What Is Truth?

I am the way, the truth, and the life. ~ John 14:6.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ~ John 8:32.

The world defines truth as "conformity with fact, agreement with reality, accuracy, correctness, verity of a statement or thought, genuineness, conduct following the divine standard, spirituality of life and behavior, that which is true, real, or actual in a general or abstract sense, reality, specifically in religious use, spiritual reality as the subject of revelation or object of faith."

Noah Webster, in his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, wrote this exquistely detailed definition of truth:

1. Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be. The truth of history constitutes its whole value. We rely on the truth of the scriptural prophecies. My mouth shall speak truth. ~ Proverbs 8:7. Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth. ~ John 17:17.

2. True state of facts or things. The duty of a court of justice is to discover the truth. Witnesses are sworn to declare the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

3. Conformity of words to thoughts, is called moral truth. "Shall truth fail to keep her word?"

4. Veracity; purity from falsehood; practice of speaking truth; habitual disposition to speak truth; as when we say, a man is a man of truth.

5. Correct opinion.

6. Fidelity; constancy. "The thoughts of past pleasure and truth."

7. Honesty; virtue. "It must appear | That malice bears down truth."

8. Exactness; conformity to rule. "Plows, to go true, depend much on the truth of the iron work."

9. Real fact of just principle; real state of things. There are innumerable truths with which we are not acquainted.

10. Sincerity. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. ~ John 4:23.

11. The truth of God, is his veracity and faithfulness, Psalms 71:22. Or his revealed will, I have walked in thy truth. ~ Psalms 26:3.

12. Jesus Christ is called the truth, John 14.

13. It is sometimes used by way of concession. She said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. ~ Matthew 15:27. That is, it is a truth; what you have said, I admit to be true. In truth in reality; in fact. Of a truth in reality; certainly. To do truth is to practice what God commands. John 3.


Truth (ἀλήθεια, alétheia), is not merely truth as spoken, but truth of idea, reality, sincerity, truth in the moral sphere, and divine truth as revealed to man, often called straightforwardness.

To the pioneering mystic, to the traveler on the Via Christa, truth is what is absolutely real because truth is an absolute and abstract principle, a law of being and of doing. Truth is an absolute ultimate principle, an unalterable and permanent fact; God is truth. Truth, as a law of being, requires that you be truth to do what is true. Truth, as a law of doing, requires that you think, choose, speak, act, and live according to truth.


Edna Lister on Truth
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The Truth: Appearances Versus Reality
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Truth in Expression
» Coming soon »


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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 –1971
The original Pioneering Mystic
minister, teacher, and author

Edna Lister


References

The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: 2 volumes. E.S.C. Weiner, editor. Oxford University Press, 1971.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).


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