Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Bible Study Community!
Back in 1940, a game show started on the radio called “Truth or Consequences” that soon became quite popular. In fact, ten years later it transitioned into “must-see” TV to the point that that on March 31, 1950 the town of Hot Springs, New Mexico changed its name to Truth or Consequences which it is still known by to this day. I bring you this nugget of American history to introduce a subject that has been rattling around in my peanut brain of late which is that the secular culture surrounding the True Church of Jesus Christ is a lot less interested in TRUTH than it used to be. Not that they ever had a particularly vaulted regard for it, but in recent years Truth has come to be a lower virtue on a generalized level than the pursuit of humanistic goals with their ever-changing requirements for acceptable conduct.
What I am saying is that American culture has lost a lot of its former respect for Truth as a particular virtue even if it wasn’t always practiced. Certainly, people have always trampled on it regularly but we used to try to hide our lies and at least appear to be truthful. If politicians or business folks were caught being less than truthful, there were cultural consequences to deal with. In other words, as a culture we valued Truth even though individually we sometimes told lies or misrepresented things so we could get some kind of advantage for ourselves. Even so, we looked at lying as something that was wrong, a sin to be avoided, and we promised ourselves to try to do better, or to do a better job of hiding it. Being found out as untruthful could have brought disastrous consequences whereas today people lie openly with no apparent awareness that negative consequences ALWAYS result when Truth has been abandoned.
What is Real Truth?
Clearly of late, Truth has fallen on hard times and the related consequences are decimating American culture. The wages of sin after all DO produce death (Romans 6:23) whether people believe it or not. That’s the way things actually work because God set it up that way and we need to understand this situation a lot better than we presently do because we’re experiencing a really momentous moment in history. By all the signs, we are inside the end times, and what then should the role of the True Church be in the face of widespread intentional and unrestrained lying? Should we be doing more of the same or something new? And, a good place to start considering that question is by agreeing on what TRUTH actually is when it’s based on a biblical world view. What is real Truth?
We need to have a good answer for this basic question for two main reasons: 1) because Truth is the essence of the Word of God and its message, and 2) because there’s a wide range of opinion within secular culture as to what Truth actually is. Some folks think that advocating a biblical view of Truth is a means of trying to control people. Others say it’s subjective and depends upon individual preference and opinion. And still others believe that Truth comes from a collective cultural consensus. As True believers, we need to refuse to allow the secular world to define it for us. So, here is a good definition I found on line in an article written by Pastor John MacArthur:
“Truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God. Even more to the point: Truth is the self-expression of God.”
Real Truth is indisputable fact that is eternal in its nature. It’s absolute, unchangeable, immutable and its source is God Almighty. He is indeed the God of Truth (Psalm 31:5) and Jesus said of Himself, “I am the way and the Truth…” (John 14:6). He also said that the written logos Word is Truth that “cannot be broken” (John 10:35) and will live and abide forever (1 Peter 1:23). In sum, true Christians believe that the Truth is perfectly laid out in the Bible and that it contains every answer to life on any topic making it a complete and never-changing guide for mankind. In short, God IS Truth just as much as He IS love.
Once you take possession of the idea that God IS Truth and that Jesus is incarnate (God manifested in human form) Truth, you will understand why Truth is under such intense attack in our culture. This is a spiritual situation, a confrontation between good and evil, between Christ and Satan, between Truth and pseudo-truth between biblical correctness and political correctness. It is spiritual warfare at the highest level and it’s being waged over the souls of the relatively and presumably few people remaining on the earth who are temporarily blinded (2 Corinthians 4:4) but still have “ears to hear” the Truth while we wait expectantly for the narrow gate to close forever (Matthew 7:13).
Understanding the Pseudo-Truth
True Christians who live with Truth as their base-case anchor have trouble understanding how so many people could be willing to speak what is to us blatant and obvious and stupid untruth. Truth being virtue goes back at least 3,500 years to the Law that God gave to Moses and I want to summarize below ten verses that are clear concerning how the Lord feels about truthfulness:
Leviticus 19:11 = Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.
Proverbs 6:16-19 = God hates a lying tongue.
Proverbs 19:9 = A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaks lies shall perish.
Colossians 3:9-10 = Lie not to one another.
John 8:44 = The devil is the father of lies.
Hebrews 6:18 = It is impossible for God to lie.
Proverbs 12:22 = The Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in people who are trustworthy.
Revelation 21:8 = All liars, shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone.
Zechariah 8:16 = This is something you should do: speak the truth to one another.
John 8:31-32 = If you continue in my word, you shall know the truth, and be free.
If you watch the TV news on any channel or network, you will see and hear many politicians lying to your face. You know they are lying and they know they are lying. You will also see and hear most of the members of the American press lying and exaggerating and deceiving to your face. You know they are lying and they know they are lying. You will also hear companies advertising their products and services and many of them are lying and exaggerating and deceiving to your face. You know they are lying and they know they are lying. There are college professors, political organizations, unions, activists, bureaucrats, sports organizations, foreign governments and a bunch of other people lying to your face. You know they are lying and they know they are lying. How did this come to be an okay way to live in America?
Having pondered this question for a few months now, I think there are at least two major factors to consider in relation to an end-times context where lying has become the norm:
1. The first is that the prevailing humanistic objectives of non-believers have taken on their own virtue in the minds of their proponents and have become much higher in value than the virtue of truth-telling. It’s not just lying to obtain your own benefit any more but lying now is of no importance when compared to the desirability of achieving certain humanistic objectives that have replaced Christian principles and values. In other words, lying that helps achieve humanistic objectives has become a counterfeit virtue that has totally replaced the former virtue of telling the Truth.
2. Secondly, the Bible says that at the end times, God will give many (maybe most) non-believers over to their lusts and will no longer draw them to Himself. They will have had their opportunity and lost it. Consequently, they will have exchanged the truth of God for a lie by choosing Satan to worship and serve rather than the Creator. It’s one of the other: only two choices. As a result, many (maybe most) non-believers are no longer able to even consider the possibility that God is Truth even though the evidence of God’s existence is all around them and an awareness of Him has been evident within each of them since they were born (Romans 1:18-32).
The Bible says that understanding the Truth will set people free (John 8:32). Understanding comes from pursuing the Word with curiosity and purpose and determination so it can change us from the inside out. Conversely, rejection of the Truth and supplanting it with pseudo-truth based on humanistic values and pursuits will put people into bondage including helplessness in the face of sin, fear instead of faith and the control of others instead of freedom. Moreover, when real Truth is replaced, an important consequence is the loss of wisdom which explains why the liars pursue ways to deal with our cultural problems that are naïve, unworkable and frankly stupid.
There may be a revival coming sometime soon, a Third Great Awakening before that Narrow Gate closes. A lot of people think so. Indeed, the True Church should be supporting that idea and working to help make it happen. There are still some stragglers on the earth or Jesus would have already returned. In the meantime, the problem that the world has with Truth is not likely to improve and will probably get even get worse. Read Matthew, Chapters 24 and 25 sometime soon and it is plain that Jesus is talking about a bad situation getting progressively worse. But the True Christian will win. We must hang on to the Truth while the world is persecuting us and looking for their deliverance in all the wrong places. We should also be teaching with boldness that real Truth is still virtue of the highest order and that the world cannot operate effectively without it.
To conclude, someday all those liars you see on TV who tell you they are Christians but are pro-death, the ones who put controlling others ahead of building a godly and free country, the greedy, the immoral, those who covet, those who steal and deceive and take advantage of the less fortunate: someday you will hear Jesus say to them, “You called me Lord but I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23) as He points them to the Lake of Fire that awaits ALL the ungodly (Revelation 20:15). That is what my Bible says and I believe it’s True!
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