Whose Idea Was Natural Revelation?

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1)

This concept of natural revelation is God’s design; it is His idea. And we know that because He created it for this purpose: to glorify Him. It is not meant for us. The “heavens” declare His “glory.” This word would include every heaven – the sky, atmosphere, space and the 3^rd heaven (or the place of God’s dwelling). The word “declare” appears in a tense that communicates the “heavens” continue to do this. They never cease preaching “the glory of God.” They are narrating the “the glory of God.”

Also, David writes, “the firmament shows His handiwork.” This word is a general term speaking of all the skies where the stars reside. It is the area of the sky just above the earth.

Charles Spurgeon wrote in The Treasury of David that “Any book without its first page would be sadly imperfect, and especially the great Natural Bible, since its first pages, the sun, moon, and stars, supply light to the rest of the volume, and are thus the keys, without which the writing which follows would be dark and undiscerned. Man walking erect was evidently made to seen the skies, and he would begin to read creation by studying the stars begins to look at the right place.”

Spurgeon was right. Even creation was for the purpose of being able to see his natural revelation and glorify Him. What is wrong is when men attempt to exclude God from nature and don’t allow nature to carry us on to that end for which it was designed — to bring us to an understanding that behind this universe, behind ourselves and the mystery of our own being, is the great intelligence and wisdom and power of a living God. 

C.S. Lewis once said, “Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me.”

Or consider these words from the 1^st century Roman philosopher Cicero: “What can be so plain and so clear as when we behold the heavens and view the heavenly bodies, that we should conclude there is some deity of a most excellent mind by whom these things are governed?”

Natural revelation is by God’s design; it was His idea.