[In the article below, it is my intention to respond to those who have expressed a lack of assurance of faith, and those who even question the necessity of belief. In doing do, I will get to roam in some interesting places and bring before you a whole realm of discussion-points which I hope you will find profitable]
Introduction
LOOKING OUT ACROSS THE WORLD TODAY, all the civil unrest; rioting; political idiocy; duplicity; warmongering; lies; hypocrisy; corruption; clown ‘leaders’; dastardly AI/Transhumanist plans (which will likely chime in an Endtimes type of scenario); social media madness; the huge proliferation of false teachers; the vast majority of churches being utterly ineffectual, totally off-the-rails or just plain insane; and so much more, are all the result of the vast majority of people being without Christ — having no true God to follow. And before you say, “How do you know that the vast majority of people are without Christ?”, apart from the witness of one’s own eyes/spirit, let me remind you that Jesus Himself said, “Many are called, but few are chosen” (20:16; 22:14) and “small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14). When Jesus was asked, “Lord, will only a few people be saved?”, He essentially confirmed that, rather drastically (Luke 12:23-30). The true Church is truly “a little flock” (Luke 12:32), “a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5), comparatively speaking when seen against the billions of souls which have passed through this fallen world. So it was in Israel too in the Old Testament, where by far the majority were not truly saved and merely prospered from being part of the tribes. In the days of Elijah, it is specifically said that out of the half-million or so of Israelites that are reckoned to have been alive at that time, there were only “seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18) — the seven thousand being a round number depicting the “remnant according to the election of grace” which existed in those days too (see Romans 9:6-8 with Romans 11:4-5). In the visible church today, it is the same kind of pattern. There is a remnant who are saved by the grace of God in the midst of that visible church. Like in Israel of old, the true believers are a ‘hidden’, much smaller number who are motivated by love and truth and who are faithful to the uttermost and who do not pollute their faith with corrupted beliefs and practices.
The common notion among many professing Christians that there is a global revival coming is nothing more than hopium pie-in-the-sky baloney without any biblical merit. When a church is given over to lunacy and bizarre antics, a “Holy Spirit revival” is so often claimed. But all that fatuous malarkey is nothing but a sign of the apostasy and has nothing whatsoever to do with the growth of the genuine Ekklesia which is always a soberminded and suffering remnant transformed by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.
Gaining Assurance of Salvation
1) “How Can I Know For Sure that I am a True Believer?”
In the midst of all this mayhem, one truly needs a firm assurance of salvation. In this little article, I am going to respond to things which have been put to me verbally from time to time by folks who do not have the necessary sense of assurance of salvation. The first of these things is this:
Questioner: “How can I know for sure that I am in that remnant, part of the few who are chosen, a true believer? This is something that I have agonised over for years. I mean why would God choose me? I’m just a piece of dirt”. [This has literally been said to me. So I will here respond to that person, and all the others who have said similar things].
Alan’s Response: First, there are ways that you can discover the answers to all those questions which I will try to lay out below. But let me say right away that thinking of yourself as a “piece of dirt” is an excellent starting point for becoming a true believer. For Jesus came precisely to rescue those who have come to have a realistic view of their sinful nature. Most people are filled with narcissistic pride and never reach the view that you are expressing. If you were to come before God with your feelings of worthlessness and ask the Lord Jesus to heal you within (for it is clear that you are broken), and to bring you into His kingdom, and to make you a new creation, He will do just that! Maybe that has happened already but you haven’t, as it were, ‘caught up with it’ yet.
I will say to you that one doesn’t have to go round continually feeling like a ‘piece of dirt’ once one has been saved. For the Lord polishes that dirt away. When David said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10), and God said, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26-27), the fulfilment of that promise is not just for those who were under the old covenant. As the Apostle Paul put it:
“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of the new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs with the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:4-7).
That “washing of the new birth” is what cleans away the dirt and actually makes you into “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), though with some people that can take some time to fully sink in and become plainly evident. When that takes place, along with “renewal by the Holy Spirit”, that dirt of which you are so aware is cleansed. Sure, you will mess up from time to time but that does not render you into a “piece of dirt”. For “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Cleansed! Get it?
So if you feel that you may not have properly come before God in full repentance (which may be why you still feel like a “piece of dirt”), then just do so right now. Right this very moment! Don’t waste another second! “Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22). Cleansed! No more “piece of dirt”. Yay! When you are covered by the blood of Christ, God does not see you as a piece of dirt but as His beloved child, adopted into His family:
“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption to sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him. (Romans 8:15-17).
The Holy Spirit communicates all this to your own spirit, that you are indeed a child of God and not a random piece of dirt. Remember that it is Satan who wants to keep believers in what Thomas Brooks referred to as “a sad, doubting, questioning and uncomfortable condition” in his great work, “Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices”. [See Chapter 4 of that book, here: https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/brooks/Precious%20Remedies%20Against%20Satan%20-%20Mod%20-%20Thomas%20Brooks.pdf by scrolling down to page 163]. In that book, Thomas Brooks describes believers whose over-rigorous consciences have made them fixate continually on their sins (“pieces of dirt”) rather than on Christ. They are so intent to ruminate on their flaws and failures that they lose sight of God’s grace and the gift which has been given them through the sacrifice of Christ. Is this you?
Maybe you have been so badly damaged in earlier life through being made to feel like a piece of dirt by significant others that you cannot believe it is possible for you to be anything other than that. Well this is the whole point of salvation in Christ! Despite any residual dirt (real or imaginary), we have been released from that into something far more amazing. Jesus is referred to as “Him who loves us and has released us from our sins by His blood, who has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father” (Revelation 1:6). Thus, far from being a mere “piece of dirt”, when you are regenerated (reborn) you have been elevated into a spiritual kingdom of infinite worth and eternality, and are now functioning as a priest of God throughout this age (see also 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 20:6). If you believe in Jesus the Christ and want to follow Him (i.e. be His disciple), then this is your reality, not perpetually seeing yourself as a “piece of dirt”, for Jesus came to this earth to pull you out of that dirt-hole and wash you clean! While it is good to be humble, it is going too far to wallow in being a “piece of dirt”. It’s a little like overplaying the victim; and it is not necessary or fitting. Are you hearing me? I hope you are finding this helpful.
Unbelievers Do Not ‘Agonise’ Over Whether they are True Believers or Not
Moving further into your questions, when you say, “How can I know that I am a true believer?”, there is a clue right there in your own words, because you go on to say that this is something which you have “agonised over for years” . I can assure you that if you were not a true believer you would not be agonising at all about whether you are or not. Only a genuine believer — or someone on the threshold of becoming a believer, an ‘almost believer’, what I call “a disciple-in-waiting” — would agonise about that. If you were one of the huge number of ‘Christianised’ unbelievers (those who manifest and play around with the superficial trappings of ‘playbook Christianity’ but there isn’t much happening under the hood/bonnet) this would not really concern you much. You would just ‘bottom along’, thinking that your faith is proven by doing all the typical external stuff like proudly strutting along in your ‘Sunday Best’ to church (aka ‘churchianity’) with your leatherbound Bible under your arm twice on a Sunday and once midweek, continuously listening to so-called “Contemporary Christian music” (CCM) so as to ‘keep the demons away’ (so they imagine!), going to “Christian” jamborees with thousands of other ‘Christianised’ unbelievers, speaking in gibberish ‘tongues’, waving your arms around when you sing a soppy ‘chorus’, wearing a big fat cross around your neck, having a fish sticker on the back of your car, taking the Alpha Course, waiting for the Rapture to happen (and having a sticker on the back of your car which says, “Keep back as I may be raptured!”), ‘studying’ the Bible ‘fish and chips’ style with your friends (you all fish around and everyone chips in and no one is any-the-wiser but you think you are), loving Israel and sending money to it, thinking Trump is the bee’s knees, and all the many other trappings, accessories, bandwagons, distractions, bells-and-whistles, and accoutrements of the pseudo-“Christian” scene which complete the off-the-peg (pseudo)-“Christian” self-image. As if being a disciple of Christ is proven by all this external stuff! Fake assurance.
What people call “Christianity” has now become a religious fashion which is light and breezy with all its razzmatazz, lots of fun, makes you feel great all the time, easy to fulfil, where everyone speaks in the same clichés and prays publicly with the ‘approved’ nomenclature, and “going to church” is like another form of social media, like being at a concert, a compulsion, a habit. Then there is discipleship to Christ, which is not a fashion but a serious and beautiful spiritual way of life in which one is challenged and tested to the hilt by the Holy Spirit, continually humbled, despised by the world and treated like a pariah for expressing our faith — though one is blessed immeasurably whatever the outward circumstances. So one should not really be asking, “Am I a Christian?” but rather “What are the signs of me being a disciple of Christ — one who follows Him, comes after Him?” This is what I shall be developing below.
So let me ask you a question: “Do you believe?” Maybe you will then reply, “Well, yes, but it says that loads of people in the Bible believed but in fact they didn’t really do so. Not really. I’m probably one of those”. Okay then, let’s look at the “belief” of those who are said in the New Testament to have “believed” but didn’t really after all…
A good starting point would be the parable of the seed-sower in Matthew 13:3-9 and then explained in verses 18-23, as this is about belief in relation to hearing “the message of the kingdom” (v.19). Of the four possibilities, the first is where it is not understood and there is a complete lack of interest and because such a person is completely under the power of Satan (1 John 5:19), there is no response whatsoever. The second possibility is the person who has a superficial, even happy response to hearing the truth of the Gospel but as soon as any stumbling-block appears such as persecution or whatever, the skin-deep delight fritters away into nothing. The third possibility is that any reception of the word is completely nullified by the person being caught up with material concerns. The fourth possibility is that the person hears the word, understands it, bears fruit and produces a crop. In all the first three cases, the person concerned was never regenerated but only superficially affected by the word of the kingdom. In fact, the first case was not affected at all. Now, none of those three cases apply to you, because I know that you have essentially believed for decades but you are just not sure that it is all real. There is a foundation of assurance of faith which is missing. I will come back to this, but before I do let us press on to look at those who are specifically said to have believed but then it was revealed that they did not do so really…
Unbelieving Believers
First, there is the instance at the end of the second chapter of John’s Gospel:
“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man” (John 2:23-25).
He knew very well the fickleness of people, these people in particular. It is interesting that the Greek word used for “believed” in relation to the people is the same which is translated as “entrust” in relation to Jesus’ response to their apparent belief. They kind of “believed” in His name just because of the signs by which they were impressed, but He didn’t believe in their alleged belief enough to entrust Himself to them. In other words, they were impressed by the signs and wonders, but they didn’t have saving faith in Him. Now, you who wonder if you are really saved (or not) do not need to equate yourself with those fickle folks who Jesus did not trust. You have believed in far more than a sign. You know who Jesus is. You know what He came to earth to do. This is why, despite calling yourself a “piece of dirt” and thinking you are unsalvable, you have for all these decades regarded yourself as a Christian and clung onto some kind of faith. True? I’ll press on…
In John 4:39, we find an example of Jesus ministering for two days by request to those who had believed in Samaria, therefore — unlike those in John 2 — He did not refrain from entrusting Himself to them. In fact, the text says, “Many more believed because of His message. They said to the woman, ‘We now believe not only because of your words; we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man truly is the Savior of the world’” (John 4:42-43). So their belief went far deeper than merely being impressed with a sign. It was non-fickle, real belief rooted in hearing the words of Jesus.
Then in John 4:53 we find a man believing with his whole household and there is nothing to suggest that it was a superficial, fickle sort of belief. After all, Jesus was fulfilling prophecies in Isaiah 35:5-6; Isaiah 61:1; cf. Luke 7:18-23. Towards the end of John 6 we read that because of His hard sayings,
“many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God’” (John 6:66-69).
That is the response of the true disciple of Christ. Even if, for some weird reason, one was momentarily tempted to get out of the whole Christian thing and abandon Christ, one would quickly say, “To whom shall we go?” There is nowhere else to go. Nowhere. There is only one way back to God and only one way out of here.
In John, chapter 8, verse 30, we read that “As Jesus spoke these things, many believed in Him”. Then He continued to “speak directly to the Jews who had believed in Him, ‘if you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’” (verse 31-32). Immediately, these alleged “believers” began to backtalk to Jesus, taking offence at His words. Next thing, Jesus is saying that they are trying to kill Him (verses 37, 40) and He then tells them that “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out his desires… But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me!” (verses 44-45). Finally, He tells these folks who ‘who had believed in Him’, “If I speak the truth, why do you not believe Me? Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God” (verses 46-47). So really, despite their alleged superficial and fickle belief in Him mentioned in verse 30, they did not really believe with their hearts and they did not belong to God. Extraordinary. So I now ask you if your belief is the same as those Jews who were of their father the devil. I know that it isn’t, and you know that too. You don’t get offended by Jesus’ words. You love to hear Jesus’ words. You love to hear the Bible being read to you. You are not like them. You just have a weak faith which needs some nurturing and pastoral bolstering.🙂
In John chapter 12, verses 37-41, Jesus quotes Isaiah concerning the blinding of the Jews to the truth. Then the Scripture says that in spite of that blinding, “many of the leaders believed in Him” (verse 42). However, it is immediately followed by these words: “But because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue. For they loved praise from men more than praise from God” (verses 42-43). Does that inspire confidence in their belief? So now I ask you if your faith is something that you hide from people lest they turn away from you? If it was, then that faith would have to come under scrutiny. But I know that you do confess Jesus when asked. So once again, your belief cannot be compared to these people who preferred to please mere created humans rather than God, the One who actually created them.
There have been many who believed superficially in Jesus, either because they were impressed with one or more miracles, or because He seemed to perform a “better magic” than what they were used to, but this was merely an intellectual assent and it was not saving or justifying faith. So I say to you that these do not cover your situation because you weren’t turned by a mere miracle and you weren’t looking for a “better magic”. Speaking of looking for a “better magic”…
There is the strange case of Simon the Sorcerer. He is said to have “believed” (Acts 8:13), though I do not believe that he was truly regenerated. For a short time later, when Simon saw what miraculous power the Apostles had through the laying on of hands, he “offered them money and said, ‘Give me this power as well’” (Acts 8:18-19). The cult leader wanted the abilities of what he could see was a superior “cult” (in his mind). He was simply wanting to step up the rungs of the cult leader’s power-ladder. He was initially said to have “believed” but it was merely because he thought that what Philip was doing by the Holy Spirit was a superior “magic cult” to his. He just wanted more spiritual power. So now I ask you if your (on your own admission, flimsy) belief is on a par with Simon the Sorcerer’s. Of course not. I know that you utterly reject the occult and all that kind of weird woo-woo.
The Characteristics of the Saved
So what are the characteristics of someone who has genuinely been saved, regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Jesus spelled it out on a number of occasions. First, He said to the crowds and to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). For starters, if you want to be Jesus’ disciple, you must first “deny yourself”. What does He mean by this? He means that from the depths of your heart the primacy of God in your life must increase and your putting yourself on a pedestal must decrease until there is no pedestal at all. If that does not happen and you still retain your notions of self-importance, then you cannot and do not want to be a disciple of Christ. Secondly. if you want to be Jesus’ disciple, you must be prepared to “take up your cross”. He is even more emphatic about that in Matthew 10:38: “Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me”. To take up your cross means to be prepared to suffer in all ways possible for the sake of Christ — whether it is actual persecution from outside, or internal agonies, or resisting temptation, squaring up to the inevitable testings of faith, or even being prepared to lay down your life because of your faith. There have been so many before us who have held onto their faith despite everything that happened to them. Therefore we must:
“throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 11:1-4).
That is what taking up our cross means, and fulfilling that is a sign that we are genuine disciples of Christ rather than fakes. If you want to ascertain whether or not your belief is phony, take a look back at your life to date. You should be able to see some improvement in your comportment, demeanour, behaviour and personal bearing. You should be able to notice that your interests and activities are being purified so that the wrong or unnecessary things fell to the wayside. It should be evident your general holiness has proliferated. You should be able to see an increase in spiritual fruit. The genuine disciple of Christ grows. There is growth, betterment, progress, blossoming, development, flourishing, regardless of whether you have been hard pressed with afflictions, persecutions, slanders, testings and sufferings. In fact, being hard pressed with afflictions, persecutions, slanders, testings and sufferings is much more likely to ‘grow’ you than merely having a quiet life or cavorting about having ‘phun’ in today’s happy-clappy pseudo-“Christian” environments!
If you think that all the above sounds very hard and not very spiritually inspiring, let me assure you that it most certainly is worth every bit of it. Contrary to most thinking these days, genuine spiritual inspiration does not come through groovy experiences, through seeking a quiet life, or through receiving ‘strokes’ in therapy sessions, or through sitting in the ‘Lotus Position’ cross-legged on a mountaintop, or through hanging out with multitudes in huge “Christian” weekend ‘praise’ gatherings, but through having all that phony superficial nonsense stripped away from you until there is nothing left but complete dependence on God and the resultant discipleship to Christ. Are you now inspired? Because there is no other way to go.
There is more on this: In Matthew 16, Jesus expands on His formula for discipleship when He says:
“If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).
That expansion means that if your goal is to preserve yourself and your present life at all costs — putting yourself on centre-stage and not denying yourself at all — taking yourself so seriously that the real stuff is ignored, then that life will be taken away from you when you die and you will have nothing, less than nothing, for you will be in a hellish state instead. But if you deny yourself in this life, put your ‘self’ on the backburner as a secondary issue, believe in and glorify God and His Christ above all else, then you will have spiritual life in abundance — not just in the present but for all eternity. This means that you could be sitting in a dungeon, or be poor as a church mouse, or be a pariah for your faith, or be entirely friendless and alone, yet your spiritual life will still be in abundance.
2) “Why Must I Believe?”
Now on to another related question…
Questioner: “Why must I believe? I feel silly saying I believe in Christ” [This has actually been said to me. Yeah, in my situation I have some engaging dialogues!]
Alan’s Reply: This is an interesting question to respond to. For it gives me the opportunity to open up the meaning of belief and also, most importantly, why so many find it so hard to believe. The Greek verb, to believe, is πιστεύω, pisteuó, which is derived from πείθω, peithó, which means to persuade or convince. Essentially, believing means that one is persuaded or convinced by whatever it is that one believes. So, when Paul says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9), it means that you are so persuaded and convinced in your heart that Jesus was raised from the dead that your salvation is assured. Why would anyone feel silly for saying that they believed that? It is what they believe, so they can publicly stand by it, and it should be declared in a world which vehemently does not believe that. One is speaking the truth of one’s belief into ignorance, darkness, and unbelief.
You are not the first person to struggle with belief. There was a man once who said to Jesus, “I do believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). That is a very interesting thing to say. It expresses a conflict. I think this is somewhat like you. If I asked you if you believe that Jesus is real and all His claims are real, you would reply, “Inwardly, I believe that, yes”. But there is something holding you back from being able to declare openly the fullness of your faith. There is a streak of doubt corrupting your belief. I think I know where that streak of doubt comes from: A combination of the fact that 1) So much is fake in this world that anyone with a weak faith could even doubt that which is true, and 2) There is the mistrust of others which was likely fostered (and has since festered) in childhood disappointments on discovering that so many significant others had lied to you. We are dealing here with a massive sense of distrust. Let’s look at both of those influences in turn:
Firstly, let’s look at the influence of the fakery of the world on your mistrust and weak faith. In my commentary on the Book of Revelation, “The Essential Apocalypse”, I wrote about the widespread fakery of the world like this:
“Almost everything in the world today is fake and/or a lie. Religious authoritarianism poses as piety. New Age greed poses as spirituality. Psychological ‘bypassing’ poses as ‘positive thinking’. Controlling, despotic government poses as benign leadership. Social engineering, personality manipulation and behavioural conditioning pose as education. Narcissist politicians pose as visionaries for a better world. Corrupt multi-millionaire heads of political parties promise you social justice and ‘equality’. Enslavement poses as ‘job opportunities’. Poisons and toxins pose as edible foodstuffs on all supermarket shelves. Indoctrination and disinformation pose as ‘the news’. Government, military-industrial and power-elite propaganda pose as journalism. Obscenity, mesmerism, and sheer banality pose as harmless entertainment. Social control and massive state-surveillance pose as security. Exploitational colonialism, genocide, plunder and various forms of skulduggery are dressed up as respectable history. Illegal invasions and the destabilization of sovereign states pose as ‘humanitarian regime change’ and/or the spreading of democracy. A list of whacko kings and queens inadequately poses as the fullness of ‘history’. Intel-gathering and narcissism pose as ‘social media’. Infatuation, romance, lust, and pheromonal overflows pose as ‘love’. Drug-pushing poses as ‘The Happy Hour’. Whistleblowers are falsely projected to the public as ‘dangerous criminals’, while genuinely dangerous criminals pose as philanthropists. Oligarchy poses as democracy. Pastiche and cacophony pose as music. Greedy business-people pose as promoters of art. Dangerous pharmaceuticals pose as cures. Genuine cures are falsely projected to the public as quackery. Cures for potentially fatal illnesses are falsely projected to the public as being merely ‘horse de-wormers’. Lunatic asylums pose as parliaments and congresses. Enslavement to trends poses as fashion. The push to undermine the sacred masculine and feminine poses as ‘gender-diversity’ and non-binary nonsense. Sodomy and sexual immorality pose as ‘pride’. Misandry poses as ‘women’s liberation’. Plunder and genocide pose as democratization. Assassination death-squads pose as government ‘intelligence agencies’. The list could go on and on! We live in a world where almost everything is fake and/or a lie because it is a world run currently by the forces of darkness (1 John 5:19), in which hypocrisy, counterfeit and desolation are the pinnacles of their achievements; and they are getting desperate because they know they only have a short time”. [Extracted from https://diakrisis-project.com/2025/03/12/second-edition-of-the-essential-apocalypse-is-now-available-as-an-e-book-in-pdf-format/ , pages 593-594].
Small wonder then that so many see the claims of Christ as just more fakery. (I am speaking from a human point of view because God can obviously overcome the mistrust of anyone). I believe that you are allowing this fakery of the world to undermine your faith. Maybe a part of you wonders why the claims about Christ should not also be part of the fakery of the world. But the whole idea in this world is that Christ has been catapulted explosively into all this fakery as the only real element in it! The Lord is likely waiting on you stopping having one foot in the world, being influenced by its fakery so that it has affected your trust in the truth. The world is fake, but Christ is true!
Engrammed Mistrust
Secondly, I strongly suspect that your weak faith and suspicion of belief has been influenced by a mistrust of others which was likely fostered (and has since festered) in childhood disappointments on discovering that so many significant others had lied to you, which they do. You likely have trust issues with loved ones, always ready to suspect that they are lying to you, just as your parents, teachers and others did to you as a child. You find it hard to say, “I believe”, finding it silly, because often when you believed something which someone told you as a kid it was later shown to be fake. People lied to you. Really, you cannot allow this mendacity of others which happened in your formative years to influence and potentially overthrow your spiritual life. As I said above (and it applies just as much in this situation), “the whole idea in this world is that Christ has been catapulted explosively into all this fakery as the only real element in it!”
Therefore, the time has come to eschew being locked into mistrust born out of past experiences. If the claims of and about the Christ are not true then this whole life experience is a meaningless nihilistic joke. Why on earth would this whole creation be here if that was the case? Truth has to be the real sought-after element of life, otherwise this whole universe might as well disappear up its own backside! Finding that truth in the midst of all the lies and fakery — discovering light in the midst of all the darkness — uncovering good in the midst of all the evil — unearthing what is sweet in the midst of so much that is bitter — realising that Christ is the unique key to all that discovery is what beginning to live for real in the adventure of life is all about.
Belief is not an optional extra; it is absolutely paramount…
“Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
“To all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (Acts 16:31).
“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:18)
“Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24).
“Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?’” (John 11:25-26).
“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33).
“If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15).
“Without faith it is impossible to please God. For anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
“The Apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” (Luke 17:5).
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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2026
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]
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