WATER OF LIFE

And the Lord said to them, “Now listen to what I say: “If there were prophets among you, I, the Lord, would reveal myself in visions. I would speak to them in dreams. But not with my servant Moses. Of all my house, he is the one I trust. I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles! (Numbers 12:6-8)

God has chosen to speak to us in the riddles of our dreams instead of face to face like He did with Moses. God speaks to people throughout the Bible, but the way he speaks to them sometimes isn’t mentioned. There are 113 occurrences in the Bible for the word ‘dream’ and 118 occurrences for the word ‘vision’ in the NLT translation. Both visions and dreams use symbols which the Holy Spirit leads us to meaning of. I don’t think there is any difference between a vision or a dream but I don’t hear about people having visions very often; however, we all have dreams at night. Therefore, my desire is to understand how God speaks to us through dreams. These are all the dreams I could find in the Bible:

Prophecy about one’s own life.
1. In Abram’s dream God promised the land of Israel to his descendants and before that they would be enslaved for 400 years (see Genesis 15).
2. Joseph (son of Jacob) had a dream as a youth that his brothers bundles of grain bowed down to his, which meant he would reign over his brothers (see Genesis 37).
3. In Joseph’s second dream the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed before him—symbols of his mother and father and eleven brothers. Later, the twelve brothers become the twelve tribes of Israel. (see Genesis 37).
4. In Jacob’s ladder or stairway dream God told Jacob He will give this land (Canaan) to his descendants and he will one day bring him back to this land (see Genesis 28:12).
5. A Midianite soldier had a dream of loaf a bread tumbling into their camp. It meant that Gideon would have victory over them (see Judges 7:13).
6. Solomon in his dream asked for wisdom and God gave him that, in addition to riches and fame (see 1 Kings 3).

There are also prophetic dreams about one’s own life interpreted through someone with God’s gift of dream interpretation. “God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams” (Daniel 1:17). Joseph or Daniel were given the gift of interpretation of dreams—both of their own and others (i.e. Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar). This was before the Holy Spirit was given to us all. Now we can all hear from God the interpretation of our dreams—we look to the Holy Spirit to speak to our own hearts for the meaning of our dreams.

1. Joseph (son of Jacob) interpreted his jailmates’ dreams. The cup-bearer and baker’s dreams of three branches and baskets mean in three days one would be promoted by the Pharaoh and the other beheaded (see Genesis 40).
2. Joseph (son of Jacob) interpreted Pharaoh’s dream of seven wheat and cows as seven years of feast and famine (see Genesis 41).
3. Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream of a large tree cut down and seven periods of time as symbolic of Nebuchadnezzar going insane for seven years (see Daniel 4).

God warns us.
1. God warns King Abimelech in a dream that he has been deceived and must give Abram his wife back or face destruction of his nation (see Genesis 20).
2. Laban (Jacob’s father-in-law) is warned by God in a dream to not harm Jacob (see Genesis 31).
3. God warned the wise men in a dream not to tell Herod where the baby Jesus was (see Matthew 2:12).
4. Pilate’s wife had a nightmare that Jesus was innocent and told her husband to leave him alone (see Matthew 27:19).

God commands or guides us.
1. Twenty years later Jacob had a follow up to his earlier personal prophecy dream. He had a dream where God told him that He has blessed his flocks and to return to the land of Canaan (see Genesis 31).
2. God told Joseph (husband of Mary) to flee to Egypt from Herod in Bethlehem (see Matthew 2:13).
3. An angel told Joseph (husband of Mary) to go back to Israel (see Matthew 2:19).

God informs us.
1. God told Joseph (husband of Mary) that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit with the son of God—who is to be named Jesus (see Matthew 1:20).

Gift of prophecy.
These are dreams that go beyond the normal limited scope of our lives, for example, to prophesy about whole countries, the world, and apocalyptic events (apocalyptic means symbolically predictive of future events). Even non-believers are given supernaturally prophetic dreams.

But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the future (Daniel 2:28).

1. Daniel interpreted King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a gold, silver, bronze, and iron statue as symbolic of four kingdoms ruling the world before an everlasting kingdom (see Daniel 2).
2. Daniel dreamt of four animals that represent four kingdoms that come before the kingdom of Christ. God told Him that this dream is about events in the distant future (see Daniel 7).
3. In a dream Jeremiah is told of God restoring Israel after exile to Babylon (see Jeremiah 31:23-26).

Visions
It appears John’s book of revelation wasn’t a dream and came to him while he was exiled on the island of Patmos (for preaching the word of the Lord and for his testimony about Jesus). He was awake worshiping God in the Spirit and a loud voice spoke to him and he saw a vision (see Revelations 1:10). Ezekiel’s apocalyptic prophecy was also a vision instead of a dream. Lastly, Zechariah had prophecies about the reconstruction of the temple. In Zechariah 4:1 he says and angel woke him as if he had been asleep. I don’t know if this counts as a dream or not.

Interpreting dreams is God’s business (Genesis 40:8).

God wants you to understand what is in your heart and what is going to happen (paraphrase of Daniel 2:29-30). Is it possible that Nebuchadnezzar, much like ourselves sometimes, woke up disturbed by his dream but couldn’t remember the dream and that is why he asked them to tell him what his dream was in addition to what it meant? We must look to the Holy Spirit not only for the meaning of a dream but for help in remembering a dream. Lastly, dreams are messages from God but they are not the Word of God. The Bible is the ultimate authority and messages from God will not contradict it. Read the whole Bible and spend more time studying it than you do your dreams.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Christianity, Holy Spirit, Christian Dream Interpretation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.