When Truth is Revealed

For those who don’t know, we have been going to a local village, Mentz, for several years so we could have a Bible Study group.  I (Mark) remember when we first started this Bible Study and how overwhelming it was because it was something new to us.  We found that the people who attended were active church members (various churches were represented).  

For our first study, we decided to use the same curriculum our mission organization, Samaria Mission, has been using to teach the leaders and pastors in Mozambique.  We began to ask those in the first study to turn in their Bibles to certain scriptures; we soon found out that the knowledge of the Bible was lacking.  We went home and prayed about how this Bible Study group should go.  God put on our hearts and mind to use the Fundamentals of the Faith (Grace Community Church) as some of the subjects help with the basic foundational beliefs and learning about the Bible.

Years later, the title above, When Truth is Revealed, we see growth in those who attend.  We love it when we see the Holy Spirit speaking in the lives of those who are involved in the Bible Study.  

In African village life, we hear about such things like the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve partook was sex.  To our American ears, we were taken back, but then the Holy Spirit reveals Scripture to share.  He (The Holy Spirit) takes me to the first two chapters on Genesis and shows us the Scripture where one of the God’s first commandments to mankind is to “be fruitful and multiply”.  How can sex, when God commanded it, be the forbidden fruit?!  This command was given before chapter 3 in Genesis, so we let Truth reveal itself.

A few weeks ago, at one of our Tuesday nights with with the Mentz Bible Study group, we were prepared for the next lesson, BUT God (isn’t that an awesome statement: It is He that directs our paths) gave us a different direction.  One of the ladies began by telling us about how she has been thinking about what was said the previous week in reference to standing before God and revealing all your life.  She later explained that she believed that since God lives in her life that there will not be another day when she stands before God.  She made a statement, “why does God need to come back because He lives within her.  He already knows”  Wow, how things in our lifelong journey brings about beliefs and traditions.  But when God reveals Truth, God gives us a new outlook.  We read the following scriptures and explained that all of mankind will stand before the Judgment Seat and have to account for all we did. 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

Romans 14:12, 

“So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.”

2 Corinthians 5:10,

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”

Revelation 21:22-27, 

“And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day--and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.”

When Truth reveals Itself, we find our lives in a situation to put aside our own world views and establish ourselves in the Truth.  

John 14:6-7, 

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.””  

My question to you to answer for yourself is, what is God going to reveal when you have to account for all you did while you lived?

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 13:14, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

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