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The Christian walk begins with an understanding and acceptance of God’s wonderful gift of eternal life.  Paul explained it this way:  “That if you would confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and would believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you would be saved” (Romans 10:9).  However, he goes on to describe how this Gospel is propagated in mission work in Romans 10:14-15, “How therefore shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed?  But how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?  But how shall they hear without a preacher?  But how shall they preach, if they are not sent forth?  Just as it has been written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who evangelize with peace, who evangelize with good things!’”

In verse 16, the issue of the gospel is obedience to it, that is, to Christ, as Lord, “But they did not all obey the gospel; for Isaiah said, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’” (Romans 10:16).  We are commanded in Mark 1:15 to “repent and believe in the gospel.”  The proper response to hearing the gospel is to obey it.  In verse 17, Paul continued, “So faith comes from hearing, and the hearing comes from the word of God.”  God’s Word, the bible, is an integral part of people’s salvation.

But Paul further continued in verse 18, “But I say, ‘They have heard, have they not?’  Yes, indeed!  ‘Their sound went out into all the earth and their words into the far limits the inhabited world.’” At first blush, Paul’s chain of thought may have seemed to have taken a rather strange turn.  In his exhortation to send forth missionaries, he asserted that those who have had no missionaries have yet heard God’s plan for their salvation.  To prove this, he quoted from the 19^th Psalm: “The heavens are recounting the glory of God, and the firmament makes know the work of his hands.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night announces knowledge.  There is no speech, and there are no words, without their voice being heard. Their measuring line has gone out into all the earth, and their utterance to the edge of the inhabited world” (Psalm 19:1-4).

According to this passage, everyone everywhere in every time in history has known God’s plan for his or her salvation.  It begins with God’s revelation in nature.

God’s Revelation Through Nature

Man since Adam has continued in sin and has been confronted by a holy God.  Paul described how God has universally dealt with this in Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness.”  He further explained how this is accomplished in verses 19-20, “On the account that the thing of God being known is evident in them.  For from the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being perceived by the things made, both his eternal power and deity, so as for them to have no defense.”

God’s wrath, invisible attributes, eternal power, and deity can be seen in creation all around by those willing to see and believe.  The result is that no one in any geographical location and any point of time in history has any defense or excuse for not knowing about God.

Paul continued on in verse 21 through 32 to describe in detail what happens to a people, society, nation, or culture, when what is known of God (and His salvation) is rejected by them.  The consequences are quite serious.  In fact, one of the worst misinterpretations made by modern anthropology is that various pockets of so-called “primitive societies” which are discovered from time to time are not primitive at all.  They are not arrested in some “stone age” stage of social development.  Rather, in reality and according to the Bible, they have regressed from some earlier and more civilized stage, because of a rejection of what they did know about God.  The heathen are not heathen, because they have never heard the gospel but rather because they as a society have rejected whatever of God’s gospel was revealed to them.

In Acts 14, on Paul’s first missionary journey, he was preaching in Lystra and gave some further details of how God used what is referred to as “natural revelation.”  He had and has a witness in nature to His goodness with what He provides, “And yet indeed he [God] did not leave himself without witness, by doing good he gave you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, by filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17).  The key to one’s understanding of God’s salvation is that it is a matter of grace, God’s grace.  In writing to Titus, Paul asserted this, “For the saving grace of God has appeared to all men: (Titus 2:11).  There is a universal appearance of God’s grace and word to be seen by all who want to see.

God’s Revelation Through Human Conscience

On into the second chapter of Romans, Paul continued to explain how men’s conscience bears witness of God’s law, in that it is written in their hearts, “For, when Gentiles, who have not the law, by nature do the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, who display the work of the law written in their hearts, with their conscience bearing witness together with them, and among themselves with one another their thoughts accusing or even excusing [them]” (Romans 2:14-15).

Although all of mankind begins in the first stage of God’s revelation, that is, “through nature,” most of mankind in some positive response to this amount of God’s revelation will advance to the next stage, “though human conscience,” though not all.  Some in defiance of God may sear their conscience hence losing its effectiveness, as described in 1 Timothy 4:2.  Most, however, have a human conscience that contains universal and transcultural mores of right and wrong, which Paul described as “the righteous [requirements] of the law” in Romans 2:26.

If people in any geographical location or time in history respond positively to this which they know about God, He will provide for them His third stage of revelation: use of missionaries who providentially are used by God in giving a verbal witness of Christ, as described in Romans 10:14-15.

God’s Revelation Through

A Verbal Missionary Witness of Christ

We find the earliest examples of this in Acts 10 and 16.  Cornelius, a centurion officer in the Roman army, had responded to God’s earlier stages of revelation, and god brought Peter to him as a verbal witness of Christ and His salvation.  Paul in Acts 16:14 carried the first verbal missionary witness into Europe to those responding favorably to God’s earlier revelation, such as Lydia from Thyatira.

In Athens, Paul found an altar with the inscription, “to the Unknown God” (Acts 17:23).  He took this as an opportunity to verbally make God known to them.  Paul’s desire was to be used by God to carry this gospel even to Spain (Romans 15:24).  Tradition has it that James the Greater, made it to Spain with the gospel; Simon the Zealot made it to Persia; and Thomas and Matthew made it to the Malabar coast of India.  In 190 AD, Pantaenas of Alexandria went to India and there found many Christians as a result of Matthew, according to Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History.

Be it a Jonah sent to the Assyrians or missionary families being sent to the former Soviet Union, God has chosen to use people at this stage of His revelation as a verbal witness.  He follows this with some form of a written witness of His revelation in the form of a translation of the Bible.

God’s Revelation

ThroughTranslations of the Bible

In Acts 8 is a good example of God using His Written Word, the Scriptures, to bring a person to a saving faith in His Living Word, Jesus Christ.  Phillip met an Ethiopian eunuch on a road to Gaza, and in verses 26-40 used the Scriptures to bring a further revelation of the gospel.

In recent years the Wycliffe Bible translators have become an excellent example of this “spearhead” of missionary thrust.  They will find various language-groups of people who have nothing of the Bible in their language nor perhaps even a written form of their language.  They will send a linguistic missionary team who will go, share with them the gospel and develop a written form of their language, if necessary.  They then will translate the Bible, or at least portions of it, into that language.  Finally, they will seek to teach this written form of their language to the people, so that they can have a direct access to the Bible in their own language with plans for a translation of the entire Bible.

God’s Revelation Through

Various Bible Study Tools.

A further stage of God’s revelation is not only having a translation of the entire Bible but having various Bible study reference tools in one’s own language, too, along with various other translations of the Bible.  A translation is the beginning, but God’s desire is expounded through the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 2:15:  “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, an unashamed worker, correctly dissecting the word of truth.”  This is God’s will and plan for every believer.  Today, a cornucopia of various Bible study reference materials is available.  Such materials include various study Bibles, translations, Bible dictionaries, concordances, Bible atlases, commentaries, etc.  Materials, such as interlinear translations, are even available for anyone to study the Bible in its original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic languages.  Utilizing such Bible study tools can put one in a stage one step closer to God’s inspired revelation.  To any degree that one is able to learn how to read the Bible in its original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic languages will be both insightfully profitable and spiritually rewarding. This allows one to begin to think in the linguistic patterns and concepts which God originally used in His inspired revelation.

God’s Purpose and Plan is to Have Everyone Find

a Closer Understanding of His Inspired Revelation

These various seven stages in God’s revelation could be listed in a spectrum-fashion, as: 

l) Creation

2) Conscience

3) Verbal Witness about Christ

4) A translation of portions of the Bible

5) A translation of the whole Bible

6) Multiple translations and various Biblical reference materials

7) Reading the Bible in its original languages.