The word "revelation" is understood differently by many people. Some people believe that revelation is when a prophet tells you something. Some people believe that revelation is some kind of inexplicable feeling. There are those who are sure that revelation is something that people suddenly begin to understand, although they previously knew about this or that truth.
The fact is that there is no detailed and precise explanation in the Word. Like, for example, the definition of faith in Hebrews 11.1.
However, this word appears repeatedly in Scripture. I want to start with the last book, with the book “Revelation”, or in Greek - Apocalypse. That is, I do not take into account the meaning of this word in Hebrew. I just don't know him. And since this is relevant to us today, in the light of the teachings of Jesus Christ, I will consider this issue in the new testament.
What does the word "revelation" mean?
Apocalypse - (Greek) opening, exposure, disclosure, removal of the veil;
(translated). revelation, appearance, enlightenment;
We see in this place that this is the revelation of Jesus that God gave Him. And we see that THIS REVELATION was sent to people through the angel to John. And he has already written to us. I simply repeated this Word again so that we can see that what is written in the last book of the Bible is also a revelation. Although, oddly enough, many people consider this book “the most inaccessible, incomprehensible.....”
Let's look at all the places in the Bible where this word is mentioned. The fact is that the dictionary cannot always accurately convey the meaning. But how and where the word was used may give us a clearer picture.
Why did I choose all the places using this word? Because all of them have a fairly specific meaning. Substitute the Greek translation for the highlighted words - the revelation of Jesus, the revelation of His glory, the revelation of the mystery, the Lord's revelation...
Now, for completeness, let’s look at other places in our Russian Bible where the word “revelation” is used.
(Greek) - to give revelation, command or warning, to warn, to instruct;
And let's look at the places where this word is still used.
And one more place that is always referred to as revelation . Its Greek spelling differs from the word apocalypse by one letter. I do not pretend to be an expert on Greek, but I always look at all the passages of Scripture using this particular word in order to understand what meaning the Author intended in it. The Greek dictionary gives a translation almost the same as the first word “apocalypse”
- open, reveal, expose
But I still ask you to pay attention to the context in which it is used in Scripture.
The Church is the guardian of Revelation
By revealing himself to man, God imparts to him knowledge of Himself in a supernatural way. “Supernatural knowledge is that which comes into the mind in a way that exceeds its natural methods and powers,” teaches St. Theodore the Studite. “It comes from the one God, when He finds the mind cleansed of all material attachments and embraced by Divine love.” Supernatural knowledge of God is communicated to the human soul by Divine grace emanating from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. It is through the Divine grace of the Holy Spirit that a person assimilates the truths of Divine Revelation. The Apostle Paul states that: “...no one can call Jesus Christ Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). This means that only one whose mind and heart has been influenced by Divine grace can confess Christ as Lord.
Divine grace abides in the Church and is given in the Holy Sacraments. Therefore, the Church is also the custodian of Divine Revelation. “God is known only by the Holy Spirit,” teaches St. Silouan of Athos. “Our Glorious Church has been given by the Holy Spirit to understand the mysteries of God.” The apostles announced the entirety of the truth received from Christ to the Church (Acts 20:27). According to St. Irenaeus of Lyons, the apostles put into the Church everything that relates to the truth. Being “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:14), the Church preserves divinely revealed doctrinal truths, called dogmas.
God gives revelation
All of these examples of passages from the Word show us the connection between revelation and God. What you (as a believer) heard from someone and accepted it as truth cannot be called revelation. Many people, listening to sermons, say that they received revelation through people. It's right. Although it is more correct to say that you received a revelation from reflection on the Word of God, which (the Word) was spoken by no matter what person.
Or, for example, it was said from the pulpit that one must wear certain clothes or, conversely, not wear something. And then the person says that he acts as it was revealed to him. In this case, obedience is demonstrated. And revelation comes from communication with God.
Example from life
Let me give you a couple of examples. A woman came to our congregation, repented, and was baptized. She was quite old, but she always loved to dress impressively and wore various jewelry. Not gold. We in the congregation don't pay much attention to appearance (who knows what I mean). And after a couple of months, this sister in the congregation asks the question: “Is wearing jewelry a sin??” We started asking what happened and who told her.
She said that she bought more malachite jewelry at the store. I unpacked it at home. During prayer, for some reason her eyes were directed to these earrings, and she suddenly realized that she had done something wrong. She simply told God that tomorrow she would take them back and if they were accepted (without labels), then she understood everything correctly. In the morning she took them in, and they took them back and returned the money. And she had the same question. We began to talk about the passage about “jewelry and hair braiding.” And she realized that it is not earrings that are a sin, but the passion to have more and more of them.
The second example is related to one of the controversial passages where it talks about veils for sisters. We also don't make rules for people. My sister comes to one of the meetings wearing a headscarf. We ask why. Everyone is interested. And she said that she read the Word about women's veils, and it was revealed to her that she should have a sign on her head. For information. We have sisters in our congregation who wear the veil and others who do not.
How God reveals himself to people
Love for His creation became one of the reasons for the appearance of God's discoveries before people. The Creator wants to save all people and spend time with them on the new earth.
When humanity began to forget its Creator, choosing many gods for worship, Jehovah created His people, the Jews. The first Jew on earth was Abraham, a faithful and obedient man to God, who knew how to hear and listen to the Creator of the world and worship him.
Jew means a wanderer who left his land.
Abraham
Thanks to the revelation of the Creator to people, his visions through Abraham, his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, the Creator led a multi-million people out of Egypt, who survived in the desert, spending 40 years there, thanks to the visions of the Holy Spirit and the ability to hear the voice of the Creator.
The Almighty reveals Himself in nature, in the natural world. All processes in the human body are interconnected; it is impossible for the human mind to understand the uniqueness of this phenomenon. All cycles occurring in nature are subordinated to God's order; human intervention, which is not by the will of the Creator, ends in disaster.
In the world around us, God manifests Himself in order, regular repetitions, and expediency. The beautiful, bright, colorful world of nature is a hymn to the Creator. The Bible, the Holy Scripture, filled with God's Revelations, is called upon to reveal the Almighty to people.
Bible, Holy Scripture
In the New Testament, through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Creator is revealed as a loving Father, Teacher, Savior and Healer.
The ability to read God's discoveries strengthens human faith, fills with spiritual strength, and gives confidence in the future. The letters to the churches, written more than 2 thousand years ago, are filled with spiritual guidance for modern Orthodox believers. The Lord transmitted many of His messages, such as the Revelations of John the Theologian, the book of the prophet Daniel and others, in encrypted form, they can be read by people who know the essence and nature of Existence.
Important! By reading the Bible, plunging into its depths, each person can find in it personal messages from the Creator, helping to change character, learn to love people, become obedient to the Word and faithful to God.
God's messages are filled with:
- advice;
- warnings;
- recipes for happiness;
- descriptions of future events;
- pictures of heaven and hell.
All the Creator’s letters to people are striking in their unity in the diversity of languages in which Holy Scripture was written, the time of writing and the forms of presentation of the Creator’s thoughts.
Through the Holy Scriptures, the Almighty conveyed to people the plan of salvation and inheritance of eternal life.
About the Bible texts:
- Epistle to the Galatians by St. Paul the Apostle
- Psalm of David 58
- Apostle Paul on love
The main paths of God's revelations
The Creator’s revelation to people through His messages focuses on the desire of the Creator Himself to reveal itself to people so that they have saving faith and honor Him.
According to Archimandrite Sophrony, people cannot know the Almighty if he Himself does not reveal itself to them.
Metropolitan Hilarion emphasizes that the Supreme Being can speak, hear, see, think and help. The Creator meets His children face to face. Hilarion calls Jesus a living revelation, the Creator, who came to earth to reveal God to people through Himself and His revelations.
The Almighty is revealed in the Bible through His names. For many centuries, people have heard the Existent, Eternal, True, Righteous, Saving, Holy and Just Creator. He revealed himself in the Son - Savior, Healer, through Beauty, Love, Life, Wisdom.
Jesus Christ
Through Jesus, God appeared to the world in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16), while remaining an unsolved mystery, the knowledge of which will last forever.
Three stages of God's revelations to people
- For the first time, the Creator reveals Himself in the Old Testament through prophets, judges, kings and other people. This stage of Epiphany is called preparatory.
- The central part of Divine revelations is the New Testament, in which, through Jesus Christ, Orthodox believers can see the essence and character of Being, as a confirmation of the Old Testament discoveries.
- The Revelation of the Apostle John is the final part of the appearance and messages from the Creator set forth in Holy Scripture.
The Great Creator continues to reveal himself to people throughout the history of the world created by God.
General revelation and special revelation are two ways chosen by God to reveal Himself to humanity. General revelation refers to the general truths that can be learned about God from nature. Special revelation refers to more specific truths that can be learned about God through supernatural phenomena.
Regarding general revelation, Psalm 19:2-5 declares: “The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament declares the work of His hands. Day imparts speech to day, and night reveals knowledge to night. There is no language and no dialect where their voice is not heard. Their sound goes throughout the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” According to this text, the existence and power of God can be clearly seen by observing the universe. The order, complexity, and beauty of creation testify to the existence of a powerful and glorious Creator.
General revelation is also taught in Romans 1:20: “For His invisible things, His eternal power and Godhead, have been seen since the foundation of the world by the consideration of what has been made, so that they cannot be seen.” Like the text in the Psalms, it teaches that God's eternal power and nature are "visible" in relation to what God has done, and there is no excuse for denying these facts. Given these passages, perhaps a working definition of general revelation would be “the revelation of God to all people in all times and places, proving that God exists and that He is intelligent, powerful, and above human understanding.”
Through special revelation, God reveals Himself in miraculous ways. Special revelation includes the physical appearance of God, dreams, visions, the written Word of God, and most importantly, Jesus Christ. The Bible mentions God appearing in physical form numerous times (Genesis 3:8; 18:1; Exodus 3:1-4; 34:5-7), as well as speaking to people through dreams (Genesis 28:12; 37:5; 1 Kings 3:5; Daniel 2) and visions (Genesis 15:1; Ezekiel 8:3-4; Daniel 7; 2 Corinthians 12:1-7).
Of primary importance in God's revelation is His Word, the Bible, which is a form of special revelation. God miraculously directed the human writers of the Holy Scriptures to properly record His message to mankind; although He used their own styles and personalities. The Word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12). God's Word is inspired and profitable (2 Timothy 3:16-17). God determined that truths about Him should be written down because He knew that oral tradition was imprecise and unreliable. He also understood that a person's dreams and visions could be misinterpreted. God has chosen to reveal everything that mankind needs to know about Him, what He expects, and what He has done for us, in the Bible.
The highest form of special revelation is the Person of Jesus Christ. God became a human being (John 1:1, 14). Hebrews 1:1-3 sums it up best: “God, who at many times and in divers manners spoke of old to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by the Son... Who is the brightness of his glory, and the image of his person.” God took human form in the form of Jesus Christ to identify with us, to give us an example, to teach us, to reveal Himself to us, and most importantly, to provide us with salvation by humiliating Himself in death on the cross (Philippians 2:6-8). Jesus Christ is God's supreme special revelation.
Stages of Revelations
Preparatory
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Before the Nativity of Christ, God the Father revealed His will through the prophets. The most famous of them: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Nathan, Jonah. In the Holy Scriptures, a prophet (“neviim”, “navi”) means one who proclaims, called by God. They came to know through the Holy Spirit the hidden, secret wisdom of God and proclaimed it to all people.
Central
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Through the Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, the essence and character of God the Father is revealed. The truth given by the Lord does not deny or change, but confirms the Old Testament prophecies.
Final
In the Apostolic era, the Revelation of Christ was spread by his disciples.
The famous book of the Apostle John the Theologian contains the Revelation of the Second Coming of the Lord to earth. Otherwise it is called “Apocalypse”, since it describes apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic cataclysms.
In subsequent centuries, many saints received individual and general revelations from God.
In Revelations, New Testament man is not given new truths. He receives a deep, meaningful knowledge of what has already been revealed by the Lord.
The Bible as a source of God's revelation
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The Bible is not a book made up by anyone. The contents that the prophets and apostles only “spoke by the working of the Holy Spirit” came from God.
Biblical Revelation is necessary for people because we are separated from the Lord by original sin. The biblical word means that what was previously unknown has now been revealed to man and there is no longer anything hidden from him.
The Bible is verbal communication with God. This communication is beneficial and God-inspired for a person. Holy Scripture reveals to us the truth, teaches us righteousness, instructs us in the love of philosophy, denounces sinful thoughts and actions, and prepares us for Eternal life.
To avoid heresies and personal speculations, it is necessary to study the Holy Scriptures. Interpretations of the Holy Fathers of the Church, sermons of priests, and attentive prayer help with this.
The Word of the Living God nourishes the immortal soul of man, just as food nourishes the mortal body.
Types of Revelations
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Orthodoxy recognizes natural and supernatural Revelation.
Natural
The Lord revealed himself to us through Christmas. We have the necessary ideas about the universe, God and man. Natural knowledge of God is a process inherent in every person. We explore the harmonious order of the Universe, historical events, and listen to the voice of conscience. Thanks to this, one can come to a conclusion about the action of the All-Wise Creator in the world.
Now people are coming to faith who know nothing about Orthodoxy. They did not read the Bible, they did not hear about the work of the Holy Fathers. Novices have their own vague or completely incorrect ideas about the Orthodox doctrine. Such natural revelation of God often leads them away from the truth. It is necessary to study and always compare ideas about God with what he bequeathed to us in the Holy Scriptures.
Supernatural
Natural knowledge of God is built on the foundation of the supernatural. Such Divine Revelation includes knowledge about God, the world and man from the Primary Source. Orthodoxy reveals to man about correct faith, salvation, worthy of honoring the Lord. Divine Revelation serves as an inexhaustible source for the Orthodox faith.
Supernatural knowledge of God can be individual or general. Individual – for the edification of one person. General revelation is announced to certain people (apostles, prophets, saints) in order to convey through them God's will to individual nations or to all humanity.
The ultimate goal of God's revelation is the salvation of man.
