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The title of this page is ISKCON Hare Krishna which are the two primary names by which this group is widely known. To members of the group itself they refer to themselves by name as Internationational Society of Krishna Consciousness or ISKCON. To those outside the group, they are known by the nickname Hare Krishnas which is derived from the mantra of Hare Krishna which devotees would chant publicly.
ISKCON Hare Krishna is a Vishnuite sect of Hinduism which itself can be divided into three main forms of worship:
This Hindu tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, began back in the 15th century by a Bengalese Brahmin (high priestly caste of Hinduism) named Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who develoed the Doctrines of Krishnaism from among the Hindu sect of Vishnuism. It was based on the idea that the god Vishnu revealed himself in the form of Krsna (Krishna) and that this Krishna was the supreme god.
But it was the relatively recent work of Abhay Charan De Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the 1960s that caused the movement to become widely known in the West during the 1960s and 1970s, ultimately resulting in the creation and incorporation of ISKCON Hare Krishna as an official organization. Prabhupada passed away in the 1970s but he continues to be the primary figure of ‘spiritual’ guidance for the ISKCON Hare Krishna.
This guidance occurs by way of his written works: Bhagavad-Gita: As It Is and the periodical which the group publishes called “Back to the Godhead”
Today, ISKCON Hare Krishna is ruled by two different groups, one group of 11 men rule over “spiritual” areas and then a board of directors handles the administrative areas of responsibility.
Many Hindu sects began to emerge with the idea that their own god was a “personal” god of “love” etc. in response to the spread of the gospel (good news) of the Biblical God who demonstrates His love for sinful humanity by coming to earth and paying our death sentence in the person of His Son Jesus (Rom 5:8)
The Lord Jesus made it clear that genuine eternal depended on a right and truthful understanding of who God is in truth and exactly who His Son is – so that when we cry out for forgiveness and mercy, we cry out to the One true God and when we put our faith in His Son for the forgiveness of our sinful heart, we trust in the right and truthful Son of God:
Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent."
The Hindu gods and the ISKCON Hare Krishna god in particular are considered to be “one” with their creation, meaning they are are not separate from what they have made but subject and even comprised of it. This is completely contrary to the Biblical God in that He created everything by a word of His mouth through by and for His Son and is therefore not subject to it but eternally above and beyond it:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
The ISKCON Hare Krishna Jesus is merely a man who is the son of their god Krsna (Krishna). Their Jesus is not a “savior” and especially not the creator of the universe which the Bible says of the real Jesus:
"He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him."
Regarding salvation – i.e. the afterlife, there are completely contradictory methods between ISKCON Hare Krishna beliefs and the truth of God’s word. The Bible says that humanity stands condemned due to an in-born eternally lethal heart of sin toward our Maker, God Almighty. But His Son came to earth to pay our eternal death penalty with His eternally valuable (worthy) body and that if we believe in Him for salvation, we can know that we have eternal life:
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The ISKCON Hare Krishna will deny this gospel and the Jesus of the Bible as they believe in the traditional Hindu belief of reincarnation blended with a touch of Buddhism whereby a devotee must work off all the evils of his past life (bad karma) by doing good works in this current life. According to Prabhupada’s “Bhagavad-Gita As It Is” p. 326, he defines these “good works” as getting rid of ignorance of Krishna through disciplinary devotion and chanting his name (which is how they came to be known as Hare Krishnas) hearing and singing his praises, meditating upon the divine play and deeds of KRSNA and engaging in the rites and ceremonies of his worship.
The devotee must also repeat the name of Krishna to the count of beads (c.f. Roman Catholics praying to Mary repeatedly extolling her godlike attributes while counting beads of the rosary) along with self-denial and sacrifice in order to attain the finality of Nirvana (one with the universe who is god to them) and to escape the endless cycle of rebirth through reincarnation.
There are several troublesome issues with this view of “salvation” from ISKCON Hare Krishna. The first of which is, no one knows exactly how many acts or Krishna worship and devotion are required in any given life to escape the torment of eternal rebirth.
Secondly, working off one’s bad karma via reincarnation is obviously a man-made doctrine of demons as it doesn’t solve the problem of evil for humanity but only perpetuates it. That is to say that one’s bad karma must be worked off by someone else committing the evils to you that you committed in the past life, which means that person must have ANOTHER person come along and work evil against THEM to work off THEIR bad karma and on and on and on for eternity.
Finally, the real God of Scripture reveals in His word that all other gods besides him are demons and that those that give them worship, sing their songs and praises are actually offering worship to demons whether they realize it or not. This means that chanting a demon’s name repeatedly is a recipe for disaster in a person’s life as the Bible says that the modus operandi of demons (fallen angels) is to steal, kill and destroy whereas Jesus’ purpose in coming was that we would have life and have it more abundantly.
"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."
"They provoked His jealousy with foreign gods; they enraged Him with abominations. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear."
"What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons."
Once considered a cult due to the odd dress of orange (similar to Buddhist monk attire) and the shaved heads with a lock of hair. The Hare Krishnas used to descend upon airports in an effort to raise money for their faith but the court case ISKCON v. Lee a 1992 Supreme Court decision stated that airports are not public areas, and can thus forbid fundraising activities.
The most famous Hare Krishna of all time was the Beatles guitarist George Harrison, even donating a temple to the group. His first hit as a soloist “My Sweet Lord” in 1970 was a song of devotion to Krishna but typical with the demonic realm, it was a complete theft of the song “He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons who sued and won in court.
Since the death of the founder in 1977, ISKCON Hare Krishna has been an embattled group with charges of abuse, control and financial impropriety. In addition to this, the members are worked extremely hard while convinced to exist in total isolation from their families. All of these characteristics would point to this group as a cult, not of the Christian faith i.e. a Christian cult like the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses but a cult of the Hindu faith like Transcendental Meditation (TM) or Rajneeshism.
It was only upon visiting the Hare Krishna headquarters (ISKCON temple) in India and conversations with local Hindus that I would discover that the Hare Krishnas are mostly considered a “sect” of the Hindu religion and not a Hindu cult. However, in the West, the Hare Krishnas are considered a cult but have largely disappeared from relevance in the public sphere.
No one receives eternal life and eternal presence with God (from Whom all good things come – James 1:17), by belonging to the right church, denomination, world religion, or by having a particular world view. Rather only those who trust in the Lord Jesus (preached by the Apostles in the Bible) for their own sin. We will not trust in a Savior for sins that we either don’t believe we have or that we think aren’t deserving of hell. But the Bible says that ALL have sin and the wages of that sin is eternal separation from God (death). The good news is that the Bible says that you can know that YOU have eternal life. Click the button below to see if you are genuinely saved from your sins according to the Bible: