Lying by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 21, 1878

Lying.

By John Norton Loughborough

A READER of the SIGNS wishes to know how it is that the Bible forbids lying, and then in other parts sanctions lying.

I do not so understand the scriptures. While it is true that the Bible condemns lying, the simple fact of its recording what people did is not giving a sanction to their lies when they told them.

The statement is true every time that "lying lips are an abomination to the Lord," and that "all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire," that there shall not enter the New Jerusalem "anything that maketh a lie." God-emphatically commands, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," and in the New Testament, "Put away lying." Eph. 4:25.

There is arrayed against this the statement made in Ex. 1:17-19, by the Hebrew midwives respecting the Hebrew women. I suppose what they said was true. There is no evidence in that connection to show that they lied. It is plainly stated that they "feared God." This fear led them to refrain from killing the children of the Hebrews, and they stated a fact to excuse themselves before Pharaoh.

We are referred to a case in Eze. 22:19-23, where a lying spirit went out and moved the false prophets to bear a testimony to an ancient king which resulted in his falling in battle. He was a wicked king who had rejected God, and truth, and righteousness, a lying spirit of Satan, ever ready to do such a work, when permitted, went out and deceived the king by causing him to go up to Ramoth Gilead, where he fell in battle.

Because a lying spirit, ever ready to do evil, was permitted thus to do, is not by any means controverting the command of Jehovah, and saying we can bear false witness against our fellow men.

In the case of Rahab who received the spies and sent them out in a manner to free them from the rage of the people of Jericho. It is not said in the whole record, either in the book of Joshua, in Hebrews, or James, that God sanctioned her lying. The spies made a pledge to save her alive when the city should be taken. They did not lie but kept their word to her. There is nothing in the record that says they told her to lie for them, or that they commended her for lying. It is recorded simply as a matter of fact. She took the course she did because she believed these men to be good men and she believed success was going to attend them. It is not very probable that she, living among idolaters, had very distinct ideas of the sin of lying. Her confidence that success was going to attend these men, led her to choose her own manner of protecting them, and securing their favor, and getting a pledge from them that she should not be destroyed with the city. Her "justification by works," I understand has direct reference to her deliverance from the destruction in that city and not to her final salvation. So it would be a perversion of this text to claim that it sanctioned lying.

J. N. L.