Last night I awoke in the middle of the night from a two-part dream. I was at a church gathering of some sort, almost like a retreat, and a pastor was there whom I know in real life. In my dream, I was trying to avoid  him because I knew he was hostile toward my presence.

I saw as on a film screen that there was a table spread for the people at the retreat in the middle of the woods. It looked beautiful and inviting among the peaceful greenery of the forest, with stately, Gothic-style chairs all around it. But as the church people sat down to it they were suddenly ambushed from behind by executioners and simultaneously shot at once. And the pastor was in cahoots with the executioners.

Then the dream changed and we were by this pastor’s church. Instead of pavement there was water where the road was. I was in a kayak and there was someone from the junior high youth group who was in a kayak coming from the church, but she couldn’t get a handle on her boat. The pastor got in with the youth and erratically they paddled the little craft. We were all rowing from the church toward the entrance to a park I knew from childhood.

As we approached the park, I looked up to see a massive wave. A wall of water towered eighty feet above me. In a split second, I realized I could dive through the base of the wave and survive; I knew that just behind me, the pastor and the youth wouldn’t make it.

Significance

I asked a friend to pray into this dream with me. I agree with her interpretation:

“The pastor has a spirit of deception. He is offering hospitality to people, but it is setting them up for spiritual death. The second part of the dream is more of the same deception. The pastor is leading the young people into danger and confusion. The huge wave is God’s glory coming to earth. It will be like a tsunami. It will flow over true believers and followers of Christ but those in confusion and deception will be washed away.”

The pastor, as I mentioned, is someone I know in real life. He is, I believe, representative of many, many pastors in the United States right now. The boat, or kayak, represents ministry. We were all in relatively shallow water together, but when the wave came, it was sudden and without warning and there was no avoiding it.

The Lord gave me this dream not because it isn’t already evident how much false teaching abounds in these last days – but I believe to underscore how very deadly it is. We might know people in leadership who we think are a little “off”, but they’re not awful people; they mean well.

The pastor wasn’t preaching heresy, but he had aligned himself with the spirit of this age. The graphic witnessing of a group of people accepting what they thought was a time of fellowship, only to be swiftly executed, was shocking and horrific.  Whether he intended it or not, the people who trusted in the pastor’s leadership met a deadly and surprise end.

Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, My people, so that you will not share in her sins or contract any of her plagues” (Revelation 18:5)

If you have any insights or if this resonates with you, please take a moment to share your thoughts in the comments.