“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17-18). I recently got a text message from a female Iranian parishioner here in Hamburg, telling me that she had had a dream. She wanted to know what it meant. In her dream a voice had whispered: “Christianity is the true religion.” She looked over to her husband, who was on his knees, praying. She called out to him: “Mohammad, Christianity is true!” Scared, she also knelt to pray. A shadow was hovering behind her and the room started to spin, she wrote. I texted back that I did not know what it meant, but that it was a good dream, and that God was possibly communicating with her. “Perhaps He is telling you what you already know from Scripture,” I wrote, “namely that Christianity *is* the true religion.” I concluded with the above Bible verse. *** It is, in fact, common for people from Islamic backgrounds to experience dreams, in which Jesus Christ calls them out of Islam and draws them to the true religion of Christianity. I have heard these stories for years, as have many other people. And indeed, God does work in this way. Think of Joseph and Daniel in the Old Testament, or Peter in the New Testament. But even as God seems to sometimes use dreams to connect with people, that can only be the first step. He then brings us into His fold in Holy Baptism, where He makes us His children, forgives our sins, and grants us eternal life. He meets us regularly in the Lord’s Supper, where He again forgives all our sins and strengthens our faith. Our triune God is active all around us, whether perhaps coming to us in dreams, but most certainly in Word and Sacrament—and even through His angels that He deploys to protect us—in these Last Days.
The Tiews in Germany 