I was making my way on foot down the side of a mountain with another man who seemed to be a mixture of my earthly and spiritual fathers. The mountain we were descending was desert like, covered with rock, cactus and stumps. Not a single tree remained on the mountain, while the valley below was lush and inviting with green forest and clear streams. Though I couldn’t see from the rocky trail, I knew the valley to be filled with people, shelter, food, fellowship, etc. Conversely, I knew the mountain to be “snake country”. If I’ve never mentioned, I hate snakes!

Despite my best efforts to convince the “father” to press on for the valley, which we could have made by nightfall, he decided instead to spend the night on the mountain. We unrolled our sleeping bags, even while I objected to it and the danger posed by snakes. He laid out his sleeping bag next to an old rotting stump, from which a vine-like fern was growing and he began to eat the fern, which I thought was most unappetizing. Finally in response to my concern about snakes, the man pulled a large calendar from his pack and showed it to me.

In the dream, I was acutely aware it was the month of December. The calendar was marked “snakes in hibernation” beginning in November. On seeing the calendar, I thought to myself “it’s the cold that sends snakes into hibernation but it’s unseasonably warm!” Consequently, I believed the signs of the times more than I believed the calendar. As we settled into our sleeping bags with our heads pointed up hill, I did seem to get over my concern about snakes. We went to sleep and that ended the dream.

The dream confused me for several reasons. The mountain was desert-like while the valley below was lush and inviting. That seems like an opposite to me, perhaps because I live in the mountains of the Pacific northwest where we’re surrounded by tree-covered mountains and the valleys below are cleared for agriculture, commerce and housing. Another seeming opposite was worrying about snakes on a mountain, when typically they’re not found at elevation where it’s cool, but at lower elevations where it’s warmer and food is more abundant. Also, I didn’t understand his point about hibernating snakes, when the weather obviously contradicted the calendar. I didn’t understand him eating the vine-like fern either.

It isn’t a new dream; I had it nearly 25 years ago. It’s one of a handful that I remember vividly because they were instructive and formative. Like a call to action for me. I’ve never had the leading to blast my dreams and visions out to the world via Spew Tube with great fanfare and alarm. Instead, I pray about them, and perhaps share with a mature and gifted friend whom I trust to pray and offer godly insight. It was a mature sister in Christ who observed the “institutional church”, or IC as I call it, has long been heralded the “mountain of the Lord”; the de facto church of Christ on earth. Realistically, the IC has been in decline for many hundreds of years. Lacking the power of the Holy Spirit and bold faith of the early church; devoid of miracles, healings, and deliverances that accompany those who believe. The “mountain of the Lord” is spiritually barren, like the mountain in the dream where the shepherds as in Ezekiel 34 feast on the gifts, offerings, and labors of the sheep, to keep their profitable religious business running.

Unlike the early Church who shared everything, needed nothing, practiced unity and sought the will of God in everything by prayer, the IC relies on the Advent calendar to guide their seasons, which hold to the remembrance of things past as if God were not active in the present. Year after year, the church celebrates the same holidays with the same scriptures, while oblivious to the leading of the Holy Spirit and the “signs of the times”. Such was the “father” in my dream, symbolically representing a pastor or shepherd who relies on the calendar to discern the time of year, while I read the signs all around me and discerned we should be cautious. Despite the sounds of life from the lush valley below, my “father” lingered, pausing to consume the sparse remaining resources on the “mountain of the Lord”.

As for the “vine-like fern”, the Lord says “I AM the vine” and so it was a false vine the “father” ate to sustain himself. Here in the Pacific Northwest, bracken ferns – which is what the foliage of the fern in the dream looked like – wilt in full sun. Symbolically they can’t abide in the light. They’re also known to contain carcinogens and lead to cancer of the digestive tract in people who eat them as “fiddleheads”.

Concerning the trees, all of which had been felled and only rotting stumps remained, Christ was crucified upon a “tree” (Acts 5:30, Acts 13:29-30). Thus on the so-called “mountain of the Lord” in my dream men had cut down the cross of Christ and instead embraced a cross-less gospel. Where Jesus said “take up your cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24), men have resisted taking up the cross for themselves, teaching instead a doctrine of prosperity; as if to say “Forget the cross, embrace the cash!”

Conversely, the valley below was lush with trees and I sensed there the people of God were equal and servants of God and one another. In the valley, no one built religious institutions for a man – a place of performance for a “spiritual father” or “pastor”.

If the dream is an expression of my desire to see everyone delivered from religious slavery and frustrations with my “father” who refused to press onward, should I have left him there? A barren mountain infested with snakes is no place to spend the night. Yet in the dream I abdicated my choice in the matter to the “father”, rather than exercise my own authority as a son of God and priest in Christ. By yielding to this “father”, I limited my progress toward the lush valley below and placed myself in mortal danger. Would he have followed if I’d simply refused to stop and boldly led the way?

Perhaps that is the most important lesson for me; is to step into my inheritance, warn and leave the straggler(s) to their fate in the Lord. After all, Jesus did say “let the dead bury themselves”. He also left unbelieving Nazareth – His own home town. What is so heart-rending for me is, not all who spend their lives on the “mountain of the Lord”, are without life. Such were the men who led me to Christ and married my wife and I; both are genuine brothers devoted to introducing Christ to people who turn to man’s church system. Like the picture painted by Jesus in His letter to the church at Laodicea, people gather there for traditional religious services, but Jesus is not in their building nor in their service. Living Jesus is outside, knocking on the door, calling them out unto Himself. Admittedly, it’s strange to look at man’s traditional church system that way, but, when someone hears and receives the living Jesus, He calls them out to follow Him 24×7, not just for an hour on Sunday morning. Perhaps then the real work of genuine brothers on the “mountain of the Lord”, is like that of John the Baptist, who on the rise of Jesus, sent his own disciples away to follow Him, while John faded away. If so then the measure of success for a man’s church, is the exodus of the born again to follow the living Jesus.

Perhaps that sounds like the rantings of a crazy old man. It wouldn’t, if you’d sang in countless churches of men and heard pastors admit frustration over the loss of members whenever Jesus gets a hold on them. Could it be that a pastor’s real job is preaching to sleepers, so that when they finally hear Jesus knocking and calling, they recognize His voice and come out from their religious tombs?

About that, have you ever noticed the sudden departure of a church member and wondered why? I was 11 or 12 the first time I saw that happen. It was my uncle Fred. He left our dead family church and became a minister in the Assemblies of God church. It wasn’t until 30 years later that I understood why he left. Why so long, you ask? Because it takes the Spirit to understand the ways of the Spirit. Suffice to say, Jesus lit him up and Uncle Fred chased after Him. Newly clothed with power from on high, I couldn’t help but do the same. What a joyous race that is; running down the barren snake-infested mountain of men, to the lush valley below, where Christ lives in and through His people, in community.