Visions and Temples

In the book "Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths" by Karen Armstrong, Armstrong describes many cases where visions influenced humanity to worship God in one way or another. For example, she states that at that time "a temple had to be a copy of the god's heavenly home, and it was this likeness which linked the celestial archetype with its earthly replica here below, making the two in some sense one" (page 45). For this to come about, leaders building the temples had to follow plans given to them from God through prophets or through visions. They had to obtain certain materials and specific plots of land that would appeal to God. David is said to have collected cedarwood and juniper for the temple as it was revealed to him in Yahweh's plan. He also bought land to build a temple on because he saw an "angel" standing on Mount Zion, and a court prophet told him building a temple there would stop a plague from God.

Armstrong also describes other visions received by humans from God, such as Isaiah's vision of Yahweh seated on his "heavenly throne" (page 65) while standing in the Hekhal, and Amos's vision of Yahweh in the Temple of Bethel. These visions are of great interest to me. Many religious visions influenced biblical humans to change their spiritual goals which had long-lasting effects on religion. Even Armstrong states that "these visions continue to affect the politics of Jerusalem to the present day" (page 65) when discussing how Jews, Christians and Muslims all saw Jerusalem as the setting for "God's final intervention" (page 65). I wonder if or why humans in the present day do or don't have as many visions- from a religious standpoint, did people have more visions in the past because religion was still being worked upon and created? Or did these visions provide a way for humans in the past to feel religious purpose?