Prodigal Son - Part 1

Transcription (edited)

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Announcer:  Is your truth as valid as mine? How do you check with the final authority for absolute truth?

Michael Pearl:  It is a symptom of the day in which we live that men think that we are the products of evolution. If that be true, then there is no spiritual, intellectual truth. There's no moral truth. Everything is relative. It's relative to one's own pleasure or to one's commitment to social norms. In other words, something is wrong because socially it affects other people or because it makes people uncomfortable, and that'd be the basis for it being wrong.

But if society changes and mores change and people accept a different level of morality, then it's good because people are not offended by it, people are not bothered by it, people are not upset, so then queers can marry queers, or people can have sex-change operations or whatever they want to do. As long as that is the norm for the general population, then that's true.

You hear people speaking all of the time of "my truth/your truth." "That's your truth, this is my truth"—very common phrase. It all springs from the whole concept that there is no final authority, no absolute judge of the universe, no day of accountability. Nothing that's absolutely true and absolutely false. That it's just relative to what you think about it.

That's the root of it and that's the reason we have to battle that so much. The Christians have fallen to it by ceasing to believe that they have a Bible that's absolutely true. Today among Christians it's your interpretation/my interpretation. That's the same thing as your truth/my truth. That's your view; this is my view. The view itself has no credibility beyond how it affects you internally or whatever it does for you, whatever it means to you.

The place we Christians need to start is in our own house, our own church, our own people. Start back with "Do we have an absolute authority?" The Catholics have one; it's the pope. The Baptists have one; it's their pastor. But Bible believers, they're only left with . . . well the Amish have one too; it's their community organization, the church, whatever they call the eldership or something. Bishops?

But Bible believers, the only authority we have is the Word of God. If we have four different bibles that say four different things, then we have no final authority. Our authority is the Word of God.

A lot of Christians have fallen prey to the idea that it's the spirit that's the final authority. The spirit is an ethereal thing that vacillates. It's your interpretation of the spirit, my interpretation of the spirit and again, no final authority.

Jesus himself appealed to a final authority. When being tempted by Satan, he quoted Moses. He said, "It is written," and he quoted exactly what Moses said. Jesus believed in a final authority, which was the words of God already recorded, already written down, which he was able to quote. He said to the Pharisees, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

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Announcer:  We're really glad you listened today, and we hope that you were blessed. Remember, check our always-changing online specials.