Job 6:24-25

24 'Teach me, and I will be silent; And show me how I have erred. 25 'How painful are honest words! But what does your argument prove? NASB

Words of truth are powerful. They are powerful enough to make anyone silent when they finally and correctly identify them. However fancy rhetoric, which is laced with truth, is evil. Though good intentions are always behind them, once truth is distorted, it becomes evil and its evil heads down a path of even more evil.

Job asks for their arguments to be backed up with facts. List the facts and he will listen, but simply throw out innuendo and the arguments are worthless. What good is it, when reasonable arguments are laced with distortions?

If the hypothesis is false, then the reasoning is false. If the reasoning is false, then the conclusion is false. If the conclusion is false, then the premise is false.

How does this apply to Job? His friends theorized that since he was suffering, then he was under judgment. If under judgment, then he needed to recognize it, repent it, and then God would perhaps turn His heavy hand away from him.

The entire reasoning process is laced with truth, but its application was in error.

While it is true that if you are a bad person, then suffering may very well fall into your life, but not necessarily always during this life. Some bad people can be allowed to live their life of evil, but will not see their suffering until they leave this world in death. In the next life they will get their due. Saddam, Hitler and others may be extreme examples of this.

Likewise it is true that if one repents, then God will forgive, but the suffering may very well continue for a time if not indefinitely. Suppose you fooled around socially a little too much and came down with an incurable disease. You will suffer in this life for sure, and if you repent, the disease will not miraculously go away. You may have to live with it for the rest of your life, however long or short that might be.

The repenting in this case, will not solve your earthly problems, but it will open up the door for your spiritual life. And growth in your spiritual life will open up the door for phenomenal blessings in the next life. As for this life, your physical pain may remain, but your mental anguish will eventually dissipate due to the increased capacity you will develop in your spiritual growth. So your life will be better even though you have an ongoing affliction.

Politicians, especially liberal ones, use this type of argument to bolster their impact and win votes. They have good intentions, therefore their facts are not necessary in order to make their point. This approach works only on the na ve. Anyone who pays attention, or anyone who tests their theories, will not be fooled by political rhetoric.

Let see, what would be a good example? Global warming? The world has been around for a very long time. There is ample proof that the Middle East was a forested region thousands of years ago. Today it is a wasteland. Did that wasteland occur recently? No. The Middle East has been a wasteland for thousands of years. Did man cause the warming or is there something else to blame? Sunspots perhaps, or weather trends, or some natural world climate phenomena even something else, like a combination of all of these things.

What do we know from the Bible? The Tribulation is future. When it will occur, we do not know, but it is a future time, and during that seven-year period, the weather will go berserk. There will be basketball hailstones, famines, flooding and super high heat, storms like never before and so forth. Are these caused by man, or again, are they caused by something else.

Perhaps weather is allowed to warm in order to provide a longer growing season so that more food can be grown in order to feed the growing world population?

Anyway, we are getting off the subject a little bit. The whole point of this is that weather and its causes cannot be determined. We can only observe and record the patterns. Weather may very well be a natural phenomenon but controlled by Christ. Hummm. Can't really leave out the divine aspect in any discussion. Even though we cannot measure or verify it.

Maybe there is a correlation between the world climate and the spiritual lives of the general population? Hummm! World sin and Noah flood. World sin and forests turned to deserts. World sin and the Rapture. World sin and the Tribulation. World sin and the judgment of the Second Advent. Sin in your life and cursing surrounds you. Faith in your life and blessing surrounds you. World faith and the perfect environment of the Millennium. Hummm!

That is where faith comes into play. We study our Bibles, and we begin to see truth, courtesy of the Holy Spirit. Maybe there is more to life than temperatures and trends.

What can man really do to stop global warming? Nothing really. Can you imagine everyone suddenly parking their cars and buying horses for transportation? Can you imagine everyone riding bicycles in rainstorms, snowstorms, in ice storms and such, forty miles each way to work and back home? Uphill? Carrying kids and groceries? Do we really want to live our lives like those folks in Afghanistan, or Somalia? Really?

Can we stop the wind from blowing around the globe? Can we control the sunspot activity? No.

Anyway, such arguments, influence only the na ve. No solutions will be offered and those solutions that are offered will be absurd to the point of ludicrous. In thirty years, our world population will double to twelve billion. In another thirty or forty years, that population will double again to twenty-four billion. Then it will go to fifty and then to a hundred billion people in the next century. What rules will control those folks.

Somewhere along the line, perhaps when humanity is so overwhelmed with problems, Christ will pull the plug and the Rapture will occur, and then the Tribulation will reveal mans real incompetence, and inability to understand, let alone control his environment, and life.

In the mean time, we will have to live with the Eliphaz's of the world. They will gain headlines and talk show time, and they will offer their conclusions. And all of it will be of no practical use.

Your life does not depend on whether or not your car gets ten miles to the gallon, or a hundred. Your pocket book might be affected, but not your life. Your spiritual life is the real you, not your worldly life.

Your spiritual life is formed and sculpted by Bible doctrine, not world opinion. And certainly not by those who offer truth-laced opinions, ignoring 'all' of the facts of life, and drawing conclusions, which only serve to advance them in their profession, and nothing more.

Before Jobs problems, Job was the center of attention. Remember chapter one? Now Eliphaz is having an opportunity to some fame. And even though he does know a great deal of doctrine or truth, his arguments are flawed because he is drawing conclusions based on presumptions, not facts.

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