When a person is high on a mountain or elevated above other people, when speaking, the person's voice will carry and be heard more readily by those below. Natural (or constructed) amphitheaters are the opposite of this model and allow the voice to carry upwards. However, it is worth noting that the following words that introduce what is commonly known as “the Sermon on the Mount”:
- When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying (Matthew 5:1-2)
All Jesus did was sit on a mountain and open his mouth, so He could teach His disciples. Yet thousands were evidently present and heard Him speak. A crowd could be one hundred thousand people; in which case, since there were crowds present, this would obviously be more people than a hundred thousand, if only a crowd of people were hanging out to hear what was to be said.
How many were there when Jesus was speaking? We do not know, but there were crowds, not just a crowd of people.
George Whitfield (born: December 16, 1714, Gloucester, United Kingdom, died: September 30, 1770) was a renowned open air speaker, who spoke to tens of thousands of people without a microphone or any equipment.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, reporting one of his meetings, stated that his audience “covered three acres” —14,520 square yards. Another periodical described one of his congregations as “a prodigious concourse,” and other contemporaries used the terms “most numerous” and “an innumerable multitude.” Even his opposers left testimony in the matter. Dr. Trapp, a prominent London clergyman, made reference to “vast multitudes … so sottish as to run madding after him,” and the Rev. Thomas Church asserted, “He cannot possibly be supposed to know all … those present at his meetings of 30, 50, or 80,000.”[1]
John Alexander Dowie was another who was renowned to have spoken to tens of thousands in the open air without a microphone. [2]
When Moses was speaking, from what we are able to ascertain there were hundreds of thousands of people present—some estimate three million, which is not beyond a possibility because Neweiba Beach (Exodus 14 ) is sufficiently large enough to cater for three million people—even if there is nowhere to go.
Imagine the voice of Moses as he stood up on the Mountain of God and declared to the Israelites assembled in the valley below what was required.
When people are anointed by the Spirit of God, speaking to millions of people without a microphone is not an impossibility. For God nothing is impossible. The Spirit of God merely carries the anointed speaker’s voice to the ear of every hearer, who has an ear to hear.
Likewise, Jesus merely opened His mouth, He did not have to stand up on top of the mountain for the crowds to hear Him. Jesus sat down, opened His mouth and taught His disciples what we find in Matthew, chapters five to seven, and the crowds heard Him. Actually, we are also told that “the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29).
Moses speaking to the crowds of Israelites was no different to what happened when Jesus spoke, or Alexander Dowie spoke or George Whitfield spoke, the Spirit of God carried their voices and what they said was as if God Himself were speaking—which is the difference between the anointed and those who are not anointed; the wannabes.
Footnotes
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