Mike, don't worry about offending me. As long as you have sincere, reasonable objections, I'm happy to address them.
And we don't need anything to confirm it - the evidence from the Bible is icing on the cake. Let's pretend we're having a conversation before the Bible was written. Topics include:
(1) Does God exist?
(2) Which religious document did He sponsor, if any?
(3) How do I know, even if I read the right document, whether I'm picturing the correct God? Maybe I'm praying to a conceptual idol, not to the real God (viz. today this brings to mind Mormons, JW's, unsaved Jews, etc).
(4) How do I know my faith is of the right kind and strong enough to have eternal life?
(5) How is my fallibility to be overcome, for example when reading God's book? Or when making moral decisions that could harm the world in ways that my feeble mind could not possibly have anticipated? (For example going on vacation to another country without realizing I'm spreading Covid-19 to that nation).
Direct Revelation solves these problems - notice at this point I've drawn this conclusion without the Bible. I don't need the Bible to confirm. I don't even need to know which religion is the correct one, to reach the conclusion that God, if He exists, would need to leverage Direct Revelation. (But it's nice that the Bible seems to confirm that hypothesis over and over and over again).
I used simple reasoning to reach that conclusion. It's not infallible, but we're all agree on that point, right? Currently none of us participating in this discussion are infallible, for example no one on this thread has claimed to be a prophet.
Those who dissent with this conclusion are free to provide a more well-reasoned theory. Certainly the Sola Scriptura theory isn't an improvement.
I think you're pointing out that I can't PROVE my theory 100%. True. I can't even prove that you exist. Neither can the Sola Scriptura party. All we can do, in our current state of fallibility, is pick the most reasonable theory presented to date.
Right. I can't prove it 100%. Would you say the same about all communication? Would you say:
"Nobody has a clue how men speak to men."
I don't think you'd be that skeptical. And if you understand my metaphysics, I'm saying, based on Isaiah 55:11 for example, that God speaks to men the same way that men speak to men. Sound waves (Energy/Matter). Of course, shortly before impact, He can reshape the divine Energy/Matter into Light Waves, or Water Droplets (see John 3:5), or whatever He likes. But that's not really anything new because Cable TV can send a fiber optic wave, for example, that eventually gets converted into sound waves.
"Fiber optic cables carry communication signals using pulses of light generated by small lasers or
light-emitting diodes."
Is Fiber Faster Than Traditional Cables? Learn All About Fiber Optics
If even human beings can convert light waves to sound waves, can't God convert His Sound Waves to any kind of material impact? But I've digressed into metaphysics. Sorry!
Don't be short-sighted. In the IMMEDIATE SHORT TERM the doctrine of Direct Revelation doesn't gain you much. But things would likely be different if the church had been cultivating prophets for the past 2,000 years. It's much easier to become a Joshua if you've got Moses as your mentor. The point is to begin moving in the right direction.
And not just because "infallible doctrine" is important. For example, I tried to demonstrate, a few posts back, that Paul, in Galatians, defined sanctification as an ongoing sequence of Direct Revelation.
I disagree. Abraham did not need to have that faith in resurrection. Nice that he had it, but what he really needed, from the Voice, was 100% certainty that killing his son was the morally right thing to attempt.
I'll now prove this point. Suppose Abraham attempted to kill his son simply because he
reasoned that God could raise him from the dead. In other words, suppose the Voice wasn't the decisive influence. This creates 2 problems.
(1) If he lacked 100% certainty that the slaughter was the morally right thing to do, we cannot celebrate him. Anyone who tries to kill his son on less than 100% certainty has opted for evil and merits contempt and imprisonment (unless you really want to maintain that Abraham was a man with a warped conscience, that is, a psychopath).
(2) If Abraham was driven by
reasoning he should have completed the slaughter! What stopped him? The Voice! Thus we see a parallel:
(A) The Voice is what
started him along that path.
(B) The Voice is what
ended his trek along that path.