Dreams, Visions And Experiencing God

What do you think of when you hear the word "vision?"

Do you think of the last-day vision that John chronicled in the book of Revelation where he saw things and interacted with what he saw, even to the point of eating something at God's direction? Or do you think of something like Peter experienced when he was hungry on the rooftop garden, waiting for lunch to be prepared. He saw a sheet let down from heaven with every type of unclean animal on it and was told to "kill and eat" -- this vision was intended as a lesson to help Peter understand that God does not consider the Gentiles unclean. Or do you think of something like Daniel experienced, where He saw the Ancient Of Days sitting on His judgment throne and was thrust into the very presence of God Himself? Or do you think of what Amos experienced, where God would show him a picture (such as a basket of summer fruit) and then tell him what it meant?

What do you think of when you hear the word "vision?"

Any of the things I just mentioned are all visions from the Bible. They are all very distinct and different from each other; drastically different types of supernatural experiences. Yet, the Bible describes each of them a "vision."

I used to have a very narrow definition of what a "vision" was. I expected it to conform to one of two possible scenarios. The first would be when a person was suddenly physically transported to another place and to new surroundings that they would see and interact with, and where they would have some type of encounter with God. An example might be how Paul talks about being caught up to the third heaven where he saw and heard inexpressible things. Or John, in the book of Revelation, who was handed a scroll and told to eat it.

My second definition of a vision was where heaven would suddenly invade a person's current surroundings in a physical and tangible way. An example is what happened to Jacob, when he laid down to take a nap and suddenly a ladder appeared out of nowhere, and there were angels ascending and descending from heaven on it, right in front of him. He was able to grab one of these angels and wrestle with it.

I was quite happy with my theoretical definition of what a vision was until I had one that did not fit that definition. But my first open vision did not happen the way I expected that it should. A heavenly scene was sort of superimposed on top of my real surroundings. At first the heavenly scene was very faint and I thought it might be a figment of my imagination. I could still focus on my physical surroundings and see them clearly. It was like it was a double exposure photograph, where two different pictures were taken on the same negative. One was my bedroom and the other was a heavenly scene before the throne of God. I seemed to be in both places at the same time. For a bit, my bedroom was more real and more tangible than God's throne in heaven. But as I began to focus my attention on God and what He was doing, the vision became very real and very tangible. It did not take long before I stopped noticing my natural (physical) surroundings at all. It was like the vision was first superimposed over reality. As I focused on it, it swallowed up my real surroundings until I did not see them anymore.

I was afraid to share my vision experience for several years, because it did not conform to what I thought a vision should be like. It was a great help to me when I read a forward in one of Rick Joyner's books where he talked about how he got his vision -- and he described that at times he would be aware of his natural circumstances and even to interact with them (such as answering the phone if it rang). Reading his description of how he got his vision made it easier for me to accept how I had received mine. (I guess it gave validity to my experience to find out that others had a similar experience.)

When I had my vision, I did not watch it like someone would watch a movie. I lived it; I experienced it. I literally entered into it and interacted with God and with the angels I saw in my vision. It was very experiential in nature. I call that type of vision an "open vision."

I have friends who have experienced visions in a totally different way. They saw the vision as if they were watching a movie screen. They never entered their vision, they never interacted with it. But they watched it in explicit detail. Let me share an example -- I remember one time when a prophetic lady was staying at my house in the guest room. There was a world map on the wall, facing the bed. She was sitting on the bed and talking to me, I stood with my back to the map, facing her. Suddenly she stopped looking at me, she stopped making eye contact and was looking past me, at the map or the wall behind me. Her gaze was fixed on that. I remember turning around to see what she was looking at.

All I could see was the wall and the map. But she looked at it like it was a television set showing an interesting scene. Then she began to describe what she saw -- a heavenly procession where everyone was dressed in bright colors and where God's glory shone around everyone. She began to describe it to me in great detail, describing each person as they marched past her, and her eyes appeared to be following these invisible people in the invisible picture that she watched and described. This went on for five minutes. Since she wasn't looking at me anyhow, I turned to watch the map, hoping to get a glimpse of what she saw. But all I could see was the world map which had hung on my guest room wall for years.

Other people have seen visions as a still shot, like a photograph. One of my friends, Victoria, is able to file these in a mental file-cabinet and can pull any of them out and look at it any time she wants to. Once she is given the picture, it stays with her forever.

As you can see, there are many different ways that God uses visions to speak to people. This teaching series will take a look at some of the different types of visions -- drawing both from Scripture and from personal experiences of modern day prophets. It will also explore a few related areas, such as God communicating to us in a pictorial way (which is different from a vision), dreams, and how we can use our imagination to God's glory.

There are many different types of visions in the Bible. We are not going to examine each and every one of them. Instead we will group them into categories, and look at examples from the various categories. Here are the categories we will look at.

• Visions where God speaks personally to an individual. This includes God commissioning an individual to His service, or God communicating specific detailed instructions, teaching the person, and occasionally God even brings correction though a vision.

• Visions where God communicates a message to a prophet so that the prophet can declare it to the people.

• False visions, or visions that are not from God.

• Symbolic visions where the imagery in the vision is symbolic and God usually has to explain the symbolism to the person.

• Visions that contain revelation of God or heaven or far distant future events (such as Daniel's last-day visions).

• Angelic visitations in dreams and visions.

In addition to these topics, we will also discuss how God communicates on a regular basis to some of His children pictorially, how God speaks to individuals in dreams (and a little on interpreting dreams) and how we can use our imagination to God's glory as we seek Him.