Dreams are such an interesting enigma. To some, a dream is nothing more than a way for your brain to process information from the day. To others, dreams are messages about the future and warnings of things to come. Today's modern society has been trying to identify the purpose of dreams for ages and yet we are still only partially unraveling a small portion of the relevance of dreams in our lives. When you ask, "What does a dream mean?" you are opening the door to a world of hidden treasures.
I find myself frequently asking, "What does that mean," After waking up from a very peculiar dream. One day, while doing some research on famous people that had stories inspired by dreams, scientific breakthrough inspired by dreams, music compilations and more, I discovered that Mary Shelly was inspired to write Frankenstein based off of a dream that she had.
When recounting the dream that inspired the novel she noted, “I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision — I saw the pale student of the unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion."
I find it interesting that she noted that the person she saw was a student of witchcraft, or as she called it, Unhallowed, unholy, and wicked arts. When I read this dream I was struck by the correlation of her dream that inspired her re-born undead monster-man, and something that I had read in the Bible a little while ago.
You may be thinking, what does this have to do with the Bible? Here's what. Let's take a look at Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel 2. ' 31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest, and arms of silver, its belly, and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth."
This dream is an end-times dream. The reason I can say that is because when I look at it I see several indicators. As dream interpreters, my wife and I teach that it is important to look for indicators that signify what type of dream a person is having. If you see a front door, a window, the news or something is speaking of things to come this will indicate that the dream is prophetic or a vision. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, Daniel tells him that he is seeing things to come by saying in verse 39, " “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. " This makes this dream prophetic of things to come.
Since I am aware that you can correlate any dream symbol to the Bible, I then start to read the original Hebrew or Greek. This is where I found the most interesting thing and also why mary Shelly's dream stood out to me.
When you read the original Hebrew you see that Daniel mentions a Kingdom of bronze which is the third kingdom that comes after his. The word used for bronze is Nahasha which is pronounced nechash. This is where I find that our English translation is a little off compared to the Hebrew. Nechash, though it was bronze in the dream, is a play on words for witchcraft, divination, witch, sorcery, soothsayer and so forth. God does things like this throughout the bible where he uses word plays to mean something.
For example, when Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 1:11, "I see the branch of an almond tree." The Hebrew word for almond is Saqed. Then God responds and says He is "ready to accomplish his word." Hebrew word for ready is soqed. This is a play on words whereby God is demonstrating how he uses word plays symbolically to represent something else.
Since you now know that God uses plays on words, now we can look back at Nebuchadnezzar's dream and see that God was using a play on nechash (bronze) to represent witchcraft. The third kingdom that came was a kingdom of witchcraft that ruled over the land. There were several kingdoms that came and went since the time of nebuchadnezzar, yet he only identified three different kingdoms in his dream. by and large, most biblical scholars assume that this was the Greek empire, the Roman empire and a final empire that is yet to come. However, I do not believe that to be so. Here's why?
Daniel said that this Bronze empire will rule over all the earth. To date, there has not been a Kingdom that has ruled over all the earth. Even in Nebuchadnezzar's time, people knew that as large as his empire was, there were still areas he hadn't conquered yet. You can argue that they perceived that he ruled all the earth that they were aware existed, but God doesn't give a dream and an interpretation not knowing that there is more world that exists beyond the scope of knowledge that the Israelites and Babylonians had. It's asinine to think that when God gives a man an interpretation that God limits His infinite knowledge to match the current knowledge of humans. He gives us the truth and lets us seek out the fullness of the revelation as we delve into his word and gain understanding by chewing and consuming the word of God as our daily meal.
When we look at the verses where Daniel interprets the dream, we see that he uses a few select words that are solely responsible for triggering my correlation between Mary Shelly's dream and Nebuchadnezzar's dream. The Hebrew Translation of Daniel 2:43 reads, 'As you saw iron mixed with ceramic (this type of ceramic is actually a derivative of something that is dirty, unclean, to be swept away or cast away as useless. It is referring to demonic entities) clay, they will intermingle with the seed of men but they will not cling (This is a nice way of saying they will create progeny with humans, but they will not marry. They will have babies, but not marry. To cling or to cleave/adhere is like how we say a man will leave his parents and will cleave to his wife) just as iron does not cling to clay.'
What made me correlate Mary Shelly's dream to this dream is that the man in her dream was a student of the unhallowed arts was creating something that seemingly gave life to a previously dead person. This is a counterfeit of Jesus Christ giving life through resurrecting us from the dead. Frankenstein's monster was a collaboration of several passed away, dead people, that were manipulated in such a manner as to give the many pieces of several other people life through artificial means.
While Frankenstein's monster was not specifically ceramic and Iron, he was the remnant of several dead humans. For all intents and purposes, he was a ceramic (synthetic) human. Since we learn from Genesis one that we are made of clay, then this monster is, in fact, a type of ceramic clay to the effect that he is an artificial creation and not actually a legitimate, naturally derived human being.
I have a lot more to share with you, but I will allow you to research what I have just shared with you for yourself. I am sure that you have a lot of questions and I would like to invite you to read part two of this series when it comes out where we will cover Christ the rock, the destruction of the end times kingdom of witches and demons, and the mighty men of old. Until then, Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays.
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