New Lie Detector, Old News

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GOD SAID in Isaiah, Chapter 3, Verse 9:

The show of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

GOD SAID concerning a rebellious Israel that their countenance testified to their evil as it was with Sodom.

Genesis, Chapter 18, Verses 20-21:

And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;

I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.

GOD SAID He had heard the wicked cry of Sodom and He came down to see if it were so. Simply by looking at their countenance He would know.

MAN SAID God's word lacks credible validity. There are no absolutes and we should honor everyone's opinion and the idea that there is a God who can tell your deeds by looking at your face is simply foolishness.

Now, THE RECORD. According to the word of God, the countenance...your face, is a spiritual reflector.

Genesis, Chapter 4, Verse 5:

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

Because Cain was possessed of an angry spirit his countenance reflected it and the biblical description was, "his countenance fell."

Genesis, Chapter 31, Verse 2:

And Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, and, behold, it was not toward him as before.

It was apparent to Jacob, just by looking at his father-in-law's face that things were not right between them.

Psalms, Chapter 10, Verse 4:

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.

To a human with any life experience at all, the idea that the look on an individual's face often tells their particular attitude, is not news. However, most do not consider that this show of attitude is a reflection of the spirit that dwells within. The great man of God, Daniel, tells us that the countenance is a product of spiritual happenings going on inside.

Daniel, Chapter 7, Verse 28:

Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me: but I kept the matter in my heart.

Proverbs, Chapter 15, Verse 13:

A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.

So then a person's countenance is a product of the spirit that operates in them whether it's a fearful, deceitful, carnal spirit or a faithful, honest, righteous spirit.

Understanding that the average human can tell the spiritual attitude of a fellow human by looking at his face, it should be no surprise that an all-knowing God could look at a person's countenance and tell their spiritual condition past and present. It should also be no surprise that science, howbeit unwittingly at times, certifies the credibility of God's word multitudes of times.

In Discover Magazine, an article titled, "Liar, Liar, Face on Fire," discussed a new high-speed computer program dealing with the human countenance. A couple of paragraphs from that article follow:

Polygraph lie detectors are notoriously unreliable: 10 percent of liars pass, and 20 percent of truth tellers fail. But the real truth is written all over your face, says cognitive scientist Marian Stewart Bartlett, at the Institute for Neural Computation in San Diego. Every emotion a person feels elicits an involuntary facial expression, but often just for a split second. When someone tries to cover those emotions, the expression passes so quickly most people miss it.

Now there's a way to catch liars in the act. Bartlett and several colleagues at the Salk Institute have developed a high-speed computer program that analyzes videotapes to automatically detect a subject's microexpressions.

Paul Elkman who pioneered the work on facial expression, identified 46 distinct expressions that humans use to convey emotion. It is Elkman's data that the new high-speed computer program has implemented.

An article in Psychology Today titled, "Human Lie Detectors," dealt with receptive aphasics. Receptive aphasics are people who cannot understand speech. Their ability to discern whether a person was lying just by looking at their faces was substantially higher than those who could listen to and see the face of the speaker. The first and last paragraphs of the story follow:

We're notoriously bad at determining when someone's pulling the wool over our eyes; studies show we get fooled half of the time. We could stand to learn from receptive aphasics, people who cannot understand speech—and have the strange ability to ferret out liars from truth-tellers based on facial expression alone.

"Aphasics pay attention to fleeting facial expressions," explains study author Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D., a psychologist at Massachusetts General. "Their ability to spot liars seems to be an acquired skill." So the rest of us should focus on people's body language—not the lines they feed us—if we want the real truth.

GOD SAID simply by looking at the countenance of the people of Sodom He would be able to tell if they were guilty of the evil report He had heard.

MAN SAID God's word lacks credible validity. There are no absolutes and we should honor everyone's opinion and the idea that there is a God who can tell your deeds by looking at your face is simply foolishness.

Now you have THE RECORD.

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References:

King James Bible

"Liar, Liar, Face on Fire," Discover Magazine, July 1999

Talan, J., "The New Lie Detector," Psychology Today, Sept./Oct. 1999

"Human Lie Detectors," Psychology Today, Sept./Oct. 1999

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