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A book about the revelatory power of dreams actually began with a dream.
It was the summer of 2000. Mary Jane Woodger, a professor of church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, was in Manchester, England, when one night she had a “disturbing dream.”
In her dream, Woodger and her deceased father were driving through the English countryside in an American car but on the wrong side of the road. As they sped along, Woodger’s father explained in detail that her sister was in trouble. The dream was short but so upsetting that Woodger awoke around 3 a.m. and immediately used a pay phone to track down her sister in the United States. Eventually Woodger got her sister on the line and she confirmed what her father had described.
“I felt blessed to connect with her,” Woodger said later. “I left that experience very grateful for that dream that had been revelation in my life.”
Woodger’s dream was the first in a series of events that resulted in her teaming up with fellow BYU church history and doctrine professors Craig L. Manscill and Kenneth L. Alford to publish “Dreams as Revelation” (Deseret Book, 284 pages), a new volume that looks at dreams from the scriptures, the lives of general authorities and individual church members, and examines them within the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“Our Heavenly Father communicates to his children in various ways, both in our waking hours and when we slumber,” Manscill said. “Thus, we need to pay more attention to our dreams, recognizing their source and recording our revelatory dreams for our posterity to read. This is a self-guidance book on understanding dreams as revelation.”
The trio of authors researched and organized these dreams into 11 categories, including dreams of the Savior, of missionary work and conversion, of family history and temple work, of warning, of instruction, of callings, of comfort, of death, of opposition and of prophecy, in addition to scriptural dreams and the many dreams recorded by Joseph Smith’s family.
To read the full article on the Deseret News, CLICK HERE.
