On December 13th, 2011 I experienced a vivid dream that made a well known truth very real to me. It occurred during the Christmas season when we’re often thinking about “Peace on Earth”. It had to do with the two phrases “Peace with God” and the “Peace of God” -- very different yet both needed and to be desired.

In my dream I found myself in a huge educational building. I noticed a library, lecture rooms, study rooms, and a large student lounge area with halls of dorm rooms. It struck me that I hadn’t seen televisions or computers anywhere. This combined with the view out of a window revealing a nostalgic winter scene with horse drawn carriages and people walking – but no cars – made me wonder where I was.

I joined a group of students busy talking among themselves and I sensed they lived a simpler, peaceful life. Finally I questioned one of the students who had just noticed me. “Where are we and what year is it?” After looking at me strangely he said we were in a university dorm room and just entering a new century, the year 1900. “Where have you been?” he asked. By this time the rest of the group had stopped talking, astonished when I told him I normally live in the year 2011 – more than 100 years in their future! They wanted to know what life was like for me. I started by naming various new technologies.

I mentioned most people have radio, television, telephones and cell phones. We can instantly communicate with anyone anywhere in the world! People commute many thousands of miles each year in their cars. They affordably fly on Jumbo Jets all over the world. The gathering crowd grew as I continued about I-Pods, computers and the Internet. In my time information is easy to find. In their wide eyed amazement I understood that this was more than they could imagine. I said life is great!

I listed dramatic happenings in history. I spoke of our two world wars ending with the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. They were shocked and saddened to hear about all this destruction and death and to think all this would happen in their generation or their children’s. I was on a roll and told them that thousands of lives would also be lost through earth quakes, tsunamis, famines and - oh yes - the stock market was soon going to crash followed by a Great Depression. I was beginning to think that the last century hadn’t been as rosy as I first thought.

Someone asked if I attended church and I answered yes, but was sad to say that many people in my world have forgotten about God or just don’t have time for Him. A couple was soon to be married and I warned them to be sure of their love for one another because in my time many marriages end in divorce. They asked whether crime has decreased. I said I wasn’t sure and I spoke of shootings in schools and in the streets of our cities.

The students’ faces began to show looks of sadness and pity for me and the people of the future. Then their pity turned to crying for one another realizing that their present world was propelling them into this future. I started to sob uncontrollably and then I awoke with much to think about.

Many wonderful advancements have been made by those of the human race with brilliant minds and eager hands! Without taking away from that, the fact remains that the condition of the human race is somehow faulty and in need of major alteration. Clearly the heart of man was not getting better.

We compare our actions, as either better or worse than others, but that comparison is solely based on human standards. Clarity comes by comparing our human selves with God. God is perfect and holy. It makes us want to look back to see where things went wrong. In the beginning God created the world entirely good, perfect and everyone was happy including the first man and woman. It took just one act of disobedience by these two to cancel that perfection! By disobeying they chose to do the one thing that God had said would be bad for them.

The choice had been made. The entire human race was thereby infected by this wrong choice. They had become helpless – never to be able to regain perfection or friendship with God on their own. God’s love moved Him to act because He desires peace with man. God, Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, took on Himself all of the curse and filth of the sin of the human race – the bad things done both mistakenly and purposely and even the neglect of not doing good when they should have. He paid the price perfection demanded, namely, the spilling of His perfect, innocent blood to the death - instead of requiring eternal death of imperfect mankind.

He came alive again because He was able to pay mankind’s sin-debt in full. The imperfection of our human condition and of the world in general will always be with us until God makes all things new. However, to anyone who will ask God for it, to them He will give immediate forgiveness of sin and an entirely new godly nature. The only way for this to happen is for us to simply believe He can and then to pray asking Him to do it for us! Romans 5:1 is clear. This is how we get Peace with God. The peace of God is given to us by God as we put our trust in Him! Philippians 4:6-7 tells that story.

As I thought of my dream I realized again how much we as individuals need both “Peace with God” and the “Peace of God”. Jack Gault is a Spiritual Leader at

Bethel Bible Chapel in Shelburne.