Has God Spoken?
So my ultimate goal is to find the truth about God, creation, the universe, mankind, and ultimately myself. The first step is to find God. Let’s say I wanted to determine whether God spoke to mankind.
Finding the truth about God
I wanted to find and know the truth. How would I determine whether such communication occurred? Obviously, this is a big “If” and is based on a couple of assumptions
- God exists
- God is the creator of the universe and time itself.
- God possesses the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience
- God is eternal and uncaused.
These are all philosophical and scientific conjectures and theories based on the observable information and facts of the world around us.
These points are general revelation, but what we devel into at this point is special revelation. Has God spoken to humankind? Has He given mankind more information?
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20
but what we devel into at this point is special revelation. Has God spoken to humankind? Has He given mankind more information? What would happen if God spoke to a human being?
The first question I asked myself was, “Self, why would God speak to me?” Why do I speak? To communicate my desires, my wants, my knowledge, maybe even emotions. Here again, I am making assumptions, but to me, they are logical assumptions.
But here is the leap. As God, would I want this human who I just told “XYZ” to inform other humans? Why do we write books or teach a classroom of 20 kids or put out videos on youtube?
This is more efficient. Sure I could go around to every person in the world individually, but why? Still, even if God did that more than likely, He would say, “Tell others.” The Result?
Even if God said, “I am the creator of the universe I don’t want you to worship me, but I want you to know this information”, a form of reverence would surround the communications.
In addition, how would you prove you are God the creator of the heavens and the earth? I think some amazing signs and wonders would accompany the communication, which would place a level of awe among the hearers.
People would pass on the information. They would write it down.
Therefore, I determined I should:
Examine religions which claim God spoke
Whoa! That is a long list. That is 5000+ years of human history. Maybe I could narrow that down some. What else does general revelation suggest to me? God should still be alive today. That is God should be eternal. What are the implications?
Extant
The first feature of these assumptions is that any communication from God would be extant. That is the communication from God would still exist today. Why?
If this eternal being, who created the universe, has omnipotent kind of power, he could and would ensure that his message would still exist today. If God can convince a human that he is the creator of the universe, he can surely ensure that his information continues.
This is why I think monotheism has largely replaced polytheism. One eternal all-powerful God. (If you are unsure read “What is God?”) So by eliminating dead religions and focusing only on extant religions, based on the current Wikipedia page that would limit our research to a list of about 21 religions.
Reasonable so far? If not please read, “Why must a religion still exist?” As a parent you create life. You want to impart your knowledge to this person. Would you wait until they are 50 years old or would you start providing this information from a young age?
From Ancient Times
If I were God and wanted to inform humankind about myself, I would do it sooner rather than later. Why wait until there are 7 billion people? So any communication should be old.
I set a threshold of about 500 BC, anything after that would be suspect in my mind. Why? Check out my article on “Why any communication from God should be old.”
If we eliminate more recent religions, the list can be narrowed to about 10 religions. All the other religions are either an offshoot of these 10 or something more recent than 500 BC.
Hath God Said?
Religion is like science in trying to answer life’s most difficult questions:
The difference is that science uses our senses to find knowledge and test and verify knowledge. Religion claims knowledge beyond our senses and beyond time from beings with greater knowledge, senses, and longer, possibly eternal, lives.
Should a religion claim such knowledge and communication? Yes absolutely. However, we should ask where did you get this information? Who gave this information. Does the religion even claim God spoke to them?
Blind faith in another human has resulted in tragic consequences. So my first demand is that something should be written claiming this greater knowledge that has been preserved fairly intact for the last 2500 years. When we perform such an evaluation, we are left with…
So these clearly deserve a more in-depth evaluation and study. But I wondered could I narrow this list down further?
Do any of these religions claim that God communicated more than one time?
I mean sure the eternal creator of the universe, who wanted to inform mortal humans about the past, present, and future, things we cannot know could have only said these profound things once to one single person, but again why?
Kolan Wright
Armchair Philosopher
Lastly, regarding communication, not only was I looking for something written with 2 or more communications, but did those communications come from a single being who claimed to be the creator of the universe?
So when I examined the 5 in the list, here you will determine that only Judaism claims to have clear communication from a monotheistic God who meets all the philosophical and scientific assumptions that I laid out.
Click on the above list of religions to see my analysis. Now please remember these analyses were done before I ever became a Christian.
Judaism stands alone!!
Only Judaism claims to have clear communication from a monotheistic God who meets all the philosophical and scientific assumptions that I laid out.
Please remember these analyses were done before I ever became a Christian, I seriously had no bias. Even after coming to this conclusion, it was still another 8 years before I became a follower of Yeshua, the messiah.
But Kolan, “if you narrowed the list of religions down to Judaism, why are you a Christian?” Excellent question. For that answer, we need, “I know, another article.” Yup.
If you notice on the website I have a link for Abrahamic religions, which are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but when you study Judaism you soon come to realize something important. God continues to mention that he will be coming to earth, Immanuel, or God with us.
Islam purports to say that Judaism and Christianity lost their way. Mormonism claims to be new revelations about Jesus. What you see is that Judaism is the root of the 2 largest religions in the world today.
In fact, over 50% of the population claim to follow one of those 2 religions, but they both claim Judaism as their support.
In fact, the more I studied Judaism the more impressed I became as I realized that within Judaism they claim God spoke to mankind not once like Zoroastrianism, which was more a vision, but multiple times to multiple people.
In fact, there are over 100 times that God spoke to over 25 different people in the Torah, prophets, and historical books over 1500 year period
Recap and Summary
Of the 5 finalists, the 2 monotheistic religions Zoroastrianism and Judaism, there is no contest the first one to study and research should be Judaism and I have never done an in-depth study of Zoroastrianism.
Thus says Zarathustra? Please do, compare them. For me, I go with the weight of evidence. Just a note about the other 3. Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism seem to be branched from the same tree.
I suspect Hinduism is probably the oldest with Jainism and Buddhism being branches along with the many other sects. Buddhism seems to be really a philosophy. There is no claim of knowledge about God speaking to mankind.
The Noble Eightfold Path is beautiful and following them could provide helpful insights for many people including Christians to improve their lives. However, the question arises: where does this knowledge come from?
How do we know we can trust such knowledge? Check out the articles on knowledge (epistemology). So what you see is there are really two main thoughts about the universe in world religions. Monotheism championed by Judaism and eternal universe (God/Braham), pantheism, henotheism championed by Hinduism.
So my conclusion that Judaism or a branch of Judaism, if any religion in the world is correct, would be the most likely be true, which I have distilled into one article and a flowsheet, actually took two years to determine.
Judaism fits all the philosophical assumptions, it fits the scientific data, and it is reasonable in its presentation and origin of knowledge. But still, at the time, I did not like my analysis. Why?
- Why I hated Christianity.
- What signs would communication from God display?
- Why must God reveal Himself?
What Next?
- What is the crucial concept?
- Why is that significant?
- If you agree, the next steps
- If you disagree, please consider reading