The dream of Peter recorded in the Bible, in the Book of Acts, is perhaps the most groundbreaking scripture of all scriptures. It happened in the first stages of the spread of Christianity, not long after the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of Christ and initial growth of the church before it spread to include Romans or Greeks. Peter would possibly never have preached to Romans or Greeks directly or allowed the church to include such people if it had not been for this dream. It was while he was praying that he fell into a kind of trance sleep and saw a vision. Now move forward two thousand years to today when Christians tend to insist no dream can ever change Christian doctrine or add anything to Christian mainstream beliefs and teachings which is contrary to what is found in scripture. Yet this ignores the dream of Peter. He saw in his vision dream a cloth full of unclean animals the eating of which is explicitly forbidden in scripture. Yet despite the scriptures and in direct contradiction to them, Peter was told by the vision from Heaven to “kill and eat” these animals. In spite of his protests the heavenly vision told him not to regard as unclean what God called clean. Peter accepted it. Yes Peter always tested visions so as never to be deceived by misleading spiritual experiences, and taught doing so. Yet Peter did not use scripture to rule out accepting this vision or reject it as phoney. He accepted it as coming from God and accepted that God may overturn scripture. Wow! Eat that!
