Dreams and visions

@Ballaurena what made you switch from a cessasionist (or whatever it's called) to a believer in Miracles?

I've had a couple but I have also had 3 dreams that were spiritual demonic attacks. All 3 times I woke up Rebuking Satan and Speaking in Tongues alarming everyone and animals in the household.

What's interesting about the dreams is the connection to the 3 separate incidents that followed.

2 were involving demon possession and one involved a home that and I am not making this up and would take a polygraph to prove it but I saw the oven door open and slam shut, cabinets doors swing open and shut, pictures on the walls being tossed down like the screws just came out of the wood studs, a wind that about knocked us over inside the home. To make matters worse, they had a doberman and rott and both were just so scared when these incidents happen would squat and just scare the poo out of them. The attic door flew open and hundreds of hundreds of filing paper just came flying out like being tossed to the ground. I picked it up and each page had like 50 names on them. Paper after paper. I said gather it and throw it into the fire place and burn it. When we set it on fire suddenly these screams of human beings could be heard and they were yelling don't burn us we're already burning in hell.

So my dreams were preparation for spiritual warfare.

God WON, but it was experiences that I will never ever forget.

Not all prophecy is about believing. For me, gifts of the spirit didn't show up for years after I believed.

Many people have the Bible but still misunderstand what it says..

Agreed, but scripture is where it begins and ends.

Thank you for asking.

Let's see. First off, my mindset was more one of knowing that there is a lot I don't know. I was not really raised around such things and I was young. I would hear distant reports and would wonder. I would read my Bible and didn't know what to make of 1 Corinthians 12 or 14, but I just kind of set them aside in my mind. I also wasn't a strict cessionist in that I believed God answered prayers and would rarely cause something special to happen, much like in Old Testament stories where God would out of the blue give someone a dream.

Then my older sister was ready to go off to college and after seeking God, she felt that He was directing her toward the nearby Christian college rather than the public one (she judged this by receptiveness of the colleges, BTW). But this college was Pentecostal. Honestly, we had come from such an odd duck of a church that any Christian college was going to be odd to us so it wasn't that much of a red flag. Having later gone there myself, they aren't pushy about things, but there are obviously people there that practice the gifts of the Spirit. Chapel and small groups are a requirement to attend there, though, and one day, whatever spiritual gathering she was attending was discussing tongues in the Bible. As my sister later reported to my family, she was initially resistant to this, thinking to herself something like "I know that's in the Bible, but that's weird and I wouldn't want to do it." She then immediately recognized that her attitude was off, judging something of God, and the instant she tried to change her thoughts to repent, her apology to God came out in tongues.

As someone with no previous exposure to such things, she had a few very crazy days of pouring over her Bible and trying to seek her dormmates for guidance. A few weeks later she sheepishly asked to speak to the family about what had happened. Fortunately for her, we knew her character well enough to know she was serious and reliable about such things, and we were all humble enough to let God disrupt our whole world. And disrupted it was because for one thing, our pastor wasn't as able to receive it; I don't understand his reasons why but it wouldn't be the last time he was unable to flex to where God was leading. This put our family in a place of being sort of an island of having an amazing secret and no one to discuss it with, especially the Christians we knew best.

For me, I now poured over my Bible and saw that it really did make sense, and how it was and wasn't to be used. One reason I ultimately went to that college was that I had nobody to discuss such things with that I knew well enough to trust. My plans in this didn't really play out, though. First off, God notably did not give me the gift of tongues that seemed to be the gift everyone there wanted, and I realized that many of the students there had a very unbiblical context for spiritual gifts, seeing them as an indicator of maturity when the Bible doesn't say that, suggesting that everyone should receive the gift of tongues when the Bible clearly says that the Spirit gives different gifts "as he determines" (1 Cor. 12:11), and that prophecy was the greater gift to be sought, with tongues having a very specific and limited purpose per 1 Corinthians 14. I was puzzled at how so many Christians could be downright contrary to the Bible in their stances on these things, but I was encouraged when one of my professors had the audacity to speak the unpopular truth I had been encountering in showing us how the Bible does not support the belief that everyone is supposed to be so-called "baptized in the Holy Spirit" by exhibiting one of these gifts. At some point, I thus decided to put on my big-girl panties, stand on the scriptures and ignore what anyone else thought. I did this in part by immediately applying 1 Corinthians 14:1, in obedience asking for the gift of prophecy rather than the more socially desirable gift of tongues because the Bible said I should and then letting go of the outcome whatever it looked like. I didn't have any apparent effects, and went on my way, fighting to believe that it was up to God if I EVER had a gift of the Spirit, and determined not to let it get in the way of my following God. It wasn't always easy, though.

As I write this I am connecting dots on things that I haven't before. Though God didn't make any obvious changes in my life then, while there I read an optional chapter of our text that was experimenting with hearing God and actually heard something (via the still small or silent voice). I am just now realizing that that was a beginning on what God would do with me 5 years later. A related piece was that one day on my way to class, I suddenly realized that I had never asked God for healing on a condition I'd had since childhood. Nothing notable happed at the time but these were seeds for what God would do 5 or so years later.

While my sister and our minister had tension after the aforementioned issue and some others, I actually had a good relationship with him. But one day my mom ran into an old friend who invited her to what my mom called a 'Bible study' when she in turn invited me. To tell of all that transpired with that would be a novel unto itself, but basically I came to it out of respect for my mom and a desire to have some extra study of the Bible with other Christians, and God used it to introduce me to a new fellowship and a whole lot more of Him than I had ever known.

Prophecy was normal there. I was skeptical for quite a while, years even, but when I asked God a question on one of my first visits, the answer satisfied in a physically-impossible way that I now recognize as spiritual. Early on God used others there to perform the healing I had asked for earlier plus another I hadn't asked for, and this time when they prayed for me to receive the gift of tongues it was given. God also showed me there that He not only gave me a gift of prophecy, but had designed me for it to be able to fulfill my calling. I also discovered that though he honored the request of the ladies at my prayer group to give me the gift of tongues, I rarely use it because just as Paul noted, prophecy is greater because what is the point of speaking in a way that cannot be understood if you can do better? Even more significantly, I have discovered that the gifts of the Spirit have been extremely necessary for refining me and others, allowing us to realize not just physical healing but real, life-altering restoration of our souls, and thereby the ability to overcome the sins that have always ensnared us. In my experience, to reject the gifts of the Spirit is to reject the power of God to bring us to righteous living, effectiveness, and the freedom that is promised in scripture. It is also rejecting a huge part of having relationship with God. Imagine if you had a spouse who would only interact with you through letters; sure those letters would be valuable but how much depth of relationship would be missed?!?

Noteworthy, though, we have a lot of emphasis on discernment, something which is apparently and sadly not being practiced in much of Pentecostal Christianity. For not only does my fellowship not push unbiblical doctrines like I encountered at my college, but there is a lot of emphasis on discerning the spirit of something, and throwing it out as deception if you cannot tell.

Sorry if I have gotten off topic any here, but part of what I'm trying to convey is that the gifts of the Spirit have become a very real, and even a regular part of my life - a million miles from where I started, and in a way that I couldn't even have conceived of 30 years ago when I first became a Christian. When people suggest current spiritual gifts aren't real and try to convince me, its on par with trying to convince me that the sun doesn't exist, or that the United States doesn't when I'm an American, or I don't know what because even those things don't really express the certainty and complexity of interaction I now have with following God and experiencing the gifts of the Spirit as part of that. It turns out the Bible is true to its word about such things (Shocker!), and they do in fact work as described.

2 Peter 1:18 Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,

You search the scriptures because you think in them you have aeonous life, but they speak of a living relationship with a real person, Jesus, through the Holy Spirit; but you won't allow that personal relationship to develop that you might have life.

This may well qualify in a case where the gift of the interpretation of tongues needs to be granted.

I read this with a different emphasis

Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels...

Allow me to place the prepositional phrase beside the word it is modifying,
Let no man beguile you (of your reward) in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels...

I bolded man and angels seeing a connection between men and messengers and the worshipping of such, making particular not of Strong's Greek Lexicon

[the] worship
θρησκείᾳ (thrēskeia)
Noun - Dative Feminine Singular
Strong's Greek 2356: From a derivative of threskos; ceremonial observance.

of angels
ἀγγέλων (angelōn)
Noun - Genitive Masculine Plural
Strong's Greek 32: From aggello; a messenger; especially an 'angel'; by implication, a pastor. (bold mine)

The rest of the verse reads very differently if this is implication is taken into consideration, as to speaking towards pastors that pretend to be humble and idolize certain pastors that insist that they can 'clearly see' but are blind but, nonetheless believe they 'best' see.

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Hi Its Col 2:18 and beguile "let no one keep defrauding you of your prize". This was Paul encouraging them not to allow anyone to divert them with false teaching. As one said perhaps this can best be answered by looking at the approach some people take toward the lord. They feel they are too sinful and too unworthy to go directly to the lord, therefore they must go through some intermediary being. This attitude maybe very pious (sacred) and may represent humility but it expresses a subtle kind of pride.

So far the posts here about dreams and visions have nothing to do with what Paul was saying. Unless I misunderstand ..if so forgive me