It was Christmas Eve at my mother's husband's house and I was there. I said hello to everyone there and spent the next few hours studying something I'd printed out of a Systematic Theology book. It was the beginning. Everyone was celebrating, laughing, eating, and telling jokes and things. And then they saw me there, studying, with my bible open. 'What's he doing? Reading his bible.' I'd hear. I kind of seemed anti-social to them, but it was okay. As my previous posts say, I'm struggling lately with a hardened heart toward the lost. Well, it kept me from being hardened or harsh towards anyone to have my nose buried in reading. This way I was comfortabley tucked away in some corner out of the way. So anyway, someone at the end of the night asked, 'So, what are you reading about? Tell us, we want to know.' Or something like that. Well, I said, 'Where do you want me to start?' because I had no idea what to say, but knew that this was of the Lord to say something to them. So, I started talking about the first thing in the systematic theology book - Revelation.

Then Marley said, Oh! That's right in line with what we were reading in the car! She read to me Romans 2 and 3, I think, while I was driving. Well, it went well, and I didn't have anything to say, but what came out was just an amalgum of an intellectual approach to the doctrine of eternal judgment - that God can judge every single human being validly because we have the law of God written on our heart. We have inner revelation through conscience and morality and outer revelation through creation to know not only that there is a God, but that we've done wrong and are awaiting a judgment. This should herald someone to seek after the grace of God. Though I'd started out in the realm of saying that these were questions that philosophers have reveled over for centuries, I told them that the definitive answers lies in the bible. The law of God is a schoolmaster to drive the sinner to Christ that they might be justified by faith.

The philosopher scales a mountain of ignorance only to find the theologians have sat on the other side for centuries. While their fleshly minds debate over the meer existance of God, God Himself has been saving fallen man and redeeming mankind person to person by the Holy Spirit throughout human history for centuries.

But, then it took a turn where I didn't make myself clear, or they didn't understand. I mentioned, 'Sodom had no Bible.' It's a title of one of Leonard Ravenhill's books. I first heard about it through a Keith Green sermon and since haven't read the book, but, what he said really got me started on this whole Revelation business: Sodom and Gomorrah had no bible! They had very little revelation of who God was. How could God judge them for their wickedness if they had no bible? Keith Green thought about the title for a while, and one day it hit him, Sodom had no bible!

Here we are with our Gospel TV shows, Gospel radio, Gospel message from friends who are saved, from books, on the internet, and everywhere these days with themes and messages springing from and leading to the bible and to salvation and Jesus Christ. What did Sodom have? Nothing. They may have had a prophet, like how Jonah was sent to Nineveh, but other than that, I don't think they had anything. They were a wicked town that did much evil and other nations cried out against it, and so God wanted to take it out! But we have sooo much more of a revealing (revelation) of God's message of mercy and reconciliation, and God pleading and asking us to turn from our wicked way so that, individually, He doesn't have to judge us for our wickedness. Yet we as a generation have hardened our hearts, and have only amplified our arguments, 'What about other religions?' 'I'm a good enough person already.' and so many others. Instead of thanking God that there is a way, we harden our hearts and say why can't there be more than one right way or religion, for example. Well, as Keith Green said, if God doesn't judge this generation for not turning, even after so much Gospel and salvation message, then He's going to have to 'apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah' so to speak, because they got no message of reconciliation and were destroyed.

It's not a lack of revelation, like, 'Oh, those poor [Africans, Indians, Eskimos] in their far off country, having never heard the name of Christ or had a bible, how can God judge those people?' Because even they have a level of revelation from God! They have creation, which points to the fact that they have a Creator. They have their sin, which points to the fact of judgment of sin.' These, and a few others, as the bible says, 'leave them without excuse.' It's us who have a greater revelation. God's abundantly given us an availability of knowledge of Himself, and access to God's message of reconciliation, 24-hours, yet we haven't repented.

When Nineveh received its Jonah, Jonah came saying, '40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed.' He didn't add, '...if you don't repent.' There was no salvation plan for Nineveh. But the king said something to the effect of, 'Lets humble ourselves, and perhaps God will turn from destroying us.' They didn't know. Nineveh, with only a prophet for-warning the people that God was going to judge them: no bible, no Gospel message, no message of sparing Nineveh or any form of salvation, and God was going to completely obliterate them off of the face of the planet, like Sodom and Gomorrah. They repented! They put on sackcloth and sat on ash, and fasted. They even made the animals fast and deprived them of food! It's an interesting read, only 4 chapters long. They repented at the preaching of Jonah, and God accepted their repentance, even though all they had was the message of judgement! If Sodom and Gomorroh was destroyed for wickedness, but they had just about as much revelation as Nineveh, then what's going to happen to us in today's generation, who have so much revelation and so much message of God's judgement and His salvation and grace, but we've hardened our hearts and minds. fleshly and int ellectually? But, the important part comes from what Jesus would say a little while later on...

Matthew 12:38-42  Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

The generation that saw Jesus physically asked Jesus for a sign. He told them exactly why God would never do that. It was like this issue of revelation! Number 1, they were adulterous and evil. So, Jesus told them what revelation HAD been given to them. The sign of the prophet Jonah. Jesus would be buried for three days after the crucifixion. This hadn't happened yet at the time He was telling them, but the nature of the sign was that it concerned Jesus as a person. The whole of the 39 books of the Old Testament including the Torah the book of Moses, the very thing the Pharisees asking Jesus this request were required to memorize, prophecied about Jesus being there at that specific time, and behold He was there and they still hardened their hearts! So He told them, One greater than Jonah is there, but they did not repent. They would have been like the tax collectors and harlots that Jesus sat with, and would have believed on Jesus, but they were afraid of God taking away their place and control over Judea (John 11:48), the nation of the Jews. God visited His people and they rejected Him. Their revelation was the Son Himself, the one all of scripture declares and talks about! And they rejected Him.

So it isn't that the African or Native American who's never read the bible's revelation of God is so small, it's that our revelation of God is so great!

So today, since we have the ministry of the Holy Spirit to illuminate scripture, and such a great revelation whereas the Son of God has spoken about our salvation and the message of the grace of God from sin and mercy on the day of Judgment, how much more will God judge us and destroy us since we have sooo much revelation? We have a bible, which systematic theology calls special revelation, as opposed to what we just talked about - the outer revelation of creation testifying to the existance of God and the inner revelation of conscience testifying to the coming judgment all are natural or general revelation. And so what's in it is what the apostles heard from Jesus, directly from God's own lips. So, we have the apostles declaration the Gospel message, the death burial and resurrection of Jesus, like a Jonah. This is what it says, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;" (otherwise known as a bible). How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, considering our revelation is so great?