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VISIONS, DREAMS-C.O.D. OF TONGUES &
PROPHECIES
Question Nos. 595 to 599
CHAPTER TWENTY
Question #595: "Dear Pastor I
read from W.M.B. that visions are different from dreams. But there is this
Scripture in Job which describes a dream as 'a vision of the night'. Please
explain? Thank you."
E.O.D.H. Answer:
Quote W.M.B.: "A vision is different from a dream… Well, in one
way it's a kind of a vision, but you're unconscious… And then, a vision, you
don't go to sleep at all; you just stand and look it." (Explaining Healing and
Jairus 54-0216)
Quote: "Now, a dream is... a dream, if it's interpreted
rightly, it is a same as a vision: if it's a dream and being interpreted."
God's Gifts Always Find Place 63-1222 P:19)
"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in
slumberings upon the bed;Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their
instruction, That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from
man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the
sword. He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his
bones with strong pain:" (Job 33:14-19).
Quote W.M.B.: "Now, if a dream is interpreted, then it
becomes a vision; it's a prophecy." (We Have Seen His Star
63-1216)
If you read the Scripture carefully above, you will notice that a next
terminology for a dream is a vision of the night, not of the day. Brother
Branham said it is a sort of vision. Visions and dreams are separate and
different experiences. A vision is likened unto a dream but it occurs while one
is awake and conscious, while a dream happens when one is asleep. A person who
sees visions has both conscious and subconscious minds together, while the
dreamer has them apart. Both of these persons can have the same experience
differently in a vision and or a dream.
Question # 596: "I want to serve
God in the integrity of my heart. First of all these are some problems I will
like to share with you. By the grace of God, I have the gift of dreams and
sometimes fall into trance.
1) The most important is that I feel the calling of God in
my life. But I don't want to get into that because I want to be very sure that
it is God, and not myself.
Please, can you help me know how to be sure whether it is God or not. I will
like to hear about your calling, and anyone like Lambert's calling. I have had
so much dreams in which I meet people telling me I am called to preach.
Sometimes also, I see myself preaching to congregations in my dreams.
2) If I don't forget then, I don't understand what He wants to
tell me. Also, I am not happy about the kind of life I live, especially on the
university campus. I find it sometimes difficult to forgive people. By His
grace, I don't fornicate, drink, smoke or live a loose life, but bitterness
and unforgivingness is a problem. Please advise me on this, and I solicit your
prayers.
3) But the most pathetic thing is that the things the Lord shows
to me happen before I realise the Lord show it to me before they
happened.
4) Also I do forget my dreams when I have them.
5)
Financially, I want you to pray with my family to have a breakthrough. Three
dreams, I remember very well are;
1) I saw a big sea and a voice spoke and said, "Be holy."
2)
Another dream is when I heard a voice which said, "I am coming soon."
3)
The last one is when I saw some big fire burning and a voice spoke from
inside and said, "Why are you running from me?" And in the dream, I saw
myself going in a direction and someone said to me, "Where are you going?"
And I replied back to God.
Please help me with what you think as a pastor you can help me with? Thank
you. I want to hear from you soon."
E.O.D.H. Answer: I can see that
your personal questions mean a lot to you, and I did not want to hurry and give
a vague answer to them. I had similar questions in my earlier ministry, and it
could be very difficult. I can discern from our communication that there is a
great zeal and desire in you to serve the Lord and a great hunger to understand
truth. I guess you do so because you desire to help others, and this indicates a
calling in a brother's life, but we must understand that to be a minister there
are three main phases:
1. To be called. 2. To be trained. 3. To be sent or commissioned.
This is the pattern of all ministers in the Bible (Moses, Jesus and the
Apostles). A great danger lays in going before the time without training
and a commission, like in the case of Moses slaying the Egyptian. He was called;
he could feel it. He desired to work but done in it in the wrong time. He was
trained for 40 years in the wilderness, then commissioned by God and
vindicated.
Concerning unforgivingess and bitterness: Of course, you know that is
the works of the flesh. (Galatians 5:6), and such things must be purged out by
prayer and fasting. Many times, it runs in the family somewhere down the line,
and we must fight harder as Christians to overcome; but by His grace, if we love
the Lord, we will press through that old evil nature, until we are born again,
then the gall and root of bitterness will be taken out. Temptations will be
there but we will have control over our temper, bitterness and unforgivingness.
We must forgive if we will be forgiven by the Lord. So the answer to this
question is that you need more of His Spirit. You get the Spirit of the
Lord by hearing His Word of Truth (John 6:63). Pray and ask the Lord to anoint
you with His Spirit. If you live in the Spirit you will not fulfil the lust of
the flesh. I will be praying with you and know that you will overcome because of
the love for Truth and eternal life. If you are to be used in the ministry, you
must master that evil nature. It takes the Lord to fill your heart with love.
You cannot do it by yourself. When it comes, the negative elements are
dispelled. Both natures will wrestle with each other until the Outpouring of the
Spirit, and will only be totally subdued by the changed body (Romans 7,
Galatians 6). Read the introduction of Christ Is The Mystery Of God Revealed,
1963.
Quote W.M.B.: 12-1 "Love one another above everything.
Love one another. No matter what the devil tries to say... Now, you're all one
great, big, sweet group now, but remember my warning. See? Satan won't let
that stay that way. No, sir. He'll shoot everything, if he has to bring
somebody in to make his target. He'll bring some critic or unbeliever in, set
him down, and cause him to fellowship with you under the quietness and things.
Then he will shoot that guy with some kind of poison stuff, and he'll start
through the church with it. Don't you take sides with it. Don't you have
nothing to do with anything else. You stay right loving and sweet and kind to
one another. Pray for that man that he'll be saved too, or that woman, ever
who it is. Just pray for them and stick one with another and stay with your
pastor. See? He's the shepherd and you give him respects. He'll lead you
through, and--cause, he's ordained of God to do so." (Christ is the Mystery
63-0728).
Question #597 : "I will be glad
if you can help me out with these. I do forget my dreams (don't know whether to
call them dreams or trances since sometimes I am a bit conscious of myself). I
only remember them when they are occurring. What is the cause and how do I stop
this? Sometimes I feel the Spirit of God over my body at other places beside
church, like someone has poured ice water on me (sometimes when writing my
exams); what do you think the Lord wants to put across? Some say God wants me to
know He is around. What do you say? May God grant you wisdom to walk always in
His perfect will. God bless you."
E.O.D.H. Answer: Ecclesiastes 5;
'Dreams come through the multitude of business'. We live in an age of the
greatest deception through feelings and sensations, and as believers we
must be extremely careful with these experiences. All these experiences of
dreams and visions need setting in order by the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit -
Acts 2: I shall pour out My Spirit; Young men shall see visions; old men
shall see dreams. To be safe from demonic anointing and deceptions is to
drop and ignore all these experiences that we are not certain about, and
beg God for revelation on His Word. The gates of Hell cannot prevail against
revelation, but all other gifts shall fail - 1 Corinthians 13. It's the only
safe grounds outside of that Outpouring of the Spirit. If God wants to tell us
something, the supreme way is by His Word. I had to take this line in my early
Christian life, and it profited me greatly. I must mention that I do believe in
dreams and visions, but many of them are very deceptive. Seek revelation above
all things (Church Ages pages 13-16).
Quote W.M.B.: 13-4 "The importance of revelation by the
Spirit to a true believer can never be over emphasized. Revelation means more
to you than perhaps you realize…It is tremendously important to the church...
until God reveals to you that Jesus is the Christ, and that it is the blood
that cleanses you, and that God is your Saviour, you will never have eternal
life… if the people get the TRUE REVELATION of the TRUE CHURCH and what she
is, what she stands for and that SHE CAN DO THE GREATER WORKS, she will be an
invincible army. If they get a true revelation of the two spirits within the
framework of the Christian church, and by God's Spirit discern and withstand
the antichrist spirit, Satan will be powerless before her. He will be as
definitely thwarted today as when Christ withstood his every effort to gain
power over Him in the desert. Yes, Satan hates revelation. But we love it.
With true revelation in our lives, the gates of hell cannot prevail against
us, but we will prevail over them." (Revelation Of Jesus Christ Church Age
Book Cpt.1).
Question # 598: "What can be
said to a pastor who allows divers prophesies to be given in the church
auditorium during services without first separating the gifted people in a room
before a service, and interpreted tongues to be read out to the church by the
pastor, as taught by our Prophet?
E.O.D.H. Answer: My precious
Brother, our Prophet commanded in Church Order that all tongues
interpretations and prophecies should be done in a room privately before service
and should not be done in the open church. I believe that is standing
order. He also said that anybody that goes contrary to such orders has a
contrary spirit. I guess you are well aware of such instructions from the
Church Order Book (C.O.D.) Brother W.M.B. knew that some of those
prophecies etc. were not right. To harness them he put it in a room and said if
it does not come to pass, it's an evil spirit.
Many ministers and lay-members are afraid to go into a room and sign their
name under their prophecy, as it is not genuine and are afraid of
exposure. What can we say to such people, but quote to them what Brother Branham
said and also refer them to 1 Corinthians chapters12 and 14. I have Book 10
E.O.D.H., which deals with many of these things. If you are a sheep, you
can't say much to the shepherd, but ask a question and quote the Word. If you
are a shepherd, you can engage the pastor in a discussion with other officers.
But as a sheep, you can only do so much.
Question # 599: "I don't know
why I have all those bad dreams. I don't understand. All the time I read the
Bible and prayed but still I am not satisfied and am always afraid that when I
die; I don't know."
E.O.D.H. Answer: My precious
brother, I was young and now I am old, and this problem is very common to many
people, even older folks. Pastors seldom can help people with this question. It
happened that I dealt with many people concerning this problem for the past
decades. The apostle Paul said to Timothy: "Flee youthful lust that war in your
members." He also said: "There lieth no good thing in this flesh" - read Romans
7. He also said, "It is better to marry than to burn" - 1 Corinthians 7. Please
consider diligently those two chapters.
It is written in Eccl. 5: dreams cometh through the multitude of business.
Much can be said here about dreams. God gives true dreams, but many
dreams that we have comes because of our daily activities, what we look at, hear
or think about. Newspapers, magazines, radios, televisions, wholesale striptease
of women in the public. These are all avenues for Satan to tempt us. Such dirty
dreams of lust, sex and other evil things are just another way of Satan
tempting a Christian. Some, because they dwell on the wrong worldly things; it
comes back to the mind by a dream, while there are others who do not dwell on
these things and Satan brings such dreams to tempt them. After such dreams, a
Christian feels guilty, dirty and filthy, and if he does not understand what is
happening, then he feels condemned.
Many times, the reason for these dreams is that Satan wants the individual
to rethink what they dreamt and enjoy a certain amount of pleasure in thinking
about the dream. In your case you should realize that you did not dream that
dream on purpose; it's Satan at work. You are not responsible for things that
happen to you, while you are asleep, because you are in a state of
unconsciousness. However, if you shut your mind and do not rethink such dirty
dreams, you are free before the Lord and would not be held guilty, and then the
enemy will be defeated, because that is his purpose for such dreams, to simply
wake up your passions and cause you to hear, look and think about the wrong
things. So you are free, ignore all dreams and don't think about them,
don't feel guilty, rise up in the morning and thank God, read your bible and
pray, and the Lord will give to you the victory.
You are free to share this answer with any who may need it; also read
Proverbs chapters 5, 6 and 7 and Romans 8.
"Walk in the spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the
flesh." (Galatians 5:16)
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