A dream, a vision

This is from Lee Strobel's The Case for Miracles.

A Dream, a Vision, a Bible, a Baptism

Our world is more knit together than ever before; in fact, the global oil industry has connected the city of Houston, Texas, where I live, to many locales in the Middle East. So perhaps it's not surprising that while I was working on this chapter, I encountered a Jesus dream in the church where I serve as a teaching pastor.

The story involves Rachel, a petite and soft-spoken mother with an olive complexion and a kind and gentle demeanor. She lives with her husband and child in an upscale suburb, where I'm sure her neighbors could scarcely imagine her upbringing as a devout Muslim in a Middle Eastern country where Christianity is forbidden.

When she was twenty-two years old, she was hounded by some personal difficulties. One night before bed she called out to God, "Please send me one of your prophets who will release me from this miserable feeling. I badly need comfort and guidance."

That night she had a dream of being in some sort of movie theatre, where the projector cast an intensely bright light. Suddenly, there was a man—Jesus. "At first, it seemed like a portrait, but the portrait was not still," she said. "He was looking at me with very kind, concerned eyes. It was as if he could feel my pain and my sadness."

She said Jesus spoke to her, but the words weren't as important as the emotion they evoked: a deep and profound sense of relief, comfort, affirmation, and joy. Then his face disappeared. "My eyes opened, but I was sure I was never asleep," she said. "I was in that room with him."

By age thirty, she was married and had moved with her husband to Texas. One day while talking with a neighbor, she blurted out, "I would like to study the Bible." To this day, she's not sure where that comment came from, but eventually, she ended up studying the gospel of John, verse by verse, with a friend who is part of our congregation.

Of course, John's gospel begins with the sweeping affirmation of Jesus not as a mere prophet of Islam but as God himself: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And John features a revolutionary statement by Jesus that would shake the foundation of Rachel's Islamic training: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

As she began studying the gospel—and before she knew anything about baptism—she had a vision. "I saw a man with a book," she said. "I was standing with him in water. I saw my friend holding my arm, and we were both looking at the man with the book open in his hands. The man was looking into the horizon with tears running down his face, and I knew that this man loves Jesus very much."

The duration of the vision, she said, "was fast and not fast. I could see details, but it only lasted a few minutes." She had never seen the man's face before.

When Easter came, her friend brought her to our church. As they sat in the auditorium waiting for the service to begin, Rachel suddenly saw a man walking down the aisle.

"Over there—that's the man!" she exclaimed. It was the man from her vision—a pastor named Alan, who presides over baptisms at our church. She had never met him before, but there he was, right in front of her.

By the time she closed the last page of John's gospel in her Bible study, Rachel put her trust in Jesus as her forgiver and leader—a joyous occasion in her life, but not one she dared to share with her husband.

So one day when he was out of town, a private baptism was arranged. "We all went into the baptismal pool," she said. There they were: the man who loves Jesus, reading from an open Bible, and her friend at her side—just as foretold.

"The vision was coming true in front of my very eyes," she said. "When the pastor spoke, tears streamed down my face. I asked him to keep me longer under the water so I could feel every moment of it."

A dream. A vision. Tom Doyle's words sprang to mind: "Personally, I don't think God has put the supernatural on the shelf."

The world next door

Because much of what the Bible describes is indetectable to natural perception, that can lend Christianity an air of unreality. The Bible describes heaven. A realm of souls and spirits. The Bible describes the world to come. A future reality that lies out of sight.

But we're ordinarily immersed in the physical, sensible world of the present, with many traces of the past. The living are sealed away in this world, like a snowglobe.

There are, however, many exceptions. And they range along a continuum. Exceptions where the supernatural breaks into our mundane existence. At one end of the continuum, an unmistakable answer to prayer or a special providence.

Further along, God speaking to a Christian in an audible voice. Or an angelic apparition. Or a Christophany. We normally experience a clockwork universe, but some Christians, or Christians sometimes, experience something reaching in from outside the clockwork universe. And this can include the activity of evil spirits.

Canonical examples include revelatory dreams and visions, where seers perceive heaven or the world to come.

However, even if we set aside the supernatural examples where there's crossover traffic, dreams are a useful reminder that our perception of reality is very compartmentalized, and what appears to be real or unreal is dramatically variable.

You can have a very vivid, tangible, detailed dream that seems to be just a real as waking experience. It can be like stepping right into another world. The world next door. It was there all along, but you can't be simultaneously conscious of both. Indeed, for the dreamer, the dreamscape seems more real because that's what he's perceiving at the time. The world outside the dream is indetectable. So there's a reversal. He's immersed in the dreamscape. A different snowglobe, sealed off from the waking world.

Of course, ordinary dreams are imaginary, although they may tap into something larger than individual human minds. The point, though, is that dreams illustrate how easy it would be for our mundane world to coexist with a supernatural realm. How what may seem to have an air of unreality is right on the other side. How easy it would be to slide back and forth between them. In that respect, dreams have great emblematic value.

Jesus outside the NT

This post is a new way of making an old point. Unbelievers often ask if there's any evidence for Jesus outside the NT. There are standard monographs on that topic, like F. F. Bruce's classic Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament.

The assumption behind the question is that we should discount the witness of the NT because that's Christian, so that's a biased source. That, however, is confused. It's not surprising if eyewitnesses to the miracles of Jesus become Christian. So the question amounts to the demand for witnesses who saw Jesus perform miracles and rise from the dead, but refuse to believe in Jesus! 

However, I'd like to make a different point. The unstated assumption in demanding evidence for Jesus outside the NT is independent documentary evidence.

But that's not the only kind of evidence for Jesus outside the OT. Jesus isn't just a figure from the past. According to the NT, he is God Incarnate, with an immortal body. 

So there's evidence for Jesus outside the NT throughout church history. For instance, when Christians pray to Jesus, and their prayers are answered, that's evidence for Jesus outside the NT. That's evidence that Jesus is the living Lord. Jesus granted their prayer request. 

A more dramatic example concerns Christophanies. Revelatory dreams and visions of Jesus during the course of church history. I'm certainly not suggesting that we should credit every reported Christophany. But if enough individuals, in a sober state of mind, with no incentive to deceive, report the same sort of experience, that's prima facie evidence for the reality of what they report. We should sift their reports, the same way we evaluate testimonial evidence generally, but credible reports of Christophanies up to our own time constitute evidence for Jesus outside the NT. 

So the actual evidence for Jesus outside the NT is far broader than the handful of ancient documents which are constantly cited. This is a neglected line of evidence because Christian apologetics can get stuck in the rut of stereotypical arguments. Christian apologists influence each other, which leads to an insular, formulaic set of endlessly repeated arguments. They may be good arguments as they go, but it can have a blinkering effect on the apologetic imagination.  

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

I. I'm going to make a few observations about John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. It reflects a classic contrast between Puritanism and Anglicanism. Both Puritanism and Anglicanism have virtues and vices. On the one hand, I think Bunyan's autobiography is somewhat overwrought. Moreover, he makes salvation seem like a trial by ordeal–where the goal is constantly threatened. That makes for gripping drama when he allegorized his autobiography (The Pilgrim's Progress), but it stands in tension with sola gratia. If salvation is truly by grace alone, then the outcome shouldn't be constantly in suspense, where you dare not relax. 

On the other hand, there's an urgency to his outlook that's unthinkable in Anglicanism. It's inconceivable that an Anglican could write The Pilgrim's Progress. That's because Anglicanism, with its pacific ritualism, is prone to index salvation to baptism, the eucharist, liturgical prayer, and public acts of worship. So long as you use the right mechanism, you're probably safe. Salvation by ritual.  

II. Critics sometimes note the contrast between Bunyan's trifling vices and his terrified guilt. It seems disproportionate. In the same vein, I'm reminded of Ruskin's statement (in Praeterita) that:

Though I felt myself somehow called to imitate Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress, I couldn't see that either Billiter Street and the Tower Wharf, where my father had his cellars, or the cherry-blossomed garden at Herne Hill [his boyhood home] where my mother potted her flowers, could be places I was bound to fly from as in the City of Destruction. Without much reasoning on the matter, I had virtually concluded from my general Bible reading that, never having meant or done any harm that I knew of, I could not be in danger of hell: while I saw also that even the crème de la crème of religious people seemed to be in no hurry to go to heaven. On the whole, it seemed to me, all that was required of me was to say my prayers, go to church, learn my lessons, obey my parents, and enjoy my dinner. 

That's an obstacle to evangelizing adults as well. While the sentiment is understandable and even acceptable in a child, what it fails to grasp or appreciate is that in Christian theology, we are born lost, absent divine intervention. It's not as if the default condition is that we're moving in a heavenward direction, and must commit some heinous sin to lose our way. Rather, we are lost at the outset, and must find our way out of the forest before we're overtaken by the snowy night. Bunyan was fundamentally right about that. 

Music, dreams, and architecture

There's an interesting contrast between music and architecture, specially in the modern era. If you want to experience a Gothic cathedral, you have to go there because it won't come to you. 

But in the age of recorded music, music comes to you. You can listen to it whenever and wherever you like. When your walking or driving. 

There are some disadvantages to recorded music. There are some voices that you need to hear live in the spacious acoustic of an opera house to fully appreciate. The microphone doesn't do them justice. Studio recordings don't do them justice. Likewise, watching a performance of King's College Chapel Choir is not as enthralling as attending the service.  

But there are tradeoffs. Recorded music provides higher-quality performances than you can ever expect to hear live in most localities. Moreover, you can repeat the experience–unlike a live performance. 

Another example is dreams. In the real world or waking world, we must go places to see things, but when we sleep, the dreamscape comes to us. That can be good or bad depending on the dream, but it's the closest thing to magic most folks encounter in this life: like snapping your fingers to make something appear out of thin air. 

For the saints, the world to come will combine the best of both worlds. Access to the best of everything at your fingertips. 

It all began with a picture

At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why He came. But once He was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon He puled the six other Narnian stories in after him. C. S. Lewis, "It All Began With a Picture…" Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (Harvest Books 2002), 42.

The Chronicles of Narnia are immensely popular and immensely influential fiction for kids. And that's more significant now than it was at the time–given the increasing antipathy to the Christian faith in contemporary Western society. Mind you, it would lay a firmer foundation if kids got their theology from Bunyan (The Pilgrims Progress, The Holy War)–in contrast to the "mere Christianity" that Lewis allegorizes in The Chronicles of Narnia. Nevertheless, The Chronicles of Narnia probably expose many unchurched children to rudimentary Christian theology–planting seeds to bloom later on. 

It's interesting that the stimulus wasn't just mental images, but dreams. Given the new covenant promise in Acts 2:17-18, perhaps this was a revelatory dream. Maybe God gave Lewis that key character because the resultant novels would have a generally salubrious effect in reaching many for the Gospel, or preparing their minds. God uses vessels of clay to achieve his aims. 

Segmented sleep

The present study is less a suggestion of any fresh finding in biblical matters than a plea that the awareness of a detail of premodern life be brought to bear on various biblical passages, namely, the pattern of segmented sleep. It is a matter that has been forgotten by those who benefit from artificial illumination, which is to say almost everyone in the modern world. 

Current research by physiologists, anthropologists, and historians has made it clear that the pattern of human sleep in preindustrial society has been strikingly different from the one now taken for normal…[Ekirch] There is every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals exhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age, with a province as old as mankind. Most notable is the fact that first sleep often ends with vivid dreams…distinguished by their narrative quality.

There are two similar parables about activity at midnight, of the wise and foolish bridesmaids (Mt 25:1-3) and the master home from the wedding feast (Lk 12:36-38). Both parables describe wakefulness and the preparation of a meal in the middle of the night.

Even the monastic practice of vigils (matins, prayer at midnight), which to us might be looked upon as an extreme asceticism, is better viewed as the community use of a normal sleep pattern…Praying in the middle of the night is a convention of the Psalms (Pss 63:7; 77:7; 119:55,62,148). W. L. Holladay, "Indications of Segmented Sleep in the Bible," CBQ 69 (2007). 

That's just a sample. The entire article is informative. And it sheds further light (pardon the pun) in a particular interest of mine: the biblical symbolism of light and dark. When, for example, modern readers study the references light and darkness, day and night, dawn and dusk, sun, moon, and stars in Gen 1, there's a myopic focus on units of light as units of time. Yet this motif had a much richer range of connotations for ancient Jews. And in this particular instance, the experience of sleeping and dreaming, which–not coincidentally–is a prominent theme in Genesis. 

Why do we dream?

1. The experience of dreaming exerts a perennial fascination. Why do we dream? I can only speculate. 

Scientists have no agreed-upon explanation. If you're a physicalist, then the question is what if, any, biological function dreams have. If you're Darwinian, then you seek an evolutionary explanation. 

But what about from a Christian dualist perspective? 

2. Perhaps the question of why we dream is related in part to the question of why we play. Dreams are the mind at play. Maybe the mind requires a certain amount of daily unstructured time to retain sanity. 

3. In addition, dreams are a witness to the existence of the immaterial soul. Although the dreamer is embodied, a sleeper in bed, yet within the world of the dream it's a sensory world without physicality. So a theological function of dreams may be to remind us that reality isn't confined to bodies or physical experience. Dreams are an emblem of personal existence that survives the dissolution of the body. We can leave the body behind but still take a lot with us. In that respect, dreams are a bridge between this life and the afterlife. A token of the intermediate state. 

They can help us from becoming too attached to this life and this world. Too fearful to let go. They provide something to step into. Material existence isn't the sum total of reality. There's something ahead as well as behind. 

4. In addition, dreams can link us to dead relatives. I'm not saying that as a rule, the dead actually visit us in dreams. Generally, I'd say the encounter is imaginary, based on memory. But it reminds us of those who've gone before. It keeps them fresh in our memories. And that, too, may be a psychological bridge. We're on one side while they are on the other side, but dreams form a symbolic window. Although we're separated by the river of death, we can see each other standing on the riverbanks, awaiting reunion. 

5. Then there are supernatural dreams. God sometimes uses the medium of dreams to communicate. Or he may give permission for a sainted relative to make contact if the dreamer is undergoing a crisis and needs some timely encouragement. 

Conversely, there can be supernatural nightmares that shake unbelievers out of their spiritual complacency. In addition, I presume that those who dabble in witchcraft may open a terrifying door, where evil spirits haunt them in nightmares. 

Dreams And Trances At Enfield

The hardest Enfield tapes to listen to are the ones that feature the Hodgson children in altered states of consciousness, primarily in November of 1977. The states are often referred to as dreams and trances, so I've titled my post according to that convention, but we can't say much beyond the fact that some altered state of consciousness was involved. In a discussion with Hans Bender, Guy Playfair commented on Janet Hodgson's condition in the closing days of November:

We found the girl screaming, yelling, lying on the floor. She was underneath the table, trying to kick it over…The mother was absolutely desperate, you know. She didn't know what to do. And Luiz [Gasparetto, a Brazilian medium] spent about half an hour with her [Janet], and she immediately became quiet. I have all this on the tape. He talked to her very quietly in Portuguese, and she went to sleep. She went to sleep at 7 o'clock in the evening and she woke up the next morning only at 9 o'clock. That's fourteen hours of sleep. And she never had another hysterical fit. She just had one bad dream, and, after that, there was no more….The mother told me that she doesn't mind the tables falling over, but these hysterical attacks were absolutely too much, you know. She was really very, very distressed. And, I must say, that I was, too. It's one of the most horrible things I've ever seen, because they would go on for three, four hours. They would go on until 3 o'clock in the morning. And she would even wake up in a conversion. She was completely out for four days…Twice we called a doctor, emergency doctor, who gave her an injection of Valium…An interesting detail was that half an hour after she was given an injection of Valium, she was thrown out of bed, right across the room….the two girls would dream together….And we would open their eyes, and we would shine the torches [flashlights], and the pupil [wouldn't] contract. And we would also tickle under the arms, and they were completely asleep. And they would talk to each other….Again, we have it on tape. (tape 39B in Playfair's collection, 0:41)

Bell, Book, and Candle updated

Patrick Chan and I have updated the bibliography for this post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/02/bell-book-candle.html

In addition, he fixed the dead links on the old post.

The Night Hag

Concerns regarding sleep disorders in Hmong immigrants in the US emerged when an astonishingly high mortality rate of Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome (SUNDS) was documented in Hmong men.

In 1981, an unusual new condition came to the attention of the medical community: based on mortality reports first appearing in 1977, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued an international note that Southeast Asian refugees, primarily Hmong, to the US were dying in their sleep (Centers for Disease Control, 1981). What made this occurrence unusual was, not only the circumstances of the nocturnal deaths, but the fact that the victims were young men, previously in good health. Reports of these cases increased over the following six years; a mortality rate of 92/100,000 showed these Hmong men were dying at a rate equivalent to the leading five causes of death for American-born men of the same age range.

In contrast to the novelty of SUNDS to Western science in 1981, Hmong and other South–East Asian populations have long feared the personal experience epitomized by SUNDS. Culture-specific names have been given to this experience; Hmong refer to the terrifying nighttime occurrence of the crushing spirit on their chest as dab tsog (Adler, 1995; Bliatout, 1982; Fukuda, Miyasity, Inugami, & Ishihara, 1987; Holtan et al., 1984). Victims of visits from this spirit report that dab tsog sat on their chest with crushing force, making it impossible to move and “took their breath”. Although parallels are drawn between SUNDS and the dab tsog experience, the high fatality of the medical syndrome of SUNDS differs from that of dab tsog: historical and ethnographic reports indicate that the experience of dab tsog is not rare or fatal, and is often experienced repeatedly by the victims (Adler, 1995, 2011). Thus, the cultural pattern, collective knowledge and universal description of dab tsog suggest a prevalent bio-psychosocial condition of which only a limited number of cases results in a SUNDS fatality. In a study of 118 Hmong in California, 58% reported at least one experience of the dab tsog visit; in-depth interviews clearly indicated widespread fear, stress, and dread of sleep abnormalities in the Hmong population (Adler, 1994).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3616878/

Victims discovered in the night terrors are unarousable, and in the few successfully aroused patients, terrifying dreams were often experienced.40 In addition, frequent experiences of “dab tsog (frightening night spirit pressing on chest),” nightmares, sleep paralysis, and hypnogogic hallucinations still exist in Hmong after immigrating to the United States for decades, probably putting Hmong at high risk for SUNDS.41 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866328/

Thunderstorm

Recently I dreamt about a thunderstorm. In my dream I was in a strange house at night. I could hear the thunder and see flashes of lightning through the windows. Then I woke up, and there was a thunderstorm outside!

Now, there's nothing extraordinary about that kind of dream. When we're asleep we sometimes hear things which our imagination turns into a dream. 

It is, though, an illustration of how apocalyptic prophecies might depict the real world. In an altered state of consciousness, a seer perceives things in his revelatory dream or vision. And that may correspond to what will happen outside his dream or vision in a fairly straightforward sense. Rather like how I dreamt about a thunderstorm at night while there was, in fact, a thunderstorm at night, outside the my dream. A direct parallel between the real world and the dreamscape. 

Wingnut cessationism

I'm going to comment on a post by Fred Butler:

http://biblethumpingwingnut.com/2018/11/05/the-man-in-white-appearing-in-muslim-dreams/

David Platt gave a missions report to the IMB. The highlight, when the audience erupted in thunderous applause, is when he told of how Muslims are having spiritual dreams that allegedly bring them to salvation. The story Platt recounts tells how a Muslim man had a dream over the course of three nights of a man wearing white who told him he knew the way to salvation for his family. The Muslim man then encountered some SBC missionaries the next day,

When GTY hosted the Strange Fire conference back in 2013, attendees were given the opportunity to write out questions for the presenters to answer during the Q&A times. One of the frequently asked questions was about the alleged reports of Muslims all across Islamic countries who were coming to faith in Christ after having a dream about a man in white (or in some cases, Jesus Himself) directing them to a missionary who presents the Gospel.

Those dream testimonies are offered as evidence that God is actively working among Muslims in Islamic nations where Christianity is strongly opposed or completely outlawed and where Christian missionaries are in grave danger with the threat of death. But are those dreams legit? What is a biblically-minded Christian to think of them? Is God really bringing revival to Islamic lands in this fantastic manner, outside the means He ordained to bring the Gospel?

The New Testament consistently teaches the God-ordained means of proclaiming the Gospel is through human preaching [Mt 28:19-20; Rom 10:14-15; 1 Cor 1:21-24]...Those texts indicate that God has ordained the proclamation of the Gospel message by human preachers who declare biblical and theological truth from Scripture.  Those who hear the message choose either to reject it or to believe it by God’s grace.  

Fred is doing a bait-n-switch. They aren't converted by revelatory dreams rather than the Gospel. Revelatory dreams don't take the place of the Gospel. Instead, revelatory dreams make them receptive to the Gospel. 

If a man in white was directing appearing to Muslims in dreams and visions to direct them to the Gospel, would not God be contradicting what He has clearly ordained in Scripture regarding the legitimate means of Gospel proclamation in this age?

No, because Fred's argument is fallacious. This is Fred's inference:

If Scripture says X is the case, that means X is only the case.

Compare that to: if a Gospel says one angel appeared at the tomb of Jesus, then only one angel appeared at his tomb. But Fred needs to show that his prooftexts are logically exclusionary. As it stands, his inference is invalid.  

To say God has ordained the human preaching of the Gospel to save sinners doesn't entail that God only uses the human preaching of the Gospel to save sinners. 

If we trust that God is sovereign over all nations (cf. Acts 17:26) and is the author and finisher of salvation (cf. Hebrews 12:2), then is it biblical to believe He is able to accomplish His will in those Islamic nations according to the ordained means of human preaching?

Consider the Book of Acts. That's the official record of NT evangelism and missions. How the NT church was initially planted. Is it just through the human preaching of the Gospel? I don't think so. 

Peter's miracles and exorcisms (Acts 3; 5; 9).

Paul's miracles and exorcisms (Acts 13; 14; 16; 19; 20; 28).

Ananias, Sapphira, and Herod Agrippa struck dead (Acts 5; 12)

Miraculous jail breaks (Acts 5; 12; 16)

Angelic apparitions (Acts 5; 8; 10; 12)

Christophany (Acts 9)

Revelatory dreams and visions (Acts 2; 7; 10; 16; 18)

Prophets/prophetesses (Acts 11; 21)

In Acts, God employed a variety of supernatural means to enable evangelism and to provide a supernatural witness to the Gospel. Consider the angelic apparition to Cornelius. That was instrumental in his conversion to Christianity. 

Even if we say the supernatural accoutrements to evangelism and missions are now defuncts (a la cessationism), they don't contradict God's ordination if he employed supernatural accoutrements to further the Gospel in the 1C. 

Suggesting that God must now resort to sending mysterious dreams to Muslims implies God’s power to save certain sinners is curtailed by evil men and His chosen method of evangelism revealed in Scripture now needs adjusting because of the unforeseen problem of radical Islam. 

The Bible is chock-full of dreams and visions, miracles and angels. Does the fact that God resorts to a diversity of supernatural means and agents to convey or certify the message impugn his omnipotence or omniscience?  

That also raises the question, does God only give dreams and visions to Muslims? What about Hindus and Buddhists or other members of world religions that live in countries hostile to Christianity? Or those in China, or North Korea who are are so utterly anti-religious the government kills them? Do people in those closed cultures have similar dreams that bring them to a missionary who gives them the Gospel? Maybe they do, but I am unaware of their stories.

i) North Korea is a closed country, so I wouldn't necessarily expect reports to leak out.

ii) By Fred's logic, we ought to deny that God was doing supernatural things in ancient Israel and the 1C Roman Empire unless he was doing similar things in other parts of the world. 

What do Bible-believing Evangelicals like Platt do with Catholics reporting similar events happening with their missionaries? Many Catholics claim Muslims have dreams of a man in white, or in their case, the virgin Mary, that supposedly brings the Muslims to encounter priests or missionaries. See HERE for example. That raises the serious question as to why God would reveal Jesus to these individuals only to bring them to a false Gospel.

Folks should also understand that Muslims don’t necessarily have a problem with Jesus. He is a large part of Islam and even has an important role to play in their eschatology according to Islamic theology.  What matters is the right Jesus — the True and Living Jesus who rose from the dead and is the only way to God and who is God Himself, the Second Person of the Trinity. Is that the Jesus Muslims are directed toward when they see the man in white appear in their dreams?  Why would God send dreams to Muslims that only converts them to a false form of Christianity?

i) That's a legitimate issue. Again, though, it parallels Hume's objection that reported miracles in one religion cancel out reported miracles in another religion. By Fred's logic, if we discount Marian apparitions, then we should discount biblical reports of angelic apparitions, theophanies, or the risen Jesus. 

ii) Keep in mind that Protestants exist because early "Catholic" missionaries proselytized Europe and Great Britain. Their theology was defective, but further down the line that made the Protestant Reformation possible. 

If many Muslims are having dreams and vision that bring them to Jesus, why aren’t their immediate cultures changed by their conversion? In other words, I would think that with scores of Muslims having dreams that brings the Gospel to them, there would be an “awakening” of sorts taking place in these hostile places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan; but there isn’t really. Where is the visible proof of the revival that should be taking place if Christ is breaking into the hearts and minds Muslim people through their dreams?

Did miracles in the 1C church instantly transform the Roman Empire? 

Why the need to resort to subjective dreams and visions? How are modern day Islamic cultures (or any anti-Christian culture, for that matter) any more hostile than the pagan ones encountered by first century Christians and then later when missionaries took the Gospel to remote areas like Briton, Norway, and India?

i) Miracles and exorcisms in the ancient church were instrumental in the conversion of pagans to the Gospel. And that pattern is often replicated on the mission field. So Fred's objection boomerangs. 

ii) Does Fred think dreams and visions are inherently subjective? Are biblical dreams and visions subjective. What about veridical dreams and visions? Corroborated dreams and visions? 

On the interpretation of dreams

I'd like to revisit this issue:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/11/space-as-plot-device.html

This post is really about the hermeneutics of Revelation, but I'll back into it. Dreams have always fascinated humans. And that includes the interpretation of dreams. Traditionally, that's because dreams were thought to be premonitions, which gave rise to oneiromancy. 

Although some dreams are premonitory, most dreams are imaginary. Yet even imaginary dreams may be very interesting to the dreamer. After all, dreams tap into our personal memories and imagination. They represent the subconscious projection of the dreamer. Sometimes they allegorize what happened during the day. Sometimes they allegorize our fears or yearnings. 

So even though most dreams aren't premonitory, they may still hold personal significance. And that raises the question of whether they are worth interpreting. Does the symbolism have any real meaning–albeit a private encoded meaning, unique to each dreamer? Do dreams have their own logic? Is it just a case of finding the key?

In addition, since humans share a common nature, do dreams have some collective significance? Do some dreams embed transcultural symbolism?

Conversely, perhaps there is no logic to a dream. It epitomizes  imagination untethered to reason. Consciousness imposes logic on the subconscious. On that view, there's no hidden meaning. Nothing to interpret. 

Some dreams, while they last, have a narrative structure, while other dreams have abrupt scene changes. Some directors experiment with nonlinear narrative to evoke or mimic dreaming. We find this episodic quality in visionary revelation like Zechariah. 

Do discontinuous dream sequences have an inner logic, or is this just the mind at play? This issue crops up in commentaries on Revelation. Is it primarily linear or nonlinear narration? Premil scholars think it's primarily linear while amil commentators think its primarily cyclical. Idealists think it's entirely cyclical–like Finnegans Wake. 

Is there a third approach? Suppose discontinuous dream sequences exhibit spacial logic rather than chronological logic. They unfold in space rather than time. Architectural structuring. 

What I mean by that is this: suppose dream scenes are like opening doors to rooms. Each room is different. Abruptly shifting from one scene to another is like opening the door to a new room and walking inside. 

In a sense, a house is one big room, one large space, subdivided into smaller rooms. There's an internal relationship between different rooms within the same house. Or different stories. Perhaps an attic and basement. So it's not entirely random. 

In addition, there can be rooms within rooms. A walk-in closet in a bathroom in a bedroom. 

There's another distinction between inside and outside. You can open doors inside the house–to rooms, closets, and hallways inside the house–or you can open a front door, side door, or backdoor to go outside. 

Furthermore, the yard might be walled in, so that you can subdivide "outside" into space between the house and the wall–as well as space beyond the wall. Likewise, in Roman, monastic, and Islamic architecture (e.g. domus, cloister, Getty Villa, Alhambra), there might be inner courtyards as well as outer courtyards. Paradoxically, there's an outside inside the building. A microcosm of the macrocosm. 

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress uses linear space (a road story) while The Holy War uses nonlinear space (a fortified city). For his part, Dante combines both. 

Suppose the layout or floor plan of Revelation is architectural. Rev 1-18 is more like inside space. Alternating rooms. Heaven, earth, netherworld. Rev 19-20 are transitional while 21-22 are more expansive. Suppose, as we read the Apocalypse, we visualize moving in space–like moving from room to room, or going outside. 

Sometimes divine revelation is like opening a door to the past or future. Normally those doors are locked. But the seer is allowed to open those doors and go inside. Perhaps time itself is more like that.  

Supernatural dreams

1. One of my objectives is to expand the evidential base for Christian apologetics. Christian apologists imitate each other. As a result, Christian apologetics can get mired in a rut, recycling the same types of arguments and evidence. These may be fine as far as they go, but it neglects other lines of evidence. 

2. Evidence for Christianity can be direct or indirect. Naturalism is a primary foil to Christianity. Contemporary mainstream naturalism is defined by commitment to physicalism and causal closure. Minds are produced by brains. There's no mental activity outside the brain. The physical universe is all there is. We inhabit a closed system. There are no agents outside the universe.

Although debunking naturalism doesn't prove Christianity, it eliminates a major competitor. And that can be part of a multi-step argument for Christianity.

3. Some Victorian intellectuals took an interest in paranormal activity. This led to organizations like The [Cambridge] Ghost Club and the Society for Psychical Research. In the late 19C, three members of SPR published Phantasms of the Living (1886), by Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Myers, & Frank Podmore–based on more than 700 case-studies. Two volumes, totalling over 1400 pages. Second volume of supplementary material. 

One of the topics is supernatural dreams. Vol. 1, chap. 8; Vol 2, chap. 3.

There's a vetting process by which the authors select the most credible examples, to differentiate veridical dreams from merely coincidental dreams. If there's empirical evidence for supernatural dreams, that debunks naturalism. If all mental activity is confined to the brain, it isn't possible for a dreamer to have extrasensory knowledge. On that view, all dreams are imaginary, although they may make use of the dreamer's experience.  

4. Scripture records many revelatory dreams. Sometimes the dreamer is pagan, sometimes the dreamer is Christian or Jewish. Secular readers think these are fictional dreams. Part of ancient superstitious folklore.

There is, however, abundant extrabiblical evidence for supernatural dreams. Some Christians shy away from this material, but it's no different in kind from archeological corroboration. 

5. The aforementioned book interprets the veridical dreams as telepathic. In a sense that may be true, but that just pushes the question back a step. Most of the dreams cluster around death and danger. But if the explanation is that some humans are naturally telepathic, why would their dreams be bunched around family and friends who are dying or endangered? If they can read other people's minds, wouldn't they dream about lots of other things their loved ones were doing? 

In most reported cases, the dreamer doesn't normally have veridical dreams. This is usually a one-time event, concerning the death of a loved one (or loved one in mortal peril). Telepathy fails to explain the selectivity of the dreams. 

So that might suggest the dreams are revelatory. The ultimate source isn't the ability of the dreamer to access someone else's thoughts. 

6. Perhaps it might be countered that in a crisis, the dying or imperiled individual has especially intense feelings which generate a stronger signal. But that doesn't strike me as a plausible explanation:

i) Telepathy doesn't operate like the inverse-square law, where waves of energy are diminished by relative distance. These dreams are often about people hundreds or thousands of miles away. Conversely, there are cases of simultaneous or synchronized dreams where two dreamers in the same house have the same dream. Telepathy is action at a distance. Proximity is irrelevant. 

ii) Dying people don't necessarily panic. Some people have a peaceful death. Some moribund people are too enfeebled to generate much emotional energy. Some people are unconscious at the moment of death. So you can't chalk it up to an agitated state of mind. 

7. A number of the informants were Christian. Perhaps it's more likely that God sends revelatory dreams to Christians. But even in Scripture, revelatory dreams aren't confined to believers. 

We can speculate as to why that is. In some cases it may make them more open to the Gospel. Or make them more culpable if they steel themselves against the evidence. 

Marian apparitions

In Catholicism, there are different kinds of visions and apparitions, including Christophanies and angelic apparitions. Jesus is said to appear to famous Catholic mystics. 

Reputed Marian apparitions occupy a central place in Catholic piety. But that raises question: What niche do Marian apparitions fill that isn't already covered by Christophanies and angelic apparitions? If, according to Catholicism, Jesus can and sometimes does appear to people, aren't Marian apparitions inferior and superfluous? What distinctive purpose do Marian apparitions serve if some people have visions of Jesus?

It might be countered that God often works through intermediaries. But isn't that a function of angels? If it's a question of supernatural emissaries, angels already play that role.

Catholics say Mary points people to Jesus. But even if that were the case, why are most reputed apparitions visions of Mary rather than, say, visions of St. John the Evangelist? Isn't St. John the Baptist well-positioned to point people to Jesus? Why aren't there more Catholic reports of St. John appearing to people? "I'm the Beloved Disciple. I was the closest confidant of Jesus. I was an eyewitness to more of his ministry than anyone else". 

Moreover, angelic apparitions or apostolic apparitions wouldn't draw attention to themselves in the way Marian apparitions do. People know that angels are merely creatures, and apostles are merely emissaries. 

By contrast, reputed Marian apparitions draw attention to herself. She (allegedly) tells San Juan Diego to build a shrine to her–not to her Son.

She (allegedly) introduces herself to Bernadette as the Lady of the Immaculate Conception, and to Lúcia, Francisco, and Jacinta as the Lady of the Rosary. That draws attention away from Jesus. 

It's striking that the catalyst for Christian revival in the Muslim world is dreams and visions of Jesus rather than Mary. And that makes sense. Between visions of Jesus and visions of angels, there's no niche for visions of Mary. 

The next world

9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” (Gen 37:9-10). 

Scholars find the reference to Joseph's mother puzzling since by then she had died in childbirth (Gen 36:16-20). One explanation is that Jacob is referring to a female relative (e.g.Leah, Bilhah) who assumed the maternal mantle.

Perhaps, though, Jacob doesn't assume that Joseph's dream must come true in this life. Perhaps he's thinking of a reunion in the afterlife.  

It's natural for commentators to interpret the dream in light of subsequent developments in the Joseph Cycle, but Jacob didn't have that retrospective frame of reference. And even if the dream is largely fulfilled in Joseph's lifetime, that doesn't preclude a fulfillment extending beyond this life. Unlike Jacob, his mother died before having a chance to see what he did as an adult. A family reunion in the world to come would round that out. 

Perhaps, then, Jacob's statement bears witness to patriarchal belief in life after death. If the terms of the dream can't be completely realized in this life, then that carries over into the next world. 

Clustered miracles

Accounts of the virgin birth occur in two of the four Gospels. That's not surprising, considering the fact that only two of the four Gospels even have nativity accounts. 

The virgin birth has a litmus test of orthodoxy. Unbelievers regard the virgin birth has a transparent cover story for a prenuptial scandal. 

I presume most of Mary's relatives and neighbors were initially skeptical. But the credibility of the virgin birth doesn't occur in isolation. Suppose you were one of Mary's skeptical in-laws. You think she had premarital sex. Indeed, that's what Joseph thought. He intended to divorce her.

But then Joseph abruptly changes his mind. He tells you about a revelatory dream he had. 

Then Elizabeth becomes pregnant, even though she's well past childbearing years. After Zechariah recovers his speech, he talks about an angelic apparition. 

Then shepherds say angels appeared to them, heralding the birth of Jesus. 

Later, the Magi arrive. 

Maybe you notice the odd behavior of a "star". 

Then Joseph claims to have another revelatory dream, warning him of danger, so he skips town with Mary and the Christchild. Shortly thereafter, soldiers sent by Herod massacre all the young boys. 

Maybe you near rumors about Anna and Simeon in the Temple.

Finally, Jesus grows up to be a renown exorcist and miracle-worker.

Mary's explanation, which struck you as initially highly implausible, becomes highly plausible in light of so many other miracles clustering around the person of Jesus. 

Apparitions of Jesus

Recently I read Tom Doyle's book, Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? (Thomas Nelson 2012). I also read Strobel's interview with Doyle in L. Strobel, The Case for Miracles (Zondervan 2018), chap. 8. In addition, I read or listened to some material by David Garrison, which covers much the same ground, but is independent of Doyle, and has different anecdotes. 

Doyle and Garrison document reported apparitions of Jesus to Muslims. However, the phenomenon isn't confined to Muslim converts to Christianity. For instance:

https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2017/11/07/visions-of-jesus/

A few observations:

1. I don't automatically believe or disbelieve any particular report. I think there's cumulative plausibility, when you have multiple independent reports of the same kind of phenomenon. One doesn't have to credit all of them to think that, odds are, given that many reports, at least a fraction are probably authentic.

2. In many cases this involves individuals who have a incentive not to believe in Jesus. This happens in spite of their predisposition.

3. Of course, some people indulge in tall tales about supernatural encounters. We must always make allowance for that. Just as, odds are, a fraction are probably authentic, a fraction are inevitably fraudulent. 

4. By the same token, some people experience hallucinations. They are sincere, but mistaken.

5. However, some of the anecdotes, if reliably reported, have veridical elements. Information is imparted that they wouldn't be in a position to naturally know, but it's later confirmed. Strobel also mentions two people having the same dream the same night, although I didn't read any examples of that (unless I missed it). But if they happen, synchronized dreams would be veridical. Likewise, dreams that come true–if they're sufficiently specific and naturally improbable. 

6. How do we classify a Christophany? There seem to be two basic categories:

i) Jesus physically appearing to someone

ii) Jesus telepathically appearing to someone

Most of the cases I've read comport with (ii), although some cases have physical traces which might indicate (i). 

7. Given the number of reported encounters, if a subset of those involve Jesus physically appearing to people, then that implies bilocation, because Jesus would have to be in two or more places at once to appear to that many people. (I'm referring to modern-day reports.) 

If so, that might have implications for Gospel harmonization. If Jesus sometimes physically appears in two (or more) places at once, then "contradictory" reports of when, where, and to whom Jesus appeared after the Resurrection may have a neglected principle of harmonization. 

8. In modern-day Christian apologetics, there's an overemphasis on ancient documentary evidence. Although it's necessary to defend the inerrancy and historicity of Scripture, and while it's useful to make the Resurrection a component of Christian apologetics, the evidence for Christianity isn't confined to literary reports of biblical miracles. Christianity is a living faith. Throughout church history, some Christians encounter God in extraordinary ways. These reports need to be carefully sifted, but that's true for testimonial evidence generally. Modern-day Christian apologetics frequently suffers from tunnel vision in the sample of evidence it showcases. But the evidential database is much broader. 

Christian revival in the Muslim world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNUJm457jY