When Pontius Pilate asked 'What is truth?', he betrayed the deep cynicism which lies at the heart of all irreligious men. He revealed the sad fact that when men do not believe in God, it is not that they believe in nothing but that they believe in anything. To the irreligious mind there is no such thing as truth. The irreligious man is all his lifetime drifting in a sea of uncertainty without chart or compass. He knows neither where he came from nor where he is going. He is 'blown about by every wind of doctrine' (Eph. 4:14). He is compared to 'wandering stars' (Jude 13) which appear somewhere in the universe for a time and then vanish into the outer dark­ness. To the irreligious mind there is no ultimate meaning to life. It is a 'tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing'.

From this tragic meaninglessness every Christian is saved and delivered by the gracious power of Jesus Christ. To be a Christian is to be a believer in truth, in reality, and in the meaningfulness and purpose of life. The newly converted person rejoices to be able now to see his life, not as adrift in a dark ocean, but lived within the framework of a wise and intelligent purpose. He has the unspeakably comforting experience of looking up and recognizing that he belongs to the great God and lives his life within the framework of a fixed divine plan which is all-embracing and which takes care of every detail of life. It even takes care of the things beyond life in this present world and makes a full provision for a happy eternity to come.

The Lord Jesus Christ clearly had a passion for truth. He declared that his very life's mission was to 'bear witness unto the truth' (John 18:37). In an oft-quoted text, he even went so far as to affirm, 'I am the truth' (John 14:6). Christ is 'the true light' (John 1:9). His high-priestly prayer shows that his concern for all his people is that they 'might be sanctified through the truth'. He even defines his believing people in the same terms: 'Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice' (John 18:37).

So, to be a Christian believer is to be 'of the truth'. To live the Christian life aright is to do the truth, whereas the religious hypocrite 'walks in dark­ness and does not the truth' (1 John 1:6). The God of the Bible is the 'true God', and to have him is to have 'eternal life' (1 John 5:20). To know the truth is to believe that all other gods and all other gospels are 'idols' from which we must 'keep ourselves' (1 John 5:21).

It is essential that we pause to ask ourselves what is intended by this insistence by Jesus Christ on truth. In answer we say that it must mean just this: The only real world is that portrayed by the Bible. All other world-and­-life views are false and invalid. They do not coincide with reality but are a kind of fantasy world. Those who reject the Bible's portrayal of existence are guilty of inventing a mythical, nonexistent and therefore deceptive world. They live in a fool's paradise, a dream life which exists only in their own imagination and which will burst like a bubble once they pass beyond death into eternity. The sinner's imaginary world has no more of real existence than do the comic characters and cartoons of Disneyland.

When the Lord Jesus Christ informed Pilate that his mission in this world was to 'bear witness unto the truth' (John 18:37), he intended us to under­stand that the mission of the Christian church in every age is to challenge the false views of reality which exist in men's minds. It was this that Christ did in his own day. His sermons and miracles were a sharp challenge to the men of his generation, many of whom were very religious men in their own way. He considered it his mission to sweep away the cobwebs of superstition and tradition by which they had falsified reality and were distorting the rules of faith and duty for themselves and others. His view of reality differed essentially from that of the religious leaders of his day. His view was right, and theirs was wrong. The consequence was a profound clash and conflict between his view and theirs.

One might have supposed, had one lived two thousand years ago, that the existence of the Bible and the influence of the Christian church for so long would guarantee that most men would by this time have accepted the Christian world-and-life view. But it is not so. The natural man is pro­foundly offended by the Christian view of reality and, do what the church will, the unconverted world, so long as it remains unconverted, will always refuse to accept the true view of life. People in Christian countries are scarcely any more ready to look at life correctly today, after two millennia of gospel light, than their forefathers were in pre-Christian times. The distortion of reality may be less gross, but it is still there.

There cannot be any serious doubt in Christian minds today that the entire attitude and outlook to life which commonly prevails needs to be radically challenged. The thought patterns of men and women today, thanks to a century of declining Christianity in the West, are very far removed from those of the Bible. A score of competing philosophies, all of them far from truth, have taken possession of men's minds. The modern mind is obsessed with myths and errors like a cage full of unclean birds. What this twenty-first century needs more than anything else is a fresh baptism of light and truth.

The religious, educational and cultural scene which meets our eye as we begin this new century is one of fatigue and decadence. No greater proof or evidence is needed of the truth of the apostle's phrase: 'To be carnally minded is death' (Rom. 8:6) than what we all see around us. The intellectual life of modern society is stagnant. It runs in small and shallow channels. All the talk is about pleasure – especially sensual pleasure – and all the preoccupation is with commercial interests. Money, fashion, sport – and little else – are the socially correct topics of conversation. It is as if man's life consisted in nothing more important than what next to eat, what next to wear, where next to find a trivial pursuit.

Our society is ripe for a fresh injection of truth to lift us all above the cheapness of our age. We need it to live and breathe once more in the exciting realm of great and glorious thoughts – gospel thoughts. What truths they are! There are no facts to compare with those of the Bible! There are no ideas to match those of the gospel of Jesus Christ! They are exactly what our tired world needs to raise it from its bored preoccupation with every pleasure and to rouse the spirits of men to soar to lofty heights of thought and endeavour.

Gospel ideas, when they truly take hold of us, are electric in their potency. They grip the soul and mind as if with bands of iron, or adamantine steel. They galvanize the emotions into terrible waves of alarm and terror till we are reconciled to the truth of them, till we come at last to acquiesce sweetly in them and eventually to bathe our souls in them with unutterable comfort. Truth is a furnace heated seven times hot in which God places,  the souls of men till they emerge new men and have a new lustre in their hearts and on their faces.

Truth is an anvil upon which God places the conscience of men while he hammers them into a new shape. Let no one have small thoughts of truth. It is of God and comes from his very essence. All the truths of God are mighty, and in seasons of blessing they become incandescent. If any man doubts it, let him read Augustine's Confessions or Bunyan's Grace Abounding. Apart from the power of Christ's truth no man could ever begin to explain a Paul, or a Luther, or a Calvin or a Spurgeon. They were what they were because truth had laid hold of them and they had become its very slaves.

O what havoc truth will wreak on society when next God is pleased to give it almighty power! Picture our modern society, so busily engaged in its routine of trivial pursuits, suddenly invaded by a powerful assault of gospel truths from heaven! Imagine the effect on hundreds and thousands of our dear fellow citizens of their being suddenly aroused and awakened by the great thoughts of the Bible: the wrath of God, the awfulness of everlasting punishment, the availability of Christ's blood for free pardon, the wicket gate still open to admit the penitent, the exquisite comfort of feeling the love of God poured upon the heart, the assuring witness of the Spirit of God in the innermost soul, the consoling hope of eternal bliss in a heavenly Father's home! These and similar truths are what won myriads in the far-off Roman Empire two millennia ago to throw their ancestral gods 'to the moles and to the bats' (Isa.2:20) and to venture their all on the promise of Christ to save them. It was, in Thomas Scott's phrase: 'the force of truth'.

We wish with all the energy of our being that the great God of truth would be pleased once again to visit the earth with a powerful invasion of his gospel truth. No blessing could remotely compare with it. No medicine could so perfectly cure our modern world of its many plagues. Signs and wonders will not do it, for men will not believe 'though one rose from the dead' (Luke 16:31). New and popular philosophies will not do it. The world had abundance of them before Christ came.

Ah! but truth will cure the ills of men. Let the gospel of a crucified Saviour be heard – 'not in word only but in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance' (1 Thess. 1:5) – and this sad modern world will have to sit up and take notice. It has happened in the past again and again and – pray God – will happen yet many times still when it is his pleasure to grant it so.

But who will preach this glorious gospel of truth to our perishing modern world? Latimer is gone; Whitefield is gone; Spurgeon and Dr Lloyd-Jones are gone. Who then is to come?

O great God and Father of him who said, 'I am the truth', when wilt thou come and baptise thy church again with Pentecostal fire?