When God gave man the Bible, He gave him the most wonderful treasure that could ever be received through the medium of language. The miracle of language or speech (the utterance of articulate sounds or voices) was appointed by God for mankind to express and communicate thoughts. It is evident in the creation of man that God furnished both the faculty of speech and speech itself (the knowledge and use of words as vocal sounds or ideas). This gift of language existed even before the formation of woman, at which time we read of the first uttered words of Adam. Therefore, we must conclude that language was bestowed upon Adam in the same manner as all other faculties and knowledge—by divine origin. Language did not come into existence; it was given by supernatural power and divine appointment to man by God. While language and the faculty of speech were immediate gifts of God, written language became the representation of significant speech sounds using single and combined symbols making words arranged to convey specific meanings.
God first orally gave man His infallible Word in the language of man. At an appointed time, He then gave His Word in written form, using the language of man which He had given him. In the beginning the Word of God was rhema (Gr., “the spoken, articulate word”) as in, “And God said” (Gen. 1:3). Behind this spoken word was a logos word (Gr., a “full, thought expression of words”).
John 1 declares that the Word “became flesh and dwelt among us.” As the preexistent Son became flesh through the Holy Spirit and the medium of the Virgin Mary, so the preexistent Scripture of Truth became flesh in language formed by the power of the Holy Spirit through the hearts and minds of holy men. This language was made up of words, phrases, sentences, separate clauses, parallel clauses, contrasted clauses, texts, contexts, narratives, poetry, etc. Yes, the Word became flesh, language flesh. The eternal Scripture of Truth in heaven, eternal as God Himself, was brought by the power of the Holy Spirit into the laws and logic of human language. The Bible is truly the supernatural book in the medium of written language. God’s Word on earth is the product of God’s creation of speech and language.
Language: The Communication of Truth
God created Adam and Eve with the ability to communicate through the medium of language. Such a medium was for one purpose—the communication of truth. This “communication of truth” was the governing principle and the purpose of language divinely appointed by the Creator. But we read early in the historical, biblical record of God’s Word that the serpent, influenced by the Devil, initiated a “dialogue” with Eve by questioning God’s command, “Yea, hath God said?” The questioning of God’s Word was followed by the bold contradiction of the God of Truth in the Satanic declaration, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4, 5). It was in this historical moment that the first transgression against a law of God was committed on this earth. It was the transgression against the law of language, that which is to communicate truth, which brought forth the transgression on earth of the Lie!
The Truth Personified vs. The Lie Personified
As the Scriptures unfold the revelation of God, it is clearly revealed that the Creator abhors a lie—for a lie is against all that He is. God is the personification of the Truth! That day in the Garden of Eden man was first introduced to the antithesis of truth by the representative of Satan, the adversary and the slanderer of God. The serpent’s lie transgressed the law of language perverting and destroying the vehicle that man was to use to communicate truth. This confrontation began the great battle in history of “the truth” versus “the lie.”
When the Son of God (the very Word and Speech of God) came to earth, He declared two principles, both found in the Gospel rendered by John the Beloved. In John 14:6 He announced to His disciples that He was “the Truth,” the very personification of truth, the embodiment of “Truth.” But in John 8:44, He revealed the sobering reality that the Devil, the slanderer of God, “was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie [Gr., ‘the lie’], he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” As Christ came as the personification of the Truth, the Devil was revealed as the notorious Liar, the originator and promoter of the Lie.
Though the Devil, the father of all lies, has conceived and perpetrated manifold lies throughout all of history, biblical prophecy announces that the End Time will be given to the welding together of all the lies of history. The prelude generation before the coming of Antichrist will be given to the spreading of the final Lie throughout the world. When the Antichrist appears in history, he will be the human embodiment of the Lie.
We can observe the coming Lie in several passages of Scripture. When the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in his second epistle, he warned them of the coming of Antichrist:
And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a [the] lie (2 Thess. 2:10, 11).
In Romans 1:24, 25 we are told that the immorality of the End Time will be part of the Lie believed by humanity:
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a [the] lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
These two contexts of Scripture reveal characteristics that control this hour in history. Mankind has been convinced through governments, the national news media, and the philosophical postmodernists that their delusional, false thinking is the truth. This form of thinking has basically consumed every compartment of epistemology.
The End-Time Myth (Lie)
The End Time of the last days is described by the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:1 as “perilous times,” or exceedingly fierce, demonic times. In such times apostasy (the defection from the Truth) will be global in proportion, and its oppressive, dark authority will be assimilated in all compartments of human thought. As for the existence and the very fabric of present, visible Christendom, these “exceedingly fierce” times become the description unfolded in the verses found in 2 Timothy 3. Amidst this carefully described progression of the apostasy that characterizes the leadership and laity of the end-time visible church, Paul reveals that such men will resist the Truth; they will be men of “corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith” and evil seducers who will “wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (3:8b, 13).
The only antidote for the apostasy will be a fresh faith in and through the true, incorruptible Gospel of God’s Word. Thus, the Apostle continues in 2 Timothy 4:2–4 with a crucial exhortation:
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
To preach the Word of God “in season” is to preach when that Word is accepted, desired, and accompanied by a liberty of the Holy Spirit to declare truth. Such “in-season” periods of time have been known when God was moving among people. This was evident in the days of the 1700s when the Revivalist movement was sweeping across England as well as during the precious First and Second Great Awakenings here in America.
Nevertheless, Paul exhorted his spiritual son Timothy to also preach the Word when it is “out of season.” In such a season the Word of God is not accepted, desired, and sympathetically heard. The days of Noah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and even of Christ and the Apostles may be described as “out-of-season” times. Though many came to Christ in the early days of the Book of Acts, there was the clear evidence of the falling away as the years continued to unfold in the second half of the first century.
The greatest “out-of-season” time is revealed by Paul in 2 Timothy 4:3, 4:
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
Today, true biblical Christianity is publicly dead and can only be found in small pockets of believers scattered across the world. The time has come when public, global professing Christianity has refused to even tolerate sound or healthy teachings of the Word of God. Therefore, we are witnessing the explosion of a multitude of “teachers” of all concepts of religiosity who are Christianized to be accepted in the various segments of contemporary Christianity. No other religion in history has had a broader spectrum of belief than Christianity. It covers the gamut from extreme legalism to the most liberal perspective imaginable.
Paul reveals to us in this passage in 2 Timothy 4 that men must have something to hear, for faith is based upon hearing. But what is heard? If the true Word of God is denied, rejected, or cast aside because of hatred for its principles, something must take its place. The Devil has formed a deceptive imitation of Christianity in our time.
In Romans 10:13–15a, Paul reveals the process of believing the Gospel:
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?
Thus, the Devil has brought forth a plethora of gospels describing all kinds of “Jesuses” to call upon. The Devil, the father of lies, has his transformed angels of light who preach and teach what the people want to hear. Their ears are itching for something new, something different, something palatable to satisfy the sinful, worldly nature of man. This hearing produces a false trust and faith away from the Word of God, away from the true Christ, and away from the true salvation of the Gospel.
Yes, the Devil has his teachers, his preachers, who are capable to feed the ear of the natural man anything he wants to believe apart from the Truth. Man is never content for very long, even with the error that he hears; he must ever be going to something new. For the ear always has another “itch” that must be satisfied. And the lusts of men are always changing; therefore, they must ever be given something else to hear in order to produce another trust, another “faith” in something hoped for.
Note Paul’s revelation in 2 Timothy 4:4: “And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” They willfully and actively turn away from the truth. By doing so, another power takes over: “And shall be turned unto fables.” Once men actively choose to leave the truth, they “shall be turned”; the power of the lie will begin drawing them to its devastating and destructive trap of “fables.”
A “fable” in the Greek is muthos and signifies “conversation or speech to another, orally or written.” If we break this term down, we observe mu signifies “to close, keep secret,” or to keep dumb or silent. We also can see the Greek word muo, presented in the New Testament as that which is closed (such as the eyes or mouth). We also see this term used in the Greek word for mystery or secret, musterion. Thus, muthos contrasts the Greek word for truth, aletheia, meaning “not to cover.” There is also the Greek term logos, which sometimes is presented as a narrative setting forth the truth of a matter—truth versus a fable or a myth.
A classic insight to Satan’s “myth” influencing and controlling even history is seen on the day of Christ’s Resurrection in Matthew 28:11–15:
Some of the watch [soldiers who kept guard of the tomb] came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers. Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.
This secret approach, behind the scenes of public view, is happening tens of thousands of times daily around the world, literally changing history. Oh, the billions of dollars that are spent fabricating the myths and lies to replace the truth.
Turning the Truth into a Myth
For man to believe in the myth, he must be convinced that the truth is the myth and that the fabricated myth is the truth. When Liberalism and Modernism made their debut in the mid-1800s in Protestantism, they openly denounced the fundamentals of the Christian Faith by declaring the Bible to be a false book, given to the fiction of history. Liberalism was so bold to announce that all the miracles of the Bible were nothing but fabricated legends, sagas, and myths that were cunningly devised to perpetuate a false Jesus. They even declared that the history of the Bible was false; that the Jesus presented in the Gospel writings was a false, mythological Jesus. Men such as Albert Schweitzer spent their lifetime in the “quest for the historical Jesus” while denying the Christ of Scripture.
When Neo-Orthodoxy arose from the debris of Liberalism, it announced that to rightfully study the Bible one must first pursue its “demythologization.” The Liberals who view the Bible as mythology believed one must search for the “kernel” of truth that is buried under all the mythical words that surround the Bible’s narratives. Men such as Rudolf Bultmann invested their life’s study to such a hope of discovering the hidden kernel of truth somewhere within all the mythology of the Bible.
We are told that ninety-five percent of Protestantism today rejects and denies the Virgin Birth; and when it comes to the rest of the fundamentals of the Christian Faith, only a small percentage of Christians believe in their literality. In contemporary Christianity the devastating hermeneutical principle of existentialism has taken over the interpretation of Scripture. This approach purports that the Bible was written from a subjective, surrealistic, emotional perspective, and therefore, its vocabulary and meaning are never to be taken literally. Thus, men reading the Bible through that presupposition are taught to let it at a given moment “become” a word to them; in so doing, that experience becomes an existential refreshment to the readers, bringing “feelings” of faith and positivism.
But once the truth is cunningly convinced to be a myth, what must take the place of truth? What is now to produce faith? For without the hearing of the “word,” there is no faith. “Faith cometh by hearing”; therefore, something must be given to be heard in order to “create” faith. This is where the false “teachers” of our times step forward. They “create” their own existential truth to take the place of the principles of the Bible they call myths. These charlatan men and women declare under their own anointing or demonic inspiration that their “word” is to be the power to produce faith. Individuals are called to simply put their trust in that word given, and it will produce the faith needed. Public Christianity today has become “the myth,” the “lie,” or that which has taken the place of God’s truth. God’s truth is hated and considered to be mere mythology. False Christianity is far more diabolical than Islam, Buddhism, and all the other religions that have polluted the stream of the inner man of humanity.
Conclusion
But contemporary Christianity is only one aspect of the whole of the Lie that now controls the End Time. What is the truth and what is a lie today? Who is telling the truth and who is telling the lie? Our present administration in Washington for over two years has raised the alarm of what has been called “fake news,” or the intense, intricate, delusional presentation of what is to take the place of the truth, both historically and philosophically. Political parties spend literally tens of millions of dollars just to keep their myth alive (and thereby, the truth buried). The world is out to decimate the truth and to laud and exalt the myth.
The time has come that the concept of what is to be accepted as truth by the populace is that which screams the loudest, that which has the most money backing it, that which is “mega” in its appearance, and that which has the greatest convincing rhetoric. Reasonings and conversations based on absolutes in communications are a concept of the past. The absolute of morality is illogical thinking today; and what was right and true in the past is no longer viable for the present. Truth is out of vogue and the Lie is in. And those who will not relinquish the former and fully accept the latter will be trodden down and publicly denounced by the bold myth that controls society.
This issue of Straightway enters into the mythological world façade that rules global society today with the hope that some insight will be given to warn the righteous that truth is fallen in the streets, lawlessness is the cry of the land, and (as David declared of old) “Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men” (Psalm 12:1).
Dear reader, only God and His Word can deliver us from this present evil world’s nebulous, postmodernist powers of thought. God alone and His Word can keep us from entering the abyss of the myth, where insanity reigns as sanity, and that which was sane in better moral and logical days is now viewed as insanity. The Lie is all around us, everywhere we go; truth will only be found where God rules in law, order, design, purpose, and beauty in an individual life, in a home, or in a local church. We look to Him for the security of sound thinking and to be kept from the controlling powers of this present evil world.