In today’s society the main reason why millions of people don’t believe in God isn’t because they don’t know the truth that an all-powerful Being must have created us, but because they suppress the truth of what they know in their heart must be so. Scripture makes this plain: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Romans 1:18-20).
In addition, in our society, absolute truth, which the Scriptures teach, has been replaced with relative truth, so what is true for me may not be true for you and vice-versa. But when an individual suppresses absolute truth, or the truth of the Scriptures, what he is basically doing is suppressing the “spiritual truth” that is necessary to get to know the source of all truth – Jesus Christ.
You see, we are all rebels against God by nature, with no desire to know the truth. So God, in order to help us to know the truth of Scripture, I believe, uses natural revelation, nature, to display His awesome power and glory that can be clearly seen in His magnificent creation. Then once a person realizes that there must be a God, the Holy Spirit, activated by God’s mercy and the prayers of the saints, begins to convict each rebellious sinner onto the road to salvation. How a sinner, like me, who was lost and dead in my sins and trespasses came to know the truth is to me a true miracle. But, my friends, the work of salvation is indeed a miracle and I so praise God for opening my blind eyes and leading me to Christ.
Sadly, there are many people who read the Bible and still don’t understand the truth of Scripture. And the main reason is that they are using their intellect to understand things that can only be understood spiritually. Samuel Chadwick provided insight here when he said: “The man who thinks he can know the Word of God by mere intellectual study is greatly deceived. Spiritual truth is spiritually discerned.”1
In the final analysis, the battle for spiritual truth, which is absolute truth, can only be won when a person realizes that they are a lost sinner in need of a spiritual heart transplant.
I remember in my own life, I had been searching for the truth, and even read the Bible, but I still didn’t understand my truly lost sinful state, until one fateful day, October 12, 1981, I was confronted by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. And for the first time in my life, this Jesus who I had read about in the Bible, but only thought of as a great spiritual leader, became my personal Savior, the moment I gave my whole heart to Him! At that moment, at approximately 11:15PM, on that transformational night in 1981, the truth of the Scriptures, which were so elusive to me, became real and ever since then I have walked in newness of life and the absolute truth, that can only be known spiritually!
A great post!