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When Moses entered the Tent of Meeting to speak with the LORD, he heard the voice speaking to him from between the two cherubim above the atonement cover on the ark of the Testimony. And he spoke with him.

Numbers 7:89

Today, God speaks with us clearly and unambiguously through his Inspired Written Word, the Bible.  If anyone claims today to have heard the voice of God speaking audibly to them, we need to check the message against the infallible authority of God’s Word.  One of the reasons for this is that the Apostle Paul warns us that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14) and he is very adept at leading the Church along false paths, and into false doctrines, in this capacity.

Because there were no written Scriptures in the time of Moses, God spoke directly with Moses and revealed his truth to him in this way.  This how the first Five Books of our Bible – the ‘Pentateuch’, or the Jewish ‘Torah’ (Law), came into being.

And the place where God spoke with Moses is significant: God’s voice came from “between the two cherubim above the atonement cover on the ark of the Testimony” in the “Tent of Meeting”, or ’Tabernacle’.  The only place sinful Man can meet and communicate with a HOLY God is at the ‘Atonement Cover’ or ‘Kapporeth’, which the KJV translates as ‘Mercy Seat’.  (The ‘Day of Atonement’ in Hebrew is ‘Yom Kippur’, using the same Hebrew root ‘KPR’.)  Here, God’s Holy Wrath against our failure and inability to keep his Ten Commandments is mercifully ‘propitiated’ (turned back, because someone/thing is punished in the Law-breaker’s place) through the Sacrificial System which points ultimately to the One True Perfect Sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf.  As the Apostle Paul explains: “God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, a ‘propitiation’ (the Greek word is the one used to translate ‘kapporeth’ in the Greek OT), through faith in his blood.  He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26).

sWhen the gross sinner, John Newton, discovered this for himself he wrote: “Approach, my soul, the mercy seat, where Jesus answers prayer; there humbly fall before his feet, for none can perish there.  Thy promise is my only plea, with this I venture nigh; thou callest burdened souls to thee, and such, O Lord, am I.  Bowed down beneath a load of sin, by Satan sorely pressed, by wars without and fears within, I come to thee for rest.  Be thou my shield and hiding place, that, sheltered near thy side, I may my fierce accuser face, and tell him thou hast died!  O wondrous love!  To bleed and die, to bear the cross and shame, that guilty sinners, such as I, might plead thy gracious name!”.