The greatest prophecies have been given through visions and dreams. We do not know how many of the Millennial descriptions of Isaiah and others owe their vividness of details to this fact, but we do know that such prophecies stand out the more clearly and linger longest in the memory. It may be that God chose the sense of sight rather than that of sound as His first medium of communication with man, and spoke to "holy men of old" in vision rather than sound. The oldest words for 'prophet', roeh and chozeh, seem to indicate this, for they both mean 'one who sees' and are often translated 'seer'. After about 1000 BC, however, the word nabi, meaning one who speaks ecstatically and fervently, began to supplant the older words. It may well be that this change of word indicates a development in the status of the prophets. Whereas at the first they could do no more than relate the visions that they had seen, the later prophets could, and did, explain their visions in part to the people. Perhaps now they could tell them in glowing terms of those glories of the Divine Plan that they had been permitted to see. Such a conclusion is in harmony with the view that Divine truth progressively unfolds as century succeeds century. An interesting note in this connection is found in 1 Sam.9.9. The narrator, explaining Saul's servant's reference to the 'man of God', says, "Formerly in Israel anyone who went to enquire of God would say, 'Come, let us go to the seer, for the one who is now called a prophet (nabi) was formerly called a seer (roeh)." This verse is evidently an editorial note added to the account at some later date to explain the change of term to a generation that was not familiar with the more primitive meaning.

It is noteworthy that visions and dreams were not used to convey knowledge of God's future plans to men until the time of Isaiah. From then to that of John the Revelator, a period of eight hundred years, they formed the principal means of prophetic revelation. It is probable that visions as such go right back to the time of Eden. The sight of the Cherubim with the flaming sword, stationed at the entrance to Eden to keep the way of the Tree of Life (Gen.3.24) must have been a vision, for the cherubim, symbolic four-headed and six-winged creatures, have no existence in reality. Then Moses saw the vision of God on the Mount and talked with Him, at the time when the Law was written there by the finger of God (Exodus 31.18). Moses of course, was that finger, for the Law proved to be well and solidly graven on stone slabs, and human instrumentality of some kind manifestly was employed.

Apart from the problematical case of Balaam (Num.24.16) there is no instance of "Kingdom prophecy" by vision or dream prior to the time of Isaiah. This is in keeping with the fact that Israel's own understanding of the Messianic Kingdom began to assume definite shape in Isaiah's day. Even although David sang about it in his Psalms, the idea was not clearly formulated in Israel at that time. It required the revelations of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, positively to define the nature of the Kingdom, and appropriately enough these four, together with Zechariah, who lived last of the five, were those to whom the greatest and most detailed of Messianic visions were granted.

Isaiah's first vision was that of the Lord in His Temple (Isa.6.1). Although he does not explicitly state which of his further revelations were given by vision the nature of some of them, particularly chaps. 13, 21, 35 and 63, is such as to leave little room for doubt that they are descriptions of scenes that he did actually see. In some cases the visual impression was merely a symbolic picture, symbolizing to his mind the reality that was intended. For example, in chapter 21 he perceived the dreaded simoom, a cyclonic wind, sweeping up from the Persian Gulf to destroy the land followed by a motley procession of chariots drawn by ill-assorted beasts of burden making all haste to get away. He knew this to be symbolic of the fall of Babylon and the over-running of the country by Cyrus of Persia. In chapters 44 and 45 he associates this victory of Cyrus with the assumption of regal power by the destined 'Servant of Jehovah', the Lord Jesus Christ in His Millennial Kingdom, and so makes chapter 21 a prophecy of that also. In chapter 35, however, he describes a scene that will certainly be literally fulfilled in the Millennial Age and like Paul in after days (2 Cor.12.2) he might well have viewed in vision an actual scene of earth, three millenniums before that scene can be enacted in reality.

Jeremiah saw an almond twig suddenly and miraculously burst into blossom, and then a boiling cauldron overturned so that its seething contents were precipitated all over the ground. (Jer.1.11-14). Those symbols told him of the coming fulfilment of Divine promise, but that there must first be a visitation in judgment at the hand of the Chaldeans, spreading death and destruction over the land. A later vision showed him two baskets of figs, symbolic of his own nation. One basket contained good figs and the other, bad ones, telling him of the two sections into which that nation had divided itself, the one part heeding the Divine word and resting quietly in Babylon, the other chafing under God's judgment and looking still to Egypt for salvation (Jer.24.1-10). The prophecy represented by this vision was fulfilled to the letter eighteen years later, when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple and brought the national existence of Judea to an end.

Twelve years after Jeremiah had seen his blossoming almond rod, Ezekiel, far away in Babylonia, beheld a series of visions which for sheer grandeur have no equal in the Old Testament. Like his predecessor Isaiah, he saw first of all a vision of the majesty of God, riding on the heavens, His throne supported by the cherubim (Ezek.1). Later on he received visions relating to events imminent in his own time, a roll of a book containing an intimation of the coming downfall of Jerusalem. (chapters 2-7) a vision of the Temple with its idolatrous worship and the destruction of both city and Temple at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers (chapters 8-11); all this some twelve years before the events took place. Later in his ministry he saw the final re-gathering of Israel (the valley of dry bones). This was their last trial of faith (the onslaught of Gog), and the Millennial reign, under the symbol of a new Temple and city, chapters 37-48 of his prophecy. It comprised a detailed symbolic account of history from the Jewish viewpoint extending from their national awakening at the end of the Gospel age to the final establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth. This is a series of events that in Ezekiel's day was something like twenty-five centuries future.

The visions and dreams of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar belong to this same period but whereas Ezekiel viewed the Divine Plan from heaven's standpoint, Daniel saw these things from the standpoint of an observer upon earth. Ezekiel saw his vision on the plains of Tel-Abib, the Jewish colony in southern Babylonia; Daniel saw his, in the main, at Babylon, the centre of the Gentile power. The symbols in which the visions of the Book of Daniel were expressed were in keeping with this environment, expressive of the might of material things; a great image, a great tree, powerful wild beasts, and a heavenly Judge come down to make an end to them all. And here is a case where a completely unregenerate man is used as the vehicle of Divine revelation. Nebuchadnezzar was not a worshipper of God, yet his two dreams were as strictly and accurately prophetic as were Daniel's, although it was necessary for Daniel, the God-directed man, to explain them. At the same time it must be remembered that Nebuchadnezzar was a deeply religious man and served his gods with an ardour worthy of a better cause. Like Saul of Tarsus, he verily thought he did God service. Is it possible that this piety of his, even although applied to unworthy objects, did make it possible for the prophetic vision to come to him where it could not come to a less worthy man?

The Book of Daniel has often been called the 'Revelation' of the Old Testament, but the description is probably more true of the Book of Zechariah. The visions of this, the Restoration prophet, embrace a greater span of time and a wider range of symbols than any other of the Old Testament prophecies. They commence with the Captivities of Israel and the Restoration, going on to the history of the Church, merging into the coming to power of the Ancient Worthies and concluding with the establishment of the Kingdom. The imagery of Zechariah is more like that of John the Revelator than is that of any other prophet.

Now the significant thing about all these prophetic visions and dreams is that the later prophets saw more deeply, farther into the future, and clothed their prophecies in more grandly symbolic language, than did the earlier ones. There seems to be a kind of progressive revelation at work that enabled the later prophets to see more clearly into the mysteries of the spiritual world. Amos and Nahum, and to some extent Isaiah and Jeremiah, spoke only of things that were fulfilled within a century or so of their own time; and the visions were largely of mundane things, the city of Nineveh, the everyday implements of husbandry, armies of Babylon, and so on. The later visions of Isaiah and Jeremiah and all those of Daniel, reach farther forward, to the threshold of the Millennial Kingdom. They employ symbols in which the powers of heaven begin to be introduced ‑ the stone cut out without hands, the Ancient of Days come down to judgment, the new covenant written in men's hearts and the new heavens and new earth. Ezekiel and Zechariah, and John the Revelator, the last of the 'vision' prophets, take their predictions into or to the end of the Millennial Age. They use symbols which only the spiritually minded can hope to understand; the Temple and the River of Life, the High Priest raised to royal power, the olive trees and the golden candlesticks, the Lamb on Mount Zion and the marriage of the Lamb. In all of this there seems to be a gradual but a definite leading away from the plain unvarnished literal acceptance of what is seen in the vision to its spiritual interpretation along lines of accepted symbolism. And this in its turn is but another aspect of our turning away from that which the natural eye perceives to that which is discerned spiritually, by mental sight, that we might thus be instructed in the things of God.

To us, then, the visions and dreams of the prophets should be looked at in their structure as akin to our own dreams, strange composite pictures, flickering across the consciousness. They are not necessarily to be taken as literal images of the things with which they deal, but as representations in which every symbol has a meaning alluding back to some event or thing in the Old Testament or in the world of the Old Testament. Thus it is that only those who are thoroughly conversant with that rich storehouse which is God's Word, can hope to understand and interpret prophecy.

How do the visions come? By what power are these symbolic fore views of events that have not yet happened produced upon the screen of the human mind? And, once produced, is there no power that can divert the current events so that the predicted happenings never materialize in fact? And if there is no such power, and the event must follow the prophecy as surely as night follows day, and if the lives and destinies of men are bound up in such prophecies‑ as indeed they are ‑ what becomes of the boasted free-will of the individual? Is there is no escape from the fulfilment predicted, it may be, long ages before those men were born. The answers to such questions, insofar as there can be answers in the present limited state of our knowledge, must form the subject of a separate article.

(to be continued)

AOH