Revelation
……………. This internal method of revelation reaches its culmination in the New Testament period, which is preeminently the age of the Spirit. What is especially characteristic of this age is revelation through the medium of the written word, what may be called apostolic as distinguished from prophetic inspiration. The revealing Spirit speaks through chosen men as His organs, but through these organs in such a fashion that the most intimate processes of their souls become the instruments by means of which He speaks His mind. Thus, at all events there are brought clearly before us three well-marked modes of revelation, which we may perhaps designate respectively, not with perfect discrimination, it is true, but not misleadingly, (1) external manifestation, (2) internal suggestion, and (3) concursive operation.
Theophany may be taken as the typical form of “external manifestation”; but by its side may be ranged all of those mighty works by which God makes Himself known, including express miracles, no doubt, but along with them every supernatural intervention in the affairs of men, by means of which a better understanding is communicated of what God is or what are His purposes of grace to a sinful race. Under “internal suggestion” may be subsumed all the characteristic phenomena of what is most properly spoken of as “prophecy”: visions and dreams, which, according to a fundamental passage (Num_12:6), constitute the typical forms of prophecy, and with them the whole “prophetic word,” which shares its essential characteristic with visions and dreams, since it comes not by the will of man but from God.
(ISBE: Revelation)