“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20)
Every account of the Lord Jesus Christ, what some call a “story,” had within it no embellishments to modify those accounts for the listener, no added items to expound further, the truth was spoken by Him, continuously. If you doubt these words, then you must doubt the existence of hell as He spoke of it in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, you must question the entire book of Jonah, “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” (Matt. 12:41)
If you do not believe what the Lord said while He walked on this earth, you will begin to question every aspect of the Scriptures.
The parables that He gave are just as misinterpreted and, in some cases, confusing to those who live today as they were in His day. “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” (Matt. 13:15)
The truth of the Word of God is open to all who will hear, but unless the Holy Spirit opens your ears and your heart to accept them as such, you will live in a land of conjecture and doubt, and my friends you must be willing to not only accept as truth that which you do not want to know as such but believe fully in what is written. Hard verses are not so easy to accept.
“See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.” (Deut. 32:39)
“As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” (Romans 9:13)
“Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.” (Matt. 17:17)
The person who can do so sees clearly through the lie that God is only love, that He loves everyone so much that all will live in His kingdom. Satan is real and God created him for a specific purpose, hell is real and all who do not accept the sacrifice and shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ will go there and remain there until they are cast into the Lake of Fire, the Almighty killed thousands of people just for looking into the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus made a whip to drive people out of the temple, and then and died for those same people.
“And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” (John 2:17)
These are not usually the accounts that you will hear on Sunday morning these days, we want our ears tickled, we want to feel wanted, even needed by a loving God, not reproved and rebuked, sin has become an allegory for a momentary lapse of goodness. The enabled society was created just for this cause, to draw men away from their own responsibility towards God, to cause doubt as to His love and care for all who will come to Him.
In every age of man, the ruling power, the government, has always been willing to take the place of God in the lives of mankind. This world has always been run by spiritual powers, the Most High prompts, Satan coerces, and we have the free will to choose between the two, there is no third option. Our adversary does not need us to be evil in our intent, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)
Another truth that many will not believe, we are born in sin, there is no way to be saved from our sins but by the mercy of God, you can never be good enough, and if you do not accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, you will suffer horribly for all eternity.
Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, Gideon laid a fleece out, a virgin conceived and bore a Son, men who raped and murdered are in heaven today because they believed the truth.
“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17)
You cannot find the truths of the Scriptures unless the Holy Spirit shows them to you, and only those who have been born-again have the Holy Spirit within them. The first battle is to attempt to show them the truth of the cross, the Lord will reveal what He will to them after that.