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God has spoken to us from the beginning. Adam heard the voice of the Lord in the Garden of Eden. God also spoke to Eve, and she knew who was speaking and must have trembled because she knew she had disobeyed Him.
Two people, a man and a woman, chose to disobey God and plunged into a world that was spiritually dark and dead—and physically unproductive except by hard work and suffering. The world was under the judgment of God. The Bible teaches that man is in a period of spiritual blackout. “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving” (2 Cor. 4:4).
Isaiah, the great Hebrew prophet, said, “We grope along the wall like blind men, we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at midday as in the twilight, among those who are vigorous we are like dead men” (Isa. 59:10).
Isaiah was giving a vivid description of what sounds like physical blindness, but which is the darkness of the spirit.
To be trapped in physical darkness can be an uncanny experience. When Cliff Barrows and I were in England just after World War II, we drove down the streets in fog so thick that one of us had to walk in front of the car to prevent it from running into the curb. This was a new experience, a type of “blackout” which was frightening.
How much worse it is to be forever spiritually blacked-out and trapped! There are those who have physical blindness and yet are able to “see” better than a sighted person.
There is a beautiful Korean girl with a voice that has been described as “electric.” She also plays the piano beautifully, and yet she is physically blind. Kim sees more than many with 20-20 vision and does not consider her blindness a handicap, but a gift from God. I have found her to have mental, psychological, and spiritual insights which are amazing.
Man is also spiritually deaf. Another great prophet said people have “ears to hear but do not hear” (Ezek. 12:2). Jesus said it with more force: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31).
The difference between physical deafness and spiritual deafness is illustrated to me vividly at the crusades. We have a section for the deaf and I have often stopped to shake hands with these men and women. At one crusade about a dozen deaf persons were brought to see me in my office and I sat and talked to them through an interpreter. The light of Christ was quite obvious on the faces of many of them.
The world of the physically deaf is one which those of us with normal hearing find difficult to comprehend. But we walk in the world of the spiritually deaf every day.
Spiritually, many men and women are more than deaf and blind, they are dead. “You were dead in your trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1).
For the spiritually dead there is no communication with God. Millions of persons long for a world of joy, light, harmony, and peace; instead they are engulfed in a world of pessimism, darkness, discord, and turmoil. They search for happiness, but it eludes them, just as a sunbeam or a shaft of light eludes a child who tries to catch it.
Many give up and give in to pessimism. Often their despondent attitude leads to a circle of cocktail parties or bars where they obliterate the reality of their world with the unreality of alcohol. Sometimes they are led to drugs or an all-consuming pursuit of a hobby or a sport. All these are symptoms of the great escapist disease caused by an insidious infection called sin.
Many persons want to dissect God under their own microscopes. After establishing their own methods of analysis they come to no conclusions. God remains the great cosmic silence, unknown and unseeing. However, God does communicate with those who are willing to obey Him. He penetrates the dark silence with free, life-giving discoveries in nature, the human conscience, Scripture, and the Person of Jesus Christ.
God Speaks in Nature
I was present when our youngest son was born, and our three sons-in-law and our oldest son were present at the births of their children. We all felt that we had experienced a miracle. As one of the doctors said, “How can anyone deny the existence of God after witnessing birth?”
In its own language, nature speaks of God’s existence, whether it is the cry of a baby or the song of a meadowlark. It is the language of order, beauty, perfection, and intelligence. The intricacies of a flower are God’s work; the instincts of the birds are within His plans. God speaks in the regularity of the seasons; in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars; in the balance of the elements which allow us to breathe. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Ps. 19:1-2).
The very size of the universe has always been incomprehensible to man, but as twentieth-century exploration has taken man into space our minds have become boggled. Every scientist who lacks belief in God must be completely baffled when he surveys how small man is on this earth—part of an estimated 100 billion galaxies, with 100 billion stars and planets in each galaxy.
With the exploration of the universe this generation has also looked at the other end of the scale. The electron microscope and biochemical research have enabled investigators to examine cells which have been magnified up to 200,000 times. There are so many molecules in one drop of water that if they could be transformed into grains of sand there would be enough sand to pave a road from Los Angeles to New York!
The apostle Paul said, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Rom. 1:20).
God says that we can learn a great deal about Him just by observing nature. Since He has spoken through His universe men and women are without excuse for not believing Him. This is the reason the psalmist writes, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps. 14:1).
God speaks in nature but we cannot know Him simply by sitting under a tree and gazing at the sky. He has another avenue of revelation for us which is often called that “still small voice.”
God Speaks in Our Conscience
What is a conscience? A dictionary definition is “the sense of right and wrong; ideas and feelings within a person that tell him when he is doing right and warn him of what is wrong.”
“Let your conscience be your guide” is sometimes wise advice, but not always. God shows Himself in our conscience. Sometimes it is a gentle teacher, prodding us in the right direction like the usher in a darkened theater leading us to our seats. Other times our conscience is our worst enemy, torturing us day and night with agonizing unrest.
Paul describes the working of conscience in this way: “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them” (Rom. 2:14-15).
“A man’s conscience is the LORD’s searchlight exposing his hidden motives” (Prov. 20:27, The Living Bible).
When we realize that God takes a powerful light and shines it into the darkest recesses of our minds, examining not just our actions but the motives behind those actions, it becomes clear that God does indeed speak through our conscience.
Even people who are not Christians realize the existence of something within themselves which is a guiding force. Thomas Jefferson wrote almost two hundred years ago that “the moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree.”
Some persons, even without God, have a stronger sense of conscience than others. But the one with a seared or dead conscience is like an airplane without a pilot or a boat without a rudder—confused and directionless, on a collision course with circumstances. Through sin the conscience can become hardened, and even dead.
God Speaks in Scripture
The Bible is the textbook of revelation. In God’s great classroom there are three textbooks—one called nature, one called conscience, and one named Scripture. The laws God revealed in nature have never changed. In the written textbook of revelation—the Bible—God speaks through words. The Bible is the one book which reveals the Creator to the creature He created! No other book that man has conceived can make that statement and support it with fact.
The Bible is unique in its claims, its teachings, and its survival. Today there are many persons who are looking at books which are supposed to give answers to the great questions of life and death; many of these books are products of Eastern religions or humanistic philosophy. In his book Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell quotes a former professor of Sanskrit who spent forty-two years studying Eastern books and said this in comparing them with the Bible:
Pile them, if you will, on the left side of your study table; but place your own Holy Bible on the right side—all by itself, all alone—and with a wide gap between them. For, . . . there is a gulf between it and the so-called sacred books of the East which severs the one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever . . . a veritable gulf which cannot be bridged over by any science of religious thought.1
Skeptics have attacked the Bible and retreated in confusion. Agnostics have scoffed at its teaching, but are unable to produce an intellectually honest refutation. Atheists have denied its validity, but must surrender to its historical accuracy and archaeological verification.
I picked up a reputable news magazine and read that a certain head of state made a remark about the economic trends. Nothing very startling about that. You and I read statements made by men and women every day. If we hear them from several different sources, we are inclined to believe that they’re true and to tell someone else.
If we were confronted with a book which said in hundreds of different situations that, for instance, the Queen of England spoke, we would believe that she actually had been making statements.
No doubt about it!
The writers of the Bible spoke in many ways to indicate that God gave them their information. In the Old Testament alone they said three thousand times that God spoke! Just in the first five books of the Bible we find such phrases as these:
“The LORD God called to the man.” “The LORD God said to the woman.” “The LORD said to Noah.” “God spoke unto Israel.” “God said.” “The LORD spoke saying.” “The LORD commanded.” “Hear the words of the LORD.” “Says the LORD.”
Did God speak to these men as they were inspired to write? If He didn’t, then they were the most blatant and consistent liars the world has ever known, or they were mentally deranged. Would a variety of men from different areas, many of them not knowing each other, tell more than three thousand lies on one subject? If they were mistaken in this area, why should we believe anything they said? If we cannot believe that God spoke to men in the Bible, then we cannot believe that the prophecies of these great men came true—and yet they did!
If someone lies to you two or three times, you begin to distrust him. You find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe anything he says. However, we would have to negate everything in the Bible if we thought that the Bible writers lied when they said God spoke.
Jesus quoted frequently from the Old Testament. He knew it well and never doubted the Scriptures. He said, “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).
The apostles often quoted the Old Testament Scriptures. Paul said, “All Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Tim. 3:16). Peter said, “For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:21).
Many people get their belief about the Bible from secondhand sources. A smattering of biblical movie epics, some television reruns, hearsay, and courses on comparative religion give them man’s view of Scripture. In high school or college classes students take courses in “the Bible as literature.” Many times these classes are used to undermine the faith of young people unless there is a teacher who understands the Bible and has a strong faith in God. I know students who have studied such topics as the “Myths and Discrepancies of the Bible.”
Secondhand sources will not do.
A verse or a story in the Bible may speak to someone in a way someone else could not imagine. It was a firsthand source in a secondhand bookstore that changed the lives of an entire family.
My wife has a weakness for books—especially old, choice religious books which are now out of print. At one time Foyles in London had a large secondhand religious book department. One day during the 1954 London Crusade she was browsing though the books in Foyles when a very agitated clerk popped out from behind the stacks and asked if she was Mrs. Graham. When she told him that she was, he began to tell her a story of confusion, despair, and frustrations. His marriage was on the rocks, his home was breaking up, and business problems were mounting. He explained that he had explored every avenue for help and as a last resort planned to attend the services at Harringay arena that night. Ruth assured him that she would pray for him, and she did.
That was in 1954.
In 1955 we returned to London. Again my wife went into Foyles’ secondhand book department. This time the same clerk appeared from behind the stacks, his face wreathed in smiles. After expressing how happy he was to see her again, he explained that he had gone to Harringay that night in 1954 as he had said he would, that he had found the Savior, and that the problems in his life had sorted themselves out.
Then he asked Ruth if she would be interested in knowing what verse it was that “spoke to him.” She was. Again he disappeared behind all the books and reappeared with a worn Bible in his hand. He turned to Psalm 102, which I had read the night that he had attended the crusade. He pointed out verse 6, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert” (KJV). This had so perfectly described to him his condition that he realized for the first time how completely God understood and cared. As a result he was soundly converted to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And subsequently so was his entire family.
My wife was in London during 1972 at the time of a Harringay reunion. As the ceremonies closed, a gentleman came up to speak to her, but he didn’t have to introduce himself. She recognized the clerk from Foyles. He was radiantly happy, introduced his Christian family, and explained how they were all now in the Lord’s work—all because God spoke to him when he was “an owl of the desert!”
Make use of this tool of communication by which God speaks to us—namely, the Bible! Read it, study it, memorize it. It will change your entire life. It is not like any other book. It is a “living” book that works its way into your heart, mind, and soul.
Speaking in Dark Places
In places where there is easy accessibility to the Bible, it may gather dust on the shelf. In countries where the Bible is subversive literature, God speaks in unusual ways.
A famous violinist was invited years ago by Chow En Lai to teach at one of the famous universities in the People’s Republic of China. He was told that if he wanted to leave he would be able to do so. After seven years this violinist was completely disillusioned.
When he went to the exit permit office to apply for the right to leave, he was refused. However, he returned every day, and one day a piece of paper was slipped into his pocket. On returning home he found it there and pulled it out, only to discover that it was a page from the Bible. He read it with interest and found that it strangely spoke to his heart. On one of his subsequent visits a man came up to him and asked if he would like another page from the Bible. He said he would.
Each day when he returned to the exit permit office he was supplied with another page from the Bible. There in the People’s Republic of China he was soundly converted to Jesus Christ. Ultimately he received his exit permit and went to Hong Kong. He is now a professor in another country.
When Corrie ten Boom was in Ravensbruck prison camp, it was the studying and teaching of the Word of God that kept her mind clear so that when she was released she was mentally alert. Many inmates upon their release were little more than vegetables and had to be cared for until they regained some form of normalcy.
A similar story is told of a missionary who was imprisoned by the Japanese in China. At this concentration camp the penalty for owning even a portion of the Scriptures was death. However, a small Gospel of John was smuggled to her in a winter coat. At night when she went to bed she pulled the covers over her head and with her flashlight read a verse and then put herself to sleep memorizing that verse. In this way, over a period of time, she memorized the entire Gospel of John.
When she went to wash her hands she would take one page at a time, dissolve it in the soap and water, and flush it down the drain. “And that is the way,” she said, “that John and I parted company.”
This little missionary was interviewed by a Time reporter just before the prisoners were released. The reporter happened to be standing at the gates when the prisoners came out. Most of them shuffled along, eyes on the ground, little more than automatons. Then out came the little missionary, bright as a button. One of the reporters was heard to ask, “I wonder if they managed to brainwash her?”
The Time reporter overheard the remark and said, “God washed her brain!”
The Word of God hidden in the heart is a stubborn voice to suppress. Ruth had another experience in London which emphasizes this fact. During the meetings in Earls Court in 1966 she made friends with a little Cockney beatnik. Each night as we arrived, this thoroughly likable, irrepressible little rebel would be waiting for Ruth. During the Earls Court crusade she would frequently sit with Ruth, or sometimes just walk with her to her seat.
They began an unusual, but lasting, friendship.
Ruth learned that the girl had, previous to her conversion, been on drugs. Ruth told her to memorize several verses which she felt would be important to her, like John 3:16, 1 John 1:8, and the last two verses of Jude. One night she even warned her that, because of her past background, when she hit a snag in life she would have two choices: one was to go back on drugs, the other was to go forward with the Lord Jesus Christ.
One night during the service the usher gave my wife a note saying, “I am on drugs and I need you. Please come help me.” It was signed by this young friend.
Ruth slipped out of the meeting and found her waiting—white-faced, hollow-eyed, and obviously drugged. Ruth, having had little previous experience with drug users, thought that they were handled as drunks and took her to a coffee stand to get her a cup of coffee. She didn’t realize that was the last thing she should have done. On the way she asked the girl why she had done this, only to receive the reply, “Me best friend died on an overdose today.”
Ruth wanted her to hear the sermon, and they sat down on a step within earshot of the service. The girl was in no condition to hear. Realizing that her little friend was fast passing out, Ruth wrote on the little card found at the bottom of a pocket package of Kleenex something to this effect: “God loves me. Jesus died for me. No matter what I have done, He will forgive me if I repent and ask Him to forgive me.”
The following year, 1967, we were back in London at Earls Court for another series of meetings. One evening Ruth was having tea with her young beatnik friend. The girl fished into her sack and brought out the crumpled Kleenex card on which Ruth had written the words the previous year. She asked Ruth when she had written these words. Ruth told her, but the girl had no recollection of what had happened that night. Then she repeated the verses of Scripture that Ruth told her to learn and asked when it was that she had learned them. Ruth explained to her, but she didn’t remember the occasion. It is interesting that the drugs could cause amnesia up to a certain point, but they had not been able to take away the Word of God which she had hidden away in her heart.
A similar situation happened when Ruth fell out of a tree while trying to build a pipeslide for our grandchildren. She suffered a severe concussion and was unconscious for the better part of a week. As she regained consciousness, the thing that concerned her the most was that she could remember so little. Her greatest loss was that of the Bible verses which she had memorized down through the years.
In her notebook she has written how one night as she was fuzzily praying about this fact, out of nowhere came the words, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.” There was no recollection of when or where she had memorized the verse, for her mind was still foggy. And yet—there it was!
God Speaks in Jesus Christ
God speaks most clearly in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. “God . . . in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb. 1:1-2).
Throughout the ages many people have believed that God is a spirit within everyone. Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, said, “Every man recognizes within himself a free and rational spirit, independent of his body. This spirit is what we call God.”
Philosophers have found God in everything. In the first century the Roman philosopher Seneca set the stage for belief throughout the ages when he wrote, “Call it nature, fate, fortune: all are but names of the one and same God.”
Seneca was, of course, wrong. But so have millions of men throughout the ages been equally mistaken.
In most religions of the world we find some references to a belief that God would visit the earth. There have been many men who have come claiming they are God. One man from Korea during our time has drawn many followers by claiming to be the “Lord of the Second Advent.”
However, it was not until the “fullness of time” when all the conditions were right, when all the prophecies were fulfilled, that God “sent forth His Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4).
In a little town in the Middle East almost two thousand years ago, the prophecy in Micah 5:2 was fulfilled when God “was revealed in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). This revelation came in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Scripture says about Christ, “In Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Col. 2:9).
This revelation is the most complete God ever gave to the world. Do you want to know what God is like? All you have to do is look at Jesus Christ.
Nature has perfection and beauty; we see order, power, and majesty in the physical world around us. All of these descriptions apply to Jesus Christ. In the working of our conscience and the magnificence of the written Scriptures we find justice, mercy, grace, and love. These are attributes of Jesus Christ. “The Word [logos] became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
To His disciples and to all of us living in this twentieth-century world, Jesus said, “Believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1). This sequence of faith is inevitable. If we believe in what God made and what God said, we must believe in the One whom God sent.
How can we believe? The means of understanding these facts of salvation is “faith.” We are not always challenged to understand everything, but we are told to believe. “But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
Every need to know God, every expectation of eternal life, every desire for a new social order—all must be tied to the only One who can accomplish these goals—Jesus Christ. When we come to Jesus Christ, the unknown becomes known; we experience God Himself.
When our groping, darkened lives experience the light of the eternal presence of God, we are able to see that another world stretches beyond the confusion and frustration of the world we live in.
A small child, not even old enough for school, went into one of those mirrored mazes at an amusement park. When her father discovered that she had slipped away, he saw her trying to find her way out and beginning to cry in fear. She became increasingly confused by all the paths, until she heard her daddy call out, “Don’t cry, darling. Put your hands out and reach all around. You’ll find the door. Just follow my voice.”
As he spoke the little girl became calm and soon found her way out and ran to the security of her father’s outstretched arms.
God has revealed Himself to the human race on this little planet through nature, conscience, the Bible—and fully in the person of Jesus Christ.