PAUL’S VISIONS

Acts 9 : 1 – 6, Acts 16 : 6 – 10, Acts 18 : 9 – 11, 22 : 6 – 10, Acts 26 : 12 - 18, Acts 27 : 23 - 25, 2 Corinthians 12 : 1 – 7

I

Paul’s Conversion

Acts 9 : 1 – 6, 22 : 6 – 10, 26 : 12 - 18

This is the well known story of Saul’s conversion to Jesus Christ, The elements are interesting. ‘A sudden light from heaven flashed around him’. What was this sudden light from heaven? Could it have been a natural light, a lightning bolt which struck the earth near Paul, knocking him to the ground? Was it a searing mental light which affected Saul’s brain and balance? Some reductionist commentators who seek to undermine the validity of Saul’s experience suggest he suffered from epilepsy and had had a seizure. Was it a spiritual light specifically directed to Saul by the Lord Himself? It seems so because verse 7 tells us that the men travelling with Saul ‘heard the sound but did not see anyone’. They may have seen the light from heaven. The description ‘flashed around them’ is very like lightning. In this respect it is a familiar occurrence in the Old Testament. ‘When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground’ (Exodus 9 :23). ‘When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear’ (Exodus 2: 18). ‘He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth’ (Job 37 : 3). ‘His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude’ (Daniel 10 : 6). And in the New Testament, ‘As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning’ (Luke 9 : 29). ‘For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man’ (Matthew 24 : 27). …‘an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow’ (Matthew 28 : 2 - 3). ‘From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder’ (Revelation 4 : 5). If it was lightning, Saul would have understood immediately that this was God addressing him in judgement.

He fell and he heard a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?’ The Lord does not say ‘Saul Saul, you are persecuting me’. He says ‘Why are you persecuting me?’ ‘Why are you doing this, Saul?’. ‘What are you doing Saul?’ ‘What are you thinking Saul?’ Saul knew why he was persecuting Christians. After Stephen’s martyrdom ‘Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison’ (Acts 8 : 3). He replied ‘Who are you Lord?’ This is a curious question. ‘Who’ as an interrogative normally indicates the need for knowledge and introduction. Did Saul think it was some intermediate supra-human being worthy of being so entitled. But he was no spiritualist. He was a devout monotheist. This must have meant God. ‘Lord’ in the Greek used here is ‘Kyrie’ indicating The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is a common usage in both Old and New Testaments. Saul may have been confused in the moment. We don’t always know if and when it is God speaking to us. There are many confusions on the journey of the spiritual life. Little Samuel did not know that it was God calling him (1 Samuel 1 : 1 – 10). Isaiah did though. ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.’ (6 : 1)

The answer was ‘I am Jesus’. The visionary element is the light from heaven. The audible element is the voice of Jesus. Paul did not see Jesus. Technically, this was not a vision of Jesus. But it most certainly was an encounter with Jesus. Its intimacy is guaranteed in the use of Saul’s name. ‘Saul, Saul’. Very few are called by their first name. Very few visions are so personal. This is unlike the vision of Jesus in Revelation chapter 1, verses 13 - 16 in which John actually describes in detail his vision of Jesus….‘someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.’ (Revelation 1 : 12 - 16) Imagine the shock to Saul to hear the words ‘I am Jesus’. In the Old and New Testaments divine visitations usually result in the recipients feeling fear. For example, ‘Do not be afraid Mary, you have found favour with God’ (Luke 1 : 30). Paul does not seem to have been afraid though.

Luke repeats his account of Paul’s conversion in Acts 22. It varies in some details from Acts 9.  ‘About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ ‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked. ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. ‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked. ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me’. (6 -10). Here it is ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ who replies to Paul’s question ‘Who are you Lord?’. And Paul asks a further question. ‘What shall I do Lord?’ which is not in the Acts 9 version. In Acts 22 Paul was speaking to the crowds in Jerusalem who wished him dead. The addition ‘of Nazareth’ seems appropriate in this context identifying the man some of them at least had heard about or even seen. It is also a testimony of Jesus’ authentication as Messiah, as Son of God. Here Paul suggests his own immediate positive response initiative in place of the simple command given in Acts 9. There is an indication that the men accompanying Saul did hear the voice but did not understand it.

Acts 26 : 12 - 18 also written by Luke has an even lengthier account of Saul’s conversion. ‘On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ “Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’“ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me’. In this third account of Saul’s conversion in Acts, the light is not like lightning. It is a more general light from heaven encompassing Saul and his travelling companions. Here – they all fell down, not just Saul. He adds that Jesus spoke to Saul in Aramaic and adds the words ‘It is hard for you to kick against the goads’. He is in effect saying ‘ Saul – you are hitting your head against a brick wall and hurting yourself’. Then Luke adds further information about Jesus’ words to Saul to reflect the reasons he is on trial in Caesarea before King Agrippa.

One incident but three different versions. The basics are undeniable. The additions seem contextual. Recounting spiritual visions is difficult. The impact is often lost in the telling. Time may bring adornments but time can also clarify details. Saul adds description helpful to his respective audiences. Luke does not harmonise the accounts into one single identical story. He is an authentic historian. He records what Saul, then Paul said on each separate occasion.

II

Paul’s Vision of a man of Macedonia

Acts 16 : 6 – 10

In Acts 16 : 6 - 10 Luke tells us, ‘Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them’.

Clearly Paul was living under the influence of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 12 : 2 he wrote ‘Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will’. This was the erstwhile spiritually blind Pharisee Saul who now had a mind open to relationship with the Risen Jesus Christ. It is illustrative of the words Jesus spoke to his disciples recorded in John 15 : 15 ‘I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you’. The Risen Jesus was in dialogue with Paul, guiding his missionary journeys and exploits. This never became the exclusive preserve of great apostles. The 1913 hymn by C Austin Miles testifies  ‘And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own, And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known’. Innumerable people have claimed to have heard the voice of Jesus and to have seen a vision of him or of some related person or object which has clarified their spiritual state and journey. Judaism was replete with such visions. Jeremiah 24 : 2 reads ‘the Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed in front of the temple of the Lord. One basket had very good figs, like those that ripen early; the other basket had very bad figs, so bad they could not be eaten’. Zechariah chapters 1 – 6 record eight visions given to Zechariah, including ones of horses, a measuring line and a lampstand. Direct access to the Risen Jesus was given to Paul. Specific guidance was given to him in the unmistakeable meaning of the beckoning ‘man from Macedonia’. Was this though the Risen Christ Himself already present and seeking out his people in Macedonia? The text does not say so specifically. If it had been Jesus, Paul would have recognised him and said so. If we maintain our relationship with Jesus Christ He will guide and direct us within his will. Contemporary cultures of atheism and Godlessness are oblivious to this possibility. They neither seek or want it. Many prefer the false, profane and hallucinatory visions resulting from taking drugs, damaging themselves permanently and taking them further and further from ‘the renewing of the mind’ that Paul described.

III

Paul’s hears the Lord speaking to him

Acts 18 : 9 – 11

In Acts 18 : 9 – 11 we read, ‘One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” So Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God’. Paul suffered much as an apostle of Jesus Christ. He had arrived in Corinth in 49 or 50 AD shattered after a difficult time in Athens when he had been unable to convince intellectuals and thinkers about the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 17 : 16 -34). In 1 Corinthians 2 : 1 - 5 he writes ‘When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power’. Paul was sensitive to the spiritual hostility present in a city like Corinth. He received a timely encouraging word from the Lord that his safety was guaranteed so that he could remain and preach and evangelise and build up Christian congregations. It was not just the paganism of Corinth of which concerned Paul. He was also fearful of Jews pursuing him as an apostate with enmity towards him. Paul was not thick skinned. He was not even brave. He suffered internally the agonies of his vocation, of faithfulness, of human frailty, of physical weakness and of providential dependence. Jesus remained with him throughout his apostolic missionary enterprise.

IV

Paul experiences the visit of an angel

Acts 27 : 23 - 25

Acts 27 tells the history of Paul's journey to Rome. It was fraught with danger and after having left Crete the ship in which he sailed was engulfed in a two week long storm. However in verses 23 – 26 we are told by Paul that he encouraged the crew and other passengers with these words. ‘Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island’. Here it is an intermediary, an angel, who speaks to Paul. By now we are not surprised by the appearance of an angel to Paul nor to the words of encouragement addressed to him. Once again these begin ‘Do not be afraid Paul’. This is a message of survival, of future purpose and of care for everyone else on this ship. Why did they all have to go through this trial, this terrible two week long storm? Had they listened to Paul they would have avoided it. It may have been the greed of the owners. It is held by some that the Titanic sunk because of the greed of the owners who wanted to arrive in New York to great fanfare and commercial opportunity at a certain time of day which necessitated going more quickly than was safe amid the iceberg lanes. Greed probably contributed to the grounding of the Ever Green cargo ship in the Suez Canal continuing to sail in dangerous high winds. Because Paul was aboard the lives of everyone were saved. The ship and its cargo were lost though, wrecked on the beaches of Malta.

Angels appear throughout the Old and New Testaments. Angels have appeared to many Christians throughout the centuries. Others not rooted in Jesus Christ also claim to have seen angels. In folk religion there is a common theme of ‘my guardian angel’. We cannot limit the providence and intervention of our Maker and must simply keep an open mind towards the testimonies of those who say they have received these visitations. For any good Christian, an angelic intervention should not be so strange, certainly not unwelcome. Maybe indeed, we could do with having more such companionship. However our culture and values inhibit our minds from apprehending the personally numinous, spiritual, angelic. Our drunken, drug fuelled recreations are the opposite of the quiet, seeking lifestyle of anyone who wants to live close to God. Our noisy industrial, mechanised, computerised age is blind and deaf to the messengers of God who would help us see and believe.

Even so the Churches Conservation Trust records that 'In a 2016 poll, one in 10 Britons claimed to have experienced the presence of an angel, while one in three remain convinced that they have a guardian angel. These are huge numbers and mean that, on some counts, angels are doing better than God.’ The author Peter Stanford (b. 1961) has written ‘I grew up with guardian angels...Mostly they inhabited the sleep-inducing cadences of my night-time prayers, repeated from under a candlewick bedspread in my Catholic home near Liverpool, while gazing up at the "holy picture" of Jesus on the wall with his copiously bleeding heart. ‘Angel of God, My guardian dear, To whom his love commits me here, Ever this day be at my side, To light and guard, To rule and guide. Amen.’ He has commented further ‘Twenty-one per cent of Brits who never worship in church, as well as 7 per cent of atheists, say they believe in angels; and of those who claim to have seen one recently, 31 per cent say they beheld ‘wings and a white gown’, 17 per cent ‘ordinary garb’, 12 per cent ‘an infusion of light’, 9 per cent experienced ‘a special smell’, another nine per cent ‘felt a presence’, and 5 per cent ‘heard a heavenly choir’ (Angels : A Visible and Invisible History, 2019).

Here is a personal testimony to contemporary angelic intervention. An American woman called DBayLorBaby entered the hospital in 1994 with acute pain from "a fibroid tumour the size of a grapefruit" in her uterus. The surgery was successful but more complicated than expected, and her troubles weren't over. DBayLorBaby recalls that she was in horrible pain. She had an allergic reaction to the morphine she was given, and the doctors tried to counteract it with other medications. This made a bad experience even worse. She had just had a major surgery, and now she was dealing with the pain of an acute drug reaction. After receiving more pain medication, she was able to sleep for a few hours. "I awoke in the middle of the night. According to the wall clock, it was 2:45. I heard someone speaking and realized someone was at my bedside," she says. "It was a young woman with short brown hair and wearing a white hospital staff uniform. She was sitting and reading aloud from the Bible. I said to her, 'Am I alright? Why are you here with me?'" The woman visiting DBayLorBaby stopped reading but did not look up. "She simply said, 'I was sent here to make sure you'd be alright. You are going to be fine. Now you should get some rest and go back to sleep.' She began to read again and I drifted off back to sleep." The next morning, she explained the experience to her doctor, who checked and said that no staff had visited her overnight. She asked all of the nurses and no one knew of this visitor. "To this day," she says, "I believe that I was visited by my guardian angel that night. She was sent to comfort me and assure me that I would be okay. Coincidentally, the time on the clock that night, 2:45 a.m., is the exact time recorded on my birth certificate that I was born!" Who can gainsay?

V

Paul’s out of the body experience – visions and revelations

2 Corinthians 12 : 1 – 7

‘I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations’.

The context of this part of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians written to them from Macedonia in or about 55 AD was doubt and opposition to him as an apostle. In chapter 10 he quotes earlier criticisms. That he is ‘timid’ when face to face but ‘bold’ when away (verse 1) and that ‘His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing’. (Verse 10) In chapter 11 Paul writes about ‘super apostles’. These seem to have been eloquent and perhaps charismatic speakers with different presentations of the Gospel from that of Paul. He admits that he is no orator (verse 6) but he contrasts his humble servant hood with the stronger personalities of others. In America for many years there have been and still are ‘super apostles’ of the type that Paul mentions. Norman Vincent Peale (1989 – 1993) was one of the most prominent. He advocated ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’. Peale merged worldliness and godliness to produce an easy-to-follow theology that preached self-confidence as a life philosophy. He became rich and famous. Robert Schuller (1926 – 2015) was another. He built a crystal cathedral. He broadcast and televised his ‘Hour of Power’ ministry. ‘He deliberately avoided condemning people for sin, believing that Jesus "met needs before touting creeds". Once in a relationship with God, Schuller emphasized, someone who is sowing positive faith in his heart and actions will discover that the by-product is a reduction of sin. He was known to say, "Sin is a condition before it is an action." Schuller encouraged Christians and non-Christians to achieve great things through God and to believe in their dreams. He wrote, ‘If you can dream it, you can do it!’ He became rich and famous. Joyce Meyer (b. 1943) and her second husband Dave began a TV ministry called ‘Enjoying Everyday Life’ in 1993 which is still being broadcast. She became a popular Bible teacher and also be came very rich and very famous. In November 2003, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a four-part special report detailing Meyer's "$10 million corporate jet, her husband's $107,000 silver-gray Mercedes sedan, her $2 million home and houses worth another $2 million for her four children," a $20 million headquarters, and many other excesses. Meyer responded to criticisms by saying that she doesn't have to defend her spending habits because "... there's no need for us to apologize for being blessed..."You can be a businessman here in St. Louis, and people think the more you have, the more wonderful it is ... but if you're a preacher, then all of a sudden it becomes a problem." Joyce Meyer still preaches and teaches.

On a very much smaller scale then, perhaps the ‘super apostles’ Paul refers to were larger than life personalities on the preaching circuits doing well for themselves in ministry. Paul calls them out. ‘For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 11 : 13). Paul then lists his credentials as a genuine apostle of Jesus Christ, his Israelite heritage, his Abrahamic descent, his hard work, his imprisonments, his beatings, floggings and stonings, his shipwrecks and dangerous journeys, betrayals from false believers, hunger, thirst, sleeplessness and nakedness – all in the cause of Jesus Christ His Lord (2 Cor 11 : 21 – 27). Contemporary examples of similar sufferings and worse are documented by The Barnabas Trust. In India Christian pastors are forbidden by the government to visit, teach and encourage new Christian converts. In Nepal it is a criminal offence to try to convert a Hindu or a Buddhist to another religion. In Saudi Arabia, converts still face the possibility of execution as apostates from Islam. In Tajikistan Christian children are banned from attending church. In Turkmenistan a Christian pastor says that Christians are full of joy through unshakeable faith amid suffering. In many countries in Africa Christian men, women and children are being murdered wholesale by Islamic jihadis, Sudan, Mozambique, Congo, Cameroon, Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and northern Nigeria among them. Just one example: between 20 November and 3 December 2020 at least 30 Christians were killed, 14 seriously injured and 10 young women and girls raped by Islamic jihadis in the north-east of Congo. Some died for not being willing to renounce faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul has recorded his negative boasting, that is, his apostolic suffering for Jesus Christ. Then he goes on to his positive boasting about his visions and dreams. What was ‘the third heaven’ that Paul says he was caught up into? Martin Visser explains it thus. In the Bible the first meaning of ‘heavens’ is the atmosphere of the earth. ‘The birds of the heavens’ (Genesis 1:26) ‘He will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain’ (Deuteronomy 11:17). The second meaning of ‘heavens’ is the stars beyond the earth’s atmosphere. ‘I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven’ Genesis 22:17). The third meaning of heavens is the dwelling place of God. ‘And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive’ (1 Kings 8:30). ‘Our Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 6 : 9). Paul was saying ‘I was not in the clouds, I was not among the stars – I was in the presence of God!’ This was an out of body experience. The mystic Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582) was the subject of out of body spiritual experiences. She wrote of four stages for the ascent of the soul to God. The third of these she called ‘Devotion of Union’, which concerned the absorption in God. It is a heightened and ecstatic state. At this level, she wrote, reason is also surrendered to God, and only the memory and imagination are left to ramble. Paul writes that he was caught up into paradise. This means heaven. Jesus said so when he replied to the penitent thief on the cross. ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’. (Luke 23 : 42 – 43) Revelation 2 : 7 also says ‘To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. The Greek word ‘paradeison’ is common to all three texts. Originally the word was associated with gardens, notably the Garden of Eden. It later became the location of saved souls, that is, heaven as we are accustomed to think of it. Paul heard ‘inexpressible things’ which were not permitted to be repeated. So, we don’t know what they were or what they meant. Revelation 10 : 4 has something similar. ‘Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down’. Retelling visions is a draining and emptying process. It utterly diminishes the events and makes them commonplace. That explains why Paul is told not to tell. The ‘inexpressible things’ are God’s gift for him alone.

Paul remembers the content of these visions and revelations in detail and the year that they were given to him. This could have been around 41 AD. Paul might well have been in Tarsus on retreat or they occurred during his visit to Antioch as described in Acts 11 : 25 - 26. ‘Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch’. This was a particularly productive phase of Paul’s ministry. He writes about the visions and revelations in a form of anonymity not using ‘I’ this and ‘I’ that. His was not ego self-promotion. It was, definitely though a means of combatting the ‘super apostles’ with their big personalities and the self advertising of their spiritual gifts and capacities while preaching their versions of Christianity. And it was another example of Paul’s concern that Christians would be led astray by false teachers. He had just previously written ‘….your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough (2 Corinthians 11 : 3 - 4). This indeed was the reason for his recounting of his visions and revelations.

Paul was an intellectual, activist, dynamic communicator, selfless apostle of Jesus Christ. He also had this inner spiritual life of the soul in continuing direct contact and relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He was sustained in his extraordinary courageous and effective work by this dimension to his life. As he also wrote ‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’. (Colossians 3 : 1 - 4)