Ninety percent of Christians love not the truth.  They accept what is convenient to them or what suits them.  Some servants of God and myself are participating in the marriage forum of Christianity.com and are fighting against the doctrine that justifies divorce and remarriage.  The pages have now gone over to about 300 pages.  We are still waging this war.

Quite a few quotes from 2nd Timothy there.  2 Timothy is believed to be Paul's last letter which makes it even more interesting that he spends all that time telling his disciple to stay with sound doctrine.

Mike I truly understand what your saying &b I agree, but I hope you don't mind if I post something from the word. concerning what Paul said about Bible teaching. I asked because, I know you don't won't me to take up a lot of space so I apologize in advance, but Paul truly makes a great point here. I belive in no man I trust in God word, and if anyone is ministrying or preaching I go chech it out in the word if it does not line up, then I know he preaching his own doctrine.

BIBLICAL TEACHINGS WILL ALWAYS BE UNDER ATTACK.
The problem that Paul was combating in the Colossian church was similar to Gnosticism (from the Greek word for knowledge). This heresy (a teaching contrary to Biblical doctrine) undermined Christianity in several basic ways: (1) It insisted that important secret knowledge was hidden from most believers; Paul, however, said that Christ provides all the knowledge we need. (2) It taught that the body was evil; Paul countered that God himself dwelt in a body-that is, he was embodied in Jesus Christ. (3) It contended that Christ only seemed to be human, but was not; Paul insisted that Jesus is fully human and fully God.
Gnosticism became fashionable in the second century. But even in Paul’s day, these ideas sounded attractive to many and they could easily seduce a church that didn’t know Christian doctrine well. Similar teachings still pose significant problems for many in the church today. We combat heresy by becoming thoroughly acquainted with God’s Word through personal study and sound Bible teaching.
BIBLE READING: 2 Timothy 1:1-14
KEY BIBLE VERSE: Hold on to the pattern of right teaching you learned from me. And remember to live in the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. With the help of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard what has been entrusted to you. (2 Timothy 1:13-14)

WOW.....ok, what can I say?     WOW !    That was truly awesome and it is so true about what you said of how we, even Christians, can follow someone or something that is so undeniable false to anyone's eyes and the truth is standing right there in front of them and they are drawn to the falsehood or the lie, or as you mentioned how they will believe a stranger over the own loved ones.     I speak to you from expience, because this very thing has happened in my immediate family and it does not bring me any pleasure, delight, or happiness to admit that I have been there.    In fact, I am right now fighting and hanging onto to God's promises that "if He will bring me to it, He will surely bring me through it."     Amen?     As brief as possible, my husband, my daughter and I have been attending  this church for 13 years.   Very involved, very active, and very happy.   I as the Director of Family Life Ministries and my husband on the building committee with 5 years devoted to building our new sanctuary.    One day, my husband just out of nowhere decides to follow a small group of people expressed complaints about one thing or another and none of those complaints were truly shared by my husband, but yet believed by him.   He set out to follow this group in the most drastic way possible...he secretly went to "meetings" for over 3 months making plans to leave our church, build a new one with this very small group of people.   Please understand that at no time during that 3+ months, he was still attending our church just like always, sitting in the pew with me and our daughter, and neither my daughter nor myself had one single clue that he was not only leaving our church, but leaving WITHOUT his wife and child.    At that 3+ months mark, I found out his plans through a person who was in this group with him and they began to talk to me as if I not only knew about it, but that I was in agreement and in fact was going to leave my church to join this group of people.    COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHOCK.....NEVER WAS THERE A MOMENT IN MY LIFE WHERE I HAD NEVER FELT SO ABANDONED, DECEIVED, AND LIED TO.    It just couldn't be true and I believed my husband and I stood up for him and told this person that there would be no way that my husband would every leave our church home, but more importantly never would he do it behind my back and our daughter's back all the while he was continueing to attend our church just like nothing was going on.    Never had I ever faced such a falsehood in my life as that.     I lived with this man, I have been married to him for going on 24 years and nothing has ever been more sacred to us that telling the truth, but also sharing the love that we all had for our church.   When I returned home that day from a church event where I had received this message from someone that considered a very dear friend.....I asked my husband and prefaced it with the fact that I thought they were just kidding and playing a joke on me, I honestly and completely felt that because I knew this man very well and our church life, our relationship with God, and the raising of our daughter in this church was number one on our list.      He gave me an answer that completely knocked me out.....HE NOT ONLY ADMITTED EVERYTHING THAT I WAS TOLD, BUT HE IMMEDIATELY BECAME VERY VERBALLY ABUSIVE TO MYSELF AND TO MY DAUGHTER.    OUR DAUGHTER CRIED AND CRIED AND CRIED AND THE MORE SHE CRIED, THE MORE UGLINESS AND HATE HE POURED ON AND NOTHING MADE SENSE FROM THAT POINT ON.     My daughter and I have been living with this horrible situation for 4 years now.    My daughter and I continued to attend our church, but my husband went the other way.    I told him that I would understand if he was not being spiritually fulfilled at our church, I would have had no problem if there was one shred of good reasoning behind his decision.    I made it perfectly clear to him to that if he could share with me his reasons, then perhaps it would all make sense and my daughter and I, even though we loved our church and even though our daughter was baptised there and wanted to one day be married there.....throught all of that, we would have followed him.   All he had to do is come to me and share his feelings and I would never have denied him the right to worship where ever that might be.     His only answer, and I quote, "I HATE THE PASTOR'S GUTS".     No other reason, and he had no reason to feel that way about our pastor except to say that he no longer cared for the way he was leading our church, but to say that you "hate his guts"....that was definitely a bit overboard, but that is the only reason given.     From that day, my daughter and I have lived in Hell in our home.     His anger has increasingly gotten worse and his abusive behavior has now caused both myself and my daughter health issues due to the stress level we are under.     We have prayed about this more times than I can count.    We have ask God to give us the patience to endure this, to continue to walk His path He has laid for us and we have both said that whatever God is doing with this relationship and this family, He is doing in His own time so for us to go through so much over the last 3+ years, our reward on the other side must be some kind of doosy !!     To reflect back on your statements regarding falsehoods, lies, and how some things can appear to be the truth, but turn out to be false......the Bible speaks of false prohets and the adoring of idols or praising anything other than our Heavenly Father.    This story, which is my every day life now of fighting and trying my best to hang on speaks volumes of your message.     The small group that my husband abandoned his church for, abandoned his family for, abandoned everything that we had......it saw many trials and tribulations, it came to be something that no pastor was looking for to lead and teach this group about God or even bring about a church or meeting place for this "new church" to grow and be blessed.    God was never in this, God is not in it now.....it was never about God with them and therefore none of the people are together, they couldn't find a pastor that would guide them and so one of the members of this group took the role as pastor though certainly not qualified to do so.    It wasn't long until this "new pastor" and his wife began to make their own rules running as far away from Scripture as they possibly could.     This group broke up and each one went in search of a new church.      As for my daughter and I, we still have the same man living in our home who is still verballly abusive and now, since our daughter is in college and away from home, never in her 19 years has her father every been anything else but loving, compassionate, fun, proud....everything to her......a relationship made in Heaven.     This year when we set out to move our daughter into her new dorm on August 16th to begin her Fall classes, her father drove to the college with his truck loaded with her belongings, arrived, removed all of the boxes from his truck and then drove off leaving me and our daughter to do all of this by ourselves.      TODAY MARKS 92 DAYS SINCE HER FATHER HAS SPOKEN TO HER, EMAILED HER, WRITTEN HER, OR CALLED HER ON HER CELL PHONE.    First time in her 19 years of life and she hasn't done one single thing to deserve it.      92 days and he doesn't know how she is doing, how she doing in her classes, what her dorm looks like, how her roommates are.......NOTHING.       So, your piece that you wrote here regarding the following of what "looks" like the truth and when find out that its not the truth, you need to make it right.       I wish someone could tell my husband that.

I thank you for this and I hope that who ever reads this will believe even more in the power of God, that the devil is real, and that we can easily succom to the lies that others paint as the truth.

God Bless you,

Trina 

I have to add a big Amen and thank you.  Satan prowls

Excellent comments all, thanks! (The smartest people on the internet clearly come here!) Thanks for the amen Joey! Thanks Chris, hope you can provide more input if you get some time! Pastor Tim, another great quote. I've gotta know what website you're lifting those from -- just kidding!!! You must certainly have an amazing library.

Kathy, thank you for offering your perspective. I don't think Paul was warning Timothy about people who held differing opinions on minor doctrinal issues. I imagine he was concerned with important matters of the faith w/eternal implications. And I also doubt they were as unfounded as that group you read about in the paper. There is a whole lot of plain truth in the Bible -- in fact I'd suggest that the more important the doctrine, the more clearly it is seen in the scripture texts, and the more widely held throughout Christendom. The enemy would certainly like to get us doubting scripture now, wouldn't he?

Lourdes, thank you for sharing those 4 steps. That is sure to be helpful in cases where truth is unclear!

Arlene, I'm sure folks can sincerely believe lies. Some may knowingly endorse falsehood as well. Trina's husband was convinced. But he also had clues that he was going wrong. Such as the way he treated his family, his ex-pastor, etc. I believe folks who fall for lies can see these clues if their pride would allow them to step back and look at the big picture. Or if they follow Lourdes' 4 step program. :-)

A much needed blog thank you so much... and thanks Lourdes for the four steps. 

Amen again!!  We do have to be alert to false teachings.  We have teach our children too.  As far as some people sincerely believing the teachings....  Mike, I think they do.  I think people grasp for straws, anything that sounds easier than going through the eye of a needle.

Trina - What can I say?  I am overwhelmed and moved to tears as I read your comments.  I pray for your relationship with Jesus that you will not give up hope as you endure this pain.  I pray that your husband would be broken before The Lord and his eyes openned to what is going on.  I pray that your husband will not be prideful, but willing to admit where he was wrong.  I pray for your daughter for her relationship to Jesus and to you and her father.   I just dropped off my daughter this fall at college as well and I can't imagine not being in contact.

There was a period in my life when i was in college that we started getting angry about something.  It was probably a dumb rule at the college I was atttending.  We started complaining in a small group and it got to be the only thing we would talk about.  Complaining seemed to be a thing we had in common and it really caused me to be mad at the world, do poorly in school and just be a pain to be around.  The tongue is a fire just as James says in his book.  I surely regret that junior year in college and would love to erase that.  The thing that I wonder about is what negative affect did I have on others around me.  I hadn't thought of this story in over 10 years, and I hope it makes sense to you.  God Bless you and your family! 

Arlene - OOPS, I didn't mean anything by that question.  I was just enjoying the fact that there is a whole dialect that has come along with the IM crowd.  Besides, age is just a number combined with an attitude, don't you think?  I agree with you that they did know because they are rejecting the Truth.

mstovall - Great point - read the Word and not about the Word.   Don't allow others to tell us what is in God's Word of Truth. 

Have a blessed day.  Your brother in Christ, Brent 

Wikipedia has a great visual of truth, belief and knowledge.  According to Plato, knowledge is both believed and truth.  However, belief in of itself is not always aligned with truth.

Mike wrote:  "Until recently, I naively thought that when truth is placed next to falsehood and lies, the truth would naturally be seen as true, and falsehood/lies easily discarded."

I thought this way as well, particularly on such black and white issues such as the Trinity.  Read my blog from a few months ago to get a sampling of how perplexed I was to find out this assumption was wrong. 

Gene - Yes the IM speak was off topic for sure. 

Mike - Thanks for putting up with our foolishness!  *grin* 

Right on, Mike! 

MyChurch crashed right after my last post last night, so I couldn't add this bit:  The blog I mentioned is linked below.  It's also very pertinent to this topic, for the interested reader:

How Deceptive, Exactly, are False Prophets?

The next several posts following that one are also semi-related. 

AMEN TO THAT  it is sad but true so many are decieved by someone they think is a believer and knows better than they do.That is why we must always pray and hear from God test and see if spirit bears witnes to that truth.
All my love and His from above,
Diana

Hi Mike,

Thank you as always for sharing your ideas.  Discerning the truth is not simple - we have to struggle not only with lies, but with simple confusion that exists among people of good will.  Words have multiple meanings and it is so easy to misunderstand one another.

There isn't any shortcut or magic bullet.  While we should be cautious about new ideas that ask us to discard everything in our past, we can't afford to limit ourselves to the familiar.  We risk shutting out the truth that exists outside our own local community.  I like Lourdes' list of helps.

Thank God for giving us a brain and a conscience.  He knows that we will never get 100% of the truth every time.  If we could, then there would be no mystery. 

Be blessed.          - June

Hi June, thanks for your comment, your honesty and humility are precious! Seems clear to me that you are a pilgrim in pursuit of the truth!

Hey Charlie, thanks for your comment. I didn't take your comment as being argumentative, but I hope you'll allow me to respond and perhaps clarify. You mentioned the unfortunate children of KKK and similarly deceived or disillusioned. My words above were not addressed universally, but to believers in Christ the Lord (truth) who I would expect to read this blog on this site. Otherwise, I would be falsely counseling children of Muslims, Hindus, Jehovah's Witnesses, athiests, etc. to follow the counsel of their parents. I will also assume that the vast majority of pastors are well meaning and highly value the truth of scripture, and therefore should be trusted. I know there are exceptions.
 
Charlie, praise God that we are one in the Spirit, together enjoying that living relationship you eloquently speak of. Amen to growth! Yes our views will change as God sanctifies us, drawing us closer to him. And one day we shall see truth clearly, with no distractions, our sinful nature no longer hindering our sight. But until then, I would urge that we embrace the core truths we have learned from trusted sources. If we aren't careful, we too can become susceptible to being deceived!

Great Blog!!
Someone said that truth is in the eye of the beholder( I don't know who somebody is)
My point is that because we have so many different views about the plan of salvation it is easy to say I'm right and everybody else is wrong.I believe that you can mix truth with lies and come up with some crazy statements of faith. I also believe that satan has found a way to divide the body
by using the one thing that is suppose to bring us together THE BIBLE.
2 Peter 1:20  says that "no prophey of the scripture is of any private interpretation" it is so sad because we all do it we allow our own interpretation of scripture lead us to name calling and actually spewing hate in the name of truth of course.because we all think our way is the right way

2 Peter 2:1 Peter is telling us that false prophets and false teachers were around in his day. So fighting about doctrine didn't just start in 2007 it has been going on for a long time.

1 Corinthians 14:33 " For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace,as in ALL churches of the saints. I don't believe anyone wakes up with a desire to go to hell,but they may believe what they believe even if others think they are wrong. It is at this point we pray that God would reveal truth to that individual. I will close with a bible quote, and I love all of you and I pray one day we will become one as Jesus prayed we would and that the world would know we are Christians by our LOVE for one another.

Hi Mike – Excellent post; very thought provoking.

Several things came to mind when reading through it and some of the comments made by your other readers.  The first thing I thought was that Satan is like a roaring lion going around seeking whom he may devour.  Unfortunately many Christians are devoured by the deceptiveness of false teachers or by ‘leaning unto their own understanding’ or to the traditions of men.  We have the promise directly from God that His Word is TRUTH and that Jesus is the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.  There are many truths within the pages of the Bible and we do not have the right to pick and choose the ones that suit us.  They are all in there for God’s divine plan and purpose; to enable us to come to the knowledge of Him and his precious son, Jesus Christ, and of course, to ultimately answer the call of the chosen.

I can still remember the theme of the first Bible study lesson I ever sat in on, “Open your heart when you open your Bible.”  The gentlemen teaching the study told us that he had three rules in his class.  The first was that we were not going to discuss denominations and, that it didn’t matter what we thought.  Our main concern was “what does the Bible say?”  The second rule was that no one should be made to feel that they must join any denominal church, and third, that we would not argue.  He asked that we put aside biased opinions, the traditions of men and prejudice in the study, and open our hearts and minds to the TRUTHS of God’s Word. 

Ah hah!!! DIVINE REVELATION…..Just because I believe something, that doesn’t necessarily make it true!  It was the best counsel I have ever received.

I began to understand what he was saying when I discovered ‘little things’ like no where in the Bible does it ever say anything about there being three (3) wise men.  It says, “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem”.  (Matthew 2:1-3 (in context)).  We make so many assumptions and I think that’s what happened here; just because three gifts are mentioned in the story related to the wise men, gold, frankincense and myrrh, we just naturally think that each one was brought to Jesus by three wise men.  There’s nothing definite there.

Also, it says “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.  (Matthew 2:10-12 (in context)), thus eliminating the concept that the wise men brought their gifts to an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes laying in a manager with cows and sheep, etc. in attendance when this happened and as depicted in so many Hollywood movies and nativity scenes.

I could go on and on (Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree, it doesn’t declare anywhere in the book of Genesis that the fruit was an apple.)  Just simple, little things like that, that the adversary uses to deceive us.  Getting into more ‘modern times’ now, where in the world is there anything in the good book about saying a sinner’s prayer or accepting Christ as your savior?  I know I getting somewhat controversial now, but where are those things in the word of God, if anyone knows?