confirmation of...what???

With all this madness happening around me and the deep emotion being released from the inner core of my being, I frantically opened up my Bible to see if I could possibly find anything to bring confirmation or validation to all this. As I thumbed open the page, this was the very first line I read in that moment: “You have overwhelmed me with all your waves” (Ps. 88:7 NIV).

Byrd, Andy; Feucht, Sean (2010-09-01). Fire and Fragrance (Kindle Locations 1305-1308). Destiny Image. Kindle Edition.

This excerpt has a context. The writer (the book has two co-authors, I'm not sure which one is writing here) was in Australia, and has walked to a beach, and has some kind of experience, which I seriously doubt was from God. One reason has to do with this verse that he thinks confirms what he heard in this experience.

First, there is simply the fact that he played the game of "Flip Open the Bible and Read the First Thing You See". Assuming that it really happened this way, that he simply opened up his Bible and, lo and behold, the first thing his eyes lighted upon was this verse fragment about waves, then...so what? There is no attempt to try to look at this sentence in context, there is no attempt to understand what it's really saying. What makes this in any way significantly different from, say, tarot cards or ouija boards? After all, even the Devil can take the Bible out-of-context to mislead someone, which is what happened when he tried to tempt Christ. No, this is simply a form of divination, which the Bible severely frowns upon.

Second, let's have some context. He's only looking at a part of the verse. Here is all of it, from the ESV.

7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah

Well, that kind of puts a different take on things. "Waves" are related to "wrath". How about a bit more context.

88 O LORD, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you.
2 Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!
3 For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength,
5 like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.
6 You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep.
7 Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah
8 You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
9 my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.

This isn't a happy Psalm. The one writing it, perhaps one of the Sons of Korah, is not having a good time. He's having problems, and serious ones. When he wrote that God's waves were overwhelming him, he wasn't thinking about a nice day at the beach and splashing around in the surf. He was writing about serious troubles, things that were drowning him.

If this verse is a confirmation of some vision you've had, you'd best be careful. If you think this verse is telling you that waves are coming, you may want to start doing some serious repenting, in the hope that maybe God will let those waves pass you by.

uninvited intruders

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His Glory” (Isaiah 6:1-3).

So not only do we have the promise of God and the petition of Solomon, but now the perspective of Heaven! As the inhabitants of Heaven look down on the earth from the throne room of God, they can’t help but declare the holiness of the God of the armies of Heaven! Their perspective of our planet in the context of their surroundings is, “The whole earth is full of His glory.” In their eyes, His glory is already covering the earth and all that separates us from seeing this is a thin veil of unbelief, the weight of sin, and our human, earthly perspectives. Once again, heroes are made when they can lift the temporary veil of earthly perspective and peer through the eyes of Heaven on the glory of God that even now covers the earth! Then they will be able to call this glory forth like lava from the depths! These moments are what we call revival, a miracle, or the Kingdom breaking in! Oh, to live constantly in this reality of Heaven!

Byrd, Andy; Feucht, Sean (2010-09-01). Fire and Fragrance (Kindle Locations 788-798). Destiny Image. Kindle Edition.

I'll give these writers partial credit for some truth here. The rightly point out that the angels said that the Earth is already filled with God's glory. From that point on, though, they seem to have gone loco.

For example, the passage says nothing about this, "all that separates us from seeing this is a thin veil of unbelief, the weight of sin, and our human, earthly perspectives." Was the prophet Isaiah also a human, did he not suffer from things like unbelief, sin, and being human? God visited him in this way, in spite of these thing. He visited other prophets, such as Ezekial, in the same way. He visited Abraham, despite the fact that he was a liar and showed a lack of faith when he had a child by his wife's maidservant. He gave Jacob a vision of a ladder, despite Jacob being a deceiver, even one who deceived his own blind father.

These and others whom God spoke to were not able to make themselves good enough. They could not cure their own unbeliefs, the could not clean even the smallest of their own sins.

And this is important, because look at what these pitiful writers say. "Once again, heroes are made when they can lift the temporary veil of earthly perspective and peer through the eyes of Heaven on the glory of God that even now covers the earth!" It is as if they are saying that Isaiah, Ezekial, Abraham, Moses, any prophet, did the work of lifting this veil on their own, as if all they had to do was to do some X actions and then God will give them a sneak peak of spiritual matters.

That's not what happened. I can't think of any time in the Bible when a person was allowed to attempt to breach the veil into spiritual things. It is always God's sovereign decision to speak to a person, or to give that person a dream or vision, or to send an angel to them. When Peter was rescued from prison by an angel, or when he received a vision concerning the Gentiles, he had nothing to do with trying to cause those events to happen. It was all God. Saul was not looking for Jesus when Jesus knocked him down near to Damascus, and he had nothing with trying to have the vision that told him to Macedonia.

God sent visions to pagans like Pharoah in Genesis and to Nebuchanezzar in Daniel. God sent an angel to the greedy prophet Balaam, and even let his donkey speak to him. He sent prophets to good kings and bad. He even sent a dream to Pilate's wife as a warning.

It is not our job to "lift the temporary veil of earthly perspective". We cannot do that. It is not our job to "call this glory forth like lava from the depths!", nor are we able to do such things. It is nigh unto blasphemous to say that we are able to do such things, if not all the way there. No Scripture ever tells us to do those things, and I would say that there is a danger in doing them, because it is all about works, all about our own efforts.