Well, I’ll tell you first that I believed you were likely Jewish from your first comment, and after your last response confirmed that with a little searching here on FR, so my reply will be with that understanding between us.
So on your picture of Vishnu, that’s just something superficial. As secular humanists say, you can make all sorts of connections between different religions.
On Christianity, though, doesn’t it say something that all over the world, where people had no knowledge of the true God and His continual relationship with man, going back to the time He created Adam and Eve, because their ancestors turned from God and invented idols, people know the true God today? In every land around the world, people are praying to Him and read His Word, and have learned about and meditate on the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, Moses, and David, etc.? Isn’t that enough to make one wonder if that is a work of God Himself, of spreading His fame and revealing Himself? And as you know, that happened through Christianity.
As I’m sure you know, too, we believe Jesus was and is the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. There are a great many reasons for this belief of ours. One is that we came to know the truth about God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In essence, the Gospel means that God Himself came to earth in the form of a man, and died as an innocent sacrifice to take the punishment we should rightly suffer for our sins. In that regard, the sacrifices of animals was a shadow of this ultimate, one-time sacrifice.
Now these are some things to back up this belief. First, Jesus’ sacrifice is to restore us to relationship with God. For God to be just, He can’t just forgive sin, like a judge can’t just let a guilty person go free because He wants to show mercy. And Jesus also showed that while someone might not commit actual murder or adultery in his lifetime, he still does them in his heart, but not looking at things that way, people get puffed up with religious pride, especially if they do things like pray a lot or give offerings to God. Jesus said the proper prayer to God wasn’t, as a Pharisee, one of the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, prayed, “Thank You for not making me like other men,” whom the Pharisee said are evil, and then he added how he regularly prayed, fasted and tithed. Instead, Jesus said the proper prayer was one of a tax collector who beat his breast and prayed, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus said that the latter man went down to his house justified, not the first. Jesus brought low the proud, including the religious proud who trusted in themselves, that they were righteous, and raised up those who were humble in heart towards God, knowing themselves to be unworthy to be in His presence. And this is one of the very many points where Jesus doesn’t contradict the Old Testament, but actually brings out what was taught there, but the religious leaders of the time of Jesus’ appearing weren’t teaching the people as they should have.
Similarly, just as the Old Testament teaches that “the just shall live by their faith,” and gives so many examples, so does the New. When Jesus appeared and revealed Himself to be the Messiah, it was the humble people who by faith believed that He was and is the Messiah, but the religious leaders who rejected Him. The prophecies of the Messiah existing, and coming to earth and being rejected, and also suffering for the sins of others, are all in the Old Testament, among other prophecies. The Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ time also considered some of the prophecies to show the Messiah to be the Son of Joseph, or “the Suffering Servant,” and others to show Him to be the Son of David, or “the Conquering King,” and I read about this that some thought this could mean that there were two Messiahs, as the two different roles seemed irreconcilable. Yet in what happened in Jesus’ earthly life, that He was God on earth but was crucified and killed by the unbelieving, who didn’t live by faith, yet then overcame death through the Resurrection, as the first of those who lived by faith in God who would be resurrected to eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, both types of prophecies are fulfilled. His death, as it was God’s plan to redeem mankind, also satisfied the requirement that every sin be punished. He took the eternal punishment for every last sin, of thought, word and deed, of every person, if we accept that He died in our place, taking our punishment on Himself. This was part of restoring justice, eternally, while also restoring man to a relationship with God, as Adam and Eve had, being in His presence - a God who is perfectly holy while we aren’t. As David said, our sins are truly against God alone, in a sense. To the extent that we’re sinning against others here, we’re sinning against other sinners, but that’s not the case with God. If God in His mercy wanted to allow us not to be eternally punished for our sins, which would be justice, then someone would have to suffer for those sins in our place, and that could only be Him, the being we wronged. It’s Him who was wronged, and who is doing the forgiving, and it must be Him doing the suffering for us. It would not be just for Him to have an angel, for example, to suffer for our sins, since He is the one sinned against but choosing to forgive us and let us escape our eternal punishment. Therefore, if He has done this for us, what should our response to Him be in gratitude for what He’s done, suffering for us while we had no regard for Him, profaning His name and disregarding His commandments without fear of Him? One thing He requires is that we forgive others, since He has forgiven us. Jesus told a parable about a servant who owed his master an enormous amount of money, with no hope to repay it. The master ordered the servant and his family sold to pay the debt, but when the servant begged for forgiveness, the master forgave him. But then the servant went out and found a fellow servant who owed him a little money by comparison, and he grabbed the man by the neck and demanded repayment. When some other of the master’s servants saw this, they told the master, and he then told the servant he had forgiven that he was wicked for not forgiving so little when he’d been forgiven so much, and he then sold that man. So that is how God reconciles us to Himself, and each other, while being just.
Jews simply do not believe in the New Testament, whereas you believe in the TaNaCh. We furthermore believe that Islam and Christianity ‘formatted’ (like an old floppy disk) the world for the imminent coming of Moshiach which will include the universal belief in one G-d.
Your words were heart-felt I have no doubt. And you have a deep love for Jesus, and faith. But just as many people believe in that wacky picture above with the same faith and fervor.
Go back to TaNaCh. There is not yet knowledge of G-d and world-wide peace. Moshiach hasn’t come, but is close.
So much explaining to get around:
I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD WHICH BROUGHT YOU FROM THE LAND OF EGYPT. THOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME
...But I understand. I went to Christian schools for two decades and learned of the New Law day after day for hundreds upon hundreds of days. Why was I not saved? You write the rules, you and only you (a very new idea!) Are “forgiven,” and Heaven is yours. I lived in the Middle East for a bit and read KORAN. Same idea. Except, of course, YOUR god is right and THEIR god is wrong. Can’t you see? Anyone else simply isn’t saved. Best part is, you’re a Jew too, aren’t you? Of course you are. The Book was simply rewritten! Say the Shema, my brother! You are a Jew! Grafted in! Exclusive and righteous, but better! Praise be to whomever!