Not A Matter of Talk

By Amy Hartmann

“How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God.  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.  When I awake, I am still with You.”[1]

Dreams have prepared me for my future…

Dreams have reminded me of my past…

Dreams have been conversations – instigated by God – in the night watch.

As best I can remember, the first time God communicated with me in this particular way was the first week of December, 1978.  God spoke to me in the night, preparing me for my father’s sudden, accidental death on December 14, 1978.  It was my freshman year – and my first semester.  I was enjoying my new found liberty and responsibilities at a small private junior college in Lebanon, Tennessee.  God spoke and I listened.  I awoke, terrified and hysterical.  Back then, there were no cell phones or internet connections.  Dawn was breaking as I tumbled out of bed and began searching for enough change to make a pay phone call to my parents.  My roommate saw my panic and she hurried out of  bed to see what was wrong.  I quickly told her the dream as my tears fell.  I had to talk with my Dad.

A month after his funeral, in January of 1979, I had another dream about my brother in a car wreck.  I shared the dream with some school friends, as our college show choir traveled to my home town, to do a series of recruiting shows at numerous Chattanooga, TN high schools.  We were all riding in a van being driven by our college choir director.  Everyone knew of my earlier dream and they were all concerned with my grief load.  When we arrived in Chattanooga, we were met by my mother.  She was quite upset.  My choir director was out of the van first and he began to talk with my mother.  When I got out of the van, I was advised by our director, that my brother had indeed wrecked my mother’s car the night before.  Thankfully my brother escaped with no serious injury to himself, but the car was almost totaled.  Everyone in the van was amazed, because they all knew I had no way of knowing this information.

Now days everyone is texting and snap chatting every single minute of their lives, but in December of 1978, there were only occasional pay phone calls when we had enough change to spare.  At this point, my choir friends were in agreement with me that something strange was going on in my sleep.

As the years progressed, I began to keep track of my dreams, as I encountered the future in my sleep.  Dreams caused me to pick up the dusty Bible on the floor in my closet and carry it with me on my work trip to Leiden, Holland in 1987.  Dreams stirred me out of my complacent, self-centered life style when I was working in Acton, England in 1988.  Dreams caused me to examine, again, what the word of God had to say on this subject.

It is still interesting to me that the Book of Daniel was my random selection when I restarted my long neglected habit of reading the Bible.  It was February of 1987 when I made this choice, while I was sitting in my quiet hotel room in City Hotel, Leiden – Holland.  The entire book tracks the rise of a young, aristocratic, Hebrew teenage slave named Daniel, who found himself deported to the magnificent halls of the King of Babylon sometime in the Sixth Century, B.C.  He eventually spent much of the next 60 years as an advisor to the various rulers of the Babylonian empire and its ensuing conquerors.  Daniel’s narrative also documents some amazing and deeply disturbing prophetic, futuristic dreams.

The Bible is full of dreamers and the message they share is very clear: “…being warned of God in a dream…” people took action.[2]

Taking this key advice to heart, I began to seriously document my dreams in early 1990.  I made footnote references and logged dream dates and content in the blank pages in the back of my Bible.  Soon those pages were full and I took up dream journaling on tablets and spiral binders.  My book shelf is full of these diary-like notebooks.  Sometime in 2008 I took up daily prayer journaling.  It was at this time I began in earnest to correlate life events with my dreams.

In early 2009 my sleep took on another form of revelation: I began to feel the earth shake.  At first, I awoke to a shuddering feeling, as I heard the ground groan underneath our Jacksonville home.  Fearful of this event, I woke my sleeping husband, warning him of the earthquake underway.  He looked at me for a few moments, he said he felt nothing and then he went back to sleep.

October 14, 2009 the ground shook violently in my sleep, and I awoke convinced that Jacksonville had experienced a serious shaking.  I made note of the time.  The next morning, as I talked this over with my kids, no one else felt the tremors.  I went online to the US Geological website, in search of earthquake documentation.  Sure enough, at the time of my awakening there was a 2.6 tremor 14 miles from the US Virgin Islands.

  During the months of November and December, 2009, the earth shook repeatedly and I awoke again and again, night after night; and with each incident, I tracked the time.  Daily I went to the USGS website, verifying my logged tremors.

From my 2009 journal, I found this interesting note:  Sunday March 8, 2009; I dream I am with a lot of young people in a big multi-story building.  A terrible disaster occurs and the building is partially destroyed.  Suddenly the manifest presence of God comes…His Glory in a great cloud of engulfing, blinding light.  We all fall down, prostrate before His presence.  I hear the hurting, wounded people all around me.  I get up and begin to help them, praying for them as I dig them out of the rubble.  I realize my oldest son is also in this building and I find him.  We help more buried, hurting people.  The blinding Glory of the Lord comes again and we all fall down in His presence, unable to move.  I awaken at 8:14 a.m.

I have another interesting dream journal log entry from May 25, 2011; however the dream came to my daughter and not me (she was 12 at that time and we were still in Jacksonville, FL).  She came into my office in the late morning and she was very upset.  I realized she had been sleeping and I told her to come sit on my lap.  I asked her what was wrong.  She began to tell me about a great earthquake that shook the central part of our nation such that the monuments on Mount Rushmore split in half.  She was terrified by this event.

In August of 2011, after we moved to Virginia, the entire North East Coast shook with the 5.9 Mineral, VA quake.  This time I was wide awake.  I was walking through my living room when I heard the dreaded sound of the groaning earth.  It started out as a rumbling, and as the walls and the house began to move, I heard the glass rattle and my kids calling out in fear.  We live less than an hour away from the epicenter.  The rest of that week, strong tremors and aftershocks continued.  The shaking underneath Mineral and Louisa, Virginia has continued, even as recently as December, 2013.  My nighttime earth shaking experiences continue as well.

February 15, 2012, I dreamed I was sitting in my living room and suddenly a huge 8-9 ft man walks through the wall coming off the kitchen.  He was dressed in a full Scottish kilt, with the tam, the sash and a thick, white sweater underneath.  He gleamed, as if lit with his own light source.  He was crossing diagonally through the house, as if it wasn’t even there.  I yelped and cried out in great fear.  He stopped and looked at me, and then he called my name and began telling me the most shameful, secret things I had ever done.  His eyes burned with a fire I had never seen before.  I was crushed and terrified.  His thick Scottish accent made his words even sharper.

Suddenly I knew what to say to him.  “Yes, that was me,” I agreed, “before I let Jesus wash those sins away with His shed blood at the cross of Calvary.”

“You have answered correctly,” he replied, and he started to walk on through the wall.  I stopped him again and asked who he was and why he was walking through my house.  This time he stopped and he smiled.  “I am Towcheleth,” he replied, and then he disappeared through the hallway wall.

Greatly puzzled by this dream, I began trying to find the meaning of this name, which I only knew phonetically.  I searched name websites, name books and even general internet name searches.  One night several days after the dream, I was working on one of my website posts and I had a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance opened to the Hebrew dictionary.  Suddenly it occurred to me that the name this man gave me might be Hebrew.  I had to search the entire reference section and it wasn’t until I got to the very end, 150 pages later, I discovered Hebrew # 8431: towcheleth (to-kheh-leth); expectation – HOPE; from Hebrew #3176: yachal (yaw-chal); a primitive root; to wait; by implication, to be patient; to cause to have hope, to have hope, to make to hope; to be pained, stay, tarry, trust, wait.[3] Finally I understood, Towcheleth was the Angel of Hope and he walked through my house on February 15, 2012.

Early morning, before 7:00 a.m, January 5, 2014; I dreamed of a massive earthquake that struck the nation and other parts of the world simultaneously.  I heard the earthquake minutes before the terrifying shaking began.  Others around me were crying out, trying to figure out what was making the pitiful, painful, ear-splitting groaning.  I knew it was the earth and I began to warn them to hold on and get ready.  Cities were leveled.  The devastation was unlike anything I had ever seen on the news or even in some movies.  My house was damaged slightly but deemed safe to occupy, and many homeless neighbors began to show up asking for shelter.  Friends and business associates came seeking me out, trying to make sense of all that was taking place on the earth.

I awoke from that dream, troubled and stirred up by the magnitude of what I had seen and experienced.  One specific scripture comes to mind as I remember this dream:  “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”[4]

I decided to look up the word here for ‘groaning’ – Greek #4959: sustenazo (soos-ten-ad-zo); to moan jointly; i.e. experience a common calamity – groan together; from G#4862: sun (soon); primary preposition denoting union, with or together; by association, companionship, process… and from G#4727: stenazo (sten-ad-zo); to make or be in dire straits; to sigh, murmur, pray inaudibly; – with grief, groan, grudge, sigh.[5]

I have one last dream I want to share; arguably it is the most important dream I’ve ever received.  September 17, 2011:  I am walking along a busy, broad sidewalk in New York City.  There are great crowds all around, and out of the corner of my left eye, I see a vividly bright, white robed figure walk past me.  Suddenly I realize it is Jesus.  I have never seen Him in person, and I am struck with awe and amazement that He is there beside me.  He catches my eye and He acknowledges me with a glance of His eyes.  He starts to walk away, but I call out His name and He stops.

I am weeping with the realization that I can see Jesus.  I ask Him not to pass me by without at least letting me hug Him.  He is happy with this request and opens His right arm to me in a loving embrace.  His face is not beautiful, like the paintings.  His face is marked with terrible scars.  His hands are scarred.  His feet are scarred.  I am broken by those marks on His face, His hands and His feet.  He holds me for several minutes and I feel the most amazing love I’ve ever experienced.  It pours out from Him.  He doesn’t speak, but His eyes tell me He has to go, there are others He must see and touch.  I reluctantly let Him go and He takes one step and just disappears into the person walking directly in front of me.  I wake up.  Immediately I think of this scripture:  “…to them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles (non-Jewish believers) the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[6]   

Additional Notes:[7]

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.  I have set the Lord always before me.  Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.  Psalm 16:7-8

Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who minister by night in the house of the Lord. Psalm 134:1

This is what the Lord says – your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:  “I AM the Lord your God who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.” Isaiah 48:17

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what He commands.  Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger.  Zephaniah 2:3

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout in triumph O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your King is coming to you.  He is just and endowed with salvation…He will speak peace to the nations…and His dominion will be from sea to sea… As for you also, because of the Blood of My Covenant with you, I have set your prisoners free…return to your fortress, O prisoners of HOPE; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.  Zechariah 9:9-12