(Guidelines) Revelation — J. Vernon McGee

God Has Spoken Through Revelation

Now, let's look at these. First of all, Revelation. And again, may I repeat it, God hath spoken. And 2 ,500 times we have in the Bible, thus saith the Lord. The Lord didn't want you to misunderstand that He had spoken.

And you will find that in the first chapter of Hebrews, He made it very clear that God hath spoken. Let me turn and read that. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the world.

Human Communication Reflects the Need for Revelation

Now, will you note here, first of all, Revelation. Wherever you'll find two persons endowed with a reasonable degree of intelligence, who harbor the same feelings and desires, who are attracted to each other more or less, you will find a communication between them.

Persons of like propensities, separated from each other. They delight in getting in touch with each other. Communication, we call it. And they rejoice in receiving a communication from another. And this innate characteristic of the human heart explains the post office department, the telephone and the telegraph.

Friends write to friends, husband away from home writes to his wife, and the boy or girl at school they write home, asking for money. And ever and anon, they send an epistle of a girl to a boy, and then the boy to the girl, and the sentence not so good there.

All of this is called communication. It's the expression of the heart. The scripture says, deep calls to deep. You will recall the story of Helen Keller. I remember the thrill that came to me when I heard her story and read the account of it, of how this woman shut out from the world in so many ways, blindness, deafness, and no way to communicate it would seem.

And then that way was opened up, and she could communicate probably better than many of us who can see and talk today. And now, may I say on the basis of that, I'd like to ask you a reasonable and certainly an intelligent question, isn't it therefore reasonable to conclude that God has communicated with his creatures to whom he's committed a certain degree of intelligence, those he's created in his own likeness?

God Communicates Through His Creation and Human Experience

May I say to you, if we did not have a revelation from God right now, I think that you could just wait there at your radio, and he'd be speaking to you because of the fact, my friend, we could expect God to speak to us.

Now I think that God has communicated more ways than through the scripture. You will notice that the writer to the Hebrews says that God in the Old Testament spoke through the prophets, and he now has spoken through Christ, and both the prophets in the Old Testament, the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, both are in the Word of God, of course, and that's the only way you'd ever know about the communication from either ones.

But I think God communicated through creation. Paul says that, that the invisible things are seen by the things that are made, and the heavens do declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

But I'm not interested in dealing with that. I believe also that God has communicated with man through the human heart. Don't misunderstand me, not through visions or anything like that, but I believe that today God has communicated through the experiences that you and I have.

I'm sure that many of us can look back on our lives, and we can see the hand of God in our lives. But the thing that we're concerned about here is that God has communicated to us through the Bible, and that is his revelation.

The Bible’s Sixty-Six Books

And this book has 66 books, and I have in my notes that we send out how you can get the Bible on one hand. And if you have that, and I hope you do, if you don't know the books of the Bible, learn them like that.

But you put the Old Testament on the tips of your fingers, and you put the New Testament down in the valleys between the fingers. And on the thumb, you just start out there and put the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, then go over to the finger, the index finger, and on that you put the historical books of the Bible, Joshua, and so on.

And then you come to the poetic books, the next finger, middle finger, and you begin there with the book of Job. And then you put the prophetic books, major prophets, on the ring finger, and you begin with Isaiah.

And then you put the minor prophets, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and so on, on the little finger. Now down between, between the thumb and the forefinger, put down there the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

Then you put the historical book of the New Testament, book of Acts. Then you put the epistles in the next valley. And then in the last one, you put the prophetic book of Revelation. May I say to you that that's the way that God's spoken to us.

The Attack on Biblical Authority

And there is today an attack that's made upon the Word of God. I recognize that. Dr. Elmer G. Homringhausen, former dean of Princeton Theological Seminary, in his book Christianity in America Crisis, he's made this statement.

Few intelligent Protestants can still hold to the idea that the Bible is an infallible book. Some might still claim for the original copies of the Bible an infallible character. But this view only begs the question and makes such Christian apologetics more ridiculous in the eyes of sincere man.

May I say that's a terrible indictment coming from a professor in a seminary. But it was made, by the way. And then the seminary up in New York, Union Seminary, a professor there, he made the statement that no intelligent person could believe the Bible is the Word of God.

Well, I believe the Bible is the Word of God, and according to that, I guess that I would not be considered intelligent, according to these men. May I say they boast of the fact that they are humble. I wonder what kind of humbleness is that that says everybody that does not agree with them is a fool and they are the only intelligent people.

That's a dangerous position for anyone to take in any way. But the very interesting thing is there have been some very intelligent people that have believed the Bible, and there have been some that haven't been so intelligent, apparently, that have brought in, may I say, damnable heresies that are a curse to the world today and plague our society.

Competing Philosophies and Doctrines of Demons

Let me give you this statement from Dr. Gregg. He says, Aristotle's philosophy was the learning of the schoolman. It clustered the Bible. It worshiped bones in the churches in an attempt to link them with the apostles.

The 10th century was the darkest, but in the 20th century, Aristotle's philosophy, through Maimonides, Spinoza, Hegel, and Darwin, worshiped bones in the universities and museums in an attempt to link them with the apes.

It has also given us Unitarianism through Emerson in America, Reformed Judaism through Moses Mendelssohn, and Bolshevism through Karl Marx. It is the doctrine of demons and seducing spirits. May I say to you, I like that statement very, very much.

Intelligent Defenders of the Bible

May I also add that there have been men that have been intelligent, men that have believed the Bible. Years ago, B .B. Warfield, it is said of him that he probably had the most giant intellect of any man that America has ever produced.

Would you like to know what he says? He says, the Bible is the word of God in such a sense that whatever it says, God says. I like that, my friend. And Bishop Hadley said, there is more meaning in every word of holy writ than we shall ever get out of it.

Plenary Verbal Inspiration

And I personally believe in what is known as the plenary verbal inspiration of the scripture. That means that we believe that the Bible is an authoritative statement and that every word of it is the word of God to us and for us in this day in which we live.

And may I say to you, that's very important for us to see today. The words are inspired. I heard the little story several years ago of a girl who had taken music lessons, singing lessons from a very famous teacher.

The Importance of the Inspired Words

And she was giving her recital. And he came. And after it was over with, she was anxious to know what he said. He didn't come back to congratulate her. And she said to a friend, what did he say? Well, he said that you sounded heavenly.

She just couldn't believe he said that. And so she asked again. She says, did he say I sang heavenly? He said, yes. He said that. She said, well, I want to know exactly what he said. What did he really say?

Give me the words that he said. Well, if you really want to know the words, he said that was an unearthly noise. May I say to you, friends, an unearthly noise doesn't mean it sounds heavenly. And believe me that it's the words of scripture that are inspired.

And we need to recognize that. We need to keep that before us today. And I'd love to have time to develop that a great deal.