Dreams Tested by Scripture

Most claims in this book so far have been arguments from a verse. This one is different, for it comes from a dream:

“I prayed, and in a dream I received the answer that keeping the Torah is not it. Whatever I do not know, I can ask the Spirit to reveal directly.”

A person who brings a question to God in prayer is doing something right, and a person who wants to hear from the Spirit desires something good. The claim also rests on something true, for God does speak in dreams. That is not a modern idea; it is in the Torah.

Numbers 12:6 And he said, "Hear now my words: if there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make myself known to him in a vision, in a dream I speak with him.

God Himself says, “in a dream I speak with him.” The question in this chapter, then, is not whether God can speak in a dream, for He can. The question is how anyone is to know which dream is His. Scripture did not leave that open. It set a test, and the test is the written word.

The Test Moses Set

Deuteronomy 13:1-4 Every word which I command (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') you, it you shall keep to do; you shall not add to it, nor diminish from it. If there arise in your midst a prophet, or a dreamer of a dream, and he gives to you a sign (ot) or a wonder (mofet מוֹפֵת mo-faith'), and the sign (ot) or the wonder (mofet) comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, "Let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve (avad עָבַד aw-bad') them"; you shall not hearken to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of the dream; for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh).

(Deuteronomy 12:32–13:3 in most English Bibles; the YLV numbers it 13:1-4, as the Hebrew text does.)

The first thing to see is where this test begins. Before any dreamer is mentioned, Moses sets down the rule: “Every word which I command (tzivvah) you, it you shall keep to do; you shall not add to it, nor diminish from it.” The word comes first, and only then does the dreamer appear.

The second is how hard the test is. The dreamer “gives to you a sign (ot) or a wonder (mofet),” and the sign “comes to pass.” This is not a dream that plainly failed; something really happened. Even so, Moses says, “you shall not hearken to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of the dream,” because the dream led away from what God had commanded.

The third is why God allows such a thing: “The LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart.” The dream itself is the examination, and the question on the paper is which of the two a person will follow when a dream and God’s word point in different directions.

No one reading this book is being accused of following other gods, and that is not the point of the passage. The point is the order Moses sets. The dream does not test the word; the word tests the dream.

Straw and Grain

Jeremiah lived in a time full of dreamers, and he put the matter in a single picture:

Jeremiah 23:28 The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has my word, let him speak my word in truth. What has the straw to do with the grain? declares the LORD.

The word for “dream” is chalom חֲלוֹם khal-ome'. The word for “truth” is emet אֱמֶת eh'-meth, what is firm, what holds. God does not forbid anyone to tell a dream: “let him tell a dream,” He says. But “he who has my word, let him speak my word in truth.” Then comes the question that sets the two apart: “What has the straw to do with the grain?”

Straw and grain grow on the same stalk, and from a distance they look like one thing. At harvest, however, the farmer separates them, because no one can live on straw. A dream can feel as real as anything, but the word of God is the grain.

Isaiah said the same in the verse we read in Chapters 10 and 28: “To the Torah and to the testimony (edut עֵדוּת ay-dooth')!” A voice that does not speak according to this word has no dawn (Isaiah 8:20). Proverbs, which we also read in Chapter 28, goes further still: “He who turns away his ear from hearing Torah, even his prayer is an abomination” (Proverbs 28:9). A prayer that asks God to set His Torah aside is the very prayer that verse describes.

The Apostles Say the Same

This test did not expire when the New Testament began. John writes:

1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit), but test the pneumata(spirits) to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

The word for “test” is dokimazo δοκιμάζω dok-im-ad'-zo, to examine, to put to the proof, as metal was tested to see whether it was genuine. John does not tell his readers to believe every spirit that speaks to them sincerely. He tells them to test the spirits.

Paul sets the bar higher still. In Chapter 32 we read his warning against anyone who would “proclaim to you a good news contrary to what we have proclaimed to you,” and who that anyone might be: “even if we, or an angel from heaven” (Galatians 1:8). Neither an apostle nor an angel is exempt. If the message runs against what was proclaimed, it is the messenger who is set aside, not the message. If an angel from heaven cannot overrule the written word, neither can a dream.

The Compass and the Feeling

Picture a ship at sea on a moonless night. The sailor at the wheel has a strong feeling that the harbor lies to the left, and he can almost see it. Then he looks at the compass, and the compass says right.

A wise sailor does not tap the compass and say, “My feeling was so strong, the compass must be wrong.” He trusts the instrument made for exactly this kind of night. From the moment a feeling is placed above the compass, the ship is no longer being steered by it.

The same thing happens when a dream is placed above Scripture. Scripture no longer judges the dream; the dream judges Scripture. There is a simple reason this cannot be the Spirit’s doing: the Spirit does not give answers that contradict the word He Himself caused to be written, for “holy men of God spoke, being carried along by the hagio(holy) pneuma(spirit)” (2 Peter 1:21). Yeshua said what the Spirit would do:

John 14:26 But the Parakletos(the One who comes alongside to call), the hagio(holy) pneuma(spirit), whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

We met the word parakletos παράκλητος par-ak'-lay-tos in Chapter 34, the One called to come alongside us. His work here is twofold: “He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” The Spirit teaches, and He reminds, bringing back what Yeshua had already said. He is not described as bringing a new word that cancels the old one.

In that same chapter we met another para- word, parabaino, to step aside, to go beyond. John uses it of the one who “parabaino παραβαίνω par-ab-ah'-ee-no(going-ahead-and-departing, transgressing) and does not abide in the teaching of Messiah” (2 John 1:9). A revelation that runs ahead of what Messiah taught has not led its hearer deeper. It has led him past the boundary.

How Peter Read His Vision

Scripture even shows us how a true vision is to be read. Book 3 of this series looks closely at Peter on the rooftop in Joppa. Three times a sheet came down holding “all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth and wild beasts and crawling creatures and birds of the air,” and a voice said, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!”

If any vision in the Bible could be taken to mean “now I may eat anything,” it would be this one, and that is what a first impression would say. Peter, however, did not follow a first impression. His answer in the vision was, “I have never eaten anything koinos κοινός koy-nos'(common, worldly) or akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos(impure, unclean)” (Acts 10:14), and he said it years after Yeshua had risen and ascended. Years earlier he had asked Yeshua to explain His saying about what enters the mouth (Matthew 15:15-17), and when he later told the story in Jerusalem, he said it again: “nothing koinos(common, worldly) or akathartos(impure, unclean) has ever entered my mouth” (Acts 11:8). For Peter, as for Yeshua and every Jew of his day, what enters the mouth was food, and food was what Scripture calls food: “the living thing (chai חַי khah'-ee) that may be eaten” (Leviticus 11:47). Back on the rooftop, Luke records this:

Acts 10:17 Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in himself as to what the vision which he had seen might mean, behold, the men who had been sent by Cornelius had asked directions to Simon's house and appeared at the gate;

Peter did not decide the meaning from the feeling the vision gave him. He waited, and God supplied the meaning through the men at the gate. When Peter reached the house of Cornelius, he said what that meaning was:

Acts 10:28 And he said to them, "You yourselves know how athemitos ἀθέμιτος ath-em'-ee-tos(lawless) it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man koinos(common, worldly) or akathartos(impure, unclean).

God had shown him that he “should not call any man” common or unclean. The vision was about people, and God Himself fixed its meaning. The meaning of a vision is not settled by its first impression. It is settled by God’s interpretation and by Scripture.

If a dream seems to answer a question, or if you wake with a verse in your mind, the way to read it is the way Peter did. Do not stop at the impression. Read the verses before and after, and let Scripture say what the text means.

Not a Waste of Time

Some feel that checking a revelation against Scripture shows a lack of faith. Luke thought otherwise:

Acts 17:11 Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the logos λόγος log'-os(word) with great eagerness, examining the graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture)s daily to see whether these things were so.

The Bereans checked even an apostle’s preaching, “examining the graphe(written-scripture)s daily to see whether these things were so,” and Scripture does not call them doubters. It calls them “more noble-minded.”

That is the posture this chapter asks of anyone who has had a dream about the Torah. It does not ask him to throw the dream away in anger, nor to treat it as a word above the word, but simply to lay it beside what is written, as the Bereans did, and let the written word decide.

One more claim remains before this part of the book ends. It concerns neither a dream nor a single verse. It is the quiet sentence many believers say to themselves after trying for years: “Even with the Spirit, God’s commandments are just too hard to keep.”