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God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian
Interpretation of Dreams
Rating: 9 on a scale of 10 Review Recently, I was casting about for a book about dreams in the Old and Testaments. I was planning to teach a Sunday school using dreams in scripture as the focus. This turns out to be the best book I have found. There are several other excellent books, but this one gives a superb discussion of the Jewish mind regarding dreams, the nature of thoughts about dreams during the times of the New Testament, and then a thorough discussion of dreams throughout church history up to nearly the present. I have spent over 3 years studying my own dreams and the communication from God therein. The prominence of dreams in both the Old and New Testaments is something I had never noticed until I began to study my own dreams. When I read through dreams in the Old and New Testaments I realized they were common features of mid-life and beyond. The western world has systematically devalued the importance of dreams. This book is very well researched. I enjoyed his systematic development and review of the topic. He was able to clearly delineate the ebb and flow of thought in the course of history and demonstrate the development of how we have regarded dreams over the centuries and millennia. This is not a how to book on how to interpret dreams. There are plenty of those out there (try out Windows of the Soul by Paul Meier and Robert Wise). I have recently started my Sunday school class. I have been studying the dreams/visions of Abram. Mr. Kelsey does an excellent job enlightening us about the way Jews understood communication from God in visions and dreams. It is an interesting cultural discussion. It is hard for us as modern westerners to understand that we are involved in a religion that has deep eastern roots. The facts in scripture are very clear, the very origin of our religious faith is rooted in the dream experiences of the early church father's, Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. There would be no faith without the dreams they had and paid attention to. We are biased in our understanding of what the scripture says. We interpret many of these sections as if God spoke to the receivers of the dreams face to face. In reality, they were experiences in sleeping dreams and waking dreams. If scripture is consistent then no one has ever seen God face to face. Even Moses, who is said to have heard from God as if face to face, appears in scripture to have only ever seen just his back at the very most. As strange as it may seem, Moses only ever heard His voice, but never saw His face. Some will argue that he must have been seeing "Jesus", but this is our western analytical mind working overtime to come up with a rational explanation. The reality in Jewish thought is that God was speaking to people through dreams. What is hard for us is that they don't care really about just how it took place, they were concerned that communication was coming from God. People were "hearing" and "seeing" things from God. They were "seeing" into the realm of the Spirit. They were quite literally being "see-ers" and "hear-ers". I can't say for you, but sometimes I have heard from God just as plain as if God was standing right next to me. I am also an artist and on occasion I have received fully formed pictures from God that explain something quite clearly. I am also a musician and on occasion I have had songs come nearly fully formed and written, as if they were just dumped into my consciousness. And, I have come to recognize God's presence in my dreams in wondrous and magnificent ways. In western society we have been discounting dreams for some time. This is clearly a reflection of our preference for analytic modes of thought, a reflection of our connections to the ideas of Aristotle, the realms of Greek thought and the enlightenment. Some will argue it is the over reliance and valuing of a masculine form of thought that keeps us trapped. Others will say we have become mired in the functions of the left side of our brains and have projected this onto our entire society and culture. Others will argue we are just relentlessly playing out the endless cycles of generations each responding to the shadow of a prior generation ever onward into the future. Regardless of how you see society, culture, minds, thought, and generations working out their issues, if we would begin to take into consideration what we are hearing in our dreams we would be greatly served by an incredible source of Spiritual wisdom. This is the lesson we should have gotten from the foundational Scriptures we hold dear. We have missed the message by in large. As westerners, this is hard for us to accept. I say this as a poster child for the "analytic, linear, thinking side" of our culture. We are missing a big piece of reality that we have dismissed as unreality. Having said this, I am fully aware of the complications of such a position as this. Never the less, as a people, we are the richest, most technologically advanced, most well fed, with the most amazing medicine, technology and science in history, yet we as people remain unhappy. We have within us a Spiritual voice that speaks to us nearly every night, but we have tuned out the broadcast. This book can point us to where we need to head. We are a land of spiritual people. We seek for a vibrant connection to God, the Spiritual realm. We have all we need in many respects. Our "shadow" as modern westerners includes the realm of dreams. This book will help bring light to a dark place and you will find it is a wondrous place to poke around in and become familiar with. Our Spiritual father's did not fear this place. We would benefit by being willing to go where they have gone and beyond. I encourage everyone to read this book. All opinions are those of Curtis Climer, MD Copyright 2011 |
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