There was a recent shooting in a synagogue in Jerusalem. The rabbi who was there fought the shooter and managed to reduce the number of deaths to only 1. So he was invited to the White House and probably asked what he would like. He said, “I wish the schools in America would reinstate a moment of silence, so that children can contemplate and think; so that not every moment is necessarily packed with activity.

So our soul must be still to listen to the word of God. We shall now pray to God and ask God to guide us; to give us peace and stillness to our soul.

The Bible is the sole authority of faith. It highlights the importance of truth. We look to the Bible for the truth, and truth should be a very important aspect of our lives. As Pilate asked in John 18:38, “What is truth?”

What is truth?
Today we hear about fake news. Today we hear about people talking about freedom and goodness. There’s such a thing called ‘universal human rights’.

What is truth?
Is it the one who has the mike and speaks the loudest? Who writes the most on Facebook and is an influencer? Recently a university professor (teaching medicine) describes the foetus as a legitimate parasite; it’s just feeding off the mother. This appeals to people who believe abortion is the right of the woman. It dehumanises foetuses so they can be killed.

What is truth?
John 17:3-8
And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.

The truth that we believe in is a revelation from God. On what basis is this revelation good or valid? Jesus said it’s from His Father, who is God.

In John 3:13 He says, “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.”
His basis is, “Well, I know the truth because I came from heaven.”

While other religions sought enlightenment by sitting under a tree, or by saying they heard something from an angel, the Bible says the truth we have is directly from God. This is our basis for our belief in the Bible.

The Bible are stories of the people of God. It’s a history book. It’s also full of prophecies; the word of God came to prophets who spoke the word of God. To us, this is the baseline. In some places, it’s called an axiom; a fact that cannot be disputed.

Logic means that we can dispute or argue about certain statements. But any theory/thought you have must have a baseline. At that baseline, it cannot be challenged. We call that an axiom. That is to be accepted by faith. From that baseline to be accepted by faith, we then use logic which is human reasoning, to come to an idea of truth.

Here’s an example:
Matt 22:24-32
The Sadducees posed this question to Jesus (read). They didn’t believe in the resurrection. This was their baseline: no resurrection. According to the Old Testament, when a man has no kids and dies, his brother must marry her. Hence they came up with this ridiculous question. Since it was impossible for the resurrected 7 of them to share 1 wife, the Sadducees hoped to argue by logic that there can’t be resurrection.

v29-30 read Jesus’ answer
His baseline/truth was that in heaven, there is no marriage. So logically speaking, there’s no problem with the 7 brothers and that woman all resurrected.

This shows us that we can use logic. But if we start from different baselines, we come to different conclusions. It’s important to get the right baseline. To us we read the Bible to find the right baseline. Because we believe that the Bible is the word of God.

Philosophy tries to use logic. But their baseline is uncertain. They like to use, as the Sadducees did, trick questions. Their questions are phrased in such a way that you will accept their baseline.

For example, they like to ask this questions. “If God is so good, why is there evil in this world?” So we start thinking very hard how to defend God. But we have fallen into their trap. Because when asking that question, they’re already making a statement: God is not fully powerful and/or good because there’s evil in this world. That is THEIR baseline. So if you end up trying to argue with them trying to defend God, we find it quite difficult.

Let’s analyse this question. It consists of 2 parts.

1. God is good
2. There’s evil in this world
   Joined together: If God is good, why is there evil in this world?

Reject these connectors. Throw away the ‘if’ and ‘why’.

“God is good.”
Is this our baseline? Is that truth to us? Yes.

“There is evil in this world.”
This is truth too.

Both these sentences are truth to us. But putting them together is no longer the truth. This is the trick of the philosopher. By putting it together, they make you think it’s truth. It makes you think whether God is good.

What is logic? Logic depends on the baseline. Again and again, we must have faith in the baseline: the Bible. Then we won’t be tricked by there so called logical questions.

What is truth? A baseline we accept by faith. When this baseline is correct, we can so call reason against other truths from it.

What is truth? Truth is also history.
Exo 17:13-16
We all know about the Amalekites. It’s in the Bible. Did you know if you look at Wikipedia, they say that Amalekites don’t exist today. We say, “Yay! Means God has fulfilled His promise to destroy the Amalekites.” But the people say, “Maybe the Bible is wrong. That’s why there’re no Amalekites today.” Until someone digs up something some day. By default, people say the Bible is wrong.

But the Bible is a history book, it has never been proven wrong.

Truth can be found in the past. History is very important and we need to know history. For example, what is the history of our church doctrines? Why do we have certain doctrines?

Some people say: your church only 100 years! Look at the Roman Catholic Church which is 2000 years old!

The speaker’s friend is a Presbyterian Elder. He put in his office: 500 years. Did you know the reformation was in 1517? Our church 1917. When they turn 500, we turn 100. They say we’re just nothing. But we need to know history.

Why is their church only 500? Because they broke away from the Catholic Church. This means the 2000 year old church had many teachings they didn’t believe in. On the other hand, there were teachings they kept. The celebration of Christmas, Easter. When you look at the history of the church, you’ll find our church is 2000 years old because our teachings are exactly the same as the apostolic church.

It’s the same internally in our church. Why do we have particular teachings? Let us not be so quick to change our teachings. This will be discussed more later.

History is important to find truth. History finds itself in records and witnesses. The word ‘witness’ occurs 137 in the NKJV found in 119 verses. Historical records are very important.

Acts 4:33, 22:15, 1 John 1:2, 5-6
The Christian experience is one witnessing. That’s why we bear witness of the truth. For that reason when we bear witness of God’s grace to us, it is crucial that it’s 100% accurate. It’ll be good to have exact dates and times and people’s names, so it can be checked and we can glorify God because it’s real. It’s a terrible thing if a witness is not real, because in this church we must bear witness to the truth.

Ezra 6:2
The people of Israel were having a tough time returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of God. People were saying all sorts of lies about them, that they wanted to rebel against the Persians. So they had to search the records that King Cyrus allowed them to go back. So records are important. They must be accurate. They must state places, times and people’s names accurately. Then these witnessings can be very powerful. “Sis Tan in a north village in 19xx” can be easily checked. But “a few years ago in some place someone said” can’t be easily checked.

Journalism today tends to be opinion pieces. Very few journalists go to sources. If you read our Straits Times, TODAY Online, CNA, we’d always see AP (Associated Press) or AFP (Associated French Press). Which means they never went to the scene. They just wrote what they think about. And journalists have a very biased world view.

There was a reporter called Marie Colvin. She lost an eye in Sri Lanka because she went right there to see what happened to the Tamil Tigers and government. She said, “My job is to best witness. I’m not interested in what make of plane bombed the area, or whether the artillery is what what millimetres.”

The speaker spoke about details just now. You don’t need all the details. Just need details that bear witness of the truth.

If you’re bearing someone else’s witness, make sure what you got is totally correct. If it’s firsthand, you’d really have power in your witnessing.

Marie Colvin was killed in Syria. She went directly to the place to bear witness. But the Syrian government knowing where she was bombed the place.

What is truth?
It’s making an assessment and seeking the Lord.

Prov 18:17
We have to assess. If you’re interested in the truth in church, we cannot simply listen to just one side. Let’s say it’s an administrative or personal matter in church. This verse says the first one to plead seems right, until his neighbour comes and assesses his statement.

If we make judgements of people just based on one perspective, we have not sought the truth. If we make opinions of a particular verse, especially if it’s a controversial, and don’t want to listen to another side, then we are not standing up for the church.

Prov 1:25-33
We should seek the Lord. But not too late. Here described what it means to be too late. We must have a heart that desires the truth.

Finally, we are asked to search the Scriptures. NOT to research the truth. What is research? Research is diligent and systematic inquiry into a subject in order to discover or REVISE facts/theories/applications/etc. That’s research. In the universities, your research is measured by what kind of new things you come up with. If what you come up with is not new, it’s not research.

Now when it comes to truth, we have a continuum. On one hand we have truth that’s very very verifiable. Like mathematics, the hard sciences, engineering. And because they CAN be verified, they have produced a revolution in the earth. Everything, the lights cars computers, everything.

The truth is, if you put in a current connected to something, the bulb will light up. It’s true.

So people do research in universities. Your phone: how can you hear someone 1000km away? How do the sound waves translates to electrical signals, bounces to space and down back to earth? You can ask Dn Chong HAHA the speaker doesn’t know.

But the Bible? The Bible is not to be researched. In the universities, the facilities of theology and philosophy, and sometimes even education, have not produced truth as verifiable as the sciences. That’s still okay in some sense, but we cannot claim that it’s true.

Worse is we are always trying to dig up something new in the Bible. We’re not asked to dig up something new. It’s told to us there in the Bible.

The speaker had a visitor from Israel. A mathematician. He remarked with some exasperation, “All those Jewish guys put in so much effort to study one book! For hundreds of years! And they can’t even figure out Jesus is Christ after studying it for so long.” Because they’re looking for something new.

We come back to our first point: the Bible is the revelation of God. It’s not difficult. We should not seek the respect of men. So we should not follow in their way of theological research. We should not, in our True Jesus Church, say, “Let’s argue using the original language.” That means: when we discuss, English and Chinese is not enough. Must use original language.

We shouldn’t talk of structures within the Bible. And just surmise and postulate such strictures exist. These are the methods of the other churches. We should not use their jargon. We should not use ‘Soteriology’. It simply means the doctrine of salvation. Why use ‘Soteriology’? Like so atas only some people understand. We shouldn’t use exegesis or ?

We shouldn’t do this for 3 reasons.

1. It’s not fair to church members who only know English and Chinese. It’s looking down on them.
2. These methods are not respected by other scholarly disciplines. That’s why the aforementioned mathematician scoffed at the theologians.
3. If we take their methodology, we may look down on our fellow members. But the other Christians will now look down on us. Because we use their methods. “What are you? You’re just a few years knowing these thing. We have hundreds of years of experience. What’s this writing? Can’t even publish in my journal.”

Just see what the Bible says instead of ‘exegesis’.

Here’s an example:
2 Kings 2:11-12 (read carefully)
This is what the speaker heard when someone did an exegesis of this passage. Exegesis says “don’t add anything to the passage. Just read it as it is”. That’s the methodology.

“…suddenly a chariots of fire appeared with horses of fire…separating them..Elijah went up in a whirlwind into heaven.”
Elijah went up in a whirlwind. So using exegesis, we’re adding to the Bible by saying Elijah went up by the chariots of fire.

But common sense tells us it’s possible the whirlwind took up Elijah, the chariots and horses of fire. Suppose the whirlwind only took up Elijah. Common sense tells us that the horses are left there eating grass. It was just to separate the two of them. Common sense tells us it was to take Elijah up.

Because in v12 what did Elisha cry out? Not “whirlwind whirlwind” but “the chariot of Israel and its horsemen”.

If we investigate further:
v11 the chariot of fire and horses of fire cane
v12 the horsemen and chariots went up

Even children storybooks show Elijah ramen up in the chariots.

That’s the problem with trying to be original.

What is truth? We have to believe the Bible is the revelation of God. Take the teachings of the Bible as baseline truth. We use logic to derive further truth. In life and in the Bible, we must look to history, good records and witnesses. We must assess the truth and seek the Lord. We must search the Scriptures and not RESEARCH the scriptures. We should use the Bible as it ought to be user.

Psa 1:2
The psalmist mediates on the word of God day and night, not to come up with a new teaching, but to find out how to apply it to his life.

Let us use the Bible properly as god intended for us. Let us let truth guide our lives.

67: Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord
Pray for those unwell. Pray for ourselves that we may be guided by the truth. Pray for the church that we may preserve the truth given to us.