Jesus said His sheep would hear His voice. He also said, the reason others wouldn't hear His voice, was because their father was the devil. It's the same way today.

You see, Jesus is still speaking. That's what the true gift of the Holy Spirit is all about -- it's so we can speak Christ's message to the nations. When Christians were first filled with the Holy Spirit, they didn't spin around in circles, they stood up and spoke (Acts 4:31).

This brings up a good question. How do we know when Christ is speaking and how do we know when it's the devil? The Apostle John provides an answer. He says, if the message isn't from God, it will contradict in some way what was taught by them -- the First Century Apostles. John said:

We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (1 John 4:6 New American Standard Bible).

In other words, our success in discerning the difference between our Lord's voice and the voice of the devil is directly related to how intimate we have become with the Bible. If the voice is saying something contrary to the Bible, no matter how slightly, we know the voice is not that of our Lord.

Why am I bringing this up? Because, I'm concerned about what I'm seeing. If you recall, in the end, the Bible tells us there is to be a time of testing for the whole world. And, to some degree, I fear the testing may have already begun.

Over the last few days, motivated in part by the passing of the pope, I've written commentary about the importance of truth. I pointed out that truth is a moral issue, just like the issues of abortion and gay marriage. I even went so far as to say, as evangelical Christians, truth is our ultimate moral issue. Why? Because, Satan, our arch enemy and deceiver, is a moral angel. That being the case, it makes truth our ultimate moral issue.

I was stunned by the reaction. Although the majority of my readers responded positively, many didn't. In fact, the way some attacked, you would think I had just made a pact with the devil.

Friends, now I'm really concerned. When the time comes when we can't stand up for truth anymore -- even among evangelical Christians -- persecution is around the corner.

So it begins ...