At the time of Abel, not a single book of the Bible had been written. It was fourteen hundred years after Abel, at the time of Moses, that the Pentateuch was completed. However, even at the time of Moses, God’s revelation was still in the process of development; it was not yet complete. The vision that Moses saw was not enough to completely govern those who came after him. When we come to the New Testament, we find Paul saying that he became a minister to the church according to the stewardship that God had entrusted to him for the completion of the word of God (Col. 1:25). Around A.D. 94, three decades after Paul’s martyrdom, the apostle John was raised up to do a mending work. He wrote the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the book of Revelation. After these books were written, the revelation of God was fully completed. For this reason, at the end of Revelation John said that if anyone adds to the words of the prophecy of this scroll, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this scroll (22:18). This means that the apostle John’s book of Revelation completes the entire revelation of God. The book of Revelation is certainly the ultimate consummation of God’s revelation because Paul did not mention anything about the new heavens and the new earth, and Peter mentioned them only briefly (2 Pet. 3:13). Only the book of Revelation speaks about them in detail. This shows clearly that by the time the apostle John finished the book of Revelation, the biblical revelation had reached its ultimate consummation. This then becomes the vision and basis of our service today.
From the time of the apostles until today, for two thousand years, all the servants of the Lord who serve according to the revelation of the Bible serve according to the vision. This is the standard and the basis of our service. After the apostles passed away, servants of the Lord were raised up in every age. They argued, fought, and debated over whose service should be considered the genuine and right service. The verdict on such considerations should be based on the standard of the revelation as revealed in the Bible.
Today God’s revelation is already put into writing. It is recorded in the Bible and is no longer something abstract. This is a very important matter. When the Lord Jesus spoke on the earth, He would say, “As the Scripture said” (John 7:38). Even while He was being tempted and was arguing with the devil, He said, “It is written” (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10). He did not speak according to any personal feeling within Him. This means that the divine revelation upon which He based His speaking is veritable; it is written in black and white and is not abstract at all. When He debated with the Pharisees, He quoted the Old Testament Scriptures. On the Sabbath day, when He took His disciples across the grainfields, the disciples picked ears of grain and ate. The Pharisees interrogated Him, and He answered, saying, “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, and those who were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and they ate the bread of the Presence, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, except for the priests only?” (12:3-4). During the final six days of His earthly journey, when He went up to Jerusalem and was questioned by the Pharisees, Sadducees, elders, and chief priests, He answered with the words of the Bible: “It is written...Have you never read?...Have you never read in the Scriptures?...Have you not read that which was spoken to you by God?” (21:13, 16, 42; 22:31). This shows clearly that the Lord argued and justified Himself according to the revelation that was written down at the time.
In the book of Acts, both the apostles Peter and Paul spoke in the way of a defense. The first message that Peter delivered on the day of Pentecost was a defense based extensively on the Scriptures. He quoted the prophet Joel and proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the people had crucified on the cross, had been raised up by God. This was what David referred to in Psalm 16. Moreover, as David prophesied in Psalm 110, God had exalted this Jesus to His right hand. Paul also wrote his Epistle to the Romans in the way of an argument based on the Old Testament. Someone said once that in order to be a good lawyer, one has to study the book of Romans thoroughly because this book contains the most perfect reasonings and the highest arguments.
With the truth of the Bible as our guiding principle, we can study and examine all the denominations and sects that we find today. From this perspective, Catholicism is far off the mark. Surely Catholicism is not governed by the vision. The Anglican Church takes as its head the queen, who may not be saved at all. It considers all British citizens members of the Anglican Church by birth, whether or not they are believers and have been baptized. This clearly shows that the Anglican Church is not under the vision either. If we examine and compare all the other denominations, free groups, and charismatic organizations, we will see that none of them is serving fully according to the complete biblical revelation.
We should ask how high the standard of the revelation is which these groups hold. For example, we cannot say that Catholicism is a hundred percent contrary to the biblical revelation. At least it acknowledges one God, and it acknowledges that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. In the Catholic Church there are some truths, but their standard is too low. In the same way, we have to admit that many people in the Protestant churches do expound the Bible. There are even Bible schools that teach people the truths of the Bible, but whether they see the revelation in the Bible and whether they are clear about God’s vision are other questions altogether. We cannot say that as long as people have the Bible, they have the revelation or are acting according to the vision. It is very possible that they merely hold the Bible in their hands; they have not realized the vision and revelation contained in the Bible. Hence, we have to recognize some basic principles. First, we must be governed by the revelation contained in the Bible. Second, the standard of such revelation must be sufficiently high; it must be up to the standard of the divine revelation.