Our "perceiver" doesn't work sometimes, and it can be costly. Those who continually seek and walk with the Lord will be able to have those perceptions corrected. Those who don't, won't. Look at brother Paul, the mighty apostle, the one whose godly example has been followed in our day and, it seems, in all time, second only to Christ Himself.

In Acts 27:10, brother Paul has a dream. He actually sees the wreck of the ship on which he is travelling! Having seen this, he "perceives" that lives of people on board will be forfeited. But in Acts 27:22-24, an angel corrects Paul's perception with God's revelation. No one will die! Oops. He immediately corrects his perceptions with God's revelation.

We hear a lot of people's perceptions of things today. Some of them aren't too bad. Some of them are awful. Like, what heaven and hell are supposed to look like, or why God will go ahead and save people even if they don't know Jesus, and what it's like right after death.

But revelation always trumps [pardon the expression] perception, no matter how perceiving we might think a person is. No matter if it's the apostle Paul himself, much less - may I say - self-styled apostles and visionaries of our own day. We have the written word of God's apostles, the word that Paul and others would one day pass on to us from the Spirit of God. It was Paul that finally had to admit that some would just have to go on being ignorant (I Corinthians 14), but he let us know that the things he spoke were from heaven, and that there is no excuse for disobeying.

Shortly after the episode above, Brother Luke records another "perception" story. Remember the friendly islanders where Paul was shipwrecked? (Acts 28:4) Remember Paul's attempt to build a fire, and a snake that halted his efforts? When the people realized that this was a shipload of prisoners, and they viewed what seemed to be a mass escape of same, it was only one more step to conclude that the snake now attaching itself to Paul's body must be a messenger of Heaven to execute wrath upon him for his murdering ways.

Well, there was at least some truth in their conclusions, wasn't there? There always is, you know. Paul had indeed been responsible for killing people. And not just any people. God's people, God's finest people. And God had told Paul that he would be suffering many things for the Gospel's sake. This was not judgment, but its results often looked like it. Beyond that, their theology wasn't all that bad either. God, the God of justice, will indeed judge the sins of men. All men. Even those gullible islanders one day found the truth of this proposition. But they missed the specific truth by a lot.

Their first clue that they had "missed it" was a miraculous healing that came forth from the supposedly murderous hands of Paul. That changed their tune. In fact, their imagination, again guided by corrupt logic, told them now that Paul was a god come down to earth.