Turner's "Confessions" remains to be the most reliable source that confirms his religious fervor. Written before his execution, the book details Turner's experiences and how he planned his rebellion.

      Most slaves during Turner's era could not read, however some of them owned Bibles anyway. They saw the book as a tangible reminder that the “Good News” contained within would eventually manifest itself in the modern day and deliver them from slavery. Turner, on the other hand, learned how to read as a child, and the Bible was a book that he read and preached from regularly.  During his interrogation after the revolt, Turner constantly compared himself to biblical figures who had delivered their people from the hands of tyranny and were praised and idolized by all believers. In his "Confessions", Turner quoted the Gospel of Luke twice, and scholars have found many of his words to be akin to many famous passages from Ezekiel, Joshua, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, and Revelation; like many 19th-century Protestants, Turner drew his inspiration from the Bible.
      While Turner venerated the Bible, he rejected the notion that the scripture alone was the only reliable account of Christian values.  Turner believed that God continued to communicate with the world, as he felt God did with him.  At one point, Turner said “the Lord had shewn me things that had happened before my birth.” At another point, “the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me.” On May 12, 1828, “the Spirit instantly appeared to me.” When asked to explain who and what the "Spirit" was, Turner responded “The Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former days.” All of these supernatural happenings culminated in Turner's impression of himself to be a modern prophet.
      Turner believed that God communicated with him through the natural world. His neighbors saw the stars in the sky as simple balls of hot gas, but Turner saw them as “the lights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west.”  He found the unusual natural phenomena of nature to be indirect messages from God.  In a field, he once found “drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven.”  When he saw “leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood,” he was reminded of “figures I had seen in the heavens.”
      The most significant signs that a revolt was oncoming appeared months prior to the revolt. In February, Southampton, located in southern Virginia, observed a solar eclipse, which Turner interpreted as a providential signal to start recruiting rebels. With the eclipse, “the seal was removed from [Turner's] lips, and [he] communicated the great -work laid out for [him] to do, to four in whom [he] had the greatest confidence,” who were the first conspirators to join his plot. In August, a greenish sun appeared across the eastern seaboard. Turner immediately interpreted this as the perfect time to begin the revolt.

      Turner’s views on his private revelation were incredibly similar to religious figures like Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, and William Miller, the father of the Adventist movement. Turner’s views were heretical to the local interracial churches. Throughout the region, Protestant churches run by whites ministered to both whites and blacks, where the black members met separately from the white members, but on Communion Day the entire church came together to commemorate Jesus’s last supper.  When Turner tried to join one of these churches, the church refused to baptize the self-proclaimed prophet.
      After multiple conflicts with the Church and after heeding his own visions, Turner escaped from his owner.  When he was in the woods, hiding, the Holy Spirit appeared to Turner and ordered him to “return to the service of [his] earthly master—‘For he who knoweth his Master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus, [has the Lord] chastened you.’”  When the slaves heard Turner quote the slaveholders’ favorite passage from Luke, the slaves ostracized Turner.  “The negroes found fault, and murmurred against me, saying that if they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world," complained Turner.
      As alluded to previously, this was not the only time that the religious Turner found himself at odds with his later co-conspirators.  In the spring of 1831, when Turner and his co-conspirators were deciding the day for the revolt, the rebels selected Independence Day due to its obvious political resonances. On July 4th, Turner worried himself “sick” and postponed the revolt.  Then, on August 21, 1831, Turner met rebels whom he had not personally recruited.  He asked Will, an enthusiastic rebel, why he joined the revolt. Will responded “his life was worth no more than others, and his liberty as dear to him.” Likewise, when other men were questioned about the roots of their loyalty, none of them cited religious obligations; even in the courtroom, they referred to Turner as "Captain" or "General" but never "Prophet". Every slave, save Turner saw the rebellion as a secular uprising.
       Perhaps Turner’s religious isolation from the rest of the black community can help explain the most surprising thing about Turner’s religion: the only disciple that Turner named in his "Confessions" was Etheldred T. Brantley, who was a white man.  There was a great white-driven antislavery sentiment in the region, thus it is debatable if Brantley, who was not involved in the revolt, was converted by Turner’s antislavery, or if he was simply following the popular political sentiment of the region to which he belonged. If Brantley was, in fact, converted by Turner it would have been for the following reasons: Turner’s millennialism and Turner’s success in stopping the outbreak of a disease where blood oozed from the victim's bodily pores. Millenialism, or "the doctrine of a future (and typically imminent) thousand-year age of blessedness, beginning with or culminating in the Second Coming of Christ", made Turner seem like the catalyst of change that supported the Second Coming of the Bible and the future golden age of peace, justice, and prosperity. Additionally, medical expertise was rare at the time, so Turner possibly curing a seemingly demonic disease definitely made him stand out in the mind of this disciple.
      Turner always perceived his revolt as a religious movement rather than a secular uprising. When Turner was locked in prison, facing a certain executioner, Gray asked, “Do you not find yourself mistaken now?” Turner responded, “Was not Christ crucified[?]”.