This other truth that's supposed to be given to us by God, okay?
How does that fix something in the New Testament? Or tell us something
significant that we didn't know? And if they come up with;
"Oh, it does this wonderful thing for us!"
Why didn't God want us to have that in the first place?
Thanks. Yeah, I had a question.
So, let's say you're talking with someone and they go along with you.
"Okay, the Bible was written by people, people that were inspired, prepared.
You're set up to write the Bible." So they ask, "Well, why can't that happen today?"
Look at the Book of Mormon. Mormons believe it was divinely inspired.
And other books feel like "the Holy Spirit led me to write this book."
And so how would you respond to that?
It's a good question. I would say that the key to this is Christology.
And what I mean by that is; in the arc of the biblical story, Jesus is the linchpin,
it's where Old Testament stuff leads. And it's where New Testament stuff,
there's the hinge point and where it extends. And so, if that's the case, and if we have...
if Christology of Jesus is unique in world religions, we'll say, that's something
that has to be factored into; why we think we need revelation.
Okay, so there's one touch point there.
God gave us revelation so that we would understand
the plan for getting what he wanted. And the fulcrum for that is the person of Jesus.
So, there's the issue of why we needed to know stuff. And then the question is, well,
now that we are living in a time where we're living, and we do know stuff about Jesus,
on what basis do we need to know something additional, that isn't in this other thing
that is completely oriented to the person of Jesus?
That forces the person asking you the question to justify the need.
Where is the New Testament insufficient? That's one sub question.
And then the other sub question to follow it is; how is what you're telling,
this other truth that's supposed to be given to us by God, okay.
How does that fix something in the New Testament?
Or tell us something significant that we didn't know? What does it do for us?
And if they come up with: "Oh, it does this wonderful thing for us!"
Why didn't God want us to have that in the first place?
Like, if this is so crucial to my faith, to understanding my relationship with God,
because why else would God supplement the information? If this is something so important,
why did it only come in in 1850? Or something like that.
So, you need to put the onus of the question on the person to articulate why we need this,
and what gaps it fills. And ultimately, typically, what you get in this sort of thing is,
I'll come back to one other point here in a second,
but what you get with this sort of thing, is these kinds of
"revelation moments" typically arise out of a context in which a religious group
that has broken off something else or as something new, needs to justify its own existence.
In other words, they want to attach itself to the Bible. Why would you need to do that?
Okay, "because I need votes. I need people to come over here and, you know,
give us money or whatever." Like, we need to somehow justify our own existence here.
That, you know, why would God give you a revelation?
You know, ultimately, I'm not going to name names here.
But ultimately, a lot of that talk is designed to justify their desire for influence and power
in a community. It doesn't really have anything to do theologically.
You know, there's going to be theology that's part of it,
that's made up, it's not in the other thing.
But it's amazing how much of this gloms onto the New Testament
or the Old Testament to create a virtue by association.
So, you're claiming that I'm mischaracterizing what you believe.
Well, let's go back to the other questions: What did we miss? Why do we need this?
Why did God wait so long? You know, just these fundamental questions.
Now when you do get into Christology as an orientation point,
there is something to be said for in the New Testament.
And to me, this is just me speaking, to me, it's not...
what I'm going to say is not as tight as I'd like it to be. But I think there's something to it.
And that is, you can trace some firsthand association with the risen Christ
to all the hands in the New Testament, except for a few.
And in those cases, like Mark, it's somebody who traveled with Paul or Luke.
In other words, there's a very close chronological attachment
to people who had been with Jesus.
And you don't have the sense in the early church of "we need a supplement now."
Now, you have sects, (S-E-C-T-S), to check my spelling here.
You have sects in the early first few centuries, that are trying to redefine Christology
and redefine the faith and they have their own scriptures and things like this.
So, they're doing the same thin;
they're creating these attachments, these virtues by association
on a thing they disagree with the community, doctrinally. "We're gonna go our own way.
And hey, we have this book now to show that we're right.
And it still talks nice about Jesus.
So come over here!" You have these sort of pragmatics situations
that are the context for a lot of those things.
So, I would want to know, why should we believe someone in 1850
is getting revelation that isn't attached to Jesus, to the risen Christ,
because all this other stuff can be oriented in that way. Why the gap?