50 - Revelation of God

Revelation as God’s Self-Disclosure

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 to 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 ten or twelve 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 harmoneutics, how to interpret the Bible, dispensationalism, covenant theology, and hopefully I'll explain those better as we go through by that time.

Natural Revelation in Creation and Conscience

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.

It 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. The 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 with a flaming sword and turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life.

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 can look at the miniscule, 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.

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, you know, 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, 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 the God that created this would have been perfect and holy because of the amazing thing he can create. He recognized that and 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 in 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 God that I met on that beach, the God that I worshipped.

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 was 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. 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. 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.

Our 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.

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 into the guardrail, 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've banged up against their conscience so much that it has lost its purpose.

Now God gives us a purpose for natural, sorry, that's 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. Alright, 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. 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 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, 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 verses 1 to 6 of Psalm 19. 7 and 8 talk about special revelation, so what you're seeing there is that the psalmist is saying these first six verses, talking about natural revelation, is a preparation for the special revelation.

Special Revelation, Its Instruments, and Its Limits

Alright. 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 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, 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, he talks about being called, but to be called we have to believe, but to believe we have to hear, to hear 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 you, 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.

See, 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 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 Korea.

From South Korea, they put the book of Luke, sorry, Mark, the book of Mark, in Korean, on a balloon. Okay? The Voice of the Martyrs. You can check them out, persecutedchurch .org. What they do is they have, 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's 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, or 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? Well, 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 devoted 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, 8 verses, if you look there. It says there that at Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian cohort, 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, 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. But in Acts 19, again you have people that they know of the baptism of John the Baptist but they don't know about Jesus. They run in to people that know Christ and they give fuller knowledge of repentance and explain about Christ.

And so those would be the passages 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. We're 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. 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 can 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 3 .5 million people can walk on dry land and be able to basically, they walk 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, 3 .5 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 that they were saying like 200, 250, maybe 300 miles an hour winds to make this water stand on 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 ridiculous but 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 and go, well there's no other explanation, we want to give an explanation but just apply a little critical thinking and you realize that can't be a good explanation.

It explains how water could stand in a wall but it doesn't explain how 3 .5 million people with their cattle and their children walked through that water or on the side of it. Okay, the Red Sea, lastly the rain in Elijah's day.

You can look at let me give you a verse of Red Sea is Exodus 14. Elijah with the rain, you can look at 1 Kings 17 and 18 and you can see those. So we first have the issue of miracles or mighty works. Second instrument that we have is Theophany.

Theo meaning God and Ophany meaning manifestation. A Theophany is a physical manifestation of God in some way and there are three types of these in Scripture. The first is called natural Theophany. A natural Theophany.

We can see this in Exodus 21 and 22. And the Lord went before them day by day in a pillar 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 day time it would act as a protection because it would just look like a big cloud.

But this is a natural phenomenon. Well, a pillar of fire and cloud is not natural but fire and smoke would be. It's a way of God revealing himself manifesting himself through something natural. So the first blank there is natural natural theophany.

Second is an auditory theophany. Do we have an example of that? Well, we happen to. Still in Exodus, Exodus 19 and on the third new moon after the people 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 Rephola I can't pronounce that properly but Rephiodim 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, one 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. I'm just going to give you a synopsis of it but here you have well I'll read it because we want to I want to give you the scriptures for it.

Let's actually go instead. Can 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.

And 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 acquired in Param to go to the land of Canaan I think actually so this is, if you see here this is all, this is 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 Christ, you'll see that that is a reference to God, okay 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 spokesman who will who would declare the message of the Lord.

Now there's two ways that they would declare it 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. It 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 foretells 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 and people get in trouble when they try to say this is the future plan for God and 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 do 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 second 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 the 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 to know God and his will.