Listen, and hear my voice; Pay attention, and hear my speech. – Isaiah 28:23 NRSV
There is nothing more desirable than to hear from God directly. Then we can know that our thoughts
and behaviors are being watched by our Creator and found either acceptable or in need of correction.
Then we can know that all our needs are known in advance by the Heavenly Parent who has always
provided for them. Then, if we want always to will, desire, know, speak, and do the right thing in the
right spirit, we have a Divine Friend at hand to show us how. We can then re-learn to live without fear.
But do we want always to will, desire, know, speak, and do the right thing in the right spirit? And do
we trust God to show us how? Throughout history, great lovers of God have felt and celebrated the
unsurpassable goodness of the Almighty One; but our wary and anxious age hears voices claim that
God can’t be both almighty and good, because – look at the evils of the world! But we can answer
those voices: “With the pure, the Lord shows Himself pure (Psalm 18:26), and once we’re pure, the
God who’s promised to wipe away all tears from our eyes (Rev 7:17, 21:4) must give us a mind to
understand why all that suffering was permitted to be experienced, else tears will remain unwiped.”
Jesus experienced enough unjust suffering to destroy anyone’s faith, and yet His was not destroyed. He
promised to indwell His followers (John 14:15-24, 15:4-5), and His apostles witnessed that it was so (2
Cor 13:5, 1 Jn 2:27, 3:24). Follow Him, then, and see for yourself. And if you still doubt God’s
almightiness and goodness, ask the Savior who now indwells you.
In the mid-1600s, the first Quakers made the wonderful discovery that God, through Christ, did still
speak to men, women, and children, just as in biblical times. The religious authorities of the time hated
this news, of course, for they’d just published what I call “the doctrine of the sulking God,” which
declared it impossible! Yes, the Westminster Confession of 1647 held that God had completed God’s self-
revelation with the completion of the Bible, and, in effect, now gone silent. The “whole counsel of God
concerning all things necessary for… man’s salvation” was to be found in the Canon of Holy Scripture
as we now have it, “commit[ted] wholly to writing,” and nothing was to be added to it, “those former
ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.” God would speak no more to
people directly, and prophets would prophesy nothing new in God’s name. In the words of the hymn
“How Firm a Foundation,” which reflects much Christian thinking even today,
What more can God say
Than to you hath been said,
To you who unto Jesus
For refuge have fled?
I smile at the boldness of men who dared predict what God would and wouldn’t do between 1647 and
the end of time, but I’m shocked by the rash thought that true, new prophecy was to cease as soon as
the ink was dry on the last “Amen” of the Book of Revelation. For at least twenty-four men and women
are named as prophets in the Book of Acts, and Paul (1 Cor 14:39) urges the Corinthians, “be eager to
prophesy!” What? Be eager, and then all fall silent, on cue, till Judgment Day?
Against this discouraging doctrine of a God who spoke to humans no more, the early Quakers eagerly
took up the cry of George Fox, that Christ was “come to teach His people Himself,” and Christ’s voice
was to be heard by simple, untrained people everywhere! In a parish church in the North Country of
England in 1653, Fox writes,
the Lord opened my mouth to declare his everlasting Truth and his everlasting day… and to turn them to
Christ their teacher; … so to know both God and Christ’s voice by which they might see all the false
shepherds and teachers they had been under and see the true shepherd, priest, bishop, and prophet, Christ
Jesus whom God commanded them to hear. (John L. Nickalls, ed., The Journal of George Fox, 152.)
According to the biblical record, God had commanded the Israelites, through Moses: “Obey My
voice!” (Exodus 19:5) – and again through the prophet Jeremiah: “Obey My voice!” (Jer 7:23, 11:4,
11:7). Through Isaiah (Isa 30:21), God promised an audible “word behind you, saying, This is the way;
walk in it!” Fox wrote of this promise in a 1657 pamphlet titled “The Second Covenant:”
…this is the word, here is the voice behind, and who heareth this voice, and hath heard this word, hears
the Son; in these last days God hath spoken to us by his Son, who is heir of all things, whose name is
called the word of God. Rev. 19 (Fox, Works, v. 4, 148).
“Obey my voice!” What can be clearer? And yet for centuries, this has been taken to mean “Obey my
rulebook!” or “Obey my church hierarchy!” Indeed, George Fox had to challenge the naïve belief that
God spoke to ordained clergy of the government-approved church, but not to laypeople:
… I came up to Swarthmoor again, and there came up four or five of the priests, and I asked them whether
any one of them could say they ever had the word of the Lord to go and speak to such or such a people and
none of them durst say so. But one of them burst out into a passion and said he could speak his experiences
as well as I; but I told him experience was one thing but to go with a message and a word from the Lord as
the prophets and apostles had and did, and as I had done to them, was another thing.
Could any of them say they had such a command or word from the Lord at any time? But none of them
could answer to it….
And at another time there were several priests at judge Fell’s… and I asked them the same question…
Hereupon Thomas Taylor, an ancient priest, did ingenuously confess before judge Fell that he had never
heard the voice of God nor Christ, to send him to any people… which did astonish judge Fell, for he and
all people then did look that they were sent from God and Christ. (The Journal of George Fox, 123.)
Friends, I pray that you might all have the experience of hearing the voice of God and Christ in this
lifetime if you haven’t had it yet! I believe we all will, sooner or later, when God thinks best. True, there
are seasons of “famine of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11), but we are in such need of God’s
and Christ’s guidance at every moment! Many of us reason that we “must be doing what Christ wants”
when Christ may be wishing that we would not reason, but ask! For reasoning without asking God’s
counsel easily tempts us to decide, “Let us do evil that good may come,” despite Paul’s pointed warning
against such logic (Romans 3:8). And the spectacle of right-leaning and left-leaning Christians seeming at
irreconcilable odds in this country shows, I think, the effect of one side, or both, pursuing “correctness”
of reasoning without hearing Christ’s commandment (John 13:34, 15:12, 17) to love one another!
I myself did not hear and recognize the Divine Voice until mid-life, and then only after having
explicitly laid down self-will and dedicated my life to God – or such was my intent, though I still had,
and still have, much self-stuff to outgrow. I’d recommend that you make, or intend, such a surrender of
self-will before you ask to hear Christ’s voice, for He says “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking:
if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me” (Rev
3:20) – and when you do hear such a call, you won’t want a mountain of self-junk to climb over to get
to the door! Neither do you want to risk hearing Him dismiss you as an evildoer (Matt 7:23)!
There will be much you can’t do to “clean up your act” in advance without His help, but He knows
that. Do what you can; then ask for His help. He’s the Good Shepherd in the parable He told of the
lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7): He’s already been searching for you. He’s like the father in the parable He
told of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32): He’ll come running to greet you.
John Jeremiah Edminster (M. Div., Earlham School of Religion, 2019) worships regularly with Conservative Friends and hosts the Tuesday evening House of Light Friends’ Worship Group in his home in Richmond, Indiana. He carries a concern to promote surrender of self to Christ.
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