Articles
Assuring Truth
When witnesses are sworn in to give testimony, the court usually requires something that goes like this, "Do you swear to tell THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH?"
John records the words of Jesus in chapter 8 vs 32 "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
The truth is NOT the truth unless it is all of the truth, and all of the truth without anything that isn't truth mixed in. It's easy to have less than the whole truth, and it's just as easy to have all the truth with some extra stuff that isn't truth. If you have either of those, then what you have is no longer the truth, and it would stand to reason that we are not set free because what we have really isn't the truth at all.
As the picture shows, people will often choose to hear what they want and avoid what they don't want to hear. The Apostle Paul said a time was coming (and I firmly believe we live right in the middle of it) "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 Tim 4:3)
It is possible to look around until you find a 'church' that preaches that everybody is OK, all is good, God loves you and we are all going to heaven because, in the end, God will change His mind about Hell and save everybody. Only thing is, it's not the truth, it's not the whole truth, and it IS EVERYTHING BUT THE TRUTH!
It is not hard to skip a particular scripture or two we don't feel great about, read the ones that we like, and lightly apply a couple of others and get a nice warm fuzzy feeling about our relationship to God. But if we examine our status without the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that warm fuzzy feeling may get scalding hot on judgment day! Something to seriously think about.
