Dream of Dangerous Deception

I was just feeling a couple of days ago – lighter. I had a feeling of normalcy and I thought ‘I could just jump in my car right now and go about an ordinary day, with no worry at all.’ Of course, I didn’t, because we are still in lockdown. I believe God quickly showed me that this feeling of complacency was not from him. I had a dream – I was standing on a table, looking down at a very fat python on the floor. It was un-natural in that the colours were khaki green and red – at least in this country, those are not the normal colours of a python. I was also thinking to myself that the patterns on it resembled those of a venomous snake, rather than a python. But I felt safe on my table, thinking ‘as long as I can see it and it’s down there, I’m okay.’ But then I wondered, ‘where is its head?’ I was peering at the coils of it and realised that some of them were unseen, underneath the table. When I turned around, its head was raised up and looking at me – it had been watching me from behind the whole time.

This is actually the second such dream I’ve had in the last couple of weeks. The first one, a few days before, was a cobra – it was disguised as the branch of a tree, it was abnormally broad, and it was covered with green leaves. Only when it launched itself towards me did I realise it was actually a snake. It latched on to another man, who seemed to be trying to convince me to take hold of it, and I managed to shut my doors just in time. In this country, cobras don’t hang out in trees – they prefer holes and rocks.

I never want to present these dreams in a way like, ‘thus says the Lord’ – I would always encourage believers to pray on everything they hear, whoever it is from. I say that especially in relation to these dreams, because I’ve simultaneously heard prophetic messages from South Africa saying that God will work in miraculous ways and everything will turn out fine. I actually think both could be true – we will be fine, IF we listen carefully to God’s instruction and remain in close relationship with him? I don’t know. But if these dreams don’t play out, the worst that’s happened is I’ve made a fool of myself, and whoever reads them has exercised caution. I don’t mind being a fool – I would rather that than receive a warning and not warn others (I don’t want to make that mistake again).

The Interpretation: The elements in the dreams speak of deceit and danger. In both cases, the snakes appeared “safe”, but they were deadly. In both cases, they had abnormal characteristics – the python was the wrong colour and it had the wrong markings, making it both a constrictor and a venomous creature. The cobra was in a tree, disguised by leaves.

It seems to me that while our attention is drawn to one side of the ‘table’, (in this case, probably the virus and the lockdowns and the economy), there is something happening on ‘the other side of the table’ that is more sinister. It is something that could cause confusion, because it is not normal, it is a combination of things, and that makes it more dangerous.

Another thing in the dream was ‘we won’t see it coming’ – we will think we are okay and safe, and then it will be a very sudden attack from a place we weren’t expecting, a place we weren’t looking at, but it had its eyes on us the whole time. I was thinking about this dream as I thanked God for the beautiful blue sky this morning and I heard in my mind, ‘it will change in a moment’.

Lastly, Satan is repeatedly in scripture referred to as ‘the serpent’. The scriptures that came to mind were ‘be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves’, and ‘my people die for lack of knowledge’. It seems the enemy is planning a surprise attack, and we should pray about this, for God to open our eyes to see it and for Him to protect us. This dream did not reveal a time frame.