REVELATION-DELIVERED
The rule is:
listen and allow the Word to make the beginning, then the knowing (God) will
nicely follow. If, however, you do not listen, you will never know anything.
For it is decreed, God will not be seen, known, or comprehended except through
his Word alone. Whatever therefore one undertakes for salvation apart from the
Word is in vain. God will not respond to that. He will not have it. He will not
tolerate any other way. Therefore, let his Book in which He speaks to you be
commended to you. For he did not cause it to be written to no
purpose. He did not want us to let it lie there in neglect, as if he
were speaking with mice under the bench or with flies on the pulpit. We are to
read it, to think and speak about it, and to study it, certain that He Himself,
not an angel or a creature, is speaking with us in it.
As far as the
apostles were concerned, they were as weak as any other men. They were
uneducated, very ordinary men. Yet they are given this privileged position:
they will deliver the Word of God through the Son to the world. From God the Father, through the Son, through the Spirit, and
through the apostles to the world. In this sense, the apostles are
"foundational" to the church... Theological and ethical instruction
from the apostles is universally binding. Indeed, it is "from God to
us."
Fred Zaspel
Tom Wells and Fred Zaspel, New Covenant
Theology, 2002.
God will not
be known if He does not speak, and we cannot know Him if He has not spoken a
word that we can rely on. God must reveal Himself. That’s the point of the
Bible. Because of our own sins, we could never know God otherwise. Either He
speaks or we are forever lost in the darkness of our own speculations.
Mark Dever
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway,
2000, p. 35.
Can God
reveal Himself to humanity? And, to be more specific, can He reveal
himself in language, the specifics of which become normative for Christian
faith and action? With an inerrant Bible these things are possible.
Without it, theology inevitably enters a wasteland of human speculation. The
church, which needs a sure Word of God, flounders. Without an inerrant
revelation, theology is not only adrift, it is meaningless. Having
repudiated its right to speak on the basis of Scripture, it forfeits its right
to speak on any other issue as well.
James Montgomery Boice
Taken from "Foundations of the
Christian Faith-Book I" by James Montgomery Boice,
page 72. (c)1986
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the USA, Revised edition. Used by
permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=991.
The knowledge
of God cannot be denied; it can only be distorted.
Edward T. Welch
When People are Big and God is Small, P&R
Publishing, 1997, p. 85.
The manner of
God’s revealing His will to men is (also) very different. Some have had
special, personal, and peculiar discoveries of it made to them. So had Samuel
about the choice of the person whom he should anoint king… But now, all are
tied up to the ordinary standing rule of the written Word, and must not expect
any such extraordinary revelations from God. The way we now have to know the
will of God concerning us in difficult cases, is to search and study the
Scriptures, and where we find no particular rule to guide us in this or that
particular case, there we are to apply general rules.
John Flavel
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 132.
God has
communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable
of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both
spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature
of man.
Francis Schaeffer
When God
speaks He speaks so loudly that all the voices of the world seem dumb. And yet
when God speaks He speaks so softly that no one hears the whisper but yourself.
Henry Drummond
What God most
values He has a right to reveal, and what He most values is Himself.
John Hannah
To God be the Glory,
Crossway, 2000, p. 18.
Revelation
does not mean man finding God, but God finding man, God sharing His secrets
with us, God showing us Himself. In revelation, God is the agent as well as the
object
J.I. Packer
God Has Spoken, Baker, 1988, p. 47.
God is not
silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The second person of the Holy Trinity
is called “The Word.” The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God’s continuous
speech. It is the infallible declaration of His mind.
A.W. Tozer
For
the living God to be known, He must make Himself known, and He has done this in
the acts and words recorded in Scripture.
Donald Bloesch
Taken from: A Theology of Word and Spirit © 1992, p. 20, InterVarsity Christian
Fellowship/USA. Used with permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400,
Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
Is
authority to be placed in human wisdom or cultural experience, or is it to be
located in an incommensurable divine revelation that intrudes into our world from
the beyond? Does it lie within the compass of what we can ordinarily discover
or conceive, or does it break into our world as a new reality that overturns
human imagination and conception? Is it a truth waiting to be uncovered through
diligent searching, or is it a word personally addressed to us, calling us to
repentance and obedience?
Donald Bloesch
Taken from: A Theology of Word and Spirit © 1992,p.
185, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Used with permission of
InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.
It is clear
that there must be difficulties for us in a revelation such as the Bible. If
someone were to hand me a book that was as simple to me as the multiplication
table, and say, “This is the Word of God. In it He has revealed His whole will
and wisdom,” I would shake my head and say, “I cannot believe it; that is too
easy to be a perfect revelation of infinite wisdom.” There must be, in any
complete revelation of God’s mind and will and character and being, things hard
for the beginner to understand; and the wisest and best of us are but
beginners.
R.A. Torrey
Revelation is
the act of God whereby what once was concealed from men is now made known to
them.
John Piper
The Wisdom We Speak, 1 Corinthians 2:6-13,
July 20, 1980. www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
God’s Word is
a revelation – a revealing of truth to make the dark things light, bringing
eternity into bright focus. Granted, there are things in Scripture that are
hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). But taken as a whole, the Bible is not a
bewildering book.
John MacArthur
Truth
in a World of Theory from Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a
division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 83.
Revelation
is the activity of God by which He unveils or discloses or makes known what is,
to humanity, otherwise unknowable. It is God making Himself known to those
shaped in His image. Revelation is what God does, not what mankind achieves. It
is a divinely initiated disclosure, not an effort or endeavor or achievement on
the part of mankind.
Sam Storms
Special Revelation I, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
Revelation...is
progressive, i.e., cumulative. God has not revealed Himself comprehensively at
any one stage in history or in any one event. Revelation is a series of divine disclosures,
each of which builds upon and unpacks or unfolds that which preceded it.
Revelation moves from what is piecemeal and partial and incomplete (but always
accurate) to what is comprehensive and final and unified. This contrast between
the incomplete and complete, between the partial and the full,
is not a contrast between false and true, inaccurate and accurate, but a
contrast between shadow and substance, between type and antitype, between
promise and fulfillment.
Sam Storms
Special Revelation I, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.