This will never look the same.
He went into a lot of detail. He described how God’s face cannot be seen because it is such bright white light. He said he saw Jesus, and that there were marks on his wrists. He told me how there are colors that can’t be seen in this world, and that there is a feeling of such indescribable peace that there are no worries or fear whatsoever. He talked to my Uncle Bob, whom he has never met. He saw hell because God wanted him to know it was real. God let him know that Love saves people from hell.
At the time, I was understandably thrown for a loop. Sage grew up fairly obsessed with Pokemon cards and being read the stories of Brer Rabbit, not the Bible — a fact I am not proud of. I had no idea where all this was coming from. It seemed odd content for a hallucination that would arise out of prior knowledge or interests.
I told his doctor about it, and he told me about the book If Heaven Is for Real
It is about a 4-year-old boy who sees heaven during a life-threatening surgery. I’ve always been pretty skeptical about these things, and it wasn’t on my reading list.
The book was a quick read, and after I finished it, I remember lying on the bed feeling almost paralyzed. I called Sage into the room. Having read about how the boy saw a rainbow around the throne of God, I asked, “Did God sit down?”
My son said, yes, he was sitting on a throne. “What did it look like?” I asked. He told me about how a rainbow went around it.
At that point, I my mind did a flip and I started to feel really afraid. My son said, “There is a dark presence in this room. God wanted me to tell you that we are going to be in a very large spiritual battle.”
Note that I don’t recall discussing things like spiritual battles with my son at that point. I remember I had just started attending church, after the dream he had where he was quoting the Book of Revelation to me.
So there it is.
I’m convinced this was a true spiritual vision — God forgive me if I’m wrong. I really think that if all this was only neurologically based, then the vision would have been of something else entirely. Like Pokemon characters. But no, his visions have never had that sort of content. It is always God, Jesus, angels, demons, and things like exploding nuclear bombs and parched earth.
We don’t watch the news and never have. We don’t have television since I discovered that watching it was causing him to stutter several years ago. So I can’t attribute this to something he had watched a few days prior.
I am so thankful for this. This vision caused me to completely desire to follow Jesus, to give my life to God. I count myself as very fortunate, as my intellectualism had set up many arguments against much in the Bible being literally true. Being a part of this experience has forced me to put my feeble human arguments aside and simply praise God that he permitted me to see.
And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. Revelation 4:3
It’s amazing how he could describe all those things, to say the least. So, is he going to church now? What are his general reactions to the things being taught there?
Yes. After he had that battle dream, he started going again. He likes church, although sometimes he says that “demons attack him,” making it difficult for him to be there. Like most 13-year-old’s, he gets bored at adult church. He likes youth group discussions and helping out. At any rate, he believes most of what he is taught. We attend a loving church with humble leaders who themselves follow the teachings of Jesus.
Some of what he says is uncanny. A couple of days ago, he expressed concern about our income because my husband was home sick. I told him not to worry, that God would provide our daily bread. He said, “Mom, I think that “daily bread” is a spiritual concept, not a physical one.” I’m thinking there must have been a discussion about that at one point at church, but it blows my mind to think that a 13-year-old thinks like this.
Sometimes he is incredulous when spiritual warfare is brought up, as if he can’t believe people don’t realize it is real.
IT IS REAL. I can testify.
He sounds like an old soul and those kind of kids(like my older daughter) have many agonies because of their depth and perception. Hard to be them. Would you recommend that book to me or do you think it would upset me?
It might — I’m not sure. They could have done a better job writing it, in my opinion, but that’s just me. I found his experiences absolutely fascinating because of the similarities. Is it a good book, though? Well… *shrugs* You know, you can find out a lot about it just by reading the reviews on Amazon. Some of them sum it up pretty well.
Interesting. I believe we can have spiritual visions, but I also wonder why those visions always are described in similar ways. Could it be that that is what we were taught and therefore that is what we experience in a hallucination or dream?
The thing that gets me, though, is that what he was taught and what he sees are very different.