Sid: Guess what Mispochah the anointing, the presence of God is pouring through your tape-recorder, pouring through your radio right now because God’s up to something special. We’re talking on an area that is so important to God that He not only prophesied this in the Old Covenant through Joel but He Prophesied this in the New Covenant in the Book of Acts. He said “In the last days (which we’re part of right now) God is going to pour out His Spirit and we’re going to have dreams and visions. I got a hold of a book called “Dreams and Visions” by Jane Hamon; Jane is the Pastor, and her husband, of Christian International Family Church in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. And many of you may be familiar with her father-in-law Bill Hamon who is really a father of many, many prophets and many are familiar with the CI, Christian International Organization. But this is perhaps the most simplistic yet practical book but there’s an area where we’re talking about yesterday Jane that there’s a great deal of confusion. In the New Age they have books and they say “This is what you’re dream means.” And there are things I understand that when I dream about a house it has a particular meaning but you do something I love in your book. What you say is that different symbols have different meanings to different people and there for that’s why one person can’t interpret another person’s dream just based on what these symbols mean.
Jane: Right, I don’t think that we can just dream and then go look up the symbols in a book and plug in a meaning that really cuts the ministry of the Holy Spirit out of the interpretation process I think. I think that we have to understand that symbols really are one of the most basic languages that we really can’t even read the scriptures without understanding symbols we understand symbols in our day to day life when we see certain symbols on a road side. Or in a mall we understand we have to deal with but in the scriptures we see Jesus symbolized; we see Holy Spirit symbolized; we see Satan himself symbolized in many many different ways. So I think it’s important that when we dream we aren’t just plugging something in without understanding how it got there. For example just say for example Sid that I had a dream about a dog and you had a dream about a dog. And just say for example that I really loved dogs and you really didn’t like dogs.
Sid: Well, you’re being prophetic right now, no I love dogs as long as I don’t have to take care of them, but go ahead.
Jane: (Laughing) But that symbol would actually mean two different things to two different people based on their life experience, is that right?
Sid: Of course.
Jane: Okay, now if I were to take that back to the scriptures and I was to say “Now say I had a vision of a lion, according to scripture what does a lion represent? Well, we have Jesus, the Lion of Judah but we also have Satan as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour and we also have the believers the saints, the righteous who are bold as a lion. And so you see that same exact symbol being used to describe Jesus, to describe Satan, and to describe saints. So you can’t just say “Lion represents xyz” you have to listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying in that regard. However, I think that living in a western world we’ve become very accustomed to not thinking in a symbolic way. The people of the eastern cultures they think symbolically and they use symbolism in their day to day life. But as we begin to learn to read the scriptures, as we learn to look at the pictures that are seen in the scriptures, we can begin to develop an understanding of what the symbols actually mean. For example you brought up the symbol of a house.
Sid: Right.
Jane: When I dream about a house number one I look at is it my house? What’s happening inside that house. Jesus used that house to represent a man’s life. He said “It’s like the man who built his house on the rock verses the man who built his house on the sand.” Well, what is He talking about? He wasn’t talking about where what real estate we build on, He was saying “What are you building your life on?” What are you building your life on? So the house actually can represent an individual’s life or it could signify a time in your life, for example I used to dream about my grandmother’s house and these were things that God wanted to speak to me about promises, generational promises or generational curses that needed to be broken. The people that were in the house, my families, things of that nature. Look at what’s going on inside the house and I think that that’s one of the ways you can approach that symbol. The symbol of people is where many times people will actually miss it. They will have a dream about their boss, or they’ll have a dream about their pastor, or their husband and they’ll immediately assume that that person is literally that person in their dream.
Sid: I’ll tell you as a new believer I did that and I would get so afraid that something would happen to someone I loved not realizing it was not that person; that person represented something.
Jane: Exactly right, people can be symbols and I think that if people can just remember that one little lesson about symbolism it will keep people out of a lot of trouble. (Laughing) because people can actually be symbols. For example maybe your pastor is a symbol of how you respond to authority, maybe it’s how you respond to God because God has delegated that person as a spiritual authority. So God maybe using a dream that you had where your pastor is speaking to you and it’s actually God trying to get through to you on something. Or maybe you have a dream where you see some political figure doing something wrong, maybe you don’t really have a trust in authority, maybe you have trust issues when it deals with authority like that. But what I encourage people to do when it comes to the symbols of people is look at some of the…what are some of the outstanding characteristics when you think of that person that come to mind. Maybe God is using that to symbolize that as something that God wants to deal with you in your own life.
Sid: You know this is really important stuff Jane that most believers go their whole life and don’t have a clue about.
Jane: It really is and I think that if we can understand just some of the basic principles of interpreting a symbol some of the basic principles of understanding how God speaks symbolically to us. Then it open up a whole new understanding of not just of the realm of revelation that God is speaking to us by his Rhema, or revelatory, word to us but it actually opens the scriptures up to us more understanding that as we study a symbol we can study it and study it and continue to gain understanding and revelation.
Sid: Now can Satan give us a dream and if so how do we know.
Jane: Well, I think that number one I don’t think that the righteous need to be afraid of Satan giving us bad dreams. Okay I went through a season where I was tormented by dreams, but I will say this not every nightmare is from the devil okay. In Genesis chapter 20 God gave Abimelech a nightmare when he had taken Abraham’s wife Sarah into his palace. Remember Abraham’s told a half lie and then God gave Abimelech the dream and said “You’re a dead man,” this is not a good dream, this is not a good dream you could even say that it was a nightmare that stirred Abimelech and got him back on the right course.
Sid: It saved his life.
Jane: Exactly it saved his life and it saved the destiny of a nation that God was birthing through Sarah. So God may actually use a disturbing dream to get us back on course. Job chapter 33 says “I’ll speak one way and then I’ll speak another and then I’ll talk to you in a dream.” (Laughing) and you know to get through to you so that I can remove the walls of pride and save your life from falling into the pit. And ultimately that’s what God’s after, but the devil can come in and bring tormenting and fearful dreams. I went through a season where I was very tormented in dreams and God had to show me the root of that thing in my life so that I could receive deliverance from the Holy Spirit so that I could be set free. And even now there’s people that are being tormented, people that are listening to this right now that are being tormented in their sleep, and in the name of Jesus in the name of Yeshua we break the stronghold of that spirit of fear off of your life and release to you the peaceful dreams that come by the Holy Spirit.
Sid: You know as your speaking in a prophetic word, can all the gifts of the Holy Spirit operate through dreams?
Jane: I believe so, I believe that well think about it what happens when we go to sleep at night, does the Holy Spirit clear out until the morning? Does He take His gifts of the Holy Spirit that He’s given us to operate in the day time, does He take those with Him when He goes? I don’t believe so I believe the Holy Spirit abides with us throughout the night season as well. And so the same gifts that we operate in during the day can actually operate in our sleep in our dreams as the Spirit of God is moving upon us. I have a prophetic gift and I see things prophetically quite often. In dreams I have gifts of discernment where I’m discerning either angels or the works of the enemy, and I see things in my dreams on a very frequent basis out of the gift of discernment that God has given me to walk in during my waking hours.
Sid: You know you talk about in your book about some of the corruption that came into the early church which in some of these Greek philosophers. Explain that.
Jane: Yeah, the Greek philosophers you know basically they started out teaching that we could rely on human reasoning, the senses, or the spirit realm to be able to gather valid information. But then they came along later and determined that the only way that we could really determine true valid was through reason and through our five senses, and they completely cut out the realm of the spirit as being a valid receptor of valid information. And so that’s kind of where the whole process of our western civilization of really neglecting the understanding of the spiritual power that comes or information that comes through the spiritual means.
Sid: But you know we’re in a period of restoration of all things and I’m so glad that the supernatural of God is being restored…
