Does God speak Directly To People And Through Which Medium?

Hi,

I have heard quite a number of people and preachers who claimed that God directly speak to them. This keep me wondering because there are quite a large number of people who have never had the experience of having God speak to them. Why would God select some group of people among us to speak to while leaving the rest of us in the dark? And if not so, do these special breed of individuals have special abilities that the rest of us don’t have?

I will appreciate discussions that will shed more light on this issue. Thank you.

They are cold reading their own minds Olayinka.

2 Likes

Hi Klax,

I will appreciate it if you can explain that a little further. Thank you.

People are having a dialogue with themselves, asking themselves questions and calling the responder God. You could ask the cat or whiteboard it. [It’s all in the framing of the question and ones emotional and reflex and - rarely - analytical response to it. We usually have an idealized version of ourselves, a better angel of our nature, or a nice grandma, deceased. What would they say? We can actually be out own therapists and project that on God.]

1 Like

I really appreciate your clarity. What if God has been speaking to everyone, but only that many of us don’t recognise His voice or the medium through which He Speaks?

You’re too kind. I added an edit above. I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit operates orthodoxly and ineffably; encouraging, correcting, leading, inspiring, humbling, discerning, strengthening, calming, guiding. Yearning back. She never uses words. Never plants thoughts on our heads. Those are all ours.

I really like the way you are channelling the discussions. In which manner do you think God communicated with Adam in the Garden of Eden, especially when He led the animals to Adam to give them names? Do you think He spoke to him the way you and I speak?

I guess it depends on what they mean.

The Holy Spirit convicts us our our sins. In John 16:5-8 or so it talks about the Holy Spirit convicting is of sins.

However, as I can better show when I’m off work, the Holy Spirit seems to now days do that through the scripture.

God is not giving people new doctrine or scripture to give to the church and so on. The Bible says we study his word and make our plans and set him first and he helps us.

1 Like

In the inspired story, He did. He was remarkably different to all other contemporary (C6th BCE) divinities. Paternalistic. Which is an improvement in capricious.

Yes, you are very right. But my question is if God did speak to people especially in the Old Testament? How did He Speak to them? Did he speak to them the way you and I speak? And if that is the case, why is God not speaking to us the same way today? Thank you.

I have a very different conception of what gives rise to God belief. From my point of view I would say that expecting for God to have a private conversation on ones own terms would be self defeating. Probably anyone who feels they have had such an experience, has relied more on their intuitive mind than their rational powers.

If He did, if the stories are accurate reports, then the answer is in the stories. All the the answers are there. Visions, voices - via a donkey, a burning bush, a pillar of smoke - dreams, demon possessed witches.

What’s the alternative?

I think i will have to agree with on that. But may i draw your attention to how God communicate with people in the Old Testament, will you hold the same opinion to people who experienced communicating with God directly?

Scripturally I believe all evidence points towards prophecy coming to a end. There are no more prophets and there are no more divine orders for his chosen people beyond what he already said.

In the Torah the Jews were his chosen people and he spoke to them to guide them through the prophets and the prophets gave them doctrine and direction.

We don’t need that anymore. Scripture is complete. His chosen people are Christians and Christ is our king and he’s said all he’s saying I believe.

So we don’t have prophets with new divine wisdom to guide the body. The apostles were the last ones.

Same as the apostles were the last ones with the ability to lay on hands and they were immune to snake and so on. They carried out the great commission and completed it.

Interestingly, i quite agree with you that God may actually not be speaking directly to people as we are made to believe. May be God communicates to us through mediums, such as those you mentioned. But even at that, in which way does God communicate to these mediums? Maybe there is an alternative that we do yet recognised. There may be a universal way through which God can speak to anyone of us. It may be through Thoughts.

There is a piece of work where an elaborate dialogues have been made to explain the Concept of Thought as one major instrument through which God conveys information to us.

May be the information here could help explain further the concept of Thoughts.

Well I don’t think the O.T. is a straight up historical account. And honestly I’m not much familiar with or invested in the Bible. It doesn’t figure very prominently in my hunch regarding what gives rise to and supports God belief.

I always go with the simplest explanation taking all the facts of the stories, the disinterested stories of the stories, in to account.

From many years of my research and study of the O.T, what i come to understand is that it is the most misunderstood part of the Bible. Unfortunately, most of the christian Theology today is based on the on O.T. The Creation story, fall of man, chronologies and age of the modern earth. They are all being misinterpreted, and that is why it is very difficult for many of us to get our heads round the historical accuracy of the scripture.

What about the history of the texts?

As for the NT, He spoke three times, with overlapping content twice, to an audience indicating Jesus and once to Him, from the sky, once from a cloud.