"Revelations" are to be experienced (2)

Beliefs about God through other people's experience and through our own experience

What is the meaning of the phrase "it was revealed"? It means that an experience a person had, was transmitted to us. Any revelation is originated from a personal experience of the divine. Revealed truths are thus supposedly "divine experiences."

When the prophets of the Bible announced or wrote something about God, they said something they learned from God, through a personal experience. When Jesus gave us his teachings regarding Yahveh or our everlasting destiny, he taught us something he had learned through his communion and experience of God.

The being of God on the prophets

The whole Bible is full of teachings about the being of God and his relationship with mankind. He "revealed" to Abraham, to Moses, to the prophets. Let us see an example of these revelations among countless contained in the Bible. This is from Isaiah 40.28-31.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. There is no searching of his understanding.

He gives power to the weak and to those who have no might he increases strength.

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

When the prophet says this, he is sharing his own personal experience of God. And, although we used to call this a revelation, it is simply a personal experience the prophet had of the divine; his subjective interpretation.

The being of God in the teachings of Jesus

Something similar happened with the teaching of Jesus. Given that he had the most intimate experience of the divine, we may expect that it is through his experiences that we learned the supreme revelation of God.

More in the book. 

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