Paine begins "The Age of Reason" by attacking revelation. Revelation, he maintains, can be verified only by the individual receivers of the message and so is weak evidence for God's existence. Paine rejects prophecies and miracles: "it is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it." He also points out that the Christian revelations appear to have altered over time to adjust for changing political circumstances. Urging his readers to employ reason rather, than to rely on revelation, Paine argues that the only reliable, unchanging, and universal evidence of God's existence is the natural world. "The Bible of the Deist," he contends, should not be a human invention, such as the Bible, but rather a divine invention—it should be "creation".