Dreams and Visions

Recently I was doing some research online and came across an article that someone wrote on the topic of visions. This person claimed that God had given him a series of visions that, among other things, offered glimpses into the future. He then started talking about the details of these visions and what they meant.

I’m sure it’s not difficult to find people online who claim to have had special revelation from God – be it about Heaven, or Hell, or the future, or the Second Coming, or whatever. Many people have claimed that God told them exactly when the Rapture was going to happen. Other people claim to have had special revelations about the afterlife. From what I have been told, if you want to know what Heaven is going to be like all you have to do is head down to your local Christian bookstore, where various authors are all-too-happy to fill you in on what they saw on their personal, guided tours.

I have to say I’m pretty skeptical of all this, for a whole lot of reasons. One thing I noticed long ago is that these personal accounts of Heaven are rarely consistent. What I mean is that the various accounts cannot be reconciled: it was as if each author had visited an entirely different place. For example, one book said that the gates of Heaven were each made out of a single giant pearl, while another said that the gates were composed of thousands of tiny pearls, while still another said that the gates weren’t made out of pearls at all but just had a pearlescent look to them. Well, which is it? If you sit down and read several different accounts back-to-back you’ll see exactly what I mean – they don’t agree with each other, and they offer conflicting details!

If they were truly all accounts of the same place then you would expect them to be quite similar, but they are not. As an analogy, it is something like questioning three different witnesses about a bank robbery, only to find that each witness offered a completely different description of the bank robber. If this happened in a court of law their accounts would be thrown out. Even if one of the descriptions was accurate, the fact that all three disagreed would make it impossible to tell who was telling the truth and who was not.

That brings us to another point. Many times the visions include details that directly contradict the Bible. For example, in one rather famous vision about Hell the person said that he saw demons there that were torturing lost souls. Now, I realize that this is a very popular idea that is deeply ingrained into our culture, but the idea that demons are in control of Hell comes from Dante’s Inferno, not the Bible. In fact, Hell was actually created as a place to torment demons:

Matthew 25:41: “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:”

In fact, the ultimate fate of the devil is to be tormented, not to be the chief tormenter of Hell:

Revelation 20:10: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Demons are not in charge of Hell; in fact, they desperately want to avoid going there. At one point when Jesus cast some demons out of a person the demons begged Him not to do something:

Luke 8:31: “And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.”

The phrase “the deep” is actually the word “abyss”. This is the same place mentioned in Revelation 20:1 where the devil will one day be bound for a thousand years. Demons do not want to go to Hell; they are afraid of it, and know that one day they will be tormented there forever and ever. They are not in charge of it, nor do they run the place. That is a pagan idea that is not found in the Bible – but it is a popular part of our culture.

If the person had actually had a genuine tour of the real Hell, I would have expected it to conform to what the Bible has to say – but instead it contradicted the Bible and replaced its description of Hell with the one that we find in popular culture. This strongly implies that the person’s vision did not come from God. The Lord is simply not going to contradict what He revealed in His Word.

That brings up another problem with these visions: they often end up being extra-biblical sources of spiritual revelation. After all, the whole appeal of these type of books is that they offer details that aren’t found in the Bible! They give the reader a chance to discover what the afterlife is really going to be like, or they prophecy about events that the Bible doesn’t mention, and so forth. These books offer themselves as “expansion packs” to the Bible – and that is exactly how cults get started. The Book of Mormon, after all, is a “special revelation” that Joseph Smith was given by an angel – a revelation that offered truths not found in the Bible. The same thing can be said of Islam. In each case, we’re being told that the Bible just isn’t enough: if you just read this book over here you’ll find out all sorts of new truths!

Yet the Bible claims to be all that we need – a complete work that has no need for expansions:

2 Timothy 3:15: “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”

Do you see what these verses are saying? Not only are the Scriptures said to be the words of God (and not the words of men), and not only are they able to make you wise, but it says that they are able to make you perfect and give you everything you need for all good works. If the Bible has what you need to equip you to perform all good works, then that means it doesn’t have any gaps in it that would need to be covered by some new revelation (like the Book of Mormon).

These verses don’t say “All Scripture is given so that that the man of God may know some things, until one day additional revelations come along to fill in the gaps.” Lots of cults like to claim that the Bible is not enough, but the Bible says otherwise. It really does claim to be all that we need.

Of course, not all visions try to teach brand-new doctrines (although many of them do). There are some cases where people say that they simply went to Heaven, got a guided tour, and then came back. They don’t try to tell you that Christianity is all wrong or that there’s some new way to God that doesn’t involve Jesus. Instead they just offer glimpses of Heaven or Hell (or, in some cases, both). Let’s lay aside for the moment the visions that directly contradict the Bible. What about the others?

Well, I’m not going to say that visions of Heaven never happen. In fact, I can think of several cases in the Bible where they did happen. For example, the apostle Paul had just such a vision:

2 Corinthians 12:1: “It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

Here we see Paul talking about a time when he was caught up to Heaven. (Paul speaks in the third person for purposes of modesty and humility, but he is talking about something he personally experienced.) Notice, though, that Paul doesn’t actually reveal what he saw! All he says is that he heard “unspeakable words”. We don’t know what he actually experienced because he doesn’t tell us.

Another very famous person who had a vision of Heaven was the disciple John, who wrote the book of Revelation. In Revelation 4 we find an amazing description of the throne room of Heaven, but that’s about all the book has to say about the subject. The rest of the book talks about the Tribulation, and judgment, and the Millennial Kingdom, and the Eternal State, and other things.

Now, I will admit that it does talk about the New Jerusalem, but in Revelation that city does not arrive on the scene until after the Rapture, the Second Coming, the Millennial Kingdom, and the Great White Throne Judgment. If it doesn’t come into existence until after all of those events then it is far in our future! I realize it is very possible that the New Jerusalem is in Heaven right now, but I don’t know that for certain and it’s quite hard to prove it from Revelation 21. The city may exist right now or it might not have even been built yet; I really don’t know.

That, in fact, is the point I would like to make: there is a tremendous amount about Heaven that we just don’t know! What is the average day like there? Do people spend all their time in the Throne Room, praising God, or do they wander around doing other things? Do people eat? Do they have mansions, as Jesus mentioned in John 14:2, or was He talking about something else? Do people currently live in the New Jerusalem or is that reserved for the future?

There are some things we can know about Heaven, and I’ve already discussed those elsewhere. The amazing thing is that there is a tremendous amount of basic detail that we just don’t know. The reason I find this amazing is because Paul had a vision of paradise, and yet he didn’t tell us anything about it. John apparently spent quite a bit of time in Heaven and yet he only tells us about the Throne Room and the New Jerusalem. Jesus was the creator of Heaven and yet He spent more time talking about Hell than Heaven.

What I’m trying to point out is that God has had a lot of opportunities to fill in all of the missing details and yet He did not do so. Am I really supposed to believe that, even though God chose not to reveal the details of Heaven in the Bible, I can still learn all the answers through these other, highly contradictory visions? In other words, am I to believe that if I really want to know what Heaven is going to be like, what I should be studying is not the Bible but all these extra-Biblical visions and revelations? That is where the truth can be found?

Why is it, then, that these modern authors are permitted to describe Heaven in such rich detail, and yet Paul and John and Isaiah were largely kept silent? We know for sure that these men were actually there because we have God’s Word on the subject. Is it not strange that God would choose to reveal details about the afterlife through sources other than His Word – sources that cannot be verified or checked for accuracy? Does no one find that odd?

Once again, I am not saying that revelations of Heaven do not happen; they clearly do. What I do wonder, though, is whether we’ve become far too trusting when it comes to visions and revelations. Many people claim to have visions from God, and we simply accept their accounts without question. I think it’s time we took a step back and began taking a bit more of a critical look at all of these visions and revelations that are so popular today, to see if they really are of God.