There’s no end to the things people will say about the Lord Jesus these days. Every philosophy, every religion, every loose crank will rattle off some idle description, some pointless explanation, some uninformed interpretation of who Jesus really was, and/or what Jesus was all about. If we make the mistake of looking to the world for spiritual truth (or even for verification of that truth), we will not last long as believers in Jesus Christ.

This is nothing new. Old manuscripts show that such things were going on as early as the fourth century. Whenever God speaks and acts, the enemy is also eager to speak and act in some way, trying to draw away from the real -- just as in the Garden, the serpent pulled Eve’s attention to the forbidden tree, while the tree of life stood not far away, ignored.

Had the early Christians not been filled with God’s Spirit, and had they not already had the true Scriptures in circulation among the churches, the false philosophizing might have gained a foothold even among true believers. Even as it was, the Spirit of God leads Paul to write:

“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the ‘elemental spirits’ of the universe, and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:6-8)

By the Spirit of God the Bible stands, as it has for a great many generations, as the unbroken Word of God. But the world is still in darkness, in the very grip of evil. When Moses began writing the Law of God, in Genesis through Deuteronomy, the foul stench of false religions already filled many nations. Human nature is corrupt, often rejecting the pure in favor of the rotten, the false, the polluted.

Even the people of God were infected with cravings for false gods, false religion, and polluted worship, from the days of Moses all the way into the very days when Israel was forced out of their homeland (see the book of Jeremiah). And in the days of Jesus, while religious leaders made a lout of pious noise, insisting that there is only one God, they in fact held their own human traditions and customs as more precious than the promises, warnings, and commands of God.

Today, it is not so different.

Because today’s church is so weak in faith, because we are slow in our willingness to obey and love God, and timid in our public expressions of the truth, the enemy is bold to use his own puppets and his own dupes to offer false teaching in the name of faith, and even in the name of God. In ancient times, a corrupt king built two golden idols and called them by God's own sacred Name. And today the enemy uses men and women who have no knowledge of the truth to mislead many as to the true nature of God and of Jesus Christ. Falsehood speaks in the name of God.

But people in the Western world have no excuse. The truth is not only "out there" but right here among us, within our very grasp. Bibles abound in the English language, and in many other languages. Scholarly editions of the original Greek and Aramaic manuscripts also abound. Archaeology has published its findings, not for the sake of the church, but for the whole world to see. Public libraries carry the evidences of centuries of research and discovery. My own bookcases are filled with ancient editions of the Bible, both Christian and Jewish. There is no excuse for being misled into thinking that the Bible is not God's Word.

But according to Scripture, unbelievers will always exist, right up until the Lord wipes Satan himself off the face of the earth. And these things do not happen until after Jesus has reigned on the earth for a thousand years.

Think about that: Even after Jesus Christ Himself has ruled this planet for a thousand years, unbelievers will still be around to rise up against God and His people. The book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ (last book of the Bible) makes that clear enough.

And so today, with all the information we have, we also have unbelievers who refuse to learn anything. They are too infatuated with their own ideas, their own daydreams, their own religious philosophizing. So many people claim to want only facts and truth, yet so few really care about truth even enough to dig a little for themselves. They’ll accept any garbage offered to them that speaks against the Bible, but will not take the time to discover God's Word in Scripture for themselves. For me, this is just so much more proof that human nature is twisted, bent, broken, totally perverse.

Again, the Bible says that it will be so. John 3:17-20 says it this way:
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.”

The bottom line: people tend to love their sins more than they care to know the truth. If the truth threatens them with change, they will reject the truth in favor of any false idea that allows them to continue in sin. In fact, most people will run from anything that even talks about the reality of sin. And they will not follow the real Jesus Christ because Jesus exposes sin for what it is.

Yet Jesus Christ was a real human being. He was born. He walked and spoke, and He fasted, abstaining from food for some 40 days and nights. He was a real human being. He bled real blood, just as He said He would. He was really nailed to a Roman cross. He really died. He was really buried. He really rose up again from the dead -- the only human being to ever conquer death and the grave. Yet He conquered death and the grave not just for Himself, but also for everyone who believes in Him.

What about the evidence?

Unbelievers sometimes claim that there is no evidence that Jesus ever really lived or died or rose again. But they say this because they are rejecting God's Holy Spirit -- and the Bible record -- preferring to cling to their own imaginations, instead. Thousands of ancient New Testament manuscripts still exist, some of them from all the way back into the time of the apostles. And that’s thousands more witnesses than the almost nonexistent manuscript evidences we have of other ancient figures such as Homer, Socrates, Aristotle, and others that we would never think to doubt.

Why do some religious leaders and so-called scholars want to get rid of Jesus Christ? The answer is very simple. They have no love for the truth, and Jesus is the Truth. They have no interest in knowing God, preferring their own ideas and traditions instead. Yet Jesus is the one and only Way to God. And these unbelievers are dead, spiritually, having never turned to God in repentance. They hate the light. They hate the bountiful life of God. And Jesus Christ is the perfect Light of God and the unbounded Life of God.

If anyone desires to know God, to know the real facts about Jesus Christ, then all they need to do is read the Bible for themselves. Read with the intent of allowing God to show you the truth.

For those unfamiliar with Scripture, I suggest starting in the Gospel of Mark (2nd book in the New Testament portion of the Bible). It’s a short Gospel tract, and will not take long to read. Next, you should move on to John's Gospel. I suggest reading that book twice in order to absorb as much information as possible. And then, read the other two Gospels: Matthew and Luke. And from there, you might want to read the Acts (5th NT book) and so on.

The point is, get the facts for yourself. Before you go running off to drink form a crumbling and stagnant well, first drink good and long and deep from the fresh flowing spring of God. Before you start trying to learn from the counterfeits, study the real thing. Only the real Word of God, applied to our hearts by the Spirit of God, will satisfy the longing of a heart that's hungry for God’s truth and reality.