Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him,
"If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.
And you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free."
[ John 8:31-32 New King James Version ]
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Is there such a thing as absolute truth ? Think about it.
How can there NOT BE absolute truth ?
I use the word in its purest possible meaning which is what actually is so. There is nothing
relative or situational about it. For example, the earth is not flat though for a long time
people believed it was. Believing something does not make it true and not believing something does
make it false.
Electricity, gravity, x-rays, and much more were "discovered". The truth is they existed
whether or not humans knew of them or believed in them. What is, is. There can be only one absolute
truth and everything else is not truth. A partial truth is not truth.
Truth has a single absolute source which logic dictates is the creator, master of the cosmos, and all
that is seen or unseen, known or unknown, discovered or undiscovered, believed or not believed. We
label that source "God" with a big "G" to distinguish this Being from all the other lesser beings,
real and mythical, called gods with a little "g".
Only the Absolute Source knows the whole of absolute truth. We can believe we know part of it as it
has been revealed to us in His word given to humans and handed down by them and later written by them.
Long before modern scientific thought accepted the "big bang" theory of the universe, which theory
posits a very sudden beginning followed by rapid expansion, which they do not or will not term
creation, scripture told us everything was created in an instant. Prior to that instant our cosmos
did not exist. Now it exists. Eventually it will cease to exist.
The cosmos is not eternal. The creator is eternal. How can it be otherwise ?
If God came into existence ... When ? How ? From what source ? The answer of course would be one who
existed before God, then THAT being is God. To believe that all existence is some sort of random
happening requires a mind bent to deny the truth. In eternity there is no time. Time began with the
beginning of the temporal cosmos. Meanwhile, God is, was, will be.
Eternal essentially means always being ... no beginning and no end. Immortal is a different matter.
We who are saved are immortal but we had a beginning. Those among us who are not saved will either cease to
have conscious existence or enjoy eternal torment when all else goes into the lake of fire.
[ Revelation 20:12-15 ]. Whichever interpretation is correct the result is positively dreadful to contemplate.
Angels are immortals who had a beginning and presumably no end.
The Name of God
If God has a name, we do not know what it is. He must have given it to Himself or accepted a name
by which His creation called him at it's beginning. Presumably, the angels were the first beings
other than God to exist. In scripture God is identified by the Tetragrammaton, four Hebrew letters
which are transliterally YHWH giving rise to the label Yahweh or Yahveh which usually is
pronounced like yah-way.
God is also called Jehovah, Yehova, Adonai, Elohim and other names but we
do not know what actually is the name God calls Himself if indeed He uses any name. In other languages
God is called Deus, Dio, Gott and so on. Each language has its own word. None of them are the true name of God.
For our purposes and discussions it is sufficient to reverently call Him God or Abba as did Jesus who said God is
our father. He also said Satan is the father of those who do not believe. I do not think He meant
that in a literal sense but rather that they believed Satan's lies instead of God's truth. All who
believe God through Christ become sons of God and brothers or sisters of the first born son.
Binary Limitation
Our ability to conceive or comprehend is boxed in and limited to opposite extremes.
Yes and No are opposites with nothing beyond them. There is plenty between them .. 'maybe',
'more or less', almost certainly', etc. Yes is the limit of the positive. No is the limit of the
negative. Same with black and white. Near infinite shades of gray exist between black and white but nothing is
blacker than absolute black or whiter than absolute white. Pick a pair: positive and negative,
on and off, is and is not. Your mind can not go beyond the limits.
Absolute truth, however, may be quite different. In our present existence we are unable to know it, nor do we need to know it.
What we do need to know is the truth which will set us free from the curse of the final death which awaits nonbelievers.
We know what that truth is. Absolutely.
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