Fact or Fantasy
Robert Marsh
Midland SDA Church
August 6, 2011
There is a black-and-white gull-like water bird known as a Black Skimmer. They are black on top and white underneath, with short red legs, and webbed feet like a duck.
The adult male is about 18” long with a wing span of up to 48” and only weighs about ¾ pound.
But if you saw this bird, the first thing you would probably notice is its beak. The bottom half is longer than the top half. This bird uses its beak to get food. When it gets hungry, it skims along really close to the water, dragging its long bottom jaw. When it feels a fish, snap! It closes its mouth and has its dinner.
Most Black Skimmers live on the Atlantic Ocean, down along the coast of Texas, and in Mexico and South America though some live in other places.
James and Priscilla Tucker tell the story of some black skimmers that decided to set up housekeeping on one of the parking lots of a large chemical plant on the Texas coast. The lot was covered with crushed sea-shells, and apparently the skimmers thought that it was a beach and established a colony there. Years went by, and the company ran national ads showing how the skimmers could live in the midst of the smoke and smells of a large chemical-producing complex.
Then one day an executive had the shells graded off. The lot produced a nice stand of goose grass. The skimmers went elsewhere, and the company was in for some bad publicity for not continuing to take care of its skimmers. The board of managers ordered that the lot be returned to the proper condition for skimmers. This was done, but the skimmers would not return.
A wildlife expert was hired to get the skimmers back.
His technique was simple. He had a pair of plastic models made to look exactly like the skimmers. He placed the decoys on the new shell lot and waited. His plan worked. When real skimmers saw what appeared to be a pair of their own kind sitting on the 1ot, they stopped by for a visit. Soon the lot was again covered with nesting skimmers.
Additional experiments with the decoys showed that if the decoys were facing a certain direction, arriving birds would position themselves to face in the same direction, even when they would be facing into the wind—something that no skimmer would do naturally. When they wanted the skimmers to start nesting, they put the decoys off to themselves and very close together; the next day all of the skimmers began their nesting rituals.
This colony of birds was being controlled not by fact but by fantasy.
Now what about us? Are we controlled by reality or imagination? Truth or a supposition based on no solid evidence?...fact or fantasy?
PRAYER
In this world we have the real and the unreal. We have the right way and the wrong way. We have truth and error, fact and fantasy ...- and what we want is truth. We don’t want to be following a decoy or be misled by something that appears good but underneath are lies.
On a sign over a building complex entrance were these words
”There is a path to freedom. Its milestones are : Obedience, industry, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, sacrifice, discipline, and love of one’s fatherland” (From sign on roof of the “Service Building” for processing world war II prisoners at Dachau Camp!
In Psalm 119: 30 David declared: I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me. (KJV)
And God wants us to have truth as David said in Psalm 51:6 “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” (Psalm 51:6)
If we are going to talk about truth we have to talk about Jesus. John wrote that Jesus was
“full of grace and truth.” John 1:14
That is a good combination…. and in Jesus it was a complete and balanced combination.
Jesus himself declared, John 14:6 …. I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Maybe we could separate Sears and Roebuck, Maybe we could separate Lewis and Clark but we cannot separate Jesus and truth.
Jesus doesn’t merely say that he speaks the truth but that he is the truth.
Every ray of light and truth that has come to this world has come through Jesus.
The Bible teaches us that truth does things for us. For example in John 8: 32
Jesus said “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
And in John 17:17 Jesus prayed “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”.
Truth is important and truth is comforting. The Holy Spirit is called the comforter and in John 14:17 He is also called the Spirit of Truth.
And yet sometimes there is a lack of interest in truth.
It is possible to hold a treasure in your hand but be ignorant of it and go for the wrapping instead. This proximity to truth and distance from its worth is all too common. Truly people hold the dust and let the gold go free.
It is our privilege to rejoice in the truth as it is in Jesus. Now in 1 John 2: 21 it says,
I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth (1 John 2: 21).
No lie is of the truth. While it is true that no lie is of the truth it is also true that many lies contain some truth. Because of this fact those who are interested in knowing the truth must be careful what they accept as truth.
We must be careful that what we accept as being true is indeed true.
And if our Christian message is not to be contaminated we must be careful that what we say is true…the fact that we believe something to be true when it is not true is not so much the issue.
But if we assert something is true and it turns out to be false our Christian witness can be wounded and give the devil ammunition to bring into question the accuracy of our Christian assertions.
I’m reminded of my early working years of hearing daily news items as I traveled to and from my work. One news item I picked up on was concern about climate change and I wondered what our world’s prospects would be as I heard more and more dire projections for our globe.
This was in the mid-70’s and the concern then was that we were headed for a global ice age.
But now days in my children’s working years the same news outlets are raising concerns and trying to make laws to avert the dire projections for global warming!
If I would have been a better student of media and science reporting over the decades I may have been slower to be seriously concerned about these projections. For example the New York Times …a world wide source of news… had global cooling concerns in 1895 and this idea was still reported in September 18, 1924 when it relayed a famous scientist’s warning of signs of a new ice age; Then in the March 27th 1933 issue it switched to “America in the longest warm spell since 1776”; Then in the May 21, 1975 it switched again and reported “A major cooling widely considered to be inevitable” ; Now in our current years they have switched again back to global warming.
I have my questions about most assertions about disastrous projections of temperature trends. However I do believe this world will ultimately be destroyed by fire and then restored by God for the redeemed!
I wonder how many last-day speakers have used assertions of global weather changes, declaring as fact things that subsequently were brought into question.
(e.g. Fox News reported in August 2010 “Acknowledging flaws in its reports and growing public skepticism toward the theory of man made global warming, the United Nations hired an independent review panel in March to audit its climate-science arm. The group found plenty of problems….”)
Where did lies come from? John 8:44 tells us, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
One definition of “truth” is “that which corresponds to reality.”
Now it is a fact that most of the forms of entertainment in our society today are nothing less than a means of getting away from reality. Getting away from truth. If, for example, one goes to the movie theater today, Almost all the time what do people see there? Something that is real or something that is not real?
The typical movie shown in our theaters seeks to manipulate the viewers’ minds in a variety of ways:
Humor often degrades men or women;
Or mocks/distorts religion in some fashion;
They often develop a plot which causes one to feel, in this instance, sin is ok;
Or the film may promote sin as a preferred choice for lifestyle;
Our emotions are played with...taking the viewer through a range of feelings, which are founded only on the fantasy line being played out.
It can intoxicate the viewers’ minds and desensitizes us to the awfulness of sin.
It is something that is made up. And yet the Bible says that “No lie is of the truth.”
It is an effort to “get-away-from-it-all” for a while.
Of course one of the most popular ways to escape truth or escape reality today is through the use of alcohol or some other substance that people can put in their mouth to affect the way their brain thinks.
People who were feeling bad can feel good. It is an effort again of not dealing with or not facing reality. But when the mind-altering affect is gone the dishes are still right there in the sink.
Now in contrast to all of this we have for example, nature which literally is constantly speaking to our senses about the love of God.
We have “the heavens which declare the glory of God and the firmament that shows his handiwork. Day unto day they utter speech. Night unto night they show knowledge. There is no speech and there is no language in which their voice is not heard.” (Psalm 19: 1-3)
We have the Sabbath a day in which we can go into nature.
We have our Bible. We have the life stories of men and women who have served God and who have overcome a warped character.
Another area in which the devil has his decoys to keep us from the truth as it is in Jesus is the reading of fiction or the reading of novels.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish born novel writer. His books are still in demand today some 75 years after his death.
I would like you to notice what Joseph Conrad said at the end of his life.
“It is a fools business to write fiction for a living. It is indeed. It is strange. The unreality of it seems to enter one’s real life, penetrate the bones, make the very heart- beats pulsate illusions into the arteries. One’s will becomes the slave of hallucinations. A strange state. A kind of fiery trial of untruthfulness. And one goes through it with an exaltation as false as all the rest of it. One goes through it and there’s nothing to show at the end. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! “
What a life. Thank God that we can live a life seeking truth.
But today we don’t have to read a book in order to follow a novel do we?.... No all we have to do is you know sit on a comfortable couch.
The Bible says that those who possess love rejoice not in iniquity but rejoice in the truth.
Today there are prestigious people – leaders, professors,preachers – past and present who do not firmly hold to some of our foundation beliefs:
literal creation week; global flood; size of the exodus...i.e. the integrity of the Bible! (i.e. the writers of the Bible themselves were mistaken e.g. Moses was mistaken when he wrote about creation in 6 literal days!)
We need to know truth....We need to know fact not fantasy.
The second commandment forbids worship of images. We feel secure in our culture but though we may not build metal images to worship we can build a false mental idea of God and worship it! ... We need truth!
So people choose truth!
Choose truth in what you allow yourself to see.
Choose truth in what you allow yourself to hear.
Choose truth in what you allow yourself to say.
In your music choose truth;
In your reading Choose truth;
In your thinking choose truth;
Our Bible admonishes us in Col 3:1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
3:2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
3:3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
And in 2 Thessalonians 2:10 Paul speaks of those who “… perish because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” If we learn to love truth here in this world the Lord has an eternity of it for us.
So folks let us live truth, let us think truth, let us taste truth, let us smell truth and finally let us love truth.
Let it be said of us what David said and that is “I have chosen the way of truth. “