I was just thinking...you know how ppl have these obe and most say they saw a bright light or heaven, Jesus. or just some blissful place.even those who are not christians will say they saw all these things. sometimes it can just be a trick from satan, trying to decieved someone into thinking their alright.
My question is...can he do the same with our dreams. how can you know for sure a dream is from God. or maybe the enemy just trying to trick you and throw you off track from God want's you to do?. I know this may sound negative, but it's not meant to be. just curious.
Have to stick to Scripture and be very cautious. I don't know if you can get dreams from God AND dreams from evil powers, but we all have dreams of the flesh, and we all get attacks from the evil powers.
Anything promoting or in line with the belief that Jesus Christ is the Lord and the Son of the God in the flesh (and not "some other Jesus", like with cults and such, where they preach "another Jesus")... is from God.
Paraphrasing from Scripture.
Dreams rarely give you such context, but if the context or your life is following wrong Scripture, so you are not even believing "The Jesus" of Scripture... and these dreams support that wrongness or build it up, then you can run into a problem.
Really, and to be sure you are on the right track, you have to have the major doctrines together, and not be seriously in error in regards to your doctrines. Where the cut off point or such, is hard to say. You have to make your salvation very sure, and doing that requires substantial evidence to please even your wildest doubts.
My impression, anyway. Could be wrong.
And by "cut off point", I mean, every Christian has somesort of doctrinal error and other error, is my impression, myself included. If I didn't, I would be a lot more sure about this answer, for instance.
Conversely, a lot of the dreams, prophecy, and miracles people - even otherwise good Christians - scoff at can actually be very genuine. It is very easy a temptation to be deceived by the motives of the heart and attribute to someone conceit they actually do not have... out of our own envy. But, such envy is unnecessary, because these gifts are free for all who seek, as Scripture says.
The important thing, again, is love, however. Dreams are a tool. So, if you take that Corinthians chapter literally, one can have dreams, but not have love and so have nothing. It would seem the higher spiritual gifts, therefore serve a purpose, a higher purpose, and this means it is ultimately for service to others.
This said many, if not most, are of a personal nature. One reason for that is for training of the person in these gifts, so ultimately they might help others.
But, God has used such things for many different purposes, as the examples of Scripture do show.
