Are You Following Your Dreams and Premonitions?

 Dennis Edwards

I have been reading an interesting book entitled, The Supernatural Worldview: Examining Paranormal, PSI, and the Apocalyptic, by Cris Putnam, published in 2014. Various chapters in the book deal with dreams, premonitions, and psychic warnings of future events. Cris takes a scientific approach to these supernatural events tying to come to the most realistic conclusion.

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln had a dream of his coming assassination ten days before it happened? Lincoln dreamt that he was in bed and awoke with an awful deathlike silence around him. But he noticed a sort of moaning or mourning sound coming from somewhere in the Whitehouse. He got up and proceeded to search for the source of the sound. Finally, he entered the East Room and saw a casket with a dead body draped with a sheet over it. A military guard was standing around the casket while mourners were weeping nearby. "What has happened in the Whitehouse?" asked Lincoln. A soldier replied, "The President has been assassinated."

Lincoln is reported to have shared the dream with his wife and friend three days before his death. Strangely enough, Ulysses S. Grant, the military General and leader of the northern troops was scheduled to attend the fateful theatre event with Lincoln the night of his assassination. Grant, however, missed the show on the insistence of his wife who had a premonition that something terrible was going to happen. Was God trying to warn Lincoln, and he missed the warning or was reluctant in heeding it?

In another account, Army Captain A.B. Mac Gowan promised his two boys to a night at the theatre. The boys had never attended the theatre.  Tickets were bought and the boys excitement raised. However, on the day of the event, the Captain kept hearing that inner voice of conscience saying, "Don't go to the theatre, take the boys to the city." How could he do that after having aroused the boys imagination over the activity. His best friend chided him on hearing he was having doubts about taking his sons to the event.

Mac Gowan almost relented, but that voice of conscience was too constant, too persistent to shake. In the end, they travelled to the city instead, much to the boys' dismay. But that very night  in 1876,  the Brooklyn Theatre caught fire with more than 300 lives lost. Had Mac Gowan not followed the voice of conscience the story might have had a totally different ending. Mac Gowan's sister who also attended the show, left early because her brother and nephews were not there. Leaving early probably saved her life.

In October 1966, a landslide or avalanche from a coal mining operation in Wales led to the death of 144 people including 116 children. A young girl of ten, the very morning of the accident, had recounted a dream she had had the night before where "something black" had covered her school. Hearing of the girl's dream a national psychiatrist used the press to poll the public  to see if others had had a similar premonition or dream. Some 60 veritable responses were found. One person had even written down his dream and mailed it to a friend a month before the accident. Was God sending a warning message, a message that wasn't heeded?

My own life has been marked by similar occurrences. As a young child I remember my mother impressing upon us kids some of her spiritual experiences.  One night she had a dream where her God-father, who was terminally ill, came and stood at the bottom of her bed. He said, "Honey, I'm going now. I love you." The next morning early, my Mom had a telephone call from her Auntie. "Sophie, your Uncle has died." My Mom already knew before the phone rang who it was and what the message would be.  Cris Putnam states that from his investigations he believes that every family has some type of unexplainable supernatural experience.

My wife had one such experience, though more akin to Lincoln's dream. She dreamt that her father had entered a hospital for an examination and had died. It was December, a very busy time for us, but thinking that maybe her father's death was imminent, we promised ourselves that we would go for a visit to her parents as soon as the Christmas and New Year's period was over. However, with a handful of young kids to attend to, January soon turned to February when we received the sad news.

Her father had been having difficulty climbing stairways without getting a pain in his chest. His local doctor advised him to visit the city hospital for a more thorough examination, and an appointment was made. He was 72 years old at the time. He entered the hospital on the morning of the appointment. The doctors decided he needed a more complete test and he signed the affidavit confirming that he took the medicine knowing the risk involved. The medicine would enable the doctors to get a more accurate look at his heart and arteries. He died a short while afterwards.  The cure ended up being worse than the sickness. Yet, we were stuck with the feeling that had my wife communicated her dream to her father, had we visited him in time, had we not procrastinated, his life might not had ended at that moment.

Just recently, a colleague of mine had a vivid dream in which I had gotten into a fight with a man dressed in white and he was getting the better of me. On relating the dream to me, he prayed for my protection and against such a thing occurring. Later in the day, while delivering humanitarian aid in the form of fruits, vegetables, and potatoes, to a soup kitchen in the city, I parked our vehicle on a ramp. The ramp was located behind a large church near to where we needed to unload the donated goods.

Suddenly, a man began approaching us yelling that we couldn't park on that ramp as it was a priority ramp for the handicapped. I was stressed from the hurried 50 km ride into town to make sure we arrived before the kitchen closed for the day that Saturday afternoon. I yelled back at the man, "I will park wherever I want to." Astonished at my reply, he shouted out, "What did he say?" Thankfully, he was on the passenger side of the car. My friend who was sitting in the front next to me, looked at me sternly and said, "Remember the man in white!"

It was then that I realized that the man was dressed in white clothes, the man of the dream. He was obviously a man of authority, possibly the top priest of the church, so I got control of myself and started to remove our vehicle from the handicap ramp. By then, his assistant, realizing we were making a delivery for the soup kitchen that the church operated for the homeless and poor, intervened and in the end we were allowed to park on the ramp. I apologized to the priest, and he apologized to me, also. A bad situation didn't develop any further because the Lord had warned us  in a dream.

We need to tune into the spiritual realm and not neglect our time with the Lord. My friend, who is 75 years old, spends his mornings in prayer, praise, and reading God's word. His prayerfulness has saved us on various occasions from serious accidents or troubles. Please take those dreams and premonitions seriously. They may keep you safe or save a life.

I wanted to add another message the Lord gave my wife in a dream. We were involved in a court case for custody of our children over our home-schooling activities. My wife was very anxious because we knew the prosecuting attorney was going to ask us questions about our lifestyle and faith beliefs. About a week before the trial date she had a dream that the prosecuting attorney would ask her a question about why the children hadn't been vaccinated. During that week she researched and found good arguments to be able to rationally defend our position to not vaccinate. On the day of the court trial, that was the very question the attorney asked. God had revealed to her what to prepare and she did and gave a coherent reply to justify our position. The judge sided in our favor and God got a great victory out of a seeming impossible situation.

Here are some verses on God speaking through dreams.

Numbers 12:6a  And he (the Lord) said, "Here now my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and I will speak unto him in a dream.

Joel 2:28  And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

Job 33:14-17 MSG God always answers, one way or another, even when people don't recognize his presence. In a dream, for instance, a vision at night, when men and women are deep in sleep, fast asleep in their beds -  God opens their ears and impresses them with warnings to turn back from something bad they're planning, from some reckless choice, and keep them from an early grave, from the river of no return.

Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.  

Matthew 1:20  But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Matthew 2:12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

Matthew 2:13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

Matthew 2:19-20 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life.

Matthew 27:19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.

Acts 16:9-10 MSG  That night Paul had a dream: A Macedonian stood on the far shore and called across the sea; "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" The dream gave Paul his map. We went to work at once getting things ready to cross over to Macedonia. All the pieces had come together. We knew now for sure that God had called us to preach the good news to the Europeans.

See also: Daniel 1:17, 2:9, 2:27-30, Daniel 4, 1 Kings 3:5-15,  Genesis 31:24, 37:5-11, 40:1-23, & Genesis 41:1-41