I am trying to sort out the place of revelation in a Christian’s life. My friends mention that they receive ‘revelation’ meaning a special insight from the Spirit …about either the meaning of scripture or about what is happening to them re God’s connection to their current experience. I have questions I’m trying to sort out 1.What’s the basis in scripture / church tradition / christian experience for this idea. 2. The other implication seems to be that this revelation trumps logic / rational deduction / is a faith response rather than logical response…what do others think about personal “revelation”???
I am struggling because I react badly when it is suggested that personal revelation trumps logic and am out of step with my friends but have I become to rational 
I was trying to find the verse about not ruling out prophesy to balance what I was going to say about testing them. However as I was googling for the former, I came across an interesting link preparingforeternity.com/trueprophet.htm I don’t agree with it all, but I think it makes some good points.
I find people who imply they have a “direct line to God” annoying so I have to remind myself to be gentle when responding 
Julian of Norwich comes to mind - people seemed to have paid her a fair bit of respect, whereas she would have just made me uncomfortable 
Stephen I’d recommend you do a word study on revelation. Apokalupto and the other variants of it.
When Jesus asked Peter who he was and he replied the son of God, Jesus replied “you are blessed Simon bar Jonah for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.”
Stephen,
You’re right; this is a somewhat touchy subject. I would submit that no one has a right to expect you to believe their revelation. Anyone who says, “God told me this and therefore that’s the way it is and the group should go along with me” is all wet. That is a bad and a wrong thing to do.
Now that doesn’t mean the group may NOT decide to go along with such a brother/sister’s revelation. For instance, several of the group have independently come up with more or less the same thing, or the person who is (humbly!!!) submitting the revelation has an impressive track record of having been right. There may be other circumstances I’m not thinking about as well. It is certainly possible that the group might rightly choose to follow the revelation of a member, but certainly not without judging its validity.
I learned several years ago what has been staring us all in the faces pretty much as long as we’ve known the scriptures…
That the bible is absolutely packed with people receiving and acting on revelations from God. What’s more, these are, in their own worlds, ordinary flesh and blood people who eat, go to the bathroom, sleep, who fear danger and whose feelings can be hurt, etc. These are not icons. If Paul the apostle was visiting your group of believers, you, Stephen, might very well have had a group of brothers over to Starbucks to have coffee with him, or he might have shown up to help re-roof another brother’s storm damaged home. The sisters might have gotten together with Deborah to intercede for their families and community, or just to can tomatoes or have a baby shower for a first-time mom. These were mortals just like us, and yet they received and acted on revelations from God.
So it follows (in Cindy’s world) that we, like them, can expect to also hear from God personally and as a group. It follows that we might “get it wrong” and also that, frankly, Paul may also have gotten it wrong from time to time. Like when he split up with his close friend, Barnabas over his pique regarding John Mark (who eventually wrote the gospel of Mark). Maybe Paul had a bit of a temper which he occasionally allowed to get out of line. (“Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall save me from this body of death?”) Maybe even some of that made it into scripture – I allow for that possibility, though I’m not sure whether it ever happened . . . not one of those things I’m prepared to swear on one way or the other.
The thing is, I hear from God pretty much whenever I take the time to sit down and listen (typically with pen and journal in hand). It’s not that He doesn’t talk to me except in that sort of situation, but I can’t seem to retain it. He’s illuminated scripture for me in some (to me) amazing ways. That’s not to say I don’t study with my bible program (e-sword), strongs/thayer’s definitions, the advice and knowledge of others, cultural backgrounds, etc. I do that a LOT. That sort of study provides material with which the Holy Spirit can work in my spirit to instruct me. Nevertheless, He still opens to me ideas I (despite their being PLAINLY stated) just did not see until that moment.
Some of us need instruction in hearing from our Father. I certainly did. Our culture with its worship of rationality, independence, concrete reasoning, etc. (not that any of those things is bad – they’re all tools given us by Father) is not predisposed to what we might call mystical communications from God. So if you do need help learning how to do this, assuming you’d LIKE to do this, I can point you to some resources that helped me and that most likely you won’t find too airy fairy or offensive toward reason.
As I was saying, the bible is thick with people hearing from God through dreams, visions, prayer, and simply listening with the ears of the spirit. Jesus Himself did this as you’ll see when you read the gospels with this in mind. He did nothing He didn’t “see” the Father do. I believe this probably refers to “seeing” with the eyes of the heart as opposed to what some call ‘open visions’. An 'open vision" means to me, a vision that sort of overtakes you like a trance in which you’re pretty much captive to the experience. Most visions are a lot more mundane. You see unprompted pictures in your mind, and usually very brief pictures (though they may make a deep impression nevertheless). You see them because you’re willing to notice them, not because they overtake you like you’re in some kind of “holograph deck” in a Star Trek episode. It isn’t as weird or as hyper spiritual as many of us have been led to believe.
Anyway, I’d better shut up here 
or I’ll definitely out-talk my welcome. I’m only trying to explain, Stephen, that it isn’t probably all as mystical as you may be thinking. It’s ordinary day to day stuff, and really, in your own style, it’s easy to do, and anyone can hear from Father. It isn’t foolproof, but there are things one can do/precepts one can follow to make hearing correctly more likely. It’s a thing that needs constant practice, and a skill which can be improved. It needs verification from other believers, but it IS possible and incredibly useful to hear for oneself from Father.
Love in Jesus, Cindy
Hi Stephen: There is also a big difference between a person feeling support from God for some personal faith journey they are on, and someone proclaiming they have had a revelation that warrants action by their whole church or changes in the beliefs of other people.
I have had the support from God feeling as I deal with a chronic illness and I feel I was led to CEU by the Holy Spirit as part of my own journey. I do not say everyone elses’ journey will evolve the same way. Pesonally, I think faith involves both logic and emotion and I need to use both.
I agree with Cindy—faith revelations are prominent in the Bible but as for today, each body of believers should have their own Bible based methods for determining what, if anything to make of modern revelations. I like Alex’s link.
I learned the hard way that it does not always work out well to make all major life decisions, regarding faith or anything else, relying strictly on logic. Sooner or later the emotions related to those decisions will ambush you, usually at the worst possible time
Hi Alex –
In defence of dear old Julian of Norwich 
: I wouldn’t for a moment accord her ‘visions’ the same status as I do holy scripture (and she makes no such claims herself). I can understand that she may seem to be someone with an easy hotline to God – but I’m sure this is not the case. Her contemporary Margery Kempe fits that bill – but not Julian.
As the fine essay in the ‘All shall be well anthology’ suggests – the best explanation for Julian’s visions is that they were near death experiences she had when a young woman on the point of death. She had no visions after this. She wrote the original visions down soon after her recovery in the short text of the ‘Shewings of Divine Love’. She pondered these visions through careful recollection for the rest of her life in the light of her experience and wrote down her reflections in the long text of the ‘Shewings’.
The visions are imaginative mediations on the meaning of the passion of Christ and the existence of sin and evil in a world created by the God of Love and all Goodness. I think it obvious that the meaning of her youthful visions was disclosed gradually to Julian through her experience as a comforter and confessor to ordinary people suffering during the calamitous times in which she lived – a time of the black death and the peasant wars, failed harvests, widespread starvation etc.
The visions provided substance for her reflections on her faith; and I think we need to understand that during the Middle Ages – with a few exceptions – the inner spiritual experience of a woman was not given any credence unless it had a visionary nature.
Julian was a medieval woman – I don’t seek her experiences and can only try to understand them with historical imagination. But I can take from Julian a host of lovely and comforting and universal images – as if would from a great artist - and an awareness of a very compassionate and intelligent woman who struggled with the deep questions of faith and suffering in the idiom of her age – and despite the overwhelming of contemporary evils her final thought is, that despite the terrible nature of sin God will do a marvellous thing at the end that will make all things well and all manner of things well.
I’m a fan of hers – but there’s n accounting for taste!
Thanks Cindy, you’ve given me much to think about. I think the character & perceived motivation (e.g are they doing it to look good, or achieve an agenda) of the person giving the revelation make a big difference. e.g. I’d take claims that God had revealed something to you, far more seriously than someone I’d only met once or twice.
Excellent points!
Thanks Sobornost for giving me a better understanding of the historical backdrop of her story - it makes me appreciate her more.
Hi Stephen,
I believe that God speaks to people in different ways. Some have visions, dreams, hear the Spirit speak to them, have scripture illuminated, hear God speak through signs as simple as seeing a rabbit or meditating upon the nature of various animals. Love communicates! And as Cindy noted, scripture is full of examples of common every day people recieving revelations from God and hearing God’s voice, encountering the Lord. And Jesus even said that my sheep know my voice and will not follow the voice of another (Jn.10:1-30).
The thing about “personal revelation” though is that it is “personal”, something that God has shown you and very well might have not shown others. Personally, I have recieved several visions from the Lord, heard his voice very clearly a few times, and often prophecy, speaking in faith what I believe is inspired by the Lord. I believe that God is always “speaking”, but like radio waves, one must “tune in”. I believe everyone hears God’s voice, but most don’t recognize it, often having “thoughts” that they do not recognize as being from the Lord. People often have “thoughts” that they wish they had listened to or are thankful that they did, having no idea where these thoughts came from.
Is “personal revelation” as authoritative as scripture? Well, not for the “group”, but by it’s very nature it is for the “person”. And if the “person” is in some form of leardership even then it is submitted to the discernment and response of the group. Of course, as with anything else, such gifts can be abused, misused.
If one has lived in a community of faith where few, if any, have learned to discern the very present voice of our Lord and instead rely completely upon what has been accept for generations as having been inspired by God (scripture), then it is only natural to question the reality of people hearing the present voice of God.
Is God speaking to people logical, rational? To me it is. One of the key elements of “love” is communication, personal, intimate communication! And if we accept that the Spirit of God is with us personally and corporately, then it only makes sense to me that God would communicate with us personally and corporately. And as noted before, scripture is full of stories of individuals and groups that heard God speak to them, recieved personal revelation.
I’m reminded of when my wife is upset at me, one of the first things that is a sign of her being upset with me is she stops communicating with me - the dreaded “silent treatment”. Love though, communicates. Love is not easily offended. Love is patient, kind, and perseveres! Love keeps reaching out, keeps speaking, keeps looking for reconciliation. If we believe that God loves us personally and individually, then it’s only reasonable that He’d communicate with us personally and individually.
I was raised in a community of faith that dismissed the present voice of God. At best they/we didn’t know what to think of others who claimed to hear God’s voice, and at worst thought they were wacky, a little dillusional! Interaction with some intelligent and loving people who claimed to hear God’s voice though inspired me to study the issue and ultimately led to me becoming one of “them”, much to the shagrin of my family and friends. Do I expect everyone to or think poorly of those who do not “tune in”? No! In no way! Though I do trust that one day we shall all hear God’s voice and come into life!
This is a great discussion 
I don’t have much time at the moment, but when I do I’ll try and throw in my two cents 
But great stuff guys
Thanks for bringing this up, Stephen, and welcome by the way
Blessings to you
Matt
Thanks for the wonderful replies 
…I’ll take some time to reflect and then ask more questions no doubt