09 Jun 2021
[A question from an online discussion group brought to Swami by Śrī Anil.]
Swami replied: Everybody says that his own religion alone is correct and that the God of his religion alone created this entire humanity. In that case, when different countries were isolated from each other in the past, the religious preaching given by God in a certain country did not reach all the countries in the world immediately. It means only the people of that country got the opportunity of salvation, whereas the rest of humanity lost the opportunity. This makes God appear partial to a particular country. But it does not make sense since He is the creator of entire humanity. Today, the preaching given by God in the past to that one particular country has reached all the countries in the world. So everyone has an equal opportunity to follow it and be saved. But what about those past generations that were deprived of that special preaching given by God? That divine message did not reach their country due to the poor modes of communication of olden times. Were they sent to hell for no fault of theirs? Or did the God of that religion only create the human beings in one particular country so that he is not responsible for saving the people of other countries?
Thus, we see that the claim of only one religion or the God of only one religion being true and others being false is totally absurd. The one God, who created the entire humanity, came to various countries even when they were disconnected and preached the same essential spiritual knowledge to the people in each country in their own different languages, following their different cultures. These essentially same, but superficially different preachings of the same God are the various religions we see today.
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