Although it is not possible to state adamantly that God doesn’t speak audibly in our time, this type of audible voice is not something a true Holy Spirit-led preacher, teacher, or student of God’s Word has encountered or evidenced today.
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. Jesus was both God and man. His Word is a written record in the Bible, through which God speaks when we read it, as the Holy Spirit imparts its truth to our spirit. The way God talks to us today is inaudibly through the Holy Spirit, who has come into each believer’s heart.
Some professing Christians claim to have heard an audible Word of God. In most every case this claim has been made in order to draw attention to them selves in some way. In most cases, that claim has been followed-up with the request, and a demand for money. The money, somehow, according to those who supposedly “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 to, audibly. Wolves in sheep’s clothing are prevalent everywhere in the world today.
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 John 4:1).
The Bible warns:
“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 Peter 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 Timothy 4:1-5).