MY NIGHTTIME COLD AND FLU MEDICINE INDUCED DREAM................(Well, not really)

The last couple of days I have been a bit under the weather. Nothing serious, just a lot of sneezing, coughing and minor body aches. Not enough to keep you down, but just enough to where you wanted to sleep a lot and your common sense tells you to stay inside as much as possible. Even though I was feeling pretty good by yesterday afternoon and evening, as it became later in the night, I began to feel a few of those annoying body aches. I decided that for one more night I would take a dose of some nighttime cold and flu medicine. Now all my life when I haven't felt well at night it is fairly common for me to have some pretty vivid and colorful dreams. Once again this time was no different. This dream was so incredible that I just had to write it down so I can read it over and over. I never want to forget it. For the sake of you not thinking I am completely insane I will call it my Nighttime Cold & Flu Medicine Induced Dream! I loved this dream and pretty much wish that I wouldn't have woken up, but alas I did.

So here it is:

It was night and for some reason there were a lot of people still outside. I was walking in a field surrounded by a town which actually looked like a little village. Even though this was an enjoyable night as I neared the village I walked past a house that gave me the most chilling of chills. Outside the house was a young woman who was bruised and battered, her hair was long and stringy and she was weeping. Something was drawing her to go back in the house and even though she kept crying, "I don't want to go," for some reason she seemed to have no choice. Somehow I began to get a sense that this woman had been a prostitute. She wanted to now be free from that life, but she was held in a grip by something or someone that she couldn't get away from. As I saw her being drawn into the house, I could hear sobs and shrieks of the woman. Again, somehow I knew that during this night this woman would be faced with a physical beating and severe punishment that would come from the deepest of darkness.

As I was still looking at the house something else began to happen which immediately got my attention. There was something happening overhead and others were noticing it, too. It was the sky. It was a crystal clear night and the stars appeared to be moving across the sky in rapid fashion. The best way I can describe it is when you are watching a show about nature and everything is time enhanced so you can watch several hours in a matter of seconds. It really was like that, the stars were going from one end of the sky to the other. As my eyes followed a group of stars, my head had turned towards the west. I focused on an incredibly intense sight. It was the moon, only it was extremely bright and pure white. It was kind of like when someone is fairly close to you and shining a flashlight. They aren't close enough to blind you, yet the light is still pretty bright even though you are still able to look at it without squinting. Just to the right of the moon, the planets were all lined up in a completely straight line and perfectly parallel to the moon. Each planet was equally as bright as the moon, but just not as big. People were now running everywhere and those that had been in their houses had heard this commotion and were now coming out. Someone was running around hollering something about aliens and how excited they were that they were finally going to get to see them. (Even though I am recalling a serious and somewhat intense dream I have to tell you that I'm laughing right now, because I've thought about someone very near to my heart who will remain nameless.) My wife who had been close to me was also gazing upwards in amazement. Neither of us felt any kind of fear, but a sense of excitement began to build. The feeling was so incredible that your insides began to feel like they would burst open. Kay and I began to run back towards the other end of the field keeping our eyes on the moon and planets, glancing up occasionally at the rapidly moving stars. For just a flash of a second there appeared to be someone or something that moved across the sky just below the moon, but instantly out of eyesight. There was speed and power in that flash of a second and I heard someone yell (I'm laughing again), "there's the ship!"

At that point my wife and I looked at each other wide eyed and knowingly. Our eye exchange was saying, "Could this really be happening? While we are still alive, could this really be happening?" The thing that so many had predicted, but never happened. The event that the last book in the Bible speaks about and so many had predicted the time, only for it not to occur. Kay and I turned back and started to run towards the village. We wanted to grab as many of our friends as we could so that we could rejoice ands share in this moment with them. Suddenly Kay stopped and yelled, "LOOK!!!!" As I looked to where she was looking in the sky, I could hear her saying, "Oh look, there they are. Just look at them." Indeed there they were. Some looked like small, moving clouds and others looked like they had taken on the shape of a person, but they were all white and moving from the sky to earth. Somehow I knew that we were looking at ministering spirits. The ones you read about in the book of Hebrews. Spirits sent to minister to people who had been badly wounded. Just then I saw that same, young woman. She had managed to slip outside and was standing just on this side of that horrifying house where I even hated to imagine what took place in there. I could see inside a window to that house and I could see that a ministering spirit was filling the room. I noticed a sign that had suddenly appeared just below the window. It read, "All has been made safe. Fear no more." And the young woman was reading it. There was something else happening, too. Something was coming from the sky. How in the world I knew what it was I have no idea, but I did and just like you know immediately when you see rain or snow falling...............I was watching grace being poured from the sky. All over the place it was being poured. It was thicker than water, almost like oil, but as it was being gently poured everywhere and as it flowed there was the feel of warmth and comfort. Much like the warmth you feel when you cover up under a nice comforter on a cold winter's night. Only this was much warmer and it made you feel so incredibly safe.

At that point whether it was audible or in my spirit I do not know, but I heard a voice. A voice of authority, strong and firm, but yet it brought you contentment, more warmth, peace and joy all at the same time. A voice that said, "NOT NOW. NOT YET. BUT THIS IS FOR A PERIOD OF TIME. THIS EXTENDED PERIOD OF GRACE SHALL BE AVAILABLE TO ALL PEOPLE, BUT ONLY FOR A TIME. YOU LOOK FOR MY SON, BUT THE TIME FOR YOU TO SEE HIM IS NOT YET."

You talk about not being able to move. I can only imagine what my eyes must have looked like. I know they were opened as wide as they ever had been and they just stayed that way for I don't know how long. I looked at my wife without the ability to speak. Friends and people all around us, but none with the ability to speak. I think it was Kay who was the first that was able to use her voice again and I heard her say, almost proclaiming, "Now they will know. They will know that our God is real. They will know that Jesus was THE ONE. The precious Lamb of God." Suddenly a joyous but uncontrollable weeping overtook us and we became lost in that moment.

Something began to hinder this incredible experience that I was having, though. I was becoming aware of other voices. While this incredible experience and scene had unfolded right before our eyes, suddenly there were voices coming from people that I could not see. Voices that were saying things like,
"Well, there is an explanation for that."
"Stupid, gullible people."
"They think that was god? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"
"Jesus, yea, right."
"Everything was just right in the atmosphere to create this very logical thing."

Suddenly there was a sense of sorrow in my heart. While most of the people were still stunned or rejoicing, these voices were voices of people that would not be saved, and again, somehow I knew that. The voices of men whose hearts had become so cold and hard hearted that nothing would ever penetrate the layers and layers of cold, scoffing, man-made denial of a living God who had sent His one and only Son for people just like them. My joy turned to sorrow for those sadly lost voices.

AND THEN I WOKE UP!

And then I woke up from my nighttime cold and flu medicine induced dream. I promise you that while writing about this dream I have not added one thing for dramatic effect. It is exactly the way it was.

But......something has me wondering. Something inside of me has me pondering. I took that medicine at 11:30 last night. Kay left for work shortly before 6:00am and I had not had that dream. I did have a dream, but it was not this one. In fact I can't even remember much of it. Kay left for work, I grabbed my pillow and after checking on things in the kitchen, I headed for the couch. I fell back to sleep for less than an hour. The last thing I remember before I woke up were those voices coming from faceless people.

I know that I will never forget that dream. The detail and clarity of my surroundings and the things that I saw were amazing. I will ponder this dream for a long time. I can't stop thinking, wondering, pondering. Was that dream induced by nighttime cold and flu medicine? I wonder......................oh, I do wonder......................

"AND I WILL POUR ON THE HOUSE OF DAVID AND ON THE INHABITANTS OF JERUSALEM THE SPIRIT OF GRACE AND SUPPLICATION; THEN THEY WILL LOOK ON ME WHOM THEY PIERCED. YES, THEY WILL MOURN FOR HIM AS ONE MOURNS FOR HIS ONLY SON, AND GRIEVE FOR HIM AS ONE GRIEVES FOR A FIRSTBORN." (Zechariah 12:10)

Here, have another tablespoon of grace,
Mark