The Visions: Destruction and Restoration

I’ve been having small, personal visions for several years. Mostly they’ve been about my near future. They don’t tell me what’s going to happen so much as different ways to think about what’s going to happen. A few have been foretelling, and some of these have turned out to be true and one has not yet (though I still hold out hope).

My prophetic visions started about three months ago, several weeks before the election. They fall into two categories: destruction and restoration.

I’ve seen huge waves, and a lot of fire. It’s not lost on me that water and fire are the two baptisms (Matthew 3:11). And even the visions of destruction do not indicate annihilation. I have been repeatedly assured that I will be okay. And in the most recent one, I was assured that all who “dwell in the Kingdom” will not be harmed.

But what does it mean to “be okay”? I’m well aware that I could lose all my earthly possessions and still be okay. This semester, I also read  the words of the 2nd century Christian, Justin Martyr: “You can kill us, but not hurt us.” So it’s not safe to say that I (or we) will navigate what’s coming without challenge or loss. But we will not be harmed. God loves us. This is not about punishment, it’s about discipline. God is becoming more insistent that we follow his commandments because he loves us.

“He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:10b-11)

I’ve also received two visions of restoration. In one, I swam through calm water toward a new land as the old one burned behind me. The other vision of restoration was so complex and powerful, I’ll describe it in detail.

I saw Jesus standing in a white robe, and the holes in his hands were radiating white light. In his hands, he held the Earth, which he gazed at with love. His chest burst open, and his blood covered the Earth. Then I began to descend to the Earth, while at the same time I could see a tree sprouting. I somehow knew that it was the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:9), but it had no fruit on it because the fruit had already been eaten. Other trees and vegetation grew also, and then I was sitting in the garden, a new Garden of Eden. I looked up at the sky, and I could still see Jesus’ face there. I asked him, “What does this mean?” He just smiled and didn’t answer. Then I saw an angel in the garden with me. I somehow knew that her name was Hedra (which I looked up later: in Greek it means “face”). I asked her what this meant, and she replied, “You know.” Then a worm came out of the ground and began to consume my body. I asked the angel, “How can I stop this?” She replied, “You brought this on yourself. It is happening because you are mortal.” Then I felt peace, even though my body was being consumed.

As I contemplated the vision, I remembered what Genesis (1:31) tells us: that God saw that the Creation was good. Humanity may have fallen into sin, but the Earth still belongs to God. And to Jesus. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (John 1:3). We are warned not to love (esteem) the world (1 John 2:15), but we are also reminded that the Earth belongs to God (Psalm 24:1). We should not worship the world, but we should care for it because it is not ours but God’s, and we should treat it as such. And the vision says something else: just as when we are reborn in Christ we don’t get a new body, so the New Earth promised in Revelation 21:1 is formed right here on the old Earth. We shouldn’t be expecting a replacement planet.

I was also struck by the fact that I arrived in Eden in my existing body. The Kingdom begins here, in this existence, and extends beyond into our post-bodily existence.

But most of all, this was an encouraging vision following as it did several other visions of destruction.

I’m not saying that our land will be devastated by fire. My guess is that the visions were more symbolic than literal. But we will be baptized by both water and fire in some figurative sense.

And afterward, if we learn what God wants us to learn, we’ll find a New Eden.

If.