What do you think about following advice recieved from someone known to be dead in a dream? You dream about having a conversation with someone close who recently died and in the dream the dead person gives you advice that you then decide to follow when you wake up. What advice would you give in such a situation as this?

/Thomas

Truth is truth regardless of the source. If its good advice, follow it, as long as it's not mingled with falshoods or unknownables. For example, if I dreamed something like that and the advise was to buy a certain company's stock, I think I might investegate the company, but I wouldn't base any decision to buy on the dream.

Don't draw any conclusions about the significance of the dream. A person's psychology is especially affected at a time such as a recent loss of someone close. Too many underlying/unknown causes for a dream exist to take much faith in a it.

Jeff

Anyone else have anything to say about this?

/Thomas

Ellen White wrote:

"While professing to bring the living into communication with the dead, Satan exercises his bewitching influence upon their minds.
He has power even to bring before men the appearance of their departed friends. The counterfeit is perfect; the familiar look, the words, the tone, are reproduced with marvelous distinctness. Many are comforted with the assurance that their loved ones are enjoying the bliss of Heaven; and without suspicion of danger, they give ear to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils...

The pretended visitants from the world of spirits sometimes utter cautions and warnings which prove to be correct. Then, as confidence is gained, they present doctrines which directly undermine faith in the Scriptures. With an appearance of deep interest in the well-being of their friends on earth, they insinuate the most dangerous errors. The fact that they state some truths, and are able at times to foretell future events, gives to their statements an appearance of reliability; and their false teachings are accepted by the multitudes as readily, and believed as implicitly, as if they were the most sacred truths of the Bible...

Satan beguiles men now, as he beguiled Eve in Eden, by exciting a desire to obtain forbidden knowledge...

But none need be deceived by the lying claims of Spiritualism. God has given the world sufficient light to enable them to discover the snare. If there were no other evidence, it should be enough for the Christian that the spirits make no difference between righteousness and sin..."

Spirit of Prophecy Vol. 4 (1884 Great Controversy) 370-375.

From the chapter entitled 'Spiritualism', renamed 'Can Our Dead Speak to Us' in the current Great Controversy (1911 edition).

For example, should I receive a dream to invest in the stock market, I am forewarned by Scripture not to lay up for myself treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal...Matthew 6:19 (i.e. Enron, Worldcom, pension plans, etc.)

Gordon

Just as the Lord can speak to us through a dream, the devil can also do the same thing, so beware!

Thomas is getting to another Ellen White quote different from Gordans, where she would get advice from James in dreams after his death.

But all this means is that her mind was focused on what James would say if he was alive and that knowing the essence of who James was and thus since God does not intrude into dreams, as that would be forcing the will, God could offer advice in a way she was open to and where her thoughts were.

Kevin got the circumbstances right. I read a webpage that refered to said Ellen passage as "necromancy". I thought that was a bit of a stretch but was still interested to know if the general overview of the event would generate positive or negative comments. Mentioning the Ellen source would bias the replies so I omited that until later. But now Kevin posted it..

The points that caught my attention was that A) she treated the dream as sent from God, and B) God generally communicated with Ellen trough angles or visions and of course trought the bible as with all of us.
And as pointed out, while remembering the dead ones is natural, communication with "them" is forbidden...

/Thomas

Impossible, yes, but deceptively possible, also yes.

Thats why I added the quotation marks. Whomever would be the other part of the communication would be either from God or from the devil.