Before I believed in God, I was what you might call “a seeker.” I had come to the place in my life, at the age of eighteen, where I knew that I did not know anything. Ironically, that was the beginning of knowledge. I looked around me and, curiously, nobody else seemed to care whether they had a higher purpose in the universe. I had never disbelieved that God existed, but I had never been taught anything about Him. I thought all religions were equally good ways to God. I sought mystical experiences. I did psychedelic drugs and tried to see auras around trees. Through all of this, I was looking for the person that Christians call God. That is, a creator who also had a purpose for not only my life, but the whole universe.
How can mortal human beings get to know such a God? First of all, there was the type of revelation of God that I’d already had without learning anything—that is, that the things that are created, the order and beauty of the natural world and the complexity of the design of people and the ecosystem reveal God as a being of perfect beauty, order, creativity, and love (we will discuss His attributes more later). This type of revelation is sometimes called General Revelation and sometimes Natural Theology. The second type of revelation is called Special Revelation, and it refers to what is written in the Holy Bible, or Scriptures. The Bible talks about General Revelation in Romans, chapter two.
Special Revelation is found in the Holy Bible, which teaches us about God’s dealings with mankind. We will discuss the contents of the Bible more detail. But I personally was surprised to find out, after all these years, that the Holy Bible is the place to find all the answers about God, life, and purpose. My grandmother had believed the Bible, but I grew up just assuming that is was a dusty, irrelevant book that nobody really understood. I thought I respected Jesus (as everyone kind of does), but it was the Jesus of my own imagination—a good teacher, maybe a kind of hippie who was all about peace and had long hair—seeing that I had never actually read the accounts about his life. When my grandma gave me a Bible I started in Genesis 1 and tried to memorize the rivers in the Garden of Eden. At the time I was not a Christian but I was beginning the think the Bible was an important spiritual book, but that maybe it needed to be rewritten in modern language (I didn’t know that modern translations had already been published in easy-to-understand language).
I came to believe in the creator because of various experiences, thoughts, and visions that would be called General Revelation. For example, I looked into a fire once and believed I felt the presence of God. Another time I looked at some clouds and felt a deep spiritual energy. However, I didn’t know the way to be saved until a Christian friend of mine, whom I had questions for because he seemed spiritual, explained to me what the Bible said about believing in Jesus.