Dreams and visions
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Hi Vassal..
I have had many dreams about my personal future.. First person perspective dreams that only last a short time where i see a future bite of time in my life.. Then probably 6 months ro a few years later that bite of time will be replayed in real time in my life perfectly.. I believe these kinds of dreams is to let me know that the future is foreknown perfectly by God down to the smallest detail..
I did have what one would call a prophetic dream in regard to the island of Santorini.. I never knew about this island before i had this dream.. In this dream i was off the coast in black water probably about 80 meters and there was this woman standing on the beach. I then looked up and saw the sky was fulled with puffy think rolling black clouds. As i was looking at the clouds white writing appeared before the clouds which said ""Thera shall be leveled"".. This is when i got very excited because this was the first dream i had ever seen writing appear, Writing with a definite message in a dream..
I knew i was dreaming and quickly forced myself to wake up.. I got up immediately and went out and got onto my computer to try and find out who or what Thera was.. I found out Thera was a name used by Volcanologists for the volcano in the eastern Mediterranean sea that was also known as the Greek Island of Santorini.. At that point the black water and the ugly black clouds made sense to me because the clouds looked like a huge thick volcanic ash cloud and the water was black because the sky was black.. So one day probably soon the entire volcano will be leveled down to the sea floor and the island of Santorini will be no more.. I am thinking this will end up being a very very big eruption and will cause a lot of suffering to that area of the world..
There where other dreams that i have had but none of them ever had actual writing in them..
I have had many dreams about my personal future.. First person perspective dreams that only last a short time where i see a future bite of time in my life.. Then probably 6 months ro a few years later that bite of time will be replayed in real time in my life perfectly.. I believe these kinds of dreams is to let me know that the future is foreknown perfectly by God down to the smallest detail..
I did have what one would call a prophetic dream in regard to the island of Santorini.. I never knew about this island before i had this dream.. In this dream i was off the coast in black water probably about 80 meters and there was this woman standing on the beach. I then looked up and saw the sky was fulled with puffy think rolling black clouds. As i was looking at the clouds white writing appeared before the clouds which said ""Thera shall be leveled"".. This is when i got very excited because this was the first dream i had ever seen writing appear, Writing with a definite message in a dream..
I knew i was dreaming and quickly forced myself to wake up.. I got up immediately and went out and got onto my computer to try and find out who or what Thera was.. I found out Thera was a name used by Volcanologists for the volcano in the eastern Mediterranean sea that was also known as the Greek Island of Santorini.. At that point the black water and the ugly black clouds made sense to me because the clouds looked like a huge thick volcanic ash cloud and the water was black because the sky was black.. So one day probably soon the entire volcano will be leveled down to the sea floor and the island of Santorini will be no more.. I am thinking this will end up being a very very big eruption and will cause a lot of suffering to that area of the world..
There where other dreams that i have had but none of them ever had actual writing in them..
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I would like to add a point to my post..
Just because someone is having dreams or experiencing visions one should not assume they where given them to make them have faith in God.. Having dreams does not negate the need for one to have Faith in The LORD Jesus.. I have to still trust the LORD in many things.. Things in regard to Gods will and things that are happening in my life, things that are happening in this world.. Yeah having dreams can fortify ones belief that God exists but it does not cause one to trust the LORD..
Also yes the revelation of the will of God and the Way of salvation has been completed in the Holy Bible.. None of my dreams for instance have ever given me some new doctrine or caused me to believe something contrary to a teaching of Jesus in the Holy Bible.. People just need to understand God can and does help people along the Way in their growth in their relationship with God.
Just because someone is having dreams or experiencing visions one should not assume they where given them to make them have faith in God.. Having dreams does not negate the need for one to have Faith in The LORD Jesus.. I have to still trust the LORD in many things.. Things in regard to Gods will and things that are happening in my life, things that are happening in this world.. Yeah having dreams can fortify ones belief that God exists but it does not cause one to trust the LORD..
Also yes the revelation of the will of God and the Way of salvation has been completed in the Holy Bible.. None of my dreams for instance have ever given me some new doctrine or caused me to believe something contrary to a teaching of Jesus in the Holy Bible.. People just need to understand God can and does help people along the Way in their growth in their relationship with God.
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Scripture is more sure of being an eyewitness.
2 Peter 1:
16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
2 Peter 1:
16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
Using a partial descriptor of faith as the be all and end all definition of faith is quite short-sighted in my view. It's like saying, "A banana is yellow," is all a banana is when it is likewise just a partial descriptor. People are not expected to believe in God based on absolutely zero evidence. The heavens declare His glory.
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No offence intended towards you, but I think the majority of folks who have visions are Master Herbalists....... 
For all these reasons, your experience might seem incompatible with the reports of others. That shouldn't make the others' reports immediately invalidated in your mind. In fact it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:
"19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil."
While there is a place for throwing out what you can't discern, this should not come until you have obeyed the scripture to "test them all." Rejecting outright is not testing any more than accepting all is testing. Rather those are two ditches where we can get off the road to truth.
I can say that I have personally experienced both dreams/visions from God, AND dreams/visions from Satan, with one of the ones from Satan looked reasonable on the surface and one of the ones from God looking shocking. This, along with the warning in 1 John 4:1 ("Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world), suggests that you aren't wrong to question, but make sure questioning doesn't become a deception of its own in throwing out what is good.
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I am curious to hear of other people’s experiences. Are there any dreams or visions u wish to share via a comment on this post?
Yes. See below.
What did you pray to gain a vision or dream from God?
I have never initiated the dream or vision though I have heard that some can ask God for one if that is their gift/calling/being. For me it has most often come (or come about if a foretelling years earlier), when God is taking me through some really rough stuff.
What do you think increases the likelihood of you connecting to God through dreams and visions?
Having the appropriate gift/calling/being for it, though He can give them to others at times. You have to believe that He can and is willing to (faith). Also, one has to be spiritually ready. For example, if it is just going to feed your ego or be wrongly used by you, God is surely less likely to do it with you.
What did u see in your dreams and visions? Eg. Souls, Heaven, Hell, Judgement day, Angels , Fallen Angels (Demons), Jesus. Etc
I don’t dream those things, but rather I tend to dream in prophetic metaphors. ‘Prophetic,’ by the way, does include telling the future but it covers a lot more than that (ex. Discerning people’s motivations).
The spirit of the dream/vision, rather than any sights or events is usually the most significant part. The spirit of a dream can be incredibly complicated and precise, which is one reason why it sounds so foolish when people dismiss the events of a dream or vision as ‘coincidence.’
How did these dreams make you feel?
Seen and loved by God. Not forgotten or excluded from His goodness.
Did they make you deconstruct or think differently /more openly about interpreting different aspects of the Bible?
It made it more real to me. I now understand better how the early church of the New Testament functioned with God.
What is your opinion on receiving dreams from God?
It is absolutely real. It is biblically sound to the point that rejecting them is unbiblical. I also believe that they aren’t universal to all followers of God for a variety of reasons including calling (see 1 Corinthians 12), level of faith, readiness/maturity, and God’s purposes.
However, we are told in scripture to test. I have personally experienced both dreams from God and Satan, and you cannot tell by external appearance which is which.
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1
“19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
How else do you feel God communicates to you?
God also sometimes just drops understanding into my head, answers through life events (ex. the phone call right on cue), or even answers via my own lips since I’m a voice by calling/being.
A few of mine:
I can say that I have personally experienced both dreams/visions from God, AND dreams/visions from Satan. One of the ones from Satan looked reasonable on the surface, being about a mild difficulty at my church, though something bothered me from the start. When I sought God on it, He showed me how the spirit of the message in it was not spiritually helpful, but rather trying to take me off course via emphasizing other people's failures. Another time, I had the most vivid dream of my life (Even more vivid than real life!), but it looked shocking and disturbing, having me (a woman) dreaming as though I was a naked man, for starters. This dream turned out years later to be prophetic (But not literal, thank goodness) about a crucial time in my life when my faith would be tested in a big way.
I periodically will dream an emotionally charged event in my life ahead of time in metaphor. For example, I once had a dream about two bears in the near distance that I was aware of but not concerned about until something happened where they interacted (I cannot remember the details now) and I suddenly became concerned for my own safety. A day or two later I was driving in the center lane of a three-lane freeway with a good amount of space in front of me. Suddenly the cars in front of me in the adjacent lanes both tried to pull into the same space in front of me at the same time, nearly colliding where I would have had no time to avoid them. The cars were the same or similar colors as the bears and the emotional journey of it perfectly matched the emotional journey of the dream.
Yes. See below.
What did you pray to gain a vision or dream from God?
I have never initiated the dream or vision though I have heard that some can ask God for one if that is their gift/calling/being. For me it has most often come (or come about if a foretelling years earlier), when God is taking me through some really rough stuff.
What do you think increases the likelihood of you connecting to God through dreams and visions?
Having the appropriate gift/calling/being for it, though He can give them to others at times. You have to believe that He can and is willing to (faith). Also, one has to be spiritually ready. For example, if it is just going to feed your ego or be wrongly used by you, God is surely less likely to do it with you.
What did u see in your dreams and visions? Eg. Souls, Heaven, Hell, Judgement day, Angels , Fallen Angels (Demons), Jesus. Etc
I don’t dream those things, but rather I tend to dream in prophetic metaphors. ‘Prophetic,’ by the way, does include telling the future but it covers a lot more than that (ex. Discerning people’s motivations).
The spirit of the dream/vision, rather than any sights or events is usually the most significant part. The spirit of a dream can be incredibly complicated and precise, which is one reason why it sounds so foolish when people dismiss the events of a dream or vision as ‘coincidence.’
How did these dreams make you feel?
Seen and loved by God. Not forgotten or excluded from His goodness.
Did they make you deconstruct or think differently /more openly about interpreting different aspects of the Bible?
It made it more real to me. I now understand better how the early church of the New Testament functioned with God.
What is your opinion on receiving dreams from God?
It is absolutely real. It is biblically sound to the point that rejecting them is unbiblical. I also believe that they aren’t universal to all followers of God for a variety of reasons including calling (see 1 Corinthians 12), level of faith, readiness/maturity, and God’s purposes.
However, we are told in scripture to test. I have personally experienced both dreams from God and Satan, and you cannot tell by external appearance which is which.
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1
“19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
How else do you feel God communicates to you?
God also sometimes just drops understanding into my head, answers through life events (ex. the phone call right on cue), or even answers via my own lips since I’m a voice by calling/being.
A few of mine:
I can say that I have personally experienced both dreams/visions from God, AND dreams/visions from Satan. One of the ones from Satan looked reasonable on the surface, being about a mild difficulty at my church, though something bothered me from the start. When I sought God on it, He showed me how the spirit of the message in it was not spiritually helpful, but rather trying to take me off course via emphasizing other people's failures. Another time, I had the most vivid dream of my life (Even more vivid than real life!), but it looked shocking and disturbing, having me (a woman) dreaming as though I was a naked man, for starters. This dream turned out years later to be prophetic (But not literal, thank goodness) about a crucial time in my life when my faith would be tested in a big way.
I periodically will dream an emotionally charged event in my life ahead of time in metaphor. For example, I once had a dream about two bears in the near distance that I was aware of but not concerned about until something happened where they interacted (I cannot remember the details now) and I suddenly became concerned for my own safety. A day or two later I was driving in the center lane of a three-lane freeway with a good amount of space in front of me. Suddenly the cars in front of me in the adjacent lanes both tried to pull into the same space in front of me at the same time, nearly colliding where I would have had no time to avoid them. The cars were the same or similar colors as the bears and the emotional journey of it perfectly matched the emotional journey of the dream.
Yeah I have allot over the years. 1st one I was very young saw my self in the dream with a huge smile and me in the dream looked up to my right so I looked up and ooh so many stars and it a very deep blue. Then angels flying across from right to left singing. I'm 63 and I have never heard music like that since. I called the person that ran the bible study PLEASE PLEASE pray I wanted to hear that again. Never did not how it works. Oh I didn't know at the time angels had wings.
I've seen things fully awake yet eyes closed. Only once did I and someone else see the same thing awake. What I saw did not come from God. Not all dreams, visions come from God. Now that one dream was the only one I saw angels never seen Jesus never seen demons/fallen angels and no seeing the future. Not going to touch that lol. Only one that I don't know what it means. We were going to Church I was in the back seat I just closed my eyes and I saw this huge open all white that had this very very long table all prepared. I was in front of the table as I was looking forward I started to go up and down the table. I thought..wow this is like a movie camera. I went all the way down to the end where a calico cat sat and it started to paw at my face. Wide awake.
Christ walked this earth 40 days after He rose. All I have ever seen is hands and feet yet not. Well reading how the woman was washing His feet with her tears I asked Him why was she crying? I was then on my knees head on the floor and.. didn't see Him but He was there.. His feet I could not stop crying. Called my mom later that week I did it every week. During that phone call she says " at Church Sunday I saw Jesus". HAHA its not something we talk about not that. I said oook what did you see? "I saw Jesus up front in the air at His side and someone was in front of Him in a ball crying was that you". I never needed confirmation. The other just hands I was talking praying about His glory before I went to sleep. I had a dream in the dream it was all white and I was standing in this line where Jesus was up front. The closer I got the louder it got it was so loud. Then when I was infront of Him my head was bowed these two hands not gold but like bronze on each side of my head lifting me up and it was over. Haha yeah never saw Him.
Again anyone that has seen Him praise GOD but I have never asked to. Why? I don't know. Longing for Him to walk in and just sit and talk about somethings I don't fully understand (in His word) but to just see Him? Its odd no? Well its as if I always see Him.. Hes in me, with me always. I don't hmm feel the wrong word but I know He's here.
For me everything He has ever shown me I do not put above His word. I don't run with them it has to be His word. We are all the same in His eyes. No one is more special then anyone else. When we talk to say Paul he will let you know he is nothing and its ALL Christ. Christ is all that matters.. if people see me.. its not God
I've seen things fully awake yet eyes closed. Only once did I and someone else see the same thing awake. What I saw did not come from God. Not all dreams, visions come from God. Now that one dream was the only one I saw angels never seen Jesus never seen demons/fallen angels and no seeing the future. Not going to touch that lol. Only one that I don't know what it means. We were going to Church I was in the back seat I just closed my eyes and I saw this huge open all white that had this very very long table all prepared. I was in front of the table as I was looking forward I started to go up and down the table. I thought..wow this is like a movie camera. I went all the way down to the end where a calico cat sat and it started to paw at my face. Wide awake.
Christ walked this earth 40 days after He rose. All I have ever seen is hands and feet yet not. Well reading how the woman was washing His feet with her tears I asked Him why was she crying? I was then on my knees head on the floor and.. didn't see Him but He was there.. His feet I could not stop crying. Called my mom later that week I did it every week. During that phone call she says " at Church Sunday I saw Jesus". HAHA its not something we talk about not that. I said oook what did you see? "I saw Jesus up front in the air at His side and someone was in front of Him in a ball crying was that you". I never needed confirmation. The other just hands I was talking praying about His glory before I went to sleep. I had a dream in the dream it was all white and I was standing in this line where Jesus was up front. The closer I got the louder it got it was so loud. Then when I was infront of Him my head was bowed these two hands not gold but like bronze on each side of my head lifting me up and it was over. Haha yeah never saw Him.
Again anyone that has seen Him praise GOD but I have never asked to. Why? I don't know. Longing for Him to walk in and just sit and talk about somethings I don't fully understand (in His word) but to just see Him? Its odd no? Well its as if I always see Him.. Hes in me, with me always. I don't hmm feel the wrong word but I know He's here.
For me everything He has ever shown me I do not put above His word. I don't run with them it has to be His word. We are all the same in His eyes. No one is more special then anyone else. When we talk to say Paul he will let you know he is nothing and its ALL Christ. Christ is all that matters.. if people see me.. its not God
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Here is scripture that prove people can have visions of Jesus it also explains why some can have them;
New King James Version john 14:21
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
New King James Version john 14:21
He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
No offence intended towards you, but I think the majority of folks who have visions are Master Herbalists.......
People who smoke a lot of marijuana often report they either don't dream or don't remember their dreams. That's because marijuana can diminish the quality of our REM — rapid eye movement — sleep. That's when our most vivid dreams occur. Mar 5, 2021
Science has proven those with no REM sleep cannot dream and smoking marijuana keeps people from reaching the REM stage.
So we know for the majority of those who are having Prophetic Dreams are not under the influence of drugs.
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John,
I appreciate your challenging the original poster to back-up his sentiment with scripture. I suspect he did not because there is actually a lot of it. It is especially apparent in Acts, and 1 Corinthians 12-14 but it is actually quite abundant throughout the New Testament.
I can somewhat understanding your missing this, though, as I myself did not grow-up around people who understood the gifts of the Spirit. I wasn't exactly a cessionist, but I probably leaned that way since no one in my world practiced such things despite my knowing many Christians. Though He in part used people, God Himself intervened in my family to show us that these things are very much real and available now, though He is the one who determines the timing.
You miss a lot of scripture when you speak of God only giving Paul "special revelation for the Gentile body of Christ" and add on that "we cannot claim that for ourselves. We have what we need in scripture to live for the Lord."
First off, you don't understand what you are talking about. Much of prophecy is practical, personal, and current, whether it is specific warnings, personal encouragement, or personal directions like who to marry or places to avoid due to a current danger. An example of this in scripture was in the book of Acts when the prophet Agabus "took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, 'The Holy Spirit says, "In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles” ' " (Acts 21:10-11). Christians today need personalized prophecy just as much now as in Paul's day, and it isn't something you will find in scripture because that isn't what the scripture is or how it works. Saying of prophecy that "We have what we need in scripture to live for the Lord" is a statement from extreme ignorance of what prophecy entails for content. For example, I have a friend who got date raped when she didn't have enough context to recognize and listen when the Holy Spirit told her to cancel. A lady mentioned on the 700 Club this morning asked God for a son and was told by God she would be given a double blessing. She desperately needed to know this when the doctors told her she should pull the plug on life-support for her twins, but because of God's word to her she knew not to listen. Now both of these ladies had in their scriptures what they needed to live for the Lord, but the cost of not having more was/would have been a lot!
Second, while Paul did have a very important calling to the Gentile body of Christ, the breadth of what God does goes far beyond the moment of Paul's life. Did not Paul himself say in 1 Corinthians 3:5-6, "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow." The fact is that God's plan did not end with Paul, and God's hands are not tied because Paul is no more among us. There is a lot of Bible prophecy yet to unfold, and as it says in Amos, "Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets," (Amos 3:7 NIV). Also, going back a bit of time from Paul, prophecy stopped entirely for the intertestamental period only to reemerge with John the Baptist's father Zechariah when the time was right - God's use is determined by His intent, not the understandings of men. And rather than being like the intertestamental period, we were actually told in the New Testament not that prophecy would stop, but rather that gifts of the spirit would become more available. In Acts 2, Peter invoked a prophecy in Joel as current that:
‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
Jesus also said in John 14:12, "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."
In fact, to reject gifts of the spirit like prophecy, dreams, visions, and tongues, one must reject, twist or ignore a lot of scripture. 1 Corinthians 12-14 speaks greatly of the need for these gifts. Nowhere does it suggest otherwise, with 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 even suggesting that they will be needed until we have completeness of knowledge, seeing God face to face (Quite the contrary of how some take that section). 1 Corinthians 14 opens with Paul saying to "eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy." - quite a strong statement for abilities that you find unnecessary. Plus 1 John 4:1 and especially 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 emphasize the need to practice discerning of the prophetic, with 1 Thessalonians specifically saying " Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good" (NASB).
When you consider all the scriptures where such things are incidentally mentioned, that is a lot of the Bible to dismissing as outdated without the Bible itself saying so. Even if the verse in 1 Corinthians 13 did mean what most cessionists say it does, that is not much scriptural support. And is it not a big red flag that such a doctrine flies in the face of the many verses encouraging faith to believe for the miraculous? Like why is Jesus telling us to have faith to move mountains in Mark 11:20-24 by saying "all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you" if we are fools to believe He still even speaks?
And finally, another big glaring hole in the logic of ceassionism is that you have to be ignorant of, ignore, or discredit the plentiful occurrences of God still doing these things to reject that God still in fact does them. I'm sure that many ceassionsts like myself before are simply unaware of these, but others take the prideful and prejudiced tactic of just dismissing any such reports or reporters of such things. I am hoping my reader here is instead able to apply the biblical exhortation to "become like little children" and thereby be aware of one's own limitations to know or figure it all out for one's self. You can ask God and then check it out with a neutral mindset. Otherwise you fail in your duty to "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good."
I appreciate your challenging the original poster to back-up his sentiment with scripture. I suspect he did not because there is actually a lot of it. It is especially apparent in Acts, and 1 Corinthians 12-14 but it is actually quite abundant throughout the New Testament.
I can somewhat understanding your missing this, though, as I myself did not grow-up around people who understood the gifts of the Spirit. I wasn't exactly a cessionist, but I probably leaned that way since no one in my world practiced such things despite my knowing many Christians. Though He in part used people, God Himself intervened in my family to show us that these things are very much real and available now, though He is the one who determines the timing.
You miss a lot of scripture when you speak of God only giving Paul "special revelation for the Gentile body of Christ" and add on that "we cannot claim that for ourselves. We have what we need in scripture to live for the Lord."
First off, you don't understand what you are talking about. Much of prophecy is practical, personal, and current, whether it is specific warnings, personal encouragement, or personal directions like who to marry or places to avoid due to a current danger. An example of this in scripture was in the book of Acts when the prophet Agabus "took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, 'The Holy Spirit says, "In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles” ' " (Acts 21:10-11). Christians today need personalized prophecy just as much now as in Paul's day, and it isn't something you will find in scripture because that isn't what the scripture is or how it works. Saying of prophecy that "We have what we need in scripture to live for the Lord" is a statement from extreme ignorance of what prophecy entails for content. For example, I have a friend who got date raped when she didn't have enough context to recognize and listen when the Holy Spirit told her to cancel. A lady mentioned on the 700 Club this morning asked God for a son and was told by God she would be given a double blessing. She desperately needed to know this when the doctors told her she should pull the plug on life-support for her twins, but because of God's word to her she knew not to listen. Now both of these ladies had in their scriptures what they needed to live for the Lord, but the cost of not having more was/would have been a lot!
Second, while Paul did have a very important calling to the Gentile body of Christ, the breadth of what God does goes far beyond the moment of Paul's life. Did not Paul himself say in 1 Corinthians 3:5-6, "What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow." The fact is that God's plan did not end with Paul, and God's hands are not tied because Paul is no more among us. There is a lot of Bible prophecy yet to unfold, and as it says in Amos, "Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets," (Amos 3:7 NIV). Also, going back a bit of time from Paul, prophecy stopped entirely for the intertestamental period only to reemerge with John the Baptist's father Zechariah when the time was right - God's use is determined by His intent, not the understandings of men. And rather than being like the intertestamental period, we were actually told in the New Testament not that prophecy would stop, but rather that gifts of the spirit would become more available. In Acts 2, Peter invoked a prophecy in Joel as current that:
‘In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
Jesus also said in John 14:12, "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."
In fact, to reject gifts of the spirit like prophecy, dreams, visions, and tongues, one must reject, twist or ignore a lot of scripture. 1 Corinthians 12-14 speaks greatly of the need for these gifts. Nowhere does it suggest otherwise, with 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 even suggesting that they will be needed until we have completeness of knowledge, seeing God face to face (Quite the contrary of how some take that section). 1 Corinthians 14 opens with Paul saying to "eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy." - quite a strong statement for abilities that you find unnecessary. Plus 1 John 4:1 and especially 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22 emphasize the need to practice discerning of the prophetic, with 1 Thessalonians specifically saying " Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good" (NASB).
When you consider all the scriptures where such things are incidentally mentioned, that is a lot of the Bible to dismissing as outdated without the Bible itself saying so. Even if the verse in 1 Corinthians 13 did mean what most cessionists say it does, that is not much scriptural support. And is it not a big red flag that such a doctrine flies in the face of the many verses encouraging faith to believe for the miraculous? Like why is Jesus telling us to have faith to move mountains in Mark 11:20-24 by saying "all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you" if we are fools to believe He still even speaks?
And finally, another big glaring hole in the logic of ceassionism is that you have to be ignorant of, ignore, or discredit the plentiful occurrences of God still doing these things to reject that God still in fact does them. I'm sure that many ceassionsts like myself before are simply unaware of these, but others take the prideful and prejudiced tactic of just dismissing any such reports or reporters of such things. I am hoping my reader here is instead able to apply the biblical exhortation to "become like little children" and thereby be aware of one's own limitations to know or figure it all out for one's self. You can ask God and then check it out with a neutral mindset. Otherwise you fail in your duty to "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good."
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