God doesn’t speak to just anyone. Communicating with the divine is mediated by clerics, sacred texts, by long and complicated rituals. Many traditions, such as Christianity, put a special emphasis on the written word, recordings of revelations from prophets, aeons, or the divine itself.

So what happens when God talks to someone who isn’t “supposed” to hear him? What distinguishes new divine revelation from blasphemy? How can you be sure it’s God speaking and not a devil or demon? Not a charlatan faking a religious experience for their own ends?

The emergence of new divine revelation that challenges or reinterprets the existing theology has happened in many traditions. In this episode we’re going to begin the story of how the God Worshipers - and then the Taiping - handled it when God began speaking regularly at Thistle Mountain.