Talk 15 God speaks to us directly (Part 1)
The Bible is full of examples of God speaking very directly, often without any human involvement. Some of the ways he speaks like this include:
- an audible voice
- angels
- dreams and visions
- supernatural signs
- promptings.
We’ll look at each of these in turn, starting with some biblical examples and then illustrating wherever possible from my own experience. I say ‘wherever possible’ because I can’t honestly say that God has spoken to me in all of these ways.
An audible voice
There are many examples in the Bible where we read that the Lord spoke to someone, but it’s not always clear how he spoke. Consider the example we looked at earlier in the series. We looked at Acts 13:1-3 where we read that the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” The Holy Spirit may well have spoken with an audible voice on this occasion, but it’s just as likely that the spoke through one of the prophets who were present (v.1).
On other occasions, however, it’s perfectly clear that God’s voice was audible. To mention just a few examples:
Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ (Isaiah 6:8).
When Ezekiel had a vision of the glory of the Lord, he fell face down and heard the voice of one speaking (Ezekiel 1:28).
At Jesus’ baptism a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17).
On the road to Damascus, Paul had a vision of Jesus, fell to the ground, and heard a voice say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ (Acts 9:4).
Peter heard his voice while praying on the rooftop in Joppa (Acts 10:13-16).
And on the isle of Patmos John heard a loud voice, the voice of the Lord, telling him to write (Revelation 1:10-12).
All these examples seem to make it perfectly clear that God sometimes speaks with an audible voice. But to be absolutely sure about this, let’s turn to the well-known story of Samuel (1 Samuel 3).
Hannah, Samuel’s mother, had been unable to have children, which, in the culture in which she lived, caused other women to despise her. But she prayed fervently to the Lord and promised that if he would give her a son, she would dedicate him to the Lord’s service. So, when Samuel was born in answer to Hannah’s prayer, she took him to the temple where the boy ministered before the Lord under Eli the priest (2:11).
In chapter 3 we read how one night, while Samuel was lying down, the Lord called him by name. Samuel, not knowing that it was the Lord, ran to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. But Eli replied, I did not call; go back and lie down. This happened three times, and by then Eli realised that it was God who was calling Samuel. He told him that, when the Lord called again, he should reply, Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.
This was the beginning of Samuel’s ministry as a prophet and it’s very clear that God’s voice was audible. The fact that Samuel thought that it was Eli who was speaking shows that Samuel heard what was being said. From this it seems reasonable to assume that this may well have been the way that God spoke to Samuel on a regular basis.
And I have no doubt that if God could do it then, he can do it today. Having said that, although God has spoken to me in many wonderful ways, I have never heard his audible voice and I know very few people who would claim to have done so. However, rather more frequently we hear of God speaking through the ministry of angels.
Angels
As far as I know, I have never seen an angel and have never heard an angel speak to me – although we need to remember that some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2). But both Old and New Testaments show that God sometimes speaks to his people through the ministry of angels.
The word angel comes directly from the Greek word aggelos (pronounced angelos) and simply means messenger. Angels are God’s messengers. They are ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation (Hebrews 1:14). A good example of this is when the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist and told him that his prayer had been heard and that his wife, Elizabeth, who was barren, would bear him a son. Humanly speaking, this was totally impossible because both Zechariah and Elizabeth were now far too old. I think Zechariah’s question was quite understandable:
How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years (Luke 1:18).
Gabriel’s reply in the next verse illustrates perfectly the ministry of angels:
I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and have been sent to speak to you and tell you this good news (Luke 1:19).
Angels are God’s messengers. They stand in God’s presence and are sent to speak to us. The Gospels and Acts give us plenty of examples. About six months after his visit to Zechariah, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, to a virgin whose name was Mary (Luke 1:26-27). It was angels who brought the good news of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds and told them where they would find him (Luke 2:8-14).
It was an angel that came from heaven and appeared to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, strengthening him (Luke 22:43). And it was the angel of the Lord who descended from heaven and rolled away the stone from the mouth of Jesus’ tomb and told the women who had come to anoint the body of Jesus that he was risen (Matthew 28:1:7).
In the Book of Acts, as the disciples were looking intently up into the sky, two men dressed in white stood beside them (Acts 1:10). They told them:
This same Jesus who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way as you have seen him go into Heaven (v,11)
These men dressed in white were undoubtedly angels sent by God to remind them of Jesus’ promise that he would come again (John 14:28).
In Acts 5:19 the angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and released Peter and John. In Acts 8:26 an angel told Philip the evangelist to go south to the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza. This led to the conversion of a key national leader from the land of Ethiopia.
In Acts 10 it was an angel who spoke to both the apostle Peter and the Roman centurion Cornelius (verses 3, 7, 22) resulting in the conversion of Cornelius and his entire household. In Acts 12 it was the angel of the Lord who once again released Peter from prison (verses 7-11). And in Acts 27:23-24 it was an angel who stood beside Paul before the ship on which he was travelling was wrecked on the island of Malta and said:
Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand before Caesar, and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you,
Now the Book of Acts was not written simply as a historical account of the beginnings of the early church. Most scholars are agreed that Luke’s intentions in writing it were not merely historical. They are theological and missional. Luke is not just teaching us how it was, but how it can and should be. And in recording the frequent activity of angels, he is surely telling us that we can at times expect angelic intervention too.
There have certainly been many anecdotal reports recently of people claiming to have experienced the presence of angels in one way or another and I see no good reason to doubt this, particularly when the testimony comes from a reliable source. As far as Eileen and I are concerned, although God has never spoken to us through an angelic messenger, I am confident that we have experienced angelic help on at least one occasion.
In 1977 I served as Acting Principal of Mattersey Hall for six months before being appointed Principal in 1978. During that time we were still living in Basingstoke although I was at Mattersey much of the time about 200 miles away from home.
One weekend I went with about 50 of our students from Mattersey to Newport in South Wales. There was a big inter-church meeting on the Saturday night and on the Sunday the students went to different churches to sing, testify, and preach. I stayed in Newport to preach in the church there.
After Sunday lunch the pastor, Eric Dando, asked me if I would like to phone Eileen, which of course I was grateful to do. After telling her that the weekend was going well, I asked her how she was and was shocked to hear her reply.
I’m O.K., she said, but I very nearly wasn’t!
Oh! What’s happened? I replied.
And she told me what had happened to her on the Saturday night while I had been away preaching in Newport.
There had been a women’s missionary meeting in London and Eileen and several of the ladies from the church in Basingstoke had gone to it. They had travelled in two cars and on the way home, on the road between Reading and Basingstoke, several horses ran into the road in front of the cars. It seems that they had escaped from a nearby field.
One of the horses collided with the car in which Eileen was travelling in the front passenger seat. The impact was so great that the front of the car roof caved in to within an inch of Eileen’s head. The car was a complete write-off and, as the people from the car in front walked back to see exactly what had happened, they feared the worst.
At this point it is important to explain that at that time the wearing of seat-belts was not compulsory in the U.K. and the car in which Eileen was travelling didn’t have any. Bearing in mind the speed at which the car had been travelling when it collided with the horse, both Eileen and the driver should have been thrown forward through the windscreen. Indeed, the woman seated behind Eileen was thrown forward so violently into the back of Eileen’s seat that it was twisted out of position.
Yet Eileen was not thrown forward, and none of those travelling in that car was seriously injured. They all walked away relatively unharmed. As she related the story afterwards Eileen told me that throughout the whole incident she was strangely conscious of something – or someone? – holding her to the back of her seat, preventing her from being thrown forward. Was it a coincidence that on that very evening I had been preaching in Newport on a subject I have rarely preached on before or since? My subject was ANGELS.
Of course, I cannot categorically state that Eileen was saved by an angel. But I am certain that Eileen’s life was spared by divine intervention of some kind – and, as we have seen, the Bible does say that angels are messengers God sometimes sends to be of help to his people.
More recently I had an experience of answered prayer which several of my friends have suggested might have been brought about by angels. It was Sunday May 9th 2021 at around 10.45am. I was travelling from Brixham, where we live, to Newton Abbot for a COVID test. This was required because I was due to go into hospital on the Tuesday for an exploratory procedure on my larynx.
Shortly after I started my journey I noticed a gentle banging sound coming from the rear of the car. At first I wasn’t too concerned and anyway I didn’t want to stop as I didn’t want to miss the appointment for the COVID test which was at 11am. If I had missed the appointment the procedure would have had to be postponed. So I continued my journey hoping that the banging was nothing serious,
Within a few miles, however, the banging had become much louder and I was getting scared. Finally, in desperation I called out, Lord Jesus, please take care of this! No sooner had I said this than I saw in the mirror a car behind me flashing its headlights. It drew along side me and indicated that I needed to pull over into the layby that was a few yards ahead.
When I did so the problem was obvious. My nearside back wheel was coming off! Two of the five nuts that hold the wheel on were missing and the other three were loose. If I had continued like that, the consequences could have been fatal. Relieved that the other driver had pulled me over in time, I asked if he could help me, explaining the urgency of getting to the COVID appointment. This he gladly did and, when he searched in the boot for the wheel brace, he discovered that there were two spare wheel nuts there! It took less than a minute for him to fix the wheel and he was on his way. And I reached Newton Abbot just in time for my appointment. I think I have never known such a quick and dramatic answer to prayer.
Now, of course, I cannot be sure that the man who fixed my wheel was in fact an angel, but I’m open to that possibility. But in a way it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Lord answered my prayer, saved my life and brought me safely through the operation. Whether or not he used an angel to do so is unimportant. As we have seen, the Bible does tell us that angels are God’s messengers and that they are sent to minister to God’s people. I believe it because the Bible says so, not because I’ve had an experience that may or may not have involved an angel.