Fairly remote from the main centers of mankind among a small number of people, one called Jesus said many centuries ago, “I and My father are One” and “I am the Way.” Jesus had a profound effect on a large part of the world and inspired a long line of saints and lovers of God. In an even more remote area among an equally small number of people, one called Mohammed said, “Come in under the shade of this tree, for the Way is beset with dangers.” And Mohammed
set in motion a remarkable outpouring of spirituality. In the Sufis can be seen the life of compassion for others and love for God that Mohammed set in motion. Similar pictures could be presented in relation to other known forms of the God-Man—Christ, Messiah, Prophet, Buddha, Rasool, or Savior. Numerous religions are based on the concept of Savior. The North American Indians, the Maoris, and the Polynesians, as examples, held the idea of a Divine Incarnation. In the Koran occurs the
sentence, “We [God] have sent Our Messengers into every corner of the earth and there is no one who has not heard of Us.” And in the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita, there is the statement, “Whenever the spiritual law has been lost sight of, and materiality has become rampant, I come.” Many religions promise the advent of the Savior, particularly at those times when men generally have given way to hatred, greed, and violence. The God-Man comes when selfishness is at
its height, when anxiety, tension, and insecurity are the major motivating force. And, in desperation, like a person on the brink of death, humanity begins to recollect that the answer must lie with God or Truth. The God-Man, the living embodiment of Truth, sometimes appears as a king, sometimes a carpenter, but whatever outward role he adopts, he continually demonstrates a meaningful “livingness” applicable to everyone, no matter what his or her circumstances in life may be.
In a Christian country, many of us have been brought up on the idea that Jesus was the one and only manifestation of the God-Man for all time. Taught that when Jesus said, “I am the Way,” that the “I am” referred only to Jesus. But consider these statements made by Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I am” and “...I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have the power to lay it down and I have
the power to take it up again.” Have you ever reflected on the idea that Infinite and Indivisible God—the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the Universe—would appear only once, for only a part of the world, and that the only salvation for the rest of the world is to accept and worship this one advent?
