TRUTH AND PEOPLE, AND THE WAY IT IS

Someone wrote: “We live in unprecedented times when many in churches seem neither to have or want the Bible as their criterion and to be more ready to love and embrace a lie than to seek the truth about anything or anyone. What do you think?” My answer: I think you are right. But no surprise—these are those times prophesied when things would be “waxing worse and worse,” and when “the love of many shall wax cold,” etc. (2 Tim . 3:13; Matt. 24:12). The important thing in these days is that we recognize realities, remain “steadfast and unmovable” where truth is concerned, and keep the following in mind:

There are two types of people in church memberships, the most influential of which will impact the spiritual condition of a church deciding whether or not it spiritually thrives or even survives. There are those able to discern truth, who value it and have the courage to contend for it, and those who operate on a different level, who seem to have difficulty even distinguishing between right and wrong.

This is simply the way it is in churches. A fact that has always had to be factored in and faced is that in pulpits and pews there are those who are and those who aren't "valiant for truth” (Jer. 9:3); those who contend for truth and those who are willing to see it compromised and even cast into the street for the sake of their own ego, an agenda or in order to ingratiate themselves with others or avoid conflict (Jude 3; Isa. 59:14). James Russell Lowell spoke to this in his famous poem The Present Crisis:

“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

With all this in mind, it's important (1) to not mistake the exercise of patience and wisdom as a compromise of truth, and (2) to remember that people, as they mature spiritually, very often change in their thinking and commitment to truth. It's easy to slip into the Elijah syndrome and think that those who really stand for truth are a whole lot fewer than is actually the case (1 Kings 19:8-18).

Meanwhile, how are we to “behave” ourselves relative to truth "in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, which is the pillar and the ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15)? Answer: We are to “contend for it” with an “excellent spirit,” while “speaking the truth in love" (Eph. 6:14a; Jude 3; Dan. 6:3; Eph. 4:15). (Please consider going to thatwemayknow.com and clicking "Subscribe").