Week 5 March 2025, Impromptu Devotion

Where there is no vision, the people perish…

This quote from Proverbs 29:18 is familiar to many of us, and in view of the centurion’s and Peter’s parallel experience, it pricked my interest in the subject of visions.  After checking various translations, I found that the amplified version was most helpful to me, “Where there is no vision [no revelation of God and His word], the people are unrestrained; but happy and blessed is he who keeps the law [of God].”  Next, I sampled the names of contemporary “visionaries,” avoiding like the plague the recent slew of wannabe prophets. Naturally, the founders of Amazon and Facebook stole the thunder formerly belonging to the likes of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford.  As for Mahatma Gandhi, the lawyer and political ethicist, he famously employed nonviolent resistance to gain India’s independence from British rule.  He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world, but was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in 1948.  Thanks to the bullet that reportedly only grazed the ear of the man who now sits in the Oval Office, the billionaire of Tesla/SpaceX fame, apparently likes to call the shots because he bought the election.  At least that’s how the media like to rub it in.  Perhaps they won’t object if we let Solomon put in what they might describe as his two cents worth.  Reading Psalm 29 in its entirety makes for several AHA moments when we discover him to be an amazingly contemporary visionary.  God’s Word doesn’t mesh with today’s “Christian nationalism,” widely hailed to make America great again.

Some of us have met congregants with claims of dreams they equate with prophetic visions. Sadly, church history shows how many gullible believers take end-tine predictions seriously, although they never pan out . Why not imitate the Bereans  - see Acts 17:10-12 – who daily fact-checked in their Bibles, no matter how reputable their “influencers” appeared to be?  In Matthew 24:3 Jesus says plainly that neither He nor the angels in heaven know the day of His return, but ONLY His Father.

I find an incident recorded in chapter 12:6-8 of the Book of Numbers to be quite insightful for the modern believer.  Aaron and Miriam were jealous of their brother’s leadership role and asked belligerently,  “Hasn’t He [God] also spoken through us?”  The Lord summoned them to the entrance of the tabernacle. “And he said, ‘Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my SERVANT Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he sees the form of the Lord…’”  Notice how God’s testimony is echoed in Hebrews 3:5, “Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a SERVANT…”  The Greek word specifically used here is therapōn, which means his ministry was therapeutic – healing – for God’s people. Today’s troubling divisions in national and faith-based affairs, will not be cured by worldly visionaries or religious purveyors of novel visions.  We as God’s born again, Spirit-filled believers, are to seek His face and hear Him speak plainly to as the truest Friend ever. How privileged we are to have a faithful therapōn lead our church, his ministry soundly rooted in God’s living Word and his relationship with our living Lord!