Dreams

Dreams

Definition: The thoughts or mental images of a person during sleep. The Bible refers to natural dreams, dreams from God, and dreams that involve divination.—Job 20:8; Num. 12:6; Zech. 10:2.

Do dreams in our time have special meaning?

What have researchers learned about dreams?

“Everyone dreams,” says The World Book Encyclopedia (1984, Vol. 5, p. 279). “Most adults dream for about 100 minutes during eight hours of sleep.” So dreams are a normal human experience.

Said Dr. Allan Hobson, of Harvard Medical School: “They are ambiguous stimuli which can be interpreted in any way a therapist is predisposed to. But their meaning is in the eye of the beholder—not in the dream itself.” When reporting this, the “Science Times” section of The New York Times added: “Within the school that places great value on dreams, there are many approaches to finding the psychological message of a dream, each reflecting different theoretical outlooks. A Freudian will find one kind of meaning in a dream, while a Jungian will find another, and a Gestalt therapist will find still another meaning. . . . But the view that dreams have psychological meaning at all has come under strong attack from neuroscientists.”—July 10, 1984, p. C12.

Can dreams that seem to impart special knowledge come from a source other than God?

Jer. 29:8, 9: “This is what Jehovah of armies . . . has said: ‘Let not your prophets who are in among you and your practicers of divination deceive you, and do not you listen to their dreams that they are dreaming. For “it is in falsehood that they are prophesying to you in my name. I have not sent them,” is the utterance of Jehovah.’”

Harper’s Bible Dictionary informs us: “Babylonians had such trust in dreams that on the eve of important decisions they slept in temples, hoping for counsel. Greeks desiring health instruction slept in shrines of Aesculapius [whose emblem was a serpent], and Romans in temples of Serapis [at times associated with a coiled serpent]. Egyptians prepared elaborate books for dream interpretation.”—(New York, 1961), Madeleine Miller and J. Lane Miller, p. 141.

In the past, God used dreams to give warnings, instruction, and prophecy, but is he leading his people in that way now?

References to such dreams originating with God are found at Matthew 2:13, 19, 20; 1 Kings 3:5; Genesis 40:1-8.

Heb. 1:1, 2: “God, who long ago spoke on many occasions and in many ways [including dreams] to our forefathers by means of the prophets, has at the end of these days spoken to us by means of a Son [Jesus Christ, whose teachings are recorded in the Bible].”

1 Cor. 13:8: “Whether there are gifts of prophesying [and at times God conveyed prophecies to his servants by means of dreams], they will be done away with.”

2 Tim. 3:16, 17: “All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching . . . that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.”

1 Tim. 4:1: “However, the inspired utterance says definitely that in later periods of time some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances [sometimes conveyed in dreams] and teachings of demons.”