I bring greetings from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Apostles in @steemchurch. The Lord keep your hearts and minds in peace in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is much debate over whether God is speaking to us today. After I became a believer, I attended a church that taught from the fundamentalist perspective. Fundamentalism places the highest authority on the scriptures. It teaches that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative word of God. There’s nothing wrong with this idea, but fundamentalism also teaches that the Bible is the final word from God to man. It says there is no more revelation that we can receive from God, except what has already been given to us in the Bible. In essence, Fundamentalism states that God spoke through the prophets and the apostles who recorded the revelation they received in the scriptures, and since then, He has had nothing more to say to us.

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After years of attending a Fundamentalist church I began attending a Charismatic one. One difference between Charismatics and Fundamentalists is that Charismatics believe God is still speaking today. One day a woman came to our church and prophesied to the congregation. She went from one person to another giving them words of encouragement that seemed to represent God’s desire for their lives. Somehow, she was able to hear God’s thoughts about others and she spoke what she heard. She was not a member of the congregation and didn’t know any of the people she prophesied to. She lived in another state. She was in town for a brief period to host a workshop. The words she spoke were accurate. I knew many of these people and I knew what she said was true. It became apparent to me that day that God is still speaking to us. This woman was clearly hearing from Him for other people. And I had to assume that if she was hearing from God, the rest of us could, too. Since then I’ve learned that He is speaking to us in so many ways, some of which I had never imagined.

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Jesus said to His disciples:

”But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the door keeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not k now the voice of strangers.” John. 10:2-5

This observation is literally true of sheep. They learn to recognize the voice of their shepherd. Once they know his voice, if another shepherd calls to them, they will not follow him. Jesus used this illustration from nature to explain the relationship He would have with His disciples. He revealed two things which could not be clearer: The first is that He has a voice which we can hear. He did not say His sheep may hear His voice, but that they will hear His voice, whether they realize it or not.

Imagine you have a neighbor who has a dog that barks loudly whenever a car drives down the street. Imagine that your hearing is perfect and when the dog barks, you hear it.

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After a few years of hearing the dog bark, you learn to tune out the barking, even to the point that when a friend visits and mentions it, you might realize you had completely forgotten about the barking dog. You still hear the barking, but you’ve chosen to live as if you didn’t hear it. And that is what Jesus is saying in this passage. That try as we might to ignore His voice, or believe that He is not speaking to us, He is speaking in a way that we can hear.

The second point He makes is that there is a stranger who has a voice we can also hear. I would interpret His reference to the “stranger” as the voice of Satan or demonic beings. The stranger has a voice we can hear. He did not say His sheep would not hear the voice of a stranger, but that when they did hear it, they would discern that it was not the voice they should follow. When they heard it, they would flee because they’re able to discern which voice is s peaking and which they should follow. This is at the crux of the debate over whether God is still s peaking to us today.

Fundamentalists fear that if God and demons were both speaking, we would not be able to tell which one was speaking and we’d be led as tray. They prefer to settle the question by believing God is not s peaking. They believe this view takes all risk out of the equation and provides a safer alternative. The Bible is clear about the existence of angels and demons. If they exist, it’s because there is a purpose for their existence. Angels, demons, God, and Satan are all real and they speak to us every day in their own spiritual language. Demons assist in the work of the kingdom of darkness and angels assist in the work of the kingdom of heaven. It does no good for us to put our heads in the sand and pretend they don’t exist and are not speaking to us when actually, they do.

There are many people both ins ide and outside the church who do not believe God is speaking directly to us. Those outside the church has dismissed claims from those who said they have heard God speak because many of these people have committed crimes and atrocities that God allegedly told them to commit. We seem to instinctively know that if God were to exist and if He were to s peak to us, He would not endorse such violent behavior. This is, by the way, one of the main reasons why many atheists dismiss the God that Christians preach.

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When an atheist hears of a God who seems to endorse mass genocide and other acts of cruelty and violence, their internal understanding (that if God existed, He would be more loving than this) causes them to reject the violent and immoral God who is preached from many pulpits. When atheists and agnostics are presented with the idea that God is a truly loving and compassionate deity, many will confess that they hope such a God does exist. While those inside the church agree that salvation comes by having a personal relationship with God through Jesus, many do not believe that this relationship includes having a direct dialogue with God. Their view is that we can speak to God through prayer, but He speaks back to us through the scriptures, and perhaps through the circumstances of our lives, but not through direct, personal revelation.

The main reason for this view is the fear that if God were to speak to us directly, we might be inclined to value the Bible less and value our conversations with God more, perhaps even to the point of disregarding the Bible completely and living only by what we hear from God.

If we teach that salvation is having a relationship with God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but that the Holy Spirit does not communicate directly with us, then we might ask a few questions:

Are we to believe that this “relationship” does not involve communication between two parties?

And if God does not speak to us directly, then how does He correct, encourage, and console us?

While it’s true that some people find encouragement and consolation by reading the scriptures, how do we imagine that God did these things before the scriptures were written, and how does He do them today for people who do not have Bibles, or are unable to read them?

Are we to believe that the Bible is the only way in which God speaks to man?

Some teach that God only speaks to us through the Bible, which brings us to our next objection.

“God speaks to us through the Bible. We don’t need anything more.”

God does without question speak to us through the Bible. The scriptures have been given to us for correction, for doctrine, for instruction in righteousness, and for encouragement. The Bible is indispensable as a guide that points us to God. But a person who reads the Bible can fall into error if their study is not guided by the voice of God.

I believe with this the argument between fundamentalism and the charismatic on "hearing God's voice" have been given perspective to.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of Christ. Your humble brother, @sirpee.

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