God is Using Dreams

In this excerpt from his book, Jesus in Iran, Eugene Bach shares how God is using dreams and visions to draw Muslims into a relationship with Jesus the Messiah.

 

I would like to state that I am not much into visions and dreams. In Christian circles, I am in the minority. After serving for more than fifteen years in the underground house church in China, I am an endangered species. I personally dislike the idea of living life based on a vision or a dream. I am not saying that it is wrong; I am only saying that I don’t like it because it doesn’t make sense to me.

I like things that I can touch, taste, smell, or measure. I like things that I can observe or hold in my hands. I watch TV shows where people are explaining to others what their dreams mean or I listen to Christians talk about the iconology of dreams and I try to learn, but I can’t help but feel like an outsider, because those ideas are so far from my own reality.

If I have an intense dream about driving a car through a crowd of Africans riding on pandas speaking Persian, the first thing that I assume when I wake up is that I ate too much chili the night before. I do not assume that God is trying to speak to me or that something in my dream is pointing to an omen in my future.

Prophetic interpretations can really make me nervous. One time I traveled to see a mission director in the southern part of the United States who has since become a good friend of mine. We were supposed to spend some time together speaking about mission work. Instead, he had set up for me an appointment with a room full of prophets. I was sure that it was a gag. Anyone who knows me knows that I believe that God uses prophets greatly, but I like to observe; I do not participate.

“Eugene, we are just going to go up to our prayer room and spend time with you and see what God is saying over your life,” my friend said to me as we stepped into the elevator. Eight other people joined us in the elevator. They all looked at me and smiled, knowing I was going to be their pet project for the day. They were the team of prophets, otherwise known as the “God Squad,” who were tasked with praying over me.

I was nervous and felt out of place. “So … where are you guys from?” I asked as we waited for the elevator to move. I have lived in Hong Kong for almost half of my life, where time is short, people are busy, and the elevators move like roller coasters. After experiencing Hong Kong elevators, American elevators feel like they take a lifetime to move up or down. Someone needed to break the silence on the slow American elevator.

“Shhh,” one of the women kindly responded. “We prefer it better if we do not know anything about you.” I was suddenly reminded of the mad professor from the movie Back to the Future.

The professor has an electronic gadget on his head, and whenever Marty tries to talk and explain why he is there, the professor yells, “No! Don’t tell me!” He wanted to read Marty’s mind with his gadget. That was how I was feeling.

When we arrived at the prayer room, I was encircled by Christians with prophetic gifts. They began to pray. Some of them sang. Others remained silent with their eyes closed. A few of them made strange sounds as they cried out to God in prayer. I brought my hands up to my mouth as if to show that I was praying, but I kept my eyes open. As a teenager, I learned at Bible camp in Indiana that praying with your eyes open ensured that no one will steal food from your plate while others were saying grace.

Then something even more strange began to happen. Some of them began to have visions, and then they used those visions to draw pictures in what they called prophetic art. I had never seen anyone have a vision and then draw what they saw in their vision. Those with visions spoke and prayed in the most powerful way imaginable. They made a special deposit into my life.

It was then, in that room, that I understood what I did not understand, what I still do not understand fully. God has given special gifts to everyone, and He speaks to us in unique ways according to the way that He made us and in line with the gifts He has put in our lives.

Several years later in April 2013, I found myself on a book tour in a church in Norway. I started the evening talking about the underground church in North Korea, the subject of the book that I was promoting.

However, knowing that a group of Iranians were in the back of the room listening, I began to talk about the similarities between underground churches in China, North Korea, and Iran. I briefly mentioned the people in Iran coming to Christ because of visions and dreams. All of the Iranians began to laugh among themselves in the back of the room. Suddenly I felt very self-conscious and wondered if they thought that the idea was laughable. I had just come from Iran and knew about many people coming to Christ because of dreams. Perhaps this group of young Iranians found the idea preposterous.

At the end of the service, I approached them and eventually built up the courage to ask them why they laughed when I talked about Iranians coming to Christ through dreams. The interpreter for the Iranian group immediately shared with me that all of the Iranians in the group were led to Christ by one person and that person came to Christ because of a dream!

The phenomenon is happening seemingly every day in Iran. It doesn’t matter how I feel about dreams or visions, because dreams and visions are changing Iran.

There is a devaluation of dreams in the Western world and a dismissive attitude regarding their significance, but throughout the Bible, dreams revealed divine meanings and acted as a method of communication between God and His people. Dreams were fraught with meaning about the future, offered solutions to life’s biggest problems, or warned of imminent dangers.

Today, many people believe that dreams are a physical manifestation of a psychological state—that dreams are connected to experiences, exposure, traumatic events, or even indigestion. However, the ancients considered dreams to be sacred and religious. And in Iran, dreams and visions are having just as much power as they did ages ago. Thousands of lives are being changed, and the landscape of an entire country is being transformed because of the power of dreams.

In June 2014, I was in the United Kingdom and had the rare opportunity to sit down with a well-known British pastor who is ordained with the Church of England. He has had a lot of experience with international outreach with both charismatic and conservative church movements. Today he is the director of a ministry focused on sharing the Gospel message with Muslims.

“You know,” I said, excited to have an opportunity to be talking with him, “I have been working a lot lately with Iranian Christians and . . .” I paused for a moment. I didn’t know how to quite say that many of them have been coming to Christ through dreams. Though he is no longer an officer in the Royal Artillery as he once was, he still has a very commanding presence about him. I felt a bit foolish suggesting that dreams were a dominant reason for Iranians coming to Christ. I almost wanted to whisper it across the table.

But I really wanted to hear his opinion on the phenomenon. He works with Muslims on a regular basis and travels in completely different circles from me. I was really eager to know if I was working in a microcosm, or if he too had been exposed to Muslim believers who had come to Christ through a dream.

“Well … many of them—many of them claim—that they are coming to Christ through dreams.” I watched his face for a response to my statement.

I was very surprised at his reaction. “Oh yes. It is true.”

“Wow. So you have been seeing this too?” I responded, feeling more confident now.

“I would say 100 percent of all of the Iranians that we are working with in Oxford have come to Christ either directly or indirectly because of a dream.”

I was astonished. One hundred percent is an extraordinary claim, but again and again, it was being confirmed that Iranians were being impacted through their dreams.

This was all new to me, but the truth is, the ancient world of Iran and the biblical culture of the Jews embraced dreams. They found meaning and direction from the mysterious open doors of dreams that occur during the vulnerability of the night. These dreams open up fantastic windows of fleeting reality that are very different from the world that they attempt to manage during the day.

During the day, we toil and labor to maintain control and exert our authority and dominion over the world around us. Insurance companies make billions of dollars providing for our insatiable desire for control and protection from unforeseen future disasters in attempts to be less vulnerable.

Unfortunately for those who seek control, sleep awaits us all. No insurance plan or amount of planning can keep any one of us from the same vulnerability that was encountered by the ancient world. The world we manage when we are awake will not submit when we slumber. We have experiences that we do not initiate and events that we cannot control. In our dreams, we are not as restricted as we are during the day. Even if we are aged or handicapped, in our dreams, we can run, fall, fight, and climb. We fall in love, lust, and sometimes we unleash such unbridled rage unleashed on even our most loved ones that we feel the guilt of when we awake. Helplessness, loss, and even death visit more frequently than they do in the work fields of daylight.

The ancients put more value on the meaning of dreams than we do today. Dreams invaded the sleep of the mighty and powerful Pharaoh. His guards could not protect him or keep the dreams at bay. Joseph, the imprisoned slave, was allowed to interpret the dreams.

Likewise, the laws of Islam that are keeping Christian missionaries and biblical literature out of Iran are defenseless against dreams. Because of the Koran, the Iranian people are aware of Jesus. The Koran mentions the name of Jesus, or Isa, as He is called, several times. In fact, the Koran mentions the name of Jesus more times than it does the name of Muhammad. Also, several Koranic Surahs refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ.

Christ was not Jesus’ last name. It was His title!

The Koran also mentions the virgin birth and that Jesus, the son of Mary, was sent by God.

So when Iranian Muslims have dreams about Jesus, many of them are able to recognize Him as the Isa of the Koran.

I have talked to many Iranians who have come to Christ because of a dream, though none of them have ever told me that Jesus came to them in their dream, asked them to repeat the “sinner’s prayer,” and then label themselves as a “Christian.”

To most Iranians, the term Christian is very culturally significant as well as religiously. When an Iranian tells another Iranian that they have become a Christian, they are often understood as having become an Armenian. To the normal Iranian, being Christian and being an Armenian are the same thing. How can an Iranian ever become an Armenian?

Many Iranians who experience Christ in a dream have to mentally process several things. They do not just go to sleep one evening and wake up the next morning as a Christian, ready to attend Sunday morning service with their families. They have years of propaganda to combat. They have been told their entire lives that Christians are evil like the Jews. They have been told that Christians follow three gods and that Jesus was a prophet like Mohammed. They have been told that the apostle Paul was a liar and corrupted the Bible and that only the Koran is pure.

Most of the Iranians who tell me about their dreams tell me that their lives changed because of the process after the dream. Instead of experiencing complete conversion in the dream, the dreams have acted as a catalyst in the process of searching and discovery. Iranians are meeting with Jesus or seeing Jesus in their dreams and their lives are changed forever. They do not wake up knowing more, but instead wake up wanting to know more.

The dreams ignited a sudden desire to find a Bible or to find a Christian to help explain their dreams to them. They start seeking answers to the many questions in their dreams.

The dreams are not an end result but a starting point to follow Jesus. Because of the cultural connotations associated with the term Christian, many Iranians who come to Christ because of a dream think of themselves as followers of Jesus but do not label themselves Christian. This is an important difference.

These new Iranian believers who might not refer to themselves as Christians but are following Christ are willing, and sometimes required, to give their lives for Christ. As believers in the Gospel, they are subjected to unemployment, persecution, divorce, loss of contact with family, and imprisonment. Apostasy, or turning away from Islam, is grounds for the death penalty.

Missionary work is banned in Iran, and many churches and mission organizations are afraid of the consequences of working in an environment that is so dangerous. Jesus said very clearly in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” No exemption was given for those countries that would not allow the Good News of Jesus Christ. Dreams are working where the church has clearly failed in Iran.

 

PR

Taken from Jesus In Iran by Eugene Bach. Copyright © 2015 by Back to Jerusalem, Inc. Used with permission.

 

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