Acts 9:1-19
1 Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,
2 and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
3 As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him;
4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?"
5 And he said, "Who are You, Lord?" And He said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,
6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do."
7 The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus.
9 And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
10 Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord."
11 And the Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying,
12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight."
13 But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem;
14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name."
15 But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel;
16 for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name's sake."
17 So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit."
18 And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized;
19 and he took food and was strengthened. Now for several days he was with the disciples who were at Damascus,
1 Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest,
2 and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
3 As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him;
4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?"
5 And he said, "Who are You, Lord?" And He said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,
6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do."
7 The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus.
9 And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
10 Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord."
11 And the Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying,
12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, so that he might regain his sight."
13 But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to Your saints at Jerusalem;
14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name."
15 But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel;
16 for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name's sake."
17 So Ananias departed and entered the house, and after laying his hands on him said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you were coming, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit."
18 And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized;
19 and he took food and was strengthened. Now for several days he was with the disciples who were at Damascus,
The story of Paul's conversion in Acts, among other things, tells us a lot about how God communicates with us, His children. In a number of respects, Paul's experience very much parallels the experience of Old Testament people with whom God also directly communicated. Whether it was Moses, Elijah, Gideon, Abraham, Daniel, or Balaam, God spoke directly, overtly and dramatically so that there was no mistaking who was speaking and what was spoken. In Paul's case, there was a bright flash of light that knocked Paul to the ground and then a disembodied voice - audible to others, not just to Paul - said a few things to him. And lest Paul begin to think the whole thing was a purely psychological event, a hallucination or imagined moment, perhaps, he is left blind from his encounter temporarily.
The Holy Spirit had come in Acts 2, as promised, filling the believers gathered together in a very overt way, provoking them to move out into the street to preach the Gospel. No one in the room in Acts 2 had to strain to catch the Spirit's moving; no one had to learn to hear the Spirit's voice; no one had to undergo several months of special "Holy Ghost training" in order to be filled with the Spirit. And neither did Paul (aka Saul). God didn't whisper a secret call to Paul's heart; God didn't speak to Paul in his mind; Paul didn't have to be trained to be able to discern the voice of the Spirit. No, instead, Christ knocked Paul to the ground and blinded him, speaking OUT LOUD to Paul right there in the roadway.
There is, though, another way God communicated in the story of Paul's conversion in Acts 9: A vision. What is a "vision"? In Greek, the word translated "vision" in Acts 9 is ὅραμα - horama - meaning "that which is seen." A "vision" isn't something imagined, dreamed, experienced without the use of physical sight, an event that happens in "the mind's eye"; it is something one actually observes with one's eyes. Both Paul and Ananias in Acts 9 see things in visions given to them by God. In the case of Ananias, there is a literal, out-loud conversation between Ananias and the One addressing him in the vision, which reinforces the fact that the vision was not an internal event of the mind. The two men, Paul and Ananias, don't have private, in-their-heads, interactions with the Holy Spirit, who speaks so quietly, so subtly, they aren't sure that what they've experienced was actually of God. No, quite the opposite is true.
A third mode of divine communication appears in the story of Paul's conversion in Acts 9. God sends Ananias to Paul to provide healing of Paul's sight and to lay hands on Paul so that he might receive the Holy Spirit. This divine messenger method was common in OT accounts, as well. God communicated His will through human agents, usually his prophets, quite a lot. Of course, God could have just murmured in the minds of those to whom He wished to speak directly, skipping the "middle man." He didn't, though, declaring His will again and again in an overt and unmistakable manner through Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, Joseph, Isaiah, Jeremiah and a multitude of other people.
What is starkly absent from the story of Paul's conversion - and from the rest of Scripture, too - is the modern notion of the Spirit speaking in mysterious, difficult-to-perceive tones in the mind of the Christian. Nowhere in the Bible is there any teaching that this is how God communicates directly to us. Yes, we read of God speaking to Elijah in a "still, small voice" (1 Kings 19:11-13), but it is not a voice in Elijah's head. Elijah hears the voice of God and gets up and walks to the mouth of the cave he's in to better hear it - an act totally unnecessary if God was speaking to Elijah directly within his mind.
Anyway, Paul's story in Acts 9 indicates to us that, if God intends to say something to us directly, He will do so in an overt and unmistakable way - no special training required - just as He did repeatedly throughout Scripture. So, then, if you think you've heard from God but you aren't really sure you have, you haven't. God doesn't communicate in a vague, amorphous, confusing way. He is not the Author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33).
Those who've invested heavily in the God-speaks-to-me-in-my-head stuff will dig in their heels at what I'm pointing out, of course, and reply, "Well, God speaks to me all the time. You can't tell me He doesn't. I know what I've experienced." When this happens, I respond by asking how they can prove to me they've heard from God and not just their own inner Self-talk, or a demonic counterfeit. "I just know," is the usual reply - with a nasty, patronizing dig that I would "just know" also, if I wasn't so spiritually immature.
Well, if a Muslim came to me and said, "Allah is the One, True God and Muhammed is His messenger," and I said in response, "How do you know?", I would be entirely justified in dismissing the Muslim's claim if he said, "I just know." "I just know" is not a valid argument; it is not convincing evidence of the truth of one's claim. One could claim the moon was made of green cheese on this basis. Would you accept "I just know" from an atheist who told you that there is no God? Obviously not. So, why, then, do Christians accept this sort of nonsensical defense of the claim to have heard from God directly?
At times, there is added to this lousy defense the further defense that an event transpired according to what God seemed to have communicated. Essentially, the argument is: I know its true because everything worked out okay. All right; fair enough. In the OT, though, one had to have a perfect "batting average" about God's communications; one's life depended upon it. If even a single "Thus says the Lord" did not work out as prophesied, the one prophesying was proven a false prophet and was to be killed.
I know, though, of many supposed modern-day communications from God - prophecies - that have proven totally false. And many of these "divine communications" were from high-profile teachers and "prophets," urging the "you must train to hear the Spirit" stuff. But rather than acknowledging that their claim(s) to have heard from God are false and abandoning their teaching about the Spirit speaking to them in their minds, they erect all sorts of astonishing justifications for their error, insisting they are mostly right.
Look, God certainly has the power to communicate to us in our minds. And the Spirit "brings to remembrance" the truth of God's word (John 14:26). But it is entirely without basis in the biblical record of God's direct dealings with human beings to say that, by the Spirit speaking into our minds, God's will is imparted to us. And so, the apostle Peter wrote:
2 Peter 1:19-21
19 So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
There is a "more sure" prophetic word? What "prophetic word" is that, exactly? Well, Peter tells us in the very next verse:
20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation,
It is Scripture that is the "more sure prophetic word" to which, Peter wrote, we all do well to pay attention. This accords completely with Paul's remarks to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
There is, though, this last bit Peter wrote:
21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
Interesting. What does Peter mean by "men moved by the Holy Spirit"? Is he referring to the idea of the Spirit speaking directly, subtly, mysteriously, to the minds of men the will and truth of God? Maybe. The word for "moved" in Greek is φέρω - pherô, meaning to "bear, or carry along" and suggests more than a mere still, small, inner voice giving dictation in the minds of the writers of Scripture. Peter doesn't elaborate, explaining what he means by "moved" exactly; but if we look back through the Bible at the instances when God did speak to people, this hard-to-hear, direct-to-mind, dictational mode isn't in evidence and doesn't, then, seem to be warranted in understanding Peter's meaning.
What about the "caught up" moment Paul wrote about? Maybe this is ground for thinking the Spirit speaks in a very subtle, direct-to-mind way:
2 Corinthians 12:2-4
2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.
3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—
4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.
Nope. This doesn't sound at all like the sort of difficult-to-hear way many Christians believe the Holy Spirit commonly communicates to them. "Caught up" - harpazo (ἁρπάζω), in Greek - is not a term describing the subtlety of a whispering, inner voice. It means to "snatch" or "seize," to "take away by force." And Paul speaks of moving - perhaps bodily - to the "third heaven" in such a way as to make it impossible to tell if he was really there or just having a vision. None of this is like the sort of mysterious, secret, hard-to-hear voice of the Spirit within that many believers are told to listen for.
I could go on, but, hopefully, I've given sufficient cause for you, my reader, to think twice about looking for special, extra-biblical, just-for-you, guidance from the Spirit. Instead, I would urge you to take all the truth, wisdom, spiritual principles and commands of God's word, the Bible, and apply them to your life, to the choices that you face every day. It is in Scripture God speaks to you; it is in God's word that the "voice" of the Good Shepherd sounds out to us.
Psalm 119:103-105
103 How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 From Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way.
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
Joshua 1:8
8 "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
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