8 Minutes
With true faith, we receive the promise of Christ and respond in obedience to the Lord’s word, knowing with certainty it is truth. In what sense is faith judged in terms of truth? Contrast faith with reason. Reason is the motive, the purpose and intention of truth. Reason is the pretext for recognizing and revealing reality, and faith gives the direction in which this revelation may be exercised. Reason is involved in the search for knowledge relating to the mind and to reality. Reason reveals truth and is the precondition of faith; faith is the act in which reason reaches ecstatically beyond itself. Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason. Faith, as found in Christ, is determined reality because the divine authority guarantees its truth. It is the truth that we all try to reach, truth in the sense of the “really real”. And it is our faith that stands under judgment when truth is revealed. The only infallible truth of faith, the one in which the ultimate itself is unconditionally manifest, is that any truth of faith stands under a yes-or-no judgment. The infallible truth of faith is revealed in God’s sanctuarial service. The elemental powers of decision were evidenced by the Urim and the Thummim. Otherwise known as “light” and “perfection”, invoked by the High Priest of the sanctuary. When presented to the Lord in prayer, the Urim and
Thummim would miraculously illuminate with an answer. Indicative of God taking control of the decision process and outcome.
Exodus 28:30
The urim and thummim, by which the will of God was made known by enquiry, shadowed the invitation of reason that God in these last days makes known Himself and His mind to us. Divine revelation centers in Him, and comes to us through Him; He is the light, the true light, the faithful witness, the truth itself, and from Him we receive the Spirit of truth, who leads into all truth. As God grants greater illumination upon His word we are brought to more perfect truth. Inspiration and revelation open the door to the truth that a scripture is not limited to just words. The scriptures can be Urim and Thummim to assist each of us to receive personal revelation. By this means, we obtain access to what God would have us know. The criterion contains a yes; it does not reject any truth of faith in whatever form it may appear in the hearing of faith, and it contains a no; it does not accept any truth of faith. Principle shows to be reality in the cross of the Christ. The premise of all truth is that a glorious restoration of faith must take place in our time because we are to aid in God’s purpose to remove relative darkness, ignorance, and error from the people. We are in the time when God is blessing with periods of greater truth and brighter light. He is giving us full light of day for special consideration in His leniency for the fulness of time. This changes everything.
Isaiah 29:14
Apostasy is being incorporated into man’s ideas and philosophies they think prevalent in this day. Their religion has gone significantly further wrong in large part because of those ideas and presuppositions. The word of God is the only way to redefine and redeem their understanding of faith, reason, knowledge, and truth in ways that liberate them from the trouble the world is bringing to the souls of so many. The loss of the understanding of the true nature of God, their unbelief in the authority of God, their abandoning the special witness of the Holy Spirit leads to the loss of the fulness of the gifts of the Spirit and thus of their own nature and purpose. These are the characteristics that bear directly on their experience and understanding of faith, reason, knowledge, and truth. We must faith the truth in the hope that these will hear and return to God. What I say here will be incomplete, but I hope not misleading. God has chosen a special people to enter into discussions of faith and reason which have suffered in these last days because they have not been informed by comprehension of the truths of the word of God. When so informed, faith is seen in a new light. And in turn, the proper understanding of faith and reason casts new light on common understandings of knowledge and truth. While in matters of faith, knowledge,
and truth, reason is deployed to present serious challenge to man’s fallible understanding.
Reason attempts to reconcile the life-changing power of faith with the compelling persuasive power of truth. Reason is the approach upheld by faith ultimately leading to a higher understanding of knowledge. Reason leads to the certainty of essential truth. Reason tells us that God's revealed word is credible, and in accordance with her advice we freely and unreservedly submit ourselves to the guidance of His Truth. If we would truly reason with every word of God, how powerful and persuasive would faith be in the enlightenment of the mind to logically come to truth impossible to doubt. And losing all vulnerability to doubt, faith would come to be understood as a certainty of both evidence and substance. In fact, faith, in a very real sense, comes to be that truth which one believes in the face of doubt. Might it be said that reason and logic ultimately ground knowledge and truth, whereas faith is what we are obliged to rely on when we lack irrefutable certainty. Faith, on this view, is a sort of positive thinking, what we cling to when we want to know what we do not know. Faith in truth characterizes the lives of thoughtful persons. And the more we know, the less faith we need. The purpose of reasoning with God is to see the evidence of truth that fulfills the hope of our being found in the will of God being obedient in all ways to His word. God is the object of our faith. Faith is not something we settle for in the absence of knowledge. It is a type of knowledge, sure and trustworthy and eminently attainable. It is our trusting in the God that we cannot at this time see and our knowing that the things He has promised He will do. We are told to have the faith of Jesus in the most severe time of trouble as did he in the trial time of the ages...the cross. Did God need faith to know that His Son would look to Him to uphold His promise? God sees all and knows all from all eternity. So, God didn’t need to have faith. He knew...
What is meant by “we must faith the truth”? Did Jesus have the evidence and the hope that God would do what He promised? And if we mix that up, we have a faulty understanding of what biblical faith, biblical truth really is. SOP - The Saviour could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal. Christ felt the anguish that the sinner will feel when mercy shall no longer plead for the guilty race. It was the sense of sin, bringing the Father’s wrath upon Him as the sinner’s substitute, that made the cup He drank so bitter, and broke the heart of the Son of God.—Ibid., p. 753. {CTr 277.4}
Amid the awful darkness, apparently forsaken of God, Christ had drained the last dregs in the cup of human woe. In those dreadful hours He had relied
upon the evidence of His Father’s acceptance heretofore given Him. He was acquainted with the character of His Father; He understood His justice, His mercy, and His great love. By faith He rested in Him whom it had ever been His joy to obey. And as in submission He committed Himself to God, the sense of the loss of His Father’s favor was withdrawn. By faith, Christ was victor.—Ibid., p. 756. {CTr 277.5}
God’s people are to enrich our faith and expand our view of knowledge and truth by reasoning. It is a wonder of what we cling to when we do not know. We are to seek learning by study. Faith is like the seed of truth; alive, growing, pushing upward. The first stirring of faith is to have a desire to believe. The seed is the true word of God...it is Christ. The word swells our souls, and we know that it has sprouted up, when our understanding begins to be enlightened, and our mind begins to magnify. Reason is this entire process whereby we begin to experience the fruits of truth and to know one thing and then another by faith. Faith leads us to a knowledge as sure and as perfect as any we could ever want. Faith could not become knowledge unless it already were knowledge.
Faith comes by hearing the Word. It is not hearing the enticing words of man's wisdom, but hearing the word of God, that will befriend faith, and hearing it as the word of God. And if the word be not in the Son of God, then there is no Christ. Faith is anchored in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the knowledge of Him is both sure and possible. Faith is a discernible and undeniable experience. It is not the sense of coming to an end. It is a sense of being sure in the word of God, nothing lacking. So, faith in God to reason is to bring a question or argument to a close in truth. Reasoning teaches the role of scripture and prayer. We must know when something is a case and when something is a fact. A case is a circumstance, a situation, an occasion. A fact is an actual reality. Remember that our faith is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in a person is a very different thing from faith that some proposition is true. If premises are true, then reason will take you to truth. Once we know what is true, reason provides a wonderful tool for sorting out obligations, anticipating consequences, and persuading others that what we know is true. Truth can be rendered reasonable. The truth of the word itself rests on the occurrence of events. There was a man, Jesus, or there was not; he overcame the whole of sin and darkness in the garden or he did not; the tomb was empty or it was not. The truth of an event is very different from the truth of a proposition. The truth of propositions is established by debatable suggestions. The truth of events is established by witnesses. Because of the word of God we are blessed with an abundance of witnesses; ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me; but ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth; this Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses; and we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree: not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead; and without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. God’s true and faithful believers have an embarrassment of riches where scripture is concerned to witness to the truth of God.
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