Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

GENESIS
power in the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and is of
still greater importance in the lives of Samuel and Solomon,
as also in the night-visions of Zechariah. We find them
in the New Testament in the life of Joseph of Nazareth
and in the history of Paul. It needs no proof to show
that the manifestations of God or angels in dreams, are
not outward manifestations to the natural senses. In the
elements of the subjective dream-vision, veils itself, how-
ever, the existing divine manifestation. But what ’ the
dream introduces in the night-life, the seeing in images-
that the ecstasy does in the day or ordinary waking life
(see Lange: “Apostolic Age”). The ecstasy, as the remov-
ing of the mind into the condition of unconsciousness, or
of a different consciousness, is the potential basis of the
vision, the vision is the activity or effect of the ecstasy.
But since the visions have historical permanence and re-
sults, it is evident that they are the intuitions of actual
objective manifestations of God. Mere hallucinations of
the mind lead into the house of error, spiritual visions
build the historical house of God. But in this aspect we
may distinguish peculiar dream-visions, night-visions of a
higher form and power, momentary day-visions, apocalyp-
tic groups or circles of visions, linked together in prophetic
contemplation, and that habitual clear-sightedness as to
visions which is the condition of inspiration. But that
theophanies which are ever at the same time Angelophanies
and Christophanies, and indeed as theophanies of the voice
of God, or of the voice from heaven, of the simple appear-
ance of angels, of their more enlarged and complete mani-
festations of the developed heavenly scene-that these are
always conditioned through a disposition of fitness for
visions, is clear from numerous passages in the Old and
New Testaments (2 Ki. 6:17, Dan. 10:7; John 12:28-29,
20:10-12; Acts 9:8, 12:7-12, 22:9-14).
># :# x. :E :I.
I00