When we think about it, we realize that every cognitively-able human person believes that he or she practices the “true religion.”  Otherwise, why would they be practicing the religion they are practicing?  (And this includes everybody–overtly “religious” people; and those who claim to have no “religion.”) 

Have you ever asked yourself this question?  What gives us–and, for sake of clarity, I will mean by “us” (particularly) those convinced and convicted members of the Reformed expression of the Christian religion–both the “right” and the “confidence” to boldly state that we are, with regard to religious debate, “in the right”?  This is actually a very good, and important question.  I would like to forthrightly answer the query; and then seek to work out some of the details (that I am quite certain may be on many people’s minds). . . .

The true regenerated saints of Christ’s church–and in this case, we will include those who are members of any number of orthodox Christian communions (denominations)–know that they are “in the right” because of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit within them, (cf. for now Rom. 8:16 and 1 Jn. 4:13). . . . I am pretty sure that there will be some objections to this assertion; and I will seek to deal with some of them below.

First of all, somebody might say, “This is not fair; we need to start from a completely ‘blank slate,’ and try to figure out the relative merits of the claims to rational objectivity that are made by all the world’s religions and philosophies, etc. For you to appeal to the ‘Spirit’ of God a priori, does not give everybody a fair shot at the claim of the true religion.”  The objector is correct in some ways; but the truth is, that even if everyone did “lay their religious ‘cards’ on the table,” and they all were evaluated absolutely fairly and objectively–the result would still not lead to an assurance of being “in the right.”

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