The Year of Truth

I am both saddened and hopeful as I write this blog. Day after day I watch the news and find myself wondering, when did we cross a line? When did we decide that we were no longer a lawful society? 

But the question that plagues me most is when did Christians become so lawless?

For decades now, we have been engaged in a literal war. I still remember the battle for our public schools when Christ was removed and the religion of Humanism replaced God’s moral law. As in that era, there is a strategy behind actors speaking out, television shows pushing moral limits, movies overstepping boundaries, one-sided news reports, and parsed political words. 

Satan’s strategy is the lawless takeover of America by removing the boundary of truth. 

Don’t be mistaken. This is not a battle of ideology, where one man’s political beliefs should be debated against another’s. This is a battle to wipe out the testimony of the goodness of God that this nation represents every day we prosper. Because He was the foundation on which we were established, we have been a beacon of light to a dark world. 

We are in a war against truth, yet we consume carnal knowledge like starving children. 

Ironically, it isn’t the debauchery and depravity that is destroying us, but the carnal philosophy of elitism that is behind iniquity. 

This same mindset was popular in Europe before WWII when the privileged and influential favored Hitler and his trendy propaganda. The exclusive ideology of selectivity was involved in Margaret Sanger’s Population Control advocacy and led to the ultimate founding of Planned Parenthood. 

But note how quickly this same way of thinking has become fashionable in our nation. We look down on anyone who doesn’t see the world the way we do. They are lesser than us. We demand our own way. What was old is new again and through these same discriminatory beliefs Hitler instigated the instability that led to the inevitability of war. 

Because we have all sinned. Because evil still rules in the hearts of men, every government of every nation is constantly subjected to the corrosive power of sin. This is the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which is also called the “Law of Decay.” “The most probable state for any natural system is one of disorder. All natural systems degenerate when left to themselves*” In spiritual terms, without the influence of the One and only source of truth, governments will descend into the throes of anarchy and godlessness. 

The irony is that lawlessness requires a weakened church and compromised Christianity. 

When the church is neither salt nor light, the banner of truth will be trampled underfoot. 

For the very first time in our history, we are seeing Christian persecution on American soil. Government has begun to dictate what we preach, how we operate our businesses, and what we say to one another.

I believe that we can trace our decent into decay back to January 22, 1973. 

The day we allowed judicial activism to go unanswered. 

The day that the shedding of innocent blood began to seep into the soil of our beloved country.

Under our most recent president, there was tremendous concern in the hearts of many believers. Yet, there were no riots, no death threats, no panicked mobs running through the streets and no property being destroyed. What we did was pray and spiritual forces turned their focus to the threat they saw in our prayers. 

Prayer threatened the godless agenda of a decaying society.

Prayer threatened the spirits who wanted to turn the light out in the last nation to stand for truth.

To say our society is not in the process of decay means closing our eyes to the recent resurgence of lawlessness. Prejudice and bigotry, racism and reverse racism, dead police officers and radical extremists have increased while our leaders play the fiddle. 

We are reaping more than 40 years of silenced truth. 

Maybe, that is why, on the eve of New Year’s Eve, in the middle of the night, I awakened to the sound of the Lord’s voice saying, “Ask Me what I am going to do in 2017.”  Barely had I roused myself to ask the question when the answer came, “Truth.” It was one word, but it resounded with all the authority of heaven. 

2017 will be a year of truth.

When truth arises, as from the cobwebs of a still tomb, it has the final say, but what form it takes is entirely up to God. He uses the strangest things to change the atmosphere. Truth will not speak without a listener. When no one hears, truth grows quiet, slipping into a void where it silently observes our decay. For decades now, truth has fallen on deaf ears. It has spent countless years caught in the noisy cacophony of opinions and godless philosophies.

Contrary to our behavior, truth does not attempt to defend itself and yet... 

Every now and then, truth stands up and when it does, the lies we have believed vanish before it. 

Truth arose in 1861 when slave states attempted to secede the union so they could chain their brothers. Though Truth had been silent, when it finally spoke, slavery ended. Truth arose in the 1960’s when one man’s voice was lifted above the noise of bigotry and truth exposed the injustice of discrimination and the oppression of elitist ideology. Truth arose in WWII when the inhumanity of man to man was exposed and we swore it would never happen again. But it did. In the holocaust that began in 1973, we showed how quickly we could forget and condemn innocent, human life to torment, suffering and death. 

Truth can be silent for impossible lengths of time, but it will not remain voiceless.

When truth arises, demons become reckless. They know their power is about to be revoked. Their time is limited, for even Satan knows that truth, presented in Love, is irreversible.

But have we grown comfortable with lies? Do we recognize the sound of truth?

Jeremiah 9:5, “Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning.” 

Psalm 52:3, “You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking what is right.”

We like our sermons to tickle our ears and our politicians to make us comfortable, even while the law of decay accelerates around us. 

We will only recognize the truth if we realize that any agenda that must manipulate or lie against the truth to be accepted is a lie. And lies can only lead us to destruction.

Truth is rising and I see God exposing the dishonest communication we have allowed to enter our political discourse, even while He also reveals our own unrighteous attitudes of dishonor against authority.

As ministers and teachers, my parents taught me that following Christ meant a complete change of mind. I was not my own. I had been bought by the blood of Jesus. That meant I had no voice in deciding what was right or wrong; moral or immoral. I was not the Lawgiver. God, the source of all truth, had already determined those things. They taught me to respect the importance and power of the law, showing me how the very foundation of our nation rested on the words of God. Only by the preservation of these commandments could we be blessed. They taught me how even our planet rotates on its axis by God’s authority. Truth in action. Were this planet to decide to ignore that law and spin even a fraction of a millimeter off course, we would die. How grateful we are that the stars and the universe obey Him. 

They taught me that within God’s Law there is safety and protection; families flourish and the nations of the earth can come to know the One Who holds the whole world in His hands. 

Under God’s Law, even a sinner is free to sin. This choice may be grievous, but unless our sin presumes to imposes itself on the health and welfare of others, we are free to choose and to experience the consequences of our choice for good or for evil. 

They also taught me that it is possible for men to create laws that oppose God’s Law and when they do, we have a responsibility to resist in a spirit of honor and respect. God has given us a way to dispute unrighteous laws, but His way of protesting involves laying down our own lives, not demanding that others lose theirs.

My grief today involves believers who applaud lawlessness and breathe insults and curses against the leaders of this nation. If enforcing the law imposes hardship, these people respond by placing their own comfort and convenience above others. With vitriol and anarchy, they oppose the laws they do not like and use God’s name to justify their actions, but they are doing the very opposite of what Christ would do. 

While my parents taught me to honor the law, they also taught me that if I believed a law was unrighteous, I must be willing to pay the cost in the same way Christ paid the cost for me. In other words, even in a matter of conscience, I must recognize the right of the law to exist. If I choose to resist an immoral law, I must lay my own life down without judgment against those who follow it. Only then can I be used as an instrument of righteousness and change.

Which is exactly what I did when I stood in front of a clinic to protest the unjust law of abortion. I considered the owners, managers, and helpers as precious as the lives of unborn children. For that reason, God turned my hardships into something beautiful. I counted the cost. I went to jail so that an immoral law could be changed.

Remember the church of Laodicea in the book of Revelation? We remember it as the church that gave God a sick stomach because they no longer loved the truth. The word, Laodicea, means, “People’s Rights.” These Christians were consumed with their own comfort, their own wealth and their own rights. 

Are we Laodicea?

As in abortion, we want the freedom to sin without consequences, but there will always be consequences for sin. If we abandon the word of God under the pressure of political correctness, then what will happen when eternity asks if we loved the truth?

If God is not the author and finisher of all truth, then whose truth do we base our laws on? The very reason our nation once stood as a beacon among nations, was because the source and foundation of our laws was the person of Truth, Jesus Christ, Himself.

Isaiah 28:16, Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed. 

As the spoken Word of God, our forefather’s wisely saw that He, alone, had the wisdom to lead a nation. 

I Corinthians 3:11, “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
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For the first time since our founding, truth is being rejected as our source and we are facing the law of decay. Proverbs 22:28, “Do not move the ancient boundary which your fathers have set.” 

Though truth has remained silent, God has allowed the tension of our questioning to build. We have chipped away at the boundaries of our own protection and have arrived at this brink.

Psalm 82:5, They do not know nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are shaken.

The greatest warning my parents ever gave me was that my Love for Christ had to be real enough to withstand the possibility of dying for His sake. If I ever renounced Him to save my own life, I would lose it. 

I took that to heart. 

Today, we are watching Christian leaders sell their soul for crowds and political correctness. We are seeing everyday believers demand comfort and convenience at the cost of others. Words are being twisted. Slander is being applauded. Spreading lies and fomenting division has become the new norm. 

Lawlessness is filling our nation, but truth is rising. 

When truth arises, we will be exposed. We will not only see the state of our nation, but the compromise in our own soul will be unmasked. When truth arises, we will have the opportunity, once again, to repent for our sins. To humble ourselves and pray. When truth arises, we will have yet one more chance to seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways. 

We are standing at a crossroad. The signposts read: Life or death. Truth or deceit. Revival or decay. Nevertheless, we have never been in a better place to see the glory of God cover us. 

And so, it is with great hope and anticipation that I say, 

Let Truth arise in 2017. 

Let the enemies of Truth be revealed. 

And let Truth shine its light upon us, one more time.

*Lord Kelvin as quoted in A.W. Smith and J.N. Cooper, Elements of Physics, 8th edition (New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1972), p. 241. www.christiananswers.net