B 5. How Can We Distinguish Truth From Error?
The biggest problem we all have is knowing what the truth is. We don’t need to understand all the answers, even though we rocket scientists are surely trying to do that. No, the real problem is that we make decisions that have grave consequences and yet often we have bogus information in that decision process. You can verify this by the numerous conflicting interpretations of the observations in the world around us. All scientists do not agree on these interpretations, because there are usually various ways to interpret the evidence. However, theologians and religious people have the same problem. They can all say we must believe the Bible and even that we must take it literally. Yet, how many different Christian religions are there? The truth is surely obscured. This is why God has said that we must seek the truth; that He is the way, the truth, and the Life; that His word is the truth; etc. Christ placed a great emphasis on knowing the truth. My assessment of the workings of the demonic forces is that they are out to obscure that truth, wherever possible. They will introduce a mixture of truth and error and thus we can be led to believe a lie in critical areas that will affect our relationship with God.
Here’s the solution:
We need to talk to God now so that we will know God when we are confused about the truth.
In times when the facts are confused, we can and should always talk directly to God in our private thoughts. Do not use any occult techniques to establish this communication, because the real God does not need them. He will show us what to do, even when we don’t understand. So, how do we know at those times that we are actually in communication with the real God and not with something less? If we routinely talk to God now, we will have a working relationship with Him and we will know Him later. We can verify that He is the real God during times of our greatest temptations to do things that we know are not good for us, but which we really, really want to do. If in those times we fight our desires and ask God to prevent us from giving in to those temptations, then He will intervene. Each time we fight a temptation by calling on God to help us, we will pull ourselves a bit closer to the real God. We get to know Him better and better each time we lean on Him to help us. Again, “We need to talk to God now so that we will know God when we are confused about the truth.”
Conversely, if we continue to give in to the same temptation every time, without ever winning a battle, we will pull ourselves away from God farther and farther each time. This makes us vulnerable to demonic possession. When we lose contact with God we find other false gods to trust. This is one way demons get entry into our thoughts, where they can eventually control our impressions of reality. We will lose our ability to discern truth from error.
Let’s look at the Bible for help on understanding Prophecy.
Isa 28:9 tells us that we need to go to God to understand prophecy
Isa 28:10 tells us that we can put all the texts on a given subject in the Bible on the table and then we’ll see the answers. We let the Bible interpret itself.
Eph 3:2-10 & Heb 1:1 God gives His messages to His prophets and they relate it to the people.
1Cor 1:1 Follow me because I follow God
Eph 3:4 God wants us to understand these mysteries
Eph 3:2-6 We need the Holy Spirit’s help to understand and to interpret these revelations correctly
2 Peter 1:21 The Holy Spirit reveals the truth to His prophets
2 Peter 2:1-3 False prophets distort God’s truth.
So how do we get this Holy Spirit’s help? This is where all the Christian churches leave us limp. They know we need God’s Holy Spirit, but they don’t give us the mechanism for obtaining what we need. They leave us with the offer that we should believe this or that group of men, even though there are differing opinions out there. I say we have a more sure way to know the truth. Consider this logic:
- First, know that the Holy Spirit is simply God’s thoughts
- Thoughts transcend the dimensional gaps between God and us. We can talk to God via our thoughts
- We can also talk to fallen angels via occult methods that work via our thoughts. How do we know who we are talking to?
- We inherently know when something we like is harmful to us.
- It is during those times we are tempted to do something we really want to do, which is harmful to us, that we can find the real God.
- While the temptation is progress, we must call out to God in our thoughts, for Him to intervene, even though we really do want this harmful thing.
- We know that the one we are talking to is the real God, if He intervenes at our request to keep us from a temptation in progress.
- Every time we fight such a temptation in progress we are drawn closer to God, until we have a strong relationship with Him.
- We must fight the temptation as often as we are able to, so that we don’t fall too far away from the real God.
- As we continue to develop this relationship with the true God, we will get to know Him and He to “know” us.
- Then in those times of serious confusion, we will know we are again talking to the true God, because He is familiar to us.
The alternative is to listen to those false gods who tell us what we want to hear. They feed us a believable mixture of truth and error and we lose our ability to distinguish them ourselves. Since their agenda is different than God’s agenda for us, we can know them by their fruits. God wants us to live life abundantly and He therefore wants us to avoid those situations, which will ultimately hurt us or keep us from a fruitful enjoyable life. The set of all such things is what we call “evil”. Doing such things is what we call sin. Conversely the set of all those situations that are healthy and constructive for our well-being, we call “good”.
God’s agenda is “good” choices, while the demonic forces promote “evil” choices. If we know the truth, then we can always elect to choose good. God makes a very big deal out of the fact that He promotes the truth. Therefore the demonic pressure is to confuse the truth. In the most confusing times you do what you have always done, “When you are good or bad, happy or sad, talk to God about it”. You will accomplish the primary purpose of your human life if you do this, ie you will develop a working relationship with your Creator and you will want that to continue throughout eternity as He has always intended. The “Good News” is that God has this plan whereby, even though we are never going to be perfect in this life, we can obtain everlasting life. All we need to do is to convince ourselves that we want a working relationship with our Creator. We can do that on a routine basis, again by talking to God all the time and telling Him how things are going and how we feel about them. Talk to God when you are good or bad, happy or sad. It’s all about this relationship, not about obeying some manmade doctrines that we have trouble understanding.
In the End Times, the world will be confused more than ever, by a mixture of truth and error. Our typical standards for measuring truth eg those around us, our senses, logic, etc. will all be distorted. We can see it all around us now. Look at what the media promotes. Is it good for us or are we being led to believe lies? Surely there is a grey area where there is some truth in the ads, but there is also error and we are confused. It will get much worse. Review the sections on UFOs. In these times, we must know God well enough to call on Him and not on some other “familiar spirit”. He will not ignore us.
19 May 2002
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