Acts 12:6-9 “And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison. (7) Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison; and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, "Arise quickly!" And his chains fell off his hands. (8) Then the angel said to him, "Gird yourself and tie on your sandals"; and so, he did. And he said to him, "Put on your garment and follow me." (9) So, he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision.”
It was not only in Paul’s ministry that dreams occurred however, for in the passage of scripture quoted above we have an account recorded which implies that the apostle Peter also received dreams from the Lord. In this account the angel of the Lord had woken Peter up from sleep and supernaturally let him out of prison. And so this is an account of an open vision, because the angel stepped into this natural realm and interacted with Peter. The point I wanted to focus on in this passage however, is that Peter was convinced that he was seeing a vision, “while he was sleeping”. In other words Peter thought he was receiving a dream from the Lord. And so clearly Peter had been exposed to dreams from the Lord before this incident, because his first response to what he was seeing was that he must be dreaming.
Matthew 2:13 “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.”
Just as with words of wisdom and words of knowledge from the Lord, the majority of dreams that one receives under the new covenant communicate clear instructions that do not require much thought as to their meaning. The above quoted passage of scripture is another clear example of the type of dream that the saints receive under the new covenant dispensation. In this account we see that Joseph received a dream in which the angel of the Lord communicated to him, both a word of knowledge and a word of wisdom. The word of knowledge was that Herod would look for the young Child to kill Him. The word of wisdom was the instruction to take the young Child and His mother to Egypt and stay there until the angel brought him word to return. And so we see that because of the simplicity of this dream, Joseph clearly understood what God wanted him to do. So what about dreams requiring interpretation? Although we see many of these types of dreams recorded in the Old Testament, such as the dreams that Joseph and Daniel had for example, nevertheless there are no incidents of this type of dream recorded in the New Testament. And of the numerous visions recorded in the New Testament, there are only two recorded that required some form of interpretation. The vision that stands out most prominently in this category is obviously the book of Revelation. The other incident recorded, is the vision that the Lord gave to Peter regarding the sheet let down from heaven showing him all sorts of creatures, and the Lord’s instruction to him to “kill and eat”, for what God had cleansed he must not call common (Acts 10:10-17). In this incident, although Peter did not understand the meaning of the vision straight away, the meaning became very clear to him as events unfolded directly after this vision. And so we can see that outside of the book of Revelation, there is only one vision recorded out of many, which required some form of interpretation. This will be the case with dreams as well. One who has the gift of discerning of spirits and operates in this gift at the lowest level of dreams, will mainly have simple dreams that are clearly understood (as in Paul’s case), and very few dreams that require some form of interpretation. And if they do have the occasional dream requiring interpretation, then the interpretation will be revealed to them soon after they have had the dream. And so under the new covenant there is no gift of the Spirit called, “the interpretation of dreams”, and the Lord has also not placed “Josephs” in His church, who interpret dreams that people have had. Saints who consult books or go to “prophets” to have their dreams “interpreted”, open themselves to deception, for both practices are completely unscriptural and are in fact demonic.
Michael E.B. Maher
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