04.06 - Revelation and its Record

(6) Revelation and its Record

While the Scriptures record and preserve the revelation of God’s will for the race, they are not the revelation itself, only in a secondary manner; and while to us the Scriptures are the Divinely appointed means for making known the revelation of the Divine will and are indispensable to that end, yet, the revelation and the record are not the same, and must be carefully distinguished. The revelation existed before the record, and is independent of it; it was in the mind and consciousness of Prophet and Apostle as the received truth and living word of God ere they committed it to writing. And though God has 1 “Christ in Modern Theology,” p. 495. caused it to be recorded for our instruction and as a means of its preservation and propagation, and this way may be said to be the best, yet God might have left it to the spiritual results in the minds and lives of men, or to oral tradition, or have embodied it in symbols, institutions, laws, and usages without committing it to writing at all. Indeed revelation considered as history, as denoting the manifestation and activity of God in the universe, and enshrined in acts and manifestations, is independent of the record, although by means of the record we are made acquainted with it. The revelation did not originate with the record, nor does the record make the history and the facts, all of which existed anterior to the record.