Problems with Theological Inclusivism – Part 23: Dreams and Visions

There have been many recorded instances of non-Christians experiencing dreams from God that served as a preparation for the gospel message they would later receive from Christians.[i] So of course, inclusivists point to these examples as evidence that God can save people through dreams and visions apart from a presentation of the gospel. They ask, “Why can’t God save sinners by giving them dreams about Jesus and his death for sinners?” The short answer is that if God did save people solely through the means of a dream or vision, then this would contradict the words of Paul in Romans 10:14: “And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” If people could hear a presentation of the gospel message through a dream from God, then that would mean they could hear without someone preaching.

When we evaluate the content of these dreams from God, we do not see a full presentation of the gospel, but visions of Christian missionaries Muslims are supposed to meet with or of Jesus himself without a gospel presentation. But in every case in which they are saved later on, they encounter the gospel message through the Bible, a missionary, television, radio, or the internet. In some cases, they were already familiar with the gospel before the dream. As Tom Doyle and Greg Webster write in their book on the subject:

“Of all the missionaries I have read or talked to personally: No one says a dream recipient goes to sleep a Muslim and wakes up a Christian. . . . Typically the salvation experience is a process that takes time. While some take years, others come to Christ relatively quickly. The Bible is just as important in leading a Muslim to faith in Christ as it is when someone does not have a dream.”[ii]

Missionaries who report these stories are themselves exclusivists who believe that the work of evangelists is absolutely essential for the salvation of the lost. It is this understanding of the urgency of missions that drives them to become missionaries in the first place. This is why inclusivists, annihilationists, and universalists have had almost no impact in reaching unreached people groups with the gospel in the history of the church.

When someone claims to have a dream from God, it must be carefully evaluated against the teaching of Scripture (Acts 17:11). If even one part of it contradicts the Bible, then it is not a dream from God. False teachers often use stories of dreams from God to promote heresy so we must be skeptical about claims to dreams and visions until we have fully examined the life and doctrine of those who claim to have received them (Jude 1:8).

I do not believe that dreams from God are a violation of the principle of sola Scriptura because these dreams are not meant to be a revelation of new information from God outside of the Bible, but to serve as signposts that point people to the gospel and the church. A dream about a missionary a Muslim is supposed to meet is not something that can be added to the canon of Scripture. If Jesus says to someone in a dream, “Follow me,” we do not need to add these words to the canon because they are already there (Matt 4:19). Dreams and visions are one of the means God can use to knock down barriers to believing the gospel that Muslims have.[iii] They are pre-evangelistic and preparatory, not a replacement for the gospel which only comes through human instrumentality.

Part 24

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[i]For a few examples, Tom Pfeiffer, “Christian Missionaries Stir Unease in North Africa” at http://www.reuters.com, the video “Nabeel Qureshi: A Short Testimony” by David Wood Videos on YouTube, Darren Carlson, “When Muslims Dream of Jesus” at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/muslims-dream-jesus/, and the website http://morethandreams.org/. Even if some of these stories are false, I find it hard to believe that all of these people are lying given the high cost of following Jesus in Islamic countries.

[ii]Tom Doyle and Greg Webster, Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson: 2012), 134.

[iii]Ibid., 261.