Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
I've got here the Upanishads, one of the Hindu scriptures, and I'm going to read from the
Amrita-Bindu Upanishad in verse 5. It says, practice meditation, stop all vain talk.
Verse 7 says, keep repeating the ancient mantram,
until it reverberates in your heart. Now this term mantram or mantra is something that's pretty
important in Hinduism and Buddhism. You'll hear it a lot and some of them are just as short as
one syllable, just the om, but others are a little bit longer, a full sentence or phrase. It's
something that's just chanted over and over again. Sometimes they're even just chanted in a foreign
language that no one even understands and nobody knows what they even mean. Like nobody really
knows what om means for example. But what does the Bible say about chanting vain repetitions
like that? It's funny because it said, well stop all vain talk but just keep chanting the mantra
om. Okay well let's see what the Bible says. In Matthew 6 7 it says, but when you pray use not
vain repetitions as the heathen do. Well who are the heathen? Hindus, Native Americans, Buddhists,
pagans of all stripes. When you pray use not vain repetitions as the heathen do for they think that
they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them for your father
knoweth what things you have need of before you ask him. So the Bible is really clear that chanting
does not get us anywhere with God. In fact we're commanded not to chant. Now what's strange about
this is that some branches of Christianity have adopted this pagan chanting from the Hindus and
the Buddhists. For example the Orthodox Church has these monks who will just literally spend
hours and hours chanting over and over again Jesus Christ son of God be merciful to me the sinner
Jesus Christ son of God be merciful to me the sinner and they'll just keep chanting that for
hour upon hour upon hour and they think it makes them more spiritual brings them closer to God.
They think that they're going to be heard for their much speaking. Roman Catholics will chant
hail Mary's and they'll chant our fathers and so forth. Why? Because they've been influenced by
the heathen the pagans and if you look at Hinduism you'll see that they have beads where they
literally count off the mantras that they're chanting and the prayers that they pray they
count them on beads. Hmm does that sound familiar? Yeah the Roman Catholic Church has borrowed that
pagan practice of using beads to count their prayers directly from the Hindus. The whole
practice of having monasteries and monks and nuns all comes out of Buddhism. So the Hindu scriptures
tell you to chant mantras over and over again whereas the Bible tells us to avoid vain repetitions.
you