THE INDESTRUCTIBLE TRUTH
THE INDESTRUCTIBLE TRUTH
By Jeannette Haley
“Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” – John 18:37b
Where does a person start on the subject of truth? I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the reality and essence of truth, or adequately answer that question because truth is immeasurably vaster, deeper, higher and wider than the human mind can conceive. Truth itself, like mathematics, is not a material, tangible thing, yet that which is seen expresses the reality of truth. In other words, “All things were made by him: and without him was not any thing made that was made” John 1:3. Therefore, I’m just going to jump in and hopefully bring forth a few nuggets of truth that will inspire and challenge hearts.
To begin with, no human, regardless of how brilliant and well-versed they may be, can fully define, express, explain or understand the Second Person of the Godhead, Jesus Christ. Christians know that He said of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” (John 14:6.) While we may know that Jesus said this, the question is do we truly believe it? If we believe it, surely our lives will bear witness to that fact, not only in our conversation with others, but also as consistently expressed in our disposition and lifestyle, and by keeping ourselves from idolatrous compromise.
When we receive Christ, we receive not only the way and the life but the truth, and that truth must be received into the very core of our being. The Bible tells us, “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” 2 Thessalonians 2:10. Receiving a love for the truth is essential to salvation, for Jesus is the truth, His Word is truth (John 17:17), and Jesus is the Word. (John 1:1.) Therefore, if you are still clinging to your one-world, New Age, Jesuit-approved Bible version, beware! David Daniels wrote, “There are two ways to change a Bible from what God meant us to have in our language. The first is to translate from a Greek or Hebrew text that added to and took away from God’s words. The second is to change the meanings of those Greek and Hebrew words to something other than the historical meaning, something that God never meant. No matter how good a job you do in translating, the end product will not be what God said. It will be men’s opinions. [Author of ”Why They Changed The Bible: One World Bible For One World Religion”]. The point is, we need to love the truth whether we agree with it or not, and honestly seek the truth, receive the truth, cling to the truth, believe the truth and obey the truth if we are to be truly saved because Jesus is the truth!
If the truth of the Word of God is hidden in our hearts, if we are grounded on the truth and standing on the truth then that truth is a powerful weapon against the father of lies. The Word of God is a two-edged sword—it either sets you free, or cuts you asunder. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” What we need is God’s perspective on everything, and not man’s opinions, including ours. Gaining God’s perspective based on Spirit and truth will give us discernment as to what is true or false. Knowing and believing the truth gives us discernment so that we are able to judge righteous judgment. (John 7:24.)
In light of the weakness of the traditional evangelical church to execute righteous judgment, A. W. Tozer said, “The fact is that, we are not producing saints. We are making converts to an effete type of Christianity, that bears little resemblance to that of the New Testament. The average so-called Bible Christian of our times is but a shallow display of true sainthood. Yet, we put millions of dollars behind ‘movements’ to perpetuate this lower form of religion and attack the man who dares to challenge the wisdom of it.” Righteous judgment, and the power and wisdom to carry it out must be based on truth, for any judgment rendered without truth will also be void of God’s righteousness and therefore will miss the mark.
For example, there is an erroneous teaching (unrighteous judgment) from the WOF (Word of Faith) heretics concerning Job that goes like this: “The reason Job went through so much suffering is because he lacked faith so what he feared came upon him.” The truth is, the entire Book of Job is about Job’s faith in God in spite of his great suffering. Oswald Chambers wrote in his book about Job, Baffled to Fight Better, “To speak the thing which is right about God, I must be in living personal relationship with Him. God is riddling the friends because while preaching the right thing, they have misrepresented Him and told a lie about the Author of Truth. If I preach the right thing but do not live it, I am telling an untruth about God. This is one of the cardinal truths of Christianity (see Romans 2:17-23). ‘But,’ a man says, ‘how am I going to live the truth?’ The Sermon on the Mount says we must have a disposition which is never lustful or spiteful or evil; where are we going to begin? Unless Jesus Christ can put into us His own heredity, it is impossible. But that is just what He claims He can do. By regeneration Jesus Christ can put into any man the disposition that will make him the living example of what he preaches. The baptism of the Holy Ghost did not add anything to the Apostles’ doctrine, it made them specimens of what they taught (see Acts 1:8).”
Those who likewise condemn and unrighteously judge Job are as guilty before God as were Job’s friends whom God told Job to pray for so that they could be forgiven. The difference today is, Job is no longer available to pray for his modern attackers who mock him and twist the truth in order to justify their doctrines of demons. Therefore, on the Day of Judgment they will be required to stand before the Judge Himself to give an account of why they didn’t believe what God said about Job, and why they turned the truth into a lie. I would hate to be in their shoes!
Concerning the truth, I’ve related this incident before, but it bears repeating here that back in the early 80’s when I was in a trying situation, and was literally on my face praying, the Lord showed me a “picture” that looked like a ball so thickly wrapped in twine that you couldn’t see any part of it. The Spirit said, “The whole world is wrapped in lies.” I have to admit, I was surprised and thought to myself how could the whole world be totally wrapped in lies? Now, after many years of exposure to the world’s systems, corrupt governments, gross wickedness, abominations and ungodliness, along with the rapid decline of true Christianity among evangelicals, it’s plain to see how Satan is indeed “the god of this world.” (2 Corinthians 4:3.) Isaiah 25:7 tells us what God will do concerning the world’s captivity to falsehood and deception, “And he [God] will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.”
This is good news to those of us who are sick and tired of all the falsehoods spewing forth through nearly every news agency and mass media today. Throngs of people crave the truth like a desert traveler craves fresh water. Not only do we desperately need the truth concerning the state of our Union, but the global situation as well. We get bits and pieces of “truthful” news from the few reliable news sources available, and thank God for honest reporters, plus we can glean from certain reliable Internet sources. From these we can discern that which is prophetically relevant and important. It’s no secret that lies, hoaxes and falsehoods are ramping up in these increasingly dark days as wickedness exalts itself, fulfilling biblical prophecies.
None of the shocking, and sometimes downright horrifying events of our time, however, could have culminated into the unresolvable problems we’re now facing if the foundations hadn’t been shaken and destroyed years ago. I’m talking about the foundation of justice and truth as established by the Word of God. Because we have forsaken, not only the truth and wisdom of God’s Word for our nation, but God Himself, we are now reaping the consequences. The Church, instead of standing separate from the world while holding forth the Light of the world, has compromised and played the harlot with the world. The result? She is no longer the church triumphant, no longer a threat to Satan and his advancements, and no longer a place of refuge for lost souls seeking the way to salvation.
Justice has been shattered into pieces that translate into justice for some, and injustice for others. Our nation is experiencing the evils of a two-tiered justice system which is a far cry from what our founding fathers established. Meanwhile, “. . . judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter” Isaiah 59:14, while a two-fold satanic foundation of lies has been laid of evolution and humanistic psychology. This has paved the way for Communism (also known as Socialism and Progressivism), political correctness (thanks to Karl Marx) along with a growing culture of death through drugs, gangs, violence, lawlessness, and outright insanity (demon possession).
Vance Ferrell in The Evolution Handbook wrote, “When we search for a reason for the fierceness (See 2 Tim. 3) of some of the politics today, we need look no further than Darwin’s theory of evolution. Since this new religion has replaced respect for a Creator, Paul’s list of perilous times described to Timothy is increasingly real.
“Darwinism has had a devastating impact on society. Its ramifications reach into the deepest aspects of social life and culture.” The BattleCry – April issue states, “Evolution leaves man without a spirit—just another one of the animals. Thus, there is no right or wrong. And if ‘survival of the fittest’ is the ultimate aim, then there is no room for the weak and powerless. They must be eliminated, fiercely if necessary. . . . It is hard to detail all the ways that evolution’s elimination of God affects our world. Since ‘science’ has replaced God as the source of truth, one need only look at where this has taken us. Science says that preborn babies are only blobs of tissue; thus 60 million U.S. murders by abortion since Roe v Wade. (Some 40 million more are killed worldwide each year.).
So, here we are, looking around us at the shambles of what was once a great nation, “under God” where families prayed together and stayed together; where God, prayer, and patriotism was not only taught at home by Christian parents and grandparents, but encouraged in the schools, and, believe it or not, in colleges. Those days were what I call the “Norman Rockwell” days where innocence, morality, discipline, hard work, patriotism, God-honoring churches abounded, the laws were enforced, and love of fellow man was the norm. We even had common sense for the most part! Now we murder each other and our innocent children, both inside and outside of the womb; allow perversion and abominations to run rampant, while lawlessness is out of control. Gangs of wild young men with no conscience are a real threat in every major city; kidnappings, rape and murder are on the daily news, and people whose ideologies are based on lies froth at the mouth with hatred, threatening anyone who dares to disagree with them, and then we wonder why God isn’t happy with us?
Our culture has a problem with the truth! The truth used to unite us as a civilization, for the most part. But now, lies rule in every area because to always tell the truth is not politically correct. So, we remain silent, or try to compromise in order to keep the peace by telling a half-truth. Therefore, half-truths take root in our “social culture” such as, for example, have you noticed the frequent out-of-context, flippant use of John 8:32, “the truth shall make you free” by both professing Christians and non-Christians? It has almost become a slogan used in news reports, speeches, commentaries, movies, talk shows, wall plaques and so forth. A whole new spin has been put on this Scripture, and that is exactly how Satan works. His specialty is in ear-tickling half-truths that appeal to weak people with itching ears, and if they are repeated often enough these half-truths become, in the minds of unbelievers and nominal believers alike, a “new truth.” I say “new” because once a truth is altered by either adding to it, or taking from it, error is the result and behind that is a wrong spirit. Those who love the truth can have no fellowship or agreement with those who have a wrong spirit; therefore, if such people refuse to receive a love for the truth, they will remain unteachable, and unrepentant. Eventually the fruit produced by their lives is pure hatred for anyone or anything that disagrees with them.
Returning to the Scripture being discussed, concerning being set free by the truth, John 8:32, Jesus said to those Jews who believed on him, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” As with all of God’s promises, there is a condition to be met and it’s this: they must continue in His Word, as disciples (students, followers) and then they would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. Not, as some preach, free from debt, or suffering, or tribulation, or loss, or poverty, but spiritually free. This may be disappointing to some who have been taught, and hold to the idea that Jesus came to set us free from a lousy lifestyle, money miseries or popularity problems. No, no, no! He didn’t come to make us happy, rich, or famous. If He had, He would’ve done so for His own, the Jews, at His first coming.
It’s totally amazing how super special man thinks he is. But, that’s how Satan works. First, he slyly slithers through any open door we give him, even if it’s only opened a crack. Pride is such a door because out of pride comes self-pity, unforgiveness, anger, jealousy, covetousness, idolatry, ingratitude, and unbelief, to name a few. After all, pride deceives us into thinking that we have a right to be treated special, and that we deserve to be happy, rich and famous. Add to that the insidious half-truths that we can become little gods, and the ending to “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley, “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” becomes the sail that powers our boat on a sea of half-truths.
Can you see how far we fall from the truth of reality when we believe half-truths that appeal to the unregenerate flesh? The only truth that makes people free is God’s truth, for not all truth is God’s truth! We know God’s truth by continuing in God’s Word, and by faith living in obedience to it. As we work out what God works into us through His Word, then “the truth shall make you free.” This is why I cringe every time someone who is either on the “fringes” of Christianity, or who is spiritually lost altogether flippantly quotes out of context, “The truth shall set you free.” Only the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, can set us free regardless of how much we quote Scripture out of context and try to make it fit our particular narrative. We cannot have the Holy Spirit apart from Truth, and we cannot have Truth apart from the Holy Spirit.
In an article on Israel by Thomas Lieth, he said some things about what I consider to be the result of half-truths that are worth quoting. He wrote, “Isn’t it true today, that many people have cobbled together their own God? They speak of a ‘loving God’ who forgives everything, does nothing to anyone, and saves everyone. They speak of a God who lets everyone act according to his own will, and who only stirs when asked to fulfill a wish. One treats God like a gumball machine, which stands lifeless, and into which one only has to make a small deposit to get something beautiful back. So, everyone has their own idea of God. But he has little to do with the God of Scripture. And some are quite scared that God is not what they thought and wanted. The people of Jesus’ time had a false conception of the Messiah, and people today have a false conception of God. The result of that time should serve as a warning to us today. Jesus spoke from the cross at Calvary: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ That hits the nail on the head: they didn’t know what they were actually doing. They were confused and torn: first, to see in Jesus the deeds and authority of the promised Messiah; and second, to have a completely different idea of their Messiah. They expected a Messiah who would bring eternal peace, free them from the bondage of Rome, and punish their oppressors (Isa. 9:6; Jer. 30:20).”
These people had the Old Testament, but their lack of understanding, like so many since the time of Christ up to the present day, was largely due to the fact that they had their own take on certain Scriptures based on their own worldview and perspective which, when taken out of context, could give rise to all sorts of faulty conclusions. Understandably, it’s easy to over-emphasize certain Scriptures (that we think we have a handle on) to the diminishment of more obscure passages of the Word. The danger of this assumption is we will end up dissecting the Sword of God. Jesus said that “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” Matthew 4:4. He also said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away,” Matthew 24:35. How comforting it is to know that the truth is indestructible, and even though heaven and earth shall pass away, His eternal Words, the indestructible Truth will continue to stand.
In his article Thomas Lieth also wrote concerning the Jews who rejected Jesus as their Messiah because He didn’t fit into their idea of the Messiah: “This should also be a warning to us, against ripping biblical statements out of their overall context, picking and choosing only what we like, or what is pleasant and contemporary. That makes it very easy to make serious errors. The vast majority of cults and ominous church movements make precisely this mistake. They tear individual statements out of their context, focus on a certain biblical passage, and overlook the rest, which, if better considered, would bring them greater insight. Thus, man builds his own gospel, which relies only on half-truths. But half a truth is always a lie, so the ‘gospel’ is no longer consistent with biblical truth.”
I’m sure you’ve noticed the fruit coming out of the lives of mockers who love lies and hate the truth, and who yell the loudest about “equality,” “social justice and socialism,” “impeach Trump,” “open borders,” “resist conservatives,” “save the planet, kill a baby,” and “keep God out of politics, schools, and public places” among other things. Their “fruit” is evil like the rotten figs the Lord showed Jeremiah in Chapter 24. The fruit they produce is dark and vile, seething with hatred towards truth and righteousness. Such are deceived, lost souls whose toxic brand of “love” is geared towards lying and the fake media. They defend lawbreakers, illegal immigrants, murderous gangs, deadly drugs, destructive addictions, all manner of sexual perversion, child abduction and pornography. Certain American cities are now considered to be “dying” as a direct result of the out-of-control drug problem and yet lawmakers are backing proposals in nearly every state to legalize Marijuana which is the first step towards addiction to hard drugs, demon possession, death and hell. “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” Ephesians 18, 19.
This short summation of the mess we’ve created for ourselves is because, bottom line, the Truth that will make people free has been rejected, minimized, ignored, and often despised by a changing American culture. The Protestant church, which was once the bastion and defender of truth has, instead of maintaining the truth in its entirety, over the years reduced truth to the status of an outdated relic of antiquity. Truth is looked upon as an “antique” that just doesn’t “fit” into our developed western lifestyle and culture. It’s outdated, and impractical and has been replaced by higher learning, humanism, evolution, psychology, and science. Without practical use in our modern day and age, truth is subconsciously enshrined under a glass dome of disregard and forgetfulness in the back of the collective church memory. If asked if they believe the truth, deluded souls would affirm that they do, but would be hard pressed to give a correct definition of it. After all, it’s a part of their church history, right? Besides, the reality of truth is embarrassing to a worldly, carnal church where compromise and outward appearances are the bedrock of its survival. The power of the truth is a threat to modern church leaders who have been converted to the unbelief of agnosticism, universalism, and relativism by unbelieving liberal professors teaching in liberal seminaries. What they fail to consider is that rejection of the Truth of God’s Word is a rejection of the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us. The day is coming when they will stand before the Judge of all the earth and He will say, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” Matthew 7:23b.
When people find Christ and receive a love for the truth, embrace the truth, believe the truth, obey the truth, cling to the truth and walk in the truth then they find themselves free from sin, and free from a confused mind, a divided heart, wayward tendencies, fears, insecurities, and worry. To know, love, and believe the truth is what makes us free from the fear of man, the world and the devil. If we are in Christ, and He in us, then we can stand in His authority and use the sword of truth against all the works, ways and wiles of the devil, cutting asunder the lies that entangle and pull us down into oppressive bondage and darkness. (See Revelation 21:7, 8.) The indestructible truth, the Lord Jesus Christ is the only One who can set us free from this: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” 1 John 2:16.
Finally, may “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue” 2 Peter 1:2, 3.