Truth and Fact

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 23, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 37.

There is a difference between truth and fact. There are many who believe in fact; most people do if it is established. It to many is a fact that God created the heavens and the earth. To them it is a fact that the Lord Jesus Christ came to this world and died for man. To them it is a fact that the Bible is true. But the demons believe facts. Truth is living, present fact which enters into and molds the life of the individual. Holding to dead fact condemns; holding to living truth and the soul is re-created. A fact may be one, or one of many; truth is one. The Bible knows no such distinction as truth and truths. It never speaks of learning various truths. It is the one truth unified by the life of God; and he who knows the truth knows its Author, and knows its personification Christ Jesus.

We do not learn this truth by argument, or by cold logic, or by being told it merely as a fact. There must be the plastic, responsive soul, the heart that loves truth, in order to receive it. Sometimes it comes to us as a development of the truth which we already possess, even as the blade from the seed, and the flower from the blade, and the fruit from the flower. Sometimes it comes to us as direct revelation of the Spirit of God. Even so the truth came to Peter that Jesus was the Son of God; and the Lord said, not only for his benefit, but for the benefit of all His children who have come to grasp the great, living fact, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven." Seek truth, therefore. Seek truth for the love of it, not because it will please the carnal heart or mind, or the philosophical heart or mind, but that that truth may sanctify the life and bring the whole being into harmony with the Author of truth, and so glorify Him.