We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
— 1 John 3:2

When John had a vision of the glorified Lord on Patmos, John fell at His feet as dead. The same thing happened to Daniel, and he said all his comely parts turned in him into corruption. Revelation of God always brings a sense of a deep heart need. If sinners can be brought into touch with the Lord, conviction will settle upon them.

The outstanding use of miracles is to bring revelation of God to people—to show His Presence, His power, and His love. It is not merely to meet the needy. That ministry which has not the supernatural and the miraculous in it is void of revelation of God and is lacking in spiritual results. It brings a mental conception but lacks heart revelation. The most of Christianity today is a result of logic and theory. Because it is so void of the supernatural, God has not been able to manifest Himself.

Oh, for the supernatural ministry today! It will come when God’s people come into revelation and knowledge of Him as John, Paul, and Daniel had it. Powerful anointing and ministries are sure to follow the revelation of the Lord.

In these days of mental development and learning, man gets almost everything that he knows by way of mental exercise. We have acquired this method of gaining knowledge in spiritual things. But spiritual things, if they are to become understood, must be by way of the heart. As it is written, “The world through wisdom did not know God” (1 Corinthians 1:21). But with the heart man believes unto righteousness.

What one gets by revelation stays with him and becomes a part of him. What you have received of God cannot be reasoned away.

PR

“…one of the early 20th Century’s prophetic voices still speaks today…” — Jack W. Hayford

Reprinted with permission from Daily Seedings: A Devotional Classic for the Spirit-Filled Life by Ivan Q. Spencer (selected and edited by Edie Mourey), Furrow Press, 2008.

For more about Ivan Spencer, see “Following in His Steps” by Edie Mourey.

Introduction

In Matthew 22:37 Jesus commanded all believers to love God with all of their heart, strength, and mind, and to love their neighbor as themselves, stating that the Law and the Prophets were predicated on these two commandments. Loving God will all of one’s mind can mean seeking to develop one’s intellectual capacities.¹ Four men in the Bible: Moses, Ezra, Daniel, and Paul, exemplified obedience to this principle, even though three of them lived and died before Jesus ever uttered those words. Using non-Western narrative methodology—in this case, biography—let us study what it means to serve God with our intellects. Rick Nañez’s repeated premise of the need for intellectual development along with spiritual passion is accepted as the basis for this paper.² One is compelled to agree with Donald Bowdle that “Jesus is Lord of learning …,” as well as every other area of life.³ Consequently, the greater weight in this paper will be given to the intellectual development, insofar as possible, of the lives of the biblical characters to be examined, and how that development impacted their service to God and man. These men serve as outstanding examples of combining powerful intellects with passionate piety.

Four Men Who Followed Jesus’ Command

There are two classes of education that are apparent in the lives of these four men. Moses and Daniel were classically educated in the liberal arts of their day while Ezra and Paul were theologically schooled in Judaism.

Moses

Moses with the tables of the Law, by Guido Reni, 17th century.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Moses was educated in the best tradition that ancient Egypt had to offer (Acts 7:22). Education fit for a prince would have likely included literacy, architecture, painting, astronomy, and mathematics as these were some of the strong aspects of Egyptian culture.⁴ It also seems reasonable to assume that a prince would have been instructed in statecraft and law. A. W. Morton suggests Moses may have learned the duties of a scribe as part of his education and would have become literate in both Hebrew and Egyptian.⁵ That he rejected the lifestyle of the palace does not suggest that he eschewed his education.

In defending the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Gleason Archer explains that there were actually two strands of Moses’ intellectual development:

He had the education and background for authorship, since he received from his ancestors that wealth of oral law which originated from the Mesopotamian cultures back in the time of Abraham (hence the remarkable resemblances to the eighteenth century [b.c.] Code of Hammurabi), and from his tutors in the Egyptian court he received training in those branches of learning in which eighteenth dynasty Egypt excelled the rest of the ancient world. From his forebears he would naturally have received an accurate oral tradition of the career of the patriarchs and those revelations which God had vouchsafed to them.⁶

The Hebrew strain could have been gained from his mother but as the biblical record does not mention conclusively that she cared for him beyond the period of his weaning (Exodus 2:10),it seems most likely that he learned the traditions of his forebears during the years in the desert.

Both strands are evident in the Pentateuch. Moses was an outstanding storyteller in the oral tradition of the Hebrews. The Pentateuch reveals Moses as an experienced leader in many areas: law, tabernacle building, dietary regulations, and many other things. Concerning law, for example, E.B. Smick draws several correlations between the Mosaic law and other legal systems known in the Middle East at the time, specifically the famous law code of Hammurabi, implying that Moses was familiar with them.⁷ One could argue that his knowledge of Hammurabi’s Code could have come from either strand of his tradition.

The Pentateuch also reveals more than one literary style. While most of it is written in compelling narrative, certain small sections are poetic (i.e. Genesis 3:14-19; 4:23-24; 9:25-27; 49:1-27).⁸ Also, the table of the nations in Genesis reveals that Moses had a grasp of history that went beyond that of the Egyptians and the Hebrews.

Moses’ passion for God is not only reflected in the man of God and great leader that he indeed became, but also in the fact that he wrote the Pentateuch. The document upon which Hebrew society would be built, it provided a solid history, statecraft, and numerous other things—God breathed into and through Moses.