From: GRAHAM%DRCV06.decnet@DRCVAX.AF.MIL (DRCV06::GRAHAM)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: Visions and appritians.
Date: 28 Aug 92 18:15:00 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
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X-To:         christia <christia@asuvm.inre.asu.edu>

I've done a lot of thinking about this issue of appiritions and visions and
the like.  My initial reaction was that any appearance or vision that held
any doctrinal error whatsoever was obviously false and from the devil.  For
example, the Cyndi Cain material is doctrinally scarred, so it cannot be
truth in the Biblical sense, but where does it come from and what effect
does it have?

I think the effect is key here.  I don't for a moment think that the real
person of Mary appears to anyone, but that issue I'll mention in a minute.
If a person sees a vision, hears a voice, sees an image in a ttree, sees a
statue shed tears, or whatever, and they are born again or attain a far
deeper relationship with God as a result, then the effect is what is valid,
not the medium.   I'm not talking here about people joining a church, Roman
Catholic or Medhodist, or whatever.  Church membership and the new birth
are not at all related.  For that matter, baptism and rebirth are also
independent.  What I am saying is this:  If a person undergoes an
experience that beings them to God, then it had to be God who worked in
their heart in the first place.  The natural heart cannot come to God, so
seeing a vision or hearing a voice could never bring a person to God unless
God chose to use it in that way.

If a person reads Cyndi Cain's material, false though it be, and a work of
righteousness is performed in their heart by the Holy Spirit, then that is
the medium that God chose to save that person.  Remember Baalam, God used a
donkey.

Now, how about the visions, voices and appiritions themselves?  A very
interesting passage can be found in 1 Kings 22:19-23.  Here we see God
sending a lying spirit to do His work.  This is but one example where God
exercises overt control over Satan and his forces.  Sure, I do believe that
most visions, voices and the like are from Satan, but they are controlled
by a sovereign God who is in charge of absolutely everything.

Many are deceived by these occurances.  This is in God's plan for He says
that He will send a lie to deceive those who do not love the truth.
However, for those who are saved through the experience, it was God's plan
that this should be the result.

Those who think that these things are bogus must remember that God is in
charge of everything.  If He lets Satan display the Virgin Mary's picture
on a coat and thereby save some and decieve many, that is His own affair.

I believe it is correct to observe the doctrinal purity of these events,
but we needn't take pro or con attitudes, it's all God's plan.

My predestinarian view comes in here.  To me, I don't care how God chooses
to save a person, just so they are saved.  Paul said that the "foolishness
of preaching" was used, but other methods are used, too.  Paul discovered
this on a road one afternoon.

Dan Graham
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