Dual Revelation

We read in Psalm 19:

¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

² Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.

³ There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.

⁴ Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.

Have you ever thought that we can rely on the record of nature to be a consistent, faithful revelation of the Creator, the God of the Bible? Look closely at each verse. In verse one, the heavens declare His glory, and the skies proclaim that His work is perfect, trustworthy, reliable, and consistent. In verse two, this realm pours forth speech, though inaudible, of the attributes, character, power, and majesty of our God. In verse three, all who study the heavens (through science) can come to the conclusion that a Creator is responsible for the orderliness and uniformity of our universe, and for the fixed laws of physics (see Jeremiah 33:25) and initial conditions at the beginning of the universe until today. In verse four, it says that "their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world" which means that this revelation of God can be understood as if you are looking at the fingerprints of God Himself, and that the study of the record of nature will yield trustworthy, reliable data consistent and not contradictory with the main revelation from God, the Holy Bible. In other words, the record of nature and the words of the Bible, having their origins in the only one and true and living God, should never contradict one another, and that we should feel confident that what we observe and study is trustworthy and consistent.

I love to read from time to time Article 2 from the Belgic Confession of faith. In case you've never read it before, let me show it to. It is the doctrinal standard set during the seventeenth century for the reformation.

It reads: Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God

• We know him by two means:

  First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.

  All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.

  Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.

The study of the record of nature (God's world) should reveal God to us in several ways: His power and omnipotence; His omniscience through discoveries of the uniformity and orderliness of the universe; His righteousness when we discover through cosmology (of the universe) and astronomy that the entire observable universe, with the mass of over one hundred billion trillion stars, was carefully prepared by God so that we could have a place to live on Earth (among other reasons); His glory when you see how vast and beautiful this universe is, and His love for humankind, in that He went to such great expense in the vastness of the universe to prepare this one location for us, and to one day send His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to come and to take upon himself all of our iniquities, so that we could put on the righteousness of God through Christ and receive His gift of salvation and eternal life.

In the coming weeks, I look forward to showing you in detail some fingerprints of God and I look forward to your questions and comments.