REVELATION

One of my favorite sayings is: Everything you need to know about God is found in the Word of God; nothing you need to know about God is NOT found in the Word of God and anything you THINK you know about God that is not in the Word of God, you just made up.

What does this mean?

What it means is that the Word of God; i.e.: The Bible; is the entire revelation of God’s character, His love for his creation and His plan for its redemption.

He left nothing about Himself out.

There is no further revelation about Him needed.

In the Bible we find every iota of information about God that we need to discover who He is and what He is about.

We also discover why He created mankind, how mankind has historically responded to Him and what happened to disrupt what was to have been a fellowship of love between Him and His highest creation: human beings.

The Bible reveals the price of mankind’s disobedience to God and tells us that there is a high price to be paid for that disobedience, a price so high that no man could pay it.

Scripture shows us God’s plan to pay the price Himself, on mankind’s behalf so that humans could once again enjoy fellowship with Him.

Throughout history there have been people who have had "experiences" that they claimed brought them some "new" revelation from God.

For instance, after a fall on the ice, Mary Baker Eddy had a vision from God that healed her and brought her revelation about the nature of existence; that pain and sickness are illusions; Jesus was the offspring of Mary’s self-conscious communion with God and was conceived when Mary "Perceived" the "spiritual idea" of Christ.

Joseph Smith had "visions" during his youth that "revealed" to him that all Christian churches, denominations, and sects were wrong and that he should set them straight, and that a "messenger" named Moroni pointed him toward some burried gold plates containing many "new" revelations about God (written, by the way, in a convoluted form of "King James" English - presumabley because God could not speak 19th century English), etc.

After being attacked by ruffians and struck in the face with a large stone, which left her disfigured and traumatized, Ellen Harmonn (later to become Ellen White) began having visions from God in which she was levitated high above the earth and "revealed" that the door of salvation had been closed to sinner on October 22 1843. She is credited with solidifying the scattered Millerites and Adventists into one denomination know as Seventh-Day Adventists.

Sun Myung Moon had a "vision" in which Jesus told him that He (Jesus) had not fulfilled His mission on earth and that Moon was the only one alive who could accomplish the mission.

I could go on, but what I want you to see is that each of these had totally different "visions" from God, each of which named them as his "chosen" one to share new "revelations" with the world.

Can they all be right?

Can one be right?

Which one?

Who gets to choose?

You?

Me?

No.

If we want the total revelation of God, we need only to turn to the collection of 66 writings by 40 authors, written over centuries, which harmonize with each other, are ALL about the same person, and that leaves absolutely nothing about God unsaid.

We call it The Bible.

Its Old Testament is all about God’s nature and the coming Savior.

Its New Testament is all about God’s acting out His plan for redemption in Christ, its accomplishment and Christ’s soon return.

You should read it…it’s great!

No further revelation needed.

Period.