When I was younger, much younger, I used to love to sleep because I had serial dreams. It's a rarish phenomenon when your dreams all string together into a coherent narrative. This is very cool when you're 13 and the dreams are an ongoing adventure saga in which you're the hero. As I got older the serial dreams became more infrequent, or perhaps I remembered my dreams less well so I didn't notice them happening. Or perhaps they got darker and I suppressed them - I remember one series about a world occupied by stitched-up living corpses and psychic fetuses which I'd rather not.
Well, now they're back and I'm remembering them. You tend to remember dreams in which you play the central role in an ongoing saga where you're the Antichrist. Until now most of my serial dreams had been pleasant experiences. Now I'm learning what it's like to have serial nightmares. Not the super scary kind of nightmares where you're physically threatened, but the creepy unnatural and unpleasantly prophetic kind. They don't exactly scare me, they just make me really nervous and glad they're only dreams.
Like any dreams, it's hard to remember all of the details when I wake up. I just know that there was an author of popular apocalyptic novels - played by the late Marlon Brando in the dream - who in his final book revealing the identity of the Antichrist, describes the character in such a way that the only person the description could possibly apply to is me. Did I mention the cinematic quality of my dreams? Popular actors regularly appear in major roles.
Key to this new series of dreams are the events of a previous dream in which I travel from the top of a tall office building into a mysterious world which I later learn is part of heaven. There I engage in what can only be described as 'wrassling angels' and I fight and kill what I find out much later is an angel. From my perspective, the angels I encounter there are monstrous, inhuman creatures of no fixed form, which change from stags to pigs to something vaguely human, constantly shifting their shape. They are incommunicative, hostile and seemingly aggressive towards me. The one I kill has attacked me, or so I believe, and I kill it in self defense, but that is apparently what marks me as the Antichrist.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Heloise
Dave you're dreaming. And the Christians are not reading their Bible with an objective eye. Jesus is talking about himself when he speaks of the "man of sin" and all the other references they have found to attribute to him. It is all about Jesus himself. They will wake up to it eventually, just as you have dreamed it.
The confusion lies in the fact that Jesus is talking about himself in past and future lifetimes. That is why the Bible readers cannot make head nor tails of it. They have taken out so many of the clues. Including that Jesus was a married man? Why the heck not.
Now wake up and smell the Bibles burning.
Heloise
2 - Dave Nalle
Heloise, you seem to have missed Revelations in your reading of the Bible.
Dave
3 - Dr Dreadful
Dave, it sounds as if you are the Marlon Brando figure in your dream(s). You have the makings here of an epic series of fantasy novels which could rival the Left Behind canon.
A series in which the protagonist/hero is the Antichrist - now that would be quite some hook.
Well, don't just sit there reading this - get writing!
4 - zingzing
now dave... i'd bet heloise is specifically talking about revelations... anything that fits into her reincarnation as famous people schtick (and who else could jesus be but the antichrist?) is bound to perk her interest. (we're just lucky that mr hasn't found this one yet... can you predict her response? it's oh so easy.)
5 - Rodney Welch
Next time Heloise writes her newspaper column she can deliver at least one hint from personal experience: sniffing floor cleaner is not only unhealthy but it leads you to write nutty responses on Blogcritics.
6 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
You know, Dave, that photo of you with the beard did have a devilish cast to it... Somehow, that you should figure as the anti-christ in your dreams - particularly one who is trying to convince himself and everyone else that he isn't - seems in character.
Don't know why.
What I do know is that for all of your claims to be an atheist, dreams like this say something different.
7 - zingzing
ruvy, i dreamt i was a shark and i was playing with a giant bowling ball that the coast guard had generously dropped into the ocean for me, then, when i flipped it with my tail fin and it went crashing through the i-99 viaduct in seattle, i was a whale that followed it into the streets of new york city, where i died and homeless people inhabited my mouth.
then michael j. west showed up and had been injured by me (as a whale, although it was shark bites from my time as a shark, but i was most certainly a whale) and i berated him (what am i now, a talking shark-whale?) for never visiting me in seattle (even though this was new york just before) unless he's injured and can't play.
so what am i? a shark, or a whale? do whales talk now? sharks? where am i? seattle? or new york? does the coast guard drop bowling balls into the water for sharks and whales to play with?
are my dreams reshaping reality?
8 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
are my dreams reshaping reality?
I dunno, zing.
You could pay a psychiatrist $200 to talk you through your finny dreams - or you could get a lot more satisfaction and send me the money...
9 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Dammit! screwed up the italicization again!
10 - Dave Nalle
Dave, it sounds as if you are the Marlon Brando figure in your dream(s).
Now dammit, I'm on a diet and trying to avoid saying 'the horror' too often.
You have the makings here of an epic series of fantasy novels which could rival the Left Behind canon.
I agree. I could probably just take that LaHaye drivel and flip the perspective and make a mint, especially if I added a lot of graphic anticrhist sex for the ladies.
A series in which the protagonist/hero is the Antichrist - now that would be quite some hook.
I agree, but Michael Moorcock already wrote it. I'm driving by his house later this afternoon. Maybe I can stop in and ask if I can write a sequel.
Dave
11 - Dave Nalle
What I do know is that for all of your claims to be an atheist, dreams like this say something different.
If so, that would be the most troubling aspect of the dream. However, I think it's my years of wasted religious education looking for an outlet.
Dave
12 - gonzo marx
well...it appears that someone's subconscious is trying to object to current behavior by the conscious Mind...
interesting Symbology utilized, sense of grandeur perhaps?
for the afflicted...
Excelsior?
13 - Dave Nalle
Since having the dreams mentioned in the article I've had a recurrence of the Frankenstein dreams I had when I was a kid, with an interesting difference. Turns out that the idea of Frankenstein is scary to kids, but as an adult I find that it brings with it suggestions of science giving man the gift of immortality, and that's kind of reassuring. At 48 dreams about Frankenstein are more like hopeful promises than scary nightmares.
Dave
14 - gonzo marx
depends on if you are some of the corpse bits, or the Doctor...imo
your mileage may vary
Excelsior?
15 - Warren
Dave,
First of all, if you're going to be a proper Antichrist, you've simply GOT to have a goatee. EVERY seminary student knows that the Antichrist will have a goatee, just like his daddy does.
Second of all, I'd say that the dreams are more a symptom of overexposure to dispensational eschatology than of a guilty conscience.
I've read that the Jews wouldn't let anyone read the book of Ezekiel until they had shown they were mature in their faith. Sometimes I think that would be a good idea for Christians to do with the book of Revelation.
16 - Iron Duke
I think we might need an antichrist right about now to flush the country and start us over. But he won't be a republican. They just get treated like the antichrist by those who are secretly already in his service.
17 - gonzo marx
heh...can anyone show me where, in Revelations...this whole Rapture thing is written?
Dispensationalism indeed....smells like snake oil to me
your mileage may vary
Excelsior?
18 - Catey
The first book about Dispensationalism I read was by Clarence Larkin, "Dispensational Truth". It was written in 1918 or 1920.
It is fascinating, with charts and theories that may surprise some on what they assume to be christian beliefs.
I would put a link here to it, but I don't know how.
You can find the book at www.armageddonbooks.com.
He also wrote a book called "Rightly Dividing The Word", and it was the first time, as a christian, that i had heard of theories such as the "pre-adamite earth". C Larkin believed that there was a whole populated world that existed before the creation of Adam, and it was destroyed,so the earth goes back millions of years.
19 - Dave Nalle
First of all, if you're going to be a proper Antichrist, you've simply GOT to have a goatee. EVERY seminary student knows that the Antichrist will have a goatee, just like his daddy does.
As someone pointed out earlier, my prvious author picture featured a very nice and suitably satanic goatee, but that goes away during the summer as it's just too damned hot for facial hair - making me wonder how they can stand to wear them in hell.
Dave
20 - Andy Marsh
Dave, something tells me that you're not the only person here at BC that's dreamed that you're the Antichrist...in the few years I've been around here, I'd almost bet you're having those dreams BECAUSE of the comments you've received here!
21 - Catey
In order to understand the reference in Revelations to the Rapture,I think it's good to know that the whole book is based on the Apostle Johns visions while he was exiled on the Isle of Patmos.
Revelations 4:1 is of John representing the Church taken up into heaven. John hears the trumpet and a voice that says "Come up hither" ("here"). He is taken to heaven and allowed to see what happens to the earth and for those who are left behind.
So the whole book of Revelations is the Rapture beginning at "Come up hither"and the events following as seen by John and described by him as best as he possibly could with the knowledge of his time.
Other references elswhere are in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17....For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,with the voice of an archangel,and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1Thessalonians 2:1-8 Now brethren,concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit ,or by word,or by letter, as if from us,as though the day of Christ had come.Let no one decieve you by any means;for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first,and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sits as God in the Temple of God, showing himslf that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining,that he may be revealed in his own time.For the mystery of lawlessness is allready at work;only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.And then shall that Wicked be revealed...
Matthew 24:36 No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
22 - gonzo marx
ok Catey..ya walked right into it..i asked where in Revelations it was...the Answer is that it's NOT in Revelations...but an oblique reference from Thessalonians...as you point out
now, normally Thessalonians is attributed to Paul (Saul of Tarsus)...and thus, like Revelations...demonstrates that it has nothing to do with anything the one referred to as "Christ" had to say at any time in his life.
the entirety of the Rapture is made up from whole cloth based on the dispensationalist approach to Books written by Men, not even about the alleged words of *Christ*
Pauline dogma stretched even thinner than the original...
Excelsior?
23 - SonnyD
Dave: I don't think there is enough material there for a novel, let alone a series. However, with the shape shifting demons and simple plot line, it sounds like a good computer game. You haven't been playing any games before you had these dreams, have you?
24 - Catey
Hi Gonzo..well, would you believe the very words of Christ when He said, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:2,3
Also,the Apostle John, who wrote the Revelations, was beloved by the Lord Jesus.He was one of the 12 disciples, and one of the inner three closest to Jesus, the other two being Peter and James.
You either believe, or you don't, really.
25 - gonzo marx
umm... the John who is alleged to have written Revelations is generally dated around 100-125 AD. even by Vatican theologians/archeologists.
not considered one of the Synoptic texts by anyone (earliest of those dated around 70AD, concurrent with the first Jewish Revolution against Rome)
and even in your Quote...this is far form the "Rapture" invented by the Dispensationalists...
which was my initial point
Excelsior?