Opposition to the Truth.
By R. F. Cottrell
HAD the truth always been obeyed, earth had still remained in Eden. But the truth has been transgressed and opposed; hence the great controversy between truth and falsehood. The first to leave the truth was Satan; angels and men have followed his example. Jesus said to the unbelieving Pharisees, "Ye are of your father, the devil; and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth." John 8:44. To say that he abode not, or remained not, in the truth, is an acknowledgment that he was once in the truth. Pride and exaltation caused him to leave the truth by the transgression of the law of God, and in the beginning of our world he became the murderer of our race by leading man into sin, the wages of which is death. He was the first to leave the truth—to break God's law—and for this reason the everlasting fire, into which the wicked will be driven, is "prepared for the devil and his angels." Since sin entered, opposition to the truth has raged. The ancient pagans turned the truth of God into a lie by worshiping the creature instead of the Creator. Rom. 1:25. But the great apostasy of the present dispensation, "the man of sin," or "the lawless one," has outdone all in exalting himself above God, and casting down his truth and trampling it in the dust. 2 Thess. 2. Daniel was forewarned of the arrogant and blasphemous work of this great abomination of desolation in the following words: "And an host was given him against the daily by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground, and it practiced and prospered." Dan. 8:12. "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws." Dan. 7:25. The law of God is the truth. Hence to think to change his times and laws is precisely equivalent to casting the truth to the ground. And this opposition to the truth is not all in the past, but will continue to the end. Amid the perils of the last days, the apostate church, those who still have a form of godliness, will be, as the apostle says, "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;" but on the contrary, they will "resist the truth;" as did Jannes and Jambres. See 2 Tim. 3:1-8. Hence Paul most solemnly charges the gospel minister "before God and the Lord Jesus Christ," and in view of the approach of the Judgment of the living and the dead, to "preach the word," the word of God, which is truth, and assigned the following reason: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." 2 Tim. 4:3, 4. And any one who will carefully read Isa. 59 will see that when the day of vengeance comes upon the last generation of earth, it will come because "truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter." "Yea," says the prophet, "truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." To depart from evil is to leave off sin, which is the transgression of the law. Hence we learn that the evil doer, that "hateth the light," will be arrayed against, and strive to devour like a beast of prey, him that shall venture to do the truth. The Lord seeing it will be displeased and will "put on the garments of vengeance for clothing," and repay fury to his adversaries." But the "Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob." Here is described the final conflict between truth and error. It is described in Rev. 12:17: "And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." But the doers of the truth shall be the victors; they shall stand on the Mount Zion, with the Lamb, and shall sing the song of deliverance on the sea of glass, when the judgments of God shall have been made manifest against their persecutors, as the host of the Egyptians were swallowed up in the Red Sea. Rev. 14:1; 15:2-4. R. F. COTTRELL.