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About Jesus - Steve Sweetman Our
Post
Truth Culture Believes The Lie If
you have been paying attention to the news lately you may have noticed a
couple new terms being floated around on our 24 hour news channels.
According to some news commentators, whom I am in agreement with,
the recent U. S.
election has demonstrated that our western world has entered a post truth
or post fact era. The
electorate was bombarded with daily unsubstantiated exaggerations and
outright lies that didn't seem to bother much of the voting public. Another
term that has been introduced into the news cycle is the term "false
news." False news
reports were purposely propagated on social media sites that were intended
to sway and mislead a gullible voting population.
The sad fact is that many, including Christians, are eager to
believe and repost every rumour, every conspiracy theory, every fabricated
exaggeration, and every lie that crosses their media devices. The
Apostle Paul warned us that this trend would run rampant in the last days.
"The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with
satan ... in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing.
They perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.
For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they
will believe the lie (2 Thessalonians 2:9 - 11 NIV). Paul
predicted that as this age winds down the devil will deceive those who
don't love truth. Our western
world is fast becoming nonbelievers in any form of absolute universal
truth, thus swinging the door to the devil's deception wide open.
When there is no foundation of truth there is no standard by which
we can distinguish between what is true and what is false; consequently,
deception rules. The
rejection of truth creates the vacuum in which God will send a powerful
end time delusion that will spur on those who don't love the truth to
believe the lie. Note it's not
"a lie" but "the lie."
What "the lie" is has been debated for years but in
context it has something to do with satanic deception.
As an aside, God does not override someone's free will and make him believe this or any lie. The person believes the lie because he has first freely and consistently chosen to reject the truth. When a person (or a culture) consistently refuses the truth God will hand him over to his unbelief (Romans 1:24 and following). God draws a line in the sand so to speak. Once a person crosses that line of unbelief and stubbornly and continually refuses to turn back, God sends something across his path to cause him to reject the truth even more, as was the case with Pharaoh in the book of Exodus. Embracing God's powerful delusion is still the choice of the individual. Our western world is rapidly tossing out any remote possibility of the existence of ultimate universal truth. The logical conclusion is that there is no standard that enables people to distinguish between what is true and what is false. Those who embrace this mindset will believe whatever appears on their media devices and whatever crosses their dumbed-down minds. From my vantage point, I see a large segment of Christendom falling into this sad state of affairs. Of course, this does not have to be the case. As Christians we have the Spirit of truth within us (John 14:17, 16:13). He is quite capable of helping us to not be so gullible that we believe everything we see or hear from our anti-truth culture.
The
time is fast approaching
"when
people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own
desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what
their itching ears want to hear" (2 Timothy 4:3
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