Dream On

CHAPTER 1

A need for dreams

Ali runs his own pastry shop.  He works hard.  He starts early in the morning and finishes late.  His dreams are not much different from those of other men.  He dreams of a home and family.  He dreams of a future where friends and enemies alike respect him.  His business is not wildly successful but it pays the bills and gives him hope for doing better.  Being Muslim is an important part of Ali's identity.  Not that he always performs his prayers, keeps the fast, or lives up to what he professes, but he does profess.  Ali has left his homeland. He has joined millions of his fellow Muslims in immigrating to a new land where he hopes to find prosperity. Ali's wife was born in his adopted country and is from a nominal Roman Catholic background. She was raised in the Christian culture but has little formal knowledge of her faith.  A relative currently living with the family is a follower of Jesus who once turned away but is now returning to faith.

A year after meeting Ali, a relationship has developed between us.  It has gone from client to acquaintance to friend to brother.   Each of knew the religion of the other but,  up to this point we had talked about what we had in common and avoided making too strong a distinction between the two.  At one point, the subject of religion and our differences finally came to a head.  After the discussion, which generated a great deal more heat than light, Ali turned and said to me, Do you know that I pray for you every night that God will reveal the truth to you in a dream?  That was too good to go to waste.  I responded, Why, that is wonderful, let us come to an agreement, you pray for me every night and I will pray for you and whoever has a dream must come and tell the other one all about it.  So began the challenge, like Elijah on Mount Carmel; we are still waiting on the dream.  Ali is one of more than 1.3 billion Muslims in the world today (Johnstone 2001, 431).  Most of them have little, if any, access to the unfiltered message of Jesus and most have never heard a clear presentation of the gospel message.  Even among those who have, familial, societal and religious pressure makes them unwilling to consider anything other than what they have heard about Jesus in Islam.

But, even as I spoke those words to Ali, a question passed through my mind.  Why would God choose to reveal Himself in a dream to my friend when he has so much opportunity to hear the gospel all around him?  We both live in an open access society.  There are dozens of churches, radio and television programs, ministries, books, andbelievers readily available.  Isn’t it presumptuous to expect God to do something so unusual when Ali could find the truth by just crossing the street?   One could understand God doing such things in places where access to the gospel is difficult.  There are stories of Muslims having dreams of Jesus, an angel, or someone they care for pointing them to Christ.  There are reports from various sources of Jesus or a man in white or green (the Muslim holy color) appearing to Muslims in dreams. It is tempting to think that this may be a new wave to reach Muslims.  Bill Bright, formerly of Campus Crusade wrote,

We are experiencing an amazing phenomenon.  Moslems in particular are having dreams and visions confirming the reality of Christ.  After one radio program it was reported that Jesus had appeared to many Moslems in a dream and said to them I am the way.  The radio station received thousands of letters from Moslems in North Africa and the Middle East in which the listeners said they had suddenly understood earlier dreams.  They then wanted more information about Jesus.  (Bright n.d.)

One worker in Africa reported that, 42 percent of the new believers come to Christ through visions, dreams, angelic appearances and hearing God's voice (Elisabeth Sherrie Elijah).  Citing a different source, Dawn's Friday Fax, this same article says that Christian in Arabic speaking countries report that Muslims are describing many dreams and visions of Jesus.  This is a hot topic in our region.  People from all over the Middle East call us, telling how they were healed through prayer in Jesus' name.  Muslim listeners often call to tell us about dreams and visions of Jesus, wanting to know what that means for them. (Elisabeth Sherrie Elijah).

In closed access countries where gospel proclamation is limited, possession of gospel materials is forbidden, and proselytizing is punishable by death, one could understand why God would need to use dreams to communicate.  However, in an open access country where Islam is a minority and laws protect people who convert; in a land that permits proselytizing as a fundamental religious liberty and human right, is it necessary?  One would certainly understand if God said, All right church, it is your responsibility to get the Word to the people and I will open their hearts to hear and understand it.  With all of the gospel proclamation in open countries, from the pulpits to television and radio, and even open-air street preachers, would God need to send dreams?  Why not just use open channels to hear the gospel and be convinced?  Is God speaking to Arab Muslim men and women through dreams in open countries as he seems to be in closed countries?  Why should God come to individuals in dreams and visions when they have so many other opportunities to hear?

But what if God showing himself through dreams in open access places reveals the depth of the commitment to bring men and women to trust in Him alone for their salvation?  The work of missions is primarily a task of God but in which believers have been invited to participate.    If Jesus is revealing Himself to Muslims through dreams, then it is still God, the primordial missionary, continuing to seek and save the lost. The Missio Dei or the mission of God defines the God of Israel as a being who is personal, purposeful, and goal oriented He is the one whose purpose is to reconcile fallen man to Himself.  (Wright 2006, 63).  It is not simply our mission to share the good news of salvation in Christ, it is God’s mission. We are part of that Missio Dei, those to whom God has given the opportunity to share in his task with our Muslim neighbors, friends and co-workers/ Because of this we can find confidence and encouragement in the midst of a difficult ministry.  We are part the program of God to bless the nations through the redemption begun in Abraham and continuing through the individual struggles of people groups and individuals today (Wright 2006, 63).

The ramifications of this subject hold unique comfort and promise for the church.  If God is revealing himself by dreams and visions to some of the most difficult people to reach under some of the most difficult circumstances on earth, we can be sure that our investment in the lives of individuals is matched by the investment Jesus continues to make in them.  He loves them and has never stopped seeking and saving to this day.  He is still not willing that any should perish.  (2 Peter 3:9)

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The reason for this book

It is my hope that this book gives Christians the confidence that God is still at work drawing Muslims to himself.     In it you will find an examination of historical methods of work among Muslims, both what has worked and what has not.  It reviews the Biblical and Islamic texts related to dreams so that we can know the authority of dreams in the Islamic world and can understand from a Biblical perspective how God may still speak through dreams.  Because of the way that psychology has affected today's worldview, it contains a brief examination of the modern psychological and sociological understanding of dreams. It examines how dreams and visions can be accepted as valid communication by pre- modern and modern people. It is my desire that this book serve as a preparation to listen to our Muslim neighbors and co-workers if they should speak of their dreams and know how to respond.

This book is descriptive, it is not prescriptive.  It is not intended to add a new evangelistic method to the various attempts people use to convey the gospel to Muslims.  It is not intended as a guide on how to get God to speak to a person through a dream. It is not a guide to dream interpretation. You will find testimonies of former and current Muslims describing how God seems to be using dreams to communicate today.  There is no claim to be a definitive guide to how God uses dreams in a Muslim context. It makes no claim other than the value of what God seems to be doing in the Muslim people he meets in their dreams.

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Goals

This work began with specific goals in mind. One of these goals was to determine if God is currently working in the lives of Muslims through dreams in a culture. The word diaspora is being used to describe a people group living outside of their ancestral homeland. These are diaspora Arabs living in a religiously open culture.

Another goal was to determine how predisposed Muslims in this particular setting were to receiving revelation through dreams. This might have been affected by how much knowledge they had of the Islamic teaching on dreams and how their understanding of dreams had been influenced by other sources. This meant discovering what both the lay persons and religious leaders thought about dreams.  Through conversation, I was able to discover people who had experienced God- influenced dreams both among Muslims who were now Christians and Muslims who were still Muslims.  Because the foundational truth for this book is unapologetically the Old and New Testaments, the parameters for what might be considered a dream from God is based on that standard.

Personal interviews were conducted among Arab communities in open access countries.  The dreams are theirs.  Some understood the meaning, most did not.  There are not many converts from Islam in these communities, but it was hoped that enough of them sharing their stories could serve to determine if God was still using dreams in these contexts.  Because of the sensitive nature of the information, I will avoid identifying the communities where the work was done.  Those I talked to were given full assurance of being shielded from unnecessary exposure.  They were made aware that there would be others interviewed, but were kept from knowing the identity of the other subjects and were not told their stories as not to create expectations.  Some of the conversations came from references from trusted third parties who knew of what I was doing and came across someone whose story should be told.  An attempt was made to determine what factors might have had some bearing on an individual’s likelihood of dreaming of Jesus, whether a crisis, a pre-disposition to mysticism, or an encounter with an excluded middle need forced them to search for power to meet circumstances in their lives (Hiebert 1982, 36).  It is hoped that the conditions in the lives of those interviewed might provide clues for knowing under what conditions Jesus might reveal Himself through dreams; especially if the formal teachings of Islam provided a background for the acceptance of dreams as true teaching from God.

The motivation: that the lost may be saved

For many years, followers of Christ have been trying to communicate the gospel message with those of the Islamic faith. Muslims are historically very unreceptive to the gospel message.  During the last fifteen years this writer has been working with Diaspora Muslims in countries with at least nominal Christian majorities.  He has worked with Muslims of various cultural heritages: East Asian, Caribbean, African, African- American, and Arab.  Most recently, he has worked in a relatively homogenous Arab cultural community in a Western context.  In the course of trying to communicate the message of salvation in Christ, an earnest attempt has been made to discover some way forward.  That is, to discover some way of approaching Muslims with the gospel message to gain an honest hearing instead of an immediate rejection.  He is not alone, in the last few decades there have been an explosion of methods and strategies developed to reach Muslims worldwide.  Current events force us to consider how we might reach them. The interest in dreams is one of them and has captured the imagination of many.

Christians believe that every person needs to have an opportunity to hear about Christ. If no one comes to God except through Christ, the consequences of not believing are terrible and eternal.  Each generation must come to grips with the reality that they are responsible for their own generation.  How did the Muslims who did come to Christ arrive?  What were their stories?    If there were commonalities in how God drew them to Himself, Christians could come into alignment with God and work with Him. They could expect God to work in similar ways and be part of the process.  To do this, I traveled to different regions in the United States, the Middle East, Asia, North Africa and Latin America to speak with Muslim converts and workers.  I listened to their stories.  During the course of various interviews, not all but many spoke of having dreams that led them to be open to Jesus.  Since many of these interviews took place with people living within closed access or limited access countries, I needed to determine if God was at