Amir Tsarfati: It’s a Way of Life

Ever since the Tower of Babel man has been trying to achieve what can only be received.

Genesis 11:1-4
Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Today we live in a world of thousands of religions, and while all claim to be true – and most offer a way to access the afterlife – they all share the same basic defect that was true at the Tower of Babel. Religion makes the follower the primary focus and not God. The desire of the builders of Babel was to make a name for themselves. This is what religion does. It makes people feel better about themselves. They did their duty, they kept the ordinances, they observed the rituals, and thus their name can be listed among the faithful adherents of what they believe. But among the religious is not where we want our name to be listed.

Revelation 13:8
All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Religion replaces truth with sincerity, faith with feelings, and relationship with rituals. During the tribulation, the earth dwellers will worship the Dragon and the Beast through the religion of the world’s most sinister false prophet. They only way to escape the deception and delusion of false religion is to have your name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.   

John 14:1-6
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Jesus did not give Thomas a list of rituals and observances in order to go to where the Lord was heading. He simply told His disciple that “He” was the way to get to the Father’s house and there were no others. No phrases to repeat, no foods to avoid, no days to observe, just believe that Jesus is God like His Father and you will also wind up where He is. (That is not to say there are not things to obey and do after becoming followers of the Way). 

The futility of religion is best demonstrated by the truth that if religious observances could save us, they would be equal to the blood of Christ in value. They would essentially eliminate the need for Jesus to come and die for the sins of the whole world. Again, that is if heaven could be had through the rituals of religion.

James 1:26-27
If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

James 3:8
But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

What James is saying is that religion, if it could make you right with God, would be manifest by never saying or doing anything wrong. He follows this by revealing a truth about us all – no person’s tongue has always been kind, only told the truth, and never said anything wrong. Nor has any person ever lived a spotless, or sinless, life before God. Thus, all religions are useless.

We should all rejoice in the fact that Jesus is the way, truth, and the life, and that means He is the only one who can take us to the Father’s house so that we may be where He is. Religion, rituals, and self-proclaimed righteousness can never do that.

The reality is this, and we have all sung it many times as saints, “What can wash away our sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus,.

Amir Tsarfati, a Jewish Christian, is the founder and president of Behold Israel, a news site to correct the scarcity in trustworthy reportage on issues and events impacting Israel, and to resolve the uncertainty about who or what to believe.