[Untitled: The Voice of God]

Thatcher, Oregon
February 1, 1922

Mr. Lull gave testimony that he had been delivered from pain due to a spinal trouble he had had since he was eleven or twelve years of age.  Was never without suffering more  or less, and sometimes unbearable.

I wonder if you have ever paid attention to the different occasions in reading the Scriptures when the voice of God is mentioned .  You know the thing that makes the Bible the Bible is the fact that somebody had an interview with God.  Somebody heard from heaven before there was any Bible.  Then the conversation or the incident or the experience was recorded, and these became the Word of God.  Now the Word of God is indestructible because it was a real voice, because it was a real experience, because God really did or said something and the record there of is true.

If you wanted to prove like you do in mathematics, concerning the Bible and its inspiration, it is very simple.  Every child is taught to prove whether his sum is correct or not.  And if you have doubts and questions and fears concerning the Bible and its inspiration, we know that if one soul ever heard from heaven another soul may.  If ever one soul had one interview with God, another soul may.  If any man ever knew his sins forgiven at any period, another man may know his sins forgiven now.  If there ever was a man or woman healed by the power of God at any time, then men and women can be healed again.  And the only thing necessary is to return again in soul experience to that same place of intimacy with God where the original individual met God.  Now is that clear?

That is the way you prove the Word of God.  That is the reason that Christian love the Word of God.  That is the reason that the Word of God becomes the thing that men live by and that men will die by.

I was reading today a little article by W. J. Bryant, in which he quotes the beautiful old hymn:

Faith of our fathers! Living still
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword:
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whene’er we hear that glorious word:
Faith of our fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death!

The reason men lived for the Word of God and died for the Word of God, the reason they were ready to endure dungeon, fire, and sword was because of the fact that the Word of God became a living reality to them-not just a theory.

No one can estimate the value to my soul that the first healing my eyes beheld was to me.  I will never forget it.  It did more to establish faith and dismiss doubts and fears than anything else that had ever occurred.  I had been converted when comparatively young, and naturally as a man [this sermon is incomplete].