Adam was the first mystic seer. He saw God, spoke with God, and walked with God. Yet even with Adam, much remained in mystery. The mystery of the one forbidden tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, lured him from God. Millennia of sin and suffering followed. Since then, mystic seers have sought the way back to God and paradise.

But no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. And so Christian Mystic will feature only mystics who seek God through Him, and through no other medium or spirit. We can apply a simple test:

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world” (1 John 4:2-4).

Any spirit or mystic who does not confess Christ works against Christ. In fact, he works with the spirit of the antichrist. Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Mt. 12:30).

Before Jesus came in the flesh, He appeared as the Angel of the Lord to many Old Testament saints. In that way Abraham, Moses, Gideon, David, Elijah, Zechariah, and others encountered Jesus.

Jesus the Word of God and the Image of God

Jesus was the Word of God who gave the words to OT prophets that they recorded in Scripture. He was also the Image of God (Col. 1:15) who gave images and visions to the prophets, including visions of glory in heaven, and of heaven coming to earth.

Scripture specifically calls some prophets, like Samuel and Amos, “seers”. Other prophets could “see” in the Holy Spirit the heavenly powers of the age to come. They include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel and Zechariah.

Isaiah even prophesied that one day all flesh would “see” the glory of God and the divine transformation of the earth:

A voice is calling,

“Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;

Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.

Let every valley be lifted up,

Let every mountain and hill be made low;

And let the rough ground become a plain,

And the rugged terrain a broad valley;

Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,

And all flesh will see it together;

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isa. 40:3-5)

Glory revealed

When Jesus came in the flesh to earth, most could not see His heavenly glory because He had laid it aside. But He did reveal His glory to three apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration.

One of those three, Peter says they “were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased’—and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic word made more sure…” (2 Peter 1:16-19).

The direct mystical experience of Christ is the prophetic word made more sure. The OT prophets prophesied of Christ mostly by faith. The NT apostles testified of Christ as eyewitnesses.

Witnessing Christ

They witnessed what He did and said in the gospels. Three of them witnessed His majestic glory. All of them witnessed His resurrection and His ascension to glory in heaven.

Before leaving the earth, Jesus told them to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit to fill them. From then on “you will be My witnesses…to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV).

In the New Testament, we read witnesses not only of His activities on earth, but of His heavenly glories in dozens of passages.

The apostle Paul did not know Jesus during His earthly days. But he wrote more than any other apostle of His heavenly glories. In Ephesians 1:3 he writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ…”

Blessings in the heavenly places

After proclaiming these heavenly blessings, Paul prays that we all may fully experience them, especially with the eyes of our hearts:

“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your hearts may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe” (Eph. 1:17-19).

Yet relatively few of us who believe have sought those heavenly riches and written of them. We would do well to pay more attention to our glorious inheritance.

Some of the more prominent mystic seers since the first century include Antony, Augustine, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, John Milton, John Bunyan and Jeanne Guyon.

Upcoming: we will look into more modern mystics…

See Visions…

Christian Mystic articles related to mystic seers:

Heaven’s Kingdom Comes in a Cocoon

Related sources for mystic seers:

The Seer: The Prophetic Power of Visions, Dreams, and Open Heavens

Keyword: mystic seers