“Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.”
Jude now turns from his three illustrations of apostasy in the Old Testament to describe four earmarks of apostates in his own day.
Likewise
Jude compares the apostates of his day to the apostates of the Old Testament (vv. 5-7). In the face of the fact that Old Testament apostates underwent severe punishment, apostates of Jude’s day went pell-mell into apostasy themselves.
also these dreamers
Apostates live in the unreal world of dreams. Since they do not live in objectivity, but in imagination, they do not face reality. They do not need to live under any authority except the authority of their own making. The only other time the word “dream” occurs in the New Testament is in Acts 2:17, where Luke uses it for prophetic dreams. Jude may mean that these apostates claimed special revelations for themselves. They justified aberrant doctrine by claims to direct revelations. These direct revelations produced falsehoods. They lived in unreal fantasy worlds of their own making.
PRINCIPLE:
False teachers reject objective truth in favor of subjective experience.
APPLICATION:
Many people spin their theological ideas out of their own web. Personal divine revelations today are unreliable. Because someone claims to have a dream does not make it true. The only reliable source of revelation is the Bible. God gave us an exhaustive, unabridged revelation of Himself and everything He wants us to know to operate in this world. He put it in writing so that it could not be distorted.
“I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in My name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ ” Je 23:25
Question, to say dreams today are unreliable raises some questions for me because in Acts 2:16-18 “No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “ ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”
I do not believe all dreams are are meant to be revelations from God, but isn’t that a blanket statement to say today they are all unreliable? I agree, if you are saying that alone they are, but I understood it to look to biblical resources and the Holy Spirit for discernment.
1John 4:1-3 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
1 Thessalonians 5:20-22 “Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.”
Maybe I’m not understanding something or misinterpreting, could you expound on your statement so I have clearer understanding.
Thank you
Jade,
The issue has to do with the closing of the canon of Scripture. To put it another way, did God give revelation after the last book of the Bible was written. Overwhelming evangelical scholars say that God did not give further revelation after He finished writing of the Bible. That is why the Book of Mormon is heresy, among other cultic bibles.
As I said in the commentary Acts 2:17 is the only other time the Greek word for “dreams” occurs in the New Testament. That occurrence is a quotation from Joel, the Word of God. See my commentary on Acts 2 to see the interpretation. The purpose of Acts 2 was to show Israel that God had made a transition from the Old Testament economy to the New Testament economy, from Israel to the church. Acts 2 is when the church began.
There is no evidence whatever in Scripture that God speaks to people today through dreams. That does not mean that God cannot do it for a specific purpose, but it is not a normative principle from Scripture, especially that it is in any sense revelation.
See my commentaries on 1 Jn 4:1-3 and 1 Th 5:20-22 to answer your references to those passages.
Note this formal statement on canonicity: https://versebyversecommentary.com/articles/doctrine/closing-of-the-canon/