Dreams of God
I haven’t written much here lately because the number of subscribers on this substack is substantially less than my other one. Another reason is that this substack was started for the purpose of discussing dreams I’ve had that could be described as “spiritual.” The group that I’ve posted to date tend to be spiritual in a way most people would interpret as religious, though some of those dreams date to before I started attending church and a time when I described myself as an atheist. To continue writing, I have to expand beyond the more traditional dreams.
There are 980 “spiritual” dreams in my journal to date. Of those, only a few dozen are “religious” in the sense that they contain content that is familiar to those raised in a Judeo-Christian tradition. The rest are spiritual in different ways. All of the spiritual dreams are consistent with each other, but some readers would likely disagree. Before I publish any more of those dreams than I have already (see my recent post on reincarnation), I wanted to discuss the 15/16 dreams wherein God himself makes an appearance.
In these dreams, God is unconditionally present as a character in the dream. The strength of these identifications is well above any other dream I’ve had. That is, my confidence of the identification and its lucidity is higher and clearer than any other dream. There are other dreams where God is mentioned directly or obliquely. Because he isn’t present himself, they are not included here.
Dream #1: 7/21/1990
In this dream, the first I remember that features God, he is about twelve feet tall and has a very deep voice. That is all I wrote regarding his appearance.
In the dream, he answers a number of questions I had, all but one of which I forgot upon waking. The only question I remember is the one he didn’t answer. I asked, "When we die as humans and evolve as spirits, do we eventually become perfected souls or do we become a part of a group of souls that has formed together and then continues evolving until there is only one spirit?" When I asked that question, He paced and looked like he didn't want to answer. My impression was that He thought His answer would upset me. Then he just disappeared like a ghost, or a light switching off.
At the time of this dream, I considered myself an atheist. It was strange to dream of God, because I rarely ever had a reason to think about religious or spiritual matters. If anything, I avoided such thoughts.
Dream #2: 3/30/2002
In the dream I am absolutely positive I saw God. He looked like an old man with a beautiful aura, though the word "beautiful" really doesn't do justice to what I saw.
He was doing something for me as a direct response to a prayer I made [the one that comes to mind is a request to find a way to go back to working out of my home office.] Whatever He does for me, I am very grateful for it. I want my wife and daughter to see Him, so he tolerates my request and brings me to where they are sleeping. My wife doesn't see Him, but my daughter can. He says I need three things, but am missing one (?)
About a month after this dream, I lost my job and found myself moving to Arizona. I spent three years there, painting landscapes, exactly as I wanted.
At the time of this dream, I had come to the conclusion that there was some form of creative force responsible for what we call “Creation.” I was not willing to credit God with that yet.
Dream #3: 8/30/2004
I'd been praying that my teeth would be healed, so God appears to me in this dream. He shows me something like the x-ray Dr. Napoulus made of my teeth. [Dr. Napoulus gave me the x-ray and asked me to bring it to a surgeon to have four teeth removed.] The only difference is that the x-ray is covered with a glowing green light that I understand to be healing in nature. God indicates to me that the teeth will have to be taken care of and with the x-ray establishes that they will be fixed by a dentist.
In other words, no miraculous healing. That said, the other part of this is that at the time, I had no money or insurance to pay for the operation. Then, right after this dream, it was given to me unexpectedly for this purpose.
Shortly before this dream, I had come to the realization that God is real and is the Creator of all things, known and unknown.
Dream #4: 4/26/2005
God tells me that He is going to clean me of my sins and impurities. I see this almost as if I am a dirty cloak that will be run through the laundry.
Two weeks later, I was baptized. I’m not sure these two things are related, but they are as close to a near contemporaneous link I could find.
Dream #5: 6/21/2005
This dream is detailed in an earlier post. Suffice to say, it contains what appears to be a hair-raising prophecy.
Dream #6: 7/13/2005
This is also found in an earlier post, here.
My impression is that this dream was meant to authoritatively confirm that I was indeed seeing the one and only God in my dreams. Check out the link to learn why.
Dream #7: 8/24/2005
God literally comes to earth in the remote past. He gives a large quantity of money to three men, charging them with watching over it. He will return later to collect His money.
In the present, the men have been notified that it is time to return God's money. They have had the use of it for a long time and it has increased well beyond its original value.
The men wait nervously for God to arrive, and then He comes to collect his due. The men are allowed to keep some of it, but most is returned, and it is a huge number. The idea that there won't be much time to spend it hangs heavy in the air.
A little later, a demon bargains with someone for knowledge of the identity of one of the three men, in the hope that he still has in his possession a certain powerful holy object, but it has already been returned to God and taken away.
I have no idea what to make of this dream other than as a metaphor for a reconciliation between man and God. God’s appearance doesn’t vary at all in the dreams. In every one of them, whether I write it down or not, he looks like an ancient and powerful twelve foor tall giant, who projects powerful light in every direction.
Dream #8: 9/1/2006
My daughter and I have gone to the past.
We pass a huge waterfall on our way to a popular swimming spot. When we get there, we see many people swimming, including some who appear to be royalty.
The current is very strong. It seems to be pulling everyone towards the falls, but too slowly for them to notice.
We stop to comment on how rudimentary communication is in this era.
At the end of the falls is a tree. This tree tells me a story of something it witnessed long ago and then something from today. As we are told the story, I see it as if I was there when it happened.
In the ancient event, someone came to the falls and commanded the trees to leave or die. Many trees were then swept over the falls. He then commanded the banks to remain sterile for a very long time. More recently, He revealed himself to this tree. He tells the tree that it, and others similarly situated, are permitted to live because they all grow on one side of the boundary made by Him. Now, he reveals that he is YHWH, creator of all things. He commands the tree to seed a new forest, for the time of the sterile land is now over.
Is this related to something in our future? I don’t pretend to understand this one.
Dream #9: 1/18/2007
God makes contact with me in this dream. He tells me that he will contact me from time to time, when he desires to do so, for his own reasons. My impression is that he is responding to my curiosity on the subject. He said some other things that were pertinent now, but not urgent.
My overall impression is that he had heard my own thoughts when I would wonder when I would next have a dream with him and he was answering those thoughts this way, exactly as a prayer would be answered. The primary effect is to reassure me.
I think he did give me some kind of message, and it related to my career. That’s it, he said that he wanted me to continue what I am doing (teaching computer graphics in Holland) for now, that it is part of his plan for me. He said it is the job he wants me to have and to know that as far as he is concerned, it is my job for him also.
I wonder if the reason I had to do that job is that because of it, I eventually earned a PhD. That PhD has enabled me to be helpful to others in ways I wouldn’t have thought of at the time. In addition, I directly helped about 1,000 students advance their careers.
Dream #10: 1/3/2008
This was also previously published in this substack. You can find it here.
The goal of this dream, if I understand it properly, is to let me know I will fulfill a role for God at some time in the future. This role, if I understand it properly, is to inform others of an event of spiritual significance that is coming.
Dream #10b, odd one out: 5/31/2009
I am in a tall building, walking up the stairwell, looking for a certain floor. I run into a couple of men who tell me I have to go back down because I am in the wrong place.
I follow their directions and find myself in a convention hall-sized room. There is a long row of partitions that are decorated with tributes to a recently deceased comic book artist (Will Eisner?). I walk into another room and see something quite interesting...[see multiple illus]
...somehow, I become aware of the presence of Jesus as he travels from one time/world back to his (whatever it would be called). So I witness him as he travels between these two places. The odd thing is that the passage is so small (see illus - and it is smaller than it looks there). In other dreams, I've noted that I have to pass through these narrow apertures to do just this and now I see the same for someone else.
I try to follow him, but when I put my hand near the center point of the passage, I feel such incandescent heat that I know it would be impossible to follow. No amount of will power could overcome obliteration, and that is exactly what this heat promised to any intruder.
Nevertheless, I was curious, so I did my best to peer through this hole to the other side. Oddly, although I could see in, I couldn't see Jesus. I did sense his movement to and fro within the space and could see the effect of his passage on things in the area, but didn't see him directly.
I hate to write this next part, because I had a bit of indecision within the dream, or about how I remember the dream, and this indecision has caused me to write this one way, though I think it may be inaccurate. I'll explain, even though the result is that some may (and will) interpret this as supportive of Trinitarian doctrine, but it is really nothing more than the difficulty of remembering a dream properly.
The fact is that on waking I had a hard time deciding if I had seen Jesus/Yeshua or God. I decided to write it as Jesus because in every other dream of God, he came across so strongly as God, that there was no question in my mind. I think the reason for the confusion may be that I saw both; Jesus entering through the portal, then the invisible workings of God inside. I'm not sure on this point, so it may be better to discard the entire dream than get hung up on this.
So, what was going on in the other side? Whoever it was, was making preparations, big ones, for a return to the Earth. It was going to be a blockbuster re-emergence when it came, with a great dramatic impact. For now though, it is in preparation on the other side, in a timeless impenetrable locale.
Dream #11: 11/4/2009
I’ll have to make some illustrations for this one when I get a chance. Until then:
This was another exciting dream-will try to do it justice-
It started out ordinarily enough. My wife and daughter and I were in a bookstore. It may have been a comic book store or a shop specializing in graphic novels, because I see many of them on the shelves. We walk into a large covered area as in a shopping mall.
My wife sat in some bleachers with a number of other people. My daughter and I go over to her. There is a tremendous sense of excitement in the air --- back up, starting over [remembered more of dream while writing journal entry]
There is a very big event coming our way. To prepare for it, a huge church-adjunct is being built near this book store, or in it. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but this is the idea I'm getting.
There was something about "staff" arriving in advance of the upcoming event, while the quarters are built. There is something about the staff that is very special. Instead of priests, they are more like angels. No one may see them work, access is completely blocked off, but they are there, every day.
Later, my daughter and I have made our way to my wife. She has a folded paper with her. It is a special invitation for us, a kind of ticket. Not everyone has one. Everyone here has one, but not everyone in the world. This is one of those things where everyone in the world would want one if they were available.
According to the ticket, or whatever it was, the event we are all there to see would begin at ten am. We had a few minutes to go, so I asked my wife to give me the paper so that I could read it again while we waited. She gave it to me, but I had miscalculated the time because almost as soon as I touched it [the ticket] it [the event] happened.
God came to earth. In glory, in a blaze of light. Everyone gasped. I blacked out. Four months later, I come to.
Now, my daughter and I are together again, but we are some distance away from where we had been. The world around us has changed dramatically for the worse. First thing I want to know is the way to the place we left my wife. The person I ask answers derisively that it can't be done. The part of the city I want to go to is officially closed off. The reason it is closed off is very strange. However it was described, this is the impression I came away with: everyone wanted to go there [the place we left my wife, where the audience sat waiting] because it was like a fountain of goodness. Anyone in range couldn't help but experience bliss, endless bliss. So many want in, and the site is so small, and there are only so many tickets. Not many people are allowed in, and it is totally impossible to force one's way in because the area has been sealed with an impenetrable barrier. Some people think God may be inside, some people don't think so.
Outside the protected zone, the city is chaos, very much like an end-of-the-world science fiction movie. As I absorb all this, I remember that my daughter and I have tickets to get into the God-abode, because that is what it is. To get there, we have to make what is now a dangerous journey among the expelled, the people not allowed into the protected zone.
We proceed carefully, knowing full well that most, or many of the people we meet cannot be trusted. It is frightening to be completely surrounded by dishonesty and sin, even though that was true before also. The difference is that the balance has shifted a great deal because many of the people with tickets were where they were supposed to be when God came, and were allowed to stay. They did, so these people were no longer among the rest, to be a check on their savage, selfish, tendencies.
We need some supplies, so we go to a supermarket where my daughter points out that we have millions of dollars in our bank account, lottery proceeds from before I was knocked out. A cashier, a black or Hispanic woman in her fifties, overhears us, and realizes that we were there when God came back to earth. She wanted to know what it was like, and I told her.
One moment, I was looking at the paper [ticket], the next, I was overcome with awe and joy. A fountain of light poured into the vault above us [from someplace above and beyond the roof], and it was the leading edge of God's emanations. The light is warm, alive, strong, energetic, loving. It fills everything above us, pours down, cascading against the interior architectural details, rushing unstoppably towards every one of us. Then the tiniest most forward portion of the edge of this cloud, this "God aura" touches me. I am overcome with joy and exhilaration and know that God is among us again. I was about to say that I blacked out then, but didn't get the chance. Instead, I woke up.
I hate to say it, but in 2018, we moved to a place that resembles the environment in this dream. Every once in a while, as we drive by the mall or the nearby comic book store, I think of this dream and wonder about it.
Dream #12: 2/26/2011
This dream was published earlier, with an illustration, but it is short, so here it is:
I am at Desert Ridge, the church we attended in Phoenix. My wife is with me and so is someone else—a man. He is a friend in the dream, but a new friend. Not sure who he is now. I go to the altar at the front of the church. At the real Desert Ridge there is a lectern, not an altar. Here, it is an altar. At the altar, I begin a painting. First it is of a hand. Then I paint a spider on the hand, newly created. I paint arms in various places, all with hands and spiders in various poses [see illus]. I paint everything in orange and yellow. When I step back from the painting, I see God within it, creating the spiders. The painting seems alive now, crawling with creative activity. I can’t make out God’s eyes because they shine so much. His beard shines too, and his hair. Both fly out from his face as if tongues of flame.
I turn to Sandy Mason, the pastor, to show him the painting. Instead, I start telling him of all the miracles God performed to rescue us from our circumstances in Phoenix. While I am doing this, I wake.
Dream #13: 3/28/2011
Here is God whispering to me again [see illus].
>God stands near, whispering to me for some time. What did he say?
I sometimes wonder if these dream conversations have some kind of spiritual value regardless whether I remember the details upon waking. In the same way as food helps build our body without any conscious attention paid to the process.
Dream #14: 10/1/2012
I wrote about this one earlier. You can find it here.
The message from this dream is that God will be there for us after our life is finished. No matter the suffering in our lives, he will be there.
Dream #15:10/31/2013
Twice, someone tries to attack the pope. In both cases, I fire a rifle at the attacker, and both times, my bullets slow down as they reach their target, hit the malefactor in question, then bounce harmlessly off. After the second time this happens, God takes the bad guy in hand, literally grabbing his whole head with one hand, and he is incinerated. Flame bursts from the hand, flows over the man's body, and burns hot until he is reduced to ash.