divine revelation on Belief

If man tries to grasp at truth of himself, he tries to grasp at it a priori . But in that case he does not do what he has to do when the truth comes to him. He does not believe. If he did, he wou...

Introduction During my time in seminary (and the year after I graduated) I spent a lot of time at a church in southern New Jersey. It’s actually how I met Scott Bullock, TPW board member and creator...

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It...

Introduction During my time in seminary (and the year after I graduated) I spent a lot of time at a church in southern New Jersey. It’s actually how I met Scott Bullock, TPW board member and creator ...

What we need to realize, however, is that there is no such thing as autonomous or “self-grounding” knowledge. All systems of interpretation and all claims to true knowledge are ultimately grounded out...

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

God wishes to be seen, and he wishes to be sought, He wishes to be expected, and he wishes to be trusted.

All-loving God, we confess our motivations are often not influenced by your love. We act according to what will bring us the best outcome. We love ourselves before we love you. Help us to grow deeper ...

The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure and integrates falling to achieve its only promised wholeness.

May the Spirit of God bless you with insight and revelation as you take this journey toward peace.  May you be led by Jesus to glimpse a new world where love is the language we speak and shalom binds...

Karl Barth wrote that, “God is always a mystery. Revelation is always revelation in the full sense of the word or it is not revelation” ( CD  I.8.2). God’s revelation, to Barth, always exists in a dia...

This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.

Preaching Commentary There they are on top of a mountain praying with Jesus. Mount Tabor in lower Galilee? Mount Hermon in the far north of Israel near Syria? Some other mount? No one knows. Sudden...

Preaching Commentary Introduction John 1 contains some of the richest Christological passages in all of Scripture. It rewards deep meditation on its meaning. Its use as the Christmas gospel text is...

But the rub of revelation is that it’s a transformation you’re not in charge of.

Inspiration presupposes a long process of God’s providential working with the author.

Revelation is a hard gift to receive. You must give up everything else to receive it—like finding a treasure in a field and selling everything you have so you can get that treasure.

Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to G...

Nothing makes one so dizzy as human reasoning, which sees everything from an earthly point of view, and does not allow illumination from above. Earthly reasoning is covered with mud. Therefore, we hav...

It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.

Preaching Commentary Rediscovering the Wonder of Jesus’ Birth It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes familiarity breeds something far less intense, but equally as destructive—co...

All the cards in the deck of revelation about God’s mercy and kindness are stacked in favor of the unthinkable.

Story is the primary way in which the revelation of God is given to us. The Holy Spirit’s literary genre of choice is story. Story isn’t a simple or naive form of speech from which we graduate to the ...

In 1961 the Russians put the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin. Nikita Khrushchev was the Russian premier, and he said that when Gagarin went into space, the cosmonaut discovered that there was no Go...

Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.

In all of knowable reality, God is unique. He is knowable not like the multiplication table or the table of elements; he alone is knowable as the one totally in control of being known. He is not at th...

Rediscovering the Wonder of Jesus’ Birth It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but sometimes familiarity breeds something far less intense, but equally as destructive—complacency. As a child,...

There they are on top of a mountain praying with Jesus. Mount Tabor in lower Galilee? Mount Hermon in the far north of Israel near Syria? Some other mount? No one knows. Suddenly, Jesus is transfigur...

Every awesome thing in creation is designed to point you to the One who alone is worthy of capturing and controlling the awe of your searching and hungry heart.

While the search for the divine has been somewhat crowded out in modern times by our busy and overstimulated lives, it is still one of the most universal of human strivings. C. S. Lewis describes this...