A prophetic picture of the Church

Not so long ago, God gave me a dream which I think shows us a prophetic picture of the Church.

In the first part of the dream, I was on a large plane (something like a 747 or A380).  The plane was packed with people.  The shutters on the windows were all down, and everyone was watching their seat back videos.  I decided to open one of the window shutters, to look outside.  To my horror, we were flying very low to the ground, and close to dangerous mountains.  But no one noticed this because they were all watching their seat back TV’s!  I seemed to be the only one who was concerned!  Why were the pilots flying so dangerously?!

In the second part of the dream, I was on the same plane, but this time there were half as many people on the plane and the window shutters were up and the plane was flying much higher.  It felt a lot safer.  People were generally more aware of their surroundings.

In the final part of the dream, I was in a hot air balloon.  It was extremely windy – and I remember thinking “how can we use this hot air balloon with all this wind?!”.  But somehow, the hot air balloon was fine.  I was in the basket below, with a few other people.  We were being carried along by the wind, when a sudden gust of wind came and blew my backpack off my back, and I watched in horror as it went to the ground.  My first reaction was “Oh no!  My laptop is going to be destroyed!”.  The next minute I was back on the ground, and I found my backpack – and to my amazement, my laptop was fine – except, instead of being the latest MacBook Air, it was an older MacBook Pro model.  Then a voice said to me “I give you these things, but you don’t need them”.

That was the end of the dream.

My interpretation is this:

1. The first part of the dream, this represents the church today.  Powering ahead in its own strength (analogy of a jet plane), packed full of people. However, the pilots (leaders) are piloting the church dangerously close to the ground (world?) but the members of the church are completely unaware because they are distracted by other things.  Only a few people dare to look outside and see what is really going on.

2. The second part of the dream represents the church some time from now.  Half have fallen away from the faith, simply because the windows shades have been lifted, and the reality of what we are navigating is made known.  But, the church leaders (pilots) have navigated the church much better, by putting some altitude between the world and the people.  The church is in a much better place, however it is still being powered by mostly self effort and not Holy Spirit.

3. The last part of the dream represents the few left after the great falling away.  The plane is gone, and the church is being completely guided by the wind (Holy Spirit).  There are only a few left though.  The wind knocking my backpack to the ground is the work of Holy Spirit removing anything remaining of the world in me.