Question:  Dear Greg,

            Since God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, why do some teach that God will not speak, audibly, to any of us today?  I don’t recall any biblical verse that plainly tells us that God no longer will allow his voice to be heard.

            Angela

Answer:  Dear Angela,

            Yes, God is the same—he does not change, in terms of his attributes, his nature, etc.  But there are many “changes” in the Bible—which this passage does not refer to.  One major example would be God himself—that in Christ God came to us as a human to save us from our sins.  He had never done that before—and will never do it again.

            Can God’s voice be heard?  It depends on what we mean, and what the Bible means by God’s voice.  Jesus said that no one had ever heard God’s voice or seen his form (John 5:37).  Yet, the Bible says that the voice of God was heard many times in the Old Testament—and the Gospels record the voice of the Father during Christ’s ministry (Matthew 3:17; 17:5, and John 12:28).

            Some believe that Jesus was referring, in John 5:37, only to the immediate crowd to whom he was speaking.  Others believe that Jesus is contrasting the old covenant and coming of the new—the fact that in the old covenant God “spoke” audibly more often than he would in the new.  Others feel that God’s voice being spoken of here is the inner voice, not audible, with which God “speaks” to us.

            Of course, it is also true that what the Bible—or those who are recorded in the Bible—speaks of as hearing God’s voice might have been hearing the voice of an angel, speaking for God.

            In any case, there is no reason to believe that God is speaking audibly to Christians today in the same manner as he did to Old Testament patriarchs.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht