Hearing the Voice of God with Jim Osman

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Opening and the Review About Hearing from God

1, 2, 3.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Well, welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I am your host, Andrew Rapoport. We're going to have a special guest on later, maybe. We'll see. I don't know if we could trust the guest to come on, you know.

Sure, you can trust this guest. Absolutely. Well, but I'm glad that you came in. You're the guest. Oh, thanks. Discount what I just said. Never mind. You know, actually, what is very fitting right now is a post that I saw from you on Facebook.

Oh, really? From a Thomas Fuller. It says, quote, he that knows nothing will believe anything, unquote. Yeah. That's very fitting. It's the spirit of the age. Yeah. You know, I love what, I don't know if you know Mike Riddle, but from Christian training.

I have to remember if it's Institute. I forget what the I stands for, but CTI. But Mike always has this thing that he'll do in one of his talks where he says, okay, I want you to give me the right answer.

Now, there's some qualifications to it. The question is, what is three plus four? However, you can't say seven. You can't spell seven. You can't have an, you know, you can't do seven in binary. You can't give me seven in, you know, with some, you know, you know, like calculations.

So you can't, whatever you do, you cannot give me an answer. That means seven. What's the answer of three plus four? And he just sits there. People look dumbfounded. Someone will just shout out 11. He goes, right.

You know, you get 24. Yes, you're right. You know, and, and it's, and his whole point is if you, if you're going to ignore the truth, anything becomes truth. You know, Jim, Jim Wallace does it. And this is Jay Warner Wallace.

It's a problem when you have a name like Jim Wallace. It's common, but.

Yes, I was about to say we're quoting sojourners now.

The conservative, Jay Warner Wallace, you know, he, he does a thing where he says, you know, because he's a, you know, 20 year police detective, right? So he says, you know, you go into a room and you, you see a guy that's, that, you know, has been shot, but there's no gun in the apartment, but someone says it's suicide.

You know, the captain says, this is suicide or, or, you know, like, or the guy has a gun shot himself and, you know, the, the, you know, and the guy says, no black guy did this. You got to go find the black guy.

You know, like in either one of those scenarios, the problem is he goes, when you already start with the conclusion, that's now the truth. You just are going to do whatever to make that. Yeah.

To make that fit. Boy, we live in those times. Now, you know, it was, I think tolerance was supposed to be the prime virtue of postmodernism, but I think gullibility is overwhelmed it since.

Well, yeah, we've, we've gotten into, you know, I think, I think what's becoming really popular again is the book 1984. Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I, okay. When I remember reading that in high school and the thing that I thought was the stupidest thing was this whole thing of newspeak that, that the government would actually change the language and people would go, oh, yes, this is the new way, like they'd ignore what the word meant yesterday and just buy into a new definition.

I said, that's so stupid. That would never work. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I mean, we, we have, we have a gentleman who claims he's a girl that is running for governor now of California, you know, goes by the name of Caitlyn Jenner, but that's not really his name, is it?

No, Bruce Jenner, which by the way, actually, I mentioned Mike Riddle and a funny story with Mike Riddle and Bruce Jenner. It's a funny thing that I always like to bring up to Mike is I asked Mike if he, if he ever lost a decathlon to a girl and he's quick to say, no, he, he lost him to a man, Bruce Jenner at the time.

He, so Bruce Jenner beat out Mike Riddle to go to the Olympics. Oh, yes. That's how good Mike is. You know, he, he was, he was next in line to go to the Olympics that year. So, but, so yeah, I, I like to bust on Mike and say he, he lost to a girl.

It's the only time I actually want to refer to Mike, refer to, you know, Bruce Jenner as a girl. So, so we got a review in this week and so let me read the review now. I'm going to start, bud, by letting you know, this review has no review or no stars.

So this is one where we just got a review with no stars, which is kind of interesting. I did take a look and, and I was looking at this and we got, we got several very, very brave, very brave reviewers.

We have, we have two reviews with no stars, no rating at all. They just left a comment. But then we have four very brave people. They left a one star, you know, rating with no review. In other words, I guess they don't want us to actually engage with why they think this show is bad.

They just wanted to knock it down. If you're going to leave us a one, if you're going to leave us a one star, you know, rating, at least give us a review so we can engage with you and find out why you don't like us.

It's, it's probably that postmodernism again. They felt like it was a one star, but they didn't have any reason for it. But it's also interesting to see where this is coming from. I don't know that I could pronounce the name, but this person writes from Nigeria, but it's like Adebukula Esther Iroh.

I probably butchered your name. Forgive me. Someone will have to like pronounce that properly for me. But, but here, here's the review. And this, this review comes on a specific episode. It's the episode that was talked about, God Doesn't Whisper.

That was with Pastor Jim Osman from Kootenai Community Church. And he wrote the book, I'll hold it up, God Doesn't Whisper. See, I'm only that far into it. See, yeah, I, I actually, to be honest, I, I just, I put the bookmark in chapter eight there just so that I could claim, you know, I, I've told Jim I'll never read a book of his.

I was going to write a review that just said, you know, best book I never read.

But I thought you said the reason you stopped where you did is because you had a dream that told you all the rest of it. That's true. No, actually, maybe that was a different text.

No, the reason I really didn't want to read this one is I was very offended by, by Pastor Osman, you know, the author, because, you know, when we first talked, he talked and asked whether, you know, I would write something up.

I mean, you can see on the back that that character, Justin Peters, he, he got, look, he, he got a, you know, his review right on the back. I was asked if I would, I would write something, you know, and I was really kind of bummed because I got bumped.

Look at who he bumped me for. He bumped me for, who's that guy, John MacArthur? I mean, he, he bumped me for, so how would I ever read this book? I got bumped for John MacArthur. Like, like he's a bigger name than me.

Well, okay, yeah. But, but here's the review, and, and we got some questions that maybe we can engage with here that this, this review asks. So, this comes from Nigeria, and, and that, but as, as we know, in Africa, like, this whole idea of hearing God's voice in the prosperity gospel is rampant throughout.

And so, here's, here's what we got. It says, at first, when I listened to this, I was upset. Like, why shouldn't I expect to hear from God audibly? I had to ask God, please help me keep an open heart and teach me what I need to know, which he did.

I still have questions, by the way, but at the end of this podcast, I can truly say I have learned something fresh. I don't know if I agree with all that he said, all that was said, but I definitely see why I need to work on my, need to work on, sorry, what I need to work on in my walk with Christ.

I've had to ask myself, is the word truly sufficient for me? Why exactly do I desire to hear God's voice? I do have a question or two that I need answered. I was disappointed it was not really talked about, or perhaps I missed it when it was discussed.

Question one is, does God speak audibly in this day and age? Two, is it wrong to desire to hear from God audibly, even knowing that it is not a compulsory part of the Christian walk and shouldn't be expected, but are you saying don't even think about it?

Thank you. So he's got a couple of questions, he or she, because I don't know if this is, I just don't know the name, if it's male or female, but so he or she has some questions, but we should try to answer it.

I mean, it would have been good if we could have gotten Jim Osmond just to come in here. You know, it would be good if he could, if he would be able to come in and just answer.

But yeah, because I'm sure he's got, he's probably not got a great answer to this. It's probably black and white, so yeah, I just wish he would.

Come in and, but we couldn't get him. I can call him and see if he's available. Ah, there he is. Oh, wow. It's almost like he got a word from the Lord that he should show up here.

I had a dream last night, show up on Andrew's podcast.

Scripture, Sufficiency, and the Voice of God

Oh, so Jim, it's good to have you back. And, you know, we did this because we wanted to, we wanted to get your, you know, we could answer this easily, but we needed an excuse to get you back on. Sure.

You know, I recently came on to the Apologetics Live, all because, but I don't know if you saw that Apologetics Live, but, you know, there was something that Jim had in one of his sermons. It was his Resurrection Sunday sermon, and he mentioned something that I was like, wait, what?

I had to go back and re-listen. And, you know, I said, Jim, you got to come on to Apologetics Live. Let's talk about this. He made a comment about talking about the resurrection and why that points to premillennialism.

And it's the first time I had heard the argument. I was like, oh, come on in. So, we talked about that on Apologetics Live, which Matter of Theology has now responded to that, Jim, Drew has. And so, we're going to try to get you and Drew together on Apologetics Live to talk about that.

But the funny thing was, Jim was like, you know, he's like, oh, that was just a throwaway comment. So, and I said, even Jim's throwaway comments are gold. That's the whole thing. So, folks, if you don't listen to Jim's preaching, you can, if you go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org, look in the podcast shows, you'll see Kootenai Community Church Morning Worship Service.

And then you can listen to each of his sermons. He's going through Hebrews. How long have you been going through Hebrews? Was Paul still writing it when you started? I'm close. Paul, Paul didn't write it.

I think it's probably been three years now, at least. I need to go back and check and see when it was that I started that series.

Yeah. So, you know, at least, Jim, you know that I do listen to your sermons. I even pick up your throwaway comments. No. So, I encourage folks to listen to that. Let's engage with this. There's a couple things that I saw right off the bat with this comment.

One is the teachable spirit. This actually surprised me, Jim. You've probably seen this a lot. When we talk about things like this, it's very rare that we get someone that is willing to even listen. I mean, I was speaking to a guy.

He wants to try to partner with the Christian Podcast Community on a project he's doing. And, you know, doing the research, I was like, you know, I'm kind of having concerns with what I'm seeing with where he goes to church and stuff like that, and who he's associated with.

And then I start talking to him, and he's like, yeah, you know, we started this project because someone came to me and said, God told them to give us this money so we could start this project. I'm like, look, you know, I mean, clearly at this point, I'm like, I'm not going to partner with the guy, but I'm going to at least try to teach him.

And I start saying, well, you know, I really don't believe God did that. You know, God didn't speak to that guy. And God, you know, you're doing all this stuff saying God's leading you, but unless you have, you know, book, chapter, and verse, I'm not buying it.

And I was actually like going, okay, I'm going to get into this long debate where I'm going to have to defend what I say. And the guy actually was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd like to get together with you more.

You really taught me some things. I need to grow in my Christian walk, and maybe we can continue discussing this. I was like, wow, okay. But that seems to be an oddity. Do you experience that as well?

Do you see that people are, when we talk about not hearing God speaking to us, that people are, do they take that with open ears? I'll put it that way. Are they ready to hear what you might have to say?

Not typically, simply because of the emotional attachment that people have to these experiences and because the experience seems so real to them. And so, you know, it's their connection to God. It's their feeling that their walk with God is real, genuine, intimate, close.

And then you suggest to them that these things that you claim that you're experiencing are really not the way that God speaks to us. Then they feel as if you've robbed them of their intimacy with God and taken that away.

And one of the challenges is getting people to realize that your intimacy with God comes in knowing scripture, reading scripture and absorbing that and walking with God in scripture and not in these subjective experiences of nudging and promptings and all the other stuff that they associate with the voice of God.

People typically are not real open to having their intimacy with God challenged on that level.

And I think that's really a product of our age, right? Is this, I mean, we see this clearly in the political realm that people are feeling their way through issues and not thinking their way through issues.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about a Caitlyn Jenner and people like actually demanding that we refer to this gentleman as a girl just because they feel like it today. Pete. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Jared.

You know, and I think that, I mean, we'll maybe get into more of a discussion, I think, the dangers of that when we look at just the church. But, you know, this person, you know, was questioning the fact of should we expect to hear God speak audibly?

And so, let me ask you the first question that they said. You know, does God speak audibly in this day and age?

Pete. Audibly, no, but that doesn't mean that God is not still speaking through his word, that he is not communicating to his people that people don't hear God speaking in scripture. And we have to clarify what we mean by that, because when we talk about God speaking through scripture, we're not talking about reading a verse of scripture and having, reading a passage scripture and having a verse or a phrase jump off the page with some new meaning, something it means to us that it didn't mean to the original writer or the original audience.

What we mean is that when we read scripture, and we understand scripture, and we hear the meaning of that passage as intended by the author and the Holy Spirit, and as understood by the original audience, then we are hearing the voice of God in that sense.

We are receiving the same message, the same communication that God gives to his people. And so, he is speaking, but he uses his word to speak to his people and to instruct his people to teach them for their edification and equipping.

But he doesn't give us private messages that are unconnected from the original meaning of the text. So, does he speak audibly today? No, we have no reason. That's not to say that God could not, if he desired to, or he intended to, he could, God could do whatever he wants.

But we have no reason in scripture to believe that God needs to speak audibly today, or that we should expect to hear God speak audibly today, or that we should expect to hear, or that we need to hear God speak in any way outside of scripture.

We simply don't need that because scripture is sufficient.

You know, let me check this. There's a guy that is on the back of your book that wrote a review that I think disagrees with you. This guy, Justin Peters.

He's got a t-shirt. I hired him off of Fiverr. For five bucks, you can get somebody to write almost anything for you.

But, you know, Justin Peters has a famous quote that I like, and maybe it disagrees with what you're saying. But he always says, if you want to hear God speak, read the Bible. If you want to hear God speak audibly, read it out loud.

Yeah, that's a play on words that he's using there.

But that's really the only way we should expect to hear God speak audibly, is through his word, if you're reading it out loud. But it really is, that is how he speaks to us in this day and age.

Yeah, and the Reformers had such a high view of preaching that they would say that God speaks audibly through the mouthpiece of the preacher. That when the preacher gets up and communicates God's word and teaches God's word, that God is in that moment, through the lips of the speaker, preaching and speaking to his people in doing that.

And anybody who is an expositor of Scripture and knows how the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of people who listen to the preaching of the word, then they would affirm that. That yes, when people understand what God's word means, the Spirit of God is working there to speak through the lips of the proclaimer of God's word.

So how does this, because even the reviewer tied this, as we did in the episode, to the sufficiency of Scripture. What is the connection here that we make about the sufficiency of Scripture and why we shouldn't be looking for dreams and visions and audible voices telling us what to do?

Yeah, because if Scripture truly gives me everything I need for life and that means that God has provided in his word, everything I need for every decision I will ever make. It doesn't tell me which woman to marry or which house to buy or which job to take.

But it does lay out for me all the principles that I need, the moral will of God and the wisdom of God that is in the examples, illustrations, good and bad. So that if I'm understanding what Scripture teaches on how it is that I glorify God and how I should live my life, then I'm free to make whatever decision I want in that regard without fearing that I have disobeyed God.

So if God's word communicates to us everything we need to live a God-honoring and obedient life, then I don't need to have God say anything outside of Scripture because I need no further information.

Now, God having provided everything I need, he leaves the choice up to me and I'm free to make that choice.

Yeah, and I think that if I had to pick what I would think would be the number one problem in the church today, it would probably be this issue, the sufficiency of Scripture. Oh, definitely. It just seems like people are looking for answers to life and godliness in everything else but the Scripture.

Yeah. In dreams, in visions, in preachers, in culture.

All the fads that run their way through the church, that blow through the church with every stiff wind, you know, whether it's the prayer of Jabez or the 40 Days of Purpose or the Daniel Diet or whatever it is, that just the constant churning out of fads by the Christian publishing community that grips the church, all of that is nothing more than a desire to find some answer to how to grow the church, how to strengthen the church, how to strengthen relationships within church, how to help marriages, how to increase giving and everything else in some other way other than just with Scripture.

And it betrays a lack of belief in the sufficiency of Scripture. The whole approach to preaching where we put video clips up on the screens behind the preacher and exegete the latest Marvel blockbuster, that's just an indication that they don't believe Scripture is sufficient to do that work of transforming the hearts and lives of people.

Well, you said it quickly, but I think you nailed where the problem is. It's in the publisher, right? Because that's really where you get all this nonsense that comes out. It's the publishers. And what people don't know is most of the Christian publishers are owned by secular companies.

So they're just looking to churn things out to make money. They're not caring about its content. And they're perfectly happy with debate in Christian circles and people tearing each other down just for the sake of selling books.

I first became aware of that when MacArthur's book, Gospel According to Jesus, came out. And I remember all the publishers, the same publisher that I think that did that book was doing either Ryrie's or I forget who the other guy was, but the publisher, like even when you saw, they would sell those books right next to each other to try to buy both or all three if you did forget who was the other person.

I want to say Zane Hodges. That's who I thought. So, yeah. So publishing is, I think, really where a lot of these fads really did come from. And it's so funny. You're mentioning the different things and I'm just going, oh, yeah, we forgot about the Daniel Diet and the prayer of J-Bez.

Like that was really big and then just gone. It's gone. You know, and it is so much of it is this thing of where it just seems like people are just, oh, I'm going to jump on this. I'm going to jump on that for whatever.

And they're looking for, and I think prayer of J-Bez is a good example because, you know, with that one, it really was this thing where people were like, oh, if I just do this prayer, God's going to give me, you know, bigger territory.

And my guess was like everyone realized it didn't work or maybe the Daniel Diet quit because people weren't losing the weight that Daniel did, you know, and gave up on it. But there's so many of these fads that do go through the church and so much of it is you could look at either the Daniel Diet or prayer of J-Bez, neither one of them are really rooted in scripture, not a proper understanding of scripture.

That's the thing you see with these is so much of it is, okay, Daniel did this diet. They ripped that out of its context of why Daniel was dieting. You know, it didn't have to do with the diet itself, and it wasn't that he was doing it to lose weight.

He was doing it to honor God and the whole thing that, you know, of him losing, it's not just that he lost weight, but he looked better, you know? Yeah. And so people rip that out of that context and go, oh, this is a diet that's going to help you lose weight.

That really isn't from scripture then, you know, and this is part of what I end up seeing so much with, you know, with a lot of these fads. And I think the latest fad, although it's not so new, but everyone's jumping onto it is hearing from God, you know?

Yeah, that's a long-lasting fad. I mean, that's been going through the church for at least a better part of almost two generations now that that has been creeping its way slowly but surely out of charismaticism and into.

Evangelicalism writ large. The reason I think that this is so dangerous though, and I want to get your feedback on this, my view is that the whole idea of hearing from God, having a dream or vision is not just a lack of sufficiency of scripture, but I think what it also ends up doing is for many, they're not trusting the scripture, they're trusting their dream.

I think that it shifts the trust and leads people to, I mean, I've actually had a guy in prayer meeting that claimed that God, you know, he was following God's will because God told him to lie to his boss so that he could protect a fellow employee and witness to him.

Yeah. And I was like, the guy you're trying to witness to now knows you're a liar. Like, he's going to believe you. You know, but this is what I end up seeing is that people feel justified and if you, because they say it's of the Lord, you cannot, they don't listen to anything you say to try to correct them.

Now, you can't disabuse them of that because the source of authority then becomes God himself and not the vision of the dream. And so why would I, why would I consult a book and go through the effort of studying and reading and exegeting a book to find out God's mind revealed to somebody who lived 3 ,500 years ago?

If I can just wait and God's going to download it immediately into my heart and mind, some new fresh revelations, you know, it's, why would I want the old revelation if I can have the fresh new thing that's custom designed for me?

And so people end up expecting that and trusting of that. And in the end, the Bible gets the short shrift.

And really what it is, it's, it's their own desires. I mean, it's not that this comes from nowhere. Typically. It's, it's, it's either their own desires or I'll say a lot of it, you know, it could be demonic, but God is going to speak through his word.

Right.

Yeah. More often than not, the personal revelation ends up being nothing more than an expression of what the person wanted to do to begin with. More often than not.

Yeah. I remember in college, young gentleman who really liked a young lady. She happened to be engaged at the time, but he got a word from the Lord during a prayer meeting. God spoke to him audibly and told her through him to marry him.

Quite convenient. And, and so she, she broke off the engagement and did marry the guy. And the, you know, the fact that they got married was the proof for them for many years that God did speak. Of course, they're divorced now.

So I don't know what, what you do with that. But, but yeah, I've seen, like, this is what I've seen with people that have this. It's really their own desire, but it's, it, but Jim, it sounds so spiritual and it's got to be right.

If it's coming from God, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. That's what, that's what they assume that it, that they have this connection with God. And if he's speaking it, then, then they have a connection with God that nobody else has. And it ends up becoming a, almost a form of Gnosticism in some ways, because you're believing that you're getting revelation, private revelation from God that is not available to anybody else.

Whereas scripture is available to you and me, we both have copies of it. We can both read it and understand it and, and, and see, and know the mind of God revealed on the pages of Holy scripture. But the person who's getting their own private revelations, well, they have a connection with God that you don't have.

They have a way of receiving information that is not available, but only to them. And then, then that they write books like Priscilla Schreier and Charles Stanley and Mark Batterson, the rest of them, they write books that talk about how you too can hear this voice.

If you'll follow their steps, you know, these, these are the steps is the way that God speaks. And if you follow this system, you follow this pattern, then you'll hear the voice of God for yourself as well.

But see the common response I get, I'm sure you do too, Jim, is when you challenge them and they're, they feel so spiritual about it, they then will push back and say, but this is from God, right?

So how do you respond to that? That's a form of question begging, because they're assuming that God is going to speak this way that he needs to, or that they can expect to. And so then when they have the experience, it becomes a form of confirmation bias where they say, well, I was expecting God to speak.

And then I got this prompting and nudge and I followed the prompting and nudge and it turned out well. So it must have been God speaking. And so that's just a, it's a method of circular reasoning, which is why in the book, I, at the beginning, I lay out three assumptions that I need to hear from God outside of scripture, that I can expect to hear from God outside scripture, and that I can learn to hear from God outside scripture.

And you deal with those three assumptions and that show that scripture does not teach this in any of the passage that they quote to, to try and prove that point, then you remove the foundation, you remove the presupposition that goes into that argument.

Because really what I'm driving at is God has no need to speak to you outside of scripture. There's nothing that he needs to tell you that he has not already told you. And you don't need to hear from him outside of scripture, because there is nothing that is not in scripture that you need to hear or know in order to walk with God in obedience.

And so therefore, God has not promised to speak to you outside of scripture. So you should have no expectation to hear his voice. And when you deal with those, then people, then what are we left with?

Well, we're left with scripture.

Yes. And if we're trying to bring scripture to them and they have their emotions that, and that becomes their authority, a lot of times you're, it's hard to deal with because you're trying to lay out a logical argument and they're, they're going, but I have this experience so much, they trust in the experience over anything that you bring to them.

Yeah. I mean, Justin did a, Justin Peters did a, his seminar in a church here. There's about 45 minutes South of us. And unfortunately it was one that I lined him up to speak in thinking that the pastor and the leadership was on board with him.

But during one of the Q and a's, somebody asked him about this hearing from God outside scripture. So Justin gave the standard answer that God speaks in scripture and scripture alone. We shouldn't be listening for still small voices, et cetera.

And one of the elders of the church got up and said, I audibly heard God tell me to marry my wife, that this is a woman I was supposed to marry. And no matter what Justin said, you could not disabuse the man of that notion because he had experienced it.

So whether scripture was sufficient or not as irrelevant to the conversation as far as he's concerned. But only thing that matters is that he experienced this. He heard this. He knows that God spoke to him and therefore you can't convince him otherwise.

But what do you think?

You look like you were going to say something. I have, I have so many thoughts about all of this and agree with everything that you guys have said. The one, the one fundamental thing that, that always surprises me is that when you engage with someone like this and you ask them about the sufficiency of scripture, they are never going to deny that.

I've not at least had anybody say, Oh no, scripture is sufficient. But then you recognize, well, wait a minute in practice, you're doing something completely contrary to that. And the other division, the distinction that I see that people don't, it's like, we've got this category of scripture over here.

We've got this category of our experiences over here. And then we have this other category, which really should be our focus, which is Christ. Well, if, if you're by practice denying the sufficiency of scripture by your emotionalism and your experientialism, if you're denying that sufficiency of scripture there, what you are effectively doing is denying the sufficiency of Christ.

You can't, you can't divide these two things. I mean, it's, it's mysterious. It's as mysterious as the concept of the Trinity, which is in scripture. But the, the mystery of Christ is the Logos. He's, he is the word of God.

What does this mean? We have to really be cautious when we tread on this kind of ground, because what you would ultimately end up doing by practicing this emotionalism, moving things from the objective standard of God's word to the subjective experience you think you've had, and maybe you did have some kind of experience.

When you move that, you are attacking the sufficiency of Christ himself, not merely a book that you read things in. It's the word of God. And Christ is that word, the way, the truth, and the life. So this kind of thing concerns me.

And I think, just one other brief comment, back to the first thing that you started with, Andrew, with the guy who said he has a teachable spirit, as you engage with people like this, and maybe it takes a little bit of time, but you will be able to distinguish a disciple by their willingness to learn.

And if they don't have that, if they just want to contend for a position and not be willing to learn from the word, you may be dealing with a nominal believer. However fiercely they may defend their position.

Yeah, that's true.

Whether Christians Should Desire Audible Voices or Trust Scripture

So, Jim, the second question that they asked, I think we sufficiently answered that no, God doesn't speak audibly in this age. The second question that was asked is, is it wrong to desire to hear from God audibly?

That's a bit more, that's a bit of a tougher question, because we've got to nuance this a little bit. If the desire is to hear from God audibly because they're not trusting in Scripture, because they don't believe that Scripture has answered or given them enough information, then yes, that's a sinful desire, because you're desiring something that is illicit, something that is actually undermining Scripture.