Among missiologists, it’s not uncommon to hear how an individual from an unengaged, unreached people group becomes a follower of Jesus through a vision or dream. Assuming the truth of such stories, what are we to make of them? How should they affect the way we think about the necessity and urgency of missions? If God can use supernatural encounters to bring the lost to saving faith, can missionaries and evangelists simply sit back and let angels do all the work, or at least pray for them to do more?
While God can communicate the gospel message through whatever means he chooses, the Scriptures consistently teach that God loves to advance the gospel through his people. Therefore, Christians and local churches are responsible for bearing the name of Jesus to the ends of the earth.
The Bible gives no evidence that God uses angels, visions, or dreams as the principal means of a person’s salvation. Instead, if angels or visions have a role in the task of missions, it’s ancillary to the responsibility of Christians and churches to herald the gospel to the lost.
Romans 10 Principle
Romans 10:13–15 is one of Scripture’s programmatic statements for the necessity of missions. Paul teaches that individuals are saved when they express faith in Jesus (v. 13), which occurs when other humans share the gospel with them (vv. 14–15).
If we follow his logic backward through the text, Paul’s missional method is as follows: an individual is commissioned to herald the gospel, and those who hear the gospel believe and call on the Lord for salvation. Paul’s logic points to the normativity of this principle, for unless God’s people share the gospel, Paul doesn’t expect anyone to hear and believe it.
Further, Paul has in mind the universal task of missions. In context, his question concerns how Jews and Gentiles alike will call on the Lord for salvation. Paul gives no evidence here that he considers angels or visions to be the normal means for gospel advance. Rather, the “beautiful feet” that herald the gospel message belong to Paul and those like him (v. 15; cf. Isa. 52:7).
Unless God’s people share the gospel, Paul doesn’t expect anyone to hear and believe it.
In Paul’s apostolic ministry, the Romans 10 principle accounts for his laser focus on taking the gospel to the nations. He made it his “ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named” so the nations would come to know Christ (Rom. 15:20–21; cf. Isa. 52:15). Even though he was a prisoner, Paul asked the Colossians to pray “that God may open to [them] a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ” (Col. 4:3; cf. Eph. 6:19). Even Paul’s imprisonment had advanced the gospel precisely because he’d spoken it boldly to his guards (Phil. 1:12–13). Paul’s lifestyle and missionary efforts assume and apply the Romans 10 principle.
Pattern in Acts
Likewise, the stories in Acts illustratively confirm the programmatic principle in Romans 10. These stories are instructive in this discussion, for they depict the relationship between the spread of the gospel and the role of angels and visions. In these accounts, angels and visions don’t communicate the gospel message but provide instructions for the spread of that message.
Angels often appear in the Acts narrative with instructions and encouragements that God’s people should share the gospel. In Acts 5:20, after an angel freed the apostles from prison, the angel instructs them to “speak to the people all the words of this Life.” In 8:26, an angel instructs Philip to “go south” where Philip was to share the gospel with the Ethiopian eunuch. In 10:3–6, an angel in a vision tells Cornelius to send for Peter. Having experienced his own vision, Peter then announced the gospel with Cornelius. Finally, during the shipwreck narrative of chapter 27, Paul tells the people around him of how an angel told him not to fear but to be encouraged since it was necessary for Paul to “stand before Caesar” as a witness to Christ (27:24).
Similarly, the visions in Acts don’t communicate the gospel but provide directives for its reception. On the Damascus road, Jesus appeared in a vision to Saul, directing him to Ananias who proclaimed the gospel to him (9:1–19; 22:10–17). In that same vision, Jesus commissioned Saul to share the gospel with the Gentiles (26:16–19; cf. 22:21). On Paul’s second missionary journey, he experienced two night visions, one from a Macedonian man and the other from Jesus (16:9–10; 18:9–11). Both directed him to herald the gospel, in the regions of Macedonia and Achaia respectively.
The visions in Acts don’t communicate the gospel but provide directives for its reception.
These stories are instructive because they illustrate how God loves to advance the gospel through Christian witness. In the patterns of gospel advance in Acts, angels and visions play a role, but not as heralds of the gospel. The Cornelius story is particularly instructive here, for presumably the angel could have told Cornelius the gospel message. Instead, the angel instructed him to turn his attention to Peter, who will tell him “a message by which [Cornelius] will be saved” (11:14).
While angels are active as God’s servants throughout Acts, not once do they share the gospel. They often urge Christ’s followers to share the gospel or direct non-Christians to find believers who will communicate the gospel to them.
Contemporary Practice
According to Scripture’s consistent witness, Christians are responsible for sharing the gospel throughout the world. While we should affirm the scriptural role of angels and visions in our missiology, we shouldn’t expect them to be the normal means of gospel advance. Nor should we assume that simply having a dream or vision about Jesus automatically makes a person a Christian. In such cases, biblical prudence dictates we follow up with that person by clearly articulating the truth of the gospel to him or her.
Of course, God can communicate the gospel however he chooses—even the rocks could cry out. But the consistent witness of the biblical text instructs us and our local churches to take responsibility for the spread of the gospel to all the peoples of the earth.
Since this is the case, Scripture instructs us how to pray for world evangelization. God uses people to proclaim the gospel, so we should pray that he would send laborers into the harvest (Matt. 9:37–38). There’s no evidence that early Christians prayed for angelic visitations or visions to advance the gospel. Instead, they prayed for strength to speak the Word with boldness (Acts 4:29; cf. Eph. 6:19). Similarly, as we pray for the task of missions, we should align our prayers with God’s revealed means of gospel advance and so join him in the joy of his harvest.
The Gospel Coalition