“Then God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night …” (Gen 46:2, NKJV)
Today we continue and end off our discussion of dreams with general heuristic and practical principles of interpreting spiritual dreams and visions:
- Keep in mind that dreams always acts as warnings rather than predictions of fate (Daniel’s interpretation of king Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Dan 4:27 is a prime example).
- When waking up from a dream, it is often valuable to immediately determine the emotion the dream evoked, which can be a general key to the interpretation.
- Examine the different actions/events in the dream and consider their possible meanings. Why, for example, is the car in my dream reversing instead of moving forward? Why am I naked? What does the person from whom I am running away, represent? So, what am I running away from?
- Animals are often signifiers of demonic activity.
- Numbers may have important significance, but only bring into consideration if your spirit highlights it specifically, or if it is a particularly strange number (like the number 173 on a sword with which you are being knighted, e.g.)
- Colour and direction (albeit to a lesser extent) can also play a role in the interpretation of dreams. Focus primarily on your own associations with the relevant colours, or consider their Biblical meanings (copper as judgement, white as purity, red as redemption, purple as authority, etc.).
- Dreams may employ metaphorical meanings in the guise of literal elements, like ketchup (American tomato sauce) for Catch up, or Antie Tat (an individual in the dream) as Anatot (Jer 32). Here the guidance of the Holy Spirit is imperative.
- Repetitive dreams are often a sign of the fact that you are not attentive to what God is communicating to you, and that you are not dealing with the matters pointed out.
- Sexual dreams may have a natural origin (Lev 15:16), but from a spiritual perspective they may also be indicative of an unholy alliance – 2 Chron 20:37; Dan 11:12; Hos 8:9.
- Nightmares might originate in various ways – they might be demonically induced, the result of exposure to certain elements (such as films) that ignited a spirit of fear, but are often only the screams of an unhealed heart.
- Different dreams during the same night may be considered as different facets of the same matter.
- Be careful in employing the dreams and visions of prophets, like Nostradamus or Siener van Rensburg, as spiritual guideposts – examine Jer 14:25-29, 32 and 27:9; Ezek 12:22; Zech 10:2 and Deut 13:1-5.
- A spiritual person experiences anxiety when a dream is not correctly interpreted or only interpreted in part, but his spirit leaps when he hears the truthful interpretation. Prov 20:5 describes this beautifully – “Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart; a wise person draws from the well within.”
- Sela: Use the guidelines of this article and relook the dream you interpreted yesterday.
- Read: 1 Sam 25; Ps 147; Luke 21
- Memorise: Ps 147:2-4
