The Truth War Read Free

seriously. The church has grown lazy, worldly, and self-satisfied. Church leaders are obsessed with style and methodology, losing interest in the glory of God and becoming grossly apathetic about truth and sound doctrine. For the moment at least, the battle appears to be turning in the enemy’s favor.
    When God gave the second commandment, which forbade idolatry, He added this warning: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5). Scripture elsewhere makes it clear that children are never directly punished for the guilt of their fathers’ sins (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:19–32), but the natural consequences of those sins do indeed pass from generation to generation. Children learn from their fathers’ examples and imitate what they see. One generation’s teaching establishes a spiritual legacy that succeeding generations inherit. If today’s “fathers” abandon the truth, it will take generations to recover.
    Church leaders are especially responsible for setting the example. What we desperately need today are “shepherds according to [God’s] heart, who will feed [believers] with knowledge and understanding” (Jeremiah 3:15; Acts 20:28–31). But it is every believer’s solemn duty to resist every attack on the truth, to abhor the very thought of falsehood, and not to compromise in any way with the enemy, who is above all a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
    The Truth War is, after all, war . Warfare is always serious, but this is the battle of the ages for the highest of prizes, and therefore it requires of us the utmost diligence.
    WHY TRUTH IS INEXTRICABLY BOUND TO GOD
    We’ll begin chapter 1 by defining truth in biblical terms. We’ll also notice that every attempt to define truth in non biblical terms has ultimately failed. That is because God is the source of all that exists (Romans 11:36). He alone defines and delimits what is true. He is also the ultimate revealer of all truth. Every truth revealed in nature was authored by Him (Psalm 19:1–6); and some of it is His own self-revelation (Romans 1:20). He gave us minds and consciences to perceive the truth and comprehend right from wrong, and He even wired us with a fundamental understanding of His law written on our hearts (Romans 2:14–15). On top of all that, He gave us the perfect, infallible truth of Scripture (Psalm 19:7–11), which is a sufficient revelation of everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Timothy 3:15–17; 2 Peter 1:3), in order to lead us to Him as Savior and Lord. Finally, He sent Christ, the very embodiment of truth itself, as the culmination of divine revelation (Hebrews 1:1–3). The ultimate reason for all of this was for God to reveal Himself to His creatures (Ezekiel 38:23).
    All truth therefore starts with what is true of God: who He is, what His mind knows, what His holiness entails, what His will approves, and so on. In other words, all truth is determined and properly explained by the being of God. Therefore, every notion of His nonexistence is by definition untrue. That is precisely what the Bible teaches: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1).
    The ramifications of all truth starting with God are profound. Returning to a point we touched on earlier: here is the reason why once someone denies God, logical consistency will ultimately force that person to deny all truth. A denial that God exists instantly removes the whole justification for any kind of knowledge. As Scripture says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7).
    So the necessary starting point for gaining authentic understanding of the fundamental concept of truth itself is an acknowledgment of the one true God. As Augustine said, we believe in order to