Treasury of Faith index

By J. W. Jepson, D.Min.

All rights reserved, including the right to grant the following permission and to prohibit the misuse thereof:

The Author hereby grants permission to reproduce the text of this article, without changes or alterations*, as a ministry, but not for commercial or non-ministry purposes.

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(First published in The Pentecostal Evangel, February 6, 1977)

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Has anyone ever handed you a piece of counterfeit currency?

Well, unless you examine your currency with an educated eye, you probably don't know. Most people have accepted a considerable amount of bogus "money" over the years, without realizing it. It claimed to be the real thing, and so they innocently took it at face value and passed it on to others.

Although counterfeit money is harmful to the economy, they sensed no immediate injury. It made little or no personal difference to them that they were aware of.

Such might be the case with counterfeit money, but counterfeit religion is a much more serious matter. Bogus doctrines can ruin a person forever!

Yet, we often hear it said, "All religions are good," or, "There is good in all religions."

But is it really true that all religions have real worth? One might ask, by analogy, how much is a phoney bill worth? Are the more realistic-looking counterfeits worth more than the crude ones? Can we touch up the engraving on spurious money and raise its value?

Of course not. No matter how much it is retouched, a counterfeit bill is still worth nothing.

Oh, you might use it as a boomark. Or you might accumulate a big enough pile to paper the walls of your den. (What a shocker that would be to your friends--or to an agent of the Treasury Department!)

Counterfeit money might even give its unsuspecting owner a good feeling, the illusion of possessing the real item. But it cannot do what it claims to do, simply because it is not what it claims to be. As a representative of real value, it is worthless.

Now the same is true of all systems of religion and philosophy that have no real Savior, hence no real salvation.

Of course, when it comes to money, we citizens feel relatively secure in the knowledge that counterfeiting is illegal and that our government has agents working to enforce the laws against "homemade money." So we are reasonably sure that the currency we carry to the grocery store is the real thing.

Not so with religion. In our free society, all religion may circulate freely including counterfeit religion as long as it stays within the law. Our government recognizes that the right of choice belongs to the people. There is no "Consumer Protection Agency" to safeguard us from something that can ruin our souls.