G: PUT a great deal of honour upon the prophets. How-
VISION
1. THE NATURE OF PROPHECY G: PUT a great deal of honour upon the prophets. However men mocked and misused them, they were the favourites and intimates of heaven. God made Himself known to them (Num. xit. 6), either by dreams when they were asleep, or by visions when they were awake, and by them made
Himself known to others. Those are happy, those are great, truly great, truly happy, to whom God makes Himself known.
Now He does it, not by dreams and visions as of old, but by the spirit of wisdom and revelation. He makes known to babes those things which prophets and kings desired to see and might not. Hence in the last days, the days of the Messiah, the sons and daughters are said to prophesy (Joel ii. 28) because they shall be better acquainted with the mysteries of the kingdom of grace than even the prophets themselves were (see Heb. i. 1).
2. PROPHECY AND VISION
But that vision which validates prophecy can become obscured. Then prophecy is scarce, as in the days of Eli (1 Sam. itt. 1). ''The word of the Lord was precious in those days." Now and then a man of God was employed as a messenger upon an extraordinary occasion, as in 1 Samuel ii. 27. But there were no settled prophets to whom the people might have recourse for counsel, nor from whom they might expect the discoveries of the divine will. The variety of prophecy made it the more precious to all those who knew how to put a right value upon it.
It was precious, for what there was, it seems, was private. 'There was no open vision."' That is, there were no people who were publicly known to have visions. Perhaps the iniquity and impurity that prevailed in the tabernacle, and no doubt corrupted the whole nation, had provoked God, as a token of His displeasure, to withdraw the spirit of prophecy, till the decree had gone forth for the raising up of a more faithful