Pilgrim's Progress: Revelation - Awaking from a dream

Today Ignorance reviles Hopeful and Christian at the very thought of REVELATION from Heaven. Note in this:
1) The mocking of the unenlightened worldling.
2) The absolute necessity of Revelation
3) The comfort of believing as the result of God's revealing.

We open up with Hopeful directing Christian to address Ignorance thus:

Hopeful: Ask him if ever he had Christ revealed to him from heaven.

Not waiting for Christian to speak, Ignorance, mockingly with incredulous disbelief, utter disgust, a kind of "HUH - what in the world are you thinking you complete moron" which is directed back at Christian and Hopeful. The very idea of God revealing from heaven is beyond the pale of any acceptability in the eyes of ignorant Ignorance.

Note the words of Ignorance but also try to get the awful sentiments.

Ignorance: What! you are a man for revelations! I do believe, that what both you and all the rest of you say about that matter, is but the fruit of distracted brains.

HE MOCKS!

As I tried with my most disgusted voice and screwed up facial expressions to impersonate the mocking of Ignorance this morning my 11 year old asked: "What are Revelations"

I tried to explain that before we come to faith in Christ we are dead but God resurrects us to a living faith. We were blind but God opened our eyes. That except God awaken us we sleep on in ignorance. We must be born again.

With all solemnity, my eleven year explained some thinking she had lately been contemplating:

"For sometime now I'd been thinking how before I became a Christian it was like I was in a dream. You know how when you are in a dream you try to think things and they seem to make sense to you but really they are not quite right. But because you are dreaming you think in your dream that they are right. That's how I was before I was saved, like I was in a dream thinking I was thinking right when I really wasn't. It was just dream thinking that was really confused thinking. But then when I was saved it was like waking up from a dream. Now I thought about things in the right way. I was no longer in a dazed dream way of thinking but awake to the truth. My thinking is now right. I can see now, how before I was saved that thinking that seemed right then wasn't. I had woke up from the dream to reality."

Thanks be to God, Christ has been revealed to her from heaven. She has woken up from the dazed dream state of not really knowing to a delicious reality in Christ. Knowing truth for he is TRUTH.

Ignorance mocks at revelation, but except for the grace of revelation there is no knowing him.

Mat 11:27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

1Co 12:3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

Eph 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
Eph 1:19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Read on as Bunyan through the lips of our Heroes responds to such mocking ignorance.

Hopeful: Why, man, Christ is so hid in God from the natural apprehensions of the flesh, that he cannot by any man be savingly known, unless God the Father reveals him to him.

Ignorance: That is your faith, but not mine, yet mine, I doubt not, is as good as yours, though I have not in my head so many whimsies as you.

Christian: Give me leave to put in a word. You ought not so slightly to speak of this matter: for this I will boldly affirm, even as my good companion hath done, that no man can know Jesus Christ but by the revelation of the Father: yea, and faith too, by which the soul layeth hold upon Christ, (if it be right,) must be wrought by the exceeding greatness of his mighty power (Matt. 11:27; 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 1:17-19), the working of which faith, I perceive, poor Ignorance, thou art ignorant of. Be awakened, then, see thine own wretchedness, and fly to the Lord Jesus; and by his righteousness, which is the righteousness of God, (for he himself is God,) thou shalt be delivered from condemnation.