Not many Christians can boast of having visions like Ezekiel’s. Even most of the heroes of the Bible themselves did not have the privilege of seeing the sorts of things that Ezekiel saw. It is usually in apocalyptic literature that we find bizarre, hyperbolic visions with little to no interpretation or explanation for modern readers (Revelation, Daniel, Zechariah, Ezekiel, one in Isaiah, to name a few). The reality is that most of the time in scripture God communicates using words—dialogue—narrative. After all, the fixed form of inspired revelation is the Bible—words, not visions (and the visions that we do find in the bible are translated into words for us). So why the occasional vision? I think the reasons are many, but let’s just explore a few. First, a life-shattering vision does not inspire faithfulness, even though it may inspire faith. Take Peter, for example. Peter was on the mountain with Jesus during the transfiguration. This was a life-altering experience for Peter (which he mentions in one of his letters that we find in the NT). Seeing Jesus with Moses and Elijah strengthened Peter’s faith in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. What the vision didn’t do, however, was inspire his faithfulness. He still betrayed Jesus. There is a great difference between faith and faithfulness. 
The same is true of Moses and the burning bush. This was a sight to see! Something out of the ordinary! The very presence of God manifest before him! It convinced Moses of the truth of Yahweh’s existence, but Moses still had some faithfulness issues to work out. Even in the midst of the vision itself, Moses argued with God. There was no doubting that God was present, there was, however, doubting the faithfulness of Moses. Take the resurrection of Jesus as another example. Many saw him in his glorified form. This resulted in their belief in him as the Messiah, but it didn’t inspire them to be faithful to him (more on this here). 
Visions can shake us to our core. They give us that mountaintop experience, but they don’t have the same effect as a deep, developing, dynamic, and challenging relationship that happens between God and the believer over time through the whispers of God’s voice in the midst of trouble and difficulty. This leads us to our second reason that words outweigh visions: visions aren’t the stuff of relationship building, dialogue is. Ever notice that almost every time an angel appeared before people they were afraid and the angel’s first words are, “Don’t be afraid!”. God’s desire is not to make us fearful of him, but to understand and accept his love. Visions can’t do this, only ongoing dialogue and relationship can. God’s desire is not to frighten us into a transformed existence marked by grace, love and forgiveness, his desire is to bring us there in the context of an ongoing, engaged and dynamic relationship. The last reason I believe that God prefers dialogue over visions is that its easier to doubt a vision than it is a relationship. It is more likely that we will find ourselves saying, “Did I really see that?” than “Do I really have a relationship with my friend?”. Relationships are the meat and potatoes of human existence. After all, is it not true that each of us owe our existence to the relationship between two other humans? The bottom line is that saving faith is personal. Because it is persona, it’s ongoing, slowly developing, and slowly life changing, just like a mustard seed. Faith is a slow burn, not an explosion.
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Yes, faith really is a process, isn’t it? A “slow burn”! I find it frustrating when people say that spiritual things are less provable or believable because they cannot be touched or seen – and yet our five physical senses can be so easily mistaken. But the process of engendering faith – and its transformation into knowledge – is so deep and sure that it’s extrememely difficult to question or deny. But you can’t show it to another person; you can only describe it. It really does have to be personal.
In our church history – as well as in the present – those who’ve left the church for various reasons, who first had developed that faith, would never deny what they’d learnt to be true through those personal spiritual experiences, even after many years.
I think there’s another reason for visions, though, too. The ones recorded in our Bible were given to prophets; God’s mouthpiece on earth. They needed to know His purposes and the outline of the backwards and forwards history of the earth – the scope of God’s plan for us. A vision is probably the only way to show that, because that plan, that history/future involves things not able to be comprehended in the present; they’re just too different from present experience. So a vision, or series of visions, is the best way to give a man or woman an understanding of things that can’t be described in words. Then it’s up to that prophet/seer to interpret them for the rest of us. Perhaps the interpretation was sometimes only spoken to the people, and therefore we don’t have a record of it – or perhaps it’s left up to present prophets to give the interpretation for the people of their time.