"However, when he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth. . . . He will glorify me, for everything that he makes known to you he will draw from what is mine." John 16:13, 14, N.E.B.

Time and again in His last words to His disciples Christ associated the Holy Spirit with truth. The term "Spirit of truth" means the Spirit who communicates truth. He leads us into the truth on all the eternal issues found in Christ and in the Word of God. Christ and the Holy Spirit stand as our supreme teachers. They disclose clearly to our minds our relationship to the spiritual world. "Your Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will call to mind all that I have told you" (John 14:26, N. E. B.).

At the very core of the Christian faith is God's respect for man as a rational and responsible person. God can use no methods or bring to bear no pressure that violates our personal integrity. The Christian faith is supernatural, but it is never irrational. False doctrine must be met by the authority of the truth of God's Word. The Holy Spirit does not allow feeling or emotional excitement to form the basis for a sound choice as to what is truth. Only by balanced emphasis on the Word and the Holy Spirit can God be glorified and men be sanctified by the truth.

The Bible is God's book. It is heaven's light for a dark world. God's Word is a path of light laid at our feet to lead us to God and to our eternal home. The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit (see Eph. 6:17). Whenever the Holy Spirit seeks to communicate with us, the truth of the Bible has priority, not some other professed "truth." The Spirit seeks to bring about our total allegiance to the truth of God.

The source of authority for our lives and for the church is the Bible, and the Holy Spirit who leads us into Bible truth. Truth does not change. Time does not destroy its relation to life itself. It is not for more religious information that men perish. We need always to hear the voice of God speaking to us through the Word by the Holy Spirit. We must be prepared to pay the price for firm allegiance to the truth. God will take it from there.