Board index ‹ Dreams

[Admiral Halsey]

Does the story of Joseph and his brothers show that God influences dreams?

I have wondered my whole life if dreams were messages from God. I'm not one who considers the Bible as entirely literate truth but it seems really clear that Joseph, the pharaoh, the pharaoh's cupbearer, and the pharaoh's baker all had prophetic dreams that were directly influenced by God.

And coincidentally that other famous Joseph had a dream where an angel told him that Mary had been divinely made pregnant. So does anywhere else in the Bible speak on this?

[jimwalton]

I analyzed my dreams for several years, trying hard to figure out what they meant. I came to the solid conclusion that they were reflections of what was going on in my life and what my emotional state was. Over the course of 3 years they never had any spiritual meaning, none of them were predictive of the future (though there were a few I thought were that but they didn't turn out to be that), and none revealed anything about the future.

Now, some of the dreams had religious elements, whether undertones or overtones. But I determined, at least for me, that those were not messages from God, but just religious things on my mind.

In answer to your question, I do not generally consider my dreams to be messages from God. I have asked many times that God speak to me, and He often does, but it's through the Bible most of the time. That's where God speaks to me—His Word to me. I have never known Him to speak to me through dreams.

This is not to say He can't or He won't, but only to say that I'm not aware that He ever has.

We can see that on occasion He spoke to a handful of people in the Bible through dreams (as you mentioned: Joseph, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Joseph, and Pilate's wife), but I see no warrant to interpret that our dreams are messages from God.