A message for the Christian believer:
If you want the truth, then turn your attention to the truth.
In the New Testament, the apostle John opens his first letter to the
churches with these words:
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we
have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our
hands,
concerning the word of life -- this life was revealed, and we have seen it
and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the
Father and was revealed to us -- we declare to you what we have seen and
heard so that you also may have fellow****p with us; and truly our
fellow****p
is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:1-3 NRSV)
But the world remains in the dark...
There's no end to the things people will say about the Lord Jesus these
days. Every philosophy, every religion, every loose crank will rattle off
some idle description, some pointless explanation, some uninformed
"expert"
interpretation of who Jesus really was, and/or what Jesus was all about.
If we make the mistake of looking to the world for spiritual truth (or
even
for verification of that truth), we will not last long as believers in
Jesus
Christ.
This is nothing new. Old manuscripts show that such things were going on
as
early as the fourth century. Whenever God speaks and acts, the enemy is
also
eager to speak and act in some way, trying to draw away from the real --
just as in the Garden, the serpent pulled Eve's attention to the forbidden
tree, while the tree of life stood not far away, ignored.
The Secret to survival: walk in the Spirit.
Had the early Christians not been filled with God's Spirit, and had they
not
already had the true Scriptures in circulation among the churches, the
false
philosophizing might have gained a foothold even among true believers.
Even
as it was, the Spirit of God leads Paul to write:
"As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live
your
lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith,
just
as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes
you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human
tradition, according to the 'elemental spirits' of the universe, and not
according to Christ." (Colossians 2:6-8)
By the Spirit of God the Bible stands, as it has for a great many
generations, as the unbroken Word of God. But the world is still in
darkness, in the very grip of evil. When Moses began writing the Law of
God,
in Genesis through Deuteronomy, the foul stench of false religions already
filled many nations. Human nature is corrupt, often rejecting the pure in
favor of the rotten, the false, the polluted.
Even the people of God were infected with cravings for false gods, false
religion, and polluted wor****p, from the days of Moses all the way into
the
very days when Israel was forced out of their homeland (see the book of
Jeremiah). And in the days of Jesus, while religious leaders made a lout
of
pious noise, insisting that there is only one God, they in fact held their
own human traditions and customs as more precious than the promises,
warnings, and commands of God.
People today are not so different.
Because today's church is so weak in faith, because we are slow in our
willingness to obey and love God, and timid in our public expressions of
the
truth, the enemy is bold to use his own puppets and his own dupes to offer
false teaching in the name of faith, and even in the name of God. In
ancient
times, a corrupt king built two golden idols and called them by God's own
sacred Name. And today the enemy uses men and women who have no knowledge
of
the truth to mislead many as to the true nature of God and of Jesus
Christ.
Falsehood speaks in the name of God.
But people in the Western world have no excuse. The truth is not only "out
there" but right here among us, within our very grasp. Bibles abound in
the
English language, and in many other languages. Scholarly editions of the
original Greek and Aramaic manuscripts also abound. Archaeology has
published its findings, not for the sake of the church, but for the whole
world to see. Public libraries carry the evidences of centuries of
research
and discovery. My own bookcases are filled with ancient editions of the
Bible, both Christian and Jewish. There is no excuse for being misled into
thinking that the Bible is not God's Word.
They will always be around.
But according to Scripture, unbelievers will always exist, right up until
the Lord wipes Satan himself off the face of the earth. And these things
do
not happen until after Jesus has reigned on the earth for a thousand
years.
Think about that: Even after Jesus Christ Himself has ruled this planet
for
a thousand years, unbelievers will still be around to rise up against God
and His people. The book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ (last book of
the
Bible) makes that clear enough.
And so today, with all the information we have, we also have unbelievers
who
refuse to learn anything. They are too infatuated with their own ideas,
their own daydreams, their own religious philosophizing. So many people
claim to want only facts and truth, yet so few really care about truth
even
enough to dig a little for themselves. They'll accept any garbage offered
to
them that speaks against the Bible, but will not take the time to discover
God's Word in Scripture for themselves. For me, this is just so much more
proof that human nature is twisted, bent, broken -- totally perverse.
Again, the Bible says that it will be so.
John 3:17-20 says it this way:
"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but
in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in
him
are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already,
because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And
this
is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved
darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do
evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may
not be exposed."
The bottom line: people tend to love their sins more than they care to
know
the truth. If the truth threatens them with change, they will reject the
truth in favor of any false idea that allows them to continue in sin. In
fact, most people will run from anything that even talks about the reality
of sin. And they will not follow the real Jesus Christ because Jesus
exposes
sin for what it is.
Yet Jesus Christ was a real human being. He was born. He walked and spoke,
and He fasted, abstaining from food for some 40 days and nights. He was a
real human being. He bled real blood, just as He said He would. He was
really nailed to a Roman cross. He really died. He was really buried. He
really rose up again from the dead -- the only human being to ever conquer
death and the grave. Yet He conquered death and the grave not just for
Himself, but also for everyone who believes in Him.
What about the evidence?
Unbelievers sometimes claim that there is no evidence that Jesus ever
really
lived or died or rose again. But they say this because they are rejecting
God's Holy Spirit -- and the Bible record -- preferring to cling to their
own imaginations, instead. Thousands of ancient New Testament manuscripts
still exist, some of them from all the way back into the time of the
apostles. And that's thousands more witnesses than the almost nonexistent
manuscript evidences we have of other ancient figures such as Homer,
Socrates, Aristotle, and others that we would never think to doubt.
Why do some religious leaders and so-called scholars want to get rid of
Jesus Christ? The answer is very simple. They have no love for the truth,
and Jesus is the Truth. They have no interest in knowing God, preferring
their own ideas and traditions instead. Yet Jesus is the one and only Way
to
God. And these unbelievers are spiritually dead, having never turned to
God
in repentance.
They hate the light.
They hate the bountiful life of God. And Jesus Christ is the perfect Light
of God and the unbounded Life of God, so they absolutely hate Jesus. They
want to design and develop their own gods.
If anyone desires to know God, to know the real facts about Jesus Christ,
then all they need to do is read the Bible for themselves. Read with the
intent of allowing God to show you the truth.
For those unfamiliar with Scripture, I suggest starting in the Gospel of
Mark (2nd book in the New Testament ****tion of the Bible). It's a short
Gospel tract, and will not take long to read. Next, you should move on to
John's Gospel. I suggest reading that book twice in order to absorb as
much
information as possible. And then, read the other two Gospels: Matthew and
Luke. And from there, you might want to read the Acts (5th NT book) and so
on.
Get the facts for yourself.
The point is, get the facts for yourself. Before you go running off to
drink
form a crumbling and stagnant well, first drink good and long and deep
from
the fresh flowing spring of God's Spirit. Before you start trying to
learn
from the counterfeits, study the real thing -- the Holy Bible.
Only the real message of God, applied to our hearts by the Spirit of God,
will satisfy the longing of a heart that's hungry for God's truth and
reality.
Jim
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