Does God speak to us outside of Scripture? Dr. Ligon Duncan explores how God speaks to us through His written word.
Video Transcript
I am sometimes asked, “Does God speak to us outside of Scripture?” Often when that question is being asked, what is being asked is does God directly reveal Himself in extraordinary special revelation to us today? Does He speak through prophetic words? Does He speak through dreams and visions? And there are certainly people out there that teach things like that.
Consider Christ
I want to draw your attention to what the Scripture says. The Scripture says that in these last times God has spoken to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. It’s very interesting that even when Jesus was on earth, He pointed disciples to Scripture. Think about this on the road to Emmaus, after Jesus has been raised from the dead, the disciples are befuddled, confounded, bewildered, and discouraged because they think that Jesus has died and they think that all their hopes have been dashed. And Jesus appears to them on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is there. Now, you can’t get a more extraordinary revelation than that. But in the course of that conversation, it is fascinating that Jesus points them to the Scriptures.
If Jesus points us to Scripture to hear God, that’s where we need to go.
And He says to them, “Oh, foolish of heart, and slow to believe all the words that the prophets have spoken.” He points them to the Scriptures. Jesus is there with them; He could have said, “I’m going to give you some direct revelation from God because I am God in the flesh; here I am.” He points them to the Scriptures (Luke 24). And then he does the same thing with these disciples in the upper room. Think about that, Jesus is there and He’s pointing them to Scripture. And so when somebody comes to me and wants to know if they can hear God outside of Scripture, the first thing I want to point him to is Scripture, because that’s where Jesus pointed His disciples.
Sufficiency of Scripture
Very often, people want to hear God outside of Scripture have not paid attention to how much God has said to us in the Scripture. We believe in not only the inerrancy and infallibility and authority of Scripture, we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. And if Jesus points us to Scripture to hear God, that’s where we need to go.
