The Bible As Reveltation

By Author: Johnson Philip
Total Articles: 90
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The extent to which the non-Christians know about God has been a puzzle for many Christians. This question did not bother most Christians a till a few decades ago because they did not know much about their non-Christian neighbors. However, increasing social contact has now told the Christians much about the religious beliefs of their non-Christian neighbors.

No sooner a Christian begins to compare the Christian faith with the non-Christian faith he begins to see many striking similarities. For example almost all faiths talk about God, sin, punishment, salvation, afterlife, and good deeds. Many statements on these subjects, and more, are very similar to what the Bible says. Even in those cases where there is some divergence, the similarity has puzzled many believers. They not only wonder about the origin of these similarities, but also come to the deduction that it can be explained only by assuming that both have come from the same divine source.

Having said the above, eventually many of these Christians take another leap of thought and claim that both the Bible as well as the non-Christian scriptures are equally ...
... inspired, so that valid spiritual information can be obtained from both. This then leads many to take another leap and declare that information about salvation is available in every religion, so that people of any and every religion can be saved provided they understand their scriptures correctly. This kind of a blasphemous thinking has already begun at least among some Christians in India, and because of their ignorance of Bible, many people are attracted to this error.

The above teaching ultimately results in the stand that evangelism is unnecessary and even sinful. They feel that evangelism forcefully plucks out a person from his family and places him in a totally alien society, doing gross violence to families and societies. Thus they encourage Christians to pray for these people and also to advise them to discover the path of salvation as recorded by God in their own religions. The error in this view is obvious because then all the commands in the Bible for preaching the gospel to non-Christians are neutralized.

In Mark 16:15 Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." In I Corinthians 1:23 Paul says," But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;" It is obvious that not only have Christians got to preach the gospel, but also that they have to keep doing it in spite of this being a stumblingblock to people of non-Christian faiths. Nowhere does the Bible indicate that people would be saved through the methods of salvation found in their own faiths. Further, the Bible is very clear in that there is salvation in none outside Christ. According to Acts 4:12, "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."

Obviously, there is a serious flaw with all the attempts to find ways of salvation in non-Christian religions. This error has resulted from the wrong assumption that God has given His inspired revelation outside the Bible also. In turn this erroneous view has developed because of human philosophy and carnal wisdom. Instead of deriving a doctrine from the Bible, many Christians have been developing doctrines based upon their philosophical speculations. This is a gross error. If the human mind were capable of autonomously discovering spiritual truth, there would be no need for the Bible.

Right doctrinal and spiritual understanding comes only when doctrinal deduction firmly is based upon the Bible. It is a lengthy process, and requires that we control our egos and meekly accept all what the Bible says. This also requires that instead of promoting our wishful thinking, we should teach only what the Bible says. It is here that many have gone wrong.

Instead of deducing doctrines from our human wisdom, we will look to the Bible for the answers. Let us see what the Bible says about non-Christian scriptures and divine revelation:
Bible As Revelation

Bible gives much attention to the subject of divine revelation, and repeatedly affirms where this revelation has been recorded. The Israelites at the time of Moses were passing through a situation similar to ours at the dawn of the twenty-first century. In Egypt and then in Canaan there was much mingling between God's people and the pagans. These societies were undergoing fast changes, which happens to be a time when there is little time to reflect upon spiritual realities. In such times as this, there is great attraction to pagan religions and philosophies.

A believer instinctively knows that such attraction is wrong and also contrary to the commands of the scripture which forbids God's people from intermarriage, inter-religious activities, and the embracing of pagan faiths. These commands in the Old Testament are so blunt that many of them feel the need to soften this sharpness by pointing out to the many similarities between the Jewish faith and the surrounding religions.

The attraction was so strong that in more than 400 places God warned them not to be ensnared by pagan gods. For example, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me", Exodus 20:3. "And in all [things] that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth", Exodus 23:13. "Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and [one] call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice", Exodus 34:15.

Since an attraction and appreciation for the pagan gods is the first stage in their eventual worship, Jehovah emphatically declared in the Old Testament that only He is the true God. There are several hundred places where this statement is repeated. Similarly, the Old Testament reminded people not to be attracted and influenced by the Oracles of the pagan gods, which were available in plenty. Since these utterances came with plenty of fearsome religious shows in their temples, there was a possibility for the Jews to be attracted to them as though they are God's word. There are many examples of Jews who went at times of crisis to sources other than the true God for hearing a supernatural voice. Saul and the witch at Endore is one such example.

Because the temptation to label all of it as God's word was overwhelming, God emphatically told the Israelites that only the message coming from Him through His chosen Jewish prophets and spokesmen was revelation. Thus the Pentateuch alone there are 420 references to the fact that only what God revealed to His chosen prophets was true revelation. The same idea is found in throughout the Old Testament, and no less than 3800 times it says that only the specific revelation recorded through the Jewish prophets was to be considered the Scripture. Considering anything outside of this to be the revealed word of God was blasphemy.

Further, the Old Testament repeatedly affirmed that the word of God was given only to (and through) the Jewish people. In Ezra 9:4 we read, "Then were assembled unto me every one hat trembled at the words of the God of Israel." The same idea is affirmed in the New Testament by Lord Jesus and the apostles who identify ONLY the law and the prophets as the word of God. (Matt. 7:12, 22:40; Luke 16:16, 29, 31, 24:27, John 1:45; Acts 13:15; Rom. 3:21, etc.).

As we progress further in the New Testament, the apostles speak about the progressive nature of revelation, but do not recognize anything outside the Bible as revelation (Hebrews 1:1). Interestingly, this was the period when the Greek philosophy was at its peak. Many things in this philosophy bore close resemblance with biblical statements. These resemblances were so deceptive that many of the third and fourth century Church Fathers made a lot of compromise between Greek philosophy and biblical theology. However, none of the inspired apostles fell into this error. They never endorsed the seeming Christian elements in the Greek philosophy, and nor did they accept that there is revelation outside the Old and New Testaments.

When the time the book of Revelation was written, a strict warning was issued that none should add anything to the Canon. "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book", Rev. 22:18-19. In the light of these verses, trying to find the revealed words of God outside the Bible is definitely an attempt to add to the word of God.

The seriousness with which the above verses warn against this should caution believers not to propagate the false doctrine that God's revealed word is found outside the Bible also. Further, when this kind of an erroneous doctrine finds acceptance at least among some of us, and when this kind of doctrine becomes popular, it is time for each one of us to take notice of our own failures. If each one of us was faithful to the Bible, and if each one of us were teaching the correct doctrine of divine revelation to our younger ones, such doctrines would not have taken root among us.
Dr. Johnson C. Philip is a scientist and an acknowledged blogging guru having a worldwide following.