“The idea that someone could go to heaven and come back with visions
and dreams and we should take that seriously is as far from historic
evangelicalism as it’s possible to get,” Phil Johnson, the executive
director of the ministry headed by MacArthur, the California pastor and
author whose ministry Beth reached out to in 2012. “To me, one of the
real signifiers that modern evangelical Christianity is badly astray and
in serious jeopardy of even existing 50 years from now is the ease with
which evangelicals buy into stories like this.”
It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I
cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.
-- II Corinthians 12:1ff.
