We’ve all seen in recent months, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the first casualty of war is truth.
We know that even before the first wave of artillery was fired, a huge propaganda war had been undertaken in both nations to justify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Just recently we’ve heard that Meta removed 1,600 fake Facebook accounts peddling Russian misinformation.
This should come as no surprise to students of history.
Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the Holocaust didn’t just happen out of the blue.
Hitler first took control of the press, enabling him to infect the public with his ideology.
With all media either under his thumb or destroyed, there was no one to warn the citizens that they were slowly being convinced wrong was right and right was wrong.
The next institution required to completely destroy truth is education.
When students from a young age are indoctrinated to whatever un-Godly theory is being taught as fact, the truth is lost in only a few short years.
This was reality for far too long for millions of people living behind the Iron Curtain in Communist regimes.
Thankfully, our founders at EEM (Eastern European Mission) risked their own lives to smuggle Bibles into this territory, so that a remnant of believers could continue to share the truth of God’s word in this region far too acquainted with lies and false propaganda.
These people couldn’t look to their political leaders or their educational systems for truth, and so for many generations, it was lost to them.
While Eastern Europe is undergoing a great spiritual awakening as a result of this most recent conflict, we in the U.S. have become complacent and spiritually apathetic and therefore find ourselves as the next victims in the war on truth.
We know with the advent of the November elections, we are already seeing a lot of political posturing that may not be an accurate representation of reality.
Much of this is propagated through social media and occasionally by mainstream journalists, many of whom think they are unbiased, but who have in reality been indoctrinated by key influences surrounding them from an early age.
We’ve also seen many school boards around the country take a careful look at proposed curriculum, determining in many instances that "revised" textbooks may in fact be revisionist versions of history, attempting a new round of anti-God indoctrination in our public schools.
"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions," we are warned in 2 Timothy 4:3. We already see many in our nation saying right is wrong and wrong is right because God is not their god.
As we try and judge for ourselves what is truth, we need to rely on God’s word – the source of all truth. We can’t depend on others, we can’t rely on politicians, the media or even our schools, or we are in danger of being led astray.
May it be said of us, as it was of Jesus in the Scriptures, that we are known for our integrity and aren’t swayed by others because we are paying attention (Matthew 22:16). In fact, God’s word warns us that “even from our own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw others after them” (Acts 20:30).
Never is that more clear than in an election cycle or in a time of war, when the battle for hearts and minds is waged not only in the trenches, but in the ballot boxes.
We may not be voting at gunpoint, as many Ukrainians endured recently. But may we stand firmly on the truth, just as many of them did, despite the potential repercussions.
Remember, the only way to true freedom is truth itself.
"Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).
Bob Burckle and Dirk Smith are president and vice-president, respectively, of Eastern European Mission, which has been delivering God’s Word to the people of Eastern Europe since 1961. They provided 1.5 million Bibles and Bible-based materials free of charge in the region in 2021, including in the public schools of Croatia, Romania, and Ukraine. More at www.eem.org.
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