I recently wrote about the times when God has “spoken” to me through His Holy Spirit, telling me things I did not previously know and had no other way of learning.  His “voice” is as clear spiritually as a human voice is audibly.  His messages come to me in a variety of forms such as words, dreams, visions and a “knowing” of something that I did not know a moment before.  For example, many years ago while I was planting trees I was driving a stake into a hole in the ground with a sledge hammer.  The ground was extremely hard so I was having to use all of my strength in the effort.  Suddenly I “knew” that I needed to move my foot to the side.  I did so and the next blow of the 12 pound hammer glanced off the stake and buried itself in the exact place where my foot had been.  Having done that kind of work many times, I knew what I was doing.  However, in this specific instance, I suddenly “knew” I needed to change my position.  I “know” that if I had not obeyed God’s “voice” I would have shattered my foot.  At various times in the past I have ignored that “voice” and, in each case, paid the price for doing so.

One of the people who responded to my “God speaks to me” posting challenged what I had written.  Though not disrespectful, I believe that he was of the opinion that God does not communicate directly with modern man.  This is a common mistake church people make.  My response to this man was that God does not change; He is the same yesterday, today and forever; there is in Him no shadow of turning (change); He is no respecter of persons.  What He did to, for and through His Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles He will do to, for and through anyone who believes and obeys His Word, which Jesus called “Truth” in John 17:17.

The response I get from people who hear or read me saying that God speaks directly to me clearly, and that what He tells me comes to past exactly as He had “spoken” it.  When He first began to spiritually communicate to me I was surprised at the exactness of His Words and the rapidity with which He fulfilled.  Over time I have gotten up to speed with His pronouncements.  That still doesn’t answer the question: “Why me.”  I can almost “hear” the people asking: “Who do you think you are?”  The problem is that people “compare themselves among themselves” and, since no one they know or know of hears from God, then no one can hear from Him.  This is the apex of pride and arrogance.  So why does God speak to me?

Because I believe His Word and obey it.  I am told by those who judge themselves by other people that obedience is impossible.  One former missionary told me: “It’s just too much trouble to (try to) obey God.”  According to her religious upbringing, she did not need to obey Him.  Jesus, she was taught, died so that she would not have to pay for her sins, which, she was also taught, are inevitable due to Adam’s sin-transferal miracle.  The god who speaks those words is Satan, the “god of this earth.”  Ironically, Satan speaks to them in the same way God speaks to me.  While my God tells me to believe and obey His Bible, the church’s god tells them not to believe and obey Him.  They label me a heretic for “hearing God’s spiritual voice” while believing what their god is telling them spiritually.  This is a spiritual double standard.

I believed God’s Word from childhood.  Belief (faith) is simply taking God at His Word.  Man lives by his faith.  Faith is taking God at His Word.  The Bible is His Word.  According to our faith, so be it unto us.  Not one jot or tittle can be changed in God’s Word (source of faith).  Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be removed from it.  I know the Bible is true.  And I obey it.  Therefore God can “speak” to me.  I do not take credit for my faith.  It is a gift from God.  God gives His faith gift to those few who are totally dependent on Him.  Jesus of Nazareth was no different.  He heard from God because He believed Him.  God exalted Him because He obeyed what God said to Him.

I once heard a world famous evangelist say that God had never spoken to him.  I am not surprised.  This man, and thousands like him, was a false prophet whose message was that God lied repeatedly in His Bible.  See the Introduction to this website for a list of a few of Satan’s lies that this “minister of righteousness” preached and led hundreds of thousands of people to believe.  Human beings will stop speaking to anyone who does not believe what he is saying.  God is no different.  If one rejects His physically written Words one will not “hear” His spiritually spoken Words.

The irony of this situation is that those who own, carry and refer to the Bible claim that what is written in it are lies.  These same people proclaim loudly and often that what Satan says about those Words is the truth.  This is exactly what Adam and Eve did: they rejected God’s Words as lies and embraced Satan’s words as truths, all the while believing that they were God’s people.  Nothing has changed.

God warned those who would believe and obey Him that the world, specifically those in his church and biological family would turn against him/her.  Why?  Because God’s true saints do what others refuse to do–obey Him.  God’s true saints are “called out” from all others to walk a different walk, to be strange, peculiar and different.  Man does not like people who are not like themselves.  God’s people are indeed different from those trapped in the world’s religions.

No one, we are told, can obey God.  No one hears from God any more.  God has changed.  Wrong on every count.  God has not changed.  His Law has not changed.  His people have not changed.  L.J.