Hey Scott....I will have to agree with you in this.....A vision is nothing like a dream....Dreams can be disorganized, surreal or even about mundane things, such as going to your letter box or something and seeming ordinarily real.
A vision however has a quality to it, that I personally can only describe as 'More real than real !'.....It is completely coherent, in sharp focus and becomes something in your life, which you cannot forget...You may not think on it every single day, but as soon as you bring it to the forefront of your memory, the sharp focus is still there just the same, it is amazing !................... It also has the same physical effect even, if that particular one has a physical component to it....it is as if it never loses any of it's power to be right there, as if it's happening right then again, even if it's been years or decades since the original event.....
Certainly one thing we as believers must listen to God about, is that there is much more to existence, than just our physical realm with our 5 physical senses.....We have to accept the spiritual realm and His ability to traverse between the two...Particularly now, that Christ opened the 'way'...He did much more, than what we see as 'just' Salvation, but without us putting out faith into those things, they cannot become real for us. So imho we ought to all do exactly as Jesus is quoted as saying to us all :" Ask, Seek and Knock" , because surely we will be missing out big time, if we don't go on to a place other than this place, (which we are told we are just sojourners in now) and allow Him to show us the way into these marvelous places He has to show us, if we are willing and unafraid ....
As far as us being created in His image and likeness, I am also with Scott here....We were not created in the image and likeness of a 'fallen man' who is naked before God ( without his spiritual covering/garment), and God is NOT anything like what man became after ingesting the thing which brought death .
Too many sincere and believing Christians seem to be under the mistaken teaching that God is just a better 'man' than we are.....That He has two sides to Him like we do,( love/hate...anger/joy.....kind/cruel and so on) and that simply isn't so, and this is why we have such a hard time of all of this, and why we need Him to explain things to us and make them plain for us to understand.....He is ONLY Love and everything which comes from Love.....He is ONLY Truth and everything that brings and so on....there is zero darkness what so ever In God, and we must not blaspheme Him this way.
When it talks of His image, it is not talking about what we take as an image...we think of a reflection in a mirror perhaps, something we can see....But it is the image and likeness of our Father Spirit we were made in. We were created as spirits and then clothed with flesh ,as He knew He had to make a remedy for us, and the flesh can be done away with and our spirit can still live, so that was the 'road' He took....simple but very effective.......Like a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, leaving it's old body behind.
Sorry hadn't meant to sound all preachy here, I just get excited whenever I get thinking on His reality....
Pia