Throughout the Bible we find that God reveals himself to people through dreams and visions. In fact, dreams and visions are used interchangeable in the Bible. The classic passage about this is Job 33:15–16, where we read this: “He speaks in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they lie in their beds. He whispers in their ears and terrifies them with warnings.” And how often God spoke through dreams and visions! Daniel had dreams and visions in the night (Dan.2:19; 7:2,7,13). The apostle Paul also had a dream which he calls a vision in the night (Ap.gj.16,9; 18,9). As we go back through the Old Testament we find that God constantly spoke like this. Through these visions and dreams God told people to do certain things, or warned them of things which He was going to do, and the result was that they realised that God is. It was God, who gave them the vision or the dream or the warning or the prophecy, or whatever it was, and therefore they were revelations, they were proofs of the being of God.

The prophet Joel is prophesying about the coming Messianic age which is also the age of the Spirit. In that age the Spirit will be poured out upon all people and dreams, visions and prophesies are available to young and old, sons and daughters, men and women alike. We are living in the age when the prayer of Moses is being fulfilled, “I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit upon them all!” God still wants to give many visions and dreams to his people (Hos. 12:10), for God wants a prophetic people.
A prophetic people, a covenant community, are living in an intimate relationship with God and know what he is thinking about the present situation and what he is planning to do in days ahead. The prophetic community are hearing and understanding what God is saying now, and they are living the word of God as well as preaching it to people around them. The prophetic community dream dreams from the heart of God and see visions of God. They are governed by prophetic visions and are zealous for God in everything they do.