THE DREAM

 "... your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:" (from Acts 2:17)

Some people testify that they dream all the time; they pretty much dream every night.  Others say they almost never dream.  Scientists tell us that most people in fact do dream every night, although many of the dreams are not remembered.  Most nights I experience dreaming.  The overwhelming majority of my dreams are completely bizarre and don't seem to have any rhyme or reason to them.  Last night I dreamed the right front tire on my car was not only flat but completely shredded.  I awoke feeling anxious; then I felt immediate relief that the flat tire was not real.  There is one dream that I had in 1993 which I have never forgotten.  Specifically it was in September or October of 1993.  I awoke from it on a Tuesday morning a little after 4 a.m.  Tuesday was my day off in those days.  I was glad I had the day off because the dream was so real and so upsetting that I needed a day just to try to process what I'd dreamed.  The man who pastored the church where I was serving prior to me was named Tom Gurney.  He lived far from Massachusetts but that very Tuesday he called me saying he was in the local area and wanted to come and see me.  We had lunch that day and I told him all about the dream.  He thought my dream was indeed very significant. 

I used to think a lot about that dream.  I don't think about it too often anymore, but during the past two weeks it's been on my mind a lot.  I decided to put it out there online.  Long ago the Lord revealed to me most of what the dream means.  Perhaps I will share about that at some future time, but now I feel I'm strictly supposed to tell the dream but not say anything about what it means.

My father sometimes talked about a weird experience he had with a medical examiner he knew.  The guy wanted my dad to watch him perform an autopsy.  My father was generally not squeamish, but he wanted no part of watching an autopsy.  He said he made crazy excuses and got out of there!  My dream opens inside some kind of medical facility.  There was a hallway and a sliding wooden door, behind which was a medical examination room.  A doctor was talking to me.  He looked quite a bit like actor Michael Landon, and he talked exactly like Mr. Landon.  He had dark hair and a well trimmed beard.  He wore a white lab coat.  He asked me to come in and view an autopsy. I thought of my father's experience!  Like him, I began to make crazy excuses.  The doctor did not accept any of my excuses.  He calmly urged me to come in and view the autopsy.  A light colored wooden door slid to the left and we walked into the examining room.

On a metal table was the body of a naked blonde boy perhaps in his early teens.  Sitting in a chair was a middle aged woman.  She looked and acted very much like Joanne Lincoln who was a woman that was active in the church I pastored.  I wasn't sure if it was Joanne or someone who looked lot like her.  She was pouring over a photo album.  I just knew she was the boy's mother.  The photos were all of him.  She told me he had been a wonderful son but that at age thirteen he'd become addicted to drugs.  She said he'd blown his brains out.  That was not consistent with the body on the table.  The head was fully in tact.  The doctor had me feel the body just to become comfortable with the situation. 

I briefly looked away.

Suddenly the doctor and the woman were gone.  Just as instantly, a wiry young man about age thirty appeared.  His black hair was very messy.  He wore a blue flannel shirt and black jeans.  He held a large sharp looking knife in his right hand.  He was yelling at me, but I couldn't understand what he was saying.  He was thrusting the knife at me and motioning for me to start walking.  We walked through metal double doors and began walking down a long corridor.  The floor was dark brown linoleum with white specks.  The walls were made of large gold colored bricks with dark mortar.   At the end of the hallway was another set of double metal doors.

We burst through the doors, into what looked like a 1950s business office.   There must have been twelve middle-aged woman sitting at wooden desks in this room.  At each desk was a large manual typewriter and a black rotary dial desk telephone.  The man spoke to me and was now clearly expressing himself.  He said he wanted me to get my car and drive him to a certain location.  I lied to him and told him I did not have my car available.  I told him my wife had borrowed the auto to go buy school clothes for our kids.  He began berating me for being a weak husband.  Then the guy quickly walked to the opposite end of the room and began harassing a couple of the women.  As this was happening, I noticed a confident looking woman at a desk who was probably around age sixty.  I slipped over to her and told her the man was an escaped mental patient and that she should call Security.  She was perfectly calm and confidently declared,

"They've been called."

Just then, two armed men in blue uniforms entered the room.  I don't know how they did it, but in what seemed like no time they confiscated the knife and had the man in handcuffs.  They walked him out of the room.

The dream ended with one of the women walking up to me.  She was weeping and trembling.  She said he had badly frightened her.  I calmly told her everything was fine.  The man was apprehended.  No one was hurt.  There was no reason to be afraid.

Instantly I was awake in my bed!

Like the woman, I was terrified.  I asked the Lord what all this stuff meant.  It's been twenty-eight years.  That dream is still on record as the scariest and most vivid dream I've ever had.