Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"But
when the comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father,
even
the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of me.
And
ye also shall bear witness . . ."
Jn. 15:26-27
It is difficult for vain man to confess it, but his opinion about anything does not matter at all concerning what is and what is not the truth. What men say means nothing because the truth is whatever it is, regardless of what men say about it. What men think means nothing because the truth is whatever it is, regardless of what men think about it. Man himself is absolutely insignificant as far as determining what is truth because truth is not of man; truth is of God. God, and the truth that is in Him, existed before man was created; man has nothing to do with truth's existence. Man has never contributed one iota toward the development of the truth because the truth didn't "develop". Lies "develop"; lies have to be reconfigured along the way if they are to remain persuasive and meet the demands of deceitfulness. But the truth has existed unchanged throughout eternity in God. God's Spirit within Him is called "the Spirit of Truth", and everything contrary to it is evil. Truth exists because God lives, and no man knows either God or His truth unless God reveals it to him.
There are few places on earth where religion does not play a significant role in society. It is impossible to find any culture on earth, however remote, where religion is absent. But all that religions of earth do is give expression to man's thoughts and feelings about God, and all of man's many religions, like man himself, are insignificant concerning what is true. They make nothing true; they make no one good; they save no souls from sin and death. Whatever is of man is vain, including his religions. David said, "Surely, every man, at his best state, is altogether vanity" (Ps. 39:5). "Altogether" means everything about him. But whatever is of God is eternal.
There is a "pure religion and undefiled" that "comes down from the Father of lights". It is "the faith which was once delivered unto the saints". It is the unchangeable gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus was not developed by man; it was not even imagined by man. On the other hand, the religion of Christianity has continually developed over the centuries because Christianity is a lie; it needed to "develop" in order to be able to continue to deceive. But the truth of Christ is, like Christ himself, "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." The glorious truth of Jesus was graciously revealed to man by the God of Truth, and it is the only religion that can sanctify and save souls from eternal damnation.
Man's claim of righteousness is as worthless as anything else he says or thinks. Only God can make a man righteous. Even a man's claim to believe in Jesus is worthless. There were many who claimed to believe in Jesus when he was here among us, "but Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man" (Jn. 2:24-25). The entire religion of Christianity, in all its forms and sects, is based upon man's word. From the richest Christian sect, Catholicism, "the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth", to the poorest Pentecostal sub-group that meets in abandoned gas stations, the common basis of that faith is one man telling another man when he is right with God. Such pronouncements are as worthless concerning what is true as is anything else man thinks or says. In heaven, man's "confession of faith" means absolutely nothing; it carries no weight whatsoever. If Jesus put no stock in man's "confession of faith" while he was here on earth, why should we think that he accepts such confessions as legitimate now? God's judgment of human confessions of faith was revealed to me years ago when the holy Ghost scornfully demanded of me, "What difference does it make, what men say about anything?"
Only God knows the heart; only God can cleanse a man and make him holy; and only God has the authority to declare anyone to be right with Him. This He does when He baptizes a soul with His holy Spirit and that person begins to speak under the power of that Spirit in a language he has never learned. The apostle John rightly said, "The Spirit is the witness because the Spirit is truth." My father used to point out to us very often the words of Jesus in the gospel of John (15:26-27): "When the Comforter is come . . . he shall testify of me, and you also shall bear witness. . ." The Spirit's witness must come first! Only after that can a man confess that he is in Christ and have it mean anything at all. When a man puffs himself up to proclaim himself to be right with God before the Spirit speaks through him, it is just another of man's empty claims of something he does not possess. The word, "claim" is not even in the Bible. What might that tell us? Until the holy Ghost bears witness with a man's spirit that he is a child of God, his claim of being right with God can be nothing but untrue. There is no other possibility.
Christians are regularly instructed that the way of faith is to claim to be "born again", as if claiming it makes it true. Doing that not only gives people an elevated sense of man's place in the way of salvation but it also gives people a false hope. We do not belong to God's family because we say so. Many sincere Christian ministers even to this day tell sinners who desire to be right with God to repeat after them certain verses from Romans 10 and then they will be born again. What a worthless ritual! My friend, you can repeat the entire Bible after that minister, and be as sincere as is humanly possible while you are doing it, but it will mean nothing. It is what GOD says that matters, not what we say! May God establish that unshakable truth in all of our hearts! Do not trust the words of men to save you; trust in the living God. Seek His Spirit. Seek His witness that your sins are washed away. Take no man's word for anything eternal; learn rather to "live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."
On the morning that the disciples were born again, they began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave the utterance (Acts 2:1-4). There is not even the slightest suggestion anywhere in the books of the New Testament that God would ever change this method of giving the new birth to humans. Decades after the disciples were born of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, the baptism of the holy Ghost that the disciples received was still the experience that made people born again (1Cor. 12:13). And it is still that experience which does it today. Some years ago, when shown this simple truth, an Assembly of God minister at the Oral Roberts Graduate School of Theology told me, "Well, that was how it [the new birth] happened back in those days, but it's changed now." He could see that the Scriptures plainly teach that the baptism of the holy Ghost, with the evidence of the Spirit's voice, is the New Birth, but his attachment to his sect was stronger than his attachment to Christ, and he was unwilling to alter his course.
Pray to escape attachments that hinder you from being able to confess with the apostle Paul, "Let God be true, but every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4). Some people have such an attachment to dead loved ones that they refuse to believe anything that does not support their contention that those dead people are in Paradise with God. Don't be a fool. If your mother died without God's holy Ghost baptism, she is in hell today. If your father died without the holy Ghost, he is in there with her. And if you die without the holy Ghost baptism, that's where you will go when you die. Sins are washed away only by Jesus' baptism of the holy Ghost! I can't change that; you can't change that; neither the Pope with all his false promises nor the President with all his military might can change that. The only one who could have changed that is Jesus, and if your mother or father, or anyone else, were never washed from their sins by God's holy Ghost baptism, what difference does it make what you or I say about it? We are not in charge of the kingdom of God. Jesus is king, and if men and women do not submit their souls to him, they die in their sins (Jn. 8:21-24). That is the truth!
Don't waste your breath claiming that you have been born again before the holy Ghost testifies through you that you are a child of God. Use your breath to confess your sins and to cry out to Jesus to wash them from your soul by the power of his Spirit. Then, after he does that and the voice of God's Spirit has spoken through you, you can at last say in truth, "I am born again!" To say "I am born again" before the holy Ghost baptizes your soul is a lie. It is just another case of man saying something that means nothing. But to say, "I am born again" after you have received the holy Ghost baptism is the truth, for in doing that, you are merely saying "amen" to something God has done.
Wise David said in spirit, "I hate every false way." May we be as wise as he, to hate "with perfect hatred" every religion that has sprung from the imagination of men's hearts. If we do that, we will love the truth only. And if we love the truth, we will wait for God to really do something before we say that it is done.