Britain is suffering from a surfeit of words. Leaders of all kinds are falling over themselves to get in front of microphones and cameras to declare their words to the nation. From princes to politicians of all parties – even the most obscure independents like the Monster Raving Loonies – everyone wants to get their words out into the public square.
This week, we’ve had Prince Andrew, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn all making personal statements trying to win our confidence, presenting manifestoes and making promises to spend billions of public money on the NHS, schools, shorter working weeks, social care for the elderly, planting trees and taking care of the environment and many other popular programmes.
But how can we be sure that what we are hearing is true? The Conservatives have been accused of misusing their Twitter account by rebranding it as a ‘fact-checking’ service. Other parties are finding their own system of convincing the people of the veracity of their statements. There is no way that we can subject all those who are making public statements to some kind of collective lie detector. But is there a common denominator or standard by which we can recognise truth from deception?
The Plumb Line
Back in the 8th Century BC, a preacher called Amos said that God was setting a ‘plumb line’ among the people of Israel. It was a standard of truth that would sort out the lies from the truth, the bogus from the genuine, the figments of the imagination from the facts.
He said that in his quiet time he had seen the Lord standing beside a wall with a plumb line in his hand. If you’ve ever tried hanging wallpaper without using a plumb line you will know what Amos was meaning. If you don’t get that first length of wallpaper absolutely true to the vertical shown by the plumb line, by the time you get round the room your wallpaper will have gone more and more out of line.
The significance for Amos was that the walls around the city that protected the people from enemies were built with two parallel uprights of stone. In between the stone walls a lot of slag was thrown to fill the gap. The slag often contained rubbish that decayed and created pressure inside the walls. The job of the city engineer was to inspect the walls using a plumb line to show if there were any places that were beginning to bulge, indicating that there was internal corruption that could cause the wall to collapse.
Amos, who was the first of the writing prophets of Israel, believed God had given the Torah (his teaching) to Moses as a plumb line of truth, to make guidance available to everyone for discerning the difference between fiction and reality, lies and facts. Some 200 years later, in the time of Jeremiah, this standard was still desperately needed. Jerusalem had surrendered to the Babylonians and many people had been taken into slavery, including the King and most of the national leaders.
Amos believed God had given the Torah to Moses as a plumb line of truth, to make guidance available to everyone for discerning the difference between fiction and reality, lies and facts.
Jeremiah and Hananiah
A new king, Zedekiah, was on the throne and his political advisers, his cabinet, were all advising him to make a treaty with Egypt and to raise an army from neighbouring countries to overthrow Babylon and bring the people home. One of the religious leaders, a man called Hananiah, said that he had received a promise from God that this would be successful. He said:
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the articles of the Lord’s house that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon removed from here and took to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and all the other exiles from Judah who went to Babylon, declares the Lord. For I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.” (Jer 28:2-4)
This sounded like a genuine word from God. Of course, it was a tremendously popular word. But it was all lies, the product of Hananiah’s own imagination. Jeremiah had the unpleasant task of having to confront the false prophet, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord has not sent you, yet you have persuaded this nation to trust in lies” (Jer 28:15).
Where is the Church?
Where are the true prophets in Britain today to expose the false prophets, to separate the fake from the genuine, to protect the people from deception? Surely this is the role of the Church! Church leaders are the guardians of the word of God - the plumb line of truth. It is desperately needed today!
The Church should be the prophet to the nation, declaring the word of God for these times. If church leaders were rightly fulfilling their responsibility today, for example, they would be highlighting the unrighteous laws that have been passed by our Parliament over the last generation, passing one moral red line after another, putting onto the statute book of Britain laws that are directly contrary to the word of God in the Bible.
God did not spare his own chosen people from judgment when they deliberately turned their backs upon truth, running after idols and false promises of prosperity. So why do we think that we can do whatever we like without any unfavourable consequences?
Church leaders are the guardians of the word of God - the plumb line of truth. It is desperately needed today!
Warnings Ignored
Surely, if truth were being proclaimed in the public square today, it would involve a call to repentance and call to account those who have been feeding lies into the nation. This means those responsible for the moral and spiritual welfare of the nation as well as those who direct social policy – in other words, the religious leaders as well as the politicians.
Back in July 1998, the report Family Matters was presented to every Member of both Houses of Parliament. It warned about the consequences of rising levels of family breakdown and called for measures to strengthen family life, as well as recognition of the sociological fact that the heterosexual married couple in a relationship of faithful love is the only type of family that produces health and happiness for adults and protection with good prospects for children.
It warned that unless there were Government changes of policy, family breakdown would increase, with mental health and behavioural problems among schoolchildren escalating, increasing stress among teachers. Juvenile crime would increase especially with respect to drugs and violence and there would be widespread social alienation and disorder.
The report spoke truth into the nation, but it was ignored - with the consequence that we are seeing the fulfilment of its prophecies throughout the land today. Instead of teaching children the truth that the one-man-and-one-woman married family is the ideal, the latest Relationships and Sex Education Regulations strongly encourage schools to teach children pro-LGBTQ+ values. Some schools are now promoting masturbation to primary-age children – and parents are being forbidden to protest at the school gates.
Why have we not seen church leaders shouting from the rooftops? Where is the plumb line of truth?
