In the episode A View from the Cross, I shared a dream that the Spirit gave me 20 years ago called the “Strange Fishing Dream”. With the help of friends gifted in interpretation, the dream helped me understand the type of ministry the Lord called me to. Not long after, the Spirit gave me an even stranger fishing dream that for nearly 20 years, I had no interpretation for and I forgot about it. When writing the scripts for the Martha and Deacons episodes the Lord brought that dream back to mind, with an eye-opening interpretation.

The Cow Fish Dream

From the window of a vacant building on a pier over the Puget Sound, I was fishing and hooked a big fish, the size of a cow. Somehow I managed to reel it in on a pole much too small for the job, lifted it out of the water, pulled it through the window and placed it on what looked like a boat cradle. I don’t remember that the fish weighed anything.

It was a funny looking fish, with a rounded boxy shape and unlike anything I’d ever seen come out of the Puget Sound. It was bloated looking, smooth skinned and had a pleasant but dumb looking expression on its face.

As is common with catching a large fish, I hit it over the head with a club to kill it and prevent it from flopping around and hurting someone.

The fish replied “What did you do that for” and with a loopy sounding laugh, began jabbering.

It’s been long enough since the dream that I don’t remember what the fish said exactly, though it was affable albeit disconnected from the reality of having been caught and me having just tried to kill it. What I remember is that it annoyed me, a lot. Stupid incoherent talking fish. I vaguely remember the fish saying I couldn’t kill it and I was amazed that the fish seemed unaffected by being out of the water.

So I found a much bigger club and hit the fish over the head again and again and again, with all my might, until it was dead, which ended the dream.

Significant differences

The Cow Fish Dream differed from the Strange Fishing Dream in three significant ways that confused me at the time, so I wrote it off as a spicy pizza dream and forgot about it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a Spirit dream, rather, either I wasn’t ready for the interpretation or the Lord wasn’t ready to reveal it.

First, the Strange Fishing Dream was a fresh-water river whereas the Cow Fish Dream was a salt-water sea. The river looked a like the Green River where I often fished in winter for steel-head. The salt-water sea looked like Puget Sound where I grew up.

Second, the fish I caught in the river was indigenous to the river, a steel-head, which is hatched in the river, migrates to the sea, returns to the river to spawn and goes back to the sea, repeating the cycle for as many seasons as it lives. The fish I caught in the sea was an inedible “trash fish” which feeds on the eggs of steel-head and other game fish.

Third, I felt compassion for the steel-head caught from the river, but I despised the funny looking fish caught from the sea.

The Interpretation

In Revelation 22:1 it says there is a “river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb” about which the prophet Ezekiel wrote in chapter 47:

(v7-9) “I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.”

In the river, live all who are born of God. Some, like the steel-head in the Strange Fishing Dream, have sustained wounds from this world while at the same time derive life and healing from the river of life.

The salt sea is like the nations, what the Greek language calls the “ochlos” (G3793) and refers to the multitudes. Isaiah 57:20 says the sea and everything in it, is unclean. In Micah 7:19 the Lord casts our sins into the depths of the sea and in Matthew 18:6 He drowns in the sea all those who cause the children of God to stumble. Metaphorically speaking, the sea is the place where sin and sinners dwell.

The strange fish that was birthed and lived in the sea is unclean and therefore was repulsive to me. That the fish was neither indigenous to the river of life, nor the salt sea, I take to mean was a creation of man, such as a vain work, or a tradition of men. That explains why it was not affected by pulling it out from the sea; likewise it’s feather-light weight. Vain works and the traditions of men have no weight per se except for the importance we assign to them. Since traditions mean little to me I hefted the fish as large as a cow by myself with a pole too small for the job. That the fish reminded me of a cow brings to mind the term “sacred cow”, which is often used to describe people’s devotion to tradition.

I viewed the cow fish in the same way I would a sucker fish, carp or dogfish. Each of them eat the eggs of valuable game fish, like steelhead. It is common practice when a fisherman catches a “trash fish”, to kill it for the protection and preservation of game fish, hence clubbing the fish over the head until dead.

Understanding

Putting an end to tradition and the vain works of men is exceedingly difficult. Some of them may even be codified in scripture. Often they start small, grow and morph beyond their original ‘good’ intentions and then turn on the men who created them in the first place, robbing them of spirit-life, all the while presenting the feel-good happy-face of tradition and what men consider ‘good works’. The tendency to grow and morph would explain the strange appearance of the fish and its affable but goofy personality and the extreme difficulty killing it.

Understanding this old, long forgotten dream, came with completing the article series Martha, Martha, Martha! and Deacons? What were the apostles thinking? I’m convinced that deacons, a position created by the apostles so they could get back to serving the bread of life, was to appease the demands of the people for bread that perishes. Certainly the position of “deacon” is contradictory to other passages in scripture wherein the apostles write that every believer must work to eat (2 Thes. 3:10), bear each others burdens (Gal. 6:2), practice hospitality (1 Pet. 4:9), and put love to action (1 John 3:18).

Where every believer is already a priest in Christ Jesus (1 Pet. 2:5 & 9, Rev. 1:6), what need is there for the special servant class “deacon”? There is nothing a “deacon” does that shouldn’t be standard practice for every believer!

So what do you suppose would be the response to suggesting the position of “deacon” be abolished? A position that has enabled the majority of the body to eat without working? A position that if eliminated would force the body to grow, serve and mature?

Some fish are just difficult to kill, even for the apostles.