Message From the Subconscious -
Heed My Warnings on Terrorism!
"I was in a haunted house, where I was playing a game with others. The game was to move from room to room, opening closets, etc., finding dead and dismembered people, and trying to piece together what had happened to them. I woke up. It was very disturbing."
This recent dream, reported to me by a friend of several years, a New York actress in her mid-30s and a very trusted source, might at first sight appear to be a chilling replay of the horrors of September 11, a recreation of its searing images imprinted on our minds and perhaps an attempt by the subconscious to purge itself.
But it is far more significant: this nightmare did not occur after the attacks, but two nights BEFORE! So too, did this one, as told by another friend: "The grim reaper was standing in one doorway; the other door clearly led to Heaven. I was dead, and started towards the Heaven door when the reaper shook his head, 'no'. Instead, I was lifted by the feet and lowered into a black pot, like a well. Then I woke up feeling terrified."
Premonitions, too, were at work. One of my closest friends told me her daughter, a 13-year-old with extraordinary intuitive powers, had been telling her for weeks before the attack: "Mommy, something bad is going to happen." On the day of the attacks themselves, she said: "Mommy, it's not over yet." My work colleague in New York told her fiancé, the night before the attack, how she had pondered on the way home whether he would know where to find her if a bomb went off.
My own troubling dreams a few days after the attack were so specific about future terrorist activities that, in addition to e-mailing the salient facts about them to the FBI, I decided to solicit my friends for any dreams or nightmares they had experienced. What I had not counted on, was learning of prophetic dreams that had preceded the horror itself.
The warnings, it seems, keep coming. One young woman at music school in New York describes in very vivid detail her post-attack nightmare of witnessing the destruction of another major New York landmark: "In front of my eyes, there was an ocean. A huge wave came up, as tall as the skyscrapers. Some people ran; I and some others stayed. The wave did not descend, but I saw the top of the Chrysler building come down. People were screaming. I could see a man on a lower floor walking around. He did not know what was happening. I wanted to scream to him, but I couldn't. A building next to the Chrysler, but taller, came down beside it."
My own nightmares depicted three people, two men and a woman, driving a European car, with an endless supply of Delsey suitcases, each one of which contained an identical device that I could not understand. They were on their way to London, but first returned to a throng of emergency workers. In another dream, I was fighting a man on a ferry boat who attempted to cut me with a razor blade. Unable to do so, he cut himself.
The suicidal mission of terrorists is also evident in a latter part of the music student's dream. "I was in a room, a safe space, with some close friends. We kept each other company. But then other people came in, like aliens, and they were infected. They wanted to give their symptoms to us. They were wearing band-aids. Underneath the band-aids, there was a green light where there skin was opening up. They locked the door and wanted us to have communion with them so they could infect us. We had to pretend. They made us hold hands with them in prayer. We wanted to escape the room, but there were more of them than us."
To Bible scholars, the tragedy of September 11 bears striking resonances with much scriptural augury, collectively referred to as 'end-times prophecy'. The sun did indeed turn to sackcloth on September 11, as described in the Book of Revelation (6:12), and a concordance search for the word 'terror' in the New International Version generates an array of references uncomfortably close to home.
Nevertheless, there remains more cause for hope than for fear. The Bible does not merely point to gloom, doom and destruction to come, but to the unleashing of powerful spiritual gifts, including prophecy, that may guard us in these fearful times and reassure us that, faced as we are by terrors beyond mortal comprehension, we are saved by more than mortal power.
The predictive power of dreams is documented in scripture with such events as the famine in Egypt (Genesis 41:1-36), Gideon's defeat of the Midianites (Judges 7:10-22), the successive empires of the earth (Daniel 2), the wanderings of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4), and the warning to the New Testament Joseph to avoid the murderous intentions of Herod (Matthew 2:13-23). The Book of Daniel (see especially 2:19-23) is almost entirely taken up with dreams and visions, and uses these two words almost interchangeably (Daniel 7:1-2). (See also Numbers 12:6.)
Another type of vision sees beyond the horror of the here and now to a time and place of peace and beauty, into other dimensions and realms, even the realm of Heaven itself, in a manner reminiscent of Dante's 'Paradiso', or to the New Jerusalem, as described in Revelation (Chapter 21).
"We were on a hill that looked down on the city," says a Wall Street worker of a dream she had two days after the event. "The sky was blue and clear, then the sun turned black with smoke, and the entire sky went black. But then the sun became crystal clear, and through it I could see the city and a beautiful skyline, like Paradise."
Such an account also resonates with the visions or prophecies of Ezekiel (Chapter 1) and Isaiah, including this one which mentions towers: "Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar. In your thoughts you will ponder the former terror: 'Where is that chief officer? Where is the one who took the revenue? Where is the officer in charge of the towers?' You will see those arrogant people no more, those people of an obscure speech, with their strange, incomprehensible tongue…your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful abode, a tent that will not be moved; its stakes will never be pulled up, nor any of its ropes broken." (Isaiah 33:18-20). (See also Isaiah 6.)
In this era of high-tech surveillance equipment, precision satellites, and infrared cameras, our best defense against terrorism may be an investigative technique as ancient as man himself. The prophet Joel looks forward to the day when the Lord "will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions" (Joel 2:28-30, Acts 2:16-18).
Such resort may seem at odds with the hard-headed 20th-century rationalism we have grown up with, but recent events call for a radical overhaul of this worldview. Although the Bible gives ample warning against false prophets, and although the tragedy has also brought many charlatans, liars and power seekers out of the woodwork, our operatives, agents, and arms of government would be well advised to locate and heed the few Cassandras who can warn of enemies in the belly of the horse. Given the failure of conventional intelligence-gathering to protect us adequately, it may be our only hope.
October 2001
