I have been following this discussion now for a couple of days and initially decided not to get involved because it can lead to the sort of arguments against which the apostle Paul warns. But then I think there are some things to be said that have not yet been said.

Is there perhaps not enough evidence in Scripture that can guide us on this issue? My feeling is that there is and for that we can have a look at how God "interacted" with His people in the Old Testament. Note that throughout the New Testament believers are directed to give attention to the examples of the Old Testament. When doing this we have to keep Paul's words to the Romans in mind that what has been written in the past was written for our instruction. The Old Testament examples are therefore important also for us and we have to carefully look at these.

Thus if we consider the example of Abraham, the father of the faithfull, we see that when God revealed Himself to Abraham it was directly related to the covenant that He made with Abraham and to the promises He made to Abraham. God's revelation to Abraham had to do with His salvation plan and therefore directly with the Gospel. But then we also read of many things that Abraham did where we simply don't read that God spoke with an audible voice to him to guide him. Abraham was in the promised land when famine broke out. He decided to go to Egypt because there were food. Abraham simply took a decision. When he got to Egypt he feared for his life and told Sarai to pretend that she is his sister. Again he made a decision and the father of the faithfull acted not in faith! God could have talked to him directly to warn him but clearly He did not. And there are more examples from Abraham's life. In fact, if you read carefully you will find that the time span between God's revelations to Abraham was in some cases very long.

Perhaps the three most striking examples in this regard that we find in the OT is that of Ezra, Nehemia and Esther. If we talk about stories of driving in the wrong lane, heading for a head-on collision, then surely the story in Esther is just such a story. Surely if God gave the sort of revelations that is the issue of this thread, then we would have read about it in the story of Esther where the OT church out of which the Messiah will come was under threat. But we don't. I think that is significant. The same applies to Nehemia. We read that Nehemia prayed "before the God of heaven". But we do not read of any special revelations from God to Nehemia about the plan to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. But God gave it in his heart to do this great act. "And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the King granted my request" (Nehemia 2:8). God worked through the actions of the King. I think we can say that God illuminated Nehemia's heart and mind to do rebuild Jerusalem's walls. We don't read that He instructed Nehemia audibly to do it.

When it comes to the NT surely there is nothing written explicitly that says that God doesn't speaks directly with His children. But equally we don't have any examples of it happen except in the cases of the apostels and then again it has to do with the preaching of the Gospel. We know about the vision that Paul had about the Macedonian man. Again this vision was specially for the preaching of the Gospel. But Luke also says somewhere in Acts that the Holy Spirit prevented them of going somewhere. There is absolutely no indication that it was through an audible voice. Finally, the apostle Paul nowhere in any of his letters even refer to something like this.

My conclusion from examples from Scripture is that when God indeed communicated in some audible or other way with people in the OT it had a very specific goal which was much higher than the individual's personal life experience.

Johan