Could this not have been what the apostles’ experienced on that day of Pentecost in Jerusalem? They were meeting in fellowship and prayer when the presence of God was experienced as the blowing of a violent wind which filled the house, and filled them. God was recreating them.

Eugene Peterson says that the vision has two functions. One is to train our perceptions so that we will never again overlook the nature of spiritual conflict and the reality of evil. The second function is to raise our adrenaline level so that we bring our energetic best to the high spiritual drama that we participate in every day. We are motivated to join the armies of heaven. We cannot be naïve about the enemy of our souls and think that we can take him lightly.

Nicholas Murray Butler, a former president of Columbia University, said, “There are three kinds of people in the world – those who don’t know what’s happening, those who watch what’s happening, and those who make things happen.” Though leadership maybe hard to define, the one characteristic common to all leaders is the ability to make things happen. We set the tone for the community in which we live.

Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, who is an atheist, is a critic of fellow atheists who argue for a materialistic and reductionist explanation of the mind. He maintains that many atheists who maintain that life can be explained purely in physical terms are afraid of religion. He writes,