p. 38 | TELL THE TRUTH by T. E. Bowen

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 19, 1915

“TELL THE TRUTH”

By T. E. Bowen

Perjury and Falsehood, and the Results—Should Not the Christian Church Be More Particular About the Truth?

By T. E. BOWEN

UNDER the above title, there appeared recently in the editorial department of one of the leading Protestant papers here in the East, the following sound counsel regarding the importance of every one's telling the truth:

“Newspaper readers have been frequently horrified, during recent weeks, by the news of fresh discoveries of perjury in the events leading to the retrial of two prominent murder cases. One can not read these accounts without being appalled at the ease with which some men and women will lie, even under oath. It makes the search for justice almost hopeless to have the way blocked by such a tangle of lies, contradictions, fresh confessions, and further lies.

“There is urgent need for some new kind of insistent exhortation to tell the truth. A child ought to be brought up to shrink from lying as he shrinks from death. There ought to be a horror at any sort of deception or evasion, or anything that will, even by silence itself, mislead another. New laws are, indeed, being made and enforced, compelling manufacturers and merchants to tell the truth in advertising their wares. New laws are needed to compel newspapers to tell the truth even in cases that could not be covered by suits for libel. It is the newspaper man's business, as well as the business man's obligation, to tell the truth, and a lie ought to make a man a criminal.

“It has been considered a deadly insult to be called a liar. It is a worse insult, an insult to one's self and to God, to be a liar. ‘Buy the truth, and sell it not,’ cling to it, live by it, think it, speak it, live it. Every lie is a step on the way of death. Lies make personal, social, business, political, judicial, ecclesiastical, national life unsound and unsafe. Let us build our lives, our homes, our churches, and our commonwealth, upon the truth.”

All truth-loving people should heartily say “Amen” to the above. A lie is a wicked thing. And if all would “buy the truth, and sell it not, cling to it, live by it, think it, speak it, live it,” what a wonderful reformation would be experienced! What joy would be brought into our homes, our neighborhoods, our churches—everywhere! In other words, it would be a call back to the keeping of God's commandments, one of which says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

A WEEKLY FALSEHOOD

Somehow, as we read these good words, we could not refrain from saying in thought, “Is it not a pity that these good people who exhort us in this noble manner to truthfulness in every particular should stop short of the truth?” To be plain and “tell the truth,” one of the stones in the foundation of nearly every Protestant church structure in the land is nothing more than a soft, crumbling sandbag handed down from the Dark Ages—a papal falsehood. Every week, from nearly every pulpit in Christendom, a lie is enacted, and palmed off for the truth, there being not one word or fiber of truth in it. And if “every lie is a step on the way of death,” what about this?

When God says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” what about all the religionists of the land rising up and contradicting Jehovah by saying, “The first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, is the Lord's day”? Because men say it, does this make it into the truth? And if it is not the truth of God's holy word, then, pray, what is it?

It takes only one rotten board in a ship to sink it. One broken rail is sufficient to wreck the most elegant of trains. Only one commandment set aside is needed to break God's holy law. One lie held to and taught for the truth—mark these words—is sufficient to drown in perdition the greatest church on earth. Why not face the truth, “cling to it, live by it,” and “speak it,” in the important matter of Sabbath keeping, as well as in all other fundamentals?

ALL LIARS DEBARRED

Making a lie, loving a lie, and living a lie—just one—knowingly, is sufficient to land one in the lake of fire. This is God's own word. Here it is: “And the city [New Jerusalem] hath no need of the sun, neither the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. . . And there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie.” “Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city. Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie”—just one. Rev. 21:23, 27; 22:14, 15.

Jesus is the truth. He is also called the Word; and the Word is the truth. He says, in that Word, that the seventh day is the Sabbath. He made it, He kept it, and He has not changed it. He ought surely to know. He who still loves the truth, and purposes to “live it,” “cling to it,” and “tell it,” will of necessity be compelled to expel from his life, with all other falsities, the false sabbath. No other refuge but the truth of God's word will stand in the awful storm just ahead. Do not insult God by presenting to Him a day for a sabbath with which He has had nothing whatever to do in its making, especially when by doing so His own word is turned into a lie. “Yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, and mightest prevail when Thou comest into judgment.” Rom. 3:4. And further, “He that believeth not God hath made Him a liar.” 1 John 5:10.

In regard to Sabbath rest, Sabbath observance, along with all else that goes into the warp and woof of our character, truly “let us build our lives, our homes, our churches, and our commonwealth, upon the truth.”