Every year Oxford Dictionaries selects a newly coined word or expression that best captures the social characteristic of the year. In 2016 the word was POST-TRUTH. The word means: “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than personal emotion and belief.” My translation: “Truth is whatever I want it to be at any given time in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” In our POST-TRUTH world, “truth” is whatever I want it to be at any particular moment and under any particular circumstance. My definition perfectly describe the mind-set of both religious and political liberals.

The people at Oxford Dictionaries believed that they had brought to light something new. However, their “revelation” is far from new. The Institutional Church (Catholicism/Protestantism) beat them to the verbal punch by some 1800 years. The Word of God, which Jesus said was “Truth” (Jn. 17:17) has been rejected as THE truth by so-called Christians for many generations. In this series I will bring forward a dozen or so examples of POST-TRUTH “truths” that today over two billion people swear to be THE truth, even attaching God’s name to their unscriptural beliefs. Some go so far as to willingly suffer martyrdom for refusing to give up those Biblically-rejected “truths.” Question: How is this possible when the Bible is readily available. Answer: The Institutional Church despises God’s Holy Bible, and therefore despises both God and His Christ. Want proof? Keep reading.

In the 13th chapter of the Book of Acts we find the Apostle Paul speaking to a group of Israelites in the synagogue at Antioch on the Lord’s (7th day) Sabbath. He addresses these men as “brethren” and “men of Israel” whose God was the “God of this people Israel” Who had chosen “our fathers” (vss 14-17) through whom to produce the race of people who would serve as His light to the Gentiles (Isa. 49:6;60:3). In verse 26 Paul, having addressed his audience as “children of the stock of Abraham,” begins his discourse by teaching them about their ancestors’ lack of faith in God which had resulted in the death of His Messiah. Paul then told his audience about that same Messiah’s resurrection from the dead and His later visit with His disciples on the Mt. of Olives (Acts 1:3). Paul then used a quote from the Old Testament to warn them not to reject the Words of the Lord’s Messiah and His apostles: “Behold, therefore, lest that come upon you which was spoken by the prophet (Habakkuk), ‘Behold, you DESPISERS, and wonder and PERISH. For I will work a work in your days, a work which YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE, though a MAN (apostle) DECLARES IT TO YOU” (1:5).

Note that both Habakkuk and Paul call those who do not believe God’s Word “DESPISERS.” What we will see in the next posting is that Jesus Christ uses the same term to describe those who do not believe His Word. As I have proven Scripturally hundreds of times on this website and on my YouTube site (proveallthingsofgod), the church is functionally illiterate relative to God’s Word, believes little of what she knows and obeys little of what she believes. As we will “hear” Jesus say in the following posting, by rejecting the Holy Scriptures, church people prove that they DESPISE their Authors. L.J.