In his state of ignorance it is essential that man receives knowledge that he does not have, knowledge that will teach him about his Creator who is his highest good, knowledge that lifts him up above an animal existence to the heavenly realms to which he should aspire. God’s knowledge is infinite and man has been designed to explore it. God speaks to men and women of his being and attributes, of the purpose of this world, of the problem of sin, of the terms on which he will deal with us, of the Redeemer sent to reconcile us to God.
But in our state of rebellion, why should we expect to hear anything from God? Why is heaven not completely silent towards a creature that has so deliberately rejected God’s authority over it? The fact that God speaks at all should be the greatest cause of wonder to fallen men and women because while there is communication from heaven to earth, there is hope for mankind. God would not speak again to the human race after he has comprehensively warned them of the consequences of disobedience, and yet they have gone ahead and ignored his commandment. There would be nothing more to say, for what should follow is the immediate judgment of the human race. And yet God still speaks, and since he begins nothing that he does not bring to conclusion, we can dare to hope that we may yet hear words of life from him. God’s first words after the fall pronounced a judgment on man, but they also delivered him a promise that gave him grounds for hope that he might yet live. Following that, God showed the basis of forgiveness and taught the principle of sacrifice. He made a covenant with Abraham and promised a coming seed who would redeem us from hell, and he prefigured the work of the Redeemer in the details of the ceremonial law, but still the people had to wait for his coming.
Hebrews begins with something that God has done and our translators make the first word of the epistle, God. Actually, God is not named as the first word of the epistle in the original Greek. It begins more or less along these lines, ‘At sundry times and in diverse manners God spake in time past’, but because this is an act of God our translators have quite reasonably put the divine name at the very beginning of the book to make it clear we understand the sense of the original God has done something.
He spoke unto the fathers by the prophets: that is a generalisation to a degree. Moses was a prophet, the first five books of the Old Testament were by him. David was a prophet of course, Samuel was a prophet before him, beginning the historic books and we can readily accept that not every single book was actually written by somebody who is named as a prophet. We don't know the authors, the inspired authors, of some of the books, but clearly, when they wrote under inspiration they were acting prophets, if not permanent prophets, because to be inspired and to write is a prophetic act. So the statement stands that ‘God spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.’ That's the time that was, the Old Testament era.