End Times dream

I know I am skipping the conclusion of my previous post, but I had a very disturbing dream last night that I am not sure what to make of.

A few things first about me and dreams:
- I usually dream in color.
- Sometimes I can even recall smells and tastes.
- I dream pretty often, or at least I remember them more than most people do.
- I tend to fight insomnia in my life and have tried everything from melatonin, white noise, perscription Ambien, praying, natural herbal drinks and extracts, black-out blinds, alcohol on occasion, Tylenol PM, and Simply Sleep. Not all at once of course, I'd be dead. They work with varying degrees of success and failures.
- I have very violent dreams many times. Usually involving injury, death, or killings. I have dreamt of being stabbed, being shot, falling, crashing in a plane, crashing in a car, bleeding out. Not all of my dreams are of this nature, but I can remember very few 'pleasant' dreams.

Lately I have been suffering under a lot of stress. Even though I wish to release my stress and worries over to Christ, I think I often take them back under control. I pray that I learn to release my fears and my anxieties, but that is easier said than done. The last time I went in for a physical, the doctor said my blood pressure is a little elevated at times. I know I suffer from stress, much of it self-induced, but that's another topic for another day.

Recently my church has been preaching about Joseph from the book of Genesis. It appears that Joseph had the gift of interpretation of dreams from God, and always gave God credit in this area. In Pharoah's court he accurately interpreted dreams regarding two of Pharoah's esteemed servants and also the state of the Egyptian empire and gained favor in God's (and the Pharoah's) eyes.

I personally don't have this gift, though I have often wondered if God did give me the gift of discernment. I'm usually pretty accurate on my reading of people and situations, sorta like a sixth sense or intuition about things if they are a blessing or not, but it could also just be coincidence or luck.

Last night I had a dream about 'The' Rapture, you know.....the one were all believers are instantly whisked off to heaven and the non-believers are left-behind to endure the 7 year tribulation. Yeah, I never ever had that dream before or anything similar to it in my life. Yet last night I dreamt in very vivid detail what happened, and I was one of those 'left behind', very distraught because it seemed like I was the only one who knew what had just happened, and yet I was not taken away.

I was walking down a street of some metropolis and I recall others around me going about their business. In my head I heard a narration, it sounded like me talking to myself and commenting silently on the events as they transpired. I sensed something was about to happen and I felt a sense of dread, not neccesarily fear. The sky took on a life of its own, suddenly getting brighter and brighter, almost as if a nuclear blast went of an illuminated and engulfed everything around me in an ever expanding wave, and just as suddenly contracted to darkness.

In my mind and my heart, I had known I just experienced The Rapture, that God took all his children right then and there, but I was still standing, and it was dark. It was dark in the way as if the sun and the moon and the stars had all just dissapeared or been shut off and they were not comming back.

I then realized that there were people around me, the sames ones on the street that were previously going about their business. I heard them talking to one another, wondering what just happened. I recall people not knowing what to do either, perhaps just lay down where they were until this passed, to save themselves from any further and unseen danger.

I remember someone stating that water should be a priority, and that we should band together and move about looking for somewhere safe to huddle about. I know many of used opened our cell phones for a source of light as we walked together, the whole time in my head knowing that mankind as we knew it only had 7 years left and it was going to get much worse and our chances for survival were slim, and I again I wondered why God did not take me.

A jeep approached from the distance, and again I noted that the headlights were more or less the only source of light other than our cell phones, and I wondered how much longer they would last before we were in perpetual darkness.

I woke up shortly thereafter and have been pondering all day what had triggered such a dream. What does it mean? Does it even have meaning? Was it my own mind playing tricks on me, or was God trying to get my attention about something else?

Not sure.

While the dream itself was an experience, it is not one I wish to repeat anytime soon.