200 God speaks to us directly Part 2

Talk 16 God speaks to us directly     Part 2       Dreams and visions

I guess most Christians know that the Bible contains many references to God speaking to people through a dream or vision. The book of Genesis alone contains some 40 references to the word dream, and at least seven people are mentioned as having been spoken to in a dream or vision. These include:

• Abimelech (20: 3, 6)
• Abraham (15:1)
• Jacob (31: 10, 11)
• Laban (31: 24)
• Joseph (37: 5, 6, 9, 10)
• Pharaoh’s Butler and Baker (40: 5, 8, 9, 16)
• Pharaoh (41: 7,  8, 15, 17, 22, 25, 26, 32).

And in the rest of the Old Testament there are many other references too, far too many to mention here. The most significant of these is Joel’s prophecy:

And afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions… (Joel 2:28),

We’ll return to this when we come to look at dreams and visions in the New Testament, but first let’s consider three other OT passages. The first is in the book of Job which is considered to be the oldest of all the books of the Bible and in it we find Elihu saying to Job:

Why do you complain to God that he responds to no one’s words? For God does speak – now one way, now another – though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears…(Job 33:13-16).

Now it’s important when reading Job to be aware that not everything Job’s friends said to him was correct, but in this case Elihu’s words are in line with what God himself says in Numbers 12:6-8: 

When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.

Here God confirms that he does speak through dreams and visions, but also makes it clear that they are ‘riddles’ and can be open to misinterpretation. They are not as reliable as the level of revelation that God granted to Moses. They need to be interpreted, as we know from the well-known stories of Joseph and Daniel who were gifted by God in interpreting dreams. 

Finally, in Jeremiah 23 we are warned against the danger of false visions:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they will fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord (v.16. Compare 14:14).

Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully for what has straw to do with grain? declares the Lord (v.28).

The context here is that God had told Jeremiah that judgment was coming on the nation, but this, of course, was an unpopular message that nobody wanted to believe. The false prophets, who were politically motivated, were only saying what they knew the king wanted to hear. Through Jeremiah God is warning these prophets to make sure that they are speaking God’s word faithfully and not prophesying visions from their own minds. And he is warning those who are listening to them not to believe them.

So the OT passages we have been looking at teach us that:

1. We sometimes think that God does not respond to us, but he does in one way or another, sometimes by a dream or vision (Job 33:13-16). 
2. Even when God does speak through a dream or vision, it often needs to be interpreted (Numbers 12:6-8). 
3. Visions and dreams need to be evaluated. What is the motivation of the person relating their dream? Are they faithful to God’s word? (Jeremiah 23:16, 28).
4. As we see from the example of faithful Moses, there is a higher level of revelation than dreams and visions. For us, that is the teaching of Scripture. This is in harmony with what we have already seen with regard to different levels of prophecy.  

As we come now to look at the New Testament, we see that here too there are frequent references to God speaking through dreams and visions. In the Gospels we read about Joseph and the wise men in the Christmas story, and Pilate’s wife having dreams, and of Zechariah, Peter, James, and John having visions. In Acts, God (or an angel sent by God) speaks in visions to Cornelius, Peter, and Paul.

The references in Acts are particularly important for us, because, as we have explained before, we are living after Pentecost which was a turning point in human history. The gift of God’s Holy Spirit was then made available to all his people. When the crowd, composed of many different nationalities, are amazed to hear the disciples speaking their languages, they ask, What does this mean? To which Peter replies:

…this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy… 

(Acts 2:16-18).

 

This seems to suggest that, far from any idea that dreams and visions might become redundant after Pentecost, there should in fact be an increase in these manifestations. They are a direct result of the Spirit being made available to all. What’s more, if God spoke to Cornelius, Peter, and Paul through visions, there is no reason to suppose that he will not speak in the same way to people today, And indeed, there are increasing numbers of testimonies of Muslims around the world who have come to Christ as a result of God speaking to them through a dream or vision.

Finally, before I share a personal testimony of how God spoke to me in a dream, it’s worth noting that in Acts 2 Peter identifies the manifestation of speaking in tongues as the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy that when the Spirit was poured out in the last days all kinds of people would see dreams and visions and that they would prophesy. This may well suggest that, just as dreams and visions are a means of prophetic revelation, speaking in tongues fulfils a similar role.  It certainly did so on the Day of Pentecost and, as we have seen, when accompanied by the gift of interpretation of tongues, it can be a means of building up believers in the local church. God has spoken to me many times through these gifts, but only once has he spoken to me through a dream.   

Some years ago, my daughter, Sarah, recommended a book by Jack Deere entitled, Surprised by the Voice of God. On reading it, I was challenged by the reminder that in the Bible God often spoke through dreams, and I wondered why God had never spoken to me in a dream. So I said, almost casually, Lord, you have never spoken to me in a dream, and I would really like you to. 

I must admit that I didn’t expect an immediate answer, but a few days later I had a dream. But before I tell you what it was, I need to tell you about our family. Debbie, our oldest daughter was living in Rugby. Sarah, our second daughter, was living in Portsmouth. And Jonathan, our son, was living near Liverpool. 

About a year before I had the dream, Sarah had asked me if I knew anyone who needed a car. She had tried to sell her old one, but was offered only £300 for it and felt that she’d rather give it away than sell it for such a low price. I told her that I thought Jonathan would be grateful for it, and so she gave the car to him.

Shortly before I had the dream, we had arranged to visit Debbie on a particular weekend because we knew that Jonathan would be there too. Now I had the dream about a week before the visit to Debbie. In my dream Eileen and I went to Debbie in separate cars because we would need to give Eileen’s car to Jonathan. That was it. And even though I had asked the Lord to speak to me through a dream, I didn’t seriously think that the dream was a message from God. And so we both went to Debbie’s in my car.

Imagine my surprise when we arrived at Debbie’s and saw what looked like a brand-new car standing outside Debbie’s house. Whose is the car? I said. Oh, it belongs to the insurance company, said Jonathan. Mine is a write-off. Someone smashed into the back of it while it was parked on the road.

And it was then that I was reminded of my dream. Could God be saying that we should give Eileen’s car to Jonathan? I told her about the dream, and she readily agreed that that is what we should do. So we told Jonathan and simply asked that he would give us the insurance money when it came through, to put towards replacing the car we were giving him. We didn’t expect very much as the most Sarah had been offered for it a year before was £300.

Eileen and I agreed together that we’d leave it a few weeks and then start to look for a replacement car for her. The car she had given Jonathan was a Toyota Corolla 1600, five door executive automatic, and Eileen loved it! So I promised her that we’d look for a newer version of exactly the same model. Shortly afterwards we heard from Jonathan. The insurance company had given him £1200 for the car, for which, if you remember, a year before Sarah had been offered a mere £300.

Grateful to God that we were getting far more than we had expected, Eileen and I set off one Saturday visiting car sales companies in several nearby towns, looking for a Toyota Corolla with the same specification. It was pouring with rain all day long, and after several hours of unsuccessful searching we returned home, tired, wet, and rather discouraged. 

Then, quite suddenly, on the following Tuesday, a thought came into my mind. A few years earlier the College had bought a Toyota minibus from a Christian brother in Nottingham who had a garage with a Toyota franchise. Maybe I should try him? So I phoned him and told him what I was looking for. If he had one come in, would he please let us know? To which he replied, Will silver do? 

Now the colour of the car was about the only detail I hadn’t specified when I told him what we were looking for, but silver was just the sort of colour we wanted! Yes, that’s fine, I said. Does that mean you’ve got one? And to cut a long story short, one had come in that very day, There was just one previous owner and they had only covered 3000 miles a year from new. The price was right, and when he said, When do you want to come over and look at it? my reply was, I don’t need to. This is so obviously God, I’ll come and get it on Saturday. That’s the only time I’ve ever bought a car without looking at it, and it was just what Eileen wanted. 

Now you may think that I’ve wandered a long way from the dream I was telling you about, but if it had not been for that dream, that whole series of amazing events would never have happened. And the story is not just about a dream about a car. It’s a testimony of how God is at work in the little details of our lives, constantly working all things together for our good because he loves us and because we are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).