Date: November 8, 2018 ()

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How did you sleep last night? For some of you watching our show, it is the middle of the night. Maybe you just woke up suddenly out of sleep with a dream and the dream has hit you hard. Some of you had a dream a month ago and you cannot quit thinking about it. What does it mean? Why did you have that dream? Does God speak to people through dreams today? Absolutely. God never changes. Never think because something happened in the Bible, that was just the Bible and it does not happen today. The Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Things do not change. We just get a picture of things from the Bible. Anything that happened in the Bible, you and I can do. We have to have the faith, but we can do it.

When you have dreams that come from God, you have to have faith that they are from God. I want to give you some instruction in it. I want you to think about dreams you have had that you remember. We will see if we can figure out what God was saying to you. There is a man named John Paul Jackson here in the United States that conducts dream seminars for Christians. He trains them in interpreting dreams. I have two friends that have been to these seminars. They want you so well trained that you cannot interpret dreams for anyone else until you have interpreted 500 dreams through this. They do not want anything goofy going on. You can do unusual things and not be goofy. God is like that. He is not goofy or weird, but He can do the unusual. All you have to do is read the Bible to see that. It is full of unusual things, but not foolish things and not crazy things. Dreams are from God; but not all dreams are.

How do you know if it is a dream from God, bad pizza or you just had too much on your mind? How do you know the difference? You can have all kinds of dreams. I used to think I never had spiritual dreams until I studied. I have a lot of books on dreams. On the website, elijahlist.com, they will tell you books you can order about dreaming to help you get more knowledge and understanding.

Does the Bible say that God speaks in dreams? Absolutely. In Job 33:14, it says, “For God speaks again and again in dreams, in visions of the night when deep sleep falls on men as they lie in their beds. He opens their ears in times like that and gives them wisdom and instruction causing them to change their minds and keeping them from pride and warning them of the penalties of sin, and keeping them from falling into some trap.” With God, He is speaking all of the time, daytime or nighttime. He wants to get what He wants you to do to you. He wants to connect with you. He will do it however He can. He does do it through dreams and visions. You do not even have to be a Christian. Is that not interesting?

The Bible is full of God giving specific, important instructions through dreams. The Bible is really a collection of 66 books and many authors. Did you realize that? It is written over a period of 1,500 years. These people did not know each other. Some people say about the Bible, “That is just a bunch of men writing down what they thought.” That is not true. If you have ever prophesied to someone, you know it is not you saying it. You know it is God speaking through you. You know the difference. The Bible says these men wrote as God gave them the skill to do it. It is divinely inspired. There is no book in the world that has lasted like this book. There is no book in the world that has changed lives like this book. I know people who have said, “That stuff is a fairy tale. It is not real. It is for weak people. There is nothing really to it.” They pick it up and read it to prove it is not true, and then they become deep believers. Why? Because the Bible is alive. It looks like pages, but it is alive. The Word of God is quick and powerful. It is able to divide, able to discern.

When God says, “I speak through dreams,” then God speaks through dreams. I sleep “like a log” every night. It probably take less than five seconds to go to sleep every night. I do not remember my dreams. I went to a dream seminar that one of John Paul Jackson’s associates was giving. She said, “Write your dreams down. Keep a piece of paper by your bed and buy a little pen that has a little light on it. When you wake up, write that dream down.” I cannot ever seem to wake up. I cannot think to do that. I think it would be great if I could. Then I would probably be able to see where God was speaking to me a whole lot more. Right now, I pretty much know, “That was from God. I need to really think about it.” In the Bible, Joseph had a dream that changed his life. He saved a nation with the dream that God gave him. His dream was about the fat cows and the slim ones, and he saved a nation. If you are a person who says, “If you are going to follow God, you pretty much need to stick to the Word of God and that is about it,” remember God did not do that.

When God was warning the earthly father of the Son of God, who was sent to save the world with His life, God spoke to him through dreams. He did not do it through a religious leader; he did it through a dream. Do not minimize dreams. God told Joseph, “Get up and get to Egypt, they are going to try to kill the baby.” We do not know much about Joseph, but the beautiful thing about him is he got up in the middle of the night and left. What kind of a man was Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, that he would be that obedient? Another question is, how strong was that dream? How powerful was that dream that he did not doubt? He got up and left. It saved the life of the Son of God who would not have been able to die for your sins. He came one time. When he was in Egypt, God said, “Get up and go back.” Joseph had dreams and he got major direction for his life through a dream. You can, too. It is meant for all of us.

Someone in the Bible that you may not have studied is Pilot’s wife. The title of her life could be “I Had a Dream Last Night”. Pilot was the Roman official in charge when Jesus was brought before the Romans by the religious leaders because they wanted Him killed. They could not get rid of Him. The more He did, the more people followed Him. They brought Him before Pilot and trumped up the charges. They wanted this man killed. In Matthew 27:19, talking about Pilot says, “Just then, as he was presiding over the court, Pilot’s wife sent him this message, ‘Leave that good man alone for I had a terrible nightmare concerning him last night.’” When you think God has to help you and there is no conventional way that He can, just look at what He did there. Think about that important situation, very powerful people in charge of a situation that was out of control, and God was still in control trying to get the word to Pilot. God already knew what was going to happen, but God cares so much about each one of us individually that it does not matter if you are a believer or not a believer. You may be watching this show and you never even heard of Jesus. I am telling you God cares about you and He will do whatever it takes to warn you and help you understand, “I need to do this, I need to do that.” He did that with this woman. Why did Pilot not have the nightmare? God gave it to the wife, and the wife told the husband. I do not think anyone else could have told him about that dream. No one else could have said, “I had a violent nightmare last night. You don’t need to do anything. This is a good and just man. Leave him alone.” He probably would have said, “Get out of my way.” When your wife says something to you, men you had better listen. I have been married 40 years and my husband is the leader of our home and he is a good leader. However, there are times when I go to him and say, “I don’t feel good about that person. I don’t think you should be involved in that situation.” Can you imagine if I said in a very important situation, “Leave that man alone. He is a good man. I had a violent nightmare about him last night.” My husband would listen.

The pressure was on Pilot. He made the wrong decision. He will have to answer to God. When Pilot stands before God, he will stand alone. There will not be anyone around, he cannot blame anyone. He cannot say, “They pressured me.” He will not be able to say anything except when God says, “What choice did you make” he said “I chose this one” and the Son of God died. We all stand alone at judgment day. Your best friend, your wife, your husband, none of these will stand with you. No one stands with you. You stand before God and give an account. That is why I am saying, God will do whatever it takes to help you make the right decisions. Pilot’s wife says, “Do not have anything to do with it.” That is the only sentence about her in the Bible. It was so important that God wanted it included. How did they know that took place between a man and his wife? Pilot did not become a Christian, so how did they know? Pilot’s wife stood for Jesus at his worst time. Everyone had left him, but she stood for him. She said, “Don’t do it.” She was the Roman governor’s wife, but she was a woman with strong convictions. I have read and studied Plutarch Lives. Just because someone was not a Christian did not mean that did not have moral lives. They had moral lives. She was a moral woman, but she still needed the Lord. She had to have someone pay the price for her sins because she was not perfect. She had a strong conviction of right and wrong. She must have felt so strongly about something wrong being done that she would go so far as to interrupt what her husband was doing before a crowd of people in a very serious situation and get the word to him. How would you have like to be the person taking that message to him? It had to have been a servant because it says she sent a message. Another interesting thing is that she knew he was an innocent righteous man and the chief priest did not know it. They were the religious leaders and they should have known it. They had been looking for the Messiah forever. There He was and they were trying to kill him. How did a nonbeliever know something that people who considered themselves to be believers did not know? At the time, this woman was living in Herod’s palace.

There is a place in Orlando, Florida that has a giant mock-up of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. The room I am in is huge, and this mock-up of what Jerusalem looked like is that big. I was fascinated with it. When I looked at it, the Bible made sense because you could see where Solomon’s temple was. You could see where Golgotha was. Sometimes people in history have said Golgotha was this hill or this hill. Remember it was called the place of the skull. You look at it and you can see the skull.

From Herod’s palace, his wife could go out and see everything. She had heard about Jesus. Everyone was talking about Jesus. She had seen the multitudes following. She had heard about His miracles. Tradition says she became a secret follower of Jesus and the Greek Orthodox Church canonized her. They said her day is October 27. The Ethiopian Christians also pay special honor to her all because she stood up for her dream.

What can happen in a dream? What is the purpose of a dream? One purpose is wisdom. It gives you wisdom to know what to do. That was the dream Joseph got for Pharaoh, what to do with the drought and the famine. You can get wisdom in a dream.

Instruction is something else you can get from a dream. What to do in those seven years of famine and those seven years of when everything was great. I had a dream in which I was a widow, and I felt all of the grief of widows. I woke up and thought, “Is my husband getting ready to die? What is going to happen? Is that what you are trying to tell me Lord?” He was saying, “You do not understand this, and I want you to understand it because as the head of this women’s ministry, you have to work with widows. I want you to know what they are feeling.” This dream was instruction.

Another thing to learn from a dream is warning. Pilot’s wife warned her husband. Abraham was warned in Genesis 15:12-13.

Correction is another purpose of dreams. It might be with an ungodly person, even with a person who does not know anything about God. An example of that is Genesis 20:13. King Abimelech was trying to get Abraham’s wife because he thought she was Abraham’s sister. Abraham lied and said for Sarah to tell him she was his sister. It was a half-lie, she was his half-sister. God sent a dream to King Abimelech because the Bible says he was a good man and an honorable man. Abimelech had this dream and he said to Abraham, “I had a dream last night. What are you doing? This is your wife. God is going to severely punish me. Why would you do that to me?” You might think you are getting away with something, or someone else thinks they are getting away with something, but God has all kinds of ways of getting truth to the proper place. There were warnings in the Bible. Think about King Nebuchadnezzar. In Daniel 4:25 God warned him, “You are full of pride. You are just going to be like an animal in the field.” God will do whatever it takes to get the word to you, a finger writing on a wall or all kinds of visions.
Another purpose of dreams is symbolism. Sometimes when you have a dream and you think it does not really make sense, you might think, “I don’t even know what all of that meant. That is not in real life.” Stop, examine and pray, “God what are you trying to say to me? What does this symbolize?” At times, you do not understand it, but you can go to someone who is experienced in dreams for interpretation. There is a pastor and his wife from Belize living with us for awhile. He said, “God has used me a lot to interpret dreams through the years.” If you dream a dream once and it is strong, it is probably from God and He is trying to tell you something. If you dream it twice, you better really pay attention to it. If you should dream the same dream three times, it is serious. Wake up. Something is going on. I had a dream like that. I had a dream about going up a path and some steps, and finally got up to a hotel. The lights got dim, it was very brown. I found a staircase and my husband and I went up the staircase. I looked out a window and it was sunny, bright, and beautiful. Then I went into a room that was all brown, but I felt okay about it. There was a Bible in there that was kind of dusty. I dreamed that dream enough that I finally asked someone. What they told me was, “It is the path of going up with Jesus. The closer you walk with Jesus the thinner the crowd gets. You and your husband are in it together and it is beautiful.” The boy, Joseph, had dreams he did not understand about the wheat sheaves bowing down, the sun and the moon bowing down. Then God told him what it meant. Joseph was about 17 at this time, and he went to his brothers and told them he had a dream last night. They hated it. You have to be very careful who you reveal your dreams to and when you do. He could have probably told them in a better way, a more humble way. He probably could have waited for the right time. He told it too soon. He was a cocky 17-year-old and they hated him so they got rid of him.

God can prophesy to you through dreams. He can tell you something that is getting ready to happen so that you are prepared. Another dream I had was about a famous woman. I was always talking to her privately about her life. I could not figure out why I would be dreaming about her. Now I can look at my life and where I am. I have a ministry and part of my ministry is that I minister to world leaders. God told me that I was going to do that. I thought maybe it meant I was going to preach and meet them professionally. It has not been like that at all. However, I know the stuff they are struggling with. They seem to end up telling me things they do not tell anyone else, and I do not tell people. That is what that dream was. I had it three times. The woman came and told me things, and I was amazed that she would tell me what she told me in the dream. Now I have seen it in my life.

Comfort is another purpose for dreams. God can give you comfort. An example would be dreaming about your spouse, parent or child who died. You see the person in heaven and they are happy. You can see the joy on their face. That happens to people. My mother-in-law lost her mother, her niece and almost lost her only child, my husband, and her father in a terrible car accident. Out of the four people, two were killed and two were in the hospital for a long time. My mother-in-law grieved over her mother. Her mother was a very Godly, wonderful Christian. She grieved and grieved. “Oh Lord, I just wish I knew she was okay.” You cannot consult the dead. You are not supposed to go to mediums and psychics. Do not fall for that. God says, “Do not do that. Trust me.” She had a dream. In the dream, somebody knocked at the front door. She thought, “Nobody knocks at the front door. They all come to the back door.” She answered the door, and in the dream, her mom was all dressed up. She had a hat and gloves on, a beautiful dress and was with her friends. She said, “Mother, I thought you were dead.” Her mother said, “Oh no honey. I am alive.” She said that the way her mother said, “I am alive,” she knew she was okay. She woke up and had peace from then on.

What about when you have bad, awful, perverted or nasty dreams? Where does that come from? Those come from the devil, night tormenters. Satan wants to torment you. I have had those, too. I go to people for advice, and do not mind doing it. I went to someone for advice and they said “I think it is the devil. I think you ought to bind him before you go to sleep.” I thought, “I don’t know about that.” I had one of the dreams again, and went to someone who said, “I think it is the devil. You ought to bind him.” I thought, “Well, maybe.” I had the dream again. I went to another person who said, “Betty, I think it is the devil.” I thought, “I think it is the devil.” How long does it take to catch on? Before I went to sleep every night, I said “I bind you in the name of Jesus. You tormentors will not torment me.” “Fear has torment” the Bible says. “You cannot give me bad dreams. I bind you in the name of Jesus. You will not do it.” I never had them again. They stopped instantly. A few months later, the bad dreams came back again. I thought, “I am not falling for that. I have been warned. I told you, I mean it. Leave me alone.” It only came back one or two times and I have never had it since.

God has a purpose for dreams, for your dreams. Ask Him, “What is the purpose?”

QUIET TIME QUESTIONS

1. How does God use dreams?
2. Does God speak to anyone in dreams? What is the example of this in the Bible?
3. If you have nightmares, what should you do?
4. What should you do if you have a dream and do not understand it?

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