5
The Truth About The Truth
Eph.
1:13a
In whom ye also trusted,
after ye heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your
salvation.
Verses 13-14
comprise the third “stanza” of Paul’s “song of praise”
(vs. 3-14). As we’ve seen, verses 4-6 focus on
the Father and speak of past ELECTION,
while verses 7-12 focus on the Son and speak of
present REDEMPTION. We now note that verses 13-14
focus on God the Holy Spirit and speak of
future INHERITANCE.
Before dealing with
this specifically, however, there is something in verse
13a that first captures our attention: In whom ye
also trusted, after ye heard the word of truth, the
Gospel of your
salvation.
Paul here makes what
we might call a “transitional statement,” much as he did
back in verse 7 when he introduced the riches we have in
God the Son (“In whom we have redemption through his
blood”). In like manner, he here shifts emphasis again
using a deeply significant truth—a statement concerning
Truth.
We live in a day
when the concept of truth is more and more
challenged. Never before has there been such a
redefining of Truth. Many, in fact, deny that there is
any Truth at all. In stark contrast, however, the Word
of God, in no uncertain terms, makes it clear that there
is Truth and that Truth is to be found
only in God and His Word.
With this in
mind, let us look at three principles that carry
tremendous significance in our day: The Meaning of
Truth, Inadequate Sources of
Truth, and The Only Source of
Truth.
I. The
Meaning of Truth
In John
18:37-38, Pontius Pilate asked the Lord Jesus, “Art thou
a king?” Our Lord responded, “Thou sayest that I
am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause
came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto
the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my
voice.” What a powerful statement! “If you would have
Truth,” He is saying, “you will hear Me.” To that
Pilate spoke three words—probably in at least a cynical
if not contemptuous tone—that have echoed through the
millennia: “What is truth?” Countless philosophers have
asked that question, but few have been able to answer
it.
We’ll come back to
that scene later, but for now it is important to look at
the meaning of the word Truth, both in English and
Greek.
The Oxford
English Dictionary is considered the foremost
authority on the meanings of English words. When
speaking of things, it defines the word “true” as that
which is “reliable, constant, sure, [and] secure.” When
speaking of a statement or belief, it says that “true”
means “consistent with fact; agreeing with the reality;
representing the thing as it is.” It goes on to say that
the often used statement “it is true” means “verily,
certainly, [and]
doubtless.”
Likewise, it defines
the word Truth
as “conformity
with fact; agreement with reality; accuracy,
correctness, verity (of statement or
thought).”
Putting all
that together, then, we see just how important this word
is. Truth, or that
which is true, speaks of what is real, what really is,
what is factual. It’s not opinion, it’s not conjecture,
it’s not hypothesis or theory. Rather, it is, like the
old expression, “telling it like it is.” If something is
true, it is absolutely reliable, totally secure. It
cannot change because to do so would mean it’s not true,
not reliable.
The Greek word
translated Truth is aletheia, which means basically the same thing as the
English. As one Greek authority puts
it:
Etymologically aletheia
means “nonconcealment.” It thus denotes what
is seen, indicated, expressed, or disclosed, i.e., a
thing as it really is, not as it is concealed or
falsified. Aletheia
is “the real state of affairs.”
Aletheia,
along with its related words, appears no less than 187
times in The New Testament. It appears, for example, in
John 1:14, where it refers to the incarnate Christ, “And
the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
the Father,) full of grace and truth.” In 16:13, our
Lord promised, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he will guide you into all truth,” that is, all
that is reliable, constant, sure, and unchanging. In
both cases, and in all others, the concept of Truth is
that which is not concealed, what really
is.
So again,
the fundamental concept to understand about Truth is that it is that which is absolute, that which
is incontrovertible, irrefutable, incontestable,
unarguable, and unchanging. If something is true, it is
always true and can never be untrue, no matter what the circumstances. One
poet has put it this
way:
A lie, whatever the guise it
wears,
Is a lie as it was of
yore.
But a truth that has lasted a million
years
Is good for a million more.
II.
Inadequate Sources of Truth
There are numerous
claims to Truth in the world, but are they really
sources of Truth? Do they offer that which is sure,
reliable, and unchanging? Let’s take a look at three of
the world’s best claims of how to discover Truth:
Science, Philosophy, and
Religion.
Science
By far the greatest
claim to being a source of Truth in our day is made by
science. In many ways, in fact, it is even a god
to many (though, of course, few would admit it).
Scientist Karl Pearson, for example, made this obvious
when he wrote in his famous book Grammar of
Science:
The goal of science is
clear—it is nothing short of the complete interpretation
of the universe . . . It claims that the whole range of
phenomena, mental as well as physical—the entire
universe—is its field. It asserts that the scientific
method is the sole gateway to the whole region of
knowledge.
The only way we can
know anything, he is saying, is through science. But
let’s take an honest look. Is
science really a source of Truth? Is it always reliable,
constant, sure, and unchanging?
For example, it is
argued that scientific observation provides
Truth. In other words, you look at something, carefully
examine what transpires, and write down your see
observations. That, it is
argued, is Truth. But let’s test that assertion. In the
Middle Ages, based on scientific observation, the common
belief was that the earth is flat. Since then, of
course, considerable evidence has accumulated that the
earth is round, but this too is based on observation. In
other words, strictly speaking, is it a fact that the
earth is round or does the observational evidence only
make it appear to be round? For example, the shadow on
the moon during a lunar eclipse looks round, when in
fact, the earth is not a perfect sphere but is slightly
flattened at the poles. But still we say it is round
according to
observation.
We might also add
that during the Middle Ages, accepted scientific theory
concluded that the earth was at the center of the
universe and everything revolved around it. It was also
believed that gravity was some kind of occult force. But
before we call those people ignorant and backward, even
today we can’t adequately explain
gravity.
In more recent years, it
was once accepted fact that light travels in a straight
line, but it was then discovered that gravity actually
bends light. We could cite many other examples of, as
one writer puts it, “the rapid rate at which previous
laws of science are discarded and replaced by new
ones.” So, for a scientist today to
say, “Well, the old laws were wrong, but we now know the
Truth,” would be the height of folly, but that is, in
fact, what science
claims.
So, may we assert
that observation is not Truth; it simply cannot be. Why?
For one thing, it’s based upon our senses, which can
deceive us. Another more serious reason, however, is
that it’s based on “inductive reasoning,” which is
logically fallacious. For example, just because we might
see 1000 black crows does not mean that we can conclude
that all crows are black. Crow number 1001 might be an
albino. Induction is always false, yet this is precisely
what science is based
on!
Right in line with
observation, there is also the argument that scientific
experimentation provides Truth. But does it?
Science tells us, for example, that water boils at 212
degrees Fahrenheit. But actually water hardly ever boils
at the same temperature. What the scientist does is
perform many experiments and notes the different
results. He then averages the data, but what kind of
average does he use: mean, mode, or median? He, in fact,
chooses which one to use; it is not dictated by the
data. Therefore, the average is just that, an average;
it most certainly is not Truth. In the final analysis,
then, equations and formulas are not Truth. Why? Because
they are selected, not
discovered.
The whole idea of
experimentation is that it is based on a faulty premise,
namely this: from an hypothesis the scientist deduces
that if you do X, then Y will happen. He then performs
an experiment, and when Y happens he concludes that the
hypothesis is true. In the study of logic, this is
called “asserting the consequent,” that is, “if p, then
q; q; therefore p.” In other words, if this is true,
that is true; now that is true, so therefore, this is
true. Or, to use a very simple example, if it is
raining, the streets are wet; the streets are wet;
therefore it is raining. That, of course is ridiculous,
since the reason the streets are wet might be because a
fire hydrant is open. But it is on this kind of faulty
reasoning that science is based, even though it’s
absurd.
As one looks at
history, he finds that this is the way science has
proceeded. When the atom was discovered, for example,
science asserted that the atom was the smallest
indivisible particle of which matter was comprised. In
fact, that’s why scientists named it “atom,” which is
from the Greek atomos,
meaning, “that which cannot be divided.” But then, not
only did science later discover that the atom can be
split (and with incredible results), but also many other
smaller subatomic particles were discovered, such as
electrons, neutrons, protons, photons, and quarks.
As the 19th
Century drew to a close, scientists around the world
were satisfied that they had reached an accurate picture
of the universe. As physicist Alastair Rae put it, “By
the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed that the
basic fundamental principles governing the behavior of
the physical universe were known.” “All the stuff that
makes up the stuff of the universe,” he was saying, “is
now known to us.” Most, in fact, said that the study of
physics was mostly completed, except for small details.
A few oddities occurred, such as the discovery of X-rays
(1895), but most scientists believed such oddities would
be later explained by existing theory.
But as the new
century dawned, the world was set on its ear. Accepted
scientific evidence declared it impossible to fly a
plane under it’s own power, and then Orville and Wilbur
Wright did it at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.
Many other things were once said to be impossible, based
on prevailing scientific theory: breaking the sound
barrier, television, satellite communications, atomic
power, atomic microscopes that can see individual atoms,
antibiotics, and much more. But in
every case, science was
untrue, unreliable, and unsure. Therefore, science never
has been and never will be able to discover
Truth.
Even with that in mind, as
late as 1936, American Nobel Prize winner in Physics
(1923), Robert Millikan, wrote, “In science, truth once
discovered always remains truth.” How anyone supposedly as
brilliant as Millikan could say something that ludicrous
is beyond understanding!
In contrast, many
honest scientists actually do
recognize that science does not discover Truth. Albert
Einstein, for example, once remarked concerning how
nature works:
We know nothing about it
at all. Our knowledge is but the knowledge of school
children . . . We shall know a little more than we do
now. But the real nature of things—that we shall
never know, never.
It’s extremely
significant that Einstein used the words “the real
nature of things” because, as we’ve seen, that’s
what the word Truth means. Einstein was honest enough to admit that
science could not discover the ways things really
are.
Likewise, British
philosopher of science, Karl Popper, wrote even more
pointedly:
All scientific statements
are hypothesis, or guesses, or conjectures, and the vast
majority of these conjectures . . . have turned out to
be false. Our attempts to see and to find the truth are
not final, but open to improvement; . . . our knowledge,
our doctrine, is conjectural; . . . it consists of
guesses, of hypothesis, rather than of final and certain
truths.
Tragically, however, while
many scientists recognize and admit that, secular
education does not. Humanistic, liberal education today
does not reflect the view of modern scientists that
science does not discover Truth, but actually asserts
the 19th Century view that science is the
road to Truth. Why does it do that? Simply because if it
admits that science does not discover Truth, it must
recognize that the source is God, and that it will not
do. So it continues to intimidate students with
statements such as, “This thing has been scientifically
proved to be true,” which is a patent and blatant lie.
The most vivid example is evolution. To put it bluntly,
there is nothing more conjectural, hypothetical,
improvable, philosophically biased, and intellectually
bankrupt than the theory of evolution.
To illustrate, it is
well known that many scientists, because they can’t find
any “missing links,” have rejected Darwin’s old theory
of slow evolution—which may we interject was for many
years considered to be “true”—in favor of “Punctuated
Equilibrium.” This teaches that evolution didn’t happen
gradually but in leaps. In other words, things went
along for a few million years, and then one species
leaped to the next; a lizard egg hatched a bird, for
example, just like in the movie Jurassic Park.
Why did this theory come about? Simply because no one
could find any missing links. So, in essence, the new
theory is saying that the lack of evidence proves
evolution. Is that science? Obviously not. It’s a
belief, and a very biased one
at that.
Another factor in this
debate is that the average layman, especially children
who are subjected to state education, continue to be
lied to and therefore duped into believing that “all
scientists believe in evolution.” But that simply is not
so. While certainly not the majority, there are
scientists who admit that there is far more evidence for
creation than there is for evolution. Many
well-known and respected scientists, in fact, such as
Sir Cecil Wakely (past president of Great Britain’s
Royal College of Surgeons), the famous Sir Ambrose
Fleming, and the great Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz,
totally reject evolution in favor of creation. Other
scientists at least admit to the failure of the theory
of evolution. Here are just two representative
quotations from many we could cite:
Evolution is a fairy tale
for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the
progress of science. It is useless. (Professor Louis
Bounoure, former President of the Biological Society of
Strasbourg and Director of the Strasbourg Zoological
Museum)
Scientists who go about
teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great
con-men, and the story they are telling may be the
greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not
have one iota of fact. (Dr. T.N. Tahmisian, Atomic
Energy Commission, USA)
Even more tragic,
however, is that many Christian theologians and
scientists have fallen into the trap of believing that
science discovers Truth. They argue using scientific
laws that are themselves untrue and improvable. The
problem here is that they are defending the wrong
thing. Instead of defending, “Thus saith the Lord,”
they are defending, “Thus saith science.” While they
think they are evangelizing, they are actually
destroying evangelism. Why? Because
evangelism, which comes from euaggelizo, and is
also translated “Gospel,” means “to proclaim good news.”
Is some improvable scientific theory the good news? No!
God and what He has done through Jesus Christ is the
good news. Is evangelism the proclamation of
proofs? No! It’s the proclamation of
Truth and, may we add,
nothing but the Truth. God’s command to us is to
proclaim the Truth, and He will do the rest. Paul made
this clear to the arrogant, philosophical
Corinthians:
Who then is Paul, and who
is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as
the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos
watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is
he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth;
but God that giveth the increase (I Cor.
3:5-7).
So, is science of
any value? Of course, it is.
While it can never discover Truth, it is still very
useful. Thousands of inventions have been made that make
life easier. Chemistry, medicine, mechanics, and physics
all contribute to making life more comfortable and more
productive.
But science does not
and cannot provide Truth or morality. It cannot decide
how to use these things. These things can be used for
good or evil, so something else is necessary to dictate
the Truth about how to use them. And that something is
the Word of God.
In the closing words
of his first letter to Timothy, Paul gave his “son in
the faith” a very important
principle:
O Timothy, keep that which
is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain
babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called
(I Tim. 6:20).
What a challenging
statement for our day! Creationist Henry Morris provides
an excellent exposition of this verse.
“Science falsely so
called” is, in the Greek, literally “pseudo-science” or
“pseudo-knowledge.” This pseudo-science is nothing other
than evolutionism, which has been in “oppositions”
against God as Savior and Creator and the world as His
creation since the beginning of time. In Paul’s day, it
mainly took the form of Epicureanism (based on atheistic
evolutionism) and Stoicism (based on pantheistic
evolutionism). It soon would take the form of Gnosticism
and later of Neo-Platonism, both also assuming
evolution. In other parts of the world, it had the form
of Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism or Buddhism, all based
on some form of pantheistic evolution and an infinitely
old cosmos. In recent times it assumed the form of
Darwinism, though men are now returning again to various
forms of eastern religion and their systems of
pantheistic evolution, still rejecting God as Creator
and Christ as Savior. Yet all forms of evolutionism are
pseudo-science at best, filled with “profane and vain
babblings.”
Added to that, may
we notice that Paul says to “avoid” such “babblings” and
“pseudo-science.” “Avoiding” translates the Greek
ektrepo, which means “to turn
away from.” False teaching must be avoided like the
deadly plague it is. But tragically, many Christians do
not avoid it. Instead, they study it and propose
arguments against it. There is even the common (and
grievous) practice in our day of casting pearls before
swine by holding panel discussions and debates with
atheists and evolutionists.
May we submit,
however, that this is the wrong approach. Our Lord never
stooped to such Truth-cheapening methods. In contrast to
those who “[suppress] the truth” (Rom. 1:18), “resist
the truth” (II Tim. 3:8), “turn away their ears from the
truth” (II Tim. 4:4; cf. Tit. 1:14), and “err from the
truth” (Jas. 5:19), we are to: “know the truth” (II Tim.
4:3), “[acknowledge] the truth” (II Tim. 2:25), “love
the truth” (II Thes. 2:10), “[believe] . . . the truth”
(II Thes. 2:12-13), “obey the truth” (Gal. 3:1),
“rejoice in the truth” (I Cor. 13:6), and finally, as
the culmination of all these, we are to “speak the
truth” (I Tim. 2:7; cf. Eph. 4:15 and Gal. 4:16).
That is our
mandate.
Philosophy
Another claim to being a
source of Truth in our day is made by philosophy.
Philosophy directly transliterates the Greek
philosophia, literally, “love of wisdom.” As the
17th Century philosopher Rene Descartes is
famous for saying, “I think, therefore I am,” there are those who
believe that ultimate knowledge can be found in man’s
own thinking. Philosophy, therefore, has historically
been man’s attempt to explain the universe
around him and the
meaning of his own existence.
In a sense everyone has a
philosophy, a worldview, but there have been many who
have specialized in the academic study of philosophy.
Thales, for example, a Greek thinker who was a
contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah (early
6th Century B.C.), is generally considered to
be the first academic philosopher. Besides being
credited with inventing Geometry, he was the first to
attempt a rational explanation for the universe,
claiming it originated from
water.
As time went on, the
Greeks became totally enamored with philosophy,
believing it was all-important. It became, in fact, the
very center of their culture, around which everything
else revolved: religion, politics, social order,
economics, and education.
The problem, of course,
was that with the some fifty identifiable
philosophical parties or movements that existed among
the Greeks, where was Truth to be found? Whose
philosophy was true, sure, and unchanging? Each person’s
philosophy was just that, his philosophy. He
tried to explain life and related matters by human
understanding. From Thales on, in fact, the vast
majority of philosophers have either denied the
existence of God or held an unbiblical view of Him, such
as Deism
or Pantheism.
But as Christian
philosopher Francis Schaeffer in our own generation has
written, man cannot begin with himself and arrive at
ultimate reality. Theologian and Christian
philosopher Gordon Clark adds that “secular philosophy
leaves life without meaning and in utter
frustration.”
\Both those godly
Christian thinkers echoed the words of the apostle Paul
in I Corinthians 2:9. He makes it clear that ultimate
Truth is discoverable neither by Empiricism (the
philosophic doctrine that all knowledge is gained
through sensual experience) nor by
Rationalism (the philosophic
doctrine that all knowledge is gained through reason and
logic). Paul writes this amazing
statement:
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard
[Empiricism], neither have entered into the heart of man
[Rationalism], the things which God hath prepared for
them that love him.
“Heart” is kardia,
which referred not just to the emotional nature,
but also to the reason and to the faculty of
intelligence. Paul’s point is clear: by himself man
cannot know God either by experience or intellect. Only
by revelation can man know God.
Another writer, Os Guinness,
comments on the futility of modern man’s search for
Truth apart from
God:
Contemporary man, with his
self-drawn picture of society as the “closed room” with
No Exit, is caught metaphysically and sociologically. In
the darkness of the room evidently without windows,
perhaps without doors, he gropes round and round the
edges. Can one hope that someone will dare to wonder
whether there is any light other than the feeble sparks
of his own making? Or will he stubbornly persist in
treading the barren circle of poor premises?
In other words, will man just
continue to stagger around in the dark groping for
Truth? And the answer is
yes.
It’s not surprising that
many philosophers have expressed that emptiness. The
18th Century Scottish empirical philosopher
David Hume, who was famous for his rejection of the
miraculous, said, “I am first affrighted and confounded
with that forlorn solitude, in which I am placed in my
philosophy.”
The 19th Century
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche mocked
Christianity as the religion of weaklings, and was one
of the first to proclaim that God is dead. He wrote, for
example,
I call Christianity the
one great curse, the one enormous and innermost
perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which
no means are too venomous, too underhand, too
underground and too petty,—I call it the one immoral
blemish of mankind.
But ultimately, Nietzsche could
not live with the implications of his philosophy. Os
Guinness again
writes,
For Nietzsche to be
consistent, he needed to become his own superman, but
his views were overwhelming even for himself. As he
poised over the abyss, he shivered with the horror of
being “responsible for everything alive.” In the
impossibility of this situation, madness perhaps becomes
his only possible freedom from the overbearing
responsibility. “Alas, grant me madness.”
Tragically, Nietzsche got
what he asked for. He completely lost control of his
mental faculties and collapsed in the streets of Turin,
Italy in January 1889. A friend brought him back to
Basel, Switzerland where he “spent the last 11 years of
his life in total mental darkness, first in a Basel
asylum, then in Naumburg under his mother’s care and,
after her death in 1897, in Weimar in his sister’s
care.” 19th Century
Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle was
correct when he wrote, “The fine arts once divorcing
themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if
they do not die.”
As mentioned in a
previous study, one of the leading 20th
Century philosophers was the French existentialist Jean
Paul Sartre, who was also an atheist. Besides his
“monumental philosophical treatise,” Being and
Nothingness (1943), he also wrote a novel titled Nausea.
In it, the
main character, Roquentin, says, “Every existing thing
is born without reason, goes on living out of weakness,
and dies by accident.” Roquentin expresses Sartre’s
belief that man is utterly
meaningless:
We were a heap of
existences, uncomfortable, embarrassed at ourselves, we
hadn’t the slightest reason to be there, none of us,
each one confused, vaguely alarmed, felt superfluous in
relation to the others. And I myself . . . I too was
superfluous. . . . I dreamed vaguely of killing
myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous
existences. But even my death would have been superfluous.
Commenting on Sartre’s view of
the absurdity of man, William Barrett
writes:
Sartre’s atheism states
candidly . . . that man is an alien in the universe,
unjustified and unjustifiable, absurd in the simple
sense that there is no . . . reason sufficient to
explain why he or his universe exists.
Man’s rebellion against
God has, in Francis Schaeffer’s words, driven him
beneath the line of despair. This again reflects Paul’s
words: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain
in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened” (Rom. 1:21-22). Three verses earlier, Paul
declares what caused this result: “For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who hold [i.e., suppress] the
truth in unrighteousness.” Today one can talk publicly
about any perverted subject he or she wants, but if
another attempts to speak of the Absolute Truth of the
God, he is censored by wicked politicians and a liberal
news media. The fact remains, however, that by
suppressing, censoring, and squelching God’s Truth and
even expunging Him from life and society, secular
philosophy has cast man into the dark abyss of
ignorance, despair, and hopelessness.
Now, many Christians
will think at this point that all we’ve reviewed here is
merely academic and not really applicable to them. Many
will say, “Well, I’m a Christian, of course, so I’m not
affected by secular philosophy, so we can just go on to
the next verse.” And it is precisely here that they are
seriously wrong. Secular philosophy has infiltrated
Christianity in many ways and with a terrible
vengeance.
Perhaps the
greatest and most serious infiltration is through the
philosophy of Relativism. Relativism
is the theory “that there is no objective standard by
which truth may be determined, so that truth varies with
individuals and circumstance.”
In other words, whatever is true to you is true, but
whatever is true for me is also true. Everyone can
decide what is true for them in any given setting or
circumstance. This philosophy is reflected in such
statements as, “Well, that might be true for you but not
me,” or “All truth is personal; you have yours, and I
have mine,” or “We must each determine what’s right for
us; no one can force his values on someone else,” or,
“Truth just depends upon your point of view.” And on it
goes.
But if one
looks at Relativism objectively, he will find
that it actually cuts its own throat. For one thing, to
say that Truth is a matter of personal and
cultural values, and is not a matter of a statement
agreeing with reality, is most certainly not “telling it
like it is” or describing “the ways things are,” which
is what the word Truth means.
Another way that
Relativism is self-defeating is that it says that
everything is relative, and it says that in a
dogmatic and absolute manner.
But hold on a minute—how can everything be relative
except Relativism? As Norman Geisler
writes:
The only way the
relativist can avoid the painful dilemma of relativism
is to admit that there are at least some absolute
truths. Most relativists believe that Relativism is
absolutely true and that everyone should be a
relativist. Therein lies the self-destructiveness of
Relativism. The relativist stands on the pinnacle of an
absolute truth and wants to relativize everything
else.
We can also add that
if everything is relative to
each person, then the view of the relativist is true
only for him. It doesn’t make it true for everyone else
because that contradicts the whole idea that everything
is relative!
There is no escaping
the plain fact that Relativism is blatantly
contradictory and totally absurd. If it weren’t so
tragic and so misleading in our day, it would be
laughable.
We cannot help but smile,
however, at a classic example of this absurdity that
appears in an incident that happened to Christian
apologist and author Ravi Zacharias. While visiting Ohio
State University to speak, his hosts took him to the
Wexner Center of the Arts, which happens to be a
monument to postmodern architecture. It has stairways
leading nowhere, columns that come down but don’t quite
reach the floor, beams and galleries that go everywhere
but nowhere, and a crazy looking girder system over most
of the outside that’s pointless. Like Postmodernism and
Relativism, it defies every rule of common sense and
every law of rationality. Zacharias looked at the
building, cocked his head, grinned, and then said, “I
wonder if they used the same techniques when they laid
the foundation.” That one comment dismantles the whole
idea of Relativism. The designers could talk all they
wanted about being independent from reality in their
decoration, but when it came to the reality of making
the building stand up, they were still dependant on a
laying a solid foundation.
But in spite of its
obvious self-defeating nature, Relativism is alive and
well. What is the cause of Relativism? The major reason
is that Relativism is comfortable; it doesn’t demand
anything. In other words, Absolute Truth makes us
responsible, so by rejecting absolutes, we can live the
way we want to.
As far as God’s
Truth is concerned, there cannot be two conflicting
views that are right. While their can be several
applications of a verse, there is only one
meaning that is right. This is why exegesis and
exposition are so vital and involved. We must first see
what a text says, not what we think it says or
what we feel it means, but what it
says. This is done by
studying the language, context, historical setting, and
several other principles. But in the Relativism that has
taken over the Church today, the Bible is open to
individual interpretation. The old adage, “Well, that’s
just your interpretation,” actually comes from the
philosophy of Relativism. Here is one quotation that
illustrates this typical attitude. One churchgoer puts
it this way:
[This approach leaves]
much more room for a forum. You can bring your own
thoughts, bring your own feelings to the church. There’s
no rules, there’s no boundaries. You love God, you love
Christ, and your interpretation of the Gospel and the
stories in the Scriptures is your own, and you can
share, and there’s no judgments made.
This is beyond dangerous;
it is deadly. There are simply no absolutes in this
approach. We see countless examples of Relativism in
Christianity today. Catch phrases such as “seeker
sensitive,” “user-friendly,” and “meeting needs” are all
built on the foundation of Relativism and its offspring
Pragmatism, which says just do what gets results
regardless of what the Bible says. If you embrace
Pragmatism, you can use any method you want, you can
have any kind of “ministry” you want, and you can
present the Gospel any way you wish. And if someone
dares to discern, question, or “criticize,” they are
labeled divisive, intolerant, and “politically
incorrect.”
But Scripture is
neither relative nor pragmatic. It deals in
absolutes. And, contrary to the popular notion, it is
not open for discussion and debate. This is why
discussion groups, leaderless Bible studies, and all
such things are not only a bad idea, they are also
dangerous. People getting together to share their
ignorance can never produce anything truly edifying.
Why? Because seldom (if ever) does this approach
proclaim Absolute Truth. The group merely discusses what
the text means to them instead of a God-called, trained,
and ordained man of God expositing what the text says
and how it applies to the Christian’s
life.
All this is
precisely why Paul absolutely refused to mix philosophy
with preaching. As he wrote to the Corinthians, “For
Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel:
not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ
should be made of none effect” (I Cor. 1:17). To mix the
two was to make the Gospel “of none effect.” The Greek
here is keno, which means to make empty or void,
to deprive of force, render vain, useless, of no effect.
So, to mix philosophy with preaching is to make the
Gospel empty, void, and useless. That is exactly what
has been done today. The Gospel is presented as
something that will make your life better, help you
prosper, “meet your needs,” and so forth. And that is
what philosophy has always taught. From secular
philosophies such as Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
to so-called “Christian” philosophies such as Bruce
Wilkinson’s popular book The Prayer of
Jabez, all such philosophy is
secular, human, and false.
What is the great
difference between philosophy and Truth? It is this:
Truth is a revelation while
philosophy is an invention. That’s why Paul
went on to write to the
Corinthians:
And I, brethren, when I
came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of
wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I
determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus
Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in
weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my
speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of
power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of
men, but in the power of God. (I Cor. 2:1-5).
All God demands is
that we just preach the Truth, for it never
changes.
Religion
A third claim to
being a source of Truth in our day is made by
religion.
In a very
real sense, what we’ve observed regarding philosophy
applies equally to religion, for religion is nothing
more than philosophy. Webster defines
religion as “a personal set
or institutionalized system of religious attitudes,
beliefs, and practices.”
Before going on, we
should make a crucial point. In a sense Biblical
Christianity is a religion. The Puritans, for
example, often referred to it as religion. But it’s
interesting that in the five verses where the world
“religion” appears in the New Testament, it is
always qualified by a
modifier. Speaking as a Pharisee, Paul refers to “our
religion” in Acts 26:5, that is, the works-oriented
religion that Judaism had become. He does so again in
Galatians 1:13-14, where he uses the term “the Jew’s
religion.” James uses two modifiers, calling one
religion “man’s religion” and the other “pure religion”
(Jas. 1:26-27).
So there is a
difference between “religion” per se and “pure
religion.” The word “pure” translates the Greek
katharos, which means that
which is genuine, or that which is free from any
improper mixture. Biblical Christianity is, therefore,
the genuine article, in contrast to just religion. For
that reason, I use the word “religion” in the sense of
false religion in contrast to Biblical
Christianity.
With that in mind,
when one examines religion, he finds that from Cain,
through the pagan cults, and right up to today’s
countless religions, every one of them has their own
belief system, their own philosophy, their own view of
Truth. In the final analysis, every religion is simply
man’s works-oriented way of getting to God (or
enlightenment, nirvana, or whatever else he wants to
call his idea of Truth). Like philosophy, religion is
invention, not revelation. Religion is
not Truth.
Perhaps the
best example is Judaism. After all, if any “religion”
could be called Truth, it would surely be Judaism. God
Himself gave the Law, instituted the sacrificial system,
and established Temple worship. But the Jews totally
perverted all of it and turned it into just another
works system. Throughout their history, especially
during the Babylonian Exile and the Intertestamental
Period, they added thousands of man-made traditions to
God’s law and made them equal to God’s law. The
rabbis searched Scripture to find various commands and
regulations and then added supplemental requirements.
As our
Lord declared to the scribes and Pharisees, “Thus have
ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your
tradition” (Matt.
15:6).
To the command not to work
on the Sabbath, for example, they added the idea that
carrying a burden was a form of work, but then they had
to answer the question, “What constitutes a burden?”
After much discussion, they decided that a burden would
be defined as food equal to the weight of a fig, enough
wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one
swallow, honey enough to put on a wound, oil enough to
anoint a small member of the body, water enough to
moisten eye salve, paper enough to write a customs house
notice, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet,
reed enough to make a pen, and so on. To carry anything
more than those prescribed amounts on the Sabbath was to
break the law.
But even such a list could
not answer every situation, so a lot of time was spent
arguing about such things as if a tailor who went out on
the Sabbath with a needle stuck in his robe, or if
moving a lamp from one place in a room to another, or if
wearing an artificial leg, or if using a crutch, or if a
parent lifted a child, or if a doctor healed a patient
on the Sabbath was considered carrying a burden and
therefore sinful.
Another related issue was
how far a person could travel on the Sabbath, based upon
Exodus 16:29: “Abide ye every man in his place, let no
man go out of his place on the seventh day.” Acts 1:12
mentions what came to be called “a Sabbath day’s
journey.” It was decided, not by Biblical authority but
by the Rabbis, that the farthest distance a faithful Jew
could travel on the Sabbath was equal to one-half of a
mile (about 2,000 cubits). Where in the world did they
get that arbitrary measurement? It was derived from
tradition based upon Israel’s encampments in the
wilderness. The tents farthest out on the camp’s
perimeter were 2,000 cubits from the center Tabernacle,
which was the longest distance anyone had to walk to
reach the tabernacle on the Sabbath (Josh. 3:4; cf. Num.
35:5), so that distance became law.
One other example of such
Jewish tradition is found in Matthew 15:1-2: “Then came
to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem,
saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of
the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat
bread?” The washing referred to here had nothing to do
with hygiene, rather ceremonial rinsing. The purpose was
to remove the ritual defilement caused by having touched
something unclean, such as a dead body or a Gentile.
Some of the rabbis even taught that a certain demon
named Shibtah attached itself to people’s hands while
they slept and that, if he were not ceremonially washed
away, he would actually enter the body through the food
handled by defiled hands.
The value of ceremonial
rinsing was held so high that one rabbi insisted that
“whosoever has his abode in the land of Israel and eats
his common food with rinsed hands may rest assured that
he shall obtain eternal life.” Another rabbi taught that
it would be better to walk four miles out of the way to
get water than to eat with unwashed hands. One rabbi who
was imprisoned and given a small ration of water used it
to wash his hands before eating rather than to drink,
claiming he would rather die than transgress the
tradition.
It was for this
reason that water jars were conveniently placed when a
meal was served. One could not use less than a quarter
of a “log” of water, which was enough to fill one and a
half egg shells. He first had to pour the water on both
hands with the fingers pointed upward; the water then
had to run down the arm as far as the wrist and drop off
from the wrist, since the water was now itself unclean,
having touched the unclean hands. And if by chance it
ran down the fingers again, it would render them
unclean. This process was repeated with the hands held
in the downward direction, the fingers pointing down.
And finally each hand was cleansed by being rubbed with
the fist of the other. A strict Jew would do this before
every meal and between every
course in a meal.
But the Law of Moses
contained no commandment about washing one’s hands
before eating—except for priests who were required to
wash before eating holy offerings (Lev. 22:6, 7). And
God never instituted such washings as any more than
outward symbols or pictures of spiritual truths. The Old
Testament nowhere holds them up as having any merit,
value, or blessing in themselves.
Such outward ritual and
meaningless works have been repeated millions of times,
throughout thousands of years, by hundreds of religions.
And religion is all it is, just man-made tradition. From
Roman Catholic ritual, which comes from tradition not
Scripture, to even Protestants, Evangelicals, and
Fundamentalists who give more authority to the
pronouncements of their denomination than to the Bible,
Truth is forced to give way to religious
tradition.
III. The
Only Source of Truth
With all the foregoing in
mind, if science, philosophy, or religion cannot give us
Truth, what can? This is, indeed, a challenging question
in our day and brings us back to Pilate’s cynical (or
even contemptuous) question to the Lord Jesus in John
18:37-38, a question that permeates our society
today: “What is truth?”
The most noteworthy thing
about that scene is that while Pilate asked a legitimate
and pivotal question, he did not wait for an answer,
rather “when he had said this, he went out again.” Think
of it—he was standing in front of Truth Incarnate but
walked away. And people have been walking away from
Truth ever since. One writer, Dr. Mark M. Hanna, notes
that
we are facing the
following pernicious but widely held assumptions
today:
(1) It is doubtful that
there is such a thing as truth; but if there is, it
cannot be known.
(2) If there is such
a thing as truth, it is very unlikely that there is any
religious truth.
Repeating our
earlier definition, Truth, or that which is true, speaks of what is real,
what really is, what is factual. It’s not opinion, it’s
not conjecture, it’s not hypothesis or theory. Rather,
it is “telling it like it is.” If something is true, it
is absolutely reliable, totally secure. It cannot change
because to do so would mean it’s not true, not reliable.
If something is true, it will always be true, and
there will never be a
circumstance when it is
untrue.
What, then, is true? What
is factual? What is absolutely reliable, totally secure,
and unchanging?
We are left with
only one answer—God and His Word.
Paul declares in our
text, In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard
the word of truth, the gospel of your
salvation. There are two
emphases in this great statement: The Immediate Truth,
and The Broader Truth.
The
Immediate Truth
First, Paul speaks
of the
word of truth, which is best stated and
understood as the
gospel of your salvation. In other words, it is
the Gospel that is the only truth
that brings salvation. The real Truth,
which in turn forms the foundation of all other
Truth and is the source from which all other
Truth flows, is the Gospel.
Word
translates logos, which means to speak
intelligently, to articulate a message, to give a
discourse. Truth, as already noted, is aletheia, which
means nonconcealment, and denotes a thing as it
really is, not as it is concealed or falsified. So the
phrase the word of truth declares that there is
one message that is real and unconcealed, not falsified
or changing. What is that message? It is the message of
the gospel.
How profound that
statement is! In a day when it is considered intolerant
and divisive to say that there is only one true
religion, that statement invites violent criticism. To
call one group a cult or false religion, or call Islam
“an evil religion,” as did President George W. Bush
after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers
and the Pentagon, brings a storm of protest. But such
dissent does not alter the fact that God says that only
His Word is Truth.
The word
Gospel has an interesting etymology. The Greek,
of course, is euaggelion: eu, good;
aggello, to
proclaim, tell. But the English is even more
fascinating. It comes from the Old English
godspel:
god,
good; spel, tale. Witches were said to cast a
spell, that is, say certain words that supposedly
had magic powers. To spellbind, is to speak in
such a way as to hold people’s attention. To
spell a word means to name or
write the letters of the word. So, the Gospel is,
indeed, the good spell, the good tale, the good story,
the good message, the good news.
Even more
significant, the gospel is the only good
tale. The definite article (the) is present twice
in the English but three times in the Greek. We can
literally read it,
“The message of the truth,
the good news of your
salvation.” Paul wants to make it clear that there is
only one good news. As he declared to the Galatian
believers:
I marvel that ye are so
soon removed from him that called you into the grace of
Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but
there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the
gospel of Christ. (Gal. 1:6-7).
He makes it clear to them
that a perverted Gospel is not a Gospel (a good news, a
good story) at all. It is for that reason that he writes
the very pointed, narrow command in the next two
verses:
But though we, or an angel
from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that
which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As
we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach
any other gospel unto you than that ye have received,
let him be accursed (vs. 8-9).
“Accursed” (anathema) refers to that which is
devoted to destruction. We are not to be tolerant of
false teaching, rather we are to consider such teaching
and teachers as under God’s judgment. God simply will
not tolerate a perversion of Gospel. Why? Because it’s
the only Truth. The Apostle Paul preached the
only Gospel there is. In contrast, in our day the
Gospel is being retold as a new tale, a new story. It’s
a story of God’s Universal Fatherhood, Jesus’ life as a
good moral example, and a salvation without repentance,
Lordship, or even acknowledgment of sin. One today can
define the Gospel in whatever terms make him feel okay.
But that type of Gospel, which is no Gospel at all, must
be cursed for what it is—a lie. The only
Gospel is, as the context makes clear, trust in
Jesus’ blood as the only redemption from
sin.
The Broader
Truth
Going still deeper
here, the
truth refers to more than just the Gospel
message. It also includes all of God’s
revelation, that is, all of His
Word. We say this because the message of the Gospel is
the center of God’s revelation and everything else flows
from that. When we come to Christ, we embrace not only
the Truth of the Gospel, but all of God’s
Truth.
It is precisely for
that reason that we need to recognize that God’s Word
is the only source of Absolute Truth (which is actually redundant, because Truth
implies an absolute). As we’ve seen, there are many
other claims on how to discover Truth, but it is God
alone who reveals it.
Words fail to
express the impact that this realization has produced in
my own life and service. After examining the history of
science, philosophy, and religion, it becomes glaringly
obvious that Truth is to be discovered
only in God and His Word. As
mentioned earlier, to argue along the lines of these
other things is pointless, fruitless, and, if I may be
so bold, borderline blasphemous. We should not argue
from any other premise but, “Thus saith the
Lord.”
Now, some would object to
our whole discussion by saying, “This is all quite
silly. After all, I can say, ‘The book is on the table;
that is a fact and is therefore true, and the Bible
didn’t have anything to do with it.” And to that we say,
you are quite right. That is what is called
“self-evident fact.” Something that is self-evident does
not need to be proved because it shows itself to be
true.
This thought
immediately prompted me to ask, “Does the Bible have
anything to say about what philosophers call
“self-evident fact?” And I found that It does, indeed.
Galatians 3:11 declares, “But that no man is justified
by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The
just shall live by faith.” The word “evident” translates
the Greek delos,
which, as John Gill puts it, refers to “a clear case,
out of all dispute.” Writing to the Galatians, who had
become entangled in the works-oriented Judaizing heresy, Paul is
saying that there is nothing more “self-evident”
than the fact that man cannot be justified by Law
but by faith in Christ alone. There is, indeed, no more
obvious and self-evident Truth in Scripture than that.
That is precisely what changed Martin Luther’s life and
ignited the Reformation. In Luther’s own words, “If
anyone could have been saved by his monkery, it would
have been me.” But he finally realized the self-evident
Truth of sola fide (faith
alone).
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
wrote a wonderful book titled, The Approach to Truth:
Scientific and Religious. In it
he writes:
The Bible says quite
plainly and frankly that man is totally incapable of
arriving at a knowledge of truth by means of scientific
theory, and that if he would arrive at a knowledge of
truth, he must submit himself to revelation. In other
words, he must admit he cannot arrive at truth unaided.
He must cease to have self-confidence; he must cease to
trust his own intellect and his power of reason . . .
The Bible is quite explicit in saying that there is only
one way of arriving at a knowledge of ultimate truth,
and that is to accept the revelation which is given in
the Bible.
Many people look at such
an attitude and mockingly say, “That is simply
intellectual suicide. To accept the Bible and,
therefore, ignore millennia of scientific proof and
philosophical argument is childish simplicity.” Really?
How then does one explain a man like Blaise Pascal, the
17th Century French mathematical genius? At
the age of 12, he discovered the main principles of
Geometry on his own; when his father took away his
Geometry books to make him study languages, the boy
worked out 32 of Euclid’s propositions without prior
knowledge of them. He later pioneered Hydrodynamics and
Fluid Mechanics, in so doing discovering what would be
named Pascal’s Law, which formed the basis of
Hydraulics. He would be honored in the 20th
Century by having a computer programming language named
after him. And yet, where did he place his faith and
trust? On the person of Christ as Savior and Lord by
grace.
Countless other
brilliant individuals are likewise hard to explain. The
Apostle Paul himself, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther,
Calvin, Edwards, and others were all brilliant
individuals. But why were they brilliant? Because they
realized that mere intellect is limited; it could not
take them all the way. They all realized that Truth was
not to be found in reason, but in
revelation.
In contrast, as the
Psalmist declares, the smartest person in the world who
says there is no God is not smart at all; he’s a fool
(Ps. 14:1). Here is another sweeping and profound
statement. The person who denies God, no matter how
brilliant he is or how earth shattering his discoveries
might be, is simply a fool.
The
evolutionist, for example, who is perhaps the
most pitiable of all scientists, looks for Truth by
digging up bones and then proposing wild theories of
origins that he cannot even begin to defend
intelligently. But what is the Truth? “In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth” (Gen. 1:1), and “In six days the LORD made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” (Ex. 20:11)
The
astronomer gazes into the vastness of space and
postulates that it all started with a Big Bang billions
of years ago. But what is the Truth? “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge” (Ps.
19:1-2).
The
philosopher rambles on about “being” and
“knowing.” But what is the Truth? “In [Christ] are hid all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).
The
religionist pontificates about the many roads
there are to God. But what is the
Truth? Jesus declared very
narrowly, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man
cometh unto the Father, but by me” (Jn. 14:6). And
again, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction,
and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is
the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto
life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. 7:13-14).
How sad it is that so many
today are, “Are ever learning, and never able to come to
the knowledge of the truth” (II Tim. 3:7). No matter
what man discovers, no matter what he learns, no matter
what advances he makes, he still misses the
Truth.
Finally, one of the
greatest burdens on my heart is the lack of knowledge
and Truth in Christianity today. It is deeply tragic
that many are caught up in these inadequate sources of
Truth when the battle can only be won with the “sword of
the Spirit, which is the Word of GOD” (Eph. 6:17). And
what’s more, the major fault lies nowhere else than on
the heads of preachers. One of the saddest realities in
the Church are pastors who stand in the pulpit week
after week and preach nothing but salvation messages, or
at best, some shallow, syrupy devotional. Yes, salvation
is the beginning, but it’s just that—the
beginning. From there comes “the
perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ.” (Eph. 4:11-12).
Paul went out of his way to specifically challenge the
Ephesian elders to declare “all the counsel of God” and
“to feed the church of God” (Acts 20:27-28). It is only
by giving God’s people the Truth—predominately by
expository preaching—that they can be equipped for
living and become discerners of error. But tragically,
that is not the norm today.
It is also for this reason
that Paul entreated Timothy that the very mission of the
Church is to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I
Tim. 3:15). This was actually an extraordinary
statement. Timothy was at that time the pastor of the
Ephesian church. Paul had left him there to deal with
several problems that had arisen. While we don’t readily
understand this statement, Timothy and the Ephesians
immediately recognized the imagery Paul uses.
The impressive temple of
the goddess Diana (Artemis), one of the seven wonders of
the ancient world, was located in the city. William
Barclay gives the following description of it:
One of its features was
its pillars. It contained 127 pillars, every one of them
the gift of a king. All were made of marble, and some
were studded with jewels and overlaid with
gold.
Each
pillar
acted as a tribute to the king who donated it.
The honorary significance of the pillars, however, was
secondary to their function of holding up the immense
structure of the roof. Here, then, Paul says that the
church’s mission is to hold up the Truth.
But Paul adds
something else—that the church is also the ground
of the Truth. Ground translates the Greek
hedraioma, which appears only here in the New Testament
and refers to “a stay, a prop, or a support.” Some
commentators maintain that the idea here is
“foundation.” The NIV even translates it as
“foundation.” But that is a very serious error. Gordon
Clark points out by writing:
Were this word translated
foundation, so the church would be the foundation
of the truth, the connotation would be seriously in
error. The Church does not invent the truth; the truth
produces the church . . . The church is the pillar and
seat, the mainstay, the bulwark, the support of the
truth. In less metaphorical language this means the
church proclaims, defends, and propagates the
Gospel.
Greek scholar
Kenneth Wuest gives the true comparison of pillar
and ground by
writing:
The word “ground” is
hedraioma,
“a stay, a prop.” The kindred adjective is
hedraios, “firm, stable.” The
words, “pillar” and “ground,” are in apposition to
[i.e., supplement] the word “church.” The idea is that
the church is the pillar, and as such, the prop or
support of the truth.
So, in Paul’s
metaphor the church is not the foundation of the
Truth—the Truth is the foundation. Rather, the Church is
the pillar, the mainstay, the chief support that holds
up the Truth and proclaims it as the only Truth.
As the pillars of the Temple of Diana were a testimony
to the error of pagan false religion, so the Church is
to be a testimony to God’s Truth. That is its mission,
its very reason for existence.
In direct
contradiction of Paul’s imagery, the mission of today’s
churches is to be “user friendly,” “purpose driven,” and
“seeker sensitive,” but God said to just preach the
Truth. It is the solemn responsibility of every church
to solidly, immovably, unshakably, uncompromisingly
uphold the Truth of God’s Word. Again, the Church is not
to invent the Truth, as is being done today by
everything from redefining the Gospel to
reinventing Church ministry.
Such people are treading on dangerous ground. As
Revelation 22:18-19 declare, judgment awaits those who
alter God’s Word:
For I testify unto every
man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book,
If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add
unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And
if any man shall take away from the words of the book of
this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the
book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book.
When John, the last
of the apostles (and therefore the last person able to
write Scripture), wrote these words, the Gnostics were
already adding to and subtracting from the Word of God.
The Roman Catholic Church has since added its traditions
and the ex
cathedra (“from the chair”) pronouncements of its
popes to the Word of God. The Mormons have added the
nonsense concocted by Joseph Smith in The Book of Mormon.
The so-called Christian Scientists have added the
ramblings of Mary Baker Eddy. The Spiritists have added
pronouncements derived from demons. In contrast to such
additions, liberal textual critics have
specialized in deleting great portions of
Scripture. And the tampering goes on, in spite of God’s
warning. In the end God will settle His own accounts
with those He bluntly labels “liars” in Proverbs 30:5-6: “Every word of God is pure:
he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and
thou be found a liar.”
May we say it one more
time—the Church’s mandate is not to invent the Truth,
but to support and safeguard the Truth. It is to the
Church that God has given the stewardship of Scripture.
The Scripture is the most precious possession on earth,
and it is the Church’s duty to guard It. Churches that
tamper with Biblical Truth, misrepresent it, depreciate
it, relegate it to a secondary place, or abandon it
altogether destroy their only reason for existing and
will experience impotence and judgment. I grieve every
day over the fact that many (if not most) evangelical
churches are not preaching the unadulterated,
uncompromised Truth of God’s Word.
The most important
gauge by which a church can be measured is not how large
it is, how good its fellowship is, how interesting the
pastor is, how good the music is, how well the grounds
are kept up, or even how respected it is in the
community. The measure of any church is how it
handles the Word of God. Two questions should be our
benchmark: First, does it teach the Truth?
Second, does it live the
Truth?
May we emphasize once
again that Truth is not relative. Unlike the world,
Liberal Christianity, and even much of the Evangelical
Church, the Scripture could not be clearer on this
point. In Luke 9:50, the Lord Jesus said to His
disciples, “He that is not against us is for us.” Two
chapters later (11:23) He said it in the reverse: “He
that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth
not with me scattereth.” A person is either for Christ
or against Christ. There is no middle ground between
right and wrong, Truth and error, sound doctrine and
heretical doctrine, true Gospel and false Gospel.
Something is either true or it isn’t. In contrast to the
prevalent and predominate attitude of our day, there is
nothing in the middle. There is no “gray
area.”
Oh, Dear Christian Friend,
no matter what the question, no matter what the issue,
would that our motto be, “What saith the Scripture?”
(Rom. 4:3; Gal. 4:30). Why? Because only It is
Truth.
Let us close with two
other wonderful verses:
Then said Jesus to those
Jews which 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 (Jn.
8:32-33).
Will science make us free?
No, we’re ever leaning but never discovering. Will
philosophy make us free? No, it drove Nietzsche mad.
Will even religion make us free? No, the Law keeps us in
bondage. It is only the Gospel of Christ that makes us
free, and it is only in His Word that we find
Truth.
