Dreams and Visions--pg. 14

Are dreams and visions different?

The Bible treats revelations in dreams and visions as practically identical. Both are used to describe ways in which God breaks through everyday reality to communicate his will to the people. Although dreams refer to experiences during sleep and visions are usually applied to something seen when a person is awake or in a trance, the distinction is not always maintained.
Gen 46:2—Dreams are often called “visions of the night.”
Dan. 7:1—The Book of Daniel tells how he “had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed.”
God’s message was always more important than whether the person receiving it happened to be awake or asleep. Jeremiah condemns prophets who “speak visions of their own minds” and prophesy lies, saying “I have dreamed!”

To whom does God talk in dreams?

The evidence of the Bible suggests that one did not have to possess special spiritual gifts in order to experience divine revelations in dreams. Just about anyone—even idol worshipers and evildoers—could receive such messages. In addition to communicating through dreams with such well-know figures as the patriarchs Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and many prophets, God used dreams to reveal his will to people like Abimelech, the Gentile king of Gerar, warning him to release Abraham’s wife Sarah, and Jacob’s unscrupulous uncle, Laban, telling him not to harm the fleeing Jacob. The Book of Numbers tells how God communicated with a pagan prophet, the Mesopotamian priest-diviner Balaam: “And God came to Balaam at night and said to him, only what I bid you, that shall you do.” (Num.2) Dreamlike visions persuaded Balaam to obey the Lord’s will and bless Israel rather than curse it.
The New Testament, too, relates how God used dreams to send ordinary people messages. In the Gospel of Matthew an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph before and after the birth of Jesus. Matthew also tells how the “wise men from the East” were “warned in a dream not to return to Herod”; and how the wife of the Roman governor, Pilate, dreamed that her husband should “have nothing to do with that righteous man,” Jesus.

How did visions help Mary and Joseph?

The Gospel of Luke describes the angel Gabriel visiting the Virgin Mary in a waking vision and telling her, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
Matthew gives special prominence to dreams and visions in his account of Jesus’ birth. When Joseph, who was betrothed to Mary, found out that she was with child, he “resolved to divorce her quietly” because he believed she must have had relations with another man. But “an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream” and told him, “Do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. After the Wise Men visited the baby Jesus, “an angel of the Lord” came to Joseph in a dream and instructed him to flee with his family to Egypt so that Herod would not be able to harm the infant. After Herod’s death, the angel appeared to Joseph and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life is dead.”