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.
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.
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 BoiceTaken 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. Get this book!
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.
Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, Crossway, 2000, p. 35. Get this book!
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.
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.
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 132.
What God most values He has a right to reveal, and what He most values is Himself.
To God be the Glory, Crossway, 2000, p. 18.
Since [the] perfections characterize God, they cannot be discovered and defined by man, especially in his depravity, for man by himself cannot know God completely. Rather, God must reveal Himself for man to assuredly know anything about God, including His perfections. God has revealed Himself in nature, but humanity corrupts that knowledge. Only the Bible gives accurate information about God and His perfections. Even this information is not exhaustive, but it is true because it is written in the inspired text.
God the Father by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue taken from Biblical Doctrine by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, copyright 2017, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 151.
God exists. He exists as He is revealed by the Bible. The reason one must believe that He exists is because He said that He exists. His existence must not be accepted on the basis of human reason, because that is limited to time and space and has been corrupted by indwelling sin. God has sufficiently revealed Himself in the Bible, but He has not revealed Himself exhaustively. Man can know only what God has revealed in Scripture about His nature and works. But that is sufficient for people to know Him in a personal, saving relationship.
God the Father by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue taken from Biblical Doctrine by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, copyright 2017, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 151.
God is not comprehensively or exhaustively knowable to humans in any aspect of His being or actions. Humans are limited to time and space and in Adam are corrupted by indwelling sin… [God] has not revealed to us all that He is or all that He knows… God’s thinking transcends man’s intellectual capacity, process and output.
God the Father by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue taken from Biblical Doctrine by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, copyright 2017, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. Page 145.
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.
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 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
God Has Spoken, Baker, 1988, p. 47.
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Revelation is the act of God whereby what once was concealed from men is now made known to them.
The Wisdom We Speak, 1 Corinthians 2:6-13, July 20, 1980. www.desiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
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.
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.
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.
Special Revelation I, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.
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.
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.
The knowledge of God cannot be denied; it can only be distorted.
When People are Big and God is Small, P&R Publishing, 1997, p. 85. Get this book!
