Dreams, Visions And Experiencing God

I went to a training session on dream interpretation from a "well known" ministry. While I do not wish to attack another ministry, what I heard in this seminar was of such great concern to me that I felt I needed to address some of the concepts conveyed there. In particular, they had four premises that I found alarming and wanted to comment on.

PREMISE 1 - GOD WANTS TO COMMUNICATE OBSCURELY TO US, THAT IS WHY HE SPEAKS TO US IN DREAMS

The speaker started with the premise that God intentionally wants to communicate obscurely to us, in ways that we won't be able to understood. He suggests that is why God constantly speaks to us in dreams, so that He can talk to us in a way where we won't understand what He is saying to us. He cited the parables as "proof" of this, where Jesus said, in Matthew 13:13, "This is why I speak to them in parables: 'Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.'"

The premise that God does not want to be understood when He speaks to us is based in error and misunderstanding of the text. The verse was not taken in the context it was given in. First, Jesus was not discussing people in general, but a special subset of people -- nonbelievers who came to Him predisposed to disbelieve Him and looking to find fault with what He said. Jesus did not seek these people out and knock on their door and begin to talk to them in parables. Instead He was speaking at a public meeting and they came there to where He was. Jesus said in Mark 4:11, a parallel passage, that these people are outside of the kingdom of God. They were unbelievers who were not willing to open their heart to hear God and believe.

Personally, I think that Jesus used parables as a form of grace, because their condemnation would have been greater if they understood clearly and rejected what He said. Jesus knew they would reject His sayings, so He had compassion for them and Jesus spoke to them figuratively, so they would not get in quite as much trouble for rejecting it.

This passage is NOT saying, "In general God prefers that people don't understand what He says to them." Jesus did not mean that at all!

Second, Jesus went on to explain the parable to His disciples when they came to Him and asked Him about it. He did not tell them to pull out some reference book and look up symbols, He simply told them what He was talking about -- e.g., Jesus demonstrated a willingness to communicate clearly to His own.

God does not want to be obscure in His communication to us. He is a communicating God and that He desires to speak clearly to His own -- He wants to be heard and understood by them.

[Those of you who know me or are familiar with my teachings know that I believe that God is a communicating God who goes out of His way to communicate clearly to us. I don't want to take the time here to reiterate my teachings, but if you would like to read more on that, you can either read my book or look at some of my internet teachings. A good place to start might be the teachings series titled "Ways God Speaks" that is available free of charge on the internet. The URL is: www.godspeak.net/ps_lessons/ps20_index.html]

PREMISE 2 - GOD GIVES US DREAMS SO WE WILL PRESS INTO HIM FOR THE INTERPRETATION

The speaker quoted a Scripture from Proverbs 25:2 to "prove" this. The passage says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings."

He did not say this was the only reason that God gives dreams to us, but he seemed to indicate this was an important or primary reason. He went on to share a story from his own life where God spoke to him in a dream and he did not understand it. So he began to pour through Scripture and pray and seek God for an interpretation. He spent three weeks doing this before God finally gave him the interpretation. When he got the interpretation, he was very disappointed because it was not a very big thing. He felt like he'd wasted three weeks pressing in for that particular piece of revelation and he asked God why He gave him a dream and had him spend three weeks pressing in only to find that it was a trivial dream with a non-significant interpretation. And God's answer to him was, "Well that was the first time in a long time where you spent that much time pressing into Me. I gave you that dream because I wanted you to seek Me and to spend concentrated time in prayer and in My word."

Now, I do not disagree that God will sometimes do that. When we fall out of intimacy with Him, God will sometimes do something to entice us back into pursuing Him. He could send a dream we don't understand. Or He could introduce a question into our spirit where we need to hear from Him. Or He could give us a prophecy that we want to judge and evaluate. Or He could quicken a passage of Scripture to us that excites us and makes us want to jump in and study it. God does love to entice us back to Him when our walk with Him begins to slip. Dreams are one of the ways He does that, the not the only way.

However, we are not supposed to be in that backslidden or "far away from God" place on a regular basis. We should walk close to Him, so God won't have to "entice" us back to Him a regular basis. God intends for all of His children to have a close and intimate relationship with Him. He also expects us to regularly practice the Christian disciplines that help keep our relationship with Him strong -- such as praying, reading His word, and worshipping Him.

It is true that we will have short seasons where we slip in those disciplines or where we wander away from God. And at those times, God will usually entice us back to intimacy with Him. However, that is intended to be the exception, not the general case. He should not need to entice us back to Him on a regular basis because He expects to live in close relationship with Him. If we are constantly putting God in a position where He needs to entice us back to Him, there is something fundamental that is wrong with our Christian walk.

PREMISE 3 - WE NEED TO THINK "METAPHORICALLY" IN BOTH DREAM INTERPREATION AND IN INTERPRETING SCRIPTURE.

The speaker began by pointing out that there are many symbolic passages in the Bible, and that we must not take them literally. This is very true and I agree with that statement. We need to interpret symbolic passages symbolically.

However, we cannot randomly assign our own symbols to the passage. And we must be sure that we interpret literal passages literally instead of trying to metaphoricise them. We also have to take passages in context and to receive the passage's interpretation of itself when the passage does offer it's own interpretation. In short, we have to interpret the Bible in via the quickening of the Holy Spirit.

The speaker gave the example of Amos 9:13b, which says "New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills." He suggested that is symbolic of God's spirit and anointing flowing in His people, not of literal wine in the hills. He said that if it were literal, then people would grab their cups and run for the hills.

However, in this case, the passage actually interprets itself. The full verse says, "'The days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills." That verse is saying that in those days the harvest will not be be destroyed anymore and there will be such an abundance of harvest that there will be enough grapes to make lots and lots of wine.

The context of that verse is that God is going to judge and destroy Israel and after that there will be a time of restoration. Then it goes on to describe the restoration, including a fruitful soil that people can harvest successfully. Verse 14 says, "I will bring back My exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit."

The next verse, verse 14, offers more interpretation, again suggesting that God is literally talking about vineyards and wine and fruitful soil as part of what His restoration of Israel looks like. Part of the judgment was that they won't enjoy the fruit of their labors (reap their own harvest for their own consumption) and part of the restoration was that they will once again begin to have good harvests and enjoy the fruit of their labors, such as fruitful vineyards that produce an abundant harvest.

We have to be careful that we don't get overly symbolic when dealing with Scripture to the point where we take literal passages symbolically.

The speaker referenced Acts 2:17-18, which is the Apostle Peter quoting Joel 2:28-29. The passage literally says, "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."

The speaker went on to suggest that metaphoric interpretation of this verse means the spiritually immature (young men) will have visions and the more spiritually mature (old men) will have dreams. He felt that this passage teaches us that interpreting dreams is more advanced than having visions. He said that was because dreams are symbolic and harder to interpret than a vision. (That statement made we wonder if he ever read the Book Of Revelation, which is a complex and symbolic vision of the last days.)

The passage is literally talking about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Peter said, Acts 2:15-16, "These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It's only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel..." and then he went on to quote Joel. This passage is clearly interpreting this as the various symptoms of God's all-inclusive prophetic outpouring on all believers, men and woman, old and young. It uses a common Hebrew poetic form called parallelism, where the same thing is restated multiple times in similar but not identical ways.

The fact is, we must not think metaphorically to interpret Scripture, we must think "Spirit-led." (and we must also look at the context and see what light Scripture sheds on itself.)

Following a parallel track, he suggested that we need to think metaphorically when interpreting dreams. He suggested that we need to look for symbols even in seemingly literal dreams.

I would offer the same caveat for dream interpretation that I offered for interpreting Scripture. We do not want to think metaphorically on dream interpretation, we want to think Spirit-led -- e.g., we want to hear from God on what He is trying to communicate instead of randomly assigning certain meanings to certain symbols. If a dream is given by God, then He should be involved in giving the interpretation.

There is another dimension to this that we need to look at. There are times when God gives us a dream about something specific and adds filler to make it complete. For instance, God may want to show us a tree in a dream. Perhaps it is a strong and tall oak tree, with a gnarled trunk. But God knows that we don't generally see trees floating by themselves in space with their roots hanging down. They are usually planted in the ground and there is usually a sky above the ground. So maybe God will add a bit of "filler" that makes the tree picture more complete. E.g., He wants to show us a tree but He also supplies some grass and a sky, maybe with a cloud or two in the distance. The important thing is the tree, but some filler of grass and sky and clouds is thrown in.

Metaphoric thinking would have us pay equal attention to all the details in the dream, such as the color of the grass and maybe the shape of the clouds. But those details aren't really relevant to what God intends to say, they are just filler. You will add false meaning to the dream if you interpret them because they are not a part of God's message. But Spirit-led thinking will bring us back to God to ask Him what He is trying to communicate. It will enable us to focus on the tree because that is what the message of the dream is really about. We don't want to figure the dream out on our own, we want to involve God in the process of helping us understand what He is staying to us.

PREMISE 4 - GOD HAS UNIVERSAL AND PREDETERMINED MEANINGS FOR ALL SYMBOLS USED IN DREAMS, WHICH HE HAS REVEALED TO US IN SCRIPTURE

The speaker suggests that we should use a specific book to look up symbols in a dream to understand what the dream is saying -- and that we begin to memorize the symbols so we won't have to refer back to the book to do dream interpretation.

The speaker suggests that all of the symbols in a dream interpretation book are carefully determined from Scripture. Once the Bible has given us the meaning of a symbol, that will always be the meaning that God ascribes to that symbol when He uses it in a dream. Of course, you have to be careful to have the right dream interpretation book because there are many different books out there with conflicting meanings for the symbols.

I would think that the fact that many different people get many different meanings from Scripture references to various things is a good indication that this method of dream interpretation is faulty. Also, his symbol book (supposedly developed by a prophet from studying Scripture), had many symbols that are not discussed in the Bible, like cars and trains. Since the Bible does not discuss those things (they did not exist when the Bible was written), I can't imagine how he is able to get a Bible interpretation for them.

He went on to give an example of how the symbols were derived from Scripture. He used the example of one particular symbol -- trees. He decided that trees in dreams represent people. He got this from two Bible passages. The first was Mark 8:22-25 where Jesus healed a blind man. Jesus prayed for him and then asked him, "Do you see anything?" The man replied, verse 24, "I see people; they look like trees walking around."

This is his Scripture basis for saying that in dreams trees represent people. That argument is ludicrous. God did not compare people to trees. A blind person who Jesus prayed for tried to explain that his vision was still blurry, that he saw what he assumed were people but they looked like moving tress to him because he could not make out the details very clearly. It is a big stretch to get that God uses trees to represent people in dreams from that passage.

And then the speaker offered what he called a "witness" (e.g., a corollary proof) from Daniel 4:22. The chapter describes a warning or corrective dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had, it's interpretation and it's fulfillment in real life. The king dreamed of a huge flourishing tree that was cut down for a season. When Daniel interpreted this dream, he said in verse 22, "You O king, are that tree." The speaker suggested that was proof that people are trees in dreams. But Daniel 4 places more emphasis on the King as the ruler (as the head or a nation) than of him being a person or an individual. It is more reasonable to assume, from this passage, that trees represent leadership or government authority than that they represent people. However, I don't think we should use this passage to draw a conclusion that trees in dreams always have any specific meaning.

The speaker's development of Scripture for how trees represent "men" is extremely weak and makes me wonder how many of his other symbols in his book, supposedly developed from Scripture, are equally weak. Why "stretch" and twist Scripture to say that a certain symbol has a certain predestined meaning? Wouldn't it be better to simply go to God, who gave the dream, and ask Him what He is saying in that dream?