The Voices of the Prophets

"They knew not... the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath" (Acts 13:27).

"God having... spoken... in the prophets... in divers manners" (Hebrews 1:1).

Our object in these chapters will be to see what those divers voices and manners of God's speaking mean for us in our time and our lives: not a fullscale study of the Prophets, but just the salient message for our instruction, comfort, guidance and - perhaps - warning.

The statement made by the Apostle Paul in the first quotation above is a very astonishing and arresting one, and itself becomes a message and a warning from the Prophets. It says precisely that on every Sabbath day, over a long period of years, the Prophets were read in the hearing of a people, in a great centre like Jerusalem, and in numerous synagogues far and wide, and, while the words were read and heard, and while the Prophets were speaking through the mouths of priests and synagogue-rulers, the people and their rulers "knew not the voices of the prophets". Words, Scriptures, sounds, times without number, but the 'Voice' undiscerned and undetected; that inner meaning, that vital message, that one inclusive Object unrecognized.