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I’ve said this before, but I think it’s important to be precise when we talk about this sort of thing. Visions are mentioned in our scriptures, but they aren’t “commonplace”. Seriously, if you want to have an eye-opening experience, read our entire cannon and see how many people record visions. I think most of you would be surprised – and that’s in records covering thousands of years and in cultures that didn’t have problems accepting visions.
Then there are visitations: Um, almost none that aren’t phrased in such a way that they absolutely had to be visitations and not visions. The brother of Jared, Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (the only instance in his mortal life, interestingly), Jesus appearing to the Nephites and . . . who else?
I’d like to have more visions and visitations reported in our day, but I’m realistic enough to believe that such events just don’t happen much – when viewed through the lens of our recorded scriptures.
Old-Timer wrote:I’d like to have more visions and visitations reported in our day, but I’m realistic enough to believe that such events just don’t happen much – when viewed through the lens of our recorded scriptures.
if the mechanism of visions, visitations, and revelation is “in your mind and in your heart”, and if according to doctrine, you cannot see god in the flesh with mortal eyes and live, then why do we need to think that a vision or visitation is anything other than a spiritual, mental event?I probably should clarify my last comment: If we are talking about “visions” only and defining them as broadly as possible, they happen quite regularly still. I know of LDS members who have had visions of some kind or another, and I don’t question most of them. I’ve even had one moment where I might say I had a vision.
There are all kinds of visions, if we are talking about prophecy and “seeing the future”. My own experience was like that – getting a flashing glimpse of what would happen in the Deep South if the people ever could let go of their racist viewpoints – both some members and lots of non-members. It was an amazing experience, and it was “visionary” in a way – but that’s not what I meant.
I think those types of visions happen all the time still – but I didn’t think that’s what SD meant in his comment. When I say visions and visitations are relatively uncommon in our scriptures, I mean God appearing to someone and seeming to visit that person. Those are rare – and if they are rare in our scriptures, in times and cultures where they were accepted relatively easily, I understand why they are even rarer now in our modern, industrial, technological society and culture.
Well, to anyone that doesn’t the point of this post, the point I’m trying to make is that apart from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other prophets and apostles in these last days, why don’t we hear such things from President Monson or when President Hinckley was alive? Was it all considered too sacred? The conclusion I draw is that most prophets only receive the same form of revelation that we all receive. Namely, promptings of the holy ghost. If God came down to talk to Pres. Monson, I am sure he’d let us know because it would be important.
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