Suggested Pre-Reading: God Reveals His Oracles: 3
Even though God gives to all of us a general understanding of His eternal power, divine nature, and moral character, by writing such things on our hearts, it was God’s good pleasure to choose long ago a specific group of people to receive His detailed oracles; truths about God, man, and the events of history. God even told these people about future events before they happened, such as the death of the Jewish Messiah and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem.1 Thankfully, these chosen people wrote down the divine words, so that we could have them today. One must keep in mind that due to limited technology, the only two ways the ancients could give us God’s words were in writing or by means of an oral tradition. Without a doubt, a written tradition is far superior to an oral one, and so the ancients preserved for us God’s words using the best method available.
Now who were these people who God chose to write down His oracles? They were the Israelites – the Jews. God personally established the nation of Israel by delivering the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from slavery in Egypt, and by using the man Moses to help lead them. One of the promises God gave to the nation through Moses was to provide a line of prophets who would dispense holy truth. Moses recorded this promise:
God spoke to Israel over the centuries through various prophets. God did not speak with other nations in the same way; the relationship between God and Israel was unique. This uniqueness was attested to by the apostle Paul:
So these Jews, who at the time were the only people entrusted with the oracles of God, wrote God’s words down for posterity. Over the course of time a portion of their many writings were collected and bound together as one book – this book today is called the Bible. The Bible is a library consisting of sixty-six books from some forty authors, whose writings occurred over the span of more than one thousand years. Despite the multiplicity of authors and span of time, the Bible is a cohesive narrative with discernible plots and themes. This should be expected, since God was the one giving the words to be written down. The Bible is the key source of information about God and man, and it says of itself:
Now, what is the main point of the Bible? Since God has gone to the effort of inspiring words to be written, and binding them together in a singular book, what is the message of this book that God wants us to know? The answer to these questions is the focus of the next series, which will discuss the essential Christian principle “God’s Oracles Center Around Christ”.
As we move on to the next principle, regarding Christ, let us summarize in three key points what has been discussed over the course of this series on divine revelation, points which are an orthodox Christian perspective on divine revelation.
- God must speak to us, if we are to know anything specific about Him.
- God could choose to speak to all people or to some people.
- God chose the Jewish people to be the recipients of His specific divine instruction, and their words have come down to us today in the form of the Bible.
The Christian must be convinced of these three things, and they must cling to the notion that the edifice of all true Christian doctrine is built upon the foundation that the Bible is the divinely revealed word of God.
1 Book of Daniel, Chapter 9 Verse 26: “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary…” These words were written approximately 500 years in advance of Jesus’ death and the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome.