Half-truths, are tremendous lies.

“You will not die, only your eyes will be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil”, said the ancient serpent. But the real consequence of this half-truth to Adam and Eve was the estrangement from the presence of God.

The tempter also wanted to trick Jesus with half-truths: “If you are the son of God, command these stones to become bread …” Jesus could have done it, but never for the purposes of the devil. The religious people and the system they represented in Jesus’ day, said to him, “Teacher, we know that you rightly … teach the way of God in truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Statements like this and many other half-truths are always loaded with Satanic evil.

The half-truth in the Church of today is that God loves the sinner, and the half lie that goes with it is that the sinner may be a full member and participant of the Church and remain in his or her sin, because God is love.

Satan has a Ph.D. in confusion and deception; and the Church has another in selective misinterpretation.

Satan is the father of lies and evil machinations. Half-truths always have a destructive intent wrapped up in the other half of their proposition. The problem lies in that it is difficult for us to clearly discern the intentions of others.

The days of Sodom and Gomorrah are back and very much at the center of society, and devilish spawns are strategically positioned at every level. These are the times announced by the Lord with a clear warning, “false Christs and false prophets will rise to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect” (Mark 13:22).

The problem lies in the fact that unrepentant and unregenerate sinners by the blood of Christ, want to govern the Church of the Lord.

That is why some are looking to change the Confession of Faith and even the Bible itself, if they could. To make matters worse, the confusion and Satanic deception has led a Church, lazy in prayer and in the reading of Scripture, to misinterpret and select favorite passages, ignoring the Bible as a whole. Let us remember that 2 Tim 3:16 admonishes us that, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.”

The deviant LGBT agenda has moved front and center to the society in which we live, with the inclusion of laws, so that we may accept such lifestyles as normal, and for decades has promoted it within the churches. This has resulted in fatal divisions in many denominations. The problem is not whether people of same-sex attraction can be married or not. The problem is that these deviant relationships are contrary to the design and purpose of God. Satan has confused people into fighting each other over the results of distortions in sexuality, instead of attacking the root of the problem. God created man and woman, one for the other, but human beings, in their disobedience to God, became depraved and were turned over to reprobate minds (Rom. 1:24-27).

Early on, Genesis 6:5 declares, “God saw how great man’s wickedness on earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”

The coming of Jesus Christ had God’s purpose of saving us from sin and the evil embodied by those who had been deceived.

Jesus came to fulfill a restorative work so that by obedience to Christ we may enter into communion with God the father. The call remains the same, “repent of your sins,” confess Christ and follow in his footsteps. If we understand that the Kingdom begins here and now, our lives must show that we are participating members of that kingdom by our obedience to God, and by our actions. We should demonstrate this by first separating ourselves from sin, and secondly, by giving testimony that God has the power to transform the most inveterate and vile sinner, into a new creation.

The complete and absolute truth is that Jesus Christ and his message has not changed.

“Everyone that invokes the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness” (2 Tim 2:19). Let us not imagine for a second, that God will modify his word to accommodate people, baptized but unconverted, who have born no fruits of repentance. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Do not become entangled in worldly quarrels, rather confront them with the truth of a new and genuinely abundant life in Christ.

Beware of half-truths and obey God!

This is the English translation of Rafael Barahona’s editorial from the May issue of Meno Acontecer. The views expressed do not necessarily represent the official positions of Meno Acontecer, Igleisa Menonita Hispana, Mennonite Church USA, or The Mennonite, Inc.