They differed. The religions today are spread in the face of the earth and spread divisions and discord. They refute and reject each other like children in a kindergarten.
Christians say Jesus saves, and Muslims say Muhammad saves. Christians say it was Isaac, and Muslims say it was Ishmael. Christians say the cross is required, and Muslims say five daily prayers are required. So they engage and enrage against each other. Books and websites are created to discredit each other.
The prophets who brought these religions are now looking at these from heaven. And the wise men and the enlightened are looking at these with saddened and darkened eyes. Angels of God are crying. For where religions fight with each other, the winner will be Evil, and where one religion rejects others, all religions will be rejected.
So the celebration of demons is now complete. People are turning away from religions because of these disagreements and arguments. People are coming to the fold of Evil in thousands. Nobody repeats the name of the Lord; nobody wakes up before sunrise with hands raised to the Creator of the sun. The world has become silent, mechanical; hearts are empty, and emptiness is our religion now; nihilism is our religion now.
O religions! Stop the fight! You are responsible for the death of religion! You killed yourselves! Know that all religions are true, and every religion has its family, and every religion has helped some people. How can this be? How all religions are true in a world where all religions are fighting, and no two religions agree and approve of each other?
A wise man always finds the gem, even if hidden in pebbles. The Divine path we preach, the pure and perennial religion, the path of simple connection to God and good deeds, is indeed at the heart of all religions. But as fire is covered by smoke, as the sun is covered by clouds, so this pure religion is covered by many non-pure elements: philosophies of all kinds, theologies, rituals, reverence of various people, and historic beliefs all covered this gem like pebbles. So it became hidden from the eyes of man, and differences in religions came into being. So they began to fight and argue.
But when a wise man sees the pure religion at the heart of all religions and knows that this pure religion is enough for man's salvation and exaltation, and when he sees that all the non-pure elements are just for decoration and assistance to the adherent, and that they are not needed in the end, then he truly sees and obtains to the vision.
And it is with this vision that we proclaim all religions are true, and every follower can obtain merit if they follow sincerely. But in the end, it is the pure religion and the power of righteousness that takes the aspirant the final mile to the final destination. So a new aspirant begins with a religion, like a child who is assisted by pictures and cartoons to learn the facts; so he moves along. And the religion helped him to some degree and brought him to the door of the house, but not inside the house yet.
To get into the house, it is time to focus on the pure religion. So everything other than the pure religion—all these philosophies, theologies, trinities, dualities, unities, etc.—will drop from the heart of the aspirant. He will see them as cartoons in children's books. They indeed had some truth to them, but not the ultimate truth, and now is the time to retire them to the attic bookshelf and soar to the highest altitude with the force of the pure religion.
Holding this view and understanding, we see all religions are true, and yet all are imperfect, and none should be exalted as the absolute truth. All these religions have the pure and primal religion at the bottom, and so they are true. But then a lot of fables and philosophies, rites and rituals, and other extraneous elements are added on top.
Of these extraneous elements, some were aids to the aspirant, some were speculations and modeling by those trying to fathom the infinite reality of the Divine with their limited minds, and some were superfluous, useless superstitions and fancies. All these made the religions different and imperfect, but not utterly useless. Some still can benefit from them. Each religion is a vehicle with passengers, and each vehicle goes a few miles and then stops, and this will be the time for another vehicle until you complete your path to the stars.
You can still read Christian scriptures and quote from them, or read Islamic scriptures and be inspired by them, and any gem of the pure religion in any religion you can capture and hold on to. But true religion is beyond them all, and these religions are just immature imitations of that. With this view, all religious fights shall come to an end, and we can have one book from each religion on our bookshelf and benefit from them all, and at the same time stand above them all.
But if religions do not accept this view, if they rebel and revert to fighting, if they continue to turn against each other, then we turn against them all. That is why we say "all religions are true" and at the same time fight with all these religions. And while we endorse them, we aim to destroy them.
But this is not a real destruction; it is indeed to revive them and reconstruct them. For Jesus himself overturned the money changers' tables and other non-pure elements of the temple, and his goal was not to destroy the temple itself but to revive it to its purity.
And Muhammad destroyed the Kaaba and all the idols in it, only to re-establish it as the universal center of monotheistic worship. So it is true with us today. We destroy all today's churches in order to erect the true church, and we destroy all today's mosques to erect the true mosque.
And this true church and true mosque will have no enmity and will be the same and one. And you will see people come out of one and go to the other, like one who goes from his uncle's house to his aunt's house. And all religions indeed become one and in harmony with each other. Nobody refutes others' religions, and under the sun all people—Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Yogis, and others—shall raise their hands to praise the One God, the Father, the Nirvana, and the Sunyata, who is in heaven and above heaven and beyond all.