Truth Magazine

By William Y. Beasley

Do you have eternal life? Would you like to know? You can know: “These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:13). This should be not only an interesting study (everyone has a vital, personal interest in it), but also a profitable one (we can change our condition). As we continue our study of 1 John together, ask yourself, Do I know, from God’s standard, that I have eternal life?”

“We Love The Brethren” (1 John 3:13-18)

This section is based on what has proceeded: The murder of Abel by Cain (3:12). Being hated is to be expected (“Marvel not . . . “-3:13). Such is the way of the world. When one passes from death to life in Jesus, he will love his brethren: “We know we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren”(3:14). According to R. C. H. Lenski, “This is the same perfect tense that was used in 2:29 and 3:9, and it has full present connotation” (Interpretation of Peter, John, Jude, pp. 468-469). In fact, Lenski translated a part of the verse: “. . . because we are loving the brothers” (Ibid.). Have you passed from death to life? Do you have eternal life? Do you love (are you loving) the brothers? The above is not three, but one question.

Lest we misunderstand the full significance of loving the brethren, the reverse is also stated: “He that loveth not abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and we know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (3:14-15). John said that this was something that “ye know”-perhaps because of the teachings of Jesus as recorded in Matt. 5:22 and John 8:44.

To know what love is we need but look to the example of Jesus Christ who “laid down his life for us” (3:16; Rom. 5:6-10; John 10:11, 17, 18). We are to love one another that much: “. . . we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (3:16). This is the same thing that Jesus preached: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34). The new thing about the commandment of Jesus was its degree or intensity-“even as I have loved you.” I pray God that I misjudge my brethren, but right here each of us needs to work on our love. We might pick and choose some for whom we would die, but what about the others? There is no question that some would not “lay down his life for the brethren” (3:16) if needed because they will not or have not shown compassion for them in benevolence. They “love in word . . . with the tongue” but not “in deed and truth” (3:18).

An Un-Condemning Heart (1 John 3:19-24)

The immediate, textual application of this section is to love the brethren (benevolence). The heart, perhaps what we call conscience, is 100% accurate only in showing condemnation. A clean conscience does not in itself prove righteousness because “God is greater than our hearts” (3:20). Our hearts may or may not be properly taught, may or may not be spiritually inclined at all. Our hearts tend to forget, but God “knoweth all things” (3:20). We are limited, we are finite. God is infinite and unforgetting.

An uncondemning heart gives us “boldness toward God” (3:21). It is all too possible that the uncondemning heart should be condemning. Many of us have heard statements like, “I’m satisfied with my baptism or marriage” and we know that they ought not be satisfied. One should have an uncondemning heart when and only when it is “because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight” (3:22). This is limited only by the things which Jesus has commanded. One cannot “believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ” and reject the Son’s authority. The second commandment is to “love one another” (3:23). When we keep His commandments (plural), we abide in Him (God) and He in us (3:24). We know that God abides in us “by the Spirit which He gave us” (3:24). Is this speaking of a personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Is it even speaking of the Holy Spirit? It is speaking, we are convinced, not of the Holy Spirit, but of the same idea we found earlier in 1 John 2:24 and 3:9, i.e., seed is equal to word of God which is to abide in us.

Conclusion

Do you know you have eternal life? Do you love the brethren? Are you right now loving the brothers? Do you love to the degree, with the intensity that you should? God, help each of us. Are you benevolent to your brother and sister in the Lord? Do you have an uncondemning heart? Do you “keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight” (3:22)?

Truth Magazine XXII: 49, p. 793
December 14, 1978

By Mike Willis

With this issue, Volume XXII of Truth Magazine is completed. There will not be an issue of the paper published next week in accordance with our agreement with the post office. Consequently, our next issue will be the special issue on the book of Romans-a 32 page special study which I can guarantee you will want to treasure up for future study and reference. We have several specials in mind for the coming year, so I am certain that you will want to stay with us through our twenty-third year and to tell others about Truth Magazine.

I would like to announce that our next issue will begin a new arrangement with a new printer. We have decided to move Truth Magazine from our printer in Berne, Indiana to a new printer in Tompkinsville, Kentucky. This change is being made in order to get your paper to you on time. Our present printer has put out quality work but has not honored our printing dates despite our repeated efforts to keep the magazine on schedule. Consequently, we have reached the point at which we must change printers to try to keep Truth Magazine on schedule. We hope that this transition can be made as smoothly as possible, although I am sure that we will run into some unforeseen difficulties.

With the change in printers, some of the changes in our previous announcements regarding the format changes of the paper are necessary. It was with a great deal of reluctance that we previously announced the change from our previous format. We had announced that our paper would be printed on the same quality of paper as Searching the Scriptures and would be one color printing. We are not able to avoid these changes because of our change in printers. We shall keep color on our front cover. This will mean that our front cover will stay virtually the same; it will have color on front and back and retain the picture on the cover. Hence, this change in printers should do several things for us. We will keep the quality of paper which we are presently publishing and will keep it on schedule, the United States Post Office cooperating.

The schedule which we will labor to maintain for mailing is to have the paper in the mail two weeks prior to the date printed on the cover. We have sought to do this ever since I began editing the paper. I have turned in copies of Truth Magazine four to six weeks in advance of the time when they were to be mailed. Frequently, this material has set in the hands of our printers and was not mailed until two weeks after the date on the cover. When one adds to this the delay caused by the poor mail service, you can understand why you have been getting your paper late. When I finally got thoroughly disgusted with the service we were getting, I would complain to the owners of the printing establishment. They would resolve to get the paper back on schedule. Then, before too long, they would lag again and we would be behind schedule once more. We finally decided that something had to be done to get better service from our printer. Hence, the change in printers was arranged.

As we look forward to the coming year and Volume XXIII of Truth Magazine, we are excited about the possibility of serving you better than we have in the past. Yet, let me take a few moments of your time to publicly express gratitude to those to whom it is due.

I would like to thank our writers for their contributions for the last year. We have had three special studies in this volume of Truth Magazine. They were as follows: (1) The Lord’s Day and Other “Holy” Days, (2) “Go Ye Into All The World,” and (3) An Assault on Modernism. In addition to these special studies, we have had a special series of articles on home and family life written by Leslie Diestelkamp as one of the highlights of our publishing year. These and other works make Volume XXII a volume which I know that you will want to keep in your library. Be sure to order your bound volume early. We only save 200 bound volumes and when these are gone, there will be no more printed. So, if you want this special year of Truth Magazine, send in your order now.

We would like to also thank our readers for their cooperation in circulating Truth Magazine. Our circulation has grown exceedingly well this year. Already we are within five hundred subscriptions of having a circulation which is as large as it has ever been at anytime in the past. We say think you for your help.

As is our customary practice, the final issue of each year contains our index to the articles which have appeared throughout the year. This index is produced in an effort to make the fine material written by our authors as easily assessible as is possible. Those who keep the bound volumes of Truth Magazine use the material for future reference. This index makes the articles easily found whether they are remembered by author or by subject matter.

We think that Truth Magazine is one good way of spreading the word of God. Whatever amount of good which we are presently doing could be increased by the simple increase in circulation. I wish that every one of our readers would take the time to kindly recommend that one of their friends subscribe to the paper. Many of our friends do not even know that a paper such as Truth Magazine even exists. They would be delighted to receive one if someone would take the time to show it to them and recommend it to them. Will you help us to increase our circulation by telling one of your friends about it?

As this year comes to a close, we are reminded that the days of our lives are quickly slipping by. We are, indeed, one step closer to the judgment of God and the crown of life laid up for us than we were yesterday. A time such as this to look backward over a year’s work and to assess our work is worthwhile. It reminds us to put God first in our lives, to work to do His will, and to encourage others to do the same. As we move into 1979, let us each resolve to labor in His kingdom with all of the ability which we have.

The staff of Truth Magazine and Cogdill Foundation hope that 1978 was a pleasant year for you. We are looking forward to serving you in 1979.

Truth Magazine XXII: 50, pp. 803-804
December 21, 1978

By Irvin Himmel

One of the great texts of the New Testament is the following from the pen of Paul the apostle:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek (Rom. 1:16).

To be ashamed of something is to have a feeling of disgrace, dishonor, or impropriety. In one of the parables of Jesus we are told of a man who lost his job because he had wasted his master’s goods. It appears that he had no training for any other line of work, and he was ashamed to beg (Lk. 16:3). Some in this modern age have no shame that restrains them from begging, especially begging help from the government! And there are people who go from city to city begging from churches (not to mention churches that constantly beg from the whole brotherhood). Work is still honorable. Able bodied persons ought to be ashamed not to work.

Note that Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” In relation to the good news or glad tidings of salvation through Christ, Paul felt no emotion of disgrace, dishonor, or impropriety. Let us now think of a few of the ways in which Paul proved that he was unashamed of the gospel.

1. Paul was not ashamed to believe the gospel. Although he fought against the Lord by persecuting His disciples in former days, Paul put his whole confidence in the Deity of Jesus. From the time that the Lord spoke to him on the road to Damascus to the day of his death, he believed with all his heart. “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” was Paul’s attitude the moment he became a believer (Acts 9:6).

Despite his past deeds performed “ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim. 1:13), Paul fully committed his heart to child-like faith in Jesus. When surrounded by idolaters, Paul was not ashamed to believe the gospel. He labored to turn men “to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:9). When in the midst of worldly-wise philosophers, Paul was not ashamed to believe the gospel. In Athens among the Epicureans and Stoics he preached Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:18). Among the Jews who were wed to the law of Moses and the traditions of their fathers, Paul was not ashamed to believe the gospel. He told his Jewish hearers that by Jesus “all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39).

2. Paul was not ashamed to obey the gospel. The Lord Jesus sent Ananias to him at Damascus to make known what he needed to do. Finding him a praying and repentant believer, Ananias said, “And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). He “arose, and was baptized” (Acts 9:18).

Later he wrote, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3,4). Paul knew that one must obey from the heart to be made free from sin (Rom. 6:17,18).

3. Paul was not ashamed to proclaim the gospel. What he believed was no carefully concealed secret. Shortly after his baptism, much to the astonishment of the Jews in Damascus, “he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). He went from country to country, town to town, among Jews and Gentiles alike, among the learned and unlearned, over land and over sea, in fair weather and in foul weather, preaching the gospel.

Paul’s attitude toward the proclaiming of the gospel was one of readiness. To the saints at Rome he wrote, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also” (Rom. 1:14,15).

4. Paul was not ashamed to suffer for the gospel. He viewed the gospel as the means by which life and im= mortality are brought to light. He was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. “For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:10-12).

Unashamed to suffer for the gospel, he did not want others to be ashamed of his tribulations. “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God” (2 Tim. 1:8). Peter urged Christians not to be ashamed to suffer for the cause of right. He wrote, “Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf” (1 Pet. 4:16).

Today, many people act as if ashamed to believe and obey the gospel. Jesus said, “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed. . .”(Lk. 9:26).

Truth Magazine XXII: 48, p. 779
December 7, 1978

By Harry L. Lewis

We must always keep in mind that the counterfeit is never as good as the original in religion. This statement is true with regard to most other things in this life but especially is it true with reference to religion. When the apostles began to preach the message of Jesus and to prove it with miraculous action, it was inevitable that some should see the possibilities of gain in power, money, or popularity and begin to counterfeit the message and the proofs as well (Gal. 1:6-9). Men who have been influenced more by greed than by the promise of salvation have been around from the first century to this. Ananias and Sapphira as well as the Simon of Acts 8:9-22 are some examples of the folks I am speaking of. There was seven such people spoken of in Acts 19:13-20. It is in relation to these seven vagabond Jews, exorcists, that I would like to direct some remarks about the true and the counterfeit in religion.

The first thing I would like for us to see is that they took this upon themselves (verse 13). This has always been the brand of the false, the counterfeit, in matters religious. Notice that these men tried to give some respectability to what they were doing by saying it was in the name of Jesus, the one Paul preached. How many times have you heard some preacher try to justify something he was doing by using the name of Jesus or the name of Paul without telling you where either of these actually said anything about what was being done? There is not a single denomination in existence which did not begin with someone taking something upon themselves. The name, organization, or the practice of these groups come from men and not from God. Some of these churches have changed all three of these; others have been satisfied to change one or two. Keep in mind that if men had not “took upon them” this power to change what God demanded they would have reproduced the church of the New Testament instead of coming up with something different.

The second point I would like for us to see is that this was done by religious leaders. This fact may not amount to much but it seems to me that teachers and leaders should be extra careful about taking liberties with the word of God. These seven men were sons of a chief religious leader. They had a good chance to learn the fact that God never respects a person who “takes it upon himself” to make decisions for Him. Take, for instance, Saul (1 Sam. 13:1-14). Saul “took upon him” the power to offer sacrifice. God was not pleased. Saul knew enough about the religion of God to know that he should not do something that God had not authorized him to do, but he “forced himself” (v. 12). People should never “force” themselves to do something in religion which God has not authorized them to do. This is especially true with regard to religious teachers and leaders for they have the resources to know better. Our liberal brethren have “forced” themselves into the support of every hair-brained scheme in the book by saying, “It is a good work.” I am amazed that they have never “took upon them” to get on the new-exorcist band wagon in the name of “Jesus whom Paul preacheth.” Is ridding the world of demon rum and demon tobacco a good enough work? (Remember our modern-day exorcists think that these were the kinds of demons Jesus dealt with.) Always remember that even the apostles Jesus appointed religious leaders) were never given the authority to “take upon them” the binding and loosing authority but were told to bind what had already been bound in heaven and loose what had already been loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19).

One more thing we need to see is the fact that even the evil spirits recognized the need for authority in this matter. In verse 15, they asked, “Who are you?” It is as if these demons were saying, “Who do you think you are?” What a large ego a person must have when he “takes upon himself” to do something for or in the name of God. When God has said nothing to us we had better stay-out of it. When someone “takes upon himself” to speak what God has not revealed to all men we might ask, “Who do you think you are?” When some preacher tries to urge a congregation to support some organization to do the work which God gave the church to do, we might ask, “Who do you think you are?” When someone tries to saddle the church with subsidizing some money-making scheme he has dreamed up, we might ask, “Who do you think you are?” Remember, those who claim authority they do not have are bound to failure as these seven men were. While you are remembering, how about remembering the Herald of Truth? What has happened to it? It did so well for a while. How many of the preachers who defended this monster in the beginning would be willing to do so now?

Last of all, let us look at verse 17. Be assured that the cause of Christ will prevail in spite of the false claims of bunko artists and phoney fellows who deal in counterfeits. There are a lot of counterfeits among churches, preachers, and “good works.” This is not new. We find these on nearly every page of the Bible. Paul said they were necessary to prove the true children of God (1 Cor. 11:19). Have faith that the other side of the coin is the true church, the faithful gospel preacher and those who are full of the good works you can read about in the Bible (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The true man of God does not need a drum and bugle corps following him around to motivate him to do the good works which God teaches him to do.

Truth Magazine XXII: 49, p. 790
December 14, 1978