{"id":8030,"date":"2011-10-11T06:24:27","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T11:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=8030"},"modified":"2011-10-11T06:24:27","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T11:24:27","slug":"on-the-nature-of-revelation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2011\/20111011-8030.htm","title":{"rendered":"On the Nature of Revelation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m blessed to belong to a church that takes the Bible seriously–and that teaches its people how to correctly divide the Word of truth.<\/p>\n

I’m taking Systematic Theology I this year and am loving it. <\/p>\n

One thing I’m not necessarily loving is how busy I’ve been between Systematic Theology, teaching Sunday School, Bible study, and working. <\/p>\n

Which is why, after spending way too much time looking up nail art online (as opposed to writing a blog post), I’m going to cheat on blogging by posting an excerpt from my first Systematic Theology paper (due today) on Bibliology.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

God is not silent.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

He does not lurk in dark corners, such that no one will see him. Instead, He is at work revealing Himself to all men (Ps 98:2, Rom 1:19). <\/p>\n

He reveals Himself through a variety of means, including through creation (Ps 19:1, Rom 1:20), through human conscience (Rom 2:15), through the prophets (Heb 1:1), through Jesus Christ (Heb 1:2), and through the words of Scripture (2 Pet 1:20-21). <\/p>\n

Generally, the ways through which God reveals Himself are divided into two categories:<\/strong> general revelation, which is given to all indiscriminately, and special revelation, which is given to specific individuals. <\/p>\n

General revelation encompasses what can be known of God from creation, from human conscience, and through reasoning. <\/p>\n

Special revelation encompasses what God reveals of Himself through the words of Scripture or of prophecy. <\/p>\n

Certain things are true of all revelation<\/strong>, both general and specific. <\/p>\n

First, all revelation is available because God expressly purposed to reveal it (Matt 11:25-27). No revelation is accidental or outside God’s will. <\/p>\n

Second, because revelation is God Himself revealing Himself and because God is completely true and incapable of lying (Num 23:9, Tit 1:2), all revelation is completely true. <\/p>\n

Third, because God is unchanging (Jam 1:17, Mal 3:6, Ps 102:27, Num 23:9) and his word is true, revelation cannot contradict itself. If God were changeable, it would be possible for revelation to be true at a certain point in time and not true at another; but since God is unchanging, all revealed truth must be the same at all times. <\/p>\n

Finally, while all revelation is purposeful, is true, and is non-contradictory, a final characteristic of all revelation is that it can be suppressed or misinterpreted by unbelieving hearts (Rom 1:18, 2 Cor 3:14-15, I Tim 4:1-2).<\/p>\n

\n

How do you like my dry, academic writing? Our assignment was to summarize what we believed about revelation (with Scriptural support) in one and a half double spaced pages.<\/p>\n

Yeah. This is one-third of what I wrote and what I wrote only scratched the surface. <\/p>\n

But I suppose it’s a start.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m blessed to belong to a church that takes the Bible seriously–and that teaches its people how to correctly divide the Word of truth. I’m taking Systematic Theology I this year and am loving it. One thing I’m not necessarily loving is how busy I’ve been between Systematic Theology, teaching Sunday School, Bible study, and … Read more On the Nature of Revelation<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[26],"tags":[161,473,1030,1066],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8030"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}