50 - Revelation of God

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. This is a school where we are going through basically study by study different systematic theologies, different categories

I should say, in a systematic way describing different attributes that we speak of when we talk of theology.

We are starting a new book, it is book number three, we're titling that God Speaks to the

World and this is going to cover the doctrine of the Bible. If you'd like to buy a syllabus, you can get it at our store which is at strivingforeternity .org.

Go to the store and book number three will be up there. All of our syllabuses we try to keep at the same price and basically that pays for the printing of those books.

So you can pick up a copy of book number three there. Now as we've been looking through a systematic theology we suggest you start in the beginning which is the attributes of God.

Now when people study theology there's usually one of two starting places that people start with.

Either the attributes of God as we have done or what many people do is start with this doctrine, the doctrine of the

Bible. Why would we start with the doctrine of the Bible? Well we would start with the doctrine of the Bible when studying systematic theology because that is really what you're going to use as a basis for all the rest of your theology.

Now we've been saying that we're going to build a theology based on the attributes, the nature of God and that's why we started with the attributes of God.

If this was a seminary level class we'd actually start with what's called

Bibliology, the study of the doctrine of the Bible which is what we're going to enter in these next several lessons, about eight lessons.

It may take us about 10 or 12 weeks to get through them and as we go through them we're basically, this is where many start.

We've suggested you start with our class on hermeneutics which teaches you how to interpret. Once you understand how to interpret the

Bible then you can build a systematic theology. So that has been our method as we've been going through and we're looking to continue that now.

What we're looking to do now is to dig into the Bible, God's Word, God's revelation to us and that's actually the lesson we're going to look at.

The first lesson in book number three is called, lesson one is Revelation. Now I'm not talking about that book at the end of the

Bible, I'm actually speaking of Revelation which is a title that we're going to get into very soon because we're going to give you some definitions.

But as we look through these lessons we're going to, this book or this book number three is going to look at one doctrine.

We're going to get into a lot of different issues through this book. We're going to look at some issues on how we got the

Bible that we have, English translations I'm speaking, what are some of the different English translations, how they were communicated over time.

We're also going to talk early on about things like inspiration, revelation, which is this week's lesson, among other things can we trust the

Bible. And then we're going to end on some issues of really hermeneutics, how to interpret the

Bible, dispensationalism, covenant theology and hopefully I'll explain those better as we go through by that time.

So let us start with the lesson on Revelation. Lewis Schaeffer put it this way, the term revelation refers to, quote, the divine act of communicating to man what man otherwise could not know, unquote.

Basically think of it as God's self -disclosure to man, the things that God reveals to us that we would not be able to know about God any other way.

Now there's really two different aspects of revelation. I've kind of given one a little bit, but the two aspects are that there's, actually before we get to that let me give you two reasons for revelation, let me start with that.

There's two reasons why revelation is necessary. One, God is by His nature inaccessible to man.

Do you have a verse for that? Well sure, Isaiah 55 says, for the heavens are higher than the earth.

So are my ways, speaking of God, my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

I could have gone to Deuteronomy 29 .29 which is one that when I teach through this class and people ask questions

I usually have to refer to those two passages. Deuteronomy 29 .29 says that the secret things belong unto the

Lord but that which He has commanded to you teach and obey and teach to your children. And so both of those passages say that there's things that we cannot know about God.

If you remember from the very first lesson, the very first attribute of God that we looked at was that God in His nature is uncomprehendable to man.

We can't comprehend everything there is to know about God. We can comprehend what He's revealed to us and that's what we're going to look at.

Second reason is because of the fall of man. Because of the fall, mankind broke fellowship with God.

We see that in Genesis 3 .24. He drove, this is God, drove out the man at the east of the garden of Eden.

He placed the cherubim and a flaming sword and turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life.

Now, so after God pushed Adam and Eve out of the garden, He would not allow them to come back in.

A lot there that we could get into not related to the topic of Revelation, so we're not going to.

But the study, this particular study on Revelation, we're going to focus on two broad categories in which all of our understanding of Revelation falls.

The first is natural revelation, that's your blank in your syllabus if you have one. Natural revelation and special revelation or supernatural if you prefer that.

So it's natural and special or natural and supernatural. Let us begin by looking at natural revelation.

As we do, let's take a look at a definition of natural revelation. A definition we have there in your syllabus is that the revealing of God to man by means of natural phenomenon, that which we see in nature.

We're going to look through these things, but you see things you can look, you can look at the vastness of the universe and know something about God.

You can look at that universe and say, there is a God who is a great designer. You could look at the minuscule, the smallest part of an atom, the further we go and the more technology we have to look into the smallest parts of the atom, the more we realize the intricacy and design in even the smallest parts.

And so as vast in design as the universe or as vast in design as the smallest part of an atom, it all shows

God's great design. It shows us something about this great God that we have that created everything out of nothing, but we wouldn't know that God created everything out of nothing by natural revelation.

Let us start with the instruments of natural revelation though, the instruments of natural revelation. Now, with this, there's two instruments which

God uses to reveal himself to all intelligent mankind.

Now, I already mentioned one and that's creation, creation. God gave us a creation.

I mentioned the stars as one. We see that in Psalm 19. He says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out through the earth and their words, sorry,

I had to clear my throat there, their words go to the end of the world.

In them he sent a tent for the sun which comes out like a bridegroom leaving in the chamber and like a strong man runs its course in joy and rises up from the end of the heavens to the circuit of the end of them and there is nothing hidden from its heat.

Now, you go, wait a minute, the sun doesn't rise like a bridegroom, what's all that?

Remember that this is poetic literature first off and second thing is the

Bible is not a science textbook. It is using language in which people would speak. In other words, we talk about a sunrise.

The sun does not rise, the earth revolves. We know that but we talk in this language about a sunrise and sunset and the same that we see there.

But the emphasis on Psalm 19 is that the glory of God is revealed in his handiwork, in what we can see in nature.

As we look at the heavens, we can clearly see a God who has created.

We see a similar thing in Romans chapter 1, very similar to this. It says in Romans 1, this starting in verse 19.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, in all things that have been made so that they are without excuse, for although they knew

God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they have become futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

You see there that what Paul is saying in Romans is that, and he's speaking in that passage to the moralist, the person that says, well,

I'm a good person. God has revealed himself through creation so that every man, woman, and child is without excuse.

Now, what's the significance of that? The significance of the creation, the revelation of God in nature, in creation, is that these verses teach that God clearly, that's your blank there, clearly revealed, is clearly revealed in nature.

This revelation is universal and timeless. Did you see that in those two passages that we looked at?

The creation of the universe is a universal thing. Everyone can look at the universe. Everyone can see the wonder.

Well, I understand those who say, well, what about the blind person who can't see? The blind person can still understand the wonder of God, even if he cannot see.

He can hear the creation of God. But the point being is that every person is without excuse.

God has clearly revealed himself and it's a timeless, universal thing.

Everyone in the world, no matter where they are in the world, so these people go, what about that guy in the tribal country of Africa that doesn't know about Jesus Christ?

He can look up to the sky and know God exists. Actually, there was an interview I heard about a man in New York.

He actually was from Africa and sitting on a beach, he looked up at the stars. What could create something like that?

That is too amazing to just happen. And he said, God, if there is a God out there,

I know the gods, the many gods that my tribe speak of, but God, the God who created all this, please reveal yourself to me so I could worship you.

He said he recognized that he had the God that created this would have been perfect and holy because of the amazing thing he can create.

He recognized that, knew that he was not perfect and holy and knew that by whatever standard

God has given, he violated that because he had a second thing, a natural revelation we're going to talk about in a moment. And because of that, he didn't become a

Christian, but he knew that there was something about this God. He ended up coming to school in New York, getting a gospel tract, reading that tract and said, this is the guy that I, the

God that I met on that beach, a God that I worshiped. This is him. And he became a Christian and he talks about that.

So he said that nature revealed that he knew that there was a God. The other thing that he had said that he relied on when not just nature, but his conscience and that's the second instrument of natural revelation, our conscience.

There's some scripture we could look at for our conscience and let's just look at Romans 2, 14, 15.

For when Gentiles who did not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even though they do not have the law, they show that work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse.

And so what you see there is that Paul is saying in that passage that our conscience reveals

God. Now, the significance of this is the conscience convince a person of right and wrong, okay?

But did you see what it said there? To either accuse or excuse.

And so the point though is that our conscience, one of the things we realize in Titus is our conscience can be seared.

A conscience needs to be purified by God, but it can be seared. In other words, if you keep hitting up against your conscience, you're going to get to a point where the conscience doesn't do the job the conscience should do, which is to reveal right and wrong.

It's kind of, this is an illustration, I don't remember where I got it from, but it really helps me. Our conscience is sort of like guardrails on a road to keep us from going off a cliff.

The problem is if we keep coming around a turn too fast and every time we're trusting those guardrails, but we just keep banging into the guardrail, banging into the guardrail, banging into the guardrail.

Every time we bang in the guardrail, it's just, it kind of weakens it and moves it over just a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, each time just a little bit.

But us constantly sinning and constantly doing what we know is wrong and trying to ignore that conscience, eventually we're going to hit that guardrail one too many times and go over the cliff.

And that's a seared conscience. One that is just banging against that right and wrong knowledge, right and wrong until wrong seems right.

That's what our culture now is doing. Our culture wants to say wrong is right because they banged up against the conscience so much that it has lost its purpose.

Now, God gives us a purpose for natural, sorry, for that special revelation.

There we go. The purpose for natural revelation. Let's look in Romans 1 again.

And this is a little bit of a longer passage, but the purpose of natural revelation is to render man inexcusable.

And actually, we looked at this. So to save time, pull back. Thank you. All right. Because we already dealt with this earlier.

But Romans 18, 19 says that creation, natural revelation reveals that man is without excuse.

So one purpose is to render man inexcusable. That's your blank there.

Inexcusable, without excuse. Man cannot stand before God and say, God, I didn't know you.

I didn't know you existed. No man can argue that because every man knows that God exists and every man can look at creation and realize that.

A second is to prepare for special revelation, special revelation.

Now, we read the first half of Psalm 19.

Let's read the second half and see now how it prepares for special revelation. That's your blank there, special revelation.

Now, we're going to get into special revelation. But I already mentioned that, you know, there's two revelations, natural, special.

So one thing that natural revolution, revolution, revelation does is prepare us for special revelation.

Psalm 19, the second half of that now, 7 verses 7 and 8, says the law of the

Lord is perfect, revealing the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart and the commandment of the

Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Now, this is right after what we read in verse verses 1 to 6 of Psalm 19, 7 and 8 talk about special revelation.

So what you're seeing there is that he's the psalmist is saying these first six verses talking about natural revelation is a preparation for the special revelation.

OK, all right. Now, let's look at the limitations, the limitations of special revelation.

Well, there are some limitations of special revelation, and some of those are that, well, one primary, the primary limitation of natural revelation is that it cannot inform for the purpose of redemption.

And that's your blank in your syllabus for the purpose of redemption. Redemption requires special revelation.

Let's look at Romans chapter 10, Romans 10. And we can look there.

For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe on him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless someone is sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, but they have not all obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah says, the Lord who has believed what is what he has heard from us.

So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. So what you see there is that faith comes by hearing.

OK, and how do we hear? I just was actually Wednesday night church service.

This was the text that as we're going through the book of Romans, this was the text I was teaching on. So how can we believe how he talks about being called?

But to be called, we have to believe. But to believe, we have to hear to hear. We have to. Someone's got to preach and to preach.

Someone's got to be sent. In other words, if you're a Christian, you should be sent. Why God has sent you so that you would preach, why do you preach so that someone will hear why so that they would believe so that they would be called.

But the thing there is, is that it is limited. So you need scripture.

You need the special revelation to understand redemption. We cannot understand redemption apart from special revelation.

And that is going to be what what is the limitation of it. Let's ask the question now that we have in your syllabus.

What if someone responds to the clear testimony of nature? Is this person condemned?

Well, I already actually kind of hinted to it with that interview that I saw with the man from Africa.

I believe that a man who responds to the clear testimony of natural revelation,

God will send him. I believe special revelation, whether it be that he comes to New York or whether it be that a missionary comes to him, whether it be that a

Bible is dropped from the air. That's exactly how some people are dropping the Bible in North North Korea from South Korea.

They put the book of Luke or sorry, Mark, the book of Mark in Korean on a balloon.

OK, Voice of the Martyrs, you can check them out. Persecutedchurch .org. What they do is they have it where you can it's a square balloon that they can cut and it's actually the book of Mark.

And from South Korea, they set it up with helium and just let it float into North Korea.

And the Bible is just landing and people are reading the Bible and getting saved.

God can use that as a means. He could use something supernatural like dreams and visions, as there's many, many reports in the

Middle East of people where Christianity is not only outlawed, but severely persecuted.

There are people who say are claiming, I mean, thousands and thousands of claims of people in visions, seeing

Jesus and having a proper understanding of who Jesus is. Many people have visions. How do you know the vision is from God?

Will you compare it to Scripture? And when you see that those visions have an accurate recording of Jesus, who he is and why he came and died, and it leads them to where they can get a

Bible. Well, I'm going to trust it a little bit more. I can never trust someone else's experience, but I can compare it to Scripture as an absolute authority.

So that would be my answer. The answer I would say is that someone can respond to natural revelation, but it won't redeem them.

But I believe that someone that responds to natural revelation, I think that person, that God will somehow bring special revelation to that person.

Now, the principle of Scripture seems to indicate that if the person responds to a devotion to all the revelation that he has, that God will provide further revelation.

Right? That's what I'm saying. So, do I have a verse for that? Well, Acts 10, verse 8 verses, if you look there.

And it says there that at Caesarea, there was a man named

Cornelius, a centurion, of what was known as the

Italian cohort, a devoted, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people.

And he prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day, he saw clearly in a vision an angel coming to him and saying to him,

Cornelius. And he stared at him in terror and said, what is it,

Lord? And he said to him, your prayers and your alms have been ascended as a memorial before God.

Now send men to Joppa and bring one, Simon, who is called Peter. He is lodging with Simon the

Tanner, whose house is by the sea. And when the angel who spoke to him departed, he and the two servants had, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, having related everything to him.

And he sent for them at Joppa. Another would be Acts 19. For the sake of time,

I'm not going to read that. All right. But in Acts 19, again, you have your people that they know of the baptism of John the

Baptist, but they don't know about Jesus. They run into people that know

Christ and they give fuller knowledge of repentance and explain about Christ.

And so that those would be the passage I'd use to say, look, these are we see in Scripture that people that have a knowledge of God from nature can get fuller revelation.

Now, let's move into a look at special revelation, special revelation.

And we're going to look specifically, let's start with a definition of revelation.

So, our definition that we have here is that for special revelation is the intervention into the natural course of things, which is supernatural both in the source and the mode.

This comes from Schaeffer, but there are blanks. There are the source and the mode.

Those are your two blanks. So, this is when God intervenes into the natural things, into the natural order of things and makes this supernatural.

That's why we call it special. It's supernatural both in its source. In other words, the source is God and in its mode.

So, we have this Scripture that's not written just by men as we're going to look into as we go through these lessons, but it's also written by God.

So, it's supernatural in its mode of communication as well. Now, three significant characteristics of special revelation, these are your three blanks there.

One, it's redemptive. That's your first blank. It's redemptive. Second, it's supernatural.

That's your second blank there. It's supernatural. So, it's redemptive and it's supernatural. Third, it's propositional.

It's propositional. That's your third blank. So, it's redemptive. It leads to redemption. It's supernatural, as I said, both in its source and its mode.

And it's propositional in that it teaches things. It explains things. Now, just as we looked at before with natural revelation, let's take a look at the instruments of special revelation.

The first instrument of special revelation is miracles or what's sometimes called mighty works of God.

I'm always amazed that our culture, when there's something bad that happens, they call it an act of God.

Why is it only hurricanes and tornadoes and things that are bad? Those are acts of God.

But if it's something good, we want to take credit for it. When the scriptures tell us that anything bad that happens is our credit and anything good that happens is

God's credit. But that aside, the miracles are the intercessions of the supernatural or mighty events which were interpreted as works by God through His spokesman.

Some of those acts, some of those instruments are in, you could see in Genesis 9.

Let's not turn there. Genesis 9, the rainbow. God said that this rainbow is going to be something as a special act that He was going to do that He would create that would be a covenant with man and God showing that He would never destroy the earth by flood again.

But He will do it by fire, just saying. The Red Sea. God took the

Red Sea and He split it so that three and a half million people can walk on dry land and be able to, basically they walked through dry land with walls on either side and then as the

Egyptians came in, the water came in. There are people that tried to prove that that's actually a natural phenomenon that if the wind blows strong enough against the water, it would actually create a wall.

The wind could actually push the water so that it's upstanding like a wall. And some people try to argue that is how

Israel marched across on dry land is that this wind pushed the water up and they all three and a half million people marched across dry land.

And then when the Egyptians came, the wind stopped and they got flooded. One problem with that.

If the wind is strong enough to push water to stand up as a wall, how are people going to walk?

Right. I mean, you don't walk during 75 mile hour winds. And yet it would take like, you know,

I think they were saying like 200, 250, maybe 300 miles an hour winds to make this water stand in a wall.

How in the world, if you can't walk in 75 mile an hour winds, are you going to walk in that kind of wind?

I mean, it's just it's ridiculous. But they try to they try to remove the supernatural because they know that a miracle is something that is supernatural.

And yet the people that know that the facts are that they look at the evidence go, well, there's no other explanation.

We want to give an explanation, but just apply a little critical thinking. You realize that can't be a good explanation.

It explains how water could stand in a wall, but it doesn't explain how three and a half million people with their cattle and their children walked through that water or on the side of it.

OK, the Red Sea. Lastly, the rain in Elijah's day. You could look at a negative verse of Red Sea is

Exodus 14. Elijah with the rain. You could look at First Kings 17 and 18 and you can see those.

All right. So we first have the issue of miracles or mighty works.

Second instrument that we have is theophanies. Now, theophany, theo meaning

God, and ophany meaning a manifestation. A theophany is a physical manifestation of God in some way.

And there are three types of these in Scripture. All right. The first is called natural theophany, a natural theophany.

We could see this in Exodus 21 and 22. And the

Lord went before them day by day in a pillar of of cloud and led them along the way and at night in a pillar of fire to give them light that they might travel by day and by night.

The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from the people.

And so what you see there is that's a natural thing. A pillar of smoke, what's called the

Shekinah Glory, this pillar that was a cloud by day and fire by night.

And the idea there that some have is that it was allowed the people to march and walk through the wilderness so they could see even at night.

But at daytime, it would act as a protection because it would just look like a big cloud. So but this is a natural phenomenon.

Well, a pillar of fire and cloud is not natural. But fire and smoke would be.

So it's a way of God revealing himself, manifesting himself through something natural.

OK, second would be in. So the first blank, there's natural phenomenon, natural theophany.

Second is an auditory theophany, an auditory theophany. Do we have an example of that?

Well, we happen to. And that would still in Exodus, Exodus 19. And on the third, third new moon after the people let the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt on that day, they came to the wilderness in Sinai and they set out from Riphola, I don't

I can't pronounce that probably, but Riphodim and came into the wilderness of Sinai and they encamped in the wilderness.

There, Israel encamped before the mountain while Moses went up to God and the

Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, Thus, you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the people

Israel. And then he goes on to explain things. That's an auditory theophany. In other words, when you can hear auditory having to do with hearing.

So it's an auditory theophany. So in that case, you have a hearing of it.

Another would be bodily theophany bodily. So you have natural auditory, natural being in a natural, the things of the natural world auditory by hearing bodily in the form of body.

Genesis 16, this is a little bit of a longer one. Let's I'm just going to give you a synopsis.

But here you have you. Well, I'll read it because we want to I want to give you the scriptures for it.

Let's actually go instead. Could we go to 31 if we can. Genesis 31.

There we go. 11 to 18. I'll deal with this one. So then the angel of the Lord said to me in a dream,

Jacob. And I have said, here I am. And he said, lift up your eyes and see. And there were goats to mate with a flock of spotted with Laban.

Excuse me. Sorry about that. He said, I am the God of Bethel, where you were anointed a pillar and made a vow to me.

Now arise, go out to this land and return to the land of your kindred. And Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, is there any portion of the inheritance left for us in our father's house?

Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? And he sold us. Indeed, he devoured the money and the wealth that God had taken from us for our father and our land.

Now, then, whatever God said to you, do so. Jacob arose and sent his sons and wives and camels.

He drove away the livestock of the property. That he had acquired in Param to go to the land of Canaan, I think, actually.

So this is, if you see here, this is all is this really based on this dream.

The Lord, now, verse 11, the angels of God came to me in a dream. The idea being that he saw the angel.

Now, if you go back to the lessons on the deity of Christ, you'll see that that is a reference.

To God, OK, to Jesus as God. That's him revealing himself. Another passage, let's not put it up, but another one that we could look at would be in Abraham.

When Abraham has God come to him and he feeds him and God says you're going to have many children. So there would be those passages.

Moving on, though, but there's dreams and visions. God revealing truth. So you have miracles,

God intervening in a supernatural way into the natural world of things. You have theophanies, natural, auditory, bodily.

Now you have dreams and visions. God revealing truth while one is asleep, such as in Daniel 7 .1

or through a conscious visual experience, such as Acts 10 that we already read.

So God can reveal himself through dreams and visions. Another one is through prophets,

God's chosen spokesmen who will who would declare the message of the

Lord. Now, there's two ways that they would declare it. All right. One is in forth telling the plan of God.

That's your blank there. The plan of God. They forth tell the plan of God means to tell the future, such as in Amos 3 .7.

They're telling what God will do. They're giving a prophecy. But a prophet also had another role, not just giving future, but also foretelling the precept of God, foretelling the precept.

That's your second blank. So he forth tells the future or he foretells what

God's already said. So he's telling the precepts, the teachings. This is the part, I would say, that is still when we talk about the gift of prophecy, that's still in play.

God, I don't believe, gives us people that are telling us the future, Harold Camping.

But people get in trouble when they try to say, oh, God, this is the future plan for God. You see these people that give false prophecies.

If they're going to do that, the Bible says we should stone them to death if they're going to act as a prophet in that way.

But we do have the prophecy where your pastor who stands up at a pulpit every week and declares thus says the

Lord and giving you God's word. That is an act of prophecy in foretelling the precepts of God.

OK, so we have miracles. We have theophanies. We have dreams and visions. We have prophets.

We have the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, the second person of the

Trinity, John 1 1, who became flesh. John 1 14 and declared himself, declared

God to mankind. John 1 18. This is what in Hebrew says is the best, the most, the clearest that we have of a revelation from God.

It is God himself in man form, in mankind. But God's not still walking around on earth as Jesus Christ.

He's now returned to heaven to the throne of God. So what is it that we have in this day and age, in this generation that we can rely on?

We're not going to rely on miracles because those by their very definition are supernatural and are not regular.

Theophanies, again, supernatural, not regular. Dreams and visions. Yeah, they're not happening as much as people are claiming, and often people are dreaming wrong things, but they're not regular.

Prophets? Well, we don't have the prophets that are foretelling the future anymore, but we do have men that stand up and proclaim

God's word. We don't have Jesus Christ walking around anymore, but what are those pastors that stand up and proclaim?

They proclaim the scriptures, and that is what we have in our day and age, the scriptures.

God's recorded and written revelation, including

God's revelation of all the above that he has desired to be known throughout time.

Therefore, the scriptures are God's self -disclosure and his will for mankind.

This is what we use to be able to test everything else. The only thing that we, we can't use our emotions, our experience.

If you went through our class on biblical harmonetics, you know that many people interpret the scriptures using their experience.

In other words, they make their experience the superior thing. Their emotions and their feelings and what they want the scriptures to say, but it is the scripture that must be our authority.

And so we must look at the scripture and hold that up and compare everything else to that.

So our scripture, the scripture is our authority. So let us look at what is the purpose.

What's the purpose of special revelation? There's three primary purposes that we have there in your syllabus for special revelation.

One, to redeem, that's your first blank, to redeem mankind and restore them back to the proper fellowship with God.

We saw this in Psalm 19. It is for the redemption and restoration of man.

Without the scriptures, we cannot be redeemed, right? That's what we were saying earlier. So natural revelation leads to special revelation.

Special revelation, its purpose is to redeem mankind. Second, to instruct, that's your blank there, to instruct all those who know him with his plan for them.

We can look at second, let's not turn there, but 2 Timothy 3, 17, Hebrews 1, 1 says that this is the goal of special revelation is that it would instruct us, teach us.

That's actually one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit, that he illuminates the word of God to our minds to teach us, to give us application, not only to understand it, but to apply it to our lives.

So one purpose of scripture, of this special revelation, is to instruct us.

And what we're going to focus on the rest of these classes within this book is scripture.

This one specific aspect of special revelation, because this is where we learn everything else.

This is where God discloses himself to us. A third purpose of scripture, so it's to redeem mankind and restore them to a proper fellowship, that's one, to instruct man on, to know

God and his will. Third, to glorify himself.

Glorify himself, that is the third purpose of scripture. To glorify himself.

Now you say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, and this is where we're going to start talking, we're going to start and we're going to get to differences between dispensationalism and covenant theology.

If you don't know those terms, that's okay. Those are two different hermeneutical systems, ways of interpreting the

Bible. You can take our classes on hermeneutics to understand what hermeneutics is, but it's two different ways of interpreting the

Bible. And one of the key areas that you're going to see a difference is, I'm kind of tipping my hat,

I would be a dispensationalist, so I would see that the purpose of scripture is to point to God's glory.

Someone that believes in covenant theology would see that the purpose of scripture is to reveal salvation.

In other words, they would say that the purpose of scripture is about Jesus Christ. So every book they would see, they would have to find a way to fit

Jesus in. Get to Song of Solomon, they would say, well see, it's about Jesus and the bride, the future bride, the church.

Well that means Song of Solomon really didn't make much sense for thousands of years, really?

Or a thousand years? The point being is that I could say, well

Song of Solomon is about a marriage, and a marriage glorifies God, and so Song of Solomon is about a marriage.

This becomes a way of interpretation, it does affect the way you're going to interpret something. If you have to find

Jesus in every verse of the Bible, then you're going to do things to the Bible that may make it say things it's not.

I would say the purpose is to glorify God, and so every passage of the Bible points back to God.

And so salvation, that points back to God. Jesus Christ, that points back to God. So I would broaden it,

I wouldn't limit it just to Christ and salvation, but I'd broaden it to say that the purpose of scripture is to glorify

God. Now let's lastly wrap up with the limitations of special revelation. The limitations of special revelation.

Special revelation, particularly the scriptures, is not universal in language, nor does it proclaim

God's timelessly as does natural revelation.

What I mean by that is that, okay, we have a language issue, right? The Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, a little bit of Aramaic, and it had to be translated.

And the Bible's not translated into every language. And so there's a language barrier. We're working at it.

Wycliffe and Tyndale, they're working to try to get the Bible translated into every language in the world. Some languages aren't written down, so that makes it an issue.

And so they're actually creating a written language for some languages. And it's not always timeless.

There are things in the Old Testament and New Testament that we read, and we just don't understand what it means. Jesus said that if you call your brother

Raca, you're under judgment. And it's like, what does Raca mean? We really don't know. They did in that day and age.

But we don't understand it because that colloquialism is no longer in use.

And so you have that issue. Revelation must be in the language, that's your first blank, in the language of the people, and must be proclaimed by believers, that's your second blank.

So it must be in the language of the people, that's your first blank, and it must be proclaimed by believers, that's your next blank, in order to fulfill its promise.

I'm not going to turn there, but Romans 10, 13 -17 is the verse for that. And so what you have there is you have a case where we see here that there is some limitations that we have to the

Scriptures when we look at these. Now if you look in your syllabus, there are some thought questions for you that we're going to start posting on our

Facebook group, Striving for Eternity Facebook group. We post these questions. My challenge to you, even if you're watching later, we'll post them live, but you can post your answers.

And if you're not watching live, if you're watching sometime later on YouTube, even if it's a year later, you still feel welcome to post the lesson you're on and your answer.

And we will try to go back and engage with it. Now some people say, why don't I give the answers right away?

Because I want more of you to contribute. Even if someone else said the same thing you said, that's okay, put your verbiage in there as well.

So if you have any questions about this lesson or any other lessons, feel free to email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Again, if you'd like to purchase the syllabus or any of our other products, you can go to our store, store .strivingforeternity

.org. That website may change, I don't know as we're going to a new website. But you can definitely go to strivingforeternity .org

and you can pick up the syllabus or any of our other syllabuses there. Also want to let you know of a way you could support us, and that is through Amazon Smile.

The link, it should be down there, smile .amazon .com. Just go there, search for Striving for Eternity Ministries as the group you want to give your donation.

And just as you buy things on Amazon, they will give half a percent of everything you spend to the ministry.

It's a great way to help support us. If you're watching live, we have the Ohio Fire coming up.

2015 Ohio Fire is going to be in Columbus, Ohio area

April 10th and 11th. It's actually going to start on the 9th with a special pre -conference. Matt Slick, Ken Cook from CARM, myself will be the speakers.

The pre -conference is going to be done by Michael Stockwell and Robert Gray from Cross Country Evangelism.

They will be leading an outreach on Thursday night. Then they will be doing an evangelism training after that.

So you definitely want to do that. The pre -conference is just $20. The Ohio Fire, it's a great conference afterwards.

The real event is we go out on the streets and evangelize. And that's the great part of that with trained evangelists we get on teams.

It's a great event and I encourage you to go. This year's topic will be discipleship and if you're watching this and it's not live, we have the videos, audios that you can purchase at our website as well.

Afterwards, at the end of the year, end of 2015, those will be available. Let you know of a new seminar we have.

That is the Bible Interpretation Made Easy. I mentioned our class on Biblical Harmonetics, 22 lessons.

This summarizes that down into 8 hours, 6 lessons. That is something you can contact us at speaker.

Just email speaker at strivingforeternity .org and you can get that.

As we end our class every week, we try to end with encouraging you to encourage someone else.

Since we're close to the Ohio Fire, I want to encourage you from someone from our Ohio area.

He is a man who hosts our website. He, by the grace of God, has helped us tremendously with our website and different things and helping host it.

He's also been able to help us to do live streaming at our Striving for Eternity events. Great tech guy, really smart guy.

He's a first responder at 9 -11 and because of that, I forget how many were on his original team of first responders.

He was one of the first guys to go in after 9 -11. And from his team, I think of like 20 guys, there's only 2 that are still alive because it was so dangerous when they went in there and the air they breathe in.

He's struggled with cancer that he got from that. He's hence moved to Ohio to get away from the

New York area for health reasons. He's a dear brother in the

Lord. I encourage you to be praying for Brother Glenn Kelly. Many of you probably don't know Glenn. Glenn is not one of these guys that you see all over Facebook.

But be praying for Glenn. Glenn is a great brother. He has been serving,

I know, in short -term missions more and more. Maybe the Lord is calling him to full -time missions,

I don't know. But he has a heart for the Lord. He has preached,

I think he's even pastored a church sometime. But he is a man who is using the gifts and talents that God has given him to serve the

Lord. Not just in his ability of his knowledge of the Scriptures and preaching, but in what he knows of IT.

Information technology. He's using his giftedness to help ministries such as CARM.

We said CARM is going to be at Ohio Fire. He helps CARM out. That's how

I knew of him, through his work with CARM. He's a great brother. Someone I've gotten to know and love dearly.

So I encourage you to go out this week, get to know him. Ask him about himself.

Find out what he believes, what he does. And if you've got a website that needs hosting, contact him and support him that way.

You paying to have him host it will help support him and feed his family. So, just an idea for you.

That would be a great way to support him and encourage him. We thank you.

Next class will be on inspiration. Until then, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.