Beginning at least with his first dream back in December 2019, Dana Coverstone’s central message for the church in America has been “brace yourself.” This message has surfaced repeatedly in many of his dreams. Sometimes it has been emphasized by repetition, while other times additional warnings have been added, like “Do not stop bracing for the storm will not pass.”
In this blog I want to talk about the message, “brace yourself,” and ask the question: is God trying to reach the church in America with this message? But this is not just a blog about Dana Coverstone’s dreams, this is a message that I think can be applied to many aspects and areas of our lives.
If “brace yourself” is God’s command for the church today, then we need to heed His warning. If we hear God’s commands but don’t follow them, then we are being disobedient, and we are sinning. If you love God then you don’t want to disobey and sin against Him.
And so it is important to know whether or not God is trying to get a message to us. Is God saying “brace yourself” to the church – or not? He is either saying it or He is not saying it – and that is what I want to take a look at today.
Let me begin with a very short bible lesson. I want to discuss how God uses and works with reality.
In Mark chapter 2 Jesus was in a house in Capernaum. He was teaching and a large crowd had gathered around Him. There was apparently a local man who was paralyzed, and his friends were seeking a way to get him to Jesus. I’m sure you know the story. They climbed to the roof, tore an opening in it, and then lowered the man to Jesus on his mat.
When Jesus saw the man He did an interesting thing. He said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Immediately the teachers of the law who were present that day began to think to themselves, “hey, wait a second. Who does this guy think he is? Only God can forgive sin!” And, they were correct.
Jesus knew their objection and reacted to intercept it before anyone actually voiced it. He turned to the religious leaders and asked them a rhetorical question. He said: “Which is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven you, or get up, take up your mat and walk?’
Now, I think there is general agreement with most Bible scholars and teachers about what Jesus meant there. When He asked, ‘which is easier to say’ Jesus seems to recognize that it’s rather EASY for anyone to SAY to someone ‘your sins are forgiven’ because it’s impossible for anyone to determine if their sins actually were forgiven. In other words, no one can document if this actually occurred in reality. I’m not suggesting that forgiveness doesn’t happen, rather that it’s just sort of an invisible thing, if you will.
But to say to someone who is paralyzed “get up, take up your mat and walk” is a very different thing. In a sense it’s much harder because it would be a very simple thing to document in reality. If a man who was formerly paralyzed gets up and walks then they could see and experience that. They could measure his steps, listen to his footfalls, they could challenge him to a race. His walking would become part of their reality. Unlike forgiveness which is invisible, the walking would be visible.
After asking this rhetorical question Jesus then said, “so that you know that I have the power to forgive sins,” He turned to the man and said, “get up, take up your mat and walk.”
In other words, to prove that He could do the “easier” thing, he showed that He could do the “hard “thing. To show us that He was capable of doing the invisible thing, He did the visible thing.
This is a great lesson on so many different levels. However, for the purpose of this blog I just want to concentrate on one thing from it: how God deals with our reality.
I believe that God created us with a unique relationship to the world around us. This world exists in reality and He has created us to know that. We have the ability to sense reality and be cognizant of reality. And our relationship to that reality is how we begin to understand truth. In fact, a very good, working definition of truth is whatever lines up with reality is true.
Because of this unique relationship that we have with reality, I believe that God recognizes the struggle we would have accepting anything that does not line up with reality. That’s why Jesus healed the man in the physical – because He wanted the people to understand that He could be trusted to do something they couldn’t see by doing something they could see.
Oftentimes Jesus was challenged to show some sort of sign in order to prove that He was who He was obviously claiming to be. In Matthew 12, when the Pharisees asked Jesus for one of these signs, He gave a somewhat cryptic answer: just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so shall the Son of Man be three days and nights in the heart of the earth.
It’s not hard to figure out what He meant there. Even the Pharisees got it. Jesus was obviously pointing toward his resurrection as a visible proof to his invisible identity. He pointed toward something that would become part of their reality: the empty tomb.
Now, what does all of this have to do with our topic of ‘brace yourself?’ Well, Dana Coverstone’s message of ‘brace yourself’ is obviously a message of special revelation. In other words, the Bible does not say that the church in American in the year 2021 should be bracing itself. When a person steps forward with a message of special revelation, they are in essence saying something that is invisible to us. We can’t necessarily know that it’s true. It may be from God, or it may not be from God.
I believe that God knows full well our relationship with reality. He created us in a way to understand truth that way. When a person steps up claiming a special revelation from God, I believe that God knows we will naturally be inclined to question if it is true. In fact, I believe that He wants us to do that.
The problem with the message of ‘brace yourself’ is that we can’t verify it. As I’ve pointed out in previous videos, Pastor Coverstone’s dreams did not come true in reality. Even Dana himself has admitted that the things he saw in his dreams did not literally come true.
“But wait,” you say, “his dreams were never meant to be fulfilled literally, they’re figurative.” And that’s the problem.
What this suggests is that God, knowing our relationship with reality, is sending a special message that He knows – we – can’t – verify. And as I’ve pointed out, that’s not the way God works with us. He knows that we are going to naturally question anything as true that we can’t document as true. If something is figuratively fulfilled then it isn’t literally fulfilled –and if it’s not literally fulfilled then we can’t test it. We are left with no way of knowing if it is true.
Because this goes against what we would expect God to do, I think we can safely reach the conclusion that the message “brace yourself” is not one specifically from God. God did not say “brace yourself” through Dana’s dreams.
I believe that the lesson from this is a practical one, and can be applied to more than just Pastor Coverstone’s dreams. I think it can be applied to any situation in which someone is claiming a special revelation from God.
Now, I’m NOT referring to those revelations that come from God to you about you. For instance, maybe you feel God is telling you to go back to school, or take a new job, or launch a new ministry. What I am referring to are those special revelations that someone claims they got from God, but is about what you are supposed to do.
For example, maybe your pastor, or a television preacher, claims that God gave them special revelation about what you are supposed to with your money. Or, maybe your pastor is telling you that God wants you to get involved in a certain ministry that you don’t necessarily feel led to get involved in. There have even been instances where a pastor has claimed that God has given them special instructions about what members of their congregation are to be doing sexually – usually with them.
This type of thing happens a lot. That’s why this message is important. We need to understand how God works with and in reality to confirm special revelation so that we can know for certain that something is objectively true.
Whenever you hear a message, which suggests God is not working in reality, then you can know that that message is not from God.
Dane Cramer is a backpacker, follower-of-Jesus blogger, jail chaplain, amateur filmmaker, Podcast host, and author of two books: Romancing the Trail and The Nephilim: A Monster Among Us , and has worked as an investigator for over 35 years.