Today Joseph is released from prison and brought before Pharaoh to do what none of the Egyptian magicians were able to do. Pharaoh had a dream which Joseph told him represented seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of famine.
In some parts of Western Christianity these days there is a big interest in miraculous signs, interpretation of dreams, and other spiritual gifts. Joseph's ability to tell what the dreams meant is often cited as an authority for all of God's people to expect similar understanding and to find authoritative words of God in dreams and natural phenomena. But something we should realize is that in Joseph's time God had not provided his people with a definitive written word which could be studied and pondered. We can therefore expect that he would have been more likely to reveal principles and events to people by means of natural revelation and supernatural dreams, visions, and utterances.
This brings us to a second important point about natural revelation and the kind of revelation we receive in dreams and visions. Christians universally confess with the Scripture that God has revealed himself in nature. We can see his power, his intricate workmanship, his provision, all around us. No doubt people sometimes have dreams that are downright prophetic in nature. Yet interpretation of all these matters is dependent on how the interpreter understands them. As Pharaoh's magicians didn't know what the dream was about but Joseph did, so also we may expect that we would understand sometimes but sometimes not. We certainly tend to filter all we see through our own experience, which is not necessarily a reliable filter. Add a slightly vague revelation to an unreliable filter and you can see that the recipient of God's revelation will want to be very cautious indeed.
The Scripture, God's revealed and definitive word about himself and his creation, gives us a much more clear revelation. Should we discount dreams altogether? Certainly not. But we are far better advised to spend our time seeking understanding of our world through good understanding of the Scripture. Let us look to the Word of God and see what God has done. Knowing this we are very well prepared to understand what he is doing in our world right now.
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