In this world there are people starving, not just for food but for answers of the great questions that have perplexed men from the beginning of time… Those questions come from the life experiences, hopes and fears of mankind through the ages. They develop these questions as they struggle with life.
How did I get in this situation? What shall I do? How can I make this any better? What am I doing here? What should I be doing? I myself have asked some of these same questions and fortunately have found some answers to my questions.
It would be nice if every child born into life would come with a compass that would point the direction as to where to go to find answers to life’s perplexing questions.
Every person born comes to a point in life that these types of questions are thought about analyzed and asked. Few find the answers for various reasons but they fail because of one human element, Pride.
It may not be their pride but the pride of those who expound to the world that they have the answers or know how to find the answers. People are searching for answers and life is becoming so complex and difficult they are looking for another way to live. Many people are not where they should be and know they are out of place with life.
Everyone goes to college now because it is the thing to do. Most go to college because they have nothing else to do, not because they want education but just for something to do. Not because it is what they should be doing but because it is where others say they should be going. So off to school they go and find nothing that answers these real questions.
So they attend colleges and universities not for a specific reason but they have nothing else to really do with their life. Universities are overcrowded and funds for education are handed out by our government like candy at Halloween.
Universities are teaching things they have no business teaching and brain washing our children and spreading their philosophy like the plague of the 1800s.
The idea of a university was to give specific education for specific purposes. The idea is to be studying what you should be studying not what another person tells you to study or designs a course for your life to follow.
Those who teach and transplant into the minds of others the idea of social change, anti religious ideas and reasoning that there is no deity are not teachers but are professors of their own failures in life.
They lack the faith to find truth and real knowledge. They have deducted that education is the answer to life, the more you know the better person you become.
The idea that a person can know there is a God and a Christ is way above their education level. Because they have turned off the idea of truth, that truth is what man makes out of life. They believe in political ideals of Solon, philosophy of Plato, the Darwin theory, the religious philosophies of Calvin, Luther, and others seem to become truth to those who expound on these ideas.
There are few complete writings that contain truth to be the absolute conclusion of truth. We study not to gain knowledge but to receive the reward of studying gives to people. What is the reward? It is recognition, the praise or a gold star for gallantry.
We don’t have to argue about truth because we have no measurement of truth to argue about just the words we read that really don’t tell the whole truth. People read the Bible and think what they are reading is absolute truth.
The oldest copies of the Bible are not old enough to tell us the real story but just relate the idea of truth. It took thousands of years to give us the Bible but it is not complete. The documents of the Old Testament took hundreds of years and many words to trickle down through the centuries.
Different writers have given us through the ages the Tanakh, the Torah, Nebiim, the Kethubim and other literary writings. The Dead Sea scrolls tell us this exact truth; everything is not in the Bible. Much of the records of the Bible are not complete but do we believe it is true? Until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered the oldest manuscript we had of the Book of Moses, the first five books, were from the fourth century.
The Bible is not complete and there is much more we don’t know. But those who study the Bible just believe the words that they read. Why? What makes us want to believe? Religious leaders for centuries have told people, revelation has stopped and the Bible is enough and all we need, is the Bible.
But recently they have decided to tell people to ask God if it is true. Why the big change? I think is because of the Mormon’s who claim if you read the book of Mormon and pray you will know the truth. Truth is available to anyone who really wants to know truth.
How then do we find truth? We pray and ask God in the name of Jesus Christ if this or that is true. He will tell you exactly what is true. But remember He will answer you about the truth you asked about. Is the entire Bible true? What will he tell you? A half truth or not answer your question? Will he answer your question? God does not reveal half a truth but can only tell all of the truth when asked. Truth is in everything of God but half truth is not the real truth. Don’t ask for half truths because He will not answer and the one asking will believe what he asked are not true.
Be specific about what you ask, with a real desire to know the truth, and the answer will come. “I stand at the door. Knock and it will be opened, ask and it will be answered seek and you will find.” These are in essences the way one understands truth.
If you receive an answer and don’t act upon the answer then you are accountable for what you know, you become one who has accepted truth or rejected truth. Be willing to risk or just live without knowing truth.
Truth is not always what you want to know because you t are then solely responsible what you know or were given. Satan cannot answer a prayer directed to God through Jesus Christ or in the name of Jesus Christ.
He might try to answer but it will be a half truth not the whole truth because he can and does lye. Be specific about what you want to know and wait for the answer, it will come. You will know the truth when you receive the truth. “Know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
c Hugh Nibley
