Have you felt a hunger for the truth recently?
If so, you are not alone.

Currently the nightly news on TV contains a lot of poorly disguised advertisements, ‘stories’ designed to increase fear, a lashing of political spin and something about sport. Whatever it is, it can no longer be called news.

The newspapers aren’t much better. My ‘go-to’ sections are the death notices and the comic page (if it exists). I then turn to the section on world news to gauge whether or not there is any balanced reporting, conclude that it isn’t there, and put the newspaper down. That’s if I have picked it up at all.

I am finding that my scrolling time on Twitter is shorter than ever, and that the levels of overt censorship are disturbing. When I dig down into the comments, it seems that the trolls have been more active than ever, and that comments that dissent from the opinions of the trolls are harder to find.

Some sub-reddits on Reddit are even worse.

On the good news side, there are valiant people writing blogs and sharing links to breaking news. May God bless them, encourage them, and help them to keep on going.

On the downside, trying to determine what is fact and what is nutcase conspiracy theory is exhausting.

There’s a massive battle going on to determine whether our future will be under the great global reset (totalitarian socialism) or under God’s divine reset. Yet so many are still asleep to the reality of the battle and the far-reaching consequences of the outcome.

Therefore my hunger for truth is growing, and my tolerance for banality is decreasing.

Where can truth be found? In the Psalms, and in the accounts in the Bible that display God’s unchanging character.

In every age there is a time of reckoning, where God goes through the accounts of communities and nations, and where judgement comes upon nations that have flouted His laws and reward and advancement comes upon nations that have kept respect for His laws and decrees.

When God decrees against a nation, it is a forever decree. Pick up your bible, read through Ezekiel 29, especially verse 15, and ponder it seriously. ‘Egypt will be the weakest of kingdoms and no longer dominate other nations; I shall reduce her, and she will not rule any more over the nations.’ This is still true today. Does this not induce awe?

2 Peter 3:9 reminds us, ‘The Lord is not being slow to carry out His promises, as anybody else might be called slow; but He is being patient with you all, wanting nobody to be lost and everybody to be brought to change his ways’.

In recent times we have seen nation after nation introduce laws completely at odds with God’s eternal laws (eg abortion, euthanasia, laws against God’s plan for marriage and family, laws against God’s plan for biological gender, laws that permit experimentation and alteration to DNA etc), we have seen corruption in the judicial and political systems, and in the means of communication.

God is still God. There are times when the leniency of mercy ends, and the day of reckoning and the day of judgement begins. God is not to be mocked. Even if the punishment is delayed, it still arrives; and the longer it is delayed, the more severe the balancing of God’s scales of justice will be.

That time of reckoning is soon.

The heinous injustice of firstly the electoral fraud and corruption in the U.S.A presidential election, and secondly the refusal to acknowledge the electoral fraud and corruption, and the refusal to co-operate in changing the unjust outcome, is tipping the scales towards the day of reckoning. Since if the Lord of all justice permits this gross injustice to stand, it calls into question the very nature and character of God. Will the Lord of all justice not see justice done on earth, and done speedily?

But the ultimate outcome rests with us.

If we do nothing, then the reckoning will happen through the persecution of the good; increased darkness, blatant evil and horror will be our punishment.
If we take God more seriously than ever before, and plead for mercy together with true repentance, then He will purge the world of the sources of corruption, if we have sufficient resolve to co-operate with Him in ridding the world of it.

It takes something like this for a nation to get sufficient resolve to do the necessary painful work of change. For example, the electoral methods in the U.S.A. have been different between counties and between states, with no political will to standardize them and remove the openings for corruption, because from time to time each side benefits from the possibilities for such corruption.

During these difficult weeks following 3 Nov 2020, the flaws have been glaringly obvious. This is a once-in-a-lifetime, maybe even a once-in-several-centuries opportunity to clean the system up once and for all. Woe to the U.S.A. and to the rest of the world, if this opportunity isn’t taken with resolve and gusto.

So how hungry are you for truth?

Are you willing to do what it takes to stand up for truth?
How much are you praying about it?
How much are you adding in a bit of self-denial to those prayers?
Have you been independently investigating the available evidence, and weighing up what both sides have been saying, and seeking God’s gift of discernment?
Have you been liking and sharing sources of truth?
Have you been telling those in positions of authority that you expect them to stand up for truth, no matter what?

Jesus Christ is the same today, as He was yesterday, and as He will be forever.
He is the one who transforms Saul the persecutor into Paul the intrepid apostle.
He is the one who does not tolerate the fraud of Ananias and Sapphira; and punished them with immediate death.
He is the one who makes the cripple at the Beautiful Gate whole.
He is the one who warns the seven churches that none of them are measuring up to His will for them, and that there will be dire and major consequences if they don’t respond positively to His warnings.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

May God grant that you learn this the easier way, than the hard way.
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Hunger for truth! 

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 22
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The lights are going off.

In the past weeks and months I've read a lot of articles on line, and many of the comments attached to them. For the faint-hearted, it is not. There are levels of barely restrained anger and malice that I haven't seen before.

In the midst of all that madness of competing 'rights' and no concern for the associated responsibilities I came across a reminder of an interview that took place a few years ago. At the time there had been an ugly schoolyard massacre in the USA, and people were asking 'Where was God?', 'Why did He allow this to happen?' The answer was along these lines: that if you remove prayer from the schools, if you remove the teaching of the 10 Commandments and the life lessons from the Bible from the schools, in effect expelling God from such schools, then there's nothing to stop these atrocities and even worse ones from happening again. God has gentlemanly manners, He helps when He is invited to and doesn't force Himself on anyone. When He is rejected, His ability to help becomes severely limited because He respects our free will so much.

The sad thing is that this scenario seems to be playing out across the societies we live in.

The very people who want to trample over the rights of another to conscientiously object to doing something they consider morally wrong, only have this freedom of speech because in times past people of good will steeped in the truth that humanity was made in the image and likeness of God (and thus giving each human life true dignity) fought for this freedom for everyone. In a totalitarian regime freedom of speech is one of the first things that goes.

As we have expelled God from more and more areas of our lives, the lights that once kept out the darkness are going off.

We have forgotten that the formal definition of hell is the utter absence of God, and of all the truth, beauty and goodness that is His.

It seems we are going to be seeing more of that on earth.

In the novel  'An Echo of Things to Come' by James Islington there is this description of a dark realm:

'There was a screeching cacophony until it could be borne no longer; there was an empty, swirling silence that left a desolate panic bubbling uncontrollably inside of him. There was searing pain and icy wretchedness. There was misery and anguish and bottomless loss. There was no relief….What you saw was a moment, a memory from a man, one that came at the cost of his sanity….I don't know how to describe it…Nobody does. The best I have heard it explained is that it is an absence. It is what it would be if there was no joy, no life, no light, no hope. If everything, - everything, - that made this world a comfort to us was stripped away, completely and utterly.'

Once upon a time the media sought for truth and balance and excellence. Now the media seeks for click-bait and sensationalism, and editors fact check so rarely and permit copying so often that fake news has become the norm. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time social media postings were from real individuals. Now you don’t know whether the postings originated from a foreign government think tank designed to provoke disunity. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time protecting the innocence of children was a sacred duty. Now when they barely reached the age of reason they are bombarded with the complexities of human sexuality and gender fluidity. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time people wished each other a Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays, they sang Christmas carols about a baby in a manger and put on annual Christmas nativity plays. Now our shopping centres and day care centres won't put up nativity scenes in case they offend someone. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time when people spoke about marriage they spoke of husband and wife. Now it is almost an act of subversion to celebrate the anniversary of a married heterosexual couple, or to speak of Mother's Day and Father's Day. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time the medical profession were revered and trusted because they vowed to always do no harm and always seek to save life. Now governments are charging them with the responsibility to help kill the vulnerable and the sick. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time if a person was elected to government office they were expected to have some loyalty to the party that assisted them. Now you take your seat as the party member one day and declare you are an independent the day after. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time churches and religious statues and Christian leaders were respected. Now it is increasingly okay to let acts of vandalism of religious property go unpunished and to insult the representatives of God. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time a person was innocent until proven guilty by a judge or jury. Now it is trial by media, with the implicit verdict of guilty until proven innocent, and the impossible difficulty of finding unbiased jurors. A light has gone off.

How many lights have to go off?
How deep does the darkness have to get before our hearts cry out for the light?
How full of horrors does the darkness have to become before we humbly go in search of the source of light?
How bad does it have to get before we plead for God to return to our lives, and to our communities?
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O God of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forgive us, help us, rescue us, save us. Amen.