To sleep perchance to dream. Dreams happen to everyone almost every night. But there are people who experience supernatural encounters in the format of dreams. These encounters can happen in many different level of intensity. God choose His way to communicate with people according to His sovereignty. Our responsibility is to recognize His voice and follow His way. While divine dreams happen in many different manners, there exist some common points which we could use to recognize the true divinely inspired dreams like their conformity.

The content and the message in a divine dream must conform to the messages in the Bible. If the message of the dream is a prophecy, then the prophecy must conform to the event that happens in the future. This is the conformity of dreams from God.

Sometimes dreams may even come with supernatural phenomenon, signs, wonders or accurate predictions. But as long as the dream contradicts the written word of God, we must be clear that it was not from God. This is well illustrated in Deuteronomy chapter 13. The law even commands to execute such person who dreams dreams with signs and wonders but speak contradicting messages to God’s word.

We see nowadays, many people stand on the stage and claim themselves to be prophets. They speak ‘prophecies’ which most of the time are meaningless or so general that they could mean anything. But in fact according to bible teachings, like in Deuteronomy chapter 18 and Jeremiah chapter 23, if someone speaks a prophecy respecting some future incident, the incident must turn out exactly as the prophecy described. Otherwise, the man is a false prophet and he deserves a death sentence.

The Lord is the God of the most high. We must be careful in saying something is or is not from Him. Misusing the name of God is the number two commandment from God, next to the commandment of having only one God, the Lord. We must test every dream with biblical principles to avoid confusion. But we must be careful not try to put God in a box. We should open our hearts to God, because He can communicate with us with many different ways.

It is our responsibility to discern prophecies and revelations. But we must not be extreme and try to limit the work of God with manmade principles. It is important that we do not casually claim a dream to be a divine one from God. It is as important not to judge someone else and say that their dreams were not from God. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. substance: or, ground, or, confidence. It creates tension in our existence. It also creates tension in our discernment of prophetic dreams. We must be cautious and at the same time open to God.

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