Revelation (theology)

“ Natural Revelation is the principle of ordinary knowledge, and therefore belongs to the domain of philosophy. We touch upon it here because it is the basis of Supernatural Revelation, and also because at the present day all forms of Revelation have been confused and have lost their proper significance. ”

“ Now, the arguments by which one assures oneself of the fact of a revelation are human arguments, such as proofs that revelation is possible and suitable, that there are miracles, prophecies and other signs to guarantee the divine mission of those who delivered the revelation, etc. ”

“ In other words, a revelation can be viewed by you as a divine revelation only in case you hold, for whatever reason, or for no reason, that you already are acquainted with the signature which the divine will attaches to its documents, that you know the marks of any authentic revelation by which a divine will can make itself known to you. ”

“ Where Nature is dumb, and Man igno­rant, Revelation speaks in the authoritative voice of prophecy. Then let us see whether that Reve­lation can stand the test of reason and of truth.—God, we are told, is omnipotent, omniscient, om­nipresent,—all wise, all just, and all good ”

“ Unless, then, you are to make one supposed revelation depend for its warrant upon another in an endless series, you must presuppose that somewhere there is found a revelation that proves its genuineness by appealing to what your own interior light, your personal acquaintance with the nature of a divine being, enables you to know as the basis of all your further insight into the divine. ”

“ One relates to the blessings of eternity; and the others to those only of time; hence if the truths manifested by a revelation had been of no more importance to man than the truths in natural philosophy, reason would say, God would have left them also to be discovered, if discovered at all, like all other truths, without a special revelation. ”

“ No, every man and every woman will have to be a revelator and prophet, and the knowledge and glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the bosom of the great deep. And by and by, as a kind of climax to all this, the revelation of the Lord Jesus himself will take place from heaven in flaming fire, to take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel. That will be a revelation that the wicked can not abide, a revelation too great for them, and that will pierce them to their inmost soul. ”

“ Faith in the perfect ordering of all things is independent of Revelation. "The argument so often employed by Theologians that Divine Revelation is necessary for man, and that certain views contained in that Revelation are required by our moral consciousness, is purely imaginary, and derived from the Revelation which it seeks to maintain. ”

“ According to the order which we are here following, we have next to treat of the second kind of spiritual apprehension, which we have described above as revelations, and which properly belongs to the spirit of prophecy. With respect to this, it must first be known that revelation is naught else than the discovery of some hidden truth or the manifestation of some secret or mystery. Thus God may cause the soul to understand something by making clear to the understanding the truth concerning it, or He may reveal to the soul certain things which He is doing or proposes to do. ”

“ New light has been thrown first of all on the concept of revelation itself. The scholastic theologians, unprovided with the instrument of historical criticism, considered God, man, the universe, and their mutual relations, from the ontological point of view; and, having an absolute conception of truth and of our knowledge of it, conceived of revelation as a communication of truth directly and by external means from God to man, and as a communication on matters which men could not otherwise have known. ”

“ When we speak of revelation, the term can only refer to the true revelation of the eternal truths through Jesus himself, as we find them in the Gospels, and the verity of which, even where it is somewhat veiled by the tradition, confers on it the character of revelation. For it is a fact which we should never forget, that even the best attested revelation, as it can only reach us in human setting and by human means, does not make truth, but it is truth, deeply felt truth, which makes revelation. Truth constitutes revelation, not revelation truth. ”

“ He alone knows Himself. And hence we may perceive the importance, the absolute necessity of Revelation—of a direct Revelation from God. Without such a Revelation, we could know little or nothing—nothing with certainty—concerning subjects of the first interest and importance to man: subjects, such as these: Who made man, and what is his destination? ”

“ Though we were to admit, therefore, that you have in reality—we believe no such thing—revelations from the Spirit of truth, it would be absurd to say, that because the author is greater than his work, these private revelations are a firmer foundation of faith, and a more certain rule of conduct, than the revelations contained in the inspired volume: it is not the Spirit which you have, but, at best, a revelation from the Spirit; and this [Pg 188] revelation you place above the Scriptures, which you acknowledge to be divine—which you admit to be a revelation from God to man. ”

“ Free as air, broad-cast as light, impartial as the genial showers of heaven, revelation informs the head, quickens the heart, strengthens the conscience and illumines the soul of every upward-looking man, to whatever clime or time he may belong. "This wide universe is the sacred temple of God;" revelation, in its truest and most catholic sense, is the 'open sesame' to the mystery of religion ; and man is, by his very birth, entitled to the bliss of communion with his Father in heaven. ”

“ But even if a revelation involved no such manifestation of God, but only a communication of truth to man, it is incumbent on those who object to its attestation by miracles, to find some other method by which the reality of a divine commission could be attested, and to show that this mode would be preferable to an attestation by miracles. ”

“ The revelation of the divine will by inspired persons is, as such, miraculous; and therefore, before the adversaries of the Gospel can employ with propriety their objections to the particular miracles on which its credibility is based, they should show the impossibility of any revelation. In whatever age the revelation is given, succeeding ages can know it only from testimony ”

“ As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word revelation. Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. ”

“ Now can you, or any man know this gospel by the power of God, that brings life and immortality to light, but by divine revelation: and do not you that deny revelation, deny the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; for Christ saith, 'when the Son of man shall be revealed, that the world should be doing as in the says of Noah, etc. ”

“ He puts the infinite mysteries of revelation into the narrow crucible of the finite, the residuum is—nothing; he calls it immutable laws, as if laws could exist without a lawgiver, and bows before a pitiless phantom, where he should love and worship the great I Am!
Examine fearlessly into nature, O earnest thinker, for the created is but the veil of the Creator. Revelation and nature are from the same God, and both demand our serious attention. Revelation is indeed the Word of Nature; the sole key to its many wards of mystery. Truth never contradicts itself. ”

“ The first 200 pages of the first volume are filled with arguments to prove that a Revelation, such as the one we profess to believe in, supernatural in its origin and nature and attested by miracles, is simply incredible, and so, on no account, no matter how evidenced, to be received. ”

“ It is called the Revelation, because God therein discovers those things which could never have been sifted out by the reasonings of human understanding, those deep things of God which no man knows, but the Spirit of God, and those to whom he reveals them. ”

“ The word revelation means the discovery of something that was not known before, or the making clear something that was obscure. Now, with this idea in our mind, it may excite surprise to find how much the Christian Revelation abounds in mysteries. By mysteries, I understand truths which are imperfectly comprehended. ”

“ To most of us, on the contrary, the Revelation is a whole, capable of being looked at from many sides, and found to be divine from whatever side it is seen; and one of its aspects is this supernatural character by which it appears to assert its identity with that Moral Law which claims absolute supremacy over all the physical world. ”

“ He is wont, for example, to reveal to some persons how many days they still have to live, or what trials they are to suffer, or what is to befall such and such a person, or such and such a kingdom, etc. And even as regards the mysteries of our faith, He will reveal and expound to the spirit the truths concerning them, although, since this has already been revealed once, it is not properly to be termed revelation, but is more correctly a manifestation or explanation of what has been revealed already. ”

“ Even without contending that a divine revelation is of any greater importance than the arts and sciences, your allowing it any importance at all, is, in the eye of reason an argument in its support. Had you taken the other road, and contended that there was no necessity of a revelation, and had you been able to make this appear, you would have proved to the eye of reason, that a Being of infinite wisdom, who can never act without a just cause, had never made a revelation. ”

“ With regard to prophesying, I wish to say, that we have a great many times the revelations of God given unto us through his spirit, when we do not comprehend what revelation is. How many of you have had the still small voice of the spirit whisper things to you, and when you have followed the dictations of that spirit it has become in you a principle of revelation. ”

“ Now we must, above all things, come to an understanding as to what is meant by revelation before we attribute revelation to the Bible. There are not many now who really believe that an angel in bodily form descended from heaven and whispered into the ear of the apostles, in rather bad Greek, every verse, every word, even every letter of our Gospels. ”

“ You say I have acknowledged that a divine revelation 'if real, is of all truths the most important;' hence you call upon the 'eye of reason' to examine this proposition to see why it should be considered more important than the discoveries made in the arts and sciences, &c. ”

“ A revelation must not only be limited by the extent of the human capacity for receiving it, and by the proposed object of it, but also, in a considerable degree, by the state of knowledge existing in the world at the time it is made. ”

“ Now, we ask seriously, Do not the foregoing facts and arguments show that there is no moral or religious necessity for a divine revelation to man? Let the believers in the necessity of the Bible, or a divine revelation, show their fallacy, or for ever abandon the old mythological assumption that it is necessary. ”

“ The Bible is just as plain and easy of comprehension as the revelation which I have just read to you, if you understand the Spirit of God—the Spirit of revelation, and know how the Gospel of salvation is adapted to the capacity of weak man.
If you could see things as they are, you would know that the whole plan of salvation, and all the revelations ever given to man on the earth are as plain as would be the remarks of an Elder, were he to stand here and talk about our every day business. ”

“ We see, first, how it is, that the truth of revelation does not compel the assent of all minds by an overwhelming and irresistible evidence. The first premiss, which affirms the being of God, although undeniable and indubitable in its ultimate idea, may be in its distinct conception, so far denied or doubted by those whose reason is perverted by their own fault, or their misfortune, as to destroy all basis for a revelation. ”

“ It makes God a fool, man a lunatic, religion a farce, and the Bible superlative nonsense. Revelation is defined to be "the act of making known." But what is made known by a book whose language is so contradictory and so ambiguous that no two persons in a million agree with respect to all it teaches? ”

“ To learn what is right and wrong in all the thousand and million complications of life by revelation, would involve the necessity of a direct revelation every hour of every day, to every individual of the race. But the only conceivable mode by which revelations from God are possible, is by miracles and prophecy, which are interruptions of the ordinary uniformity of nature. ”

“ THE field of Revelation is the spiritual. Its office is to make known the otherwise unknowable. The soul, the spiritual world, life after death, and God, can be known in the first instance by revelation only. As long ago as the days of Job it was of general knowledge that man unaided by revelation could know nothing of these things. ”

“ For if a revelation cannot be divine, if it contains any thing mysterious, whose fitness and necessity cannot be explained by human reason, then neither creation nor providence can be proved to be divine, for they are both of them more mysterious than the Christian revelation. ”

“ A revelation given to a living man in my day is just as sacred as one given to a man who has been dead some three thousand years. God is a consistent being, and he reveals himself according to his own mind and will, and in the last, dispensation he will continue to reveal line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, bringing forth a record here, unfolding the history of another people there, bringing to light the bible of the ten tribes who have been absent from the land of Canaan for almost three thousand years. ”