Galatians 1:15-16 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,… Revelation is opposed to knowledge gained by prolonged and patient thought. It is unlike the common process by which an intellectual conclusion is reached, the inference of one syllogism forming but the premiss of another, till by a series of connected links, primary or abstract truth is reached. For it is sudden and perfect illumination, lifting the receptive power into intensest susceptibility, and so lighting up the whole theme disclosed, that it is immediately and fully apprehended in its evidence and reality. We know not, indeed, what the process is, what the waking up of the higher intuition is, or what the ecstasy which throws into momentary abeyance all the lower faculties. It may resemble that new sphere of vision in which genius enjoys gleams of unutterable beauty, or that "demonstration of the Spirit" which gives the truth new aspects of richness and grandeur to the sanctified soul in some mood of rapt meditation. But still it is different and higher far both in matter and purpose. It was God's revelation of His Son, — not glimpses of the truth about Him, but Himself; not merely summoning His attention to His paramount claims, so as to elicit an acknowledgment of them, — not simply presenting Him to his intellectual perception to be studied and comprehended, — nor even shrining an image of Him in his heart to be loved and cherished, — but His Son unveiled in living reality; and in him — in his inner self, not in any distinct and separate realm of his being — with the conscious possession of all this infallible and communicable knowledge which was given, perhaps, first in clear and vivid outline, and then filled in surely and gradually. (John Eadie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, |
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