As I reflected on the various kinds of atheism and agnosticism–both secular and religious–I went to bed sort of disturbed in my mind. I prayed in tongues and felt God’s presence, and then fell asleep. After several hours of sleep, I had a dream.

I dreamed that I was high up on a porch that was thousands of feet above the ground. I wanted to get down from it. I went to walk to the edge of the porch where there was a tremendously long ladder which went down into oblivion. As I approached the ladder, a bullying boy, began to taunt me and push me aside, because he wanted to use the ladder. Initially I was repulsed at his bullying, but when I saw that he was shoving me so near to this cliff, I backed up and let him have the ladder. It then turned nighttime. I walked down the walkway quite a bit to be in a safe area. As the bully climbed down the ladder, he fell, and got caught in some ropes hanging from the side. He strangled and died.

Then I turned around. Up on a curb there was a guy I remembered from high school. His name was Nathan. He was a nice guy, but he was not a born again saved Christian. He was a Jew, a good Jew, who lived by the Torah, but had not accepted Jesus as his Messiah. I was trying to tell Nathan what happened to the bully, but he was so engaged in thought he wasn’t hearing me. He dived as if into a pool, but went face down on the wooden floor! He died on impact! When I saw this, I looked to the ground and wept, and saw a tear come from my face and fall on a nail on the floor. And I heard the music of a worship song, speaking about how we need Jesus’ presence in our lives.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Proverbs 14:12).

The bully was an atheist. The Jew was a religious agnostic or practical atheist. The one was mean, the other was nice. But both of their ways led to death, because neither went the way of Christ.