In the early days of the Christian church an angel appeared to Cornelius, a Roman Centurion, and told him, “Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon whose surname is Peter, who will tell you words by which you and all your household will be saved.” (Acts 11:14) Not surprisingly, Cornelius immediately obeyed. Peter, with a group of men who accompanied him, visited Cornelius’ home, preached the words of the gospel to them, and watched somewhat dumbfounded as the Holy Spirit “fell upon” their listeners in the same way as had happened to the disciples in the upper room on Pentecost! As Jesus previously promised Peter, the Holy Spirit used that man to unlock the door of salvation to the Gentiles. A Jewish man, who had to be convinced by a vision repeated three times that he even was permitted to go into the home of a Gentile, was the one God used! God loves to use the most unlikely people to accomplish his will. Peter thought that salvation was for the Jews only, something that Jewish tradition steadfastly held and still does. But it was a lie. God’s purpose was always to include in his kingdom those from every people group. Peter, like many others, was reluctant to let go of such a dearly held belief that exalted his people, but once he did, he realized how much more glorious is the New Covenant compared to the old one. Paul showed how God’s promise of including the Gentiles went all the way back to Abraham.
8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” 9 So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham. Galatians 3:8–9 (NKJV)
When God opens our hearts to the truth of his Word, it can turn our lives upside down and bring down persecution upon us.
It certainly was so for Peter and the other disciples. Christ’s death and resurrection was the greatest story ever told. I could not be kept quiet. As those early disciples preached the good news, two things happened. Some believed and were saved. Others were incensed by the gospel and persecuted anyone who preached or believed it.
Truth brings division between those who love and receive it and those who hate and reject it.
It is seldom easy for us to accept a new way of seeing things. We just naturally cling to our traditions and long held beliefs, even though they may be in error. That’s just part of what it means to be human. Jesus said:
39 “And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’ ” Luke 5:39 (NASB95)
When God restored the ancient truth of justification by faith during the Protestant Reformation, those steeped in the traditions and practices of the Roman Catholic Church reacted by persecuting those that promoted this new/old doctrine. When the Anabaptists took hold of the early Christian practice of believer baptism, those who held to the long accepted tradition of infant baptism, both Catholic and Protestant, persecuted, sometimes to death, those who held firmly to the new, yet old, way of baptizing people after they confess Christ is Lord.
Any time God restores truth to his church, we can be sure that the resistance will be fierce.
Today we do not see persecution in the West regarding justification and believer baptism, but the fight for the restoration of old truth continues. There are other hotly contested issues presently before the church that divide people – abortion, LGTBQ+, Christian Zionism, and biblical cosmology, to list a few. Few in the early church had doubts about any of these hotly contested issues, but now they have become battlegrounds that require people to make a decision.
Truth, until it becomes commonly accepted, always causes conflict.
Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Our pride finds it to be
quite difficult to admit we were conned. God did not deceive the Jews when he chose them for the glorious privilege of being his special people to receive his precious promises and be the bloodline for the coming Messiah. The Lord gave them plenty of hints that ultimately his plan was to save the world, not just the descendants of Abraham, but when we have a certain way of looking at things ingrained into us, it can be almost impossible to escape the power of that tradition. Today, despite the clear teachings of the New Testament to the contrary, many Christians have been deceived into believing that Jewish people are “God’s chosen people” just because of physical descent from Abraham. In the New Testament, there are no such distinctions. All that now matters is the new birth through faith in Christ, but old traditions die hard and tons of people refuse to let go of the lie of Christian Zionism.
It is sinful to adamantly cling to a lie when we are confronted by God’s truth, but we all are prone to it.
Only the Holy Spirit can set us free from powerful deceptions.
Simply by believing the words of life contained in the gospel message, Cornelius and his household were saved that day, which was confirmed by their speaking in tongues, an unmistakable sign of their having received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Peter correctly reasoned that only born again children of God can receive the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13); therefore it became crystal clear to him that, in the New Covenant, God no longer makes a distinction between Jews and Gentiles. All that matters now is faith in Christ, which includes publicly acknowledging him as the risen Lord.
9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Romans 10:9–10 (NKJV)
Isn’t it amazing that we can be forgiven, made right in God’s eyes, receive eternal life, and become part of God’s family simply by believing words that come from God?
Believing what God says not only saves us but also greatly honors God. Disbelieving him is a betrayal of the very worst sort. It is the same as calling him a liar.
Therefore, believing God’s words is our highest calling and poses the greatest test we will ever face.
Adam and Eve failed to believe God when confronted by Satan’s clever lie. They did not pass the test, but now we have the opportunity to honor God by holding what he has spoken in the highest esteem, even in the face of the devil’s most convincing lies to the contrary.
4 But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ” Luke 4:4 (NKJV)
Jesus told us that we are to live by every single word that God has spoken. Not a single one is unimportant or can be discarded or rendered meaningless through artful manipulation.
Jesus reprimanded the Jews for doing just such a thing. (Mark 7:13) Yet, today many in the church practice the same sort of self-deception by changing the clear meaning of scripture to make it agree with a lie.
If we allow some other belief or criteria to determine how we understand and interpret the Bible, we have committed a form of idolatry.
The Holy Spirit inspired Moses to write Genesis. Chapter One describes the creation of the heavens and earth. Moses, the ancient Israelites, and the early church, including our Lord Jesus who created it all, believed the Genesis account to be literally true. But today, we prefer the theories developed by men who contradict the biblical account and have influenced God’s people to abandon the literal truth of the Word of God.
Anything that contradicts God’s Word is a lie by definition.
God did not hide the truth of his creation from his people so that later ungodly men could figure it out, proving that the Bible is false. Satan told Adam and Eve that God lied to them and was hiding the truth. He claims he can give us access to previously hidden (occult) knowledge that defies the Bible. He did it in the garden and repeated that ruse again through Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Hawking, et al. We should know his ways by now, but 
human beings fall for the same old tricks over and over. We desperately need a Savior and the Word of God!
God never authorized us to select which words of the Bible to believe and which to reject. Unless the context of a passage demands us to do so, we are not permitted to designate some verses as metaphorical only, phenomenological, or merely poetic. God regards us as his children. He would not lie to us.
God did not inspire words that have no credibility in the “real world.”
God never plays with words. He doesn’t use poetry to describe what he knows is not real. He uses poetry to reinforce and beautify the truth. He says what he means and means what he says. He never misleads us. He always speaks the truth, even when he employs poetry. Anyone who says otherwise is calling God a liar and trying to deceive us.
160 The beginning (Greek - arche) of your words is truth, and for eternity are all the judgments of your righteousness. Psalm 118:160 (LES2) [This is Psalm 119 in the MT] 1 In the beginning (Greek - arche) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. John 1:1–2 (NKJV)
The beginning of God’s Word in the Bible is Genesis. God wants us to know that the first book of the Bible is the truth, not “just poetry” or phenomenological language that describes false appearances.
Try to imagine that we are obliged to trust without reservation a God who misleads us in the very first chapter of his book! God is not like that! We trust him because he is faithful and true always.
In the beginning, Jesus, the Word made flesh, was present as the Creator. (John 1:3) Our Lord Jesus said we are not permitted to “break” any word of God, meaning we have no authority to alter it in any way. (John 10:35) Only God has the right to tell us how to interpret his Word. There is no higher authority than the Holy Spirit when it comes to teaching us what it means.
It is a violation of the highest order to allow the devil or men or science so-called to dictate how the Scriptures must be interpreted. The Holy Spirit shows us how scripture interprets scripture.
The Bible proclaims that Jesus rose physically from the dead. It claims that his resurrected body later physically ascended into heaven, where he now sits on God’s throne, waiting for his Father to give him the “green light” to return to earth as the Judge of the living and the dead. That is quite a claim, isn’t it? It is every bit as “unbelievable” as the Genesis account of creation, the flood of Noah, the parting of the Red Sea, and the taking of Elijah physically into heaven. Yet, without hesitation, many of us ask people to believe that these gospel claims are 100% true, while at the same time waffling on the Genesis account’s truthfulness. What is wrong with us? Can we not see that if Genesis is not true, nothing is believable after that?
The devil laughs at such duplicity in the church. He and the atheists know that we don’t really believe the whole Bible after all, just the parts we like.
Every generation has its giants to confront and idols to smash. Moses had to face down Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. Joshua fought the Canaanites and the Anakim. David slew Goliath. Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal and Jezebel. Jesus stood firm against Satan himself. Paul refused to flinch before the persecutions of Rabbinic Judaism and heathen Rome. Some of the early Christians had to choose between death or bowing to Caesar’s claim to be lord. The reformers stood against the behemoth of the Roman Church, and many died upholding the right to have the Scriptures in our own language.
What are the giants confronting the church today? One way to tell is by seeing what makes people mad.
During COVID, anyone who refused to go along with “trusting the science” was persecuted. The anger of the compliant against those who stood their ground against the government’s lies was tangible.
Science, or more properly the religion of scientism, has become a huge idol in our country and the world. Anyone who dares stand against it will suffer the consequences.
Many have allowed this god to dictate what we can believe in the Bible and what must be relegated to myth and poetry. Obeying this false god is a great sin which many, many Christians continue to commit.
The words of Nathan the prophet still boldly ring out to all who allow science to displace God’s Word in regard to creation. “You are the man!” We commit idolatry if we revere the authority of science more than God and his Word!
Since when does any worldly belief system have the right to tell us how to interpret the Bible? Since when do we have the authority to determine what parts of God’s Word can be believed and what parts can be winked at? Did God give us this freedom? Not to my knowledge. Why do we so easily betray our Reformation heritage of Sola Scriptura? Are we really so spineless that we cannot make a stand? Are we embarrassed by God’s Word? Are we afraid of being thought a fool? If so, let us consider Paul’s words.
3 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court... 1 Corinthians 4:3 (NKJV)
Do we think the credibility of the gospel improves by our agreeing that Genesis is not a trustworthy account of creation? Is the resurrection more believable if we at the same time we insist that the Bible is wrong when it says God’s throne is right above us atop the firmament? Can the resurrection be real if heaven and earth are not what the Bible says they are? Isn’t it time for the church to throw caution to the wind and embrace God’s Word without reservation or qualification? I wonder what would happen? I hope we find out.
