Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 18:3 (Fall 2014)
Article: Has Any People Heard The Voice Of God Speaking … And Survived?
Author: R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

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SBTJ 18:3 (Fall 2014) p. 7

Has Any People Heard The Voice Of God Speaking … And Survived?

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. serves as the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology. Dr. Mohler is the author of numerous books and articles, including He is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World (Moody, 2008), Words from the Fire: Hearing the Voice of God in the Ten Commandments (Moody, 2009), Culture Shift: The Battle for the Moral Heart of America (Multnomah, 2011). In addition to his presidential duties, Dr. Mohler hosts two programs: “The Briefing,” a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview; and “Thinking in Public,” a series of conversations with the day’s leading thinkers, and he also writes a popular blog and a regular commentary on moral, cultural and theological issues. All of these can be accessed through his website,
www.AlbertMohler.com.

One of the great touchstone passages in all Scripture appears in Deuteronomy 4. Verse 33 contains a striking question—a rhetorical question, but a very real question: “Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived?”

Just like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, we are summoned together as God’s people—to speak of God, to sing about God, to worship God. It is no small thing to dare to speak of God. We actually claim that we teach what God has taught.

There ought to be a bit of humility in recognizing the audacity of that claim. It would be a baseless claim—an incredible claim—if God has not spoken from the midst of the fire and allowed us to hear. On what authority do we speak? Is it the authority of the churches of our respective denominations? Such authority is no small thing, but is still

SBTJ 18:3 (Fall 2014) p. 8

not enough. To dare speak of these things, we invoke the authority of God, for he alone could reveal himself, speak these things, and tell us what we must know.

The great philosophical crisis of our day is an epistemological crisis—a crisis of knowing and a crisis of knowledge. It is a challenge for the Christian thinker, the Christian theologian, the Christian minister, the Christian preacher, and the Christian institution—the whole of Christianity. The crisis can be summed up in one question: How do we know and teach what we claim to know and teach?

Francis Schaeffer well understood the epistemological crisis and accordingly titled his most significant contribution, He Is There and He<...

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