FEBRUARY 18 2017
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
“What is TRUTH?” Pilate wondered when Jesus stood in front of him to be sentenced to death. Jesus remained silent.
Today the matter of ‘truth’ and ‘fake’ is very much an open question.
Here’s a quote:
“The things in this world are really not what they are in the final analysis. Everything in our world is fake, carries a mask, is disguised; everything is different than it is.”
That sounds pretty post-modern. Who said this?
Actually these words are from Johan Herman Bavinck in the book he wrote on REVELATION (translation is mine). In the book the apostle John, the author, saw what was going to happen in the last days, and in bold strokes outlined what will happen before the world we live in will come to an end.
One of the signs of the approaching end is when the actions of humans will reveal their true nature: when all masks will be torn off, all hidden motives come out in the open. That is now increasingly becoming the case. Modern technology is a definite factor there with cameras everywhere.
There’s a striking text in the very last chapter of Revelation: “Those who do wrong will keep on doing wrong, and those who do right continue to do so, and those who are holy will remain holy”.
That’s the situation today: peoples’ minds are made up. All the preaching in the world will have little effect, including my writings here, which is more like preaching anyway. That also applies to the world’s economic situation which no longer can be reversed. High levels of unemployment or under-employment; falling incomes; housing crises and obscene levels of inequality have led to the rise of counter-movements in all the leading economies. These anarchist agitations – Trump and Brexit – threaten to further undermine an already enfeebled Western democracy. At the same time, the inability of democracy and our financial system to respond to the threat of climate change, imperils the very future of the ecosystem and therefore of humanity. Our world is dangerously disordered, and so-called remedies make it worse. Welcome to a post-modern or perhaps better a pre-collapse planet.
Is there HOPE?
Yes. What is happening in these Last Days is that out of all the chaos and disintegration at long last the Truth will emerge, all fakeness will vanish, all camouflage will be torn away and everything will finally show the true character that corresponds with its ultimate essence. That is the melody of the Last Bible book, the Revelation of John. This anthem vibrates through the entire book which makes it such an engaging and encouraging prophesy.
Today we see glimpses of that truth emerging. Curiously the LIAR in CHIEF, the current president of the USA, occupies an important position here: I have no doubt that he will be dethroned, that the political powers in Washington will pull the plug on him and send him home, wherever that is. But he will not go peaceably. He is so insecure that he can never admit being wrong. In his own eyes he is perfect, is always right: he simply does not commit sin.
So far his followers have stuck with him: see him as their last hope. Well, they have nothing to lose. When he is stripped of his office – the politicians there will finally see his true character – he will incite the ‘disillusioned’ to take up arms and physically battle the establishment. The failure of his campaign promises to create 25 million new jobs and give everybody full medical coverage ‘at a fraction of the cost’ he will blame on the Supreme Court, Congress and the Media, all conspiring to prevent him from implementing his political goals.
Thus will Trump, the pretender, speed up the coming of that glorious future by first bringing in the Age of Lawlessness, and the reign of the Devil.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
Jesus said that “the truth will set you free’, as recorded in John 8: 32. To be free does not mean free of all rules, free of all regulations. That is anarchy. Jesus tells us that the TRUTH is present when we follow Jesus in all our actions, unencumbered by convention, by tradition, by family custom, by life-long habits. Today it also and perhaps especially means to be free of addiction!!
Addiction?
Let me focus on that aspect. Let’s face it: we all are, without exception, addicted to carbon fuels: we all are carboholics.
Last Sunday, February, 12 part of our church’s readings were from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ famous rules for life. I was struck by one line: “if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out because it is better to lose one part than your whole body”.
That line made me think of our addiction to creation-destroying, God-cursing carbon fuel that now is causing unbelievable changes in “our Father’s World”. It focused my attention on our carbon-culture which is ruining our world. Jesus, with his typical no nonsense approach to sin would have said today: “If your carbon use causes you to sin against my creation, cut out driving, stop heating your house with natural gas and electricity, don’t eat food trucked in from California.”
Hmmm. Gouge out an eye? Deprive ourselves of automotive wheels? Freeze in the dark? Go hungry? For Jesus’ sake?
Let’s be honest. Our industrial world will remain shackled to fossil fuels for most of its energy and all of its transportation fuel, for the simple reason that no other energy source can provide the abundant, concentrated, and power source that’s needed to keep our current lifestyles going.
The Christian alternative today ought to be a deliberate downshifting out of the excruciating extravagance of normal lifestyles in the industrial world. We must be willing to accept more restricted ways of living in order to prepare for the better world to come.
“Many are called, few are chosen” said Jesus, because by all indications very few people will be willing to accept that alternative. Can anybody in the Western world live ‘clean’?
Let’s face it: the only way to stop human induced climate change in its tracks is to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Doing that would require the world to ground its airlines, turn its highways over to bicycles and horse-and-buggies and to shut down every other technology that won’t be economically viable if it has to depend on the unreliable energy available from renewable sources.
Of course no administration will enact this. Trump most certainly not. Yet for the TRUTH to set us free we must face the harsh truth about ourselves.
Today there’s much talk about the great divide in the world, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. However the real difference is not a monetary one or an educational one: it’s between those who persist in their creation-destroying conduct and those who try to do God’s will, and even for these few this is almost an impossible task, because today the Devil is in full charge of the world.
THE DEVIL: is he still out there?
Yes, now more than ever. He deserves a closer look.
It is safe to say that the devil or Satan appears in the Bible under two personas. He is in the first place the great seducer who tempted humanity right from its very start in Paradise. In chapter 12 of the Revelation of John he is still called the Satan “who seduces the entire world, (verse 9) and was hurled out of heaven”. Just imagine: Satan! Hurled! Kicked out! Expelled!
And where did he land? Feet first, right here on Planet Earth!
Jesus depicts him as the ultimate deceiver, the “father of lies” (John 8: 44). He twists human thought in the web of delusion; he conjures before the human eye the mirage of salvation and grandeur and drags the people, caught in the grip of falsehoods as an easy prey to their perdition. He is the king of conceit, the royal champion in mind bewilderment. Trump is a perfect example of this description.
But before he was sent packing, the Bible depicts this same Satan as the terrible informer, who accuses the helpless, disoriented humans before God’s throne. That’s how he, as a prosecutor, appears in the first chapter of the book of Job in the meeting of ‘the children of God’. There, scoffing cynically, he hisses his poisonous accusation: “Does Job fear God for nothing?”
He dissects the disintegrating human life, he picks it apart, he grinds it to pieces, until there’s nothing left but ruin and garbage, and then he triumphantly brings all this to God’s throne to show God that everything in this world has gone to pieces.
Imagine! He confronts God. Satan again: “This world, God, your own world, over which you at one time have pronounced that it was ‘very good’, now this world, this same world, is, in my possession, distorted into dire destruction, everything in her is in pieces, is poisoned, is on the verge of collapse.”
That’s why the Satan is the tireless accuser of all God’s servants. He is the one that carries the title of “the great accuser of all our brothers and sisters”. So, in that capacity, as the accuser of the human being, he has access to the heavenly realms. That’s the case because there is so much truth in his accusations, because, as a matter of fact, he has us in his grip, witness our Carbon Addiction. Satan has, to tell the bitter truth, truth on his side. The facts show that, indeed, we humans are completely corrupt. God is in no position to deny him that truth; God simply cannot ignore this as pure fiction.
But Jesus made the difference.
Thanks to Jesus the situation has totally changed: he has deprived the Satan of his status in heaven. Since the shout of triumph has sounded on Golgotha, the place of God’s children has become different as well. They are justified in Jesus Christ, they have become new creatures.
Now that Christ has emerged as the victor, no longer can the Satan lodge any accusations against the woman and against the people of God, because every charge comes to nothing thanks to the great redeeming work of Jesus Christ.
No longer may Satan appear in the meeting of the angels with his sneering face, his sarcastic mockery, his taunts aimed at the believers. For “in all this we are more than conquerors through Him who has loved us”. Because we know that Jesus Christ is there, who died – more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” (Rom. 8: 33).
So, what is the role of the Devil in all this?
Today the Law of the Lord has been discarded, abandoned, forgotten. But once law is abandoned for raw power, everyone is exposed. That’s what we see now!
All around the world, authoritarian regimes are questioning, even dismantling the rule of law. We see it in the Philippines, justified as a war against drug dealers and users. We see it in Turkey, justified by a coup attempt. We see it in Hungary and Poland, justified as a rebuilding of national pride and the elimination of threats attributed to refugees and minorities. We see it in Russia, justified by a desire to return to national glory and influence.
And now we see it in the USA.
And the people? Have they still got the gumption to defend the law, to fight for what is right?
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
The truth is spoken by Jesus. “”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. That is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22: 37-38).
That simply means – and is confirmed in John 3: 16 – that we must love everything God in his wisdom has created. We love great artists through carefully examining their works of art. The greatest work of art is God’s creation – there’s nothing that even remotely equals it.
We must unconditionally love God’s creation in all its manifestations, even when this leaves us at odds with everybody else. Only that TRUTH will set us free in a world now dominated by EVIL.