Counterfeit Dreams

A major part of the process of dream interpretation is determining the purpose of the dream—why was a particular dream given to the dreamer? To discern the answer, we ask a couple of specific questions. First, what type of dream is it? (roughly 25 types or purposes of dreams exist).

Second, where do our dreams come from? My belief from being trained in the Ancient Hebraic dream interpretation approach says that there are three sources of our dreams: Truth, Lies, and Self. Sometimes it is difficult to tell!

A dream from Lies is what I call a ‘counterfeit dream’. Satan is called the ‘father of lies,’ and in such dreams, the dreamer is directly being lied to. There is deception going on, truth is distorted. Usually the dreams have a dark, accusatory nature to them….they leave the dreamer feeling hopeless, angry, suspicious, etc. Often, these dreams are in black in white (no color).

Last week I met with a lady who had experienced a counterfeit dream. She is setting up a new ministry in real life, wanting to partner with some churches in her area. She felt her dream addressed her situation. In the dream, it was night-time, and she was constantly running away from people who wanted to kill her. She was terrified, couldn’t find a place to hide, and called the police, who wanted to kill her as well. In the dream, specific names of pastors and church leaders were ‘revealed’ as ones she needed to ‘take out’ first—before they could kill her. She awoke from her dream with great anxiety and a readiness to ‘expose’ the ‘evil hearts’ of the pastors—and the police—in her city! Her speech against them all was toxic, disrespectful, and venomous.

This dreamer seemed to have a bitter expectation of rejection, and I believe that evil forces were attempting to deceive her into publicly maligning the reputation of some good people—possibly to make herself look good. But that would have backfired and hurt her as well.

I’m not saying that every church leader is perfect, but this dream was revealing a tendency in the dreamer to believe the worst, and the strategy was to use that against her and to prompt her react unwisely and to possibly do some damage.

She believed her dream was from God—unaware of other possible sources of dreams. She did receive caution from us in how to respond to such a dream.

It is crucial that we weigh any kind of revelation we receive—from dreams or otherwise—to pray and seek wisdom about how to interpret and respond.

God is usually delighted to answer us when we ask. After all, his purpose in giving us dreams is to invite us into a deeper relationship with him. If we know him—and understand his truths—we can more easily recognize the counterfeit stuff.