In order for us to live with real meaning and to die with real peace, we need not only a God who exists but also a God who has spoken.

But we confront a problem. God dwells in a light no one can approach (1 Timothy 6:16). We need help. If we don't get help, we can never gain reliable information about who God is, what his plan is for us, what we've done to mess up that plan, and what he has done to restore his great and good plan. We need God to reveal himself. Reveal comes from Latin, meaning "to pull back the veil."

Ever since our first parents rebelled against God, all true religion is founded on special, supernatural revelation of God. The intellect God gave us is simply not an adequate instrument for measuring God. Any religion that originates in the human mind is necessarily false. Unless the Spirit of God pulls back the veil and illuminates our minds through the miracle we call conversion, we cannot distinguish between what is true and what is false.

As we study the Old Testament, we see how God repeatedly chose certain persons and miraculously revealed his truth to them. He also commanded them to transmit this information to his people. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews neatly summarizes this march of prophecy: "In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1,2).

ADAM

The first person whom God used to communicate his saving message was the first human—Adam. Before he was driven out of the garden, Adam called his wife Eve, which means life. Adam emphasized that she was the one through whom life—real, true life—would be restored to a world subject to the curse of death.

The closing verses of Genesis 4 record briefly the history of the descendants of Seth, a son of Adam and Eve. At the time of Seth's son Enosh, people began to proclaim the name of the LORD. Note that the name "LORD" is spelled in all capital letters. That indicates that the Sethites used the name Yahweh—God's covenant name, his Old Testament Savior name. Within three generations the religion of the true God had developed into public worship—a prophetic activity.

Subsequent generations continued this prophetic ministry. The apostle Jude informs us that "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied . . . 'See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done' " (Jude 14,15).

NOAH