Dear Doves,

     On the morning of December 11, 2006, I had an incredibly short dream that I think may be from the Lord. I have been reluctant to share it with you, however, because God has never spoken to me in a dream before. I generally get insights from God through Biblical patterns and models. So when I discovered that there was a Biblical model connected to the dream, I decided that I had better share the dream. You can determine for yourselves if it is indeed from the Lord or if I need to cut down on the late night snacking.

     The dream: All I remember is that I was on a large boat and that I met a man who introduced himself as Cornelius Hidalgo. When I woke up, I was struck by the odd combination of names. I do not know anybody by either name and I have not read or heard of either name recently. Since I could not account for why the name would be in my subconscious, I had the thought that the dream could be significant. So I decided to investigate the possibility.

     As soon as I got around to writing the name on paper, the word anagram came to my mind. Now if you knew me, you would know that I am about the last person on earth who would dream about an anagram. But something amazing happened when I tried to break the name up into other words. It worked. It broke up into the following words: Enoch, Gloria, Lid, Us. It would take me hours to come up with an anagram for the Rapture, but it seems that I dreamt of one. "Enoch" is the first person who was translated (i.e. raptured) into heaven. "Gloria" is Latin for the word glory. When we are raptured we will join God in His glory and we will also receive glorified bodies. "Lid" could refer to the eyelid. We will be raptured in the twinkling of an eye. In fact the New Living Translation translates 1 Corinthians 15:52 as "in the blinking of an eye." And the word "Us" could simply mean that we too, like Enoch, will be raptured.

     Then I checked for the meanings of each name and found that they are significant to the Church. Cornelius means "of a horn" or "horn colored." The Rapture of the Church will be initiated with the sound of a horn (shofar) or a trumpet. And Hidalgo means "noble one" or "the son of something." When we receive the Lord as our Savior, we are called the sons of God. We are also told that we will be kings and priests in His kingdom.

     Then I looked up Cornelius in the Bible. In Acts 10, we find out that Cornelius became the first Gentile Christian. Although the Church is made up of Jewish and Gentile believers, the final calculation of its members seems to depend upon a specific number of Gentiles. "Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in." Romans 11:25. Cornelius represents the first of this number. Some think that we will be raptured when that final Gentile member of the Church gives his or her life over to Jesus Christ. Wouldn’t it be something if the surname of that last person happens to be Hidalgo? Perhaps Cornelius Hidalgo is an abbreviation for the Church as a whole. Now I don’t know if this is the case, but if any of you know someone named Hidalgo who is struggling with a decision to accept Christ as their Savior, for Pete’s sake, please encourage them to make their decision quickly. (They might be holding up the show for the rest of us. J)

     Since I met this Cornelius Hidalgo on a large boat, perhaps there is a connection to Noah’s ark. We know that the days before Christ’s return will be like the days of Noah. In the story about the Biblical Cornelius, Peter is given a vision about a large sheet containing all kinds of clean and unclean animals. Three times God commands him to kill and eat, but Peter refuses because of the unclean animals. God responds by stating that nothing that He has made clean should be called impure. The point of the vision was to show Peter that God was willing to accept both Jews and Gentiles into His Church. It should be noted that Noah’s ark also carried clean and unclean animals in it. Perhaps the animals of Noah’s ark prefigure the Church, which was seen as a collection of clean and unclean animals in Peter’s vision. We, like Noah, will be protected from a period of judgment. Hopefully my dream is a confirmation that we are about to enter our heavenly ark.

     Lastly, there may be something significant about the name Cornelius Hidalgo when it is translated into Hebrew. My Hebrew is too limited to explore this fully, but 3 of the letters in the name – kaph, lamed, and he – spell the Hebrew word for "Bride" (Kalah).

    Maranatha!

         -- Lisa Taylor