Fred, in another question you asked:
Did those with Saul/Paul at his conversion hear a voice?
ACT 9:7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
ACT 22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.
Like you, I became aware of this question when I was in the Family. The answer to this one is simple, and again the confusion lies with the Family reading only the outdated English of the KJV. I guess you know by now that I have a beef about relying on a 400-year old translation. Berg said one of the reasons he preferred the KJV over modern translations was because (quote-unquote) ‘it was translated by believing translators in a day when heretics were burned at the stake.’ Yeah, & Berg would have been at the front of the line. Anyway, please let me quote those verses in the NIV (New International Version):
The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. (Acts 9:7)
‘My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. (Acts 22:9)
The people with Saul heard the sound of the voice but didn’t understand what was being said because some people are more spiritually sensitive than others. Here’s another example of the same principle:
[Jesus said], ‘Father, glorify your name!’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.’ The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. (John 12:28–29).
The spiritually insensitive heard a loud sound & thought it was thunder; more spiritually attuned people picked up that it was a supernatural voice—& guessed it was an angel. No telling whether most of them even understood the actual words though.
Here’s another example of people of differing spiritual sensitivity reacting to a vision/voice.
I, Daniel, was the only one who saw the vision; the men with me did not see it, but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves’ (Daniel 10:7).