there is but one only

The other day I had a conversation with a man who's been doing street evangelism for 18 years. Which would be great, except that he was a hare krishna monk. It is a worrying thing, that the only people who will happily stand on the street in the cold at dinnertime talking about who God is, are people who follow false religions. It was the same when we had the Mormons who kept coming back and back to the flat, not for a cup of tea or anything since they don't do caffeine, but to talk about salvation, and puzzle over the eternity of the Sonship of Christ, and ask questions about how repentance is a gift, not something you can do for yourself. If they're not a member of a cult, it just seems that people in this country would rather not hear about the existence of God, or the religious way of living your life. (Unless there's coffee involved - see this post from a blog I'm keeping an eye on from time to time.)

Both of the mormons and the hare krishna man were (a) nice people, (b) happily sacrificing themselves, money wise and time wise, to their respective religious causes, and (c) they believed in (some kind of) God.

That makes it all the more distressing, when there was this willingness to serve and worship, and this sincere acknowledgement of the existence a powerful good divine being, that they were channelling all their devotion towards a false god, directing their worship to a being who at best exists only in their respective imaginations. The hare krishna man believed God is a spirit, and that he is the Father of us all, and that Jesus was one of his eternal sons just like the rest of us. Which was his way of trying to establish a point of agreement with me, after I mentioned the three persons in the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and these three are one God. The point was that he did not worship the same God as this, and that is a problem. If he is worshipping a God other than the triune God, and if it is the triune God who is the one living and true God, then the problem is that he is devoting himself to a false god, a being which is not worthy of worship if it exists at all, and one who can't save him. That's as compared to the one who is the one true God, the triune God: "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with blessings ... He that is our God is the God of salvation." Psalm 68:19-20.

This God: who is he? One answer is this, that God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And in the Godhead there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one God. And this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world, to save sinners. Even idolaters can be washed, can be sanctified, can be justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. He is able to cleanse sinners from all filthiness and from all idols, as he says: I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them. (1 Timothy 1:15, 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11, and Ezekiel 36: 25, 37.) There are lots of things I wish I'd told this man now, I must have missed out an unbelievable amount of the gospel, but it's too late for that now. We met in providence and we talked in providence, and none of it was in my hands really anyway. Psalm 45 v 3-5.