Does God speak Directly To People And Through Which Medium?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Hi, Olayinka. I see that you’re new to BioLogos, so thank you for joining us. I hope you find a positive sense of belonging here.

The question you’ve asked here is something I’ve spent many years of research on. The position I hold is different from the other responses you’ve heard so far on this thread. This is because I’m a practising Christian mystic. So I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum from @Klax on this topic. But any words we use in this discussion can only be a starting point for the topic of how God communicates with us. It’s an extremely complex reality that overlaps with all the foundational elements of human activity: neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, pedagogy, theology, creativity, meaning, happiness, intuition, relationship with God, and, in turn, the many other aspects of life that are impacted by our core neuroscientific patterns.

You’re right in noticing that quite a number of people claim God speaks directly to them. And you’re right to wonder why this doesn’t happen to everyone. I can offer some thoughts on those questions.

First, I’d like to start by saying that God is always in relationship with each and every human being on Planet Earth, regardless of whether we believe in this or want this in our lives. God and God’s angels are always communicating with us, whether or not we ask for communication. Many Christians believe with great sincerity that God wants to communicates with us; but then we make the mistake of assuming that God only communicates with us through words.

Words are an almost endless source of confusion as far as God as concerned. Words can be twisted, used to empower deceit and abuse, coated with honey while delivering toxic bullets. Even without evil intents, words can be misunderstood, misheard, mistranslated, misremembered. So while words are absolutely essential to our lives, words must always be backed up, confirmed, verified by other sources. Some such sources include math, scientific research, and economic patterns. God communicates with us through multiple simultaneous avenues, so if we really want to understand what God is saying to us, we have to combine data and findings from many different fields of inquiry. Words from prophets and preachers in the absence of corroborating evidence from God’s other “languages” (e.g. math) just don’t cut it. So if you haven’t personally heard any direct words from God, I wouldn’t worry about it. God has good reasons for not speaking directly to most human beings.

Second, you ask if there’s a special breed of individuals with special abilities. Heh. Well, I can tell you, based on my own experience, that a small number of individuals are born with the hardwiring to push human intuition to its biological limits. But there are many caveats to this statement. And these caveats must be understood from a strictly biological perspective, because when prophets and preachers make the purely theological claims they make about revelation (ever so loudly and with no confirmation from science) they can really hurt a lot of other people with the stupid, hurtful things they say about God. So again, if you’re not loudly promoting a narcissistic agenda of revelation, that’s probably a good thing from God’s point of view.

Third, for the small number of people who are born with the hardwiring to become a mystic (who feels God’s presence and hears God’s words, but doesn’t indulge in narcissistic prophesying), it’s extremely hard work. You might think life becomes easy once you can hear God’s voice – and some parts of life do become much easier (for example, I no longer fear death) – but once you commit to the path of hearing God’s words on a regular basis, you’re expected to use those words wisely for the benefit of others and not for your own narcissistic goals and purposes.

You’ve probably noticed by now that I’ve used the word “narcissistic” several times. No doubt you know that narcissists believe they are specially chosen to have special abilities to specially save other people with their magnificent, special words.

A person who’s actually listening to God’s voice instead of his/her own narcissism doesn’t believe in specialness or chosenness. At all.

Hope this helps. God bless.

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Hello, I am so glad you were able to put such length and educative submission. Yes, it is very true that most people that always claim to hear from God sometimes exhibit narcissistic characters.

Another part of your submission that caught my interest is being able to know when God is communicating with someone from when one is communicating with oneself through one’s thought. One thing all faithful Christians will agree to is that if God speaks to anyone, that message must agree with His words in the scripture. However, the question remains, how does that communication occur? And through which medium?

I recently wrote an an article, where i have asked some series of questions and i have also used various Bible verses to state the position of God on these questions about what His communication with us can look like.

Below are few excerpts from the articles;

In all this, as usual, God was nowhere to be found. Where is he? Why can’t I find him as I seek answers to many questions I have asked for years. God, is there any reason you chose to remain remote? Is there any reason you chose to remain invisible? More than ever before, I remain determined to have him speak to me. But how could I have him speak to me if I can’t see him? This is a challenge I have to face, so I became more dramatic and resolved to challenge God using His own words to have him to speak to me about existence and every question my wisdom will allow me to ask about him.

Do you really want to get answers to your questions or are you just ranting like in the past?

My mind quickly blinked, and I hurriedly replied, yes, of course, and said, God, is that you?

Why are you doubting if it is me? Haven’t I said, seek you shall find? Have I not said, knock and it shall be opened to you? Why are you still doubting if it is me?

I am just confused if you really speak to anyone, and, want to be sure if it is not my feeling.

Do you think you can have a feeling about me if I have not put my thought in you? Do you think your mind can want to seek me if I am not already speaking to you?

Intrigued, I asked God, do you speak to everyone?

Yes, I speak to everyone. When I said, seek you shall find, I am not saying this to a group of people, or a race, but to whosoever shall seek, shall find. This is my law, I do not break them.

How do you speak and how can one be sure, you are the one speaking?

First, let us exchange the word speak with the word reveal. The word speak has been universally abused that I speak to humans. I do not speak physically to people as many claimed, it is a lie if anyone claimed I speak to them. But instead, I reveal myself to people and chose to communicate through thoughts not by speaking. When I created Adam, I brought to him every animal and bird to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called each living creature was its name. What I did here was to reveal the names of all the animals to him through thoughts and not by speaking to him. Have you not also read in the scripture what I said to Peter about his confession of Jesus being the Christ, the Son of the living God, if you have no memory of it I will remind you, and I said to Peter, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but my father in heaven. Simply, I revealed to Peter the thought of who Jesus is, and he chose to make the confession, even though he had the choice to keep quiet. I did not speak to Peter.

I do not only communicate through thoughts, but I also communicate through my physical creations. For instance, I revealed to Abraham my future promise to him that his children shall be countless like the stars of heavens. Do you think I spoke to him physically? Absolutely not! Anyone who said I speak to them physically or claim to hear my voice is not only wrong but also telling a blatant lie.

Why do you not speak physically to people?

I am the Great one, I have always been before time and space came in being, before the Great beginning I have always existed. I alone dwelling in my Glory and Majesty. I do not need to speak to anyone because nothing was in existence except me. Yet, I communicate with myself through my thoughts. In fact, Thought is my greatest communication tool, it is pure and incorrupt when it comes from a great Mind.

Since I am not created, I do not need to speak to a creator. What is created can speak because it was created to speak with other creations, but what is not created does not speak. A creator chooses the way to communicate with his creations. For me, I chose to communicate with my creations through thoughts, creations cannot decide which way I communicate with them. Is it not the same way computer programmers chose to communicate with computers through software with various computer languages such as Basic, C, C++, COBO, Fortran, Ada, PASCA to mention a few? Does a computer choose the language for its creator?

But have you ever spoken to anyone physically?

No! like I said, I communicate through thoughts. Have you not read in the Book of Thomas that I have no form? Whatever is created has a form. If I truly I speak, does it not mean I have a mouth? Does it not mean I have a head? Does it not mean I have a lung and vocal cord? Does it not mean I have a body? All of these, I do not have because I have no form, in fact, man has no words to describe how I look, and what form I take. To think I have a form or for anyone to assume I have a physical representation or image detests me. If I do have any of such things, something or someone must have formed me into the shape. Whatever that has a shape or form changes, I am unchangeable, whatever has a shape or form is created, I am not created. Have I not said in the scriptures that you shall not make any image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath? If I have a form or I can be represented by images, would I forbid you from cherishing my image? More so, if I am in heaven and I have a form, would I also have forbidden you from carving my image on earth to represent me for you to worship and exalt it for my glory?

I have included a link to this article in my previous response.

Is Thought a powerful tool God communicates to us?

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I think we’re so far apart we meet at the back! :slight_smile:

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Randal Rauser had a recent blog on the movie "Yesterday " where he proposed that if you remembered the Beatles and the rest of the world did not, you would more likely think you had a brain tumor or something like that than think the rest of the world changed. Similarly, I think if I started hearing the audible voice of God, I would be concerned more about neurologic or psychiatric illness. That is a little disturbing to consider, as I do feel God talks to us, but does so through scripture, circumstances, emotions and intuition. We can open ourselves to being sensitive to his voice through prayer.
Perhaps what disturbs me most is how we can also be misled by our own desires and leanings, and think one of the most important things in prayer is to work on the “thy will be done” part.
Still, the uncertainty remains as to what path God would have us take. We love certainty and want to know the next step. We have comfort in formulas, longing to know what we need to do to get to,where we are going. It is why we are so attracted to works based religion rather than God’s grace. I think we can take comfort that God’s grace is there for us, and God wants us to step out in faith rather than certainty.

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I had to learn years ago that no book – no set of teachings based entirely on words, including scripture – is entirely trustworthy. Those who want to participate in a full relationship with God must be willing to listen to God’s many “languages”, including (but not limited to) classical physics, quantum physics, biology, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, maths, poetry, art, architecture, movement, dance, music, and many other forms of expression, each of us tells us something different (but equally important) about the immensity and complexity of God’s Creation.

The human brain has a limited capacity to understand what God is saying to us. This capacity is restricted in scope by the number of neurons, glial cells, and synaptic connections we have. Current estimates of our memory capacity seem to vary from 1 to 1,000 terabytes. But even if our memory capacity were at the upper limit of 1,000 terabytes, it would be a tiny grain of sand in comparison to the amount of data held within God’s Heart and Mind. We shouldn’t think we can grasp the immensity of God through our thoughts alone. And we especially shouldn’t think we can depend on words to understand the fullness of God’s love.

The human brain is a very tricky beastie, and it’s easy for major mental health issues to cloud the picture when it comes to communicating with God. This is why there is no one single answer to your question about what medium God uses to communicate with us. There isn’t one single medium. There never was and there never will be. There are many mediums, and they must all be respected as equally valid. Why? Because God knows the human brain has limits.

I personally have nothing nice to say about the passages in the Bible that make promises about gifts of prophecy and revelation and speaking in tongues and the like. In my view, this is just a recipe for creating endless frustration and confusion for those who truly want to be in relationship with God.

There is no foolproof way to guarantee that the words you hear inside your own head are coming from God and not from a dysfunctional network in your brain. So every time you think you’ve received pearls of wisdom from God, it’s your responsibility to go out into the world and look for confirmation. This doesn’t mean looking solely to the words of scripture for verification, because you won’t find all the answers there. It means looking to the huge body of evidence that God has helped all of us build over the centuries about the reality of Creation: the physics, chemistry, biology, and math, but also the poetry, art, and music.

I talk to God every day (sorry @jpm) but I still have to do mountains of outside research. And I have to do everything in my power to look after my brain (hence no alcohol, no psychotropic drugs, no bizarre rituals, no unhealthy relationships). This is my responsibility as a Christian: to work within the limits of my human biology, to trust that God knows the limits of my human biology, to be humble about the limits of my human biology, and to add my few grains of knowledge to the grains contributed by countless other people.

Knowing God requires a team effort.

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There are several ways God speaks to people.

I think most often it is through what you might call our conscience or a thought that may be the result of the Holy Spirit in our lives. On rare occasions, the sudden urge or “voice in the head” is quite clear.

Another way is through the gifts of tongues and interpretation. I have heard many such messages.

Sometimes it is through dreams. My wife has had a few prophetic dreams.

Sometimes it is through a direct prophetic message. I have seen that a few times, and once I saw my wife suddenly and unexpectedly give such a message. This is sometimes called a “word of knowledge.”

And, unfortunately, many times people imagine God is talking to them.

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All of those are explicable without God. Particularly as none of them pass Paul’s rational criteria.

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Well, Martin, since you don’t know what the messages were or the circumstances under which they were given, you have no way of making that judgment.

And we disagree on Paul’s criteria. What particular failure to you see?

Are you one of the people who think God stopped communicating with people?

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I don’t have to know as I know it’s typically vague claim making.

Cognitive bias. Excluding rationality. Excluding fool proof proofs.

I know He did by any meaning of ‘communicating’ within a ripple or two of incarnating. If you know otherwise, please prove it.

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Paul’s rational criteria? So we’re talking about the same Paul who claimed he’d been chosen before birth to preach to the Gentiles? The same Paul who slyly tells us he visited the third heaven? The same Paul who never met Jesus in person, and didn’t meet any of Jesus’ friends, family, or disciples until years after the fact, yet claims he learned everything he needed to know about Jesus through direct revelation? The same Paul who says that Paul is the only proper authority on prophecy whom everybody else should listen to without argument?

You mean those rational criteria?

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I see. So other people have cognitive bias, but you don’t because you don’t have to know . . . because you just know. Even though you know nothing specific about the personal experiences of God shared in summary ways here by others, you just know they’re making vague claims that don’t prove anything because, well, you just know.

That kind of knowing is called revelation.

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That is very funny — you vaguely claim situations about which you do not know the details can be explained and then you vaguely claim that you can make those judgments without knowing details.

I have noticed that people unwilling to see God working rarely see God working.

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Yes, I agree with you that we are coming to the end, but that doesn’t mean God has stopped communicating to us. Does it?

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Does God speak directly to people?

Yes. Sometimes. Always? No.

And through which medium?

Varies enormously. Why? Because people listen and take things seriously in greatly different ways. A voice from the sky is not, for example, something I am liable to take very seriously.

I do not doubt them. What I doubt is that God requires them in order to speak to everyone else. So I see no reason to think that what God says to them necessarily has any validity for anybody else.

God speaks to people according to what does the most good. I don’t think speaking to people in the same way is of benefit to all people.

All people are different in many different ways – different abilities, different interests, different perceptions, and different ways of thinking. BUT does this mean that hearing God requires special people? No. God can speak to everyone. But because of the differences in people He is likely to speak to people in very different ways. And yes that MIGHT be through another person. Often without that person even realizing it.

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Jennifer. Of course I have cognitive bias, to the rational. Guilty. So that’s equally bad then?

If anyone wants me to know anything that a jury of disinterested, common sense peers would have to accept, they can post it.

I won’t hold my breath.

Otherwise it’s all non-rational, irrational, anti-rational cognitive bias. I know which cognitive bias I’d rather have.

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I don’t think we are coming to a end.

I just don’t believe that God is handing down divine wisdom to his people anymore to develop doctrine or righteousness. All wisdom has been given to is. There are no more prophets to teach us. The apostles are all gone.

We have the word of study to study and meditate on to develop doctrine and fruit of the spirit.

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I would have to disagree with that a bit. We have the Holy Spirit which is involved in the continued development of wisdom. That may well involve study and meditation on scripture, but I feel also the Spirit acts to give us wisdom in the new situations we find ourselves in that the writers of the text would have no idea about: Covid 19 issues, electronic media, church in the digital age, the Big Bang theory etc. We may not have designated prophets (though we certainly have many out there who think they are!) but we have people with prophetic gifts.

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I infer from your comments that you believe these questions are black-or-white, either-or, rational or irrational. So may I further infer that you believe a Christian must choose between being a person of pure reason (such as yourself) OR being a person who has room within his or her Heart for the non-Materialist aspects of God’s Creation (which at last count constituted about 95% of the known energy in the universe)?

I do wonder . . . if your cognitive bias is 100% rational, how then do you propose that we as Christians should embark on the great calling of Mark 12, where the two great laws involve . . . oh wait, what was that pesky word? . . . oh, I know. The word is love.

The human brain operates with two parallel processing systems. One of these deals mostly with rational paradigms. The other deals mostly with morality, love, meaning, intuition, and non-linear thinking.

Are you seriously suggesting Christians should give up half their natural brain power and restrict themselves solely to pure reason? From my point of view, that wouldn’t even be Christianity. It would be a philosophical ideology, to be sure – one that’s been adopted by human beings many times over the centuries. And if that works for you, it’s your choice. But a religion based ONLY on pure reason has nothing to do with Jesus.

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I don’t vaguely claim anything. There are no details. There won’t be, because they never stand up to a moment’s disinterested scrutiny.

How does God work?

I see people be His hands and feet and ears and voices and wallets and tears, whether they know it or not.

I see a young, gay, utterly irreligious neighbour getting desperate people off the street in to accommodation, 1-3 every day, making sure they have food, towels, somewhere to go to the toilet during lockdown. He spends hours on the phone with the council standing with these lepers on the street until he can call the quietly heroic police who after the end of official council office hours can invoke remarkable human powers to get these people cared for.

Truly inspiring works of God. By man. I’m not aware of any other possibility.

He doesn’t dream dreams and have visions and ‘words of knowledge’ and ‘speak in tongues’. He’s the most incarnational person I know above all the Christians I know in the neighbourhood. Multiple church loads of them.

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The Holy Spirit gives gifts as the Holy Spirit sees fit.

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

The gifts given to one does not invalidate the gifts given to others.

God has always worked through people. And God continues to reveal Himself and His work to different people in different ways.

If you continue to read the chapter I quoted above, you will see Paul compares the body of believers to a human body, with different members having different functions and capabilities.