Ecstasies And VisionsAn

Ecstasies And VisionsAn ecstatic experience is the state of being in a trance, especially a mystic or prophetic trance. We have see time and tlilme again saints who have ecstatic mystical experiences are usually considered to be mentally unstable. The derivation of our word “ecstasy” (from the Greek ek , out plus stasis , state) suggests an out of body state (2 Corinthians 12:2-3 ) or the state of being out of control.

In the Old Testament, God used visions to reveal His plan through the prophets to His people and to put His people in places of influence. For example, He spoke to Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Solomon, and Daniel. In the New Testament, visions and dreams served to provide information that was unavailable elsewhere.

They are also common in the New Testament. The outpouring of the Spirit in the latter days is associated with sons and daughters prophesying, young men seeing visions and old men dreaming dreams (Acts 2:17). Typical examples are the vision Peter had of heaven opening and something like a large sheet being let down by its four corners (Acts 10:9-15) and the vision Paul had of a man standing and begging him to come over to Macedonia (Acts 16:9).




In 2 Corinthians 12:1, Paul says that he will go on to boast of “visions and revelations of the Lord.” He then speaks in the third person about someone who was caught up to the third heaven and who saw and heard things that ought not to be shared with other humans.

The Bible Gateway Commentary suggests that to understand visions and revelations as a catchall phrase for a wide range of supramundane experiences. Whatever Paul experienced, it was decidedly "of the Lord." The genitive could be objective: "visions and revelations of the Lord himself" (Phillips). Or, more probably, it is subjective: visions and revelations from the Lord

Paul breaks a vow of silence and mentions an ecstatic experience that occurred fourteen years earlier (v. 2). This would place the event during the so-called silent years, when Paul was in the region of Syria and Cilicia (Acts 9:30; Gal 1:21). It happened well before his evangelistic foray in Corinth (c. A.D. 50-52), but not before his Damascus road encounter with the risen Christ (I know a man in Christ).

The story is narrated in the third-person singular. All the details of the story point to its being a personal experience, symptomatic of his aversion to boasting; he did it to avoid suggesting that he was special because of his experiences. He didn't allocate much importance to it; he will speak personally only of things that show weakness; or he is distancing his apostolic self from the self in which he has been forced to boast. But it may simply be that speaking of himself impersonally is the only way he can look at the experience with any kind of detachment. To boast of ecstatic experiences in a personal way may just have been beyond him.