What Is Truth?
(To Die For Part II)
Did America really land men on the Moon or was it an elaborate hoax? The question seems ridiculous because obviously the answer is America successfully sent men to the Moon. They walked on it and returned to the Earth bringing Moon rocks with them. So, why do so many think the Moon landings never happened? These doubters suspect that America's Space program was a conspiracy to deceive the world. Think for a moment about what they are willing to accept: hundreds of thousands of people have kept a shared secret for over thirty years, and not one of them has ever claimed the Moon landings were faked. The idea that that many people can keep such a huge story secret for so long is more than preposterous: it is impossible! Benjamin Franklin illustrated this point when he wrote, "Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." Even so, despite the testimony of nearly five hundred thousand participants, there are a significant number of people who refuse to believe the truth concerning the Moon landings.
Knowing the Truth has been troublesome for the Human Race since the Beginning. The question "What is Truth?" has been posed and pondered innumerable times, vexing philosophers and theologians throughout history. Today, many in our Society sidestep the issue by taking the relativistic view that Absolute Truth does not exist, or if it does exist, it is not knowable by humans. But, they are wrong: Absolute Truth does exist and it is knowable by humans.
What is Truth? Jesus Christ gave the authoritative answer: God's Word is Truth.
Jesus said this concerning the Word of God: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Matthew 4:4 This means that the Word of God, and thus, Truth, Absolute Truth, must be discoverable and knowable by us, otherwise we would not be able to live by it. The conclusion must be that God has made His Word available to us! Thus, we can find the Truth and live by the Truth.
So, the all important question we must answer is: What is God's Word? When Jesus gave the definition of Truth, what did He mean when He referred to the Word of God? On other occasions, Jesus clearly stated that the Word of God included the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. His listeners knew what was included in those descriptions and would have understood the references to mean what we call the Old Testament.
The books of the Old Testament known as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms were assembled over the course of many centuries. These books include texts that date from the time of Adam to a few hundred years before the birth of Christ. Over the years these documents were preserved by being meticulously copied by hand, and even though the originals are not available, it is a well established fact that the integrity of the text of the Old Testament has been carefully preserved. This accomplishment is so extraordinary that it can best be described as miraculous!
God has watched over His Word contained in the Old Testament and has preserved it intact to the present day. Thus, the original Old Testament contains God's Word, the copies contain God's Word, and Bibles translated accurately and faithfully using copies of the original manuscripts also contain God's Word. People today who dismiss the Bible by saying it is imperfect because it was written by men, and therefore it cannot be the Word of God are contradicting the Lord Jesus Himself who gave His approval for the copies of the Old Testament that existed at the time of His earthly ministry.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus affirmed the authenticity of the Old Testament with these words: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:17-20
Note the phrase, "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments." How does one "break" one of God's commandments? The obvious way is to simply disobey it. Another way is to redefine what the words mean so that one can claim to be obeying the commandment when, in fact, the opposite is true. Jesus denounced the religious leaders and teachers of His day for employing this second method when He said they were guilty of making "the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition." He continued with this denunciation by saying, "Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." Matthew 15:7-9
"But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."
How did this situation come about where God's Word was replaced with the commandments of men? During the Old Testament period, scholars studied God's Word and wrote commentaries on it. Scholars who came later wrote companion works to expound upon the commentaries. Eventually, the Word of God had become obscured by the teachings of those who studied the expositions of those explaining the commentaries of those who had studied the Word of God. Thus, by the time of Christ, the meanings God intended had been supplanted using the redefining of words. Far from teaching God's Word, these were false teachings that had resulted from the accumulated effects of centuries of logocide (the murder of a word by depriving it of its meaning).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus astounded the multitude when He authoritatively rejected commonly accepted teachings concerning the Word of God. In delivering His message, Jesus employed a formula as shown in the list below which was extracted from Matthew 5: first, He stated the false doctrine, and then, He taught the multitude the truth.
"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time... But I say unto you..." (used thrice)
"It hath been said... But I say unto you..." (used once)
"Ye have heard that it hath been said... But I say unto you..." (used twice)
The topics Jesus covered were murder, adultery, divorce, keeping one's word, servant hood, and love. Elsewhere in the Gospels, it is recorded that Jesus sternly corrected the Pharisees regarding false teachings on parenthood. In Part I of "To Die For", the following point was made: To grasp the immensity of the attack on our culture, consider the following list of words that are targeted for logocide: Life, Marriage, Family, Father, Mother, Love. Compare this list with the issues Jesus dealt with and note how much the two lists have in common. The attack on our Society is not a new concept, so we do not need a "new" or "fresh" revelation from God to deal with living in Today's reality. God's Word provides the answers to the problems facing our Country. It is our responsibility to study carefully the methods and the teachings contained in the Old and the New Testaments and to employ them faithfully in our own lives, if we desire God's blessings upon ourselves and our families today.
But what about the New Testament, since it obviously was written after Jesus' earthly ministry? Does the New Testament contain the Word of God or, as so many believe, is it only the words of men?
Given the history of the Old Testament, it should come as no surprise that the New Testament has also been subject to revisionism and to logocide.
Paul the Apostle wrote the following to the Corinthians about the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep." 1 Corinthians 15:3-6
Notice that the Apostle is saying that at the time he was writing, more than two hundred and fifty eyewitnesses to the Resurrection were still alive. They had all personally seen the Savior after He had risen from the dead. Now consider the following passage from Matthew 28:11-15 which describes events that took place on the day Jesus rose from the dead [note that in the scripture, the "watch" refers to the Roman soldiers who had been assigned, under the penalty of death if they failed, the task of guarding the tomb where the body of Jesus was placed on the day He was crucified]: "Behold, some of the watch 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." Note that last phrase: "and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day." There were over five hundred eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, no one was ever arrested or even charged with the alleged grave robbing, and the soldiers were never punished for the empty tomb. Like the Moon Landing doubters of today who ignore so much evidence to the contrary, many people in Israel believed the trumped up story the bribed soldiers were instructed to repeat starting on the day Jesus rose from the dead.
That last point is worth emphasizing: attacks against the central truths of the New Testament even occurred the very day that Jesus rose from the dead!
The New Testament also records that during the lifetimes of the original Apostles attempts were made by false teachers to subvert the Church by redefining major doctrines. In one epistle written by Paul, there is included a warning to the disciples to not even listen to an Angel, if he came preaching a different gospel concerning Jesus Christ. These doctrinal attacks continued after the deaths of the original Apostles. In the next few centuries heretics even went so far as to attack teachings they did not agree with by rewriting the texts for many of the core doctrinal sections of the New Testament. Some of these have survived to the present day. The problem for us is to determine which manuscripts contain the Word of God.
One important factor in verifying the texts to include in the New Testament is that, as with the Old Testament texts, the original manuscripts for the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the book of Revelation have not been preserved. However, the originals were copied and the copies were copied many times over the centuries. Several thousand of the early copies are still in existence. In addition, these were referenced and quoted in other documents, such as, letters, that have been preserved. In all, about eighty thousand documents exist, including New Testament manuscripts for the Gospels, Epistles, et cetera, plus the related documents. Some of these date close to the Apostolic period.
The New Testament manuscripts can be divided into two main categories: those manuscripts that agree with one another, which is the vast majority, and those that have substantial differences. The body of manuscripts that are in agreement is sometimes referred to as the Textus Receptus or the Received Text. The second set contains those manuscripts that do not completely agree with the first set nor with other documents in the second set. The second group is often referred to as "the oldest and best manuscripts" or some variation of same. They were thought to be the best, because at one time they seemed to be the oldest existing New Testament texts. Their status as the oldest has since been disproved.
So, how can we know which versions contain the real Word of God? Judged by the same exacting standards used for verifying the Old Testament, the texts of the New Testament manuscripts included in the Textus Receptus have been just as carefully preserved as the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. The same cannot be said for the manuscripts that comprise the second group. These disagree with the Textus Receptus and with each other about 5% of the time. In addition, the majority of the tens of thousands of external documents support and agree with the writings of the Textus Receptus. While 5% disagreement may not seem to be all that significant, it is very important to point out that the 5% contains attacks on the core doctrines of Christianity. In the words of Christ, these competing manuscripts teach "for doctrines the commandments of men."
Although the second group is often referred to as "the oldest and best manuscripts", it is the Textus Receptus manuscripts that show the handiwork of God, the same as the Old Testament documents. No other body of writings from the ancient world has been so conclusively preserved as the Textus Receptus. Thus, God has truly made His Word available to us so that we may live by it.
The Textus Receptus was translated into the English language New Testament along with the Old Testament in the early 1600's at the direction of King James I of England, and so, this version of the Bible bears his name to this day. In the late 1800's, other versions of the Bible began to appear that used the manuscripts from the so-called "oldest and best" group. Since that time, modern translators of the New Testament have relied heavily on the manuscripts that contain false doctrines.
Of all the English language Bibles commonly used today, the King James Version is truly the oldest and the best! It is surely the most accurate.
The discussion of logocide will be concluded in our next teaching letter, "To Die For Part III."
Note on the photograph: This famous photograph from the NASA archives was taken during the Apollo 8 mission. Though the crew of Apollo 8 did not have the distinction of being the first to actually walk on the moon, they were the first people to orbit Earth's God-given satellite. This beautiful scene of home greeted them during their mission.