GOD REVEALED HIMSELF TO MAN

What would mankind know about God if He had not revealed himself? Even before He began to appear to certain men, human beings already worshiped gods of their own imagination. Sumerians, for example, about 4.000 years BC, worshiped various gods within a religious system that saw them as evil, depraved, and oppressive. Separated from God by original sin and without divine revelation, mankind would have only the idealization of countless deities, stemming from the desire it nurtures for its Creator. See Joshua 24: 2 and 14.

But God, by his love for the human being, decided to reveal himself and opened a way by which man would return to his initial condition of holiness and communion with Him. That was about 2,000 BC when the Creator appeared to Abraham in Haran, in Mesopotamia, to whom he promised: "... and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12: 3). From the offspring of Abraham, Jesus Christ would born and after he would die on behalf of mankind.

From Abraham came Israel, a people whom the Creator separated to reveal himself. Five hundred years after appearing to this Patriarch, God revealed himself to Moses, with whom he had a deep relationship that inspired him to write the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. After, along a millennium, He appeared to certain men of Israel, the prophets, bringing some specific words to the nation and others to mankind. However, from the middle of the fifth century BC to John the Baptist, the last prophet, He remained silent. But He will fully reveal Himself by entering into the world through the Son, Jesus Christ.

Today, mankind has Divine Revelation, but it lives as in the time of the Sumerian, worshiping thousands of gods, proclaimed in the countless religions that it created. This happens because Revelation came into the world in a contrary logic to the human, so humanity sees God but does not comprehend him. The revelation of God is madness for man, for He has chosen insignificant and despicable things of this life to reveal Himself in them to the world, as follows (1 Cor. 1: 18-31).

Revelation of God was given to a slave people in ancient Egypt which was later dominated by successive world empires. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born in an insignificant Roman province in a stable, and the only time he entered a palace was to be tortured and then taken to the cross. A cloak of improbability, according to human reason, covers Divine Revelation so that it can only be accepted by faith. This, however, puts man in the condition of dependence on God, something that he does not accept, because he wants to be in control of his own life and, therefore, considers it unlikely to be true.

Antônio Maia – M.Div.

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