September 10, 2023

Malachi 4: 6 “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” (NIV)

Matthew 1: 1 A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David the son of Abraham. (NIV)

The creation, although it did declare so much of God, as left all men without excuse, yet did not fully manifest the will of God, nor bring men to eternal salvation.*

The verses above are the last one in the Old Testament and the first one found in the New Testament. From the time one was written to the next was a span of more than 400 years. Some speak of this as a time when God was silent. It is true that no new words were added to scripture during that time, but was God really silent? It has been more than 2,000 years since John recorded the words of the revelation of Jesus Christ – has God not spoken since then?

I like to speculate about what God was doing in the rest of the world while he was interacting with the Jews, and later, with the brand-new church. Was he silent then among all the other people on the planet? What did they know about God? Were the Gentiles who associated with the Jews the only ones who were exposed to the one true God? I don’t know who God revealed himself to outside of those mentioned in scripture, but according to Paul, in Romans 1: 19 and 20, since the creation of the world God has made himself known. So, God may have written all he is going to in scripture but he has not stopped speaking – even in nature we hear his voice.

Perhaps you feel that you are dwelling in a long stretch of God’s silence. You might wonder if those who claim to hear him speak are liars or nuts. My advice: place yourself within the sound of his voice. Start at the most basic, fundamental level – nature. God has clearly revealed himself through his creation. Acknowledge his invisible qualities – his eternal power and his divine nature. A great start! But you can’t stop there. Nature can’t tell you how to be saved – only God’s word contains that information. Read the Bible. Ask that God’s Holy Spirit will reveal God’s will to you and you will soon learn that God is not silent – you just weren’t listening.

God speaks to us through the Bible in new ways when we reflect on it deeply and repeatedly.*