DIGITAL GOSPEL
AND THE BATTLE FOR THE TRUTH
© Carlos Padilla – January 2022
These days, after 25 years of journey writing the Spanish version of this website –Jesucristo.net – I was thinking how fast we can communicate any news. Today it is as easy as sending a message and communicating any news in social media, web pages, digital news papers, radio, or TV, and it is informed in real time. However when in the old ages when something had to be communicated, a post was a person walking, or on a horse, or on a ship, who would have to travel long distances, many times during days, or weeks and wait hope that the communications would be believed, and if the case, wait to receive an answer and return to deliver it. The problem is that today the truth is so manipulated that the message arrives, but we must do an analysis of intelligence before we accept it. The world of communication of all kinds, news, schools and media have become the last battle field to dominate the mind and the thinking of the world, it has become in the battle for truth. Keep reading…
DIGITAL GOSPEL
The Synagogue, the Church, the Areopagus, the square, were places of communication. But to take a message was difficult, until the XX century after the invention of the radio by Marconi, and later the TV. Gutenberg’s printer in the XVI century made messages arrive to more people, and in a more ordered way, but jet not with speed. In times of Moses and of Israel with the twelve tribes, if there was an urgent message, or an emergency, they had to run or ride to the other tribe to ask for help, and many times they arrived too late. Trips to the known world existed, but they were slow and uncomfortable, and it was not until the Roman Empire that road would be built, that together with ships helped communication. Today, from Internet at the end of the XX century in real time, and any person can do it, it is not necessary to wait for a recognized media to do it. The problem is the fidelity of the truth of a news that today is not even guaranteed by reputed media, more and more polarized. For that reason there is nothing better than hearing the story first handed, that we are told in real time what is happening.
Nothing can substitute communication in person, people talking to each other. And we also know that nothing substitutes the immediateness and wide information that Internet provides as well as social media. In the Christianism of the last two decades, many where against the Gospel through Internet, even theological seminaries that use to criticize Internet, if they want to survive, today they offer online classes, as most universities do, except those studies that need present practice.
The question is that the message has to be transmitted even if it is through non usual media, and a magnificent example was the apostles. The key is that the message must be reliable. The apostle Paul, as we read in Acts 9:20 made an effort to try and convince of his change in faith to those who feared him. He changes his message radically, when converting from being a persecutor of Christians, to becoming the apostle of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. In Acts 11, Peter gives a report to the Church of Jerusalem that he went to the Gentiles and that these were also receiving the Lord, he worked hard for them to believe this change, this surprising news for those “of the circumcision”.
Another very relevant matter was, how would the brothers know where Paul would or other brothers be in those times? Would Paul and others inform the Synagogues and house Churches, where they would go, to be found? Acts 18:5. Today it is not necessary because we just send a message by phone, an e-mail or a call, and it’s enough to organize, communicate a news or coordinate a mission, as does the secular world, and in what way.
BATTLING FOR THE TRUTH
As Christians, we are not only responsible that the message, the news, the Gospel that we preach arrives, but that we do it as reliable as Scripture, as the Word of God. The media that we use is not what matters, but that the message is of Yahshua – Jesus Christ, because only that Message changes lives for salvation and eternal life.
The Gospel is the Gospel. Whether in person, in the Bible of through Internet, it is the Word of God and has the power to save lives of those who believe it. It can also be tergiversated in person or digitally, or by books, even some sect has modified their own Bible to take off, change and add what they want to indoctrinate. We already know who is the evil deceiver behind this. The world, as it began with the deceit of the serpent to Adam and Eve, it coming to its end with the deceit of society by all media. This comes from the beginning in the tree of Eden “Genesis 3”, because the devil deceives from the beginning, manipulates and hides the truth or uses it partially to deceive. This way, today we see how they do the same in many news, even the meaning of words is being changed on purpose.
The recent film “Don’t Look Up” exposes perfectly how media is distorting the truth, and how society has lost common sense and direction, placing vanities before what really matters, but the film is missing the Christian message of hope: resurrection and the Kingdom of God. These days one reads of a conglomerate that controls more than 90% of the news and influences ideology and geopolitically, creating confusion of concepts and meanings in the language, changing what the world perceives; A strategy that together with what they teach our children today about history, in a very distorted way, it achieves a complete confusion. It’s all about making a partisan use of truth in many cases, similar to the story of the Orchard of Eden, or directly of inventing or deceiving in own benefit. Another of its present direct battles is against anyone who is not in the evolutionist side, mocking who studies scientific models of the origins: naturalism, creationism and intelligent design, even if those who study or teach them are reputed scientist. Every time is more difficult to find free media not influenced in all the fields, whether news, history, science, religion, social life, etc.
We could finish this exposition reminding that the Bible, in its prophecies warns us of an end time, which despite other things it stands for the these characteristics: deceiving of man, and the opposition to God in all the social fields, something the Biblical Texts clearly exposes:
“Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits [c]as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.
CONCLUSION
Many have tried to tergiversate the Gospel between people, through books and printed or digital media, like Internet. Some Christian groups do it although they are not conscious, because the place their traditions before the truth of the Bible, which already the Lord Jesus Christ himself denounced to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 15:6b: “Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition”. But the spirit of the Reformation, “Scripture Only” guides us to not have another authority in matters of faith but the Holy Scripture. The Bible and its correct interpretation from the focus of the New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ is the guarantee the Truth, that of God, because through His Spirit He keeps us in the Truth. The Truth is the Good News.
The Good News, the great news continues to be Jesus Christ – Yahshua, His saving work, resurrection and His return in His Kingdom, in other words, The Gospel, whether digital, printed or preached in person. We can use any media, but it is a must to talk to the person by our side. The media at our reach allow us to reach the world in all the ways possible in which each one can receive the message, that which we can summarize in the words of the apostle Paul to the Athenians in his speech at the Areopagus of Athens, before the Greek philosophers in Acts 17:26-31:
“And He has made from one [j]blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. 30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
The digital Gospel is only a way to transmit the Truth. What really matters is that it is the Truth, that we battle for the Truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is the Truth “John 14:6”, and the Truth shall make us free, “John 8:31-38”. Amen.
