In Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, he writes, “ With no revelation . . . there was no way to know what pleased and what angered . . . This is the plight of those who live in a world without revelation. In the end, for all of their conscientious ritual, they did not know what deity wanted” (p. 145). Please post a 400-word response to Walton’s statement. Discuss the importance of revelation to God and the biblical writers. Seek to answer questions like “Was it important for God to reveal himself to mankind? If so, in what ways has God revealed himself? How important was revelation to the prophets who often used the phrase 'Thus says the Lord?'” While sources are not required, you may support your answer from the …show more content…
We have to understand that our God loves but He is just. He loves us but because His character is just he has to allow us to feel the consequences of our sinful nature, but His love offers redemption. This would not make sense if he hadn’t revealed His nature to us.
God revealed himself to creation in many ways. In Exodus 3:14, God revealed his name to Moses: "I am who I am." God's name reveals that God is self-existent, self-perpetuating life. The other names of God, found throughout the Bible, offer additional insight into who and what God is. Noah a preacher who warned everyone about the flood also received revelation from God about His expectation for Humankind.
Revelation of God was of significant importance to the prophets who claimed to carry messages to the people from God. Prophets used the phrased, “Thus says the Lord”, as a means to offer assurance to the people and convince them of whom they have received authority from to give the message. By saying, “Thus says the Lord”, this guaranteed to the prophet that the people or audience understood that he was speaking on the behalf of a “High Power’ and not of his own accord. This was especially important in the Old Testament text because messages often displayed God’s anger, wrath, judgment and warnings of things to come. Oftentimes, these messages were connected to promises that could not be carried out by those delivering the message, and so they
Joseph M. Bolton RELS 103-02 Online Old Testament Studies Spring Semester 2011 Session E May 8, 2011 to July 2, 2011 The Old Testament TimeLine Creation & Primeval History The Creation: * God creates the Heavens and the Earth * God creates man in his image. *
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all faith based religions with the shared belief in revelation, which in the text is described as “ the divine disclosure of sacred knowledge” (Ch. 4 Pg. 95). All three of these religions show the importance of revelation, whether it be through John the Baptist in the jordan river, through Muhammad in the Arabian desert, or through a burning bush in the middle of the desert with Moses. In Christianity the importance of revelation is shown through none
Comparing and contrasting different written works is a key aspect to discovering truths about the Christian Bible. When we compare and contrast canonical books, we can learn many things about the theology and context in which these books were written. Today, we will be comparing two books from the New Testament: Hebrews and Revelation. While Hebrews is often referred to as an epistle, it is actually more similar to a sermon. Revelation is a book that describes a supposed “vision” from the author John. John wrote this vision down on the instruction of a heavenly figure. While we compare these books, we will specifically focus on their relation to Judaism and their positions on Judaism. We will examine three major difference and/or similarities: Their views on the relevance of Jewish History, the superiority of Christ, and, the Second coming of the Messiah.
What God reveals to humanity, is not given all at once. He progressively reveals Himself and His strategy of redemption. The Scriptures affirm to God's progressive revelation of Himself in the fact that He does not fully reveal His truths from the beginning. However, all He reveals to the world is always true. Each Scripture builds on the previous one, revealing a little of God’s mystery at a time (Rom. 16:24). Theses factors of revelation inform understanding of God’s progressive revelation of redemption as
In the Beginning: At the beginning of the universe. God created heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. During those six days God spoke to the darkness and created the world, brought forth light, created the sky, land and animals and plants to inhabit them. However, even during this creation he was contemplating the creation of a being made in his own image.
This paper will analyze the "Divine Purpose" as it appears in the various "highways of prophecy" in the New Testament, and show how those "highways" may be followed to a deeper and fuller appreciation of God's message.
Cross referencing the 10 Allusions in the Old Testament and comparing them to the Book of Revelation solidifies the truth of the Gospel. The future events that Apostle John spoke of in Revelation, were already being revealed in part to Daniel, Ezekiel, King David, Moses, and Isaiah to name a few. The mere fact that these events and the description of Jesus Christ during His return were revealed to the them thousands of years prior to the Book of Revelation being written is incredible. Furthermore, this proves that God is Omniscience, the all-knowing God. Last year, when Isis was heavily making news headlines, the Lord asked me to pray for Damascus. There was an article floating around that the events that were taking place in Israel were
When exploring the word of God in the Old Testament (OT), it is important to locate the texts into a social and historical context. It is in this context that the word of God is mediated by human expression. To deny the human expression is effectively to place a barrier between the word of God and it’s invitation to revelation. The OT can be seen as a “record of people’s experience of God’s self-revelation” (Rohr & Martos, 2011, p. 22). Thus the theology underpinning the OT meaning and understanding of the “word” is deep and rooted in “a Semitic conviction of the power of the spoken word” (Gimpel, 2011, p. 21). The OT is based upon oral tradition. In oral traditions, the reliability of a story, message or tale rested solely upon the
The New Testament is characterized by the existence of imperative Biblical figures, with the likes of Jesus Christ, the Apostles, among many others. Peter was among Jesus’ first disciples. From his turning point, as manifested in the book of John 21, to his progress as a dedicated leader as manifested in Acts, to his final emergence as a co-elder as manifested in the Epistles of 1st and 2nd Peter, Peter exhibited traits of a transformational and charismatic biblical figure (Neil & William 409).
Every religion has their own revelations. Revelations from each religion are different. The Semitic religions each have their own revelations however they are similar. The Christians believe that the revelation is how God has revealed himself to humanity. There are usually two ways which they distinguish between Gods revelations, there is both general and special revelation.
Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Volume I: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation. Second Edi. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2010.
The Old Testament consisted of a set of documentations of religious scriptures, which were written by different people at various times for a different audience. Most of the Old Testament contains short stories of traditional stories and those stories of distinguished ways God established mankind. These stories are often told to the people in narrative form, which are guidelines often referred to as laws, songs, genealogies, and a list from these authors that composed the Old Testaments. The pressing of set documentation is essential because it is the framework for the lives of God 's followers. The term “Old Testament” originated as a means to express spoken traditions and God 's creation of that particular era. It is an method of philosophical investigation was designed to answer the why questions within these spiritual text documentations. These religious documentations consisted of four parts. These four sections retrieved from the Old Testaments are the laws, history, wisdom and prophecy. The laws are a rule of behavior enforced within the community. The rules are sometimes called “Torah.” When analyzing this Torah, these rules viewed within the first five spiritual books of the Bible. For example, in the first Torah in Genesis, it explains the creation, Noah’s Flood, Abraham and Isaac, and Joseph’s coats of many colors. However, the laws in Exodus were in regards to the going out. The going out took about 40 plus years, until the people led to
To speak of the Hebrew Scripture is to speak of story, a story stretching from the very beginning of time to only a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era. It is to speak of richness of content, of purpose and of reality and to engross oneself in an overarching narrative that, depending on your personal convictions, continues to the present day. Within this richness is found a wide variety of different events and experience, told through a series of genre ranging from foundational myth to apocalypse, law giving to poetry, genealogy to wisdom and many more. Within this diversity however, three broad sections can be discerned that speak to a shared purpose and content, these are the sections of Law, Prophecy and Writings. It
The book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible. All of the prophecies given throughout the Old Testament, as well as those in the New Testament converge in this one single book. The total objective of Revelation was to reveal the future. Jesus is the One, who did the revealing,
The process by which the English Bible, as it is known to the English culture today, was compiled is an extraordinary thing to see. The Bible consists of two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The process by which both Testaments were written and then canonized into one book transpired over a period of many years. Once the canonization of the Bible officially came to an end, it was translated into English. Since then, many versions of the modern Bible have been made. Since the individual books of the Bible became scattered as they were written, people set forth to preserve God’s Word by compiling them into one