Quotes & Sayings About Divine Revelation

Christianity is not only the revelation of truth, but also the fountain of holiness under the unceasing inspiration of the spotless example of its Founder, which is more powerful than all the systems of moral philosophy. It attests its divine origin as much by its moral workings as by its pure doctrines. By its own inherent energy, without noise and commotion, without the favor of circumstance - nay, in spite of all possible obstacles, it has gradually wrought the greatest moral reformation, we should rather say, regeneration of society which history has ever seen while its purifying, ennobling, and cheering effects upon the private life of countless individuals are beyond the reach of the historian, though recorded in God's book of life to be opened on the day of judgment. To appreciate this work, we must first review the moral condition of heathenism in its mightiest embodiment in history. — Philip Schaff

The Mormons had a divine revelation in favour of polygamy, but under pressure from the United States Government they discovered that the revelation was not binding. — Bertrand Russell

Reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign, in response to his gracious revelation of himself, and in accordance with his will. — Dan Block

The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and scientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man? — H. P. Blavatsky

Law is neither a divine revelation nor a scientific discovery. It is a wholly human creation that includes the contribution of those who claim to study it and who cannot remain blind to the values implied by their interpretations. Every society must develop a vision of justice that is shared by all its members, in order to avoid civil war, and this is what the legal framework provides. Whereas conceptions of justice differ from epoch to epoch and from country to country, the need for a shared representation of justice in a particular country and at a particular time does not. The legal system is where this representation takes shape and, although it may well be contradicted by the facts, it gives shared meaning and a common orientation to people's actions. — Alain Supiot

Our need is to see that our God today has passed through the process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement to become the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit for us to drink. He is such a compound Spirit, and we have a spirit with which to drink of Him. In spirit we are one with Him. If we see this vision, the focal point of the divine revelation in the Bible, we shall know how to drink the Lord as the water of life. (Life-study of Exodus, pp. 515-518) — Witness Lee

This Book had to be written by one of three people: good men, bad men or God. It couldn't have been written by good men because they said it was inspired by the revelation of God. Good men don't lie and deceive. It couldn't have been written by bad men because bad men would not write something that would condemn themselves. It leaves only one conclusion. It was given by divine inspiration of God. — John Wesley

The lamp of divine, written revelation reveals the will of God for the believer. Whether it is expressed by biblical command or precept, by scriptural example or principle, the Word illumines the path every believer must take. This divine light in Scripture is not a mere option, but an absolute necessity for every follower of Christ. — Steven J. Lawson

Did the latter[The Messenger] have a predecessor, who envisaged
revelation as taking place by direct contact with a divine being rather than by
a book being sent down (whether as a whole or in instalments), who claimed
to have enjoyed such contact himself and who objected to the pagan angels -
not because they violated the dividing line between God and created beings
but rather because they were female? We do not hear of such a predecessor
elsewhere in the Quran, but we do learn that the Messenger had competitors in
his own time, at least in Yathrib (2:79, where they share his concept of revelation
as a book), so there is nothing implausible about the proposition that there
were preachers before him too, including some whose preaching anticipated
features of his own. — Patricia Crone

As the African American theologian James Cone notes, "Far from being songs of passive resignation, the spirituals are black freedom songs which emphasize black liberation as consistent with divine revelation. — James Martin

I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me. — Isaac Asimov

A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man. — John William Draper

Any divine communication from God to man is called revelation. Revelation comes in many different forms. All true revelation comes by the power of the Spirit of God. By this power, the Almighty speaks to our minds and hearts (D&C 8:2). — Brent L. Top

In a word, if any kind of slavery can be vindicated by the Holy Scriptures, we are already sure our making and holding the Negroes our slaves, as we do, cannot be vindicated by any thing we can find there, but is condemned by the whole of divine revelation. — Samuel Hopkins

Human speculation is no match for divine revelation. — Johnny Hunt

Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. — Edward Gibbon

Revelation: a famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing. — Ambrose Bierce

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all. — Thomas Paine

The renaissance of Christian philosophy has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in natural theology, that branch of theology that seeks to prove God's existence apart from divine revelation. — William Lane Craig

Revelation is purposive. Its end is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. In short: revelation is reconciliation. — John B. Webster

While some dismiss the Bible as a dusty old book, I view its pages as portals to adventure. Not only is the book chock-full of clever plots and compelling stories, but it's laced with historical insights and literary beauty. When I open the Scripture, I imagine myself exploring an ancient kingdom ... With every encounter, I learn something new about their life journeys and am reminded that the Bible is more than a record of the human quest for God: it's the revelation of God's quest for us. - Scouting the Divine — Margaret Feinberg

The Bible is a love story. Time and time again it illustrates how much God loves the world in spite of its sinful disobedience...The last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St John the Divine, creates a beautiful and yet terrifying picture of those last days when God will reveal Himself in judgment and in grace to all creation. — Jerry Falwell

Everything from quarks to quasars, butterflies to brain cells, was created so that you and I might delight in the display of divine glory. We alone can glorify God by rejoicing in the beauty His creative handiwork and relishing the splendor of His-revelation in the Person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ. — Kelly Monroe Kullberg

Indeed many things which we shall not be able to discover either by the experiment of works or by the investigations of reason we shall deserve to be taught by importunate prayer, by the revelation of divine inspiration. — Richard Of Saint Victor

upon reflection, we discover that the Trinity is the highest revelation God has made of himself to His people. It is the capstone, the summit, the brightest star in the firmament of divine truths. — James R. White

A divine revelation should not consist only in uprooting us from the world's profanity in order to install us statically within a sacred world, in the bosom of which we could continue to lead almost the same life we led in the profane world. To enter into revelation is not merely to change objects as we do furniture. It is to be converted. Not to be converted once, but to be converted always. Sacred forms, rites, symbols and the Scriptures are basically conversion-makers, which means that we are never done with converting, never done with understanding, because they perplex and surpass all understanding. — Jean Borella

Primary revelation came through Jesus Christ, and I find it distasteful that additional divine finger prints should appear in nature. — George Murphy

These enemies of divine revelation extol human progress to the skies, and with rash and sacrilegious daring would have it introduced into the Catholic religion as if this religion were not the work of God but of man, or some kind of philosophical discovery susceptible of perfection by human efforts. — Pope Pius IX

The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game
the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods. — Paul Lockhart

The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man's loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation. — Ben Shahn

[Comedies], in the ancient world, were regarded as of a higher rank than tragedy, of a deeper truth, of a more difficult realization, of a sounder structure, and of a revelation more complete. The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man ... Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachments to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible. — Joseph Campbell

Surrender is a state of mind and being that opens the mind and heart to divine revelation. — Iyanla Vanzant

The examination of conscience has an important educational value. it teaches us to look sincerely at our own lives, to compare them with the truth of the Gospel and to evaluate them with parameters that are not only human but drawn from divine Revelation. Comparison with the Commandments, with the Beatitudes, and above all with the Precept to love, represents the first great 'school of penance — Pope Benedict XVI

So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do I find in the Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, the revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as they could, to set forth. — Thomas Carlyle

There is no exact principle to be found here. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground - unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive at revelation on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way." "I do have a dreadful love for — Elizabeth Gilbert

In a word, what characterizes the spiritist revelation is that while divine in its origin and of the initiative of the Spirits, its elaboration is fruit of man's work. — Allan Kardec

Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation. — George Bernard Shaw

If man wishes to know anything about Creation (the time of Creation, the duration of Creation, the order of Creation, the methods of Creation, or anything else) his sole source of true information is that of divine revelation. — Henry M. Morris

It is hard enough to face the moral law even with the revelation that the divine justice and divine mercy are conjoined. It offends our pride to be forgiven, terrifies it to surrender control. — J. Budziszewski

Our generation is lost to the truth of God, to the reality of divine revelation, to the content of God's will, to the power of His redemption, and to the authority of His Word. For this loss it is paying dearly in a swift relapse into paganism. — Carl F. H. Henry

The Catholic Church asserts that Yeshua intended to build His assembly upon an individual named Shimon Kefa personally: Therefore, whomever Shimon Kefa (Simon Peter) would designate as his successor would become the head of the Body of Messiah, as if the Messiah ruled through him. One problem with this assertion is that Petros and petra are not the same word. Yeshua does not say He will build His Assembly upon Petros (Kefa). Rather, what He said was that He would build His assembly upon the divine revelation that He was the Messiah, the Son of the Living Elohim. — Norman Willis

Muhammed's original view that earlier religions had been founded by God's will and through divine revelation, led both him and his successors to make an important concession: adherents of other religions were not compelled to adopt Islam. — C.H. Becker

When you don't know where you are going in life (No Clear Destination), you don't need direction ... you need Divine Revelation — Fela Durotoye

Men have a great deal of pleasure in human knowledge, in studies of natural things; but this is nothing to that joy which arises from divine light shining into the soul. This spiritual light is the dawning of the light of glory in the heart. There is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness in this stormy and dark world. This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior. — Jonathan Edwards

The unity of divine revelation, of the various dispensations, is found in the goal of history, the kingdom of God. And since this kingdom is centered in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the dispensational unity of Scripture and of history is Christological as much as it is eschatological. — Craig A. Blaising

PERENNIAL wisdom from divine revelation and human experience dictates that all earthly things great or small, beautiful or ugly, good or bad, sad or happy, fool ... ish or wise must finally come to an end. It is from this sobering reality that the end of executive rule has finally come for Robert Mugabe who has had his better days after a quarter of a century in power. — Jonathan Moyo

PATER SERAPHICUS. Higher rise, still higher, growing Stronger imperceptibly, Near the Divine Presence gaining A more perfect purity! What is it the spirit thrives on, What fills the ethereal space? Endless love whose revelation Blitheness brings, eternal bliss. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When you read any great mystery, recorded in holy Writ, you are to prostrate your Reason to Divine Revelation. — Thomas Ken

We seem to have lost our contact with the primordial: the idea of - call it divine revelation as opposed to something that's learned by the human intellect - something that, if you lay yourself completely open, and you just open your heart completely, something will actually come into it. — John Tavener

Typology acknowledges the factuality of the past event and presupposes a genuine correspondence between the saving and judging activity of God in the past and the present. It is based not on superficial resemblances but on the consistency of the divine action within the frame of reference established by revelation. — Anonymous

Truth is never determined by majority opinion, but by divine revelation. — Steve Lawson

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is, I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. — Abraham Lincoln

Monster" is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, "divine portent," itself formed on the root of the verb monere, "to warn." It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary. They served to announce impending revelation, saying, in effect, "Pay attention; something of profound importance is happening. — Susan Stryker

This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, "Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution."[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms).

--Making Senses of Scripture — Mark Shea

It may be debated as to whether the antichrist is seen as a superhuman figure (in Revelation "Mr. 666" is seen as having divine pretensions but actually being quite human, being the emperor), but it is quite clear in 2 John that the antichrists are false teachers who are contemporaries of our author. — Ben Witherington III

Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.
Angels and Demons p. 484 — Dan Brown

Deny that the Bible is, without any qualifications, the very Word of God, and you are left without any ultimate standard of measurement and without any supreme authority. Grant that the Bible is a Divine revelation and communication of God's own mind and will to men, and you have a fixed starting point from which an advance can be made into the domain of truth. — Arthur W. Pink

Michel's death made my father question his faith, but it had the opposite effect on me. Amidst all the searing emotional pain I was feeling, I had a moment of revelation: despite all the torment and confusion we suffer in this valle lacrimarum, a divine sense of the universe exists, one we cannot comprehend. With this revelation came an oddly empowering sense that my life, like everyone else's, is in God's hands. This awareness hasn't absolved me of the need to struggle for a better world and a better self, but it has helped me deal with things I cannot change, including death. It also helped reaffirm the core of the Christian beliefs I retain to this day. — Justin Trudeau

Why may not the Bible and especially the New Testament be read and taught as a divine revelation in school? Where else can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament? — Gene Fowler

I let go of the notion that the Bible is a divine product. I learned that it is a human cultural product, the product of two ancient communities, biblical Israel and early Christianity. As such, it contained their understandings and affirmations, not statements coming directly or somewhat directly from God ... I realized that whatever "divine revelation" and the "inspiration of the Bible" meant (if they meant anything), they did not mean that the Bible was a divine product with divine authority. — Marcus Borg

So that I do not see how those who make revelation alone the sole object of faith can say, That it is a matter of faith, and not of reason, to believe that such or such a proposition, to be found in such or such a book, is of divine inspiration; unless it be revealed that that proposition, or all in that book, was communicated by divine inspiration. Without such a revelation, the believing, or not believing, that proposition, or book, to be of divine authority, can never be matter of faith, but matter of reason; and such as I must come to an assent to only by the use of my reason, which can never require or enable me to believe that which is contrary to itself: it being impossible for reason ever to procure any assent to that which to itself appears unreasonable. — John Locke

He has the common feeling of his profession. He enjoys a statement twice as much if it appears in fine print, and anything that turns up in a footnote ... takes on the character of divine revelation. — Margaret Halsey

The most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at most, the probability, of a future state, there is nothing, except a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body. — Edward Gibbon

For 'the human' is a medium of possible divine revelation. — Edward Schillebeeckx

The books the Holy Spirit is writing are living, and every soul a volume in which the divine author makes a true revelation of his word, explaining it to every heart, unfolding it in every moment. — Jean-Pierre De Caussade

20 She said: How can I have a son and no mortal has yet touched me, nor have I been unchaste? 21 He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord says: It is easy to Me; and that We may make him a sign to men and a mercy from Us.a And it is a matter decreed.b 21a. Jesus was a sign to men, in the sense that he was made a prophet, and every prophet is a sign, because the Divine revelation which is granted to him affords a clear proof of the existence of the Divine Being. Or, he was a sign to the Israelites in particular, because with him prophethood came to an end among the Israelites. 21b. She conceived him in the ordinary way in which women conceive children; see 3:44a. 22 Then she conceived him; and withdrew with him to a remote place. 23 And the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree.a She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!b 23a. This shows that Mary gave birth to Jesus while on a journey; — Anonymous

Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. — Plato

Am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving. I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. There is no exact principle to be found here. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground - unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive at revelation on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way." "I do have a dreadful love for understanding," Alma admitted. "Indeed you do love it, though it is not dreadful, — Elizabeth Gilbert

God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation
a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on from fact Divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus He unveils His very face. — George MacDonald

These solar poems sound very monotheistic, with the high god in his heaven; here we can see whence our traditional concepts of God come. These numinous notions are repeated in the Bible and are clearly related to, if not derived from, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian and other sources, not arising as a result of unique "divine revelation" to the "chosen people. — D.M. Murdock

In a way then, the Divine Principle, this new revelation, is the documentary of my life. It is my own life experience. The Divine Principle is in me, and I am in the Divine Principle. — Sun Myung Moon

(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them
the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind
should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not. — Jerome K. Jerome

I regard Christianity neither as an inclusive divine revelation nor as an historical phenomenon, but as a teaching which-gives us the meaning of life. — Leo Tolstoy

I speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation"! — H. P. Blavatsky

Another way in which religion betrays itself, and attempts to escape mere reliance on faith and instead offer "evidence" in the sense normally understood, is by the argument from revelation. On certain very special occasions, it is asserted, the divine will was made known by direct contact with randomly selected human beings, who were supposedly vouchsafed unalterable laws that could then be passed on to those less favored. — Christopher Hitchens

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence - legitimately - our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature - by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse - we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature - natural selection - gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. — Robert Wright

Believe in God, in His providence, in a future life, in the recompense of the good; in the punishment of the wicked; in the sublimity and truth of the doctrines of Christ, in a revelation of this doctrine by a special divine inspiration for the salvation of the human race. — Andre-Marie Ampere

The Declaration of Independence ... is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto - revelation, if you will - declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights. Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, foresaw over 2,300 years ago that this event would transpire. The colonies he saw would break with Great Britain and that 'the power of the Lord was with [the colonists],' that they 'were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (1 Nephi 13:16, 19). The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition - the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God. — Ezra Taft Benson

The punishment of murder by death is contrary to reason, and to the order and happiness of society, and contrary to divine revelation. — Benjamin Franklin

Thompson's message was straightforward: if God through divine revelation so clearly sanctioned slavery, and even the trade in "strangers," how could genuine Christians attack modern slavery, or even the slave trade, as an evil? — Mark A. Noll

After we have been subdued by the law and tell the Lord that we cannot fulfill His requirements, that we simply cannot be holy as God is or perfect as the Father is, the Lord will say, "Simply open and receive Me. Let Me come into you and fulfill these requirements for you. I want to be your holiness and your perfection." We cannot be holy, but we can be sanctified. Likewise, we cannot be perfect, but we can be perfected. God's desire is to come into us to be our life and our person. In this way, He becomes one with us, and we become one with Him. Then as He lives in us, we live Him. This is the basic principle of the divine revelation in the Bible. — Witness Lee

Ontologically, chocolate raises profoundly disturbing questions: Does not chocolate offer natural revelation of the goodness of the Creator just as chilies disclose a divine sense of humor? Is the human born with an innate longing for chocolate? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will? — David Augsburger

The sun symbolizes the Divine intelligence; the empty vastness of space symbolizes the Divine All-Possibility and also the Divine immutability; a bird symbolizes the soul; a tree symbolizes the grades of being; and water symbolizes knowledge and rain revelation. — Osman Bakar

God is the ruler over every person and every institution, not just the believer and the church. And since the Bible is his revelation, it carries the same authority over every person and every institution. Therefore, every human government must submit and operate under the Bible, and any deviation from it constitutes sinful rebellion against divine authority. — Vincent Cheung

For the righteous, the revelation is a joyous event, the realization of a divine truth. But for the wicked, revelations can be far more terrifying, when dark secrets are exposed and sinners are punished for their trespasses. — Emily Thorne

The Church, if it is to be the Church, must be the revelation of that divine Love which God "poured out into our hearts." Without this love nothing is "valid" in the Church because nothing is possible. The content of Christ's Eucharist is Love, and only through love can we enter into it and be made its partakers. — Alexander Schmemann

The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.. are found upon comparison to be really part of the original law of nature. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. — William Blackstone

Our Heavenly Father continues to communicate with us through revelation. These revelations are communications of divine directions. They may come to us personally or through the voice of the Lord's chosen servants, the prophets, seers, and revelators. — L. Lionel Kendrick

The end of man is God, an end obviously exceeding the limits of reason. Yet man should have some knowledge of his end in order to regulate and order his intentions and actions towards that end. The salvation of man, therefore, demands that divine revelation should make him know a certain number of truths quite beyond the grasp of his reason.43 In other words, since man requires knowledge of the infinite God, who is his end, and since such knowledge exceeds the limits of his reason, he simply must get it by way of faith. Nor does such faith do violence to our reason. Rather, faith in the incomprehensible confers on rational knowledge its perfection and consummation. — Etienne Gilson

For the entire history of humanity, we have stared into fires, hypnotized by the twitch and flow of the blues and yellows. We see the stars of alien skies reflected in the coals and divine messages in the dance of the flames. Fire is magic. — Lance Conrad

Without artists, would this heritage have descended to us? Would the words and deeds - the revelation - have survived the arduous journey into the present without the painters, the mosaic workers, the storytellers, the stone carvers, the poets, the singers, the workers in stained glass? Wasn't it art, I thought - as I watched Bernard open a handsome black wallet and remove a handful of lire - that had been the carrier of the divine? Popes had understood that. The Emperor Constantine. Monks in damp Irish monasteries illuminating the Word. — Rachel Pastan

In the eyes of a seer, every leaf of a tree is a page of the Holy Book and contains divine revelation ... — Hazrat Inayat Khan

When we become incorruptible and immortal and attain to the blessed state of conformity with Christ, we will be ever with the Lord, gaining fulfillment in the purest contemplations of His visible theophany which will illuminate us with its most brilliant rays, just as it illuminated the disciples at the time of the most divine Transfiguration. This is the light of God, as St. John has said in his Revelation (Rev. 22:5), and such is the opinion of all the saints. — Gregory Palamas

Occultism, then, can reasonably be regarded as metaphysical speculation - speculation about the nature of ultimate reality and of our relation to it. Typically nontheistic and monistic, it is also typically mystical. All...assume the possibility of direct contact between living human beings and ultimate reality, the noumenal, the transcendent, or the divine. Contact with ultimate reality can be achieved either through a spontaneous mystical revelation or through some ritual initiation such as those of the mysteries at Eleusis. The possibility of illumination through initiation distinguishes the occult from mysticism and connects it to secret societies such as Masonry. (13) — Leon Surette

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts? — Umberto Eco

The more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, - that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, - that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, - that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses; - by such reflections as these ... I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. — Charles Darwin

If God has the truth and if man has only an analogy, it follows that he does not have the truth. An analogy of the truth is not the truth; even if man's knowledge is not called an analogy of the truth but an analogical truth, the situation is no better. An analogical truth, except it contain a univocal point of coincident meaning, simply is not the truth at all. In particular (and the most crushing reply of all) if the human mind were limited to analogical truths, it could never know the univocal truth that it was limited to analogies. Even if it were true that the contents of human knowledge are analogies, a man could never know that such was the case; he could only have the analogy that his knowledge was analogical. This theory, therefore, whether found in Thomas Aquinas, Emil Brunner, or professed conservatives is unrelieved skepticism and is incompatible with the acceptance of a divine revelation of truth. — Anonymous

A faithful woman looks to the spring, a good book, perfume, earthquakes, and divine revelation for the experience others find in a lover. They deceive their husbands, so to speak, with the entire world, men excepted. — Jean Giraudoux

We never stopped being each other. — Alicen Grey

Did you know, young lady," said Watkin to her, "that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn't it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you're killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair. — Douglas Adams