What we believe and teach - Visions, dreams, revelations - |
God speaks
to men through visions and dreams, or through an audible voice only (in this
case, therefore, He speaks to them without a vision or a dream). He speaks to
unbelievers to lead them to Jesus Christ, that is to say, to save them from
their sins and from everlasting perdition. He speaks to the saints to
encourage them, to comfort them, to rebuke them, to teach them, to warn them.
God can reveal them an event which is to happen or an event which has already
taken place, or the true identity of a person, or He can command them to go
to a certain place or to do a particular thing. God can also reveal them the
presence of evil spirits in a person or in a place. |
God cannot
lie, so He can’t reveal a future event that will not take place or an event
that did not take place. Therefore, if anyone predicts an event and that
event does not happen, he who has predicted that event has spoken
presumptuously; if anyone says that the Lord has revealed him an event which
has already happened, but that event did not take place, that person has told
a lie. God cannot reveal doctrines which nullify the Holy Scripture. He cannot
reveal another Gospel, or an alleged ‘full Gospel’ or ‘fullness of the
Gospel’ as if the Gospel which is written in the Bible were incomplete. All
the visions and all the dreams and all the revelations which prove to be
presumptuous, untruthful and contrary to what the Scripture teaches, must be
rejected without hesitation. |
Sometimes
God guides us even by visions, dreams and revelations. I have said
‘sometimes’ because God doesn’t always use these means to cause us to go to a
certain place or to do a particular thing, or to meet someone. In most cases
God guides us through the Scriptures, the impulses that the Spirit of God
gives us inwardly in one direction or another, and through circumstances
which are created and changed by God according to the counsel of His will. |