What Is The Oldest Religion?

What is the oldest religion in the world?

After the Fall

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve decided for themselves what the knowledge of good and of evil was, thereby rejecting God as their Lord. Instead of listening to the voice of God, they listened to their own evil desires to satisfy the flesh “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Gen 3:6). It was the unholy trinity of the pride of life, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, very similar to what the Apostle John wrote; “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1st John 2:16). The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph 2:1-3). They rejected God, “therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen 3:23-24).

The Beginning of Calling Upon God

There is no evidence anywhere in the Book of Genesis that Adam and Eve ever repented. We just don’t know if they were saved or not. It doesn’t appear so since they had chances to confess their sin of disobedience to God but Eve blamed the serpent, Adam blamed the woman and really, God since Adam said it was the woman you gave me (Gen 3:12), but it was a choice they made as free moral agents and by their not accepting responsibility for their actions, they showed that they never really felt remorse over their sin in the Garden. It was only later that it was said “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 4:26b) so it was at that time, and not before with Adam and Eve, that people finally began calling on the name of the Lord. This appears to be the origin of religion since this was before Babel and the first appearance of the pagan religion and the rejection of God in Genesis 11.

Pagan Religions

The origin of the pagan religion is found in Genesis 11 where it says “the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:1-4). There is a lot in this paragraph. For one thing, they wanted to make a name for themselves, thereby rejecting God. And they wanted to bypass God to reach heaven and so they reasoned, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:4). After this, “the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Gen 11:6-7) so “the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city” (Gen 11:8).

Relationship, Not Religion

Christianity is not really about religion; it’s about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We can see with the religious leadership of the Jews in Jesus’ day what being religious had done and that was nothing. They thought works and not faith would save them, not realizing that a person is saved by faith through grace and not works of our own merit (Eph 2:8-9). It would be much later that anyone would call upon God again and that happens with Abram (later changed to Abraham) in Genesis 12:1-2 where it says “the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” and so later, Abram built “an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 12:8). Abram simply “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Before this call of God, the pure religion of calling upon God’s name had been completely corrupted by idolatry, even reaching to the point of human sacrifice. Satan-inspired religion had divided into literally hundreds of religions, none of which was the one, true religion of faith in God.

Conclusion

If you don’t have Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you’ve got God’s wrath abiding on you (John 3:18, 36b) and will pay for your own sins (Rev 20:12-15) which will have no end. We all need to repent and trust in Christ or reject Jesus and be separated from God forever (Rev 21:8). Either you will have Christ take upon Himself your sins through repentance and faith or you will have to pay for them yourselves for all time. People reject Jesus because of their pride, their unwillingness to humble themselves, and their desire to swim in the lusts of their own wicked hearts and not turn from their sins (Jer 17:9) and so Paul writes specifically to you if you reject Christ that it is “because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works” (Rom 2:5-6).

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.