How God Uses Visions To Teach

There is one story in the book of Acts that has always struck me as so wonderfully bizarre that I keep returning to it.

You probably know the story.

Peter climbs onto a rooftop around lunchtime to pray. While the meal is being prepared downstairs, he becomes hungry. Then something extraordinary happens. Luke tells us Peter falls into a trance.

The Greek word is ekstasis — the root of our English word ecstasy. It describes being carried outside your ordinary way of seeing the world.

As if that were not strange enough, heaven suddenly opens. A huge sheet is lowered to the earth, held by its four corners. On it is what can only be described as a travelling zoo: four-footed animals, wild beasts, reptiles and birds.

Then Peter hears a voice.

“Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

Peter is naturally horrified.

“Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

The reply comes immediately.

“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Then the sheet disappears. This does not happen just once; he sees the sheet and the animals three times.

If you grew up in church, you’ve probably heard this story explained as the moment God abolished the Jewish food laws, and that is certainly part of the picture. But it isn’t the hidden detail. In fact, the hidden detail is far more surprising than that.

Peter himself tells us what the vision really meant, and it isn’t what most of us assume.

Food Laws Were Serious Business

To understand why Peter reacts so strongly, we have to remember the world he grew up in.

Peter wasn’t simply a fisherman. He was a Jewish fisherman who had spent his entire life taking the Torah seriously.

The food laws in Leviticus weren’t arbitrary rules about nutrition. They were visible reminders that Israel was called to be holy, to live differently from the surrounding nations. Purity wasn’t primarily about hygiene; it was about identity.

Certain animals were clean, others weren’t.

These distinctions became part of everyday life. Over the centuries, they also shaped relationships with people. After all, Gentiles worshipped other gods and ate foods Jews wouldn’t eat. Sharing a table with them seriously risked ritual impurity.

Interestingly, the Torah never explicitly forbade entering a Gentile’s house. But over generations, Jewish tradition increasingly discouraged it. By Peter’s Day, many faithful Jews simply avoided such situations altogether.

So, when Peter refuses the command to eat, he isn’t being rebellious. He’s trying to be faithful, and his protest is rooted in proper devotion.

“Surely not, Lord.”

He genuinely believes obedience means saying no, and that should make all of us pause.

Peter Has No Idea

Here’s the part almost everyone misses.

After the vision ends, Luke writes something fascinating. Peter has no idea what it all means. The Greek word Luke uses doesn’t simply mean Peter was puzzled. It describes someone completely at a loss, someone who cannot find the road ahead.

Peter doesn’t merely need a little more time to think. It is clear that he has no idea what he’s looking at. If the meaning were obvious, Luke could simply have written, “Peter realized God had abolished the food laws.”

Instead, Peter sits there blinking in the midday sun, trying to make sense of an experience that refuses to fit into the categories he’s always trusted.

Which raises a question.

If Peter himself doesn’t understand the vision, why do so many of us assume we do?

A Knock at the Door

Then something beautiful happens.

Luke doesn’t tell us that God explains the vision. No angel appears with a presentation, bundled with key takeaway points for Peter. He doesn't get any other explanation at all.

Instead, he sends Peter an experience, and that strikes me as profoundly true to life. How often do we pray for a good, straightforward explanation, only to have God send encounters instead?

We ask for certainty when God sometimes sends a conversation.

We ask for answers, but perhaps God sends a new friendship.

We ask for clarity when God might open a door we never expected to walk through.

In this case, he was interrupted by a knock at the door. At that very moment, three men sent by a Roman centurion named Cornelius arrive asking for Peter. This is where the story suddenly changes.

Cornelius is exactly the sort of person Peter has spent his entire life avoiding. After all, he is a Gentile and even worse, a Roman. One of those outsiders. But the Spirit tells Peter to go with them, although he doesn’t fully understand, he obeys anyway.

It is worth pausing there as well. I love that line.

Understanding comes after obedience, not before it.

When it all Clicks

When Peter finally arrives at Cornelius’ house, everything suddenly clicks into place.

Listen carefully to what Peter says.

“God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”

In that one moment, Peter completely reoriented his life. Before, there were things that were impure or unclean; now that distinction has gone. Peter’s understanding of who belonged within God’s covenant family suddenly became much larger.

That is extraordinary enough. But Peter hasn’t simply learnt a new rule. He has discovered that the vision was inviting him to rethink far more than food. It was reshaping the way he understood holiness, Scripture, creation and ultimately people themselves.

The animals were never the destination.

They were the illustration.

The vision used food to reveal something far bigger than food. Peter initially thought the issue was what he could put into his mouth, whilst God was actually changing how he looked at the people standing before him.

God wasn’t simply changing Peter’s diet. The vision was powerful enough for him to do something much more profound; it changed his heart and, therefore, his whole outlook on life.

The Wider Implications

Once you notice this, you begin to realize that this strange collection of animals wasn’t random but resonates with other parts of the Bible.

It deliberately echoes the opening chapters of Genesis.

The categories, four-footed animals, reptiles and birds, mirror the way creation itself is described. Genesis celebrates the richness of everything God has made.

Then Leviticus describes the process of dividing those creatures into clean and unclean.

Now, in Acts, Peter sees those same categories gathered together on one sheet. The categories remain, but the divisions are no longer the point.

Peter isn’t simply learning a new rule. He is discovering that the whole biblical story has been moving towards this moment.

Genesis celebrated God’s creation. Leviticus taught Israel how to live as a holy people. Now Acts reveals that God’s holiness was never meant to end in separation, but to overflow into welcome.

In one vision, Peter’s world has suddenly become infinitely larger.

Three Times

Notice something else.

The vision happens three times. The text doesn’t explicitly tell us why, and most scholars simply say repetition emphasizes importance, as if he needed it to get the point across. After all, in Scripture, when God repeats himself, he usually wants people to pay attention.

Peter certainly needs the repetition. But even after seeing the vision three times, he still doesn’t understand. That strikes me as very human. Of course, Peter needs time to learn and anticipate the enormous implications.

Perhaps that’s one reason so many of us find him relatable. Faithful people don’t always understand immediately. Unlike in the movies, we do not get a bolt of lightning that reveals all.

Sometimes, probably like this writer, we need to hear the same truth again, and again, and even again before we get it.

This is why I also find Peter’s first response strangely comforting.

“Surely not, Lord.”

His resistance isn’t born out of unbelief. It’s born out of commitment. He believes he’s defending God’s holiness, but ironically, he’s standing in the way of the very thing God is trying to accomplish.

That possibility should make every one of us humble.

It is entirely possible to resist God in the name of God.

Looking Back

It would be very easy to put down a strange story like this without applying it to our own lives, but once you notice these details, it becomes hard to do,

Looking back over my own life, I can think of several moments that felt remarkably similar. Of course, I did not get dramatic visions. But I have had conversations, read books, had experiences and encountered friendships that challenged me.

All moments that have simply refused to fit inside the categories I already had.

At first, I tried explaining them away. Surely that is wrong? That can’t be right? It doesn’t fit my framework. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, I realized my framework itself needed to grow.

Not because the truth had changed. But because my understanding of it had.

Growth often feels like disruption before it feels like wisdom.

The Story That Continues to Speak

Perhaps that’s why I love this story so much.

Peter doesn’t become less faithful; he becomes more faithful. Not by clinging to the categories he’d inherited, but by allowing God to expand them. His world suddenly becomes larger, and his compassion starts to fill new spaces. His understanding of God’s welcome becomes far more breathtaking than he had imagined.

Peter wasn’t abandoning Scripture. He was seeing where Scripture had been leading all along. The vision didn’t replace Genesis or Leviticus. It helped Peter read them within the larger story God had always been telling.

Perhaps there is an experience you’ve been trying to squeeze into an old framework. A conversation you can’t forget. A friendship that challenged your assumptions. A question you can’t answer. A piece of evidence that refuses to disappear. A sacred moment you don’t quite know what to do with.

Like Peter, you may find yourself completely at a loss, unsure which road to take next.

If so, don’t panic.

Peter’s confusion wasn’t a sign that God had abandoned him. It was actually evidence that God was leading him somewhere new. Sometimes the first stage of spiritual growth isn’t certainty. It’s really bewilderment.

Sometimes God doesn’t answer all our questions immediately.

It can be a painful, disorienting period of doubt and questioning. But if we keep asking long enough, we might just get a knock at the door.

In that moment, if we have the courage to answer it, we may discover that God was changing far more than our opinions.

He was expanding our vision.

Teaching us to see people the way he always has.

Peter thought the vision was about what entered his mouth. God was preparing him to see creation, Scripture and people through entirely new eyes.