A dream and vision
12 Nov 2008

The Lord woke me up at 4.20 am in the midst of a dream. I knew that He wakes in the middle of a dream to bring us into conscious remembrance of the dream and that I needed to seek the interpretation of the very thing he intends to do or inform us of.

This was a strange dream.

I remember very vaguely that we were at first , attending some kind of an event where I was driving a Ferrari. ( at least we get to do that in our dreams) There were many people there . My wife was there too. The next scene…. My wife and I were making our way to the railway station on foot through railway crossings. There was a journey that we were making and we bought railway tickets and then we boarded the train . I looked at my tickets and was annoyed that we had joined the train at a particular railway station but paid for a longer journey by mistake ( as if I had boarded at an earlier station)

The next scene is a home at the railway quarters…. Very typical of the type that officers used to stay . My father used to work for the railways and I know intimately the structure of these pre war wooden quarters. This typical one had the kitchen and servant quarters within a 10 m walk from behind the main house connected by a covered walkway, all within an enclosed compound.

The next scene is somewhere at dusk. My wife was in the kitchen and I was at the main house. From a distance in the sky I could see a plague like density which was approaching the house that I was in . I was troubled by this sign in the sky. To my horror , I could make out that this was a flock of bats and there were millions and millions of them ; and they were headed my way. I called out to my wife trying to warn of what is to come.. But the bats were so quick; they swooped in and were trying to enter the doorway from the back of the main house where I was watching. I quickly closed the door which had metal meshwork and held on to it tightly as they strained themselves against my efforts. I realized I could not hold them back any longer. I opened the doors, and immediately swung one door about 180 degrees towards the adjoining wall corner and hid in the angle. The bats just swooped in; enmasse. I saw the face of one of which stopped to look at me. It was not a pleasant sight. ( It was a picture off the book of revelations) It had a demonic countenance of a semi human and semi animal.

The next scene involved a scene in a dessert like environment . A man of middle eastern/African descent was carrying a tray of creatures that were dead. I realized these were the same bats that I had seen earlier. As he was walking, this man took one of the bats and started eating them. I found this absolutely revolting. The strange thing was this guy portrayed a countenance of enjoyment and he had no squalms eating the bats raw.

The next scene involved interesting cartoon like characters .. They had very bright coloured attires and took on interesting shapes and forms like the vivid characters such as Emperor Cuzco in the Emperor’s New Groove . The whole scene changed into ‘an image on a TV screen’ which I was watching . I knew straightaway that these cartoon characters were the gods that man worship. They did not certainly look like any of the idols of human religions that I was familiar with .

This is when I woke up.

I was very troubled by this dream and I was deeply concerned why I was having nightmares. But I realized that the Lord had woken me up at 4.20 am; much earlier than the usual 5 am or so . I realized that the Lord was showing me something very important and relevant to our times. The Lord called me into worship and he said he will explain later

After entering into a long and deep worship , the Lord showed me a vision. It was a strange vision.

It was a river with very deep embankments; about 10-15 ft deep . At the base of the river was brown water flowing and this was only a couple of inches thick. There was no rubbish in the river but I knew it was dead. I looked further and saw, that though it was not clear at first, surrounding the rivers were factories on the left and houses on the right, all of which were emptying their wastes into the river. The Lord than showed me the river in its former glory. There were no deep embankments. The water in the river was full to the brim, teaming with life. There were fishes jumping out of the water. The river was nourishing the surrounding lands

The Lord then explained the vision. The river represents the human soul. He then said something else that truly grieved me. This got me weeping. This is not just any ordinary human soul. The Lord showed me that this was the soul of a Believer. . The Lord was showing me the dilapidated condition of the soul of a born again Christian

The river of the former glory represents the condition of the soul when it first received the Lord, embraced HIM unconditionally and put his entire trust in HIM. The river also represents all the good ness which God had prepared to nourish that river, unto the fullness of LIFE so that that river can then proceed to nourish others.

The dilapidated and polluted river shows the condition of the Christian soul because it is no more receiving LIFE from the Lord. Instead it receives the garbage of life . The filth which it receives chokes its life until there is nothing left except a shallow content of brakish water which cannot support life. The Lord calls this garbage……

the Distractions of life …………………………

…….. sent by the enemy to sap the LIFE which was freely given to us . The parable of the sower ( Matthew 13 vs 22) uses the depictions of thorns as the Distractions of life. ( In Him was LIFE and the LIFE was the LIGHT of man… John 1 vs 4)

Why Distractions? Because these serve to draw us away from the plans and purposes and the wholesome LIFE that God has prepared for us to walk. In fact these are the very things that pulls us away from a relationship with God.

The horrific dream that preceeded this vision is now explained through the interpretation of these visions.!

The underlying message is …….Distractions that pulls our souls away from the Giver of LIFE

Now the dream and what it means:

The Lord had given me a 2 seater Ferrari setting . A Ferrari is one of the finest performance vehicles on 4 wheels. And the Lord had given me and my wife the best setting to take my physical journey. But I then chose to go on foot , sneak through dangerous railway crossings, pay too much for a ticket to make half the journey, end up in an old dilapidated railway house. …….Talk about HAVING MY OWN WAY and MAKING MY OWN WRONG TURN. And I had to take my wife with me as well!!! Our wives also become victims of our poor choices.

The colony of bats is interpreted as a barrage of distractions. Bats being a creature of the night were refering to a vehement strategy of immense proportions ; unleashed by the evil one against the christian soul; …. A strategy straight out of hell.. The magnitude of the colony shows the intensity of the strategy being waged by the enemy. This has certainly been meticulously calculated and it is truly a warfare tactic to accomplish a specific devilishly evil mission.

The person eating the bats shows how willing we are in wanting to consume all the distractions hurled at us by the devil. Not only that. We were definitely enjoying it. The idols on TV with all of the vivid colours shows how we tend to worship some of these distractions. TV is just but one form of distraction that truly robs us of our focus on the Lord. The 1st of the ten commandments says ‘Thou shalt have no other Gods before me’ . A preacher once explained that this is one of the most frequent laws broken by Christians. We don’t break the second one though about making ourselves a graven image. We seem to have a problem with the first one. Why ?

The preacher says anything that takes precedence over our focus on the Lord is a form of god. It could be our profession, our possessions, the stock market, television, golf , a good sleep, pornography, secret sins etc

The Lord warned me that the love of many towards the Lord in these last days is growing cold and complacent because of the incessant amount of idolatries being brought upon by distractions hurled at our human soul.

Mt 24:12 – And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved