“I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.”
II Corinthians 12:1b
Today our text deals with a vision that Paul received where he was caught up into Paradise and saw things unlawful for him to repeat. As we look into this text it is important we understand the place that visions serve in God’s self-revelation.
Why does God give visions? Does God still give visions today? The passage in Numbers 12 is instructive to us in learning some foundations about what visions are:
“Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision;
I speak to him in a dream, not so with my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house.
I speak to him face to face, even plainly and not in dark sayings; and he sees the form of the Lord.”
Numbers 12:6-8a
In this story God is correcting Miriam and Aaron for attacking Moses for taking an Ethiopian wife.
It seems from the story that they were also disgruntled that Moses was the sole source of prophetic messages from the Lord.
The Lord became angry with their denunciation of Moses and struck Miriam with leprosy.
Moses interceded on her behalf and the Lord healed her.
Some things to note. First, vision and prophesy are linked. Visions were not personal revelations, rather they were a prophetic message from God.
Secondly, visions were ‘dark sayings’- or veiled, shadowy revelations. Just read Daniel and Ezekiel to see how obscure some of these visions really were.
Third, a vision is a revelation about God- “I make myself known to him”. In other words they were a part of the progressive revelation of God whereby He was disclosing things about Himself to mankind.
In Hebrews 1:1 we find that “in times past God spoke to the fathers through the prophets in many various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us in His Son.” Notice the finality of revelation in that verse.
God’s self-disclosure came to an end in His revelation of Christ. He is the apex of what God has said.
So how about visions in the book of Acts? What about this vision that Paul had? Are they a normative part of the Christian experience? Should we expect to have ‘private revelations’ from God?
We’ll discuss that in today’s message.
Because of grace,
Tim
