Truth Be Told: A Blog by Pastor Bill Alderson

The story of the Bible is the history of God leading His people through the wilderness. The clearest illustration of this is found in the books of Moses and the records of the Hebrew nation and their road to the promised land. It proved to each of God’s people that He would be their leader in the wilderness through Moses, as Psalm 77:20 says, “ You led Your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron .” Once God brought His people through the Red Sea and guided them to Mount Sinai, He defined for them a new relationship with Him through the Torah, His laws. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:23-24 that, “ we were kept in custody under the law ”, the law becoming a tutor (one who leads children) to lead us to Christ. God’s plan was that He would be with them, His presence going before them as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. His presence would reside in the middle of all religious activities as the Ark of the Covenant to remind them of His holiness. Ultimately, the Father ...

    Numbers have important meanings in Scripture. For example, the number four represents the world (four corners), five speaks about grace, six is the number for man, and seven is used to reference perfection or completion. But what about the number eight? The number eight is very significant such that it is used 73 times in the Bible. It is the symbol of Resurrection and Regeneration. In Bible numerology, eight means new beginning ; it denotes “a new order or creation, and man's true 'born again' event when he is resurrected from the dead into eternal life .” The first historic reference is to Noah and his family as “ eight persons were brought safely through the water ” (1Peter 3:20). Those eight persons experienced a true new beginning once the flood receded. Another was instituted by God as a sign of the covenant He was making with Abraham in Genesis 17:12, that each child would be circumcised on the eighth day. This covenant with Abraham represented a new relation...

  When Jesus made his famous statement on the cross, “It is finished” in John 19:30, He was saying more than His work on earth was completed. The finished work of Christ addresses the full scope of God’s justice in directly dealing with the matter separating man from his God – sin! The Greek word katallasso is translated “reconciled” and basically means that God has taken upon Himself the work and has become an atonement. It possesses the idea of a total change not dependent on the receiver. The sense is that God has laid aside or withdrawn His wrath so that man no longer has to worry that the wrath may be restored at some later date based on his failure. “It is finished” ! To experience reconciliation is to believe on and trust in the atoning work of Christ, that Jesus is God and that His work was enough. In Romans 5:10-11, Paul writes, “ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son , much more , having been reconciled, we shall be saved b...

We are introduced to the concept of sin early in the Scriptures, in Genesis 3 with the fall of Adam and Eve. Their reaction to their sin was to hide (verse 8). Then in chapter 4, Cain has a face to face run-in with sin and his reaction is anger. The Lord warned him that “ sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you ”. Sin is everything in the disposition and purpose and conduct of God's moral creatures that is contrary to the expressed will of God. It represents the central struggle of man. As a result, there are many manifestations of sin, as many as there are people. And according to Genesis 4, it has an energy unto itself with some type of agenda. In this case, sin wants to master Cain, so the Lord encourages Cain that, “you must master it” . Although it was not directly stated, it was understood that any offering to God had to be “firstlings” , meaning that God deserves our best. When Abel offered his best while Cain’s offering was “the fruit of the ground” , the L...

  Thirty-six years ago, I was invited to a Bible study at an elementary school in Framingham, MA by a business friend. That night was the beginning of a long relationship I’ve had with our ministry. The name of the ministry at the time was “The Bible Speaks”. That’s kind of a strange name; ministries do not usually have a verb in their name! But as I listened more and more to Pastor Carl Stevens teach, his ability to quote Scripture, and speak truth to my heart, the name made a lot of sense. The Bible does speak and I was hearing that certain sound. Since that initial experience, I have recognized God’s call on my life to go to Bible college and become ordained as a pastor in this ministry. This journey has included a series of major challenges of life that seemed to accompany the things I was being taught in the classroom. God was bringing to life the Biblical truths I was now learning and to accept them as true, not just theologically, but personally. It has taken the extende...

With the 2020 presidential election right around the corner, it is important that Christians understand citizenship. As one born and raised in America, I was taught that we had a civic responsibility to our various government agencies, including voting in elections, serving on jury duty, and behaving as a good neighbor to my fellow citizens. Thomas Jefferson said,   " God... has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own."   The degree that one exercises good citizenship is directly related to his perception of the value he places on that entity. Government works well when the people believe it operates justly and with a sense of the common good. For the Christian, this principle occupies an important p...

One of the most recognizable of Jesus’s parables is the Prodigal Son. Most of us have heard messages on the subject of a restored relationship with the Father using this parable as its text, but what if this particular lesson was intended to address the Jews? Since Jews and Christians share the same Father, could Jesus be referring to the Jews as the prodigal? If the Jews are the prodigal, then how is the church the older brother? In Deuteronomy 21:15-17, the law of Moses addresses the man who has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and the unloved one has borne him a son as the firstborn. Verse 17 concludes: “ But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right of the firstborn.” In the Prodigal parable, the younger son is the prodigal while the older son has been serving his father and says, “ I have never neglected a command of yours ”.   Th...