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Hear God’s Voice – Guaranteed?

A Critique of Mark Virkler’s Hearing God’s Voice

By K. Jentoft

Mark Virkler recently presented his seminar, Hearing God’s Voice – Guaranteed, at an “Equipping Conference” sponsored by International Lutheran Renewal. The conference was designed to teach Christians how to hear the voice of God.  Some friends expressed concern that family members were planning to attend the conference, so I wrote the following article and passed it out at the conference as a brochure. Then I attended part of the conference.

In his Saturday afternoon message Virkler taught that the only guaranteed method he’s proven in order for people to hear God’s voice with certainty is “to listen to their spontaneous thoughts and write them down.”  He also described his discernment safeguard: our thoughts must be written and submitted to three spiritual advisors for review with only the weakest appeal to the scriptures.  He claimed that if three spiritual advisors “feel” that the journaled words are from God, then they are certainly God’s words.  Moreover, Virkler claims that pagans and non-Christians equally hear the voice of God through this method and named Albert Einstein as an example.¹

God decides to speak through mediators

Virkler’s chief claim in his book Hearing God’s Voice is that “God’s voice is a flow of spontaneous thoughts in our heart.”² This is the antithesis of how God has certainly spoken to humanity throughout history and minimizes the authority of the scriptures. Virkler’s book and seminar minimize reason and rationality with claims that mystical inner thoughts and visions speak for God. This defective teaching, no matter how kind and sincere a man Virkler proves to be, will damage the ones who believe and follow it. It has eternal consequences. The scripture verse Virkler quotes on the cover of his book Hearing God’s Voice, “We have heard His voice…We have seen this day that God speaks with Man,” proves his claim is wrong. In fact, the passage in Deuteronomy 5 is a vivid description of God’s voice that was tangible and experienced through their physical senses. These people heard God with their physical ears and saw the fire on the mountain. They heard and understood His words with their rational minds; quite different from a mystical “spontaneous flow of thoughts in their hearts.” Israel was overwhelmed by God’s tangible voice and asked God for a human mediator – requesting that God would speak to them through a man instead. God declared this request for a mediator between His people and Himself was good and that it pleased Him. Here is the passage in Deuteronomy 5:

You said, “Behold, the LORD our God has shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice from the midst of the fire; we have seen today that God speaks with man, yet he lives. Now then why should we die? …Go near and hear all that the LORD our God says; then speak to us all that the LORD our God speaks to you, and we will hear and do it.” The LORD heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the LORD said to me, “I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They have done well in all that they have spoken.” (Deuteronomy 5:24, 25, 27, 28)

Later in Deuteronomy God repeats that the people’s request pleased Him:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him. This is according to all that you asked of the LORD your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, “Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.” The LORD said to me, “They have spoken well. I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15-18)

Compare this to what Mark Virkler explains about the same incident:

They didn’t expect that the voice of God would come with the fire of God, and they decided they would rather not have a relationship with Him if He was going to be that way! Instead they chose to send Moses to God as their representative, to let him have the relationship and find out what God wanted them to do. God agreed to their request but warned that, first, He was not going to stop talking. If they didn’t want to hear Him, they would have to leave.³

Virkler’s book claims that the people decided against having a relationship with God when they requested that Moses be the mediator. How could God say, “They have done well in all that they have spoken,” if they were rejecting God as Virkler claims? Obviously God was pleased because He desired to speak to His people through a man as a mediator, and the first official mediator was Moses. According to Moses, God also chose other men—the prophets—as messengers to speak to His people. Thus, throughout history, the people of Israel always heard the voice of God with physical ears, tangibly from the mouths of real men. The nation of Israel was not composed of mystics seeking personal revelations in spontaneous thoughts. God’s voice was not to be heard or experienced on demand “freestyle” as each person felt. The book of Judges depicts the closest thing to personal freestyle revelations in which “each man did what was right in his own eyes.” It also declares that this led to a defective understanding of God and damaging actions by His people. God’s voice spoken to the real ears of His people by real vocal cords of His messengers is radically different than a mystical internal experience cut off from the physical senses that Virkler’s teaching is promoting.

Physical Senses vs. Mysticism

In fact, in Deuteronomy we find that God provided His people with the certified method of hearing His voice, to listen to the words of His prophet. God officially chose to speak through these men as His mediators. The obvious question the people raised was, “How can we tell who Your prophet is and who isn’t?” God anticipated this question and gave them specific criteria to judge whether a man was His mouthpiece or not:

You may say in your heart, “How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?” When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:21, 22)

God did not leave “discernment” of the prophet to subjectivity or feelings—or even whether or not he was a nice guy. God demanded that His people discern prophets, and therefore His voice, with their rational minds and physical senses.

Compare the concept of hearing God’s voice with our physical senses to Virkler’s teaching. In The four Keys to Hearing from God, Virkler quotes Habakkuk 2:1-2 as the proof text that God speaks to us internally in spontaneous thoughts, visions, feelings, or impressions when we quiet our minds—guaranteed.

I will stand on my guard post And station myself on the rampart; And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me, And how I may reply when I am reproved. Then the Lord answered me and said, “Record the vision And inscribe it on tablets, That the one who reads it may run.” (Habakkuk 2:1, 2)

Look at what the very next verse states. Habakkuk claims that his words will certainly come to pass: “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3). We see that Habakkuk’s proof for claiming to be a legitimate prophet in chapter 3:1 is consistent with the criteria God commanded in Deuteronomy 18. People would know that Habakkuk’s words were certainly God’s voice because they would certainly come to pass. They could rely on them all to be true.

All Israelites who had heard Habakkuk speak or had read his words would have been hearing the voice of God with their physical ears or seeing His words with their physical eyes. Those who refused to listen or would not read the writings of Habakkuk were not hearing the voice of God as they should have been. Those who disobeyed Habakkuk’s words were disobeying God. Please note that the emotions or feelings of those who heard Habakkuk were not as important as their physically having heard the words of God’s mediator. Having feelings or having discussed them with “spiritual advisors” had no bearing on deciding whether or not the prophet’s words were God’s.

Virkler’s teaching continuously pushes his followers into mysticism and internal experiences in their imagination. Calling internal impressions and spontaneous thoughts “the Spirit,” Virkler minimizes rational understanding. On page 25 Virkler advocates a worldview he calls “Rationalism/Mysticism Combined.” He teaches people to imagine Jesus in their minds and coaches them to see spiritual visions when he writes, “How to see a vision (pictures which light upon your mind).” This concept is absent from scripture. God does not command us to train our imaginations to see Jesus in our hearts or to seek His voice there. Instead we are told that Jesus is in heaven seated physically at the right hand of God the Father waiting to return. In fact, God discourages imagination when it comes to hearing His voice. God’s true voice spoken through His mediator Jeremiah said this: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own imagination, Not from the mouth of the Lord’” (Jeremiah 23:16).

Mysticism - False Prophets to Ourselves

When God speaks we have only two choices: obey Him or sin. Falsely claiming to speak for God is damaging because people are deluded into serving something or someone other than God. This is why it is so important to have a clear voice of God and why false prophets were to be stoned. While we tend to apply “they speak a vision of their own imagination” to the words of others who claim to speak God’s words, this should also be applied to all those who claim their own imaginations are certainly the voice of God speaking to them internally. This means that mystics who don’t meet Deuteronomy 18’s 100 percent accuracy requirement are false prophets to themselves when they claim their spontaneous thoughts, visions, feelings, or impressions are certainly God’s voice. This is exactly where Virkler’s teachings lead us—he trains us to become false prophets unto ourselves! His seminar Hearing the Voice of God - Guaranteed claims that our spontaneous thoughts are certainly God’s voice. Contrast to this mystical approach to God’s tangible voice that speaks through Scripture:

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. (Hebrews 1:1-3)

God becomes man and speaks

The ultimate expression of God’s voice was a through a man who spoke to us with audible words, heard by men with physical ears, and written down for us with their own hands. These words continue to speak to us. This Man was the great prophet and mediator that Moses spoke about in Deuteronomy 18:15, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.” In a scene similar to Sinai, God descends upon a mountain in a cloud and commands 3 men standing in the presence of Moses to listen to Jesus, His Son (Mark 9:7). Peter, in Acts 3:22, and Stephen, in Acts 7:37, claimed that the man Jesus was this prophet Moses promised. Although nobody has ever seen the Father, the man Jesus is our mediator. With his mouth Jesus has spoken the Father’s words to us—words that we cannot hear or experience directly. The words of the man Jesus ARE the voice of God, spoken and understood by humans (the apostles) through their physical senses who wrote them down for our edification.

This is exactly what John wanted us to hear and believe. 1 John 1 tells us:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. (1John 1:1-4)

How far is this from the concept that God’s voice is to be sought in our spontaneous thoughts, visions, feelings or impressions? John knew that the words and claims made by the man Jesus were true because Jesus was bodily raised from the dead and John witnessed this with His physical senses. John wrote them down so that we might have fellowship with the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the church. Our relationship with God is accomplished through the words communicated to us by men who physically experienced them.

Is there an alternative to mysticism? Hear God’s Voice – Guaranteed (for real)

I would like to propose an alternative method in order to hear God’s voice with certainty. The concept is this: listen only to those men whom God has certified as His messengers. In other words, don’t follow mystics. Rather, “hear” the voice of God through scripture with your physical senses as communicated by these men. First, the trustworthy voice of God has spoken to Moses. Moses continues to speak God’s words to us even now through scripture, and to those words we remain accountable. Second, God’s voice speaks to us through the prophets who came after Moses, through history, to Malachi. Most importantly, God’s voice is heard in the words of the man Jesus as well as those men whom He physically appointed as His spokesmen (before other men who testified to that appointment through their physical senses as John did). In short, the guaranteed method by which we hear God’s voice is to read and study the scriptures in order to understand what the human authors were attempting to convey through their words.

The Holy Spirit and Scripture

After Christ ascended to the Father, He sent the Holy Spirit to those who believed in the voice of the Man He appointed. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26). One of the primary tasks of the Spirit was to enable Jesus’ human companions to remember the words He had spoken to them. Jesus had physically and objectively spoken to all of His appointed apostles including Paul. The same Holy Spirit continues to help us as well, not through mystical experience, but by bringing to our remembrance the voice of God spoken to us by these men and by helping us to see the application of their words to our own lives. The unseen Holy Spirit’s job is to testify to the One Mediator who was tangible and human. These men through the Spirit conveyed to us the voice of God in their writings. In scriptures we have God’s love letter to humanity explaining where we find fellowship and relationship with Him. All who believe the words delivered to us by these men enter God’s family, becoming His children and escaping His coming wrath. Those who claim there is no relationship without tangible two-way mystical dialog are deluded and deny the promise of the gospel. Even as a soldier held prisoner is still married to his wife while separated from her, having only her letters to read in his cell, so we are related to God if we believe in the words of those He sent to us. When He tangibly returns as a man, we will be with Him and rejoice.

The Holy Spirit is active in the words of scripture and uses God’s certain voice spoken there to convict and sanctify us. Those who understand, believe, and obey these written words will receive eternal life when they are physically reunited with their Mediator. In John 5 we see that though the Pharisees studied the words of Moses, they did not believe or obey them. Jesus says to them, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:46, 47). In the manner of Virkler, these Pharisees had “imagined” their own laws concerning the Sabbath and had set their spontaneous thoughts, impressions, and feelings as laws above God’s certain voice. The Pharisees were condemned because they did not obey the voice of God spoken through Moses, not because they obeyed it too well.

Internal impressions, feelings and providence

I am not claiming that God, in His providence, does not give us feelings or is not involved in our impressions. I am claiming that we can never be “guaranteed” that these feelings or impressions are God’s voice because there are many sources for impressions in our lives, and we are not infallible. We can only be “guaranteed” of hearing God’s voice through hearing the words of God’s chosen messengers. God has revealed His will to us in scripture, and we obey it or we sin. In all areas God has not revealed concerning our lives we have liberty to decide and to act as we wish—without fear. For example, obvious areas of liberty include choosing a mate or a career. God gives us liberty to make decisions in these areas by whatever criteria we wish to use, even irrational reasons, feelings, or passions. We can choose a career because of a dream or choose to marry someone because of an impression. God has given us liberty to choose. This does not mean that all choices are identically wise or that they will have the same results. It is usually advisable to make the wisest decisions we are capable of. Regarding areas in which God has not revealed in the scripture, God’s will for us remains hidden until it occurs providentially in history. Continuing on the example faced by a single person concerning marriage, God has not forbidden marriage (and even calls teachings that do so the “doctrine of demons”). Thus, single people have liberty to get married to eligible unmarried singles. Among all the eligible people in the world, the single person has liberty to choose a marriage partner. Whom God has chosen as the spouse remains a mystery until the marriage happens. We know by Jesus’ words, however, that once they have made their decision and have married, God Himself has joined them together. “For what God has joined together let no man separate.” They chose, and God’s will was done.

Compatiblism

The concept “compatiblism” means that we choose and are responsible for our choices, but God’s providential will is being accomplished through our choices. The Holy Spirit is active in our thoughts, desires, decisions, and daily life in order to accomplish God’s purposes in us, whether we feel it or not. We find comfort in the afflictions and effects of our choices, knowing that God has promised to work all things together for good those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes. We read and study His certain words to grow in understanding and obedience to His revealed will as He commanded. We live and make decisions without guilt or fear in all areas of liberty that are not revealed. As we do this, God’s Holy Spirit is active in the lives of believers, and all things are working for eternal good in their lives as they make decisions and live with the results.

*This was part two of Issue 105. You wil find it on page 5 of the PDF.

Issue 105 - March / April 2008

End Notes

1. You can hear excerpts of Virkler’s claims here: http://www.markvirkler.info/
2. Mark and Patti Virkler, How to Hear God’s Voice, (Shippensburg: Destiny Image, 2005)
3. Ibid. 19.

Published by Twin City Fellowship

Critical Issues Commentary
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St. Louis Park, MN 55426
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pastorbob@twincityfellowship.com

Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptures taken from the New American Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1988, 1995 The Lockman Foundation.

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