The Importance of Loving the Truth

Truth is a very precious commodity, but often little valued. Christ, who was both absolutely truthful and the very embodiment of truth, said to Pilate, "To this end I was born, and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." It was Christ's refusal to prevaricate in deference to religious tradition or hide His relationship with the Father that cost Him His life. Pilate replied by saying, "What is truth?" Valuing only utility he and many who have followed him have sneered and ever do sneer at truth.

Paul warned that in the last days those who love unrighteousness not truth will be deluded and perish (2 Thess. 2:9-12). He also wrote that in the last times seducers would become worse and worse both in deceiving and being deceived (2 Tim. 3:13). The very act of deceiving others and believing you are smarter than they are and can get away with it opens you up to being deceived yourself. Josef Stalin trusted no one with one notable exception, he had found a man very much like himself in Hitler, and somehow trusted him implicitly. So much so that he refused to believe that the Nazis were going to invade Russia, even though he had several good reports from his spies.

A few years ago I heard through soem missionaries I knew of how they had met President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. They said that while they were in his presence, he carried such a strong deception with him that it was hard to believe that he really was doing all that they knew from having lived there several years he was doing.

I had a similar experience once when there was a certain situation was going on in a church i was affiliated with. There were certain facts I knew, but yet one night I had dream and in this dream someone was defending the other side which I knew to be wrong. It was so convincing that when I woke up I could almost have believed against what I knew by eyesight and evidence and concurrent testimony of others was true. After some prayer the confusion past, but it did bear home to my heart how easy man can be deceived apart from God's enabling power.

The key is found in loving and obeying the truth. Another time I was at a crossraods in my life and had to make a very hard choice. It firstly required that I should know the truth about a certain situation. It was going to be a hard choice no matter what and initially I honestly did not at first want to know the truth. When I saw that in my heart, it scared me into asking God to show me the truth and also to help me to follow it (the most important part of the prayer). After that the choice became simple and most of the adverse consequences I feared came to nothing anyway.

From this experience and my own near deception because I almost didn't care about the truth. I came to a very frightful conclusion... That there will be believers who will see false prophets, and false teachers and even the antichrist himself and will follow them, not because they are deceived in one sense, but because even knowing that they are false they won't care.

The comfort in all of this is that while Christ warned of deception in Matthew 24:23-24, He also implied that the elect will not be deceived. Those who continue to hear His voice and let His Word sink deeply into their hearts will not fall away, though many believers may. Christ will keep us if we are willing to love and obey the truth. Amen.