Truth… And Scripture

SAT., DEC. 14, 1991, 10:42 AM
FARM, STUDY

Scripture is full of truth. I have told you this repeatedly, and you recognize this as you read in (and you do, occasionally). But what is truth, given the various ways humans have defined it in the past, and even now? Brigette told you this week that believed every word of Scripture is truth, and you know that this is “holy doctrine” for many fundamentalist Christians. You didn’t challenge that bit of doctrine, and it would not have been kind, even Christian, to do so.

Thus, you tend to see that there is much fundamental truth enmeshed in the story of a chosen people, 2,000 – 4,000 years ago, displaying a culture quite different from your present one. You also see that much of that truth must be reinterpreted for this time, just as it must be reinterpreted in a Brazilian village, in a Korean settlement, or even in a Detroit ghetto. But that raises the sticky issue of “Which is Which”… what is everlasting truth and what is that which must be separated from its cultural context.

This Teaching was just interrupted by the call from Mabel, so let Me use that as a first illustration. There is truth in the Commandment Thou shalt not kill. If it were absolute truth there would be no exceptions, for defense, for a just war, or, as in this case, for a potentially handicapped, short-lived child. In relation to this, however, there is the question of whether this commandment truth applies only to humans with an immortal soul or to any form of life. If it applied to all animal life then killing any animal for any reason would be sinful. It obviously must not apply to plants, for there is no way a world population of the present size could subsist on foods gathered in such ways as to not kill the plant. Yet plants die, and animals die… and so do humans.

This issue thus is whether abortion is the killing of a human individual with a soul already indwelling or whether it just is the removal of an imperfect body, like unto a spontaneous abortion, into which a soul has not yet entered. So here truth is determined by conditions about which you cannot know. Your culture assumes it is right, even honorable, to surgically remove tissues that are functioning badly, or not at all. You have many means to extend life, and yet there is no commandment that says, Thou shalt extend life beyond what it would naturally be. What is the truth about life, about killing, and about extending and sustaining life?

It is truth that I, as Almighty God, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit, have done and still do miracles. I also have told you that miracles are unlikely, for I mainly desire that this earth scene function naturally. There is much prayer that I hear for what, in effect, are miracles. To pray that this developing fetus, which tests show will be a Down’s child, will come forth as a normal baby is asking for a miracle. Oh, it could happen spontaneously, or the test results could have been faulty, but generally the prayer would be for Me to intervene and to dispose of the defect. The Scriptures tell that I have done greater miracles than this… and also that I did not intervene in many, many situations in which a “loving, compassionate God’ would have changed conditions.

Scripture doesn’t deal directly with abortion… or with amniocentesis tests. It is truth that we are called on to pray, for anything, and anything you ask in Jesus name will be granted. Then there is the truth that prayers are not always, and perhaps seldom, answered in exactly the way the pray-er desires. It is non-Scriptural truth that I, the Holy Spirit, work when, where, how, and with whom I choose. Anything is possible with Me. Yet the best predictor is that the laws of nature will prevail.