ANGELS IN DREAMS AND VISIONS
Many times in the Bible we see how angels have been involved in delivering messages from the Lord in heaven, to His people on earth. While this might be obvious, since the name malak (Hebrew), and angelos (Greek) means “messenger”, it's also fascinating to see how often angels actually appear in
Angelic appearances in dreams.
It's a wondrous thing to ponder that God would communicate to us through dreams. That in itself is something worthy of ref lection. But how much more extraordinary is it that He should send an angel to us inside that dream, and then even talk to us in it! This is truly staggering.
Imagine it for a moment. God wants to speak to you, so He arranges you to have a dream. Then as if that's not remarkable enough, He sends an angel into your dream (somehow), and then gets the angel to give you a message! Truly amazing.
Note this example from Matthew 1:20
But while he thought about these things, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit”.
The question is, why did God bother to give Joseph a dream with an angel in it? Why didn't He just get the angel to appear before Joseph directly?
Perhaps it depends on the character of the recipient. Maybe Joseph was of such a personality that an “outside” angelic appearance might not have been helpful to him. Perhaps he might've been sceptical and disbelieving. Could it be the Joseph was a very reflective type of man, so that an angelic message within a dream would've had greater impact upon him than an external visitation?
I've always sensed that Joseph was like that, reflective and sensitive. S o maybe he was much more receptive to what happened to him because it was explained through a dream. It could've been that Joseph already had a very fertile dream -life so this was the obvious medium for the Lord to choose.
This also