General Revelation

There are two reasons why human beings cannot on their own arrive at a knowledge of God:

1) The nature of God Himself, His infinity, His absolute character and qualities, and His utter holiness, make it impossible to obtain any knowledge of God by means of reason or intuition.

2) The sinful character and nature of men and women. The human mind is too small to span or grasp God and to realize Him, making any endeavor to know God completely impossible.

Consequently, our only hope of knowing God truly is that He should be graciously pleased to reveal Himself to us through personal revelation. Revelation is the act by which God communicates to human beings the truth concerning Himself. His nature, works, will or purposes, and it also includes the unveiling of all this - the drawing back of the veil that conceals this, in order that we may see it. According to the Bible, God has revealed Himself in two main ways, general revelation and special revelation. Under general revelation we can include these acts:

1) Creation and nature, through which God has revealed Himself in general. Psalm 19:1 Acts 14:15, 17 Acts 17:24 Romans 1:19-20. Everything that has been made is in itself a revelation of God.

2) Providence, which is the ordering of things in this world, their maintenance, their sustenance, and the fact that everything keeps on going and continues in life.

3) History. The whole history of the world, if we could but see it, is a revelation of God. If men and women had not been sinners, by looking at the miracles and the works of God in creation, in providence, and in history, they would have been able to arrive, by a process of reasoning, at God.