Dreams, Visions And Experiencing God

The Bible tells us that people have visions that are not from God. We will use the term "false vision" to refer to any vision that is not from God. There seem to be two different sources for them -- the devil and the human soul. The Bible talks about both of these.

Visions From The Devil

The devil is able to give supernatural revelation to people. He can (and does) try to counterfeit God's voice to us. He is capable of giving false prophecies as well, which is why 1 Cor 14:29 encourages us to listen carefully to words and judge or evaluate them. Did you know the devil can also give pictures or images to people, just like he can imitate God's still small voice?

The whole subject of supernatural revelation and Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) has become very popular in recent times. There are a lot of movies and television series based on this. For instance, there is a series about a lady with ESP who works for the FBI to help them locate missing persons, usually kidnap victims. In that series, the telepathic lady gets highly symbolic dreams that contain information about where the missing person is. The dreams contain clues, and the show is about how another seasoned FBI agent uses her expert detective skills to figure out the clues in the dreams and interpret them. In the end of each episode, they always manage to locate and save the life of the missing person. The premise of the whole show is that the lady uses her ESP to find the missing people. And people love to watch this type of show because they are fascinated with supernatural revelation.

Disney recently introduced a children's series about a teenage girl, named Raven, who has ESP and gets visions of soon-to-occur events. The visions often lead her into some humorous antics. This show is also very popular. Why? Because people are fascinated with the false visions that the devil gives. These shows are Hollywood and they are fiction. But they are based on "real life" experiences of a few people.

The fact is, there are people who receive supernatural revelation from the devil (though they don't usually understand that he is the source). They call it things like "second vision," "the gift," "the sight," etc. This is really a form of divination or witchcraft that unbelievers practice. But it does occur today and many people are fascinated with it.

And at times, the devil is also able to give false visions to a true believer. That is why it is so important that we pray and stay close to God and debrief with Him about visions that we do get. The more that we yield to God, the more that the Holy Spirit has control of us, the easier it is for Him to alert us to false revelation from the enemy. We do not need to be deceived or taken in by the devil's false revelation because we have God's written word and we also have the indwelling Holy Spirit who speaks to us and teaches us and alerts us to enemy deceit.

Let's look at a few verses that talk about false visions from the devil. Jeremiah 14:14, says, "And the Lord said to me, 'The prophets prophesy lies in My name. I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart." This verse identifies two sources of false prophecy -- one is the deceptions of the prophet's own heart, which is what opens them to the false visions in the first place. The other is "divination" or receiving revelation from the devil.

Ezekiel 13:7 also discusses that. It says, "Have you not seen a futile vision, and have you not spoken false divination? You say, 'The Lord says,' but I have not spoken." God is speaking to false prophets and saying that the vision that they saw did not come from Him but it came from the devil (false divination). Again in Ezekiel 21:29, we read, "they see false visions for you, they divine a lie to you, to bring you on the necks of the wicked...." Here God identifies the source of the false visions as from the devil (because they divine a lie). And this passage goes on to explain why the devil does it -- to bring us into bondage.

The bottom line is that the devil will use false visions and he will even try to use them in the church. We need to be aware that he does that, and we need to seek God for His revelation and for His revelation ONLY. If we ask God to alert us to the lies of the enemy and sincerely seek Him, then He is happy to do so.

Of course, a primary way we determine the lies of the enemy is by bouncing what we see against what God's word says. If the vision contradicts God's word, we know it is not from God, and it must be rejected. But some visions can't be bounced against God's word because God does not discuss it in the Bible. For instance, a person may see a vision of a certain car and believe God is telling them to purchase that car. You will not find anything in the Bible that tells you to purchase one brand of automobile over another, because God's word just does not address that subject. But if you pray and sincerely seek God with a heart committed to obey Him, you can be sure that God will speak to you about whether it was really His will for you to buy that car.

I am reminded of an acquaintance of mine who saw angels in visions and received instructions from them. But the things that these "angels" spoke to this acquaintance did not line up very well with God's word. For instance he was on a long drive and they told him that he should feel free to speed and they would alert him to when a policeman was present, so that he could slow down to the speed limit and not get a ticket. The angels told him that he was very important to God, so he did not need to be limited to the laws of the land, they were only for other people who were not as important to God's plans.

What do you think of that? Does that sound biblical to you? It sure did not sound biblical to me. It seemed like it was in direct contradiction with Romans 13:1, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities." I believe my acquaintance had a false vision that was intended to lead him stray and move him into sin, where he would come out from God's protective covering and become fair prey to the demonic attack.

False Visions From Human Imagination

There are times when we want something so bad that we convince ourselves that God has said we can have it when He hasn't really said that to us. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Because we are still sinful and fallen creatures we can be deceived by the desires of our hearts.

For instance, I knew an intercessor who somehow became convinced that her primary intercessory assignment was to keep a little girl who had cancer alive by praying for her. The child died. The intercessor could not handle that. She had a vision of the child rising from the dead when she prayed for her, then everyone in the community being saved when they saw the girl rise from the dead.

(I don't think that was really a vision from God, I think it was her own heart trying to make sense of the girl's death when she thought it was her intercessory duty to keep her alive through her prayer.) She went to the funeral and caused a big scene by praying for the girl to be raised from the dead. The child stayed dead and was buried. Then she had another vision of the buried child raising from the dead and the whole city getting saved because of that. She spent the next three years trying, through prayer and intercession, to raise this buried child from the dead. She even tried to mobilize several intercessors from many different parts of the world to join her in this task.

My understanding of this situation is that she did not want to admit to herself that either of two things had happened -- either it had never been an intercessory assignment from God to keep this girl alive through prayer, or she had failed in her assignment. She wanted to believe she was a good and anointed intercessor and that she had not made a mistake regarding this assignment. So her imagination cooked up the vision of the child rising from the dead so that she did not have to face the fact that she was never assigned to keep the child alive. That was never her responsibility, it was always God's. But she had derived a false sense of purpose and destiny in praying for this child, and her unconscious mind did not want to give that up.

The bottom line is that sometimes peoples' minds can play tricks on them to support deep-seated beliefs or delusions -- the more they have invested in needing to believe something, the more likely their mind is to play a trick on them. So some people end up seeing false visions because they need to believe something so badly. Other's never actually see the vision; they just lie about it (to support their assertions) until they actually start to believe it themselves.

The Bible talks about people getting false visions from their own imaginations, or from their own heart. For instance, Jeremiah 23:16 says, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: 'Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; they speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord.'"

Lamentations 2:14 says something similar, "Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions. They have not uncovered your iniquity to bring back your captives, but have envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions."

Ezekiel 13:16 says, "'The prophets of Israel who prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace,' says the Lord God." In other words, when we want or believe something strong enough, our imagination can convince us that we are seeing a vision that is not really a vision from God.

I do not want to make you afraid of visions, I just wanted to alert you to the fact that not all visions come from God, just not like all of our dreams come from Him either.

There are three sources for any given vision or dream -- God, the devil or our own heart/mind. We need to be aware of that and to seek God to alert us should we ever receive something that is not from Him. We should not reject all visions or all dreams because it might be a product of our imagination or come from the enemy. Rather we should draw close to God and walk in obedience with Him and trust Him to let us know if we are about to be deceived by a vision that did not come from Him.