River 14
Daniel
Warning From Daniel 1985

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

I was in a forest and a very strong wind came about. I looked up at the trees and I could see them moving strongly. As I stood in awe I had this feeling that the strong wind would cause one of these massive conifer-like giants to be blown down and cause terrible damage, but I was a witness. I had this real, innate knowledge, ‘You know what’s going to happen, Daniel, your job is to warn someone. For the moment, there’s no time, just watch’. All this took place in about three seconds. I witnessed a tree come down and hit Andrew, the leader of our church, pinning him to the ground and crushing his right arm.

 ~~~~~~

I was made a deacon in a large Christian church, although I didn’t think I deserved it and I still don’t. I was very spiritual then, much more than I am now, with my head more concerned with Heavenly matters.

When I became a Christian I started praying and things started happening in my life. I was like a spoilt child: my dreams were being answered. I was having a wonderful time and things like this dream had a special significance to me. I was like virgin ground so I was ready to receive these seeds. Nowadays my mind’s filled with so much garbage that I don’t think I’m a very good receptacle for such dreams.

I woke up remembering this dream like it actually happened to me and immediately wrote it down. I knew, I was very aware, that I had to go and warn the pastor. Everything hinged on my taking action. If I didn’t, I didn’t know what the repercussions might have been. I hear people talking about dreams warning people not to go on an aeroplane, and they act, and then the plane crashes. I had the same feeling of responsibility.

I had a childlike reasoning based on insight, that because I was God’s servant, he enabled me to be used by him. I was just a messenger, nobody special.

So, how should I warn my pastor? I thought ‘Hang on, just calm down. Don’t make it so emotional. Why should I drive all the way over there and warn him? Maybe if I just go when church is on, then I can tell him and there’ll be plenty of time’.

So I went over to a session that I didn’t normally attend, armed with all this fresh in my mind. I didn’t need to read from the script because I could remember all the details after having written them down. I didn’t know how I was going to get to talk to this guy because I’d never had any time speaking with him, even though I was a deacon. The church was huge. I prayed that if this was important for me to tell, then God would make it easy for me.

I was in an area of the church where the public go, but for some reason he was walking past and he saw me and he said ‘How are you, Brother Knopke?’ ‘Good,’ I said ‘but I came over this morning because I’ve got something important to tell you’. He made time for me and took me aside. So I told him the dream, thinking this great spiritual guru will know what it’s all about and say ‘Ah, well thank you very much, that gels in with what I’ve been thinking’ but he said ‘Well, what do you think it’s saying?’ It amazed me because I didn’t have any doubt in knowing the interpretation, yet he needed me to interpret for him.

Even when I explained the dream it still didn’t seem to hit home with him. I told him that the tree pinning him down and crushing his right hand meant that something was about to happen and it was going to hit his right hand man. Now I thought maybe his right hand man was his son. I didn’t really know who his right hand man was, but he knew.

I didn’t hear any more until about six weeks later. Someone very important within the church told me that at a particular session he had said he wanted to thank Brother Knopke for the dream. All sessions were taped, and when I replayed it and heard him say how important it was in front of the entire church audience I realised it did mean something to him.

The church was subsequently rocked with the usual scandal the media digs up. For me the church started to crumble when I lost all faith in the senior deacon as a person. Later the pastor, Andrew, who must have been doing a very good job, was forced to move to another country. Obviously my dream had held a very significant warning.

Before the downfall, I used to have home meetings at my house, so people from the church could come in and pray and read the Bible. The senior deacon in question was the leader of all those home groups. Some church leaders were well-known for putting their palms on the foreheads of those who go down to the front for prayer. I remember, on one occasion, watching this particular deacon actually push somebody over. I thought ‘Take your eyes off this guy and just concentrate on God’, but kept thinking ‘That doesn’t look like God intervening here. This is not the Holy Spirit. This guy’s pushing’. I became sceptical and this, combined with his poor personal behaviour, made it very sour for me. No longer did the things that they were doing in that church agree with me. I was not comfortable, so I left.

Warning Andrew about my dream was a really weird thing that I had to go out and do, but I knew, one hundred percent, that it had to be done and I feel really happy that I followed my intuition. I’m aware that I’m watering the experience down, in telling you, so I’m not sensationalising it.

Although the church did at that stage crumble, it has been built up again. By getting rid of Andrew they felt they were getting rid of their problem.

My life has changed in that I left that Church. Today, a Sunday, I went to a different church, so my faith is being stoked like the embers of a fire, just getting back again. I feel this church has got a lot of love, and that draw me rather than all the dramatic things that go on in a lot of other churches.

My dreams don’t have a major part in my life any more and I really feel that’s because I’m not spiritual enough. It just dried up after I left the church I’d like to think that my dreaming might be some kind of gift that I have once I get into the spiritual side. When I return to that wavelength I’m sure I’ll start having more relevant dreams.

Recently I gave a warning dream to my ex-wife, thinking it was for her. I get on fairly mildly with her, so I went to warn her and gave her the dream. I’ve since erased the full details from my mind but I did write it down for her. She thanked me because she knew the significance of my first dream about the church, but she added ‘I really don’t know how it can fit in and how it can apply to me’. It was a warning that someone was going to stab her in the back or do something pretty terrible to her. I was confident that she would know that I would be sincere: I wouldn’t have wanted to look like an idiot by telling her these things if I didn’t think it was important!

After about six months had passed she still couldn’t recognise the relevance of the dream warning. As it happened, the dream was a warning to me over a maintenance action she took. I was ‘stabbed in the back’. I don’t think I was spiritually aware and in touch sufficiently to be able to understand what the dream was about.

Here’s a thought from one of Daniel’s flying dreams. Maybe it has the potential to change all our lives.

In this dream, about a year ago, I remember laying in the position of, say, superman and then just levitating and moving at a medium to quick walking pace but doing all this with my mind. After the experience I recalled the tales of many Yogis and I remember thinking that it would be possible, and in time I’m sure that mankind will be able to move about just by willing it in our minds. My simple understanding is biblical: when God created the earth, so the Bible says, he spoke things into existence. We’re supposed to be made in his image and I’m sure that if we can dream it, we can do it. If we can dream ourselves flying, then I’m sure we can achieve that.

Although not yet ready to fly, Daniel is using this principle to put a new and totally original family business into practise. He is, however, very aware of not using his dream gifts to his own advantage without due reference to his spirituality:

Dreaming would be useless to me as a gift unless I used that gift in some way that was connected to God. If I just took that information and used it for my own purposes and sold heaps of books or whatever and ‘ripped God off’ if you like, then I wouldn’t really feel very satisfied. But if I did it because there was some kind of payback to God, my conscience would be much easier and I’d feel that I did the right thing.

Our dreams may be potentially life-changing, but I don’t think enough people realise it. I read a book by a millionaire, Peter Daniels, who had studied what kind of principles successful people had in common. He concluded that our lives change from the books that we read and the people we meet - and that’s all. Now he needs to be contacted and told it’s not only the books that you read and the people that you meet that are important, but your dreams can change your life too.

Jane’s Interpretation

If I had not known that this was a precognitive dream, I had would have seen Andrew as symbolic of Daniel’s religion, and the crushing of his right arm as a ‘crushing blow’ either to Daniel’s self-expression within the church, or to his ability to give himself within the church in the same way as before. The right side of the body in dreams often relates to our handling of the outer world, and our arms to our ability to express and give of ourselves. Was Daniel’s faith in this particular religion under threat and was he beginning to feel crushed in his ability or willingness to serve? Was his job to warn Andrew or was it to heed the inner warning himself, the warning that his sense of religion and purpose was being crushed?

When trees stand in a dream forest they can represent a collection of people. These trees were huge, presumably quite old, so they may also have represented the church or its congregation. Strong winds make dream appearances when ‘the winds of change’ are upon us, when we are feeling emotionally stormy or when our sense of stability feels threatened. In this light, Daniel’s sense of security regarding his religion may have been under threat from ‘changes in the air’.

If this dream was entirely symbolic, and related to Daniel rather than to Andrew, I would have questioned Daniel about his strength of conviction within the church, asked which changes, if any, were in the air, and asked how he felt about these and his willingness to continue to serve this particular church.

There remains the observation that Daniel was a witness in the dream. Was he witnessing his own relationship to the church objectively, or was he aware of his role as a witness to future events within the church itself?

Daniel’s conviction within the dream was that his role was to witness the future and warn Andrew. He carried this conviction into waking life action, and, since subsequent events proved the precognitive symbolism of the dream, the foregoing interpretation remains either a philosophical exercise or a parallel meaning to the dream. Precognitive dreams frequently carry a second layer of meaning: one personal and symbolically pertinent to the dreamer in tandem with the obviously precognitive one.