General Revelation
Definition
God’s makes himself known as Lord through divine revelation, which is given to all people through creation and human nature and to specific people through events, inspired human words recorded as Scripture, and Jesus Christ himself.
Summary
God makes himself known to his creatures because he first knows himself perfectly as a personal, speaking God. Although all people suppress the knowledge of God in their sin, he has clearly communicated about himself to his creatures through the creation and through human’s being made in the image of God. On top of this general revelation, God communicates about himself to particular people in special revelation, which includes the events of nature and history, human words that are inspired by God and recorded for us in Scripture, and through the person of Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate image of God. In all of these different ways, God reveals himself as Lord, which is comprised of his control, presence, and authority over all things.
Video
J. D. Greear on Whether God Speaks Audibly Today
J. D. Greear weighs in on whether God still speaks audibly.
Articles
The Clues of Creation: God Is Not Hiding
In the 1998 film The Truman Show, Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, a generally cheerful insurance adjuster in a cozy island town whose days run like clockwork—-until the day a stage light falls out of the heavens and crashes near his car. Though the news on the radio says an airplane has been shedding parts, Truman begins to develop a suspicious awareness that everything is not as it seems: A technical difficulty on his car stereo broadcasts the very route he is driving. A homeless man calling his name on the street looks very much like the father he thought...
A Supernatural Nature Documentary: ‘The Riot and the Dance’
N. D. Wilson’s nature documentary ‘The Riot and the Dance’ takes us on a guided tour of God’s living art museum.
God Aims to Be Understood
Perspicuity—-the notion that the Bible is sufficiently unambiguous on the whole for well-intentioned persons with Christian faith to understand with relative adequacy—-is no small thing. Recognizing that none of us, even the most hermeneutically savvy, is immune from the cataract of confusion that inhibits a perfect reading of the text, evangelical Protestants nevertheless stand on the conviction that Scripture’s clarity is rationally and empirically defendable. In the recently released book Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism, I respond to Catholic historian Brad Gregory of Notre Dame by arguing that the doctrine of perspicuity is indeed supported by...
What About Those Who Haven’t Heard?
A world with awareness of global neighbors, the question, “What about those who haven’t heard the gospel of Jesus Christ?” demands an answer.
