Prior Book | Prior Chapter | Prior Verse | Next Verse | Next Chapter | Next Book | Viewing NASB and Amplified 2015 | |
NASB | Acts 9:4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Acts 9:4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice [from heaven] saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting and oppressing Me?" |
Bible Question: Does anyone here think that God can call out and talk to anyone in these days? I do. Anyone else? |
Bible Answer: The fact that we are discussing the subject says a lot. The fact is the Lord does talk to us, or John 10:27 is not true. But there are also people who talk to us, and we find it important to consider what they say. Any believer may know that God talks to them. He has not left us alone. He walks with us and he talks with us. But it is also important to us to know what others people say. The fact is, other people are always talking to us. Our task is often to decide whether or when to listen. Some of what we hear is solidly true, but very short on substance. The word of God is true, they say, and we agree. But what does it say? Some try to add substance and utility and they say, “God told me to go to …” and they lose us then because we have no basis for judging whether it was God. We also know of cases where it was apparently not God because the action in question was contrary to (our understanding of) the written word of God. There is, somewhere on this forum, the question whether Satan talks to us, and it might be interesting to review that. We know at least that he has ministers (2 Corinthians 11) and they are not reticent to talk. They may say that they have heard from God, but then they do not tell the truth. There is also a question as to whether true prophets always tell the truth. See 1 Kings 22. The truth is not always what we want to hear. The story of Micaiah is one that we can learn from (Romans 15:4). Even if we speak the truth, there are still those who would say, “Put this fellow in the prison, and feed him with bread of affliction and with water of affliction, until I return in peace”. But we can know when God is speaking. For one thing, it is in the word of . For the other thing, God what God says will happen will happen. So, when a preacher says, “I have a message from the Lord” and the message is: “Look to Jesus now and live”. The Lord is speaking, the message is true, and those who accept it know it from past or present experience. One can very well report: “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto Me and rest;…” I came to Jesus as I was, … I found in Him a resting place, … I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I freely give The living water; ...” I came to Jesus, and I drank of that life giving stream; My thirst was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in Him. “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘I am this dark world’s Light;…’ I looked to Jesus, and I found in Him my Star, my Sun; And in that light of life I’ll walk, till traveling days are done”. Many references have been made to Hebrews 1:2 where it says that God has spoken through his Son. Now we might ask ourselves, what have we heard the Son to say? And are we giving earnest heed to those things (Hebrews 2:1)? It may be that some of us are listening for other messages such as “Go to Chicago” or “Buy this car”. Now, since neither “Chicago” not “car” is in the Bible, we cannot detect the voice of God in such utterances. And since neither good ourcomes nor bad show that God directed we cannot tell even in hindsight whether God had spoken. What this piece means to say is that God spoken so loudly on so many things! God is light and we should walk in the light. We should worship God. We should preach the Gospel. We should love one another, not in word but in deed. Are we listening to those, or are we looking for other messages? It may be that we are looking for something secret and personal, spoken in our own individual ears. But isn’t God saying the same thing to all of us? We look at his Son. We look at his word. The Holy Spirit touches the word of God and it roars to life in us. When we read John 3:16, don’t we “hear” God saying, “I love you”? When we read Deuteronomy 6;5 or Matthew 22:37, don’t we “hear” God saying we should love him? When we read 1 John 3:16, don’t we “hear” God saying, “Love one another”? Or are we looking for something more mysterious and personally satisfying or just something more selfishly personal? Two passages of Scripture have meant so much to me in times when it seemed God was not speaking. “And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left’” from Isaiah 30, and “I being in the way, the LORD led me” from Genesis 24. Blessed are those who can hear the voice of God in the word of God, even a paraphrased version of it, and who find no need for an audible, possibly counterfeit voice. When there was no written Bible to go by, a man such as Samuel was blessed to hear the audible voice of God. But now, now that we have his word in writing, blessed instead are those who hear no audible disembodied voices, but who “hear” the word of God and do it. |