Does God ever speak in an audible voice today?
Although it is not possible to state adamantly that God doesn’t speak audibly in our time, I must answer that I’ve never heard His audible voice. Nor has anyone else I know, or know of, who is a child of God, and whom I consider to be a sound, Holy Spirit-led preacher, teacher, or student of God’s Word, heard the audible voice of God.
People of Old Testament times on occasion heard God’s literal, audible words. We know about Adam, with whom God walked in the Garden of Eden. We know God talked with Noah, and with Abraham, and, probably, with Moses.
Mankind heard God’s literal voice when Jesus was on earth. He was both God and man. His is a written record in the Bible, through which God speaks to us when we read it, and the Holy Spirit imparts its truth to our spirit.
And that brings us to consider the way God talks to us today. He speaks through the Holy Spirit, who has come into each believer’s heart.
Too often, some claim to have heard an audible Word of God. In every case I can think of, the claim has been made in order to draw attention to themselves in some way. In most cases, that claim has been followed up with the request…no…the demand for money. The money, somehow, according to those who hear God’s audible voice, will release His blessing --usually guaranteeing a financial or material blessing upon the one who contributes money to the one to whom God supposedly spoke audibly.
God’s Word has something to tell us about this phony “experiential Christianity.” “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 Jn. 4:1).
The Bible warns also:
“And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not” (2 Pet. 2:3).
It is the wise Christian who adheres to the Apostle Paul’s directive from God.
“I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry” (2 Tim. 4:1-5).