I HAD A DREAM.
A few days ago, in the early morning, in the process of waking up from a fitful sleep, I had a short dream, a dream unlike any other.
Here’s how it played out: “In my dreamy vision, I wanted I to go door-to-door and tell people about God. But, after knocking at one door, I quit. No use.”
I am not sure whether it was part of my dream, but my immediate thought, with the dream still uppermost in my mind, was that using the Bible as a physical aid, in my effort to ‘evangelize’, was totally ineffective. Holding a Globe would have been a much better tool. It could have been part of my dream, because it is fully in accord with John 3: 16: “God so loved the World.” (God did not say, “I love the Scriptures).
Dreams in the Bible.
In the Older Testament dreams play a large role: Joseph, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, they all had mysterious dreams, but in the Newer Testament, they are called visions. With the apostle Peter, the conservative Peter, God used a dream/vision to persuade Peter to enter the home of a Roman/pagan centurion and bring the gospel there. Of course, much of Revelation, the last Bible book, is the retelling of a vision.
Perhaps my dream falls into the ‘vision’ category.
I do not think that God talks to us directly anymore, as He did to young Samuel, who conveyed a dire message of Eli, the high priest. For us God speaks in a different Way: Today, Anno 2026, to interpret ‘The Future’, is done by reading ‘the signs of the Times’. Jesus, in Matthew 24: 32-34, tells us exactly that: be on the lookout: keep up-to-date on world events, and don’t believe the politicians and their rosy views.
Read widely. Be sceptical. Always keep The End in mind. Yes: Read the newspapers, glean between the lines, and maintain a biblical outlook on current events. Trump is a direct example of our corrupt and distorted political views. He is senile and a criminal, and his actions will hasten the Day. He is just another indication that the Telos is near, much closer than both the world and the church realize.
A Trinity of Perils, an ABC combination.
A combination of AI and the Bomb and Climate Change, will do the trick: a Trinity of perils. Yes, a Trinity of Perils: ABC is a good capture of today’s events. As I have written before, decades ago: The biblical world started in the Middle East, the birth place of Civilization, its cradle, and it may well end there. The news now is centered on that geographic location. The Bible has been written for that area, where Jesus lived his short life, where Paul labored to bring the Good News.
So, why AI?
The AI risks we are now facing are truly staggering. I would put them in two very broad categories. The first is existential risk: quite literally the possibility that AI could kill billions, either because it enables terrible people to do terrible things – such as design and deploy biological weapons – or because AI itself determines it is more efficient to dispense with humans.
The second danger of AI is an existential challenge: left unchecked, the development of AI will deprive billions of us of meaningful agency over our lives, with utterly profound consequences for economies, national security and human happiness. As Bill Gates wrote, the AI era will herald “one of the most turbulent times in human history”, noting that it will either be the greatest equaliser ever invented or the worst source of injustice.
The BOMB
Trump’s bottom-line justification for the illegal US-Israel war on Iran, is his wilfully mendacious claim that Tehran was weeks away from obtaining the bomb. Yet his reckless threat, issued at the UN, to annihilate Iran,” implies a possible US nuclear attack”. Trump’s hypocrisy is stunning. The US is upgrading its nuclear arsenal of 3,700 warheads and may resume nuclear tests. It unreservedly supports Israel’s hidden nuclear weapons programme. And Trump is pursuing lucrative deals – “The lust for money is the root of evil”- with Saudi Arabia, another bitter foe of Iran, to provide civilian nuclear technology that he knows could be repurposed to make weapons. That has prompted regional countries such as Turkey and Egypt to consider going nuclear.
And then there is CC= Climate Change.
Humanity has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. Matthew 24 – spoken by Jesus – and the Bible’s Book of Revelation, both mention “end times”, a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental catastrophe that may seem a less absurd prospect today than perhaps it once did. Matthew’s gospel predicts most people will ignore or ridicule warnings of imminent Armageddon. Peter, another of Jesus’s disciples, agreed: “In the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.” Trump and Putin?
The ABC of history is upon us. That is not ‘pessimism’. That is very Biblical.
I had a dream. My real dream is the New Creation. “Your Kingdom Come”, is an all-important request in The Lord’s Prayer.
Be ready for its reality.