My memory is a little hazy about all of the details and events, and this will not be an artful retelling, but I will relate the basic events:

I was in an unfamiliar place in front of a towering, dark, wooden church set upon a high cliff.  It was day, but the sky was blackened by storm clouds gathering precipitously overhead.  Something bad was about to happen.  I could sense this, and I didn’t know how or why I was there.  I was greatly distressed, terrified really.  Suddenly, the air was splintered by a lightning bolt thundering down from the sky. It struck the ground between me and the church.  The earth spit and the ground shook violently beneath my feet, throwing me down on my side.  I quickly regained my composure, sat up, and I looked where the lightning bolt landed.  There it remained, ridged and pulsing with energy, like an electrified spike driven firmly into the ground.  As I lay there in the dust terrified with awe, jesus materialized beside the lightning bolt.  He grasped it at shoulder height and broke it as if it were an icicle.  His expression betrayed simmering wrath, masterfully harnessed.  He did not look directly at me, but I could sense he knew I was there.  He circled a moment with his eyes down, and then he swung the electrified club in his hand at the remainder of the bolt extending up from the ground with what appeared almost to be an effortless precision.  Upon contact with the spike, a wall of shattered lightning erupted and rocketed into the wooden church ediface with absolutely devastating force.  The building was like tissue paper before this fury.  As jesus batted storms of broken lightning toward the church, whole portions of this huge structure were utterly torn away and disintegrated into the wind.  The process continued in a deafening and horrible violence until there was almost nothing left of the church.  The sheer power of this wrath was otherworldly.  I felt absolutely insignificant in its presence.  Before the end, however, I was awakened by my own real-world sweaty thrashing in bed.  I was relieved to be awake and out of there. 

I have no memory of ever before having such a dream or of jesus appearing before me in my sleep.  What does it mean?  Why was Jesus destroying the church?  What was the source of his harnessed rage?  Why was I there?  What is the meaning of my witnessing this?  At the risk of sounding like BroMo, I don’t know what to make of it….

Wait a minute.  Yes, I do.  It was just a dream….

It was a dream. Period.

But you might be a little internally conflicted about loosing your invisible friend and the Social group at your church.

The church has spent much of the last 2,000 years dragging Jesus’ good name through the mud. Crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, selling indulgences, alienating gay people, etc, etc, etc…..and maybe your opinion of Jesus has been unfairly colored by the misadventures of his nutty fan club. So maybe Jesus wanted you to see what he REALLY thought of these nut-jobs who have been claiming to speak for him all these years.

Or maybe it was just a really intense dream. Did you eat a bad egg roll earlier that night?

I had a christian-themed dream. What do I make of it?

Wow, man!

It’s almost as if you were raised and socialized in a heavily Christian culture.

Harlan Ellison has suggested that dreams are our minds attempt to empty garbage and purge poison.

How did you feel after the dream?  That is usually the key to its meaning.

You said you felt “relieved to be awake and out of there.”  So one interpretation would be that you’re glad to be out of the debate swirling around the modern church.

But only you can interpret what you felt.

Probably just an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of an underdone potato.

Dude, that was Zeus taking back what was his from that poser Jesus.

Are you taking anti malaria drugs?  They can really mess with your dreams.  Otherwise, maybe they will let you add another book to the Bible.

Gee Zeus!

Yeah, very BroMo- ish.  Imagine how awful it must be to be BroMo. I mean, he’s got that sort of stuff going on in his head the whole time. Thank goodness yours was just a dream, Mike, and that you are unlikely to need years of therapy and perhaps anti-psychotic medication like BroMo. What will you do if you keep having the dream? Or if you start having similar experiences in your waking moments?

Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 27 March 2012 10:26 PM

Yeah, very BroMo- ish.  Imagine how awful it must be to be BroMo. I mean, he’s got that sort of stuff going on in his head the whole time. Thank goodness yours was just a dream, Mike, and that you are unlikely to need years of therapy and perhaps anti-psychotic medication like BroMo. What will you do if you keep having the dream? Or if you start having similar experiences in your waking moments?

We all know what happens if visited on three consecutive nights Rob, BM is living proof….AHHH!!!

Some medication can cause vivid dreams, when I was a teenager I was prescribed CITALOPRAM and it really messed my dreams up, to a point I stopped taking it within a couple of weeks.
Peace,
George.

Josh - 27 March 2012 01:34 PM

So maybe Jesus wanted you to see what he REALLY thought of these nut-jobs who have been claiming to speak for him all these years.

Figures. Keeping religion alive.

Ever hear the joke of the guy who watered-down the paint he used on the old wooden church? God produced a storm to wash it all off with the admonition coming from the single storm cloud, “Repaint, repaint ... and thin no more!”

It’s probably from all the loose firing neurons circulating through your unconscious generated from being on the forum.

Mike, now that you have gotten the responses you wanted from the people you…ugh…trust, let me say this:

Your dream was no mere dream.

The spirit of the living God has chosen you for some reason.

You may not be the fool I thought you were.

I had very similar “dreams” (all written down, too, so I would gladly private message one to you as proof) the first few months I decided to stop being an idiot and give God a chance at being God.

Despite what the Aussie says, I have not had any such dreams since, for they did what they were supposed to do, i.e., show me that God was a living God who sometimes “touches” certain people at certain times in their lives for certain reasons.

This is the most important point of your “dream”—that God has chosen you at this very moment in your life.

The details of your dream are significant, too—Jesus is pissed at those who loudly proclaim atheism as “truth”; and, we are insignificant in his presence.

More dreams should come, and very soon.

Be open to them. Don’t be afraid of them. Be afraid of your response to them, for if you only go halfway into believing them as coming from God, the demon will show up and rip to shreds any remaining faith you have, leaving you worse than you are now.

Congratulations.

I’ve had recurring dreams that I could fly, and people can’t fly.
I’ve had recurring dreams that I was stalked by a T rex in my childhood backyard, and that is millions of years out of sync with reality.
I’ve had recurring dreams of screaming arguments with people I’ve never screamed at in real life.
I’ve had recurring dreams of surviving a tidal wave by diving through it, and that seems pretty darn unlikely.

It’s more the feelings of the dreams that matter.
Being able to fly is a feeling of joyful possibilities.
Being stalked by a T rex is a feeling of being overwhelmed, as is the tidal wave dream.  But diving through the tidal wave is success at facing the fear.
Being in a screaming argument is a feeling of frustration.

These feelings all relate to real times in my life.  But the dream situations are allegorical.

My take at least.