Iran. A Persian Muslim migrant arrives at a refugee centre at 6 a.m. to see a pastor, visibly upset. The night before, he dreamt of someone dressed in white, who raised their right hand and said, “Stand up and follow me.” 

The man said, “Who are you?” 

The man in white replied “I am the Alpha and the Omega. I’m the way to heaven. No one can go to the Father, except through me.”

The man asked the pastor “Who is he? What am I going to do? Why did he ask me to follow him? How shall I go? Tell me.”

In response, the pastor held out his Bible and asked, “Have you seen this before?”

“No,” he replied.

“Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

The pastor then opened to the Book of Revelation and read: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end”. 

The man started crying. The pastor then led him in prayer, and peace came over him. 

The pastor then gave the man a Bible and told him to hide it, since the Muslims in the camps could cause him trouble.

But the man replied, “The Jesus that I met today, he’s more powerful than the Muslims in the camp”.

He left and an hour later returned with 10 more Persians and told the pastor, “These people want a Bible”. 

That’s a story taken from an article posted in 2018 on The Gospel Coalition website, titled ‘When Muslims Dream of Jesus’.

Across the Middle East – particularly in Iran – an increasing number of Islamic Christian converts report having dreams about Jesus before, during, and after their change of faith.

It’s a strange pattern that’s been observed across the world.

According to data collected by Mission Frontiers, 25 per cent of surveyed Muslim converts reported dreams that led to their conversion.

All this, despite the dangers of professing Christian belief in Iran. 

So what’s going on? Is God speaking to people en masse in dreams? How do we know if He’s speaking to us?

Check out this video documenting the Jesus Dreams sweeping across the Middle East

Nimah Alizadeh, head of TGC Farsi, has years of experience ministering to “dream converts”; he himself reports to have met Jesus in a dream, leading to his conversion.

However, he’s quick to caution readers against jumping to conclusions about their own dreams.

“I believe personally that even back in the Old Testament dreaming about these things was not really normal,” he said, speaking on Undeceptions.

“Even in the New Testament, we see Paul, Peter, and a few others experience divine dreams, but I believe in the New Testament is the word of God, written and available to us, so we don’t need dreams.”

Nimah isn’t saying because we don’t need dreams they don’t happen; rather, the circumstances surrounding the dream accounts coming out of Iran (and surrounding countries, including Afghanistan) are borne from exceptional circumstances. 

“I believe still in countries like Iran, where the word of God is not legally available, God will use anything he wishes to, you know, dreams, miracles, anything”, Nimah said.

Jaffar converted to Christianity after repeatedly dreaming about Jesus. Read his story here

Be careful what you dream for

Surprisingly, caution about accepting divine dreams as revelatory is nothing new for the church.

According to Bronwen Neil, Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, the first Christians of late antiquity prioritised discernment over trusting one’s word.

“Christianity was careful about dreams as they’d learnt to be from the Judeotradition of the wisdom books,” she said.

“Some of the prophets were also quite ambivalent about dreams, and they warned people about accepting all dreams as being from the divine.

“If God could send you dreams, then the devil or demons could also send you dreams.”

So, how do I know if God is speaking to me through a dream

Thankfully, there doesn’t seem to be much room for doubt when it comes to decoding these modern “Jesus Dreams”.

A number of common factors have been identified in these recent dream stories. They are:

• Jesus speaking Scripture to dreamers
• Jesus telling dreamers to do something – providing them with a task
• A dream or vision that led to a feeling of being clean or at peace.
• A man in white physically appears

While these factors don’t necessarily match the divine dreams of the Bible (for example, the dreams of Joseph in Genesis 37), they appear to be common within the modern context.

Christian orthodoxy doesn’t rule out divine dreams – there are examples of them littered throughout the Bible – however, nor does it encourage believers to read into their own dreams.

Indeed, as the Apostle John writes in his Epistle: 

“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

When divine dreams do occur, there seems to be little room for doubt – and while they may seem unlikely (or even unbelievable) in today’s world, Nimah urges believers and sceptics alike to keep an open mind.  

“It can happen to you because this is something spiritual,” he said. 

“There is a spirit of God, moving around, and it can affect you in miraculous ways.” 

Adapted by Alasdair Belling, from ‘Decoding Dreams‘, an episode of the Undeceptions podcast

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