Does God Reveal Himself
- Jack Selcher
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
What Kind of Evidence Do We See?
Our law courts depend on direct and circumstantial evidence. Savannah Guthrie interviewing God on Today would be direct evidence of God’s existence. To date, Today has been unable to schedule that interview! God deems it unnecessary.
God reveals Himself through His creation, reason, conscience, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and visions and dreams, all interpreted through the eyes of faith (Hebrews 11:6). Those who believe God exists and sincerely seek Him find Him (Hebrews 11:6).
God Reveals Himself Through His Creation
God’s creation provides crystal clear circumstantial evidence of His existence. “They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God” (Romans 1:19-20 NLT).
Peter Adkins, a famous chemist and atheist, when asked if there was a God, said, "Well, it's fairly straightforward: There isn't one. And there's no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don't believe that there is one. And I think that it is rather foolish that people do think that there is one.”
Peter Adkins doesn’t believe God exists. Instead of sincerely seeking Him, he denies His existence. He doesn’t acknowledge the abundant evidence that renders him without excuse for not knowing God. The most blind are those who cover their eyes with their hands and refuse to see.
He believes that people who believe in God are foolish. Interestingly, Psalm 14:1 (NLT) boomerangs that statement, “Only fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!” Evidence for God is everywhere for those who look for it.
God reveals His creative genius through “sky-speak.” “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known.
They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world” (Psalm 19:1-4 NLT).
Human Reason Points to God
The application of reason points to God’s existence. Let’s consider three arguments, along with summary descriptions of each. This list is far from complete.
· The Kalam Cosmological Argument – Because the universe began to exist, its cause must be a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, supernatural, uncaused, personal Creator. That accurately describes the Christian God.
· Moral Argument - God is the best explanation for the existence of objective morality. He is the standard of good and evil. His commandments reflect His character and determine right and wrong.
· Fine-tuning Argument – Hundreds of features of the cosmos must fall within narrow ranges for life and intelligent life to exist. God created the universe with these fine-tuned features. The probability that all would exist by chance is vanishingly small.
God Reveals Himself Through Our Conscience
God programs human consciences by writing His law on the tablets of human hearts. “Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right” (Romans 2:14-15 NLT). Those who know nothing about the Bible have God’s rules for living hardwired into them.
God Reveals Himself Through Jesus Christ
If we could, the best way to communicate with a crow would be to become a crow. God’s master plan of self-revelation was to become a man while remaining God in the person of Jesus Christ. If you want to know how God reveals Himself, study the descriptions of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
“No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us” (John 1:18 NLT). Jesus told Philip that the Father revealed Himself through His Son.
“Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me” (John 14:8-10 NLT).
“And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God” (Hebrews 1:2-3a NLT).
The Father proved He was revealing Himself through His Son by the miracles Jesus performed. “Don’t believe me unless I carry out my Father’s work. But if I do his work, believe in the evidence of the miraculous works I have done, even if you don’t believe me. Then you will know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father” (John 10:37-38 NLT).
God Reveals Himself Through the Bible
We do not have to be satisfied with the “fingerprints” of God discovered in nature, history, reason, and conscience. We can personally experience the artist whose brush paints the heavens and the earth.
The Bible reveals part of the mystery of who God is. In it, He communicates His nature, promises, and expectations. Apart from it, we wouldn’t know much about Him.
For example, the Bible tells us that God’s nature is holy, and He expects us to be like Him. “You must be holy because I, the Lord, am holy. I have set you apart from all other people to be my very own” (Leviticus 20:26 NLT).
The Bible tells us that God promises eternal life to all who believe in Jesus. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NLT).
God Reveals Himself Through Visions and Dreams
God uses visions and dreams to communicate His will. People who experienced them include Abram (Genesis 15:1), Jacob (Genesis 46:2), Balaam (Numbers 24:4), Nathan (2 Samuel 7:17), Micaiah (1 Kings 22:17), Iddo the Seer (2 Chronicles 9:29), Isaiah (Isaiah 1:1), Eliphaz the Temanite (Job 4:13), Job (Job 7:14), Elihu (Job 33:15), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:4ff), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:1), Daniel (Daniel 2:19), old men and young men (Joel 2:28), Amos (Amos 1:1), Obadiah (Obadiah 1), Micah (Micah 1:1), Nahum (Nahum 1:1), Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:1), Zechariah (Zechariah 1:8), Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father, Luke 1:22), Ananias (Acts 9:10), Paul (Acts 16:9), Cornelius (Acts 10:3), Peter (Acts 10:16), and John (Revelation 9:17).
He still uses visions. At a discipleship conference in 2009, a man who didn’t know me saw mental pictures when he prayed for me. The first picture was an old-fashioned pump from which some water was flowing. He saw another picture of the same pump, but the entire area around the pump was flooded. It was a promise from God that my future ministry would bear vastly more spiritual fruit than anything I had experienced up to 2009.
The vision is being fulfilled. For the last four years, African pastors have used a book I wrote to teach more than 17,000 people how to follow Jesus. More than 7,000 people have been saved in those classes. We have provided more than 14,000 free Bibles to these people. God still reveals Himself through visions. See additional free spiritual growth resources for Christians.
God has empowered me to write His Power for Your Weakness—260 Steps Toward Spiritual Strength. It’s a free, evangelistic, devotional, and discipleship e-book. Pastors have used it in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia to lead 7,010 people to Christ and teach the basics of Christianity to 17,361 people. I invite you to explore and use it in your setting.
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