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George MacDonald, “Truth is truth, whether it’s spoken by the lips of Jesus or Balaam’s donkey.”
Dan Kimball, the pastor of Graceland in Santa Cruz, CA recently told me, " The great thing about postmodernism is the vacuum that exists for truth, and we have the privilege and opportunity to fill it."
Rich Atchley says that if you went to the average university campus today, & asked students if they know a verse of Scripture, most would say that they do. If you had asked 10 or 15 years ago, most would have quoted John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” Everybody knew that verse then.
But today, most would reply with, “Judge not that you be not judged.” Atchely says, “The whole focus has changed. Ten or 15 years ago the focus was on the truth of God’s love. But today, surveys reveal that practically everyone is convinced that there is no absolute truth. So the emphasis has switched from truth to tolerance.”
And that leaves us free to do anything we want without worrying about what God teaches.
Blaise Pascal observed, “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we...
This religion of me and thee, as George Gallup, Jr. calls it, along with a hunger for experience over knowledge, has contributed to a tremendous diversity of beliefs, many of which are antithetical to biblical principles. These unhealthy attitudes have crept into the church, as evidenced by the following results of a survey of church lay leaders by researcher George Barna:
· only 53 percent believe that there are moral truths that are absolute
· 43 percent say there is no such thing as the Holy Spirit
· 33 percent believe that Jesus never had a physical resurrection
· 19 percent believe Jesus sinned while on earth.
Source: "Lost in America" by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird
Stanford Research Institute was studying the differences in vocational perceptions. They
devised a short but succinct test. The first to be tested was an engineer. The researchers asked him: “
What does two plus two make?” The engineer simply said, “In absolute terms: four.” After making their
notes and dismissing him, they called an architect. To the same question, he responded, “Well, there
are several possibilities: two and two make four, but so does three and one -- or two point five and one
point five -- they also make four. So, it is all a matter of choosing the right option.” The researchers
thanked him and made their notes. Finally, they called an attorney. When he heard the question, he
looked around slyly, asked if he could close the door for privacy, and then came over close, leaned
toward them and said, “Well, tell me, what would you like it to be?”
Evangelish Robert Sumner told the story:
When George Gibson Polley was a boy in Richmond, he hit a baseball onto the roof of a six-story building. Since with most sandlot games, it was the only ball the boys had, George promptly climbed up the outside of the building and retrieved it. This was the start of scaling buildings that eventually earned for Polley the title “Human Fly.” Before his career came to a screeching halt at the age of 29 — not from a fall, but a fatal brain tumor — George scaled the outside of more than 2,000 buildings.
He climbed the Custom House in Boston, three buildings in a single day at Hartford, and one time he made it to the thirtieth floor of the Woolworth Building in NYC (at the time the world’s tallest) before being apprehended and arrested by a policeman. It seems that he did not have a permit. Most of the time, however, everything was legal and on the up and up, with store owners hiring him for grand openings and an assortment of sales. He could earn $200 a climb — more than many men were earning in over a month during those depression days.
While I cannot say for certain now, I think it was Polley who came to my hometown on two different occasions when I was just a boy. One time it was to scale the outside of the largest department store building in the city, located at the main intersection, the Chapman-Turner Department Store. the other time was to climb a new hotel located a block away. On both occasions, I recall standing on the sidewalk across the street, open-mouthed, heart in throat, gripping tightly my father’s hand, as Polley slowly, yet confidently, climbed to the top. Since it was standard fare in his act, I assume he pretended to slip and start to fall at least a time or two during each climb, hanging by his fingertips from a ledge.
Polley’s financial success launched a number of other “human fly” careers in those bitter depression days. One of the exciting dare-devils had been announced to climb a large department store building in downtown Los Angeles. A great throng assembled to watch and the man, slowly and carefully, climbed floor after floor up the outside of the building.
When he reached a point very near the top, the crowd watched him feel above his head, both to the right and to the left, for something he could use to raise himself higher. Eventually he spotted what seemed to be a jutting brick or a piece of stone. Since it was inches beyond his reach, he ventured everything on a cat-like spring, wrapping his fingers around the object.
While the crowd below watched in horror, the human fly fell with a scream to the sidewalk and was smashed into pieces. When medical attendants pried back his fingers to see what he had clutched, they found a spider’s web! he had risked everything on what proved to be dried froth! —Robert Sumner.
Even if you never saw the movie “A Few Good Men,” you’re probably familiar with one scene.
Tom Cruise plays a military lawyer and is interrogating tough-guy Jack Nicholson.
Cruise is getting nowhere and finally yells, “I WANT THE TRUTH!”
And Jack Nicholson shouts back. “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
Truth is difficult stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to handle.
"The trut...
A story is told in which an accountant answered an advertisement for a top job with a large firm. At the end of the interview, the chairman asked, “One last question—what is three times seven?”
The accountant thought for a moment and replied, “Twenty-two.” Outside he checked himself on his calculator and concluded he had lost the job. But two weeks later he was offered the post. He asked the chairman why he had been appointed when he had given the wrong answer. “You were the closest,” the chairman replied. Some people have the mistaken idea that God is like the man who conducted the interview. They think it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re close to the truth.
"It is human to err; and the only final and deadly error, among all our errors, is denying that we have ever erred."
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