Does God still speak to us today?

from the old testament

• The Old Testament records God audibly speaking on multiple occasions (Genesis 3; Genesis 6:13–21; Genesis 12:1–3; Exodus 3:4–6; 1 Samuel 3:4–14). God can speak to His creatures if and when He wants.
• God also regularly spoke to His people through dreams (Genesis 20:3), visions (Isaiah 6:1), angels (Daniel 9:20–21), and prophets (such as Jeremiah 1:4–10; Amos 3:7).
• Now that the Bible is complete, we have all we need to know and follow Him—He speaks today through His Word and through creation (Psalm 19:1–2).
• Creation does not tell us enough to know how to please God. That is why we need His Bible. The writer of Psalm 119 said, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). By that he meant that the word (Bible) “speaks,” giving us the knowledge of God we need to know how to obey Him.
• The Bible warns against people who claim to receive additional revelation (Deuteronomy 13:1–2; Jeremiah 23:16; Galatians 1:8–9). The primary way to keep from falling into the error of listening to false ideas about God is to listen to God by reading His Scripture.

from the new testament

• In the Old Testament, God spoke audibly to select people (“fathers,” like Abraham, and “prophets,” like Isaiah). In the New Testament, God rarely spoke audibly. In the cases when He spoke, most of them were to announce His Son to the world. For example, after Jesus was baptized, which began His ministry, God spoke from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17b). Similarly, at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–3), Jesus revealed His glory to a few disciples, and as Peter spoke, God interrupted, declaring, “This is My beloved Son… listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5).
• God spoke audibly to affirm Jesus, not to give new revelation (John 12:28–30). One final example was in a vision to Peter after Jesus’ resurrection, where God said, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15), showing that the Gospel was for all people, not just Jews.
• By the time the New Testament period began, the Old Testament was complete in written form. However, after a lengthy period of silence, He spoke once more. In each of these cases, God spoke to point people to Jesus. The book of Hebrews opens with, ‏”Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2a). The people heard from God through Jesus.
• Just as the Old Testament saints heard from God through prophets, the first century people would have heard about Jesus through the mouths of the Apostles. However, by the end of the first century, everything that had been revealed to the Apostles through direct teaching (John 14:26), visions (Acts 16:9–10), and other methods was written down.
• This means that today, God speaks to us primarily through His completed Bible. Paul teaches that Scripture is “God breathed” and is all that we need to live godly lives (2 Timothy 3:15–16). Being God breathed means it’s God’s very breath as He spoke. We hear God’s voice by reading His Word. Rather than expecting to hear from God directly, we should be listening to Him in His Bible. Scripture is all we need to live in a way that glorifies God. While we may need to work to apply it to a specific situation, everything we need to make a God honoring decision is there.
• Scripture is not dead words but living and active (Hebrews 4:12) because it is God speaking to believers.
• Peter pointed to false prophets in the Old Testament as an issue that continues through today. He said, “false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1). So, we need to be cautious with any teaching that introduces new things, even if they claim they received it from God. Everything should conform to existing Scripture or else it is false teaching.
• John, writing in the context of false believers who were deceiving many Christians, said, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). By “spirit,” he did not mean spiritual beings, but people. We are to test everyone’s claims to verify they correspond to Scripture (Acts 17:11).
• Jude wrote his message to warn believers that false teachers had secretly infiltrated the church, twisting God’s grace and denying Jesus Christ (Jude 4). All of these warning passages should cause us to test what we hear, see, and read.
• Paul urged believers to let Christ’s Word dwell in them and to teach one another with wisdom and gratitude (Colossians 3:16), reminding us to test our impressions with Scripture and wise counsel.

implications for today

There is probably not a Christian alive who wouldn’t love to hear the voice of God. We will dwell with Him eternally, and it is likely we will have that opportunity (Revelation 21:3). However, we need to be careful not to diminish God’s voice that we “hear” in His word while desiring to hear it with our ears. Over several thousand years, God patiently spoke through His prophets, apostles, and Jesus to teach us everything we need to know to get through life (Hebrews 1:1–2). When we long for “something more,” we are subtly degrading what God has already given us.

God can still speak audibly if He chooses, but Scripture doesn’t teach us to expect that today. However, in countries where the people do not have access to God’s Word, we do hear about experiences of dreams and visions leading people to missionaries who can proclaim God’s truth to them. When individuals want to know God, He will get the message to them.

Instead of longing for a spiritual experience, which Peter said is inferior to the Bible (2 Peter 1:18–19), let us devote ourselves to knowing God as best as we can through His word. Yes, it does not tell us which girl we should marry or which job we should take. However, as we come to better know God’s heart by listening to His voice in Scripture, we learn the kind of woman He wants for us and the type of job that glorifies Him with our talents. Using that biblically-derived wisdom, we are then free to make decisions. When Scripture informs our thinking, then our decisions will be godly decisions! In short, we will be acting on what we’ve heard from Him in the Bible.