20. The Era Of The Dream Interpreter

When Jesus as the Angel of the Lord interpreted Jacob’s ‘Goats and Go Back Home’ Dream He released what might be called, the era of the dream interpreter. Before this dream all dreamers understood their dreams at least to a level where they could quickly respond and apply the dream message.

God came to the non-Jews, Abimelek and Laban in simple literal dreams without any symbolism. We’re not told whether these dreamers actually saw God or not. If they saw God then it would have been an appearance of Jesus.

The Jews on the other hand, all had dreams containing some degree of symbolism signalling deeper things. Abraham’s covenant dream took place during a God induced deep sleep in the midst of thick and dreadful darkness when a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between pieces of dead birds and animals.

Jacob’s covenant dream had God standing at the top of a heavenly stairway with angels ascending and descending. This was not fully understood or interpreted by Jacob who never knew the stairway was Jesus.

But Jacob’s dream about goats required proper interpretation concerning the streaked, speckled and spotted goats mating.

Joseph’s first two dreams required dream interpretation and although Jacob and his sons understood the gist of these dreams they also missed much of significance. Yet Jacob did correctly interpret Joseph’s second dream. Pharaoh’s dreams also required a dream interpreter and the intervention of God before their message was revealed.

Afterwards the vast majority of Old Testament dreams required some degree of interpretation in order to be understood.

With the arrival of Jesus as dream interpreter there was an immediate shift from open literal dreams to hidden symbolic dreams. It’s as if Proverbs 25:2 kicked in,

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;
to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

Now God’s plans and purposes began to be concealed in parables, allegories, metaphors, similitudes, symbolism, typology, analogy and so on. This mainly continued throughout the rest of Scripture in dreams, visions and prophecy and especially in the parables of Jesus.

God's valuable hidden messages now required a seeking heart for an interpretation. The lukewarm and lazy remained ignorant. It’s the same today.

We have no way of knowing if any New Testament dream required interpretation for we’re never given any details of their content. We only know all New Testament dreamers always understood the meaning of their dreams.

In the New Testament it was the parables of Jesus that required interpretation. While Jesus walked the earth it was a parable interpreter and not a dream interpreter that was required.