our parents insisted that we tell the truth when a misbehaviour is under investigation and we should do so even when we know that someone is going to have to give account. I hope yours did too, because right now, AD 2020, is a bad time to flirt with lies of any kind, and we find Church and state frequently in collusiion with known lies and misdirection.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John. 8:12

The opportunity to separate oneself from lying rhetoric seems to have come to Yeshua’s contemporaries after Yeshua announced that He was the world’s light. If he was the world’s light what were the sacred texts, the temple services, the priesthood and the Davidide monarchy? An examination of these staples in Jewish life were opportunities to not lie any more about history.

This saying – John 8:12 – was like salt in the wound, intended to heal, but the sting was volatile. It set off the bells about the self-talk that had guided the thinking of Yeshua’s contemporaries and many generations before and since. There was a great deal of stumbling in Israelite history and the darkness was never obscure. Sinai’s darkness, the cycle of subjugation duing the Judges era, the subsequent bad kings and exile made the Isaiah prediction of the land that walked in darkness seeing a great light an all the more attractive incentive to tell the truth.

The response to Yeshua’s testimony kept trying to separate him from God, while Yeshua did not even have to try: he naturally imitated God – his father. The work on the Sabbath (John 5:17), the healing of the sick (frequently), and the forgiveness of sin ( Matt. 9:2, Matt. 9:5, Mark. 2:5, Mark. 3:28, Luke. 5:20, Luke. 7:47, Luke. 7:48) were evidence that needed no explanation or debate. When did Satan ever open blind eyes or shone light into dark places? Never!

Being unable to separate Yeshua from what they knew to be God’s goodness they resorted to technicalities such (a) as a man canot be God, and (b) the need for two or three witness to establish a matter. We can overlook the “God cannot be man” argument by referring to the creation of mankind in God’s image. The question of witness was truly moot.

Yeshua was doing, in the first place, what the Father does and what people wanted the Father to do. Secondly, it is ridiculous for anyone to think that God was allowing someone to do work that was exclusively his. Did not God stop the Egyptian magicians immediately when they tried to duplicate the transformation of Moses’ rod into a serpent? Thirdly, which human could say he or she knows anything about the Father’s person? None. Only God knows God.

But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. Heb. 1:8,

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John. 1:17, No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. John. 1:18,

John 1:17-18

When it come to grace one lie ruins everything.

How dreadful a fate it is to hear from the One who holds the keys “You will die in your sin”! That is about as horrendous and alarming as a situation can be.

They knew neither Yeshua nor God, and Isaiah predicted (6:10) no path to conversion for the masses (confirmed in Matthew 13:15). They kept substituting their views and rhetoric in order to short circuit Yeshua’s message. Do not do this!

So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”

John. 8:21