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In the information age with hi-tech devices from computers to
GPS tracking is it reasonable to believe that human beings can
still experience a vision or an apparition?
Unless God has changed the way he does things it would seem that
he has kept the lines open to men and women as usual. Should
there be any doubt let me tell you a true story of a sequence of
events in my own life. No one had more trouble believing these
events than me; in fact I wouldn?t tell even my closest friends
for over a year. Now I think so very differently. Not only do I
tell this story but I realize it is part of the reason the
events took place, I am supposed to tell of it. Telling it is my
very calling in life.
As a young man I spent many years wandering around the country.
I can truthfully say there is but one state that I have not been
in and that is Alaska. In the early sixties I landed in New
Orleans where I went to work and hung out with a crowd of pretty
wild young people. In the?City That Care Forgot, it was indeed
easy to forget just about anything other than partying and
having a good time. I imbibed in alcohol, psychedelic drugs,
marijuana and a lot of foolish behavior. As the playing deepened
to the stage where it seemed more like work I was growing
increasingly more empty and exasperated. At this height of my
partying I was experiencing a depth of despair. The best parties
have to end.
I met a girl named Fran who lived near me in the wild and famous
French Quarter of New Orleans. I only checked in with Fran when
I was at my lowest or coming off a major drunk or high. I was
drawn to her quiet sense of stability. She was the only moral
girl I knew in the quarter and while I would have preferred she
wasn?t moral I knew it kept her head clearer than most all the
other girls I knew at the time. On one occasion I asked her why
she was so different, so calm and so kind to me. Her reply
was?I?m a Christian and it is Jesus Christ that makes me
different. I scoffed at that. Nothing could have been so
meaningless to me at that time, but Fran?s influence continued.
One day she said I am going to have my church pray for you
Michael because you are so troubled and you need the Lord. I
cursed a bit and told her I could care less whether her church
prayed or not. I told her I didn?t believe in God, the church or
prayer. I kept partying as she and her church began praying. The
result of those prayers was to be more than my wildest
imagination.
Shortly after Fran and church began praying I found life began
getting hard for me. I was still partying, boozing and drugging
but it was getting harder. It seemed that now something was
pricking my conscience and I started asking myself what the
point of all this nonsense was. I felt heavy and dissatisfied
with myself. I wouldn?t know for a long time that this is what
the Bible calls coming under the conviction of Gods Holy Spirit.
I hated the fact that as I partied I couldn?t keep from
questioning. I hated it because when I engaged my sense of right
and wrong something kept telling me I was living wrong. I
thought it would pass but it was relentless. In a fledgling
attempt to deal with it all I moved out of the quarter and moved
to the uptown section of the city and started to slow down all
the going out and fun seeking. One day while alone in my new
garden district apartment I began to deeply ponder my life, my
direction or more like the lack of it. It was during this deep
moment of examination and reflection that I experienced
something that was so powerful that I was afraid to share it
with anyone for almost one full year. Since that time I have
shared it with thousands of people in many places and it is part
of a book I wrote many years later.
On that day I wandered from room to room asking myself some very
pointed questions. I pondered my path, why was I living the way
I was and where would I end up. The more I asked these kinds of
questions the more I found myself hungering for some real
answers. At some point I sat on the edge of my bed and asked
three very serious questions. When I got to the third question I
was thrust into an experience that I almost could not believe
myself. I don?t argue with anyone about its veracity I just tell
it. There is no argument to it and I could no more deny what
happened than I could deny that my name is Michael. It wasn?t
for years to come that I found a saying that I took to heart
although I still do not know where it originated. A man with an
experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
The first question I asked was, are we all just the product of
our environment and our upbringing. I quickly dismissed this as
being any sort of real answer because I knew that I had a free
will. I knew people who were raised in ghettos and worse, which
went on to live useful and productive lives. This wasn?t the
answer.
The second question was, are we only the product of our genes.
Must we cow to Mendel?s Law of The Third Generation. If granddad
was suicidal I must be too. Must we follow a path designed by a
mere combination of biological material? Again I knew this was
not the answer because free volition and the ability to choose
could overcome even these influences. Environment and genetics
were influences but not answers and I knew some people were
using both as mere excuses for every degenerate activity they
could conjure. Here then I arrived at a very positive negative.
For my third question I asked, is there really a God, could my
brother have been wrong when he told me in no uncertain terms as
a boy that parents only tell us of God so we will be good? Could
there really be an ultimate being, the very creator of all
things? At the very second I asked this question I felt a
powerful presence enter the room. Everything stood still but
this presence was as real and apparent as it would be if an old
friend or my mother had entered. In a moment of time I had a
hundred images of my past fly before me. I remembered the times
I was cruising down the street trying to tune in some rock and
roll on the radio. I remembered coming across Billy Graham
speaking of how Christ had died for the sins of the world. I
remembered to person who slipped a gospel tract into my hand as
I sauntered down the street. I looked at it for a moment
crumbled it up and threw it away. I remembered as a boy when the
catholic priest would open his bible before he preached and read
from the bible. It all stuck me as one single message a message
I had chosen to deny thinking it had no meaning. It always
seemed far fetched over simplified and pointless to me as I
carried on in my real life like everyone else. Religion I was
sure was for just a few old ladies and children who couldn?t
think for themselves as yet. At that moment I knew I had been
wrong.
In what I guess was a prayer I lifted my eyes toward the ceiling
and said these words very slowly not just once but three times.
God, I?m sorry I have ignored you all of these years and I
believe that Jesus Christ is your Son. As I spoke those words
two things happened in consecutive order. The first thing that
happened was that I felt that presence all around me in the room
enter me. It flowed in like a powerful but gentle stream of cool
clear water; it literally took my breath away. The second thing
that occurred simultaneously was that as I spoke those words
ever so slowly peering up at the ceiling the face of Jesus
Christ appeared to me. It was not a fading image but a clear
brilliant and living face. It glowed with a light I still do not
know how to best describe; it was beaming with uncreated light
like nothing I have ever seen on this earth. I fell to the floor
and wept like a baby. I felt that I had been in the dark all my
life and some kind soul just stepped in and said, hey don?t you
know there is a light switch here, and turned it on.
Most all of my life, I have believed that visions and
apparitions were for ancient saints, liars and religious nuts.
That being one of the reasons I chose not to tell anyone of the
vision for a very long time. I did not want my friends calling
me a nut, mush less a religious nut. But it was far from over.
Shortly after that experience I started to have dreams. I had
three in one night at the very beginning. I saw the past in one
dream the present in the next and the future in the third. Eight
days after the things I saw in the third dream happened to the
letter. Since then I have had hundreds of dreams some of the
immediate future some more long rang but none that have ever
been false. In over thirty years since not one dream or vision
has ever been wrong.
Do people see visions anymore? Yes, and they will with
increasing frequency. It is promised in the Bible that as we
approach the second coming of Christ that men and women alike
will begin to see and hear from God in a renewed fashion that
will be without precedent in any preceding generation. The
Prophet Joel describes this in Joel 2:28. And it shall come to
pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men
shall dreams, your young men shall see visions:
About the author:
Rev Bresciani is from New Orleans La and the author of?Hook line
and Sinker or What Has Your Church Been Teaching You,
PublishAmerica 2005 and?An American Prophet and His Message,
Questions and Answers on the Second Coming of Christ, Xulon
Press 2005. His website is http://americanprophet.org
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