General vs Special Revelation

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Let's have a word of prayer.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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As we continue to study the revelation that you have provided to us and how it came to us, I pray that you would just give us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to understand that which you have provided for us in your holy word.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Lesson seven in your book is views of general revelation.
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Now earlier in this series, and we are in a little series on the subject of Bibliology, and remember what Bibliology is, it's the study of the scripture.
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Not the studying of the Bible, but the studying of what the Bible is, its nature, where it came from, and how we received it in the form that it is currently in.
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How is it not only translated, but transmitted down through the last 2,000 years of history.
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And we made a note early on that revelation has not always come to us in the form of the written word, but God's revelation began with his spoken word, which was audible and heard by various people.
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God spoke, as Hebrews 1 tells us, God in many ways, in various ways it says, spoke by our fathers through the prophets, or to our fathers through the prophets.
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So we know that when God speaks to a man, and that man then speaks to the people on God's behalf, he becomes a prophet of God, because God is using him for that purpose.
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And the first person in scripture to receive a revelation from God is Adam, because Adam had a direct revelation from God that he spoke with God, he walked with God, he had a relationship with God that was then damaged by sin.
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Disobedience brought about his separation from God, and also all of his posterity.
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We all are sons and daughters of Adam, and as a result are now separated from God, until such time as God chooses to give us a new heart, a regenerated heart, which desires to be in a relationship with him, and we place our faith in his son Jesus Christ, who gives us new life in him.
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So this is our state, the state of the Adamic nature.
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Adam had a revelation from God, Noah had a revelation from God, after him Abraham had a revelation from God, and then throughout there are others, like Enoch and others, who we see interspersed in the scripture as having direct revelations from God.
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But the first person to be given a written revelation from God was whom? Moses.
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Yeah, Moses was the first one, and we wouldn't know about Adam, or Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or any of the rest, if it were not for Moses, because he was the one, in fact, who was used by God to write all of that down.
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Now, we might know about it by word of mouth, or what we call verbal tradition, or verbal transmission of stories, and that's certainly how Moses knew about these people before he wrote them.
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I'm sure that the people of God in Egypt, where Moses was, had not forgotten that they were Hebrews.
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They had not forgotten that they were of the tribe of Israel, their father, the twelve tribes of Israel.
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I'm sure they hadn't forgotten Joseph, and how he had been the one that Pharaoh made second command, because of his ability to interpret his dreams.
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So we know that the people of Israel knew these things, but the intricate nature by which Moses is able to explain everything about the story of Abraham on Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, and the story of Hagar and Ishmael, all of these things come to Moses by direct revelation, and he writes them down.
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Some people don't believe Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible.
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I do.
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I believe that there's no reason not to believe that.
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The only part of the first five books of the Bible Moses didn't write, that I believe, is the last part of Deuteronomy, because it talks about Moses' death.
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So it would have been most likely Joshua who would have written that.
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And that's fine.
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I don't have an issue with that, because it doesn't say Moses wrote this.
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But tradition does.
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Traditions say these are the books of Moses, and I have no reason to disagree with the writings that it being written by Moses.
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So, having said all that, we talk about revelation in two ways.
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We talk about revelation first as divine special revelation.
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So we're just going to call this special revelation.
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Special revelation comes from God to an individual, and through that individual to a group.
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So special revelation came from God to Moses, and that information then goes out to the group, right? Because it goes to the Ten Commandments, or special revelation.
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It's the only thing we know that God ever wrote with his finger.
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You know, wrote the Ten Commandments.
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And then Moses, of course, destroyed those tablets.
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So we don't have anything God actually wrote.
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But that happened.
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It was direct revelation from God.
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And we call that special revelation, because it's given by an individual for a particular people at a particular time and particular space.
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There is another type of revelation that we haven't really dealt with yet, and this is something that we need to really wrap our minds around.
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It's called general revelation.
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And general revelation, sometimes we think of general things as being common or basic, but that's not what the word general here means.
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General revelation means has been given to all in general, rather than to anyone in specific or in a special way.
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Rather than saying that we have been given revelation specially by God, which we have in his word, through his prophets, general revelation is given to everyone in a very general way.
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What are some examples of general revelation that you see in your daily life? Okay.
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The Bible says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament above his handiwork.
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And you say, well that doesn't say that's a revelation.
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Well Paul does, because later in Romans 1, he says they see God's creation in the things that have been made.
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They know that there is a creator because there is a creation.
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Creation demands the existence of a creator.
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It's like, oh I can see his face, Ray Comfort.
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Ray Comfort, when he's talking to people who are unbelievers, he'll say, look at that building.
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How do you know that building had a builder? He says, because it wouldn't be there without it.
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How do you know that building had a builder? If you see a painting, do you have to have met the painter to know that the painter exists? No, the painting is evidence of the painter.
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The building is evidence of the builder.
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You know there was an architect involved because the building is not slanted or falling apart.
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You know there was engineers involved because there's electricity and water going to the building.
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You see, you can extrapolate so much information just by looking at a building.
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You know, there was painters involved.
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There was artisans involved.
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There's all kinds of people involved in that thing.
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And you make that without ever having met or seen any of them.
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I remember having this conversation with an atheist one time and I said that and he goes, well I watched that building being built.
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I said, well you haven't watched every building be built.
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Because I pointed at a building and I said, how do you know that building had a builder? Well I watched him build it.
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Ah, you, okay.
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How about that one? That one's older than you.
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How about that one? You know? Yeah, how about the pyramids? Yeah, and what do we know about the pyramids? Somebody built that.
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It didn't just, the earth didn't hiccup and out came this large pointy thing.
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We know, based on design, that there was a designer.
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And so, this is, this does not prove the existence of the Christian God necessarily.
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But this is the thing that the Apostle Paul says is testimony to all men that God does exist.
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And it's why I think that if you go around the world and you see all the tribes of all the various places in the world, you will find men and women of every tribe worshipping something.
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Because only the fool, as the scripture says, says in his heart, there is no God.
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Because to look at the world around us and say there's no God is a foolish thing.
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So, general revelation is revelation that's given to all men.
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And the first way that it's given is in the creation itself.
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What's another way that general revelation is given? Okay, children.
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So you would say maybe seeing a plan in it all.
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Okay, okay.
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The second one that I was thinking of is conscience.
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And the reason why I say conscience, it's, you know, not just because I want to be alliterative.
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Because children would also be on the sea of alliteration.
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But if we start with creation and then move to conscience, you have within you, and everyone does, a very natural understanding of ought.
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Ought is an interesting word.
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One of my favorite words, actually, because it's so, today, it is so neglected.
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You know, when I was a kid, you'd hear it all the time.
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You ought to do that.
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Or you ought not.
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That was always the bit.
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You ought not go out and do that.
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Maybe it was more of a southern way of talking.
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But the word ought carries with it the sense of obligation, right? And you understand from your very conscience that you have certain things that are ought and certain things that are ought not.
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And they're in your conscience.
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Now we know the heart is desperately wicked.
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And who can trust it? We know the scripture says.
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Who can know it? Who can really understand the depth of depravity of their own heart? We know that.
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But yet, at the same time, if you go all around the world, all the little tribes we were talking about before, what do you see in all those tribes? Laws.
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And in almost all of the laws, there are simple, basic principles, such as, like, don't take what's not yours.
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There's a general law.
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Not everywhere, because, you know, there are people who tried to make communism work, and that's based on taking what's not yours.
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But, you know, that doesn't work.
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And then they realize it doesn't work.
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What are some other things, you know? The whole idea of marriage.
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Now, in some tribes, there's more than one wife and things like that.
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We know marriage has been misused and certainly not kept biblically.
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But there's this idea of a relationship that men and women have.
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We see that relationship.
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And we see when that relationship is obscured in some way, whether through some, you know, odd sexual behavior or whatever, it's shunned, even by unbelievers, you know? What was it Paul said about the man who had his father's wife in 1 Corinthians 5? He does what even unbelievers wouldn't think of, right? Even unbelievers wouldn't think of that nonsense, you know? So there's a universal sense of ought.
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We, as people, don't kill one another willy-nilly, in general.
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Now, you might say, I know some psychos, but what is a psycho? What is a person who's a psycho? A person who everybody agrees is not understanding ought.
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He doesn't agree with the ought.
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So all we're doing is that the exception proves the rule.
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This guy who's not obeying the ought, that we all know is an ought, is proving the sense of the ought by his not doing it, right? So, we begin with creation, picturesque picture of, picturesque picture, that's, excuse me, in the dictionary, under redundant, it says C redundant.
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The picturesque nature of creation says, okay, here's God who has created these things, and then the conscience within us that tells us ought and ought not.
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And what do we do with that conscience? We suppress it.
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Scripture says, I'm going to talk about this this morning in Romans 1.
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I'm going to be in Isaiah 45 in Romans 1 in my sermon, kind of jumping back and forth.
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In Romans 1, it says we suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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God's given the truth to every person that he exists, and there's a sense of ought, and yet we suppress the sense of ought.
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And that's why I think that the times in life where we become most susceptible to drugs, alcohol, and sexual addiction is in our late teenage years, because that is when our sense of ought is the most ripe for development, and it's the most ripe for suppression.
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And how do we suppress it? Drugs, alcohol, sexual addiction, because those things can suppress our sense of ought.
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You know? One thing, when I was teaching, they came up with a thing called character accounts, and we had this thing all the day with whatever class we had.
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This was public school.
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Public school.
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I think I remember this.
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Yeah, and they would give us rings of handouts and things to do, and I looked at it, and role play, and the kids had to get up and do this and that.
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But the kids, it's like, I ought to do this.
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I should do this.
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Why? Exactly.
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See? And I quit doing it.
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I didn't tell anybody I quit doing it, but I quit doing it because I couldn't tell them why, and I couldn't get into the depth of why they should be doing what they're doing, and they were making a mockery of it.
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Well, you used to know the why when you had the Ten Commandments, but in 1954, the Supreme Court said they can't be in the school, and the reason they can't be, because some students might be inclined to follow them.
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That was part of the ruling.
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Follow them? Why are they inclined to follow them? Ten Commandments.
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That's why they couldn't follow them.
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It might influence some students to obey them.
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It's amazing how freedom of religion has become...
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That was in 1954.
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...a restriction, actually.
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Freedom from? From religion, yeah.
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I have a question about this.
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Why do you think in unrighteousness is added? Because to suppress the truth isn't sufficient enough.
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Well, I think it's adding the qualifier of how they suppress the truth.
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Unbelieving people, and all people technically, but particularly the unbeliever who's lost in his sin, tends to find his escape from his responsibility in his unrighteousness.
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Think of the abortion.
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How do we suppress our lack of a desire for a child? We murder it.
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But you wouldn't suppress the truth.
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No, in unrighteousness.
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I know, but I'm just thinking about the flip side of it.
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You wouldn't suppress the truth in righteousness.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And what I think, again, the text is saying is we suppress the truth through unrighteousness, and in unrighteousness, by our unrighteousness, we're suppressing the truth.
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And that's what the text says.
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God is revealing his wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.
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That's what the ESV, I think, the translation that I have.
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Yours says suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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But the way that I think the better translation is for by their unrighteousness, are suppressing the truth.
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And that's the way I've memorized it.
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I guess it's just the way it came out.
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But that's the point.
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It's in their unrighteousness and by their unrighteousness.
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They use their unrighteousness as a tool of suppression.
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Sort of like I talk about the jack-in-the-box.
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Maybe I've talked about this with you guys.
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Maybe I haven't.
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But there's like a spring that, you know, there's a spring of truth that kind of comes up.
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And don't do that, don't do that, don't do that, you know.
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And so we push it down and then, oh, it snaps up, it snaps up, you know.
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And eventually we wear the spring out.
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And no longer, you know, we're suppressing it.
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How? By keep pushing it down.
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They used to call it, I guess they still do, being desensitized.
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Yeah, and it really is.
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There's a desensitization to the terrible things of the world.
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I mean, think of the things that are just not even considered sinful anymore.
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I mean, I have a thousand things in my head I can't even say.
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Because they would be just out of place for this audience.
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But just things that we see.
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Commercials.
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Commercials for all kinds of different products.
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You know, you've heard the expression sex sells.
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So they use all kinds of imagery that's intended to titillate the senses.
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And it does.
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And what do we say to that? Ah, no big deal.
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There were movies that used to scare people like Frankenstein back in the 30s and stuff like that.
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And now you replace it with Saw.
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Which is absolute, robust, macabre, nasty, terrible stuff.
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A lot of advertising is subliminal.
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Kids look at those old movies and go, that scared you back then? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Night of the Living Dead.
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That's pretty scary still.
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No, but I'm saying, people just now, it's like, oh, it's no World War X or World History X or whatever.
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What's that movie about where the zombies are literally running as fast as track stars? You see the commercial.
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That's the worst place to watch it.
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That's scary.
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The only monster I was ever afraid of was the wolfman.
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Because I figured I could outrun any of the other ones.
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You heard about the two guys that saw the bear, right? The two guys walking in the forest and they run into the bear and one guy stoops down and starts tying his shoes.
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And the other guy says, what are you doing? You can't outrun that bear.
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He said, I don't have to, I just have to outrun you.
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Let me at least look at what we've got here real quickly.
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Because when we talk about general revelation, I want to ask a simple question.
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Can general revelation by itself bring a person to a knowledge of salvation? Ah, see, the wheel's turning.
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That's it.
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That's Romans 1.
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That's it.
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They have no excuse.
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And because of that, there are differing opinions.
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I am one, like Lee has already said, no.
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I am one who does not believe that general revelation can lead a person to salvation.
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I believe that general revelation only gives enough information to condemn, not to save.
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And that's why the necessity of preaching the gospel.
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If general revelation had the power to save, there'd be no need to send out missionaries.
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So I do believe that general revelation has the ability to condemn.
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And this is why it says all the world sits under the condemnation, you know, John 3.
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It says the world is already condemned, you know.
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General revelation gives enough to condemn.
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The cross must be preached for people to be saved.
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But these are the various perspectives, and I'm going to read them as quickly as possible, just so that we understand that there are differences.
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And I'm just checking the time real quick.
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Okay, I've got enough time, I think.
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Very quick, general revelation definition.
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General revelation is God's communication of himself to all persons at all times and in all places.
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It refers to the human manifestation through nature, history, and the interbeing consciousness of the human person.
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And right there, I want to point out, Rosanna, you notice it says nature, history, and the interbeing.
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That sort of goes with what you said, because the third thing would be God's working out his plan.
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If you want to say the three things of general revelation, one is the creation around us.
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Two is the consciousness within us.
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But also, three, the continuation of a plan that you can tell the world is going somewhere.
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There's design not only in creation, but in direction.
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And that would be where you see what you said with your children and everything else.
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So yes, that does fit as one of the three things that we say is part of general revelation.
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Thomas Aquinas is an advocate of what is called natural theology, which says a true knowledge of God can be gained from the spheres of nature, history, and human personality apart from the Bible.
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So Thomas Aquinas would say that you can be saved, you can get a knowledge of God, strictly through natural revelation or general revelation.
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And what he said was this, all truth belongs to two realms.
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The lower realm is the realm of nature and is known by reason.
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The higher realm is the realm of grace accepted on authority by faith.
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Aquinas contended he could show by reason the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
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So basically, you could reason someone into believing in God.
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And while it is, in my belief, unreasonable for a person to deny that God exists, I do not think that you can reason a person to faith.
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Because I think that faith is a gift of God.
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This is where Aquinas and I would probably at least differ in some instance.
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But that was Aquinas' position.
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The Roman Catholic position is two-storied, as it says.
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There's level one, natural theology is built from building blocks of general revelation, cemented into place by reason.
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This includes proofs for existence of God and the immortality of the soul.
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It is insufficient for the saving knowledge of God.
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Most do not arrive at this first level through reason but by faith.
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Level two is a revealed theology is built from building blocks of special revelation, cemented into place by faith.
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This includes substitutionary atonement, the Trinity, etc.
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On this level, a person is brought to salvation.
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So ultimately, the Roman Catholic would say that natural theology leads but it is insufficient to complete the leading.
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It will get you there but it won't get you finished.
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You can learn about God through natural revelation but ultimately you do need special revelation.
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And Roman Catholic would say you need the church, you need the sacraments, you need these things to be confident in salvation.
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John Calvin, God has given an objective, valid, rational revelation of himself in nature, history, and human responsibility.
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It can be observed by anyone.
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Calvin draws this conclusion from Psalm 19, Romans 1.
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Sin has marred the witness of general revelation and the testimony of God is blurred.
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General revelation does not enable the believer to come to a true knowledge of God.
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What is needed is the spectacles of faith.
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When one is exposed to and regenerated through special revelation, he is enabled to see clearly what is in general revelation.
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But what one sees has always been genuinely and objectively there.
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One could find a natural theology in Romans 1.20 which is what Ann just said a minute ago.
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But Paul goes on to show that fallen man engages in suppression and substitution of that truth.
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Even the mention of nature in Psalm 19 was by a godly man who viewed nature through the perspective of special revelation.
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So basically what Calvin is saying, yes, special revelation has the power to show us many things.
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But for us to see it, we have to have the spectacles of faith.
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And without the spectacles of faith, and think of this, think of how scientists look at nature.
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They see it as this natural thing that is testable, observable, measurable, and they look at it much differently than the believer who sees it as a creation of God.
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Both are looking at the same evidence.
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Guys like Ken Ham say this all the time.
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It's not that we have evidence A and they have evidence B.
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We both have the same evidence, but our interpretation of it is through the lens of faith or through the lens of naturalism.
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And when you have the lenses of naturalism firmly in place, that creates a worldview which eliminates the ability for the existence of God.
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Karl Barth rejects natural theology and general revelation.
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Revelation is redemptive in nature.
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To know God and to have current information about Him is to be related to Him in salvific experience.
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Human beings are not able to know God apart from the revelation in Christ.
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If man could achieve some knowledge of God outside the revelation in Jesus Christ, man could have contributed in some small measure to His salvation.
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Apart from the incarnation, there is no revelation.
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Romans 1.18-32 indicates that people do find God in the cosmos, but only because they already know Him from special revelation communicated by the Holy Spirit when one reads the Word of God.
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The Bible is only a record of revelation, an authoritative pointer to revelation.
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Again, Karl Barth believes that Christ is the revelation.
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Scripture is just the tool that points us to Him.
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And if you look at what he's actually saying, he's saying that the earth and the world and everything is really not sufficient to prove that God exists.
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You have to have special revelation to understand that what natural revelation is showing you is that God exists.
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And in a sense, he's kind of right.
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No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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That's this guy.
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Much different than a Karl Barth philosopher.
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I'm trying to remember the time in which he lived.
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It wasn't for the life of me.
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I can't think of the date period that he was in.
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But no, he was a philosopher and theologian.
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He didn't start a church.
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He started a movement, if you will, Barthian theology or philosophy.
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But again, his views, not wholly wrong.
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In a sense, if you think about what he's saying, he's saying that really to understand natural revelation, you have to have special revelation.
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And we sort of said that just a minute ago.
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We said because of the lens thing.
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If you have the lens of naturalism, then everything's going to be interpreted through that lens.
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So his point is you have to have the Holy Spirit show you that these things are a revelation of God.
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And in a sense, like I say, he's not wholly wrong.
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I just think that perhaps he's going a bit too far by saying that a person can't know that God exists because we're in fact judged because we do know that God exists.
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So I think that that would be where he went a little too far.
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Yeah.
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So like I said, I don't think he's 100% wrong on that.
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I think there's just a different take on it.
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But it is true.
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For somebody to really understand natural revelation takes a special revelation.
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But that isn't to say that a person who faces God will say, well, I didn't have your special revelation, so I have an excuse.
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Because God says every man who faces Him will be without an excuse.
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The Scripture passages are here in the notes.
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Those are for you to look at.
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And of course, we've already mentioned Psalm 19, Romans 1.
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And then Acts 14 and 17 also mentions Paul's reference to the Athenians and other things there.
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On the back of this sheet, I've given you modes of special revelation.
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Remember, special revelation and general revelation are different.
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General revelation is that which comes to all men.
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Modes of special revelation, which we actually talked about a few weeks ago, but we were a little ahead of ourselves.
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This is for you just to take home to have in your notes.
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Because essentially the way that God has revealed Himself is one, through miraculous events.
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Two, through divine speech.
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And three, through visible manifestations, which we would call Theophanies or Christophanies.
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And so you may take that, look at it, use it for your own notes.
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And next week, we're going to start getting into the subject of inspiration of the Scripture.
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And the sort of ongoing in our study of Bibliology.
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So, look forward to having you guys back for that.
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Let's pray.
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Thank You, Lord, for this time to study.
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I pray that it's been encouraging for Your people.
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And that You would use it to draw us closer to You.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.