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Quality of Truth

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 28, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 42.

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Quality of Truth

By L. A. Reed

By L. A. Reed
In the Word are plain statements of truth. The language is so clear and simple that even a schoolboy can understand it. But men modify these plain statements, robbing them of their clearness and force, and making them teach error.
God has promised to supply all our need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. He says that His word is able to make the man of God perfect, thoroly furnished to all good works. And when Christians are approached with these words of God, they answer, “Yes, but—,” and then add explanations and interpretations, until, if what they say be true, it is only particular, circumscribed truths that are revealed in the Word, and for all others we must go elsewhere.
Out on such philosophy! It is the old doctrine started in the Garden of Eden,—“Yea, it may be that God hath said thus and so, but God doth know,” etc. Bound for the eternal judgment, facing our everlasting destiny, can we afford to borrow the devil’s method of dealing with God’s truth? Is it not better to believe and receive what God says? From what we know of Him, can we not give Him credit for knowing what He means to say, and saying precisely what He means?
There are many who believe and teach that the Bible does not deal with the truths of science,—that the Bible and science have separate fields, utterly distinct and isolated from one another. They rest their argument on the statement that the Bible contains only “saving truths.” And never was there a greater truth than this one just stated. The Bible does contain only saving truths. That is an undisputable truth, a truth solid as the eternal rock.
“But,” says one, “if you admit their premises, you must admit their conclusion,—that the Bible does not deal with the truths of science.” Not so! Admitting that the Bible reveals only saving truth, and building with it a right syllogism, we come to another conclusion entirely, from which there is no escape.
It is everlastingly true that the Bible reveals only saving truth; but the reason for this lies in the very quality of truth itself.
All truth is saving truth. The quality of truth is saving power, and the great end of every truth and of all truth is to save. It can do naught else but save, for truth is the character of God.
A revelation, therefore, of truth is a revelation of God. A view of truth is a view of God.
But to see and know God is eternal life, which is salvation. Truth saves.
Truth is the statement of facts concerning that which exists. But only that which God ordains really exists. The whole truth is the full expression of all that God has established or ordained. It is correspondence with and conformity to environment, as the scientists say of life. But eternally to conform to and correspond with what God has ordained, is to conform to and correspond forever with God; and how can this be anything else than salvation? Truth saves.
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32. Man is bound by sin. He can not conform to the principles of life. He does things which are utterly destructive to himself. But truth brings him into conformity with all the powers and existences that God has placed in the universe. And living thus, he is free. Truth saves.
If geometry, or algebra, or any science, is truth, that truth is saving truth. But truth must be apprehended, it must be known, in order to save. And to know truth, more is necessary than the hearing of the ears. To know a thing fully is to know it with every sense and organ and power of the being. It must be lived. Unless truth is known, it can not save. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
Science indisputably contains truth, and hence saving truth; and if the truths of science have not been aids to man’s salvation, the fault must lie in the way in which they have been known. They have not been properly taught or studied, they have not been known aright; for to know them aright is to know God, is to have eternal life, is to be saved.
Perhaps just here some would like to lodge an objection, and say that the fact that there is one God is not a saving truth; for James says (chapter 2:19) that the devils believe this truth, and tremble, but it does not save them. True; but the fault is not in the truth, it is in the way it is received. The devil does not know at all times and in all places that there is one God. He has a fond and lingering hope that he himself is God, or ought to be God.
Wherever he has opportunity, he “as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” He fell upon this very point. He meant to be God. He said in his heart, “I will be like the Most High.” If the devil or any creature comes to the point where he knows the truth that there is one true God, he must, in doing so, give up self. He is saved. Truth—any truth—is saving truth. All truth saves.
We repeat that the truth of geometry, of algebra, or of any other science, is saving truth. One may say: “I do not see it. How can the truths of mathematics be aids to man’s salvation?” But we were not discussing the question of how this is so. We were simply accepting the words of God that it is so. The first thing for us is to decide that it is so; the seeing, or understanding, comes afterward. If mathematics is to be an aid to our salvation, the first thing is to determine the fact. The next thing is to understand how it is so, and begin to study and to teach it in this right way.
It is so customary to consider the truth of mathematics as wholly independent of Bible truth, that it is difficult for us to receive such statements as the foregoing. But we have God’s word for it. We are sure of what He says. In the Word is all truth, and all truth includes the truth of mathematics. But truth saves, and hence the truth of mathematics is saving truth.
I inquired not long ago for a book entitled “Geometry and Faith.” The salesman looked incredulous, and exclaimed, “Geometry and Faith!” The idea of connecting the two had never entered his head. He thought I must be mistaken. But there is such a book; and more, there is such a combination as mathematics and faith. God joined them. Man has sought to divorce them, and that, too, in the face of the divine command, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
Mathematics can minister to a man’s faith. Rightly studied, the science of mathematics will increase one’s faith. It will be impossible, in this brief treatise, to give extended illustrations of the fact. But let it suffice to know that mathematical truth is calculated to show us, more certainly than is any other truth, that God can not make a mistake with anything, and therefore can make no mistake with us; that He is always exact; that everything He does is timed to the second.
In a thousand ways mathematical truth appeals to us, and bids us have confidence in God. This is its ultimate object. It shows us that our lives and all the providences of our lives are arranged according to the most delicate adjustment, and that there is no mistake in all God’s doings—no, not by the one hundred-millionth of a fraction of a second, or the one ten-billionth of a line.