Laziness Test

Do not scoff at prophecies, 21 but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.

1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 (NLT)

There is a quote that has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln going around social media. Given that he is one of our greatest presidents, and a very good speaker (“Four score and…”), many people give weight to the words that he speaks. The quote goes something like this, “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.” It then has Lincoln’s signature and picture beneath the quote. Of course, this should seem ridiculous. Lincoln has been dead for 150 years. The Internet didn’t roar into existence until only about 20 years ago. (If you’re just learning these facts, pay more attention in school.) It’s impossible that he said those things.

Then, of course, there are the million things that circulate the Internet every day that have to do with faith, God, Christianity, and Seventh-day Adventism. Some of them are right on point, others twist things a bit, while still others are a flat-out lie. But, here’s the issue, too many people don’t verify which “truths” are true, which are twisted, and which are false. This isn’t just for atheists or agnostics. There are many people who call themselves “Christian” as well that just buy into information shared on a blog, vlog, meme, or some other information-sharing resource, without checking to see whether it is true or not. Have we gotten that lazy in our faith, or do we truly not understand how to verify truth? As the Apostle Paul tells us, “test everything that is said.” So, how do we test it?

The Seventh-day Adventist church is sola scriptura. (That’s Latin for “the Bible only.”) So, our source to verify things about God, our faith, is the Bible. Of course, many of the blogs, vlogs, and other sites try to use scripture to prove their point. So, we must also test what they say within context of the Bible. For example, there are many out there that believe in an eternal burning hell for the wicked. They pick and choose verses that prove their point. However, when we read the chapters that those verses come from, we learn that what they truly say is not what others imply they mean. They are taken out of context.

So, I implore you, daily get into the Bible. When you find something, or someone says something about God, test it against scripture (me included). Find truth.