we hope he exists, but no one knows. And no amount of
college education and searching could find an answer- unless a miracle
takes place. But then again- how do we assume the miracle is from the God
of Christianity? Maybe it was just a nameless god deciding to answer a
prayer. There is NEVER any way for us mere humans to know who God is and
what religion is correct. Faith is blind. I know many Christians say that
to me, in answers to my doubts, and I think there may be verses that back
that up to a degree (is there?), but I can’t help but not believe and
follow Christianity unless I had the answers and had no doubts. I can’t
help but be skeptical, and apologize for that nature which shows clearly
in this… "question" which is more or less venting (I also apologize for
it’s length). What it all comes down to is I can not believe because faith
will not come. I can not find enough evidence, and even when I try to
believe blindly as I am told to attempt- it doesn’t work. There’s no
absolute answer to which religion is true. So how, then, after all this
being said, could I discover God and find faith without resorting to
blindness? Or is the only way to believe, for me, is to let go of some of
my unanswerable questions and allow some blindness to enter my faith? (I
don’t know if this is too long and too repetitious of a question for you
to bother!

Wow! You have some deep questions! I do not mind providing
an answer at all.

I would agree with you in part, that one cannot absolutely,
totally, completely, without any conceivable doubt, prove the existence of
God–specifically the God of the Bible. But then again, I cannot prove
absolutely, completely, etc that World War II happened or that man went to
the moon or that atoms exist and so forth. The fact is that we cannot
live our lives effectively without making certain working assumptions
which we do not question on a daily basis. A rational person makes
assumptions which appear to have a very high probability of being true. I
assume that my mother loves me because all the evidence points in that
direction. She might actually be faking me out and hate my guts, but I
can run with the assumption that she loves me

It is the same with faith in God and the Bible. I absolutely
do not agree at all that faith in the existence of God and in the
reliability of the Bible is blind faith, but I would agree that no matter
how much investigation one does, there is still an element of doubt which
could remain. What one must do is look at the facts and reach a
reasonable conclusion. After reaching this reasonable conclusion, one
must act on that conclusion, or life becomes aimless and empty.

Consider, for example, the resurrection of Jesus from the
dead on the third day. If it is true that Jesus rose from the dead, then
that certainly does provide extremely solid support for his claims to be
God in the flesh. This is simply common sense. Your job is to look at
the data and reach a reasonable conclusion. What is the most likely
explanation of the facts? Might Jesus have simply passed out and
recovered later? Might his disciples have taken his body away in order to
be able to claim that he was raised from the dead? What about the five
hundred eye-witnesses to his resurrection and the fact that so many of
them died for their faith–none of them recanting. Please consider
reading a fairly complete account of this question in the article at this
web site, The Resurrection of Jesus. Bottom line, the evidence in
extremely strong that Jesus did in fact raise from the dead. Belief in
Jesus being the Messiah is not blind faith.

Consider also Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah–the
fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of the anointed one of God.
Jesus, in Luke 24:44 claimed to have fulfilled all the prophecies of the
Messiah. Now, this is either true or it is not. I do not see any middle
ground. You could look at Psalms 22 which predicts that the Messiah would
be crucified and that his attackers would argue over his clothes. You
might consider Zechariah 11:12,13 which predicted that God, as the
Messiah, would be "sold" for thirty pieces of silver, or in Daniel 9:20-25
which predicted that the Messiah would come to Jerusalemin around AD 30
and many other examples like this. Then you could ask the hard questions
like "how do I really know he was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver, or
that he was crucified," and so forth. There is a pretty thorough article
on this at the web site Messianic Prophecies.

I could go on almost indefinitely. I could mention miracles
of Jesus, scientific support for the Bible and so forth. At some point,
the evidence in support of the existence of God and the inspiration of the
Bible becomes overwhelming. In fact, I believe that for the open-minded
and reasonable person, rejecting belief in God and in Jesus becomes a huge
leap of faith. No, faith in God and in the Bible is not blind. Believing
in the Bible is kind of like belief that Abraham Lincoln lived. All the
evidence points this way, but at some point we simply need to decide
whether we are willing to suspend our natural skepticism and accept the
obvious. That does not mean that we stop thinking, but it means that for
practical reasons, sometimes one must simply admit that the evidence in
support of the Bible is strong enough that the course of wisdom is to
accept it is true. I am convinced that any reasonable person willing to
check out the evidence will come to faith. The reason many do not come to
faith in God is either ignorance of the facts or because to believe would
mean that one must change, repent of their sins, and turn their life over
to the God who created them. Have you read my book, "Reasons for Belief:
A Handbook of Christian Evidence"? It is full of the kind of evidence
which you seem to need. It is available at www.ipibooks.com

Are there unanswered questions? Yes, of course there are.
However, at some point, you need to be willing to ask yourself, what is
the preponderance of the evidence telling me. I served on a jury last
summer here in San Diego. Did we have absolute, hard, completely
open-and-shut, totally beyond the shadow of a possible doubt evidence that
the man was guilty? Perhaps not, but the preponderance of the evidence
convinced us beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty. That is how it
is with the existence of God and the inspiration of the Bible. For us to
refuse the evidence and let the man go would have been a crime. At some
point, the same applies to faith in God.

John Oakes