Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

To all who read these blog postings, you do me a great honor.

Genesis 28:10-18 NASB

10 Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran.

11 He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place.

12 He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.

14 Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

15 Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”

17 He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on its top.

Hebrews 1:1

1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,

The experience of Jacob here recorded is a graphic demonstration of what is known as direct revelation. In direct revelation there is no mediator between God and man. As with Jacob, God speaks directly to the hearer. The Hebrews reference informs the reader this happened to different men at different times in different ways. The common confession of Christianity is that this revelation ended with the death of twelve Apostles of Jesus.

There is another type of revelation known as general revelation. This is mediated by some agent. It is correct to think of general revelation as that which the creation tells us about God and His acts. Psalm 19:1

¹ The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Both of these forms of revelation are equally perfect. There is no error in that which is revealed. The problems arise as man tries to understand and interpret these forms of God’s self-revelation. It is a common human error to see more than intended or something different than that which is revealed. By common is meant this error is universal and without exception.

This brings the discussion to how revelation in its truth is known. This process is known as spiritual illumination. I Corinthians 2 identifies this as discernment and “the mind of Christ”, which all believers have with a lesser or greater development. It must be added that no unbeliever has this spiritual quality.

This leaves one more item for this discussion – logic. This can be termed “reason”. The fact of the necessity of reason is so plain it needs no argument.

The question that arises is whether revelation is subject to reason exercised to its final conclusion. An illustration of this is Gordon Clark’s conclusion that God is the immediate cause of sin, as He is the cause of all things. Does the common demand of logic require this conclusion or any so-called necessary conclusion. The answer is no for two reasons.

The first is revelation is the discipline for the intellect. If revelation requires the rational mind to stop short of a necessary conclusion it must stop at that point. For the case in question with Clark, look at James 1:13.

¹³ Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.

The second reason for caution is the reasoning mind is fallen. Human intellect is at its best influenced by sin. This is a good reason the rational mind must ever be subject to the discipline of Scripture.

Those who deny the cardinal truths of Christianity have logic on their side at least in some instances. They have logic but they don’t have illumination.

The question a professing Christian must answer in 2011 is not “do you believe in Jesus”, but “what Jesus do you believe in?”.