Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Paul had what I believe to be the highest level of spiritual experience recorded in the Bible when he was caught up into Paradise, yet Paul as brilliant and spiritually astute as he was could not explain if this experience occurred in a vision or if he literally went to Paradise (2 Cor. 12:1-4). This is the way the spiritual world works, we will never be able to fully or adequately explain our experiences in the spiritual world. That takes humility. We have to be willing to not understand everything and at times be misunderstood by others if we are to go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.
The Lord actually sent a messenger of Satan to torment Paul; the word torment literally means to beat with the fist. God allowed the enemy to beat up Paul in order to keep him from falling into pride over His great revelations and experiences in the spiritual world (2 Cor. 12:7). That tells me God will go to great lengths to protect us from pride, yet in the end we still get to choose to humble ourselves or allow pride to deceive us. Paul concluded that if he were to be proud about anything, it would be in his weakness since this is how the power of Christ would be revealed in Him.
I had a dream that seemed so real that I kept asking myself if this was a dream or was it really happening. I was conscious or at least I though I was conscious through the entire dream. In the dream, I was laying in my bed when two angels came into my room and got me out of the bed. Then the Lord came up behind me as I stood between the angels and laid His hands on my forehead over my eyes, and I heard what I can best describe as the wisdom of the ages; I heard voices and communication, I saw mathematical formulas, and I heard the cry of the perishing. It felt like the waters of a rushing waterfall pouring into me. Then I was alone and I looked around and saw that I was in heaven. I was really excited because I have wanted to visit heaven for a long time. I saw a group of people I knew on earth who had passed on – family, friends, etc. They seemed concerned for me, which was surprising. Then my daughter, Hannah Joy, who has been in heaven from birth, came up to me with a serious look on her face. She said, “You have to be very careful with this, do you understand me?” I was looking into her big brown eyes and I said, “You are beautiful I love you so much.” She said, “I love you, but you must understand what I am saying.” Then my dad came up, he has been in heaven over ten years, and I said, “Daddy, you look wonderful, I love you, I miss you.” He said, “I love you; did you hear what she said? You must pay attention to what she said.”
At first I was caught up thinking about the download I was going to receive from Jesus and how wonderful it was to see and talk to my daughter and daddy. That was a real blessing, but I think the real message of the dream was pride. Think about this, here I was in heaven looking into the eyes of my daughter and telling her how beautiful she is and how much I love her, something I never had the opportunity to do on earth and she is warning me about pride. And just to make sure my daddy came over to re-enforce what she was saying. I think this was a very serious warning from the Lord concerning pride.
I believe the Lord plans to download into us the wisdom of the ages (Eph. 3:10) and a great compassion for the perishing, but honestly this does not make us anything (1 Cor. 13:1-3). We can be the best at something or be very powerfully used by God, but that could become our undoing. Wisdom and evangelism are very important, but Jesus made it clear that something greater than evangelism or wisdom is here, that something is the Lord Jesus Himself (Matt. 12:41-42). If we want to be proud about something, let’s be proud of the Lord Jesus Christ and His cross (Gal. 6:14). Let’s remember our goal in this life is not success, riches or recognition but to do what the Father is doing (John 5:19-20).
Many Blessings, BW