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Transcript 114D — Dreams and Visions – Joel 2:28 Explained
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello What I'd like for you to do is explain Joel 2:28 for me, where it says, "Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions." The way I feel right now, I've only been a Christian for a few short months. But before I gave my heart to God, I would have these dreams. And I would look them up in the dream book. And they would seem so encouraging. The explanations would be something like, "Great financial success," or "Good things will happen," or things like this. And I've found that my life has been restored. God has restored my life from what I was supposed to be, and from what I did on my own, and where I am right now.
But I feel that the more that we can attune our mental faculties to God, the more He can reveal Himself through our mental faculties. Am I on the right track?
HC: I don't think so. You see, in Joe1 2, when God said in verse 28, "And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions," we have to look at that in the context of the whole Bible.
Now in the Old Testament, before the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, God saved people just like He saves people today. But He did not mandate them, nor qualify them ordinarily to be a witness. It was only occasionally that a prophet would arise. And that prophet would declare the Word of God. Now that prophet would receive his information from two sources. One was from the Bible that he had complete to that point in time, which of course was an incomplete Bible. And occasionally God would also bring additional information which was the Word of God in the form of a dream, or a personal visitation, or a vision, or whatever. And in this way God added to His Word.
Now it was God's program that when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, right after Christ went to the cross, that every born again believer would be a prophet, would be a witness, would be qualified to declare God's Word by being filled with the Holy Spirit.
And so to emphasize this, God uses the language of this more glamorous way that the Old Testament prophets received truth. He speaks about the fact that "your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions." In other words, they will be bona fide prophets. Everyone who is a born again believer will be a prophet. Now that was fine for that day, in the Book of Acts, because the Bible was not yet complete. It was still possible in that day for someone who was a born again believer to receive a dream or a vision. The fact is, we know that Peter received a vision. We know that the apostle John received a series of visions on the Isle of Patmos. All of this was possible because the Bible was not yet complete.
But then God finished His Word. And He declared in Revelation 22:18: "If anyone adds to the words of this book, I will add to him the plagues written herein." In other words while up until this time you have the written Word, but you also have the possibility of hearing from Me from other sources, that possibility no longer exists. From now on the only way I am speaking is through the Word of God. And if you think that you have something else from Me, which would be equivalent to adding to the Bible, it simply indicates that you are still under damnation. You are still subject to hell. You don't understand that the Bible alone is the divine Word of God.
And so ever since the Bible was completed, there have been those who have had dreams, who have had visions, who have seen apparitions of one kind or another. And many of them seem to be so very holy. But you can depend upon it, none of this activity was from God.
And so today, if someone says, "I've had a dream that came true," that dream was not from God. It may have been out of their own mind. It could have been coincidental that it came true. Or it could be that they're being preyed on by Satan.
And you can see why this is. If I received a dream that I was convinced was from God, and suppose that dream appeared to relate quite strongly to the Bible, and yet it might deviate very slightly but in an area which I could hardly detect. Perhaps in this dream I dreamed that there was going to be a great famine next year, or that there was going to be a war, or whatever. Now you can depend upon it, that every time I read the Bible, if I accepted that dream as being the voice of God to me, every time I read anything in the Bible concerning the future of this world, I'm going to read it in the light of my dream. I'm going to use that dream as the telescope through which I have to look at the information in the Bible. In other words, that information from that dream will cause me to modify what the Bible actually teaches. Because when I read the Bible and try to understand it, I am to look only at the Scripture. It alone is the interpreter, not something out here that I thought was the Word of God.
And so by accepting that dream as the Word of God, it is going to close the Bible to me. The Bible no longer will be a book that I can understand. And the more I listen to this other information which I believe was divine, the farther away I'll get from finding the true understanding of the Bible.
And I think this is the reason that many folks could never come to agreement with me about certain passages in the Bible, because I choose to understand the Bible by letting the Bible alone be the interpreter. But if someone else is going to understand those same verses, and they are looking upon the Bible as the Word of God, and they're also looking upon certain visions or dreams or revelations they've received as the divine Word of God, and they are going to interpret the Bible with that information additionally, they can't possibly come to the same conclusion I would come to.
Thank you so much for calling. Good night.