Where Can I Find the Truth - II

Where Can You Find the Truth? – Part II

Last week, we spoke about finding the truth in all the wrong places. We examined the different places we look to find the truth – Books, schools, newspapers, magazines, the Internet and even governments – and saw evidence that all of these places really don’t necessarily teach us the truth. This week, we’re going to examine one last place where people go to find the truth – the church.

The problem with the church in general, as far as looking for the truth is concerned, is that there is a problem defining the truth. What is true for one church may not be true to another. However, there is a way to help determine what the truth is. The Barna group has defined what it means to have a Biblical Worldview. This worldview believes the following: that absolute moral truth exists, that it is based upon the Bible, that the Bible is accurate in its teachings, that Jesus was sinless, that Satan literally exists, that God is omniscient and omnipotent (knows everything and is all-powerful), that salvation is by grace alone (there’s nothing we can do to earn it), and that we all have the personal responsibility to evangelize (tell people all of the above). With this as a yardstick, Barna has found the following:

10% of self-identified Protestants say they don't believe in God.
21% of self-identified Roman Catholics say the same.
9% of all self-identified born again adults and just 7% of Protestants possess a biblical worldview

51% of the country’s Protestant pastors have a biblical worldview

The Southern Baptists had the highest percentage of pastors with a biblical worldview (71%) while the Methodists were lowest among the seven segments evaluated (27%).
57% of the pastors of Baptist churches (other than Southern Baptist)
51% of non-denominational Protestant pastors,
44% of pastors of charismatic or Pentecostal churches,
35% of pastors of black churches, and
28% of those leading mainline congregations.

Educationally, the pastors least likely to have a biblical worldview are those who are seminary graduates (45%). In contrast, three out of five pastors who have not attended seminary operate with a biblical worldview (59%).

Fewer than half of all Senior Pastors in the Northeast (43%) have a biblical worldview.

The point here is that the church today, especially in the Northeast, cannot give people the truth because they don’t know it or believe it themselves! And this is not a new phenomenon. This has been true from the beginning of the church. Paul writes to the Corinthians and the Galatians regarding teachers who were teaching the wrong things, teachers that we call false teachers. Jude writes the same in his letter and Peter argues against them in his letters. We see the lies of the church in all the corruption that people complain about – the witch hunts, the inquisitions, the crusades, even the sex scandals we hear about in the Roman Catholic churches these days. For centuries, the Church had taken advantage of its power over the people by keeping people ignorant of the truth of the Word of God and giving false teachings to cover up its goals of wealth and power. Great, true Christians such as Wycliffe, Galileo, and Luther were shut up and removed because they dared to oppose the church. Ironically, through all this, it’s not like the church did not have the truth – it did. It just chose to teach a lie. It became false teachers of the Word of God.

However, God is always able to fulfill His will (after all, He is God) and He brought the church back to a truer state with the Reformation, as he said he would in Revelations – which is the picture of the Philadelphia church. Today, we do have many churches teaching the truth. However, there is still a need to recognize the problem of false teachers, because, as we have seen from Barna’s surveys, there are still many false teachers out there.

2 Peter 2:1-3 “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.”

Just so it’s very clear, Peter is not just talking about some false teacher out there in the world. He is talking about false teachers in the church. He says they will be among you.

Acts 20:28-30 “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.” Here Paul also tells us that we will see false teachers come in among us – he calls the savage wolves. He says that they will come even from within the church.

We see this happening today with the “discovery” of the “Gospel of Judas”. There are men who would call themselves Christians working to undermine the truth of the Word of God and have us substitute the Gospel of Judas instead. In the true gospels, we are taught that Judas was evil, Luke 6:16 calls him a traitor, John 13:2 says that the devil prompted him to betray Jesus, John calls him a thief and both John and Luke say he was possessed by Satan. This is coming from Bart Ehrman, who also wrote, “Misquoting Jesus : The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why” where he claims that the Bible has been changed throughout history. I find it disturbing that an “expert” such as Ehrman would put so much trust in a document that was for all intents and purposes, thrown out by the believers of its day. He has taken it out of the trash and is recycling it as the truth. If he is wrong about this, what else is he wrong about? A false teacher in our midst!

How are we to react to him and others who would teach us lies as if they were truths?

Matt 7:15 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Jesus tells us in Matthew to beware of them. He says they come in sheep’s clothing, which means that they seem harmless, even adorable, embraceable. But Jesus tells us that they are really wolves, which means that they are really ferocious, threatening, deadly. This is what Jesus calls false teachers and he tells us to beware of them. Matt 24:11 “and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.” Jesus tells us that in this time, there will be many false teachers who are deceiving the church. Not just a few, but many and that many will be deceived.

Romans 16:18 “For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people.” These false teachers are not serving Jesus! They might sound like they are, but they are serving themselves. Today, we see many of these in the televangelists that grace our television screens every day. Recognize that some of them are truly trying to serve God, but when you hear any one of them justify their riches or their possessions, it’s probably a good sign that they are serving themselves. The worse part is, if you are not testing what they are saying, recognize what the bible is calling you – “Naïve”! Do not be naïve, but be like the Bereans – test these false teachers. Test true teachers! How else will you know if they are speaking truth or lies? You will find that all those teachers teaching the prosperity gospel are false teachers. All those teachers that are asking you to send money are false teachers. Listen to see if their gospel is a global truth. Is what they are saying as true in a village in the rainforest in South America or the jungles of Africa as they are in New York City or London? If not, then it is a false teaching. (For instance, I don’t think we will see too many of the natives driving a Mercedes or living in mansions.)

Titus 1:10-11 “For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain.” It’s not just me saying that these teachers are out for money – Paul tells us as well. He says that they do it for the sake of dishonest gain. In other words, they do it for the money. Also, he says that these teachers must be silenced. That’s what I am trying to do right now. These are false teachers who teach that we can have what we want if we just have faith – that was not true of the apostles, who all wished to be raptured up but instead were put to death in torturous manners. It was not true of the great martyrs of the faith who were burned, stoned, drowned, tortured and fed to the lions for entertainment. It is not true of us today – we will not have fortune or a pain-free life simply because we have faith and ask for it.

1 Tim 6:3-5 “If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” You see, it isn’t about good fortune, it’s about Jesus. The Bible teaches us that anyone who teaches something that doesn’t agree with the teachings of Jesus has evil intentions and actually thinks that financial gain is a form of godliness. Jesus’ teaching is that he is God. Creflo’s teaching is that Jesus was just a man and that he is not God. Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Fredrick KC Price, Marilyn Hickey, and even Joel Osteen all will teach things like “all this and heaven too”, “Something good is going to happen to you.” “Name it and claim it.” “God wants you to prosper.” “Wealth is a gift from the Lord.” “Health and wealth are always God’s will for his children.” “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He wants to share them with you. Visualize what you want. Speak the word of faith, and it will be yours.” Read again what Paul says about these teachers in 1 Tim 6:3-5. Jesus taught us that in this world we would have troubles, that we need to carry our cross – not that we can have whatever we want whenever we want it – even Jesus wanted the cup to pass but gave in his will to do that of the Father’s. The problem is that too many of us are happy to follow these false teachers because we like what they are saying, even though it is not the truth.

2 Tim 4:3 “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” The Bible has already told us that this day was coming. We prefer to hear that we can get rich or that the Bible has been changed and is not the truth. It makes it easier for us to continue to strive in this world than doing God’s will. We want to be surrounded by teachers who will tell us what we want to hear rather than what is the truth. It’s the reason that so few people who go to church actually have a Christian worldview, why so few Christian believe in an actual Hell, why so many Christians believe that there is another way to get to heaven than just believing in Jesus. We want to hear these things because it is more pleasing to us than hearing the truth – that there is a way that we should be living, that there is a real Hell and that there is only one way to heaven and that is through belief in the work that Jesus did on the cross; that only by believing that Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross satisfied the debt that we owe God for our sins and that only by accepting the free gift of God and believing in our hearts that Jesus is who he said he is, that we will have everlasting life in heaven.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy says “There are two commonly accepted constraints on truth and falsehood: 1 - Every proposition is true or false. And 2 - No proposition is both true and false. These constraints require that every proposition has exactly one truth-value. Although the point is controversial, most philosophers add the further constraint that a proposition never changes its truth-value in space or time.” In other words, the truth doesn’t change – it remains the same. If it is true, then it is true now and it will always be true.

So what is the truth and where can we find it? The Bible. It has been proven true over and over again, through Archeology, through prophecy, through the thousands of manuscript copies that exist throughout history (proving that Ehrman is incorrect in saying that the Bible has changed!). The Bible teaches us that Jesus is the Truth. John 8:32, 36; John 14:6.

We must recognize as we live in this time that there are many ways for us to learn the lies of the Devil – Books, schools, newspapers, the Internet, all the ways we’ve listed above. But there is one place we can find the truth – that is the teachings of Jesus, passed on to us through the teachings of the apostles, which has been preserved for us in the Bible, the Word of God. Believe that God is powerful enough to keep His teachings pure and preserve them in writing. Recognizing that, put your trust in the truth that He has taught us in His Word.

Send mail to david@TheArkNY.org with questions about the church or comments about this site.
Last modified: May 7, 2006