Exodus 19:16-20

"And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And mount Sinai, the whole of it, smoked, because Jehovah descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And Jehovah came down upon mount Sinai, to the top of the mount; and Moses went up."

Repeatedly, the word here is that God came down or descended to the top of Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:18,20). There is no way to prove such a thing, but our Lord Jesus Christ, whom we believe to be "God of very God" spoke of the Pentateuch as "the Word of God," assuring us that not a jot or a tittle of it shall pass away until all shall be fulfilled, and we accept this as the truth of God. There was actually no other way for God to reveal himself to mankind except in this appearance, along with the events leading up to it. The thunders, lightnings, and an earthquake, the mighty mountain smoking all over like a furnace, and the exceedingly loud voice of a trumpet, growing louder and louder - all those things were the result of God's will to impress the people with the absolutely unique nature of the experience engaging them. We have no need to suppose that Sinai was volcanic (as a matter of fact, it is not), or that some unusual electric storm was utilized by Moses as the occasion for arranging this theophany. As a matter of truth, Moses did not arrange it. God did it. The earthquake, etc., were not natural occurrences at all but witnesses of the theophany taking place. This earthquake was echoed and answered by the one at Calvary, the thick cloud was answered by the darkened sky that shrouded the Cross, and the exceedingly loud trumpet-sound shall once again be heard in the Second Advent of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:52).

This very paragraph is the heart of the O.T. God speaking to man! This contradicts, frontally and effectively, the idea that anybody, much less the Jews, developed, discovered, and evolved monotheism and true religion. Faith in God was not evolved from the alleged animism that is falsely supposed to have preceded it. The whole Bible, Genesis, Exodus, all of it, teaches that, "Monotheism was the original faith of man, and that all other beliefs are a departure from it."[21] The vast and comprehensive teachings of the Judaeo-Christian religion are revealed from Almighty God, not discovered or developed by ignorant and fallible men groping through the superstitious darkness of the remote past. Fundamental to any true understanding of Christianity is this basic proposition that God Spoke to Men. (See also Hebrews 1:1ff).

"The voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder ..." The word here for trumpet is "ram's horn," but it was used only because there was no other word to describe it. Two million people heard it and "trembled." How preposterous it is to suppose that an ordinary "trumpet" could have produced a result like that! Men shall hear it again, "when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise." Hywel R. Jones caught the unique significance of this passage thus:

"Here is an external voice to Moses (Exodus 19:19), and not the process of inner conscience and internal reflection on his part. The theophany is not a poetic accessory. This is important for our understanding of the fact of revelation. "God spoke ... to our fathers" (Hebrews 1:1)."[22]