The Advent Dreams

We will tell you the stories and let you be the judge. Last year our young people led a candlelight service on the Sunday before Christmas that featured the lighting, snuffing, and relighting of numerous candles to various Bible readings highlighting the history of redemption. We sat under long bolts of sky-blue fabric suspended in billowing waves from the ceiling, featuring huge angels at the entrance and the pulpit area of our sanctuary.

A mother and her teenaged daughter who were visiting from another town attended the service. Several weeks later the mother wrote this: I said yes, someone had been extremely creative in decorating the church. She rather impatiently said, 'Not those angels—the real ones. She said they were very big, very beautiful, and very radiant.

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A double row down the center aisle and two single rows to either side around the perimeter of the seated area. She's not the type to make up a story like this; she doesn't even like to talk about it. The answers are the same every time, and she's actually very matter-of-fact about it. She doesn't care if people don't believe it. She knows what she saw and she believes it. Four weeks later a young mother shared the following story with a few persons after a morning service.

She had woken up from a vivid dream that very morning. In her dream she was at worship in our church. She was able to identify the person who was leading the worship service; she clearly heard a particular hymn being sung, and she saw something happen involving movement of people. On the way to church she shared these details with her husband. Imagine her amazement when she walked into church only to find the very person she dreamed about leading the service. Not only that, the congregation was singing the very song she heard in her dream.

But nothing topped the surprise she felt when she heard our pastor invite all the young people to stand in front of the congregation and then ask all the officebearers to form a circle around them so that our leaders could lay hands on these young people and pray for them during the first-semester exams they were all writing that week.

Just as it happened in church! What do you make of that? Then, in the week that Emily Brink called to ask us to prepare an Advent series for Reformed Worship, the pastor got a call from a man in his fifties who had recently professed his faith in our church.

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This individual, a retired long-haul tmcker, came to us through a referral from the church's radio ministry, the Back to God Hour. Tragically, he had just found out he had a terminal illness. When he called, his voice was shaking. He had just woken up and seen a vision of the Lord Jesus. He was dressed in bright, white clothes. I couldn't make out his face, but I know it was either the Lord or an angel of the Lord.

Is this the day? Is the Lord taking me home? Our pastor asked him how he felt, whether there were any physical symptoms warning him that the time was near. He said no, and the pastor suggested that the Lord was reassuring him of his nearness. Many weeks later this man is still with us, and in pastoral visits he praises God for this reassuring sign of Christ's presence in his life. The moral of these stories? Pay attention to your dreams. More importantly, pay attention to the dreams and visions in the Bible.

They occur more often than we realize. They are recorded in God's Word to point us to the kingdom and the coming Christ. It has been said that every religion has to do with humanity's effort to reach God, to connect with heaven. Every religion except one, that is.

In contrast to every other world faith, Christianity celebrates a God who takes the initiative and reaches down to humanity. We see this clearly in the first of our four messianic dreams. Jacob, the deceiver, is on his way to visit his uncle.

Black and white TV generation have monochrome dreams - Telegraph

As a type of Christ we see him leaving home empty-handed and returning twenty years later, his hands full with family and possessions. As a type of Christ we see him receiving God's promise and responding with a vow to submit to the Lord and live sacrificially. As a type of Christ he bears within himself the seed of God's chosen people.

And he embodies Christ's teaching that in this new community the last shall be first, the least shall be the greatest, the elder shall serve the younger, and the King of kings shall be a baby and a servant. But it's the dream that demands our focus. As you examine and interpret it, highlight two significant things:. First, this dream clearly shows God making the first move, taking the initiative.

Jacob is passive; he's sound asleep. God is active; he gives the dream, reveals himself, and extends the promise and the blessing. Second, this dream has a central feature that Jesus applies to himself. It is the stairway that rests on the earth and reaches heaven. And in between the angels of God ascend and descend continuously on this stairway, representing God's constant communication with us.

Now sharpen your focus and zero in on the stairway itself. Compare it to a bridge which, in order to be effective, must be strong enough to carry the weight of the traffic and be firmly attached to both sides. Who is that stairway? Jesus provides the answer in our text: Now focus on the coming birth of Christ. Conceived by the Holy Spirit. Born of the virgin Mary. As Son of God and Son of Man he is the perfect mediator, the perfect bridge, the stairway to heaven provided by God himself. Just an obscure symbol with any number of meanings?

Again, we know better. In a place called Bethel, Jacob the sinner had a dream about the coming Savior. And in a place called Bethlehem, his dream became reality. For through Christ's birth the human longing for connection with the divine was fulfilled. Grace and peace to us all, from God the Father who loves us; from Jesus Christ who came to earth to save us; and from the Holy Spirit who prepares our hearts to receive the Messiah.

Go in peace, knowing that heaven is open and the Son of Man came down to be our stairway to the Father and his never-ending love. It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, But you gotta serve somebody. Joseph, his youthful lack of tact notwithstanding, makes a wonderful type of Christ. From the pit and the prison he is exalted to the highest position of leadership.

Under the most tempting and oppressive circumstances he faithfully serves his God and resists sin.

Black and white TV generation have monochrome dreams

During the time of drought and famine, all the world comes to him for bread. And when at last even his brothers arrive for help, he forgives them and reconciles with them in a way that breaks our hearts. Surely he foreshadows Jesus when he reveals his identity to his brothers and tells them, "Do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance" Gen.

Once again, however, it's the dream that draws our attention. Two similar dreams actually. Two dreams with the same theme—others bowing down to Joseph. And not just any others. Sheaves of wheat bowing to his sheaf, which rises up. Sun, moon, and stars bowing down to young Joseph. Two features about these dreams are worth noting. The first is the lordship of Joseph, which foreshadows the lordship of Jesus Christ. Everything on earth the sheaves and everything in heaven the sun, moon, and stars will bow down to the Lord.

And while we see this dream fulfilled in the miraculous way God delivers the Israelites and settles them in Goshen, we especially find its fulfillment in the lordship of Christ. This lordship is acknowledged immediately by wise men led by a heavenly sign. And as they bow to the Christ child, we think of every knee bowing likewise. The second feature is the reaction of Joseph's family.

His brothers hated him. They despised him, they plotted to kill him, and eventually they got rid of him. Motivated by jealousy, they put him into the ground and out of their sight. The brothers' hostile response reminds us of Herod's murderous reaction to the birth of Christ and of all the violence in store for the Christ child.

Pay attention to the dreams: resources for an Advent and Christmas service, page 1 of 2

But Jesus' sheaf "rose and stood upright" after all; many knees have bowed, and ultimately everything and everyone on heaven and on earth will bend the knee. Just some obscure symbols with any number of meanings? For from the bowing sheaves and astral hosts we receive our cue: So bend the knee to him who will lift you to your feet and give you the bread of life. Go in peace, knowing that Jesus is Lord.

Bow your knees before him and give him your hearts. Then he will make you shine like stars to the glorification of our Father in Heaven. Here's a dream with a timeless theme that brings to mind legendary tales of genies and other generous benefactors: I'll give it to you. Except in this dream it is God who comes to King Solomon.

Despite his unhappy end, sadly ironic in light of his answer to God's offer, Solomon also functions as a type of Christ. His very name means shalom. His reputation is one of deep insight and learning. He draws scholarly people to himself, just as Jesus at age twelve drew rabbis and at age thirty drew Nicodemus and the best of the Herodeans, Pharisees, and Sadducees. During Solomon's reign no wars were fought, and the temple was built. The memory of this peaceful reign stirred the people's longing for the Messiah, who would restore peace and reestablish God's dwelling among people.

Unlike the previous two dreams, this one features no visual images like a stairway or sheaves of wheat. Instead the dream is a conversation initiated by God. The conversation revolves around Wisdom, which Proverbs pictures as a junction from which two paths go forth: When the angel of the Lord announces the birth of John the Baptist, he says that John will turn the "disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous. The findings suggest that the moment when Dorothy passes out of monochrome Kansas and awakes in Technicolor Oz may have had more significance for our subconscious than we literally ever dreamed of.

Eva Murzyn, a psychology student at Dundee University who carried out the study, said: Research from through to the s suggested that the vast majority of dreams are in black and white but the tide turned in the sixties, and later results suggested that up to 83 per cent of dreams contain some colour. Since this period also marked the transition between black-and-white film and TV and widespread Technicolor, an obvious explanation was that the media had been priming the subjects' dreams. However it was always controversial and differences between the studies prevented the researchers from drawing any firm conclusions.

But now Miss Murzyn believes she has proved the link. She re-looked at the old studies and combined them with a survey of her own of more 60 people, half of which were over 55 and half of which were under She asked the volunteers to answer a questionnaire on the colour of their dreams and their childhood exposure to film and TV.

Miss Murzyn found there was no significant difference between results drawn from the questionnaires and the dream diaries - thus proving that the previous studies were comparable. She then analysed her own data to find out whether an early exposure to black-and-white TV could still have a lasting effect on her subjects' dreams, 40 years later. The overs who had had access to colour TV and film during their childhood also reported a very low proportion of just 7. But the overs who had only had access to black-and-white media reported dreaming in black and white roughly a quarter of the time.

Even though they would have spent only a few hours a day watching TV or films, their attention and emotional engagement would have been heightened during this time, leaving a deeper imprint on their mind, Miss Murzyn told the New Scientist. So when you dream you may copy what you have seen on the screen.