What is Truth?
There appears to be two definitions for something that can be determined as the truth as follows;
1. That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.
a. Fact is something that can be proven.
b. Reality is something that can be seen.
2. A fact or belief that is accepted as true, but has not been proven beyond a shadow of doubt
A person can believe something is true without any physical evidence provided to them proving it is factually true; this constitutes faith by the individual person because they desire to believe that it is true.
The Bible tells us that faith is the belief in things hoped for, the conviction of the reality of things that have not been seen.(Heb 11:1 paraphrased)
The Bible also tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God, for they that come to God must believe that he is. (Heb 11:6) Although, we cannot be certain that these are the words of God because we have no factual evidence that the author of the book of Hebrews received these words from God.
Let us examine some so called facts that we have been presented with and expected to believe are truths.
Is the existence of God a fact that can be proven? Is God a reality that can be accepted by seeing him? Or is the existence of God a belief that has been presented for us to believe without any real evidence of his existence?
The Bible tells us that it is necessary to believe the Gospel in order to be saved, but what evidence have they presented to us besides what some man has written for us to believe? Is there any proven fact there? Are God and Jesus a reality that we can see with our own eyes that can support a factual belief in the Gospel?
John the Baptist and the Apostle Peter testify that they actually heard the voice of God speaking from Heaven concerning His Son Jesus which served to them as being a factual reality that supported their belief in the reality of God and that Jesus was in fact God’s Son. Should our faith be grounded on what someone else says that they have experienced?
Jesus also said to Thomas; You believe because of what you have seen, but blessed are they who have not seen, yet believe. Is this what God expects us to do, believe without any factual or real evidence based entirely upon what some other person has testified to have experienced?
The Bible is full of testimonies from others that they heard the voice of God speaking to them. From Adam in the Garden, to Abraham, to the Lord’s Apostles etc. So why is it that only certain ones have been privileged to experience God in a first hand encounter and not all of us?
Without a first hand, factual, real encounter with God, we cannot know for certain that God is real and that Jesus was the Son of God and most, if not all of us, must depend on whatever faith we can muster up without any factual proof outside of what others have testified to.
The Holy Bible has been promoted by most of the Christian Churches as the Word of God. They even say that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God, meaning that it is without error and even more than that, is incapable of being in error. This in itself is not true. If the Bible actually was the Word of God, it would be without error, but the Bible is full of errors and can be demonstrated as such in a multitude of its verses. So the Bible is not all truth.
If the Bible was the complete truth it should be somehow proven to be truth beyond a shadow of doubt, but it can’t. Although any one of us could accept it as being infallible and in errantly the truth of the Word of God, but in doing this we would be believing something that is false and calling it truth because the false teachers of it have convinced many to believe what they have said.
Wouldn’t you rather know for certain and believe the truth and hang your faith on the absolute and proven truth rather than a false belief that some man has promoted in error?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that the whole Bible is false. What I do believe is that the Bible contains the true Word of God and God has a right for the truth of His Word to be made known. What I am also certain of is that some of those men who wrote the Bible have introduced errors into it. Does that make the whole Bible false? Absolutely not! You must remember that it is not written in the Bible that God wrote it. It is written that God inspired certain persons to write scripture, but He didn’t control what those people wrote and because he didn’t micromanage them, they did introduce errors into it.
Now God knew that would happen and He made provisions to rectify the mistakes of those men by inspiring certain men to make a detailed study of the scriptures and be teachers of scriptural doctrine. Men who would be completely devoted to rightly dividing what was written and teaching the truth of what scriptures were saying. Not by adding their own interpretation to what was written, but insuring that we can understand that the scriptures interpret themselves.
So unless a real factual example can be produced that we can determine is the absolute truth and not just something that we have determined in our own minds to accept as truth, what should we believe about the bible and what it says?
I believe that we have two choices to base our belief on.
One is that we can believe what some preacher says because he tells us that he or she was called of God to preach and we determine to believe in our own minds to accept what the preacher says as being the truth. Or we can believe exactly what is written in the bible about any subject as being the truth as long as it does not require some person’s interpretation of what it means.
So if the absolute truth is what we are seeking, it brings us to a point of making a decision. Do we believe what some person that says they are called of God to preach and determine to believe in our minds that we have heard the truth from that person? Or will we be resolved to believe exactly what bible scriptures say is the absolute truth?
Which of the two will you bet your eternal souls on?
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