The Fish Dream
4/12/25 6:09 PM
Solitary Man
solitaryman.substack.com
20250412
I had a dream last night. God seems to use the former city that I lived in as a backdrop for several of my dreams, and it was no different last night. It is not a place that I really ever think about while awake, so the fact that it is featured in my dreams so often is one of the ways that I believe that God is indicating to me that the dream is from him. And if the details of the dream stick with me well after I get up, that is another sign. If it’s just a run of the mill dream, the details begin to disappear as soon as I get out of bed.
In this dream, I knew that I was supposed to be at a certain address that I remember was featured in one of my previous dreams. It was an address that was never my personal residence, so it didn’t represent my home. The first thing I remember is that I found myself at the very fringe of the city. While I somehow knew the direction I had to go in order to get to the right place, I also knew that I had to walk in a straight line to get there. I had no recollection as to how I had gotten so far off course.
I started to walk. It took time. By continuing to go in a straight line, I managed to get where I was supposed to get.
When I got there, the only thing I ended up doing was checking out and fixing my fish aquariums! In the past, I had several aquariums up and running, so this was a familiar scene. But once again, I have not had aquariums for about 10 years, and never think about them, so this was another hint that the Lord was speaking, rather than something out of the imagination of my heart.
Most of the fish were out of water. They were being suffocated in black garbage bags, with just enough water to keep them barely alive! In my haste I started to throw them back into the aquariums willy nilly. When I was done, I realized that I had thrown a few of the biggest ones into the smallest aquarium, while one of the larger aquariums has only a couple fish in it, and had much more room to accommodate the larger fish.
So I had to get out my net and try to catch those large ones so I could transfer them to the correct aquarium. But suddenly it seems that the aquarium I had put them in now looked different than what it initially appeared. It seemed to have gotten much larger. Try as I may, I just couldn’t seem to reach them. My arm and my net seemed too short to grab them. I simply couldn’t reach these misplaced ones. Then I woke up.
I believe this whole dream represents the poor souls who are in the wrong places in this Laodicean church age. The first thing I remember was finding myself at the utter fringe of the city, with no idea how I got there. This represents the moment a battered and bruised, deceived child of God has their spiritual eyes opened to the fact that the church where they are at is at the utter fringes of Christianity. It may still technically be a part of the city, but it is at the outskirts, and may have even been classified as out of the city limits. I could not say for sure if the place I was at would even have been considered part of the city or not. So it is with some of these strange houses of worship. Their doctrines and practices are so bizarre, so out of the mainstream, only God knows if it is even a legitimate church.
In addition to immediately knowing that I was at the fringe and in the wrong place, I also knew which direction I had to go, and that it was a straight line to get there. This represents the fact that this was a genuine believer, still able to discern right from wrong. Once their eyes were opened, they knew they were in the wrong place, and they knew in which direction they had to go in order to get into the right place. They also knew that the road was straight and narrow, not wide and meandering, if they wanted to reach their destination.
I had to walk to get there. There were no other transportation options available, nor did it even enter my mind to call a cab, or take a bus. Even though it would be a long walk, walking was my only option. This represents the fact that there are no shortcuts back into the will of God. No one can carry you there. If you try to arrive where you’re supposed to go by using shortcuts, or letting others do it for you, you will never reach your destination. You must do the walk, and you alone. No one can do the will of God for you.
When I finally got to the right place, it was all about the fish! Jesus said that we are to be fishers of men. These represent the souls that the Lord of the harvest commands us to go fish for and bring into the house of the Lord, which is the body of Christ.
The fact that the fish were in black plastic bags, suffocating with barely enough water to survive, represents how the false churches are strangling the sheep. By preaching just enough truth to give them an air of legitimacy, they manage to deceive the sheep into staying in a toxic environment, weakening them to such an extent that they do not have the strength to do anything but try to survive.
So many sheep are being slowly strangled in these false temples, led by the wolves and the goats. They preach doctrines of demons, weakening these souls so they have no other thought but how to survive this abusive environment. It took someone coming along and lending a helping hand in order for them to escape and be taken to a healthy place where they could recover.
The fact that the fish were so quickly tossed into aquariums, without any regard to appropriateness, may represent the dangers of simply focusing on exposing the bad, and not taking enough care with the victims. In other words, some are quick to point out the false teachers and the false doctrines, and rightly so. But the priority should always be the hurting fish themselves. Just getting them out of the bad place, with no thought or care as to where they now should go, or how to properly minister to them, is not enough.
I believe that when I had recognized the error of how I handled the fish, that was a sign that our priority should always be how to bind up the brokenhearted, without neglecting the obligation to free them from toxic swamps of false teachers and false houses of worship. But I wasn’t stopping to consider where I should place these fish after I freed them from the black garbage bag, and simply tossed them into the nearest, most convenient aquarium. When I realized my error, I found that the nearest, most convenient aquarium suddenly had changed shape. It became so big that now I could not rescue these fish and place them where I knew they would have the healthiest environment to thrive in.
This may represent the fact that the victims of spiritual abuse should be our priority, much more than the exposure of the perpetrators. But also that we need to have patience with them. We need to seek the counsel of the Lord every step of the way. Don’t simply expose the wicked, yank the fish out, and toss them anywhere most convenient. Take the time to discern exactly how to minister to them. If you are too impatient or hard hearted to want to bother with them, when your conscience smites you later on, you may find that they are now out of reach and you cannot help them, even if you want to. You may only get one chance to rescue these poor souls, so take pains to do it properly, even if it means an inconvenience to yourself.
God is exposing the wicked and the corrupt that are masquerading as his servants as never before. In their wake is a sea of battered, broken, and bruised fish. Fish that Jesus shed his blood and died on the cross for. Let us be the hands and the feet of Jesus. Let us prioritize the seeking after those who have been scattered, those who have been torn and bruised.
Let us focus more on the victim than on the abuser. God will deal with the evil ones. He expects us to go and seek and minister to those broken souls who have been left in their wake.
Solitary Man
Photos courtesy Depositphotos
