Are revelation and communication the same?

It is important to distinguish between a call and a burden. This Bible college student may have had a burden, but I do not see a call here. In my own case, I heard a missionary from Japan preach, and out of the blue God spoke to my heart (not audibly) to the effect that He wanted me in Japan. I struggled with it (as do almost all missionaries) before finally saying yes to God, but it certainly was not my idea to be a missionary!

I believe every single believer, in light of the Great Commission, should be burdened about the mission field and willing to go anywhere if God should call them. My own parents were surrendered to go to Tibet under the old CIM in the late 1940's, but were unable to go because of the Communist takeover. I have always been proud of their dedication, since there were at that time more graves of missionaries on the borders of Tibet than Christians in the entire country. However, I realize they must not have been called there since the door closed.

 

Then are you saying that simple communication from God is always revelation? That differs from the usual theological definition of revelation as given in my OP. Can you give a Scriptural use of the word "revelation" which is not universal truth or physical revealing?

I consider the desire to preach a sign of a call, or even a type of call. Look at Isaiah in the OT. Can anyone doubt his call to be a prophet? Yet he described it in terms of volunteering in Is. 6:8. God looked around for a volunteer (all the time knowing who He wanted), and Isaiah raised his hand and said, "Here am I. Send me."

 

Well said, Allan! I couldn't have said it as well myself!

I just hope no one comes out to my mission field with a burden but no call. I've seen that happen, and the burdened missionary wannabe with no call didn't last, with the field missionaries having to close things up for him and a Japanese pastor taking over his fledgling church as a branch work. The man was a good man, and I felt badly for him, but he didn't have what it took. When I told him about my call to Japan one day he said he didn't have one, he just came out "under the Great Commission" (exactly what Friesen advocates on p. 331). It almost killed him--literally. His stress level was so great the doctor in the States told him if he went back to Japan he would die.

I admit that before making it to the field I may not have had 100% assurance of the call to Japan. However, after coming here and ever since, I have been 100% sure that I am where God wants me. I have truly not had a doubt about the call in these 25 1/2 years.

I have wanted to quit many times, but always knew I'd be out of God's will if I did. Where is my basis for that? Seeing the calls of the Bible. Seeing God calling and leading so clearly in the book of Acts. If the book of Acts is not to tell us how to do missions, most of its revelation is only theoretical.

Did God create me or not? If He did, He knows everything about me and He knows exactly where I could serve Him best because He is omniscient. But I am not. As I said on the recent thread about God's will, I would never have known I have a gift for language if I had not answered His call and become a missionary. I am doing exactly what God made me to do from the womb!

 

You tricked me, Jim! I thought for sure that was a hypothetical! :laugh: Anyway, I think it is obvious that he was called sometime in that story. As I mentioned to Swaimj, I believe the desire to volunteer can be a call in itself, as witness Isaiah in Is. 6:8.

As for semantics, what may be semantics to you is the very fiber of my life. If you were that missionary to Africa (you don't say you weren't :smilewinkgrin you will understand what I am saying here. I see faces in my heart: J and M, men who came to Japan with a burden but no call and failed miserably (someone had sold J on that "tent-making" idea); A and R, men who had a call but lost their burden and quit after just one or two terms; F, who recently retired after 35 years in Japan. F obeyed his call, carried his burden all the way to the end, spent himself for the Lord Jesus, and went back to the homeland exhausted and ill of body. He will no doubt hear when he reaches Heaven, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." He's a role model of mine! :type:

 

What God said to Biblical characters was revelation because it was (1) verbal, and (2) became Scripture. All of Scripture is revelation. Even when we learn the words of Satan in Job 1-2, it is revelation about the character of Satan.

Fundamentalists have never believed that the call of God or His leading was revelation. God's will is not revealed to us nowadays verbally, nor is how we are led revelation in the Biblical sense. Go back and look at the verses I listed at the beginning of the thread. There are only two meanings there for "revelation": (1) a physical revealing, and (2) universal truth from God, such as the Gospel as revealed to Paul.

I may have been at that conference, since I was on furlough and based in Chattanooga in the Spring of that year. We may have shaken hands! :wavey:

I know the man and the sermon you are talking about. However, there is plenty of evidence in the Bible that a call and a burden are different, if you just study it out, even if said preacher didn't use the passages! The word "burden" occurs 66 times in the Scriptures, sometimes as physical but usually as a spiritual heaviness or heaviness of the heart for some particular matter. The call of God in Scripture, though, in the sense in which we are using it, occurs meaning God's direction to an individual as to future location or vocation. Thus, the two are different in meaning.

Whether or not such events are revelatory are exactly the point of this thread. To say they are revelatory (without being verbal or inscripturated) is a new definition of the term "revelation" which is not in Scripture and is not the usual theological definition. I've never seen such a definition anywhere except Friesen, and no one on this thread has yet given me one from a doctrines book, Bible dictionary or systematic theology. Anyone have one for me?

 

Go for it, Allan. :thumbsup:

In the meantime, here is a tidbit from the original ISBE article, "Revelation":

"The religion of the Bible, thus announces itself, not as the product of men's search after God, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him, but as the creation in men of the gracious God, forming a people for Himself, that they may show forth His praise. In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as distinctively a revealed religion. Or rather, to speak more exactly, it announces itself as the revealed religion, as the only revealed religion; and sets itself as such over against all other religions, which are represented as all products, in a sense in which it is not, of the art and device of man."

The theology books usually discuss revelation this way, as it relates to the truths of religion, not as it relates to individuals. Note this from Revelation and Inspiration (1910), the classic work on the subject by James Orr: "There is probably no proposition on which the higher religious philosophy of the past hundred years is more agreed than this--that all religion originates in revelation" (p. 2; emphasis in the original).

 

Alan, I've been looking in my books on inspiration and systematic theologies, and I also don't find much other than what I've given so far. Very strange!

I'm going to look more in the book by James Orr I mentioned before, and maybe find some more good points. Also, the revised ISBE had a long article replacing the original ISBE article. Maybe there are some insights there. :type:

Aha! I just found a short definition in Rene Pache's The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, p. 45: "Revelation is the act by which God makes Himself known to His creatures." This seems inadequate to me, though. Much truth of the Bible deals with making God's creatures known to God's creatures. Is that not revelation?

 

Swaimj, Looking back, I may not have answered you completely here. You asked how the Bible characters can be an example for us, and I didn't address that.

I have found 9 types of God's call in Scripture (there may be more), and I will list them here:

1. Through the will of man, volunteering (Is. 6:8, 1 Tim. 3:1)
2. By force through the power of the Holy Spirit (Ez. ch. 2)
3. Through preparation from the womb (Jer. 1:4-10, Luke 1:15, Gal. 1:15)
4. Through a vision (Amos 1:1, Nahum 1:1, Acts 16:9-10, 26:19).
5. Through the Word of God (Jonah 1:1-2)
6. By a miracle (Ex. 3:1-10)
7. By the laying on of hands (Deut. 34:9)
8. Through the words of a man (1 Kings 19:15-21, Matt. 4:18-21, 9:9)
9. Through special revelation (Moses and Paul)

As I see it, God no longer uses #4 and #9 because of the cessation of special revelation. However, I don't see why any of these others cannot happen today. I still believe in miracles, though I don't believe in miracle workers. I believe miracles today occur through prayer. Now, we are specifically told to pray that the Lord of the harvest will send laborers into the harvest. Why would that not mean calling people to serve in the harvest? Again, in Acts 13, it specifically says that Paul and Barnabas were sent forth by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I believe God calls today much as He did in Bible times, with the above exceptions.