Mainstream Apologetics CHAPTER 3: REVELATION OF GOD Revelation of God is Visible, Inspired, Reliable, and Trustworthy Once we have established that God had a purpose for His creation, we establish that God's revelation of Himself is visible, trustworthy and inspired. We observe that God revealed Himself through nature, the revealed Word (the Bible) and ultimately the person of Jesus. This is evidenced by mankind's response to the creation, the moral conscience and the consistency of the biblical narrative and prophetic proclamations/fulfillments over the span of 1,500 years. ARGUMENT 3:Revelation of God is Visible, Inspired, Reliable, and Trustworthy God's purpose in General Revelation is to reveal himself generally, to everyone. God reveals his power and nature externally through the created order. He also reveals his nature internally through our moral consciences. Ultimately, God's purpose in General Revelation is to draw attention to himself, and to create within us a thirst that causes us to yearn for a more complete knowledge of him. This chapter is comprised of the following claims ... CLAIM 3.1:God Revealed Himself in Creation Extra-biblical writers provide us with an accurate and compelling profile of Jesus. This profile is corroborated among the individual writers, and congruent with the biblical accounts. Further, many of the statements presented characterize Jesus as messianic (divine). These statements include Jesus' miracles, Jesus' fulfillment of messianic prophecies, natural phenomenon accompanying Jesus' death, the mysteriousness surrounding Christian's beliefs and finally Jesus being worshiped as a god. CLAIM 3.2:Inspiration of God's Revealed Word God not only revealed himself to everyone through His created world but also revealed himself in human words. This process of divine inspiration is affirmed by testimony from the writers of scripture and Jesus. The overarching storyline of the Bible is remarkable singular and invariant even though it is composed of 66 books and written 40 writers over the course of 1,500 years. This demands that there is a single author, namely God. CLAIM 3.3:Reliable Transmission of the Old Testament The veracity of the Old Testament is found in the skillful and meticulous care of the Scribes, Masoretes and Essenes, verified by the Dead Sea Scrolls. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided scholars with Old Testament texts that predated 69 AD, the date the scrolls were hidden. CLAIM 4.4:Reliable Transmission of the New Testament The veracity of the New Testament is established on the vast number of ancient manuscripts, the early dating of those manuscripts, and the low percentage of variations among those manuscripts. Through a systematic and exhaustive process known as biblical criticism, 99.8% of the lines of the original autographs were reconstructed. CLAIM 4.5:Books of the Bible Carefully Authenticated by Church Councils The 66 books of the Bible were carefully recognized as inspired by God and authorized by God's people for use in Jewish and Christian communities. A strict set of criteria was used to qualify each book as inspired. CLAIM 4.6:God Reveals Truth What God revealed is true. This is evidenced by creation, the prophets, the apostles, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Further, for God's truth is be true it must be transcendent, absolute, inerrant and infallible.