“Truth is an antidote against error. Error is the adultery of the mind; it stains the soul as treason stains blood. Error damns as well as does vice. A man may as well die by poison as by pistol. And what can stave off error but truth? The reason so many have been tricked into error is because they either did not know or did not love the truth. I can never say enough in the honor of truth. Truth is the ground of our faith; it gives us an exact model of religion; it shows us what we are to believe. Take away truth and our faith is fancy.” Thomas Watson, Heaven Taken by Storm, First published in 1669 in London, [Northampton Press edition: Orlando, Florida, 2007], p.8The Puritans, the “physicians of the soul,” so they were called. Thomas Watson, a Puritan, and his book, Heaven Taken by Storm, is a balm that cures the wounds of the heart and soul. What better disease, malady, or cancer that needs radical surgery than error? The worst and the most deadly sickness is the poison of error. Error, however, seems to be the elixir most consumed by our culture. Our culture seems to be enamored by any and every species of quasi-truth. Everywhere you turn there seems to be a charlatan of truth. It’s if we need to ring the Francis Schaeffer slogan—“true truth”. In other words, our culture is so saturated by many so-called truths that we need to clearly articulate “true truth.” We need to sound off the clarion call of truth and let it reverberate throughout the valleys, mountains, and plains of our great country! There is certainly a battle for the truth in our culture. But, what about in the church? Have you given it some thought? Have you pondered that the church is also in need of “true truth?’ We are being bombarded by new movements calling themselves Christian; by science and their attack on the historicity of Genesis; by the constant erosion by liberals on the authority of Scripture; by false teachers masquerading as servants of Christ; by methodologies that entertain, by fads and novelties; and by a never ending assortment of humanistic quasi-experts of all shapes and sizes. What’s the church to do? We are to contend for the truth. We are to agonize for the truth. We are to have a holy violence for the truth. We ought to uphold truth, stand firm on the truth, raise the truth high, and endure in the truth as if life depended on it. Therefore, what do we do individually about truth in our lives and in the life of the church? We either pursue truth relentlessly, or we die a slow cancerous death to error. We either stamp out prideful ignorance and the false humility that comes hanging from its back, or error will blind us. On the other hand, if you do not love the truth then you have died already. My beloved, from which of these planks of the ship of error will you be jumping headlong into your watery grave filled with error? Come off the plank and get back in the safety of the ship of truth!

Pastor Jim Cater