When I was a high school student, I had a dream that was different from any of my other dreams. Like most people, I have had nightmares I was glad to awaken from. I have had dreams I wished had become reality. Some dreams make no sense at all, most dreams I don’t remember at all. But this one dream was different.

The action in the dream took place in a familiar place – the baseball field at Battlefield Park, where I had played Babe Ruth and High School games. A game was underway, and my team was at bat, but it was not my turn to bat. With most of my team mates I was sitting in the third base dugout.

As I sat there, I looked across the third base line to the pitcher and beyond the pitcher to the second baseman and beyond the second baseman to the right fielder and beyond him to the right field fence. Behind the right field fence the world as we know it gave way to the world as it can only appear in dreams.

As I looked, a wall began to rise up behind the right field fence. It rose twice as high as the fence, ten times as high as the fence. It seemed to rise as if it were being pulled up by invisible cables. I did not feel fear at the height of the wall. I did not feel fear as awareness of my team mates and the game vanished. My fear came from another quarter altogether.

For on the other side of that monstrous wall was everything I wanted: God, heaven and happiness. The higher the wall rose, the more impossible it became for me to get to the other side. It was Judgment Day, and I was on the wrong side.

When I woke from the dream, I knew I had to become a follower of Christ to get to the other side of the wall. For reasons I didn’t see clearly then and can’t piece together at all now, I didn’t become His follower immediately. But I did not doubt then, and I don’t doubt now that God sent that dream as a summons to believe in Jesus Christ.

I tell the story of my dream as a witness to the truth. It serves two purposes today. First, I hope it will encourage you to take seriously a similar dream or vision you may have had that differ from the run-of-the-mill dreams you have. It may be from God. Second, I want to show you how such dream stand in continuity with the experience of the book of Acts. That continuity allows me to reflect with you on the place of such experiences within the wise purpose of our God.

Dreams and Visions in the Book of Acts
I’d like to read with you half a dozen visions that Luke included in his story of Christianity’s journey to the ends of the earth. The first one takes us to Acts 10:3-6. The recipient was a Roman Centurion stationed in Israel, named Cornelius.

One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”

Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.

The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”

Two characteristics of this vision stand out. First, it has an unmistakable precision. The angel calls Cornelius by name, and he mentions his prayers and charitable giving to the poor. Most precise were the angel’s instructions to Cornelius in verses 5-6. He was to send men to the seacoast town of Joppa. They were to bring Peter back to Caesarea, and the angel gives him Peter’s Jewish name, Simon. He makes it clear that Peter was lodging with Simon the Tanner, whose house was by the sea.

Second, the angel did not state the purpose of bringing Peter from Joppa to Caesarea. Discovering that purpose depended on another trance-like vision that took place the next day. That brings us to our second vision in Acts 10:9-16.

About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven. (Acts 10:9-16)

That feels more like a nightmare. An unidentified voice calls on Peter three times to violate his Jewish conscience about eating non-kosher foods. Three times Peter refuses to violate his conscience. Three times the unidentified voice chides Peter for calling impure what God has made clean. Then, the sheet with its strange contents goes back to heaven, and Peter is left to wonder what it all means. He didn’t have a clue.

He might never have had a clue, if Cornelius had not obeyed what the angel told him to do. Fortunately, he obeyed, and Cornelius’ three men met Peter and brought him back to Caesarea to meet Cornelius in Cornelius’ house. Peter thought he understood the meaning of his vision. He considered Gentiles ceremonially unclean and did not associate with them socially, and here he was in the house of a Gentile.

God had something more profound in mind, as you may remember. As Peter told the story of Jesus, the Holy Spirit fell on the Cornelius and his household exactly as He had fallen on the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. Peter (and the Church) was not being asked merely to socialize occasionally with Gentiles. He and the Church were being asked to receive them as equals in the kingdom of God.

A major milestone in the spread of Christianity had been reached, and reaching it depended on the response of two men to their visions. It seems like a precarious way for God to proceed, but there it is. It prepares us for our third vision in Acts 9:3-6.

This vision actually preceded what happened to Cornelius and Peter. This is possibly the most famous story of conversion in the history of Christianity, the conversation of Paul. Here is now how it reads.

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

It was no angel or unidentified voice this time; it was Jesus, risen from the dead, who appeared in a blinding flash of light to retrieve Paul from his career as a persecutor of the Church and to commission him to take the Christian message to the Roman Empire. Again, the content is very specific. It is Saul by name. It is Jesus by name. The instructions for Paul to follow immediately were explicit. The man who would carry out the implications of what happened to Cornelius had been turned around and made available to the unthwartable purposes of God.

Luke reports three more visions that God granted to Paul. The next one takes us to Acts 16:9-10. Paul, Silas and Timothy had finished revisiting churches planted on an earlier missionary journey. They were trying to decide what to do next, and something foiled their efforts every time – until Paul had a vision.

During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

“St. Paul’s passage from Troy in Asia Minor to Philippi on the European mainland did more to shape the future of European culture and European history than anything recorded by the great historians of his day – because it took place ‘underneath the surface’” (quoted in First Things, Feb. ’04, 21). And his passage from Troy in Asia Minor to Philippi in Europe found its motivation in the tricky environment of a personal vision.

Some weeks later, Paul found himself in the city of Corinth in a familiar dilemma. Some people hate him and wanted to get rid of him one way or the other. He had never stayed in any one place for long because of local hostility to his preaching and teaching until he had a vision. Look at Acts 18:9-11.

One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” So Paul stayed for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

That brings us to the last of the half dozen visions that seem so much at home in the book of Acts and so often ill at ease in our scientific culture. After more than two years of checkered justice at the hands of petty Roman officials, Paul was on his way to the fulfillment of a personal dream. He was on his way to Rome but not the way he had hoped. He was traveling as a prisoner on a Roman prison ship, bound for Italy.

It seemed an ill-fated voyage. An autumn hurricane threatened to tear their ship apart on the high seas. After three days of unrelenting wind, waves, impenetrable clouds, rain and hunger, all hands on board gave up all hope of being saved (Acts 27:20) – all except one. It was the Apostle Paul with another of his visions.

Acts 27:23-24: “Last night an angel of the God whose I am and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’”

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
The book of Acts tells the story of how Christianity began as a small, exclusively Jewish sect, broke out of its Jewish origins, and became the faith of all mankind. And Luke’s extraordinary chronicle makes it clear that major milestones of that transition depended on visions of angels, unidentified voices, or of Jesus Himself. The calling of Paul to be the apostle to the Gentiles, the conversion of Cornelius, the passage of Christianity to Europe, and even Paul’s safe arrival in Rome depended on visions. So, what do we make of it all? Can we draw any lessons from this story for ourselves?

First, we should be cautious but not skeptical and certainly not cynical about the possibility of God-given visions then and now. The success of the natural sciences does not negate this possibility. “Science is wonderfully successful precisely because it limits itself to certain types of questions (essentially, How?)” (Polkinghorne, Serious Talk, 110). God-given visions do not offer a promising field of scientific endeavor. Plenty of excellent scientists accept the possibility of God-given visions, and some do not. But those who reject them do so for philosophical reasons not scientific reasons.

Luke offers evidence of their validity. He makes the spread of Christianity turn on visions at critical points in the story. He is cautious about the vision stories he puts in. There are only six, and subsequent experience verifies their accuracy.

However, in Acts 2:17 Luke intimates that God-given visions are not given only to the great apostles of the Church.

“‘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.’” I would like to think that my dream many years ago came from the same Holy Spirit who visited Cornelius and Peter. The young Bangladeshi preacher, who preached to us right here two years ago and told us how Jesus Christ appeared to him in his Mosque in Southern Asia, bore witness to the same truth. I would be genuinely surprised, if a number of you had not had such a visitation from God.

Second, when anyone claims to have had a vision from God, we need to exercise restraint and good judgment; and one criterion by which we assess that claim is how their vision advances the gospel of Jesus Christ. Judging from the Bible, God doesn’t give visions to satisfy curiosity but to make His name known in the earth as its true Lord and Savior. Each vision in Acts led to obedience.

Cornelius had to send those three men to Joppa to find Peter. Peter had to obey his vision about what is clean and unclean and step into Cornelius’ house. Paul had to obey Jesus’ call to go to Gentiles with the gospel. He had to sail for Europe. He had to stay in Corinth in spite of obvious danger. He had to say to the Centurion that they would survive the storm. Spirit-given visions and dreams are calls to obedience.

Third, we do not control visions. We don’t control when they happen or what their content will be. They always happen on God’s timetable to serve God’s purposes. I’m sure this seems obvious, but I say it because of the kind of life so many of us here lead. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to control our environment to eliminate as many surprises as possible. I sometimes wonder if our strong need to control doesn’t explain our skepticism about the supernatural as much or more than our science.

Fourth, visions are not the main thing. Christ is the main thing. To adore Him, to obey Him, to proclaim Him – that’s the main thing.

Fifth, as in other matters we need to listen to what the suffering Church around the world is saying about such matters. They bear eloquent witness to God’s unusual visitations. Maybe they need them more than we do. Maybe they believe God more than we do. We dare not dismiss their witness.

There are three magnificent confessions of praise in Psalm 18. They say this of our God. He parted the heavens and came down .... He reached down from on high and took hold of me .... You stoop down to make me great. Perhaps He is always coming toward us at a steady pace with visions and dreams and miracles and His still, small voice. He made us for Himself and He will not relent until we are His.