Truth and Deception

[KeptByTheWord]

I want to share something that happened during my time with the Lord just a few days ago. There are ongoing discussions here about truth, doctrine, and dogma... and it seemed a good time to share this.

So, I was thinking about the various beliefs, doctrines, ideas, and revelations that are presented to us on a daily basis as truth, both here on AFF and with just about every believer you meet. To mention a few – the rapture, pre-trib, post-trib, preterism, immortal soul, eternal security, Oneness, Trinitarian, Messianic, Calvinism, once saved always saved… I could go on and on. The list doesn’t really seem to end with ideas, doctrines, beliefs, revelations that serve to unite one group of people, and cause division and contention among the rest.

Who is right?

Who really possesses the truth?

What is the truth?

As these questions ran through my mind, my heart was heavy before the Lord. It is an incredible thing to recognize the immensity of the pendulum swing from which these revelations flow – and so how is one to know what to believe?

It seems there are pieces of truth in all of them…. yet also some glaring bit of deception present as well, and the deception is sometimes not readily evident or apparent at first glance, but nonetheless there.

My question to the Lord today was this – how am I supposed to know what to believe about YOU? Which revelation, teaching, doctrine, or idea is the one that truly reveals You to me? Is it even possible for me to be totally right in my doctrine or revelation, or will there always be some untruth in what I believe that will become known to me sometime after I’ve adopted the revelation or doctrine as a lifestyle and tenet of faith?

Is there such a thing as having complete truth or revelation in one’s life? This was the question I laid before the Lord.

And this is the answer that I heard…. The scripture came to mind “seeing through a glass darkly.” I Cor. 13:12

I understood the Lord to say to me: You are seeing through a glass darkly, there is a veil that covers your understanding in this life, but it is there for your protection. There is no way for humanity to completely understand and know Me – such knowledge is too great for you. Thus, deception is allowed to mix and exist among revelation about Me to keep you humble, and to keep you searching after Me. When you realize that something you’ve long held as truth and revelation now seems to have an element of deception or untruth to it, it is simply Me challenging you to dig further, to come closer to Me. The closer you get to Me, it will be like fire purging out the impurities in your life. The closer to Me you come, these deceptions, false ideas, and lies will make themselves known, and will fall away from you. But remember that no human being really understands or knows Me. They can’t. You can only know in part. (I Cor. 13:12) You would die from the knowledge. It is too great for you to bear.

Remember that I allow the tares and the wheat to grow together until the time appointed. The tares and the wheat are in each one of you. Truth and deception are mixed as a part of each believer. Truth and deception will continue to abide together until the time appointed. Those who truly want to know and understand Me must be willing to go through fires of persecution, difficulty, misunderstanding, heartbreak, loneliness, temptation and times of desperation… for this is the fire I am bringing you to – to weed out the deceptions, lies, and sin in your life. In order to keep you humble, deception and truth will continue to abide together as the tares and the wheat until the time appointed. This is to keep you humble, and always searching after me, so that you do not become proud in spirit.

Remember no human can know all there is to know about me, or else it would kill them. The only way to really know me as much as humanly possible, is through humility and admitting that you really don’t know much or anything at all.

Quit seeking after some new thing that someone says “works”. Quit seeking after some new doctrine, idea, understanding, teaching, miracle, sign or wonder. Those things always have deception mixed in with them. Instead, embrace your trials, embrace the difficult seasons in your life, for this is where you will really begin to know and understand Me. Don’t seek after the teaching, doctrine, revelation, sign or wonder. Seek after ME, and be willing to allow your flesh to pass through the furnace willingly, for this is when you will see me, know me, and find me.

Every religious Christian idea, or organization in the world has some truth.

But when you begin to follow that idea, truth or revelation, and forget to follow and seek Me, deception will come forth. Deception is allowed to mix with all truth so that those who hunger and thirst after Me will not be content with what they’ve received, but will continue to seek and search after Me. Only those who are not content to dwell where they are at, but who hunger and thirst after me, will be the ones that the fire of my presence will continue to purge and cleanse and they will see more of me in their suffering than any other way.

Truth is allowed to dwell with deception in order to bring forth humility in us – for us to constantly be aware that we will never be able to completely know or understand God – or else it would kill us – such knowledge we cannot bear. Psalms 139:6 “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.” And, then Job said, after contending with his friends, and God for many days, “…therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.” Job 42:3

This is truly how we will feel when we come face to face with the awesomeness of God. Our flesh will not be able to bear it. We will fall at His feet, broken, repentant, and humbled.

... continued...

[KeptByTheWord]

.... continued...

This is why Jesus spoke so much about suffering. This is why the disciples suffered so greatly. It is because in our suffering, our reliance on our flesh, and its knowledge falls off, and we recognize just how weak we are, and it is in that place that God’s glory can come in and rest upon us. If we want to know Him, and walk in Him in truth and humility, we must be willing to suffer with Him. We must understand that the truth we think we have is indeed mixed with some deception, and GOD HAS ALLOWED THIS! It is only by allowing ourselves to go through the fire with Him, that we will be able to let the deceptions go, and His Truth will reign in us. The more we walk in the fire, the more we will understand just how little we know about Him, and the more we will desire to seek after Him, and to know Him.

Don’t be afraid to admit you have both truth and deception in your life. This is the avenue God has given us to seek after Him, to hunger and to thirst after Him, and for Him alone. He wants to reveal the deception to us, as we seek after Him, instead of us being content with one revelation, or truth about Him. He wants us to be willing to spit out the seeds of deception continually as we seek after the meat and truth of who He really is.

Another illustration of why truth and deception dwell together, much as good and evil at the same time coexist together in this world, is to look at the simple illustration of a battery. If a battery had two positive ends, and no negatives, there would be no power source produced. However, because there is both a positive and a negative, these work together to produce the necessary power. It is so in the world we live in. Without the forces of evil and good coexisting, there would be nothing productive accomplished. If all were positive, or good, what kind of a boring world would this be? If all were negative or evil, can you even imagine such a place? So then, in order to fulfill the need that God has in His heart desiring of fellowship, and communion with a being that chooses to love Him, He, in all his wisdom and knowledge, created both good and evil, positives and negatives, truth and deception, along with giving human beings a choice to choose. In this freedom, good and evil are allowed to coexist. It is only in the person of Jesus Christ that mankind can be freed to rise far above and beyond the negatives that are in this world, and from which life comes forth producing power that cannot be gained by any other means. Evil and good, the tares and the wheat, the positives and the negatives, truth, and deception will continue to remain an innate part of the world as we know it because that is how the power of Christ comes forth vibrantly in our lives.

Indeed, we will never “arrive” in this life at the complete essence of truth and knowledge of our Lord. Instead, the Bible tells us that we are pilgrims, and strangers, and our whole life will be spent in search of Him. We will continue to hunger and thirst after Him through all the days of our life. As humans, we cannot attain complete and total knowledge of Him, for it is too great for us! Yet, in His mercy, He will reveal Himself in dimensions, and facets to those who never cease to hunger and thirst after Him, and who are willing to pick up the cross and carry it daily, who continue daily in their unceasing hunger and thirst after Him.

This is indeed the truth… and anything else less than this will be deception.

Paul sums it up in this verse, one of the last epistles that he wrote before his death,

Philippians 3:10 “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”

And again,

Phil. 3:13-15 “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press towards the mark for the prize of the high callings of God in Christ Jesus.

Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.”

Paul knew he hadn’t arrived, or apprehended, but what did he say we must do – forget the things that are behind us, and continue to reach forth unto Christ.

We must ever press towards Christ Jesus, being willing to suffer with Him, and in doing so, God will continue to reveal Himself to us, as we remember that we are pilgrims and strangers on this earth, and will never know or understand it all, but are content to live in humility, humbleness of mind with our focus on Christ Jesus and the prize that is set before us.

This is truth.

[FlamingZword]

I am suing you for reading my mind.

just kidding, great message precisely what I believe.

[KeptByTheWord]

Originally Posted by FlamingZword

I am suing you for reading my mind.

just kidding, great message precisely what I believe.

Glad to hear it.

[navygoat1998]

KBW, Wow! Thank you! This what I feel and could not have ever explained in such a wonderful manner!

[shazeep]

yes, very nice.

[Michael The Disciple]

Sorry friends Im not on board.

Jesus said when the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all truth.

Also how can one contend for the faith if he doesn't know what it is?

[houston]

Remember that I allow the tares and the wheat to grow together until the time appointed. The tares and the wheat are in each one of you.

Yeah, mmkay... Not!

[FlamingZword]

Originally Posted by Michael The Disciple

Sorry friends Im not on board.

Jesus said when the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all truth.

Also how can one contend for the faith if he doesn't know what it is?

I believe the Spirit of truth is trying to guide us into all truth, the problem is that not everyone is following along or at least not all the way.

The Old mainline churches are dying out, but the newer charismatic churches or Pentecostal churches are growing.

Pretty soon over half of the Christians will be Pentecostals, the balance is slowly shifting toward greater truth.

remember that Pentecostal churches were basically non existent about a century ago. It is just a matter of time.

It is a gradual process.

[ILG]

@ KBTW