Oct 1984 - Editorial

It was a typically hot and humid afternoon in the office of a Malayan immigration official, with a roof fan spinning slowly and dispensing some little cooling comfort. As the writer waited by the official's desk it was impossible not to read the only document underneath the glass top. It was a simple white card bearing the words "What is truth?" Business completed a little later, we spoke of the origin of the words and of our common joy and trust in the Lord Jesus.

The reasons for my friend's fastening these words under his desk top were doubtless associated with the gentlemen's own spiritual pilgrimage from the Hinduism of his ethnic origins. A cynical remark often quoted in the world is "Pray do not confuse me with the facts". We inhabit a world of fiction, fantasy, falsehood and hypocrisy; truth has become hugely discounted. This the Master knew better than any when He thought of the vulnerability of His disciples in a world waiting for and desperately needing their witness when He was gone. And so, "Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth," was His prayer to the Father under the shadow of Calvary.

Our contribution this month on the Sermon on the Mount high-lights the Christian's need of ruthless self-candour - the mote in my brother's eye? - the beam in my own! It reminds us frankly of the purity and simplicity which are towards Christ, expressed in "What so ever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them." This is not the world's way. There, few scruples can be afforded in the race for the summit in business, or the quick financial "killing". More sinister still, as we are reminded by "FOCUS", revealed truth is discounted in the interests of a "lowest common denominator" of understanding of things concerning our precious historic faith in the Person and work of the Son of God. But the unshakeable Word of the living God stands sentinel over our faith from age to age; and the One who declared with complete assurance and authority, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" will soon reveal Himself in full majesty and glory to a wondering world whose subtle doubts and clever heresies will wither in a moment. Till then our privilege is, like Himself, to "bear witness unto the truth" (John 18:37).

Wherefore I shall be ready always to put you in remembrance of these

things, though ye know them, and are established in the truth which is with

you (2 Pet. 1:12).

unknown | Oct 1984
Editorial