They differed. The religions today are spread in the face of earth and spread divisions and divides, spread arguments. They refute and reject each other like children in kindergarten.
Christians say Jesus saves and muslims say Muhammad saves. Christian 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 erected to discredit each other.
The prophets who brought these religions are now looking from heaven to this. And the wise men and the enlightened are looking at all these with sadden and darkened eyes. Angels of God are crying. For where religions fight with each other the winner will be the Evil, and where one religion rejects another all religions will be rejected.
So the celebration of demons is now complete. People are turning away from religions due to these disagreements and arguments. People are coming to the fold of evils thousand folds. Nobody repeats the name of the Lord, nobody wakes up before the sunrise with hands risen to the creator of the sun. The world became silent, mechanical, hearts are empty and emptiness is now our religion, nihilism is our religion.
O religions! stop the fight! You are responsible for the death of religion! You killed yourself! Know that all religions are true, and every religion has its family, and every religion helped some people. How this can 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 pure and perennial religion we preach, the path of simple connection to God and good deeds, are indeed at the heart of all religions. But as fire covered by smoke, as sun covered by cloud, 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 grapple.
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 at 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 follows sincerely. But at the end it is the pure religion, and the power of righteousness, that takes the aspirant in 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.
To get into the house it is time to focus on 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 had some truth to them, but not the ultimate truth, and now is the time to retire them to the attic bookshelf and sour to the highest sky with the force of 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 in the bottom, and so they are truth. But then a lot of fables and philosophies, rites and rituals, and other extraneous elements are added on the top.
Of extraneous elements some were aids to the aspirant, some were speculations and modeling of those trying to fathom the infinite reality of the Divine with their limited minds, and some were superfluous and useless superstitious 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 or more then stops, and this will be the time for another vehicle until you complete your path to stars.
You can still read Christian scriptures and quote from them, or read muslim scripture and be inspired with 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 in 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 but indeed it is to revive them and construct them. For Jesus himself overturned the money exchanger and other non-pure elements of the temple, and his goal was not to destroy the temple itself but revive it to its purity.
And Muhammad destroyed Kabbah and all the idols in it, only to re-establish it as the universal center of monotheistic worship. So 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 him 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 another's religion, and under the sun all people, christian, muslim, buddhist, taoist, yogi and all shall raise their hand to praise the God, the Father, the Nirvana and the Sunyatta who is heaven and above the heaven and beyond all.