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“The Dream that Changed My Life”

“The Dream that Changed My Life”

Last updated on: April 28, 2026 at 7:06 pm by Dan Peterson

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“The Dream that Changed My Life” 2026-04-28T19:06:19-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The northern entrance of the Joseph Smith Building at Brigham Young University in Provo (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I would like to remind you yet again of the two-day gathering that will take place about a month from now on the Provo campus of Brigham Young University, devoted to the Book of Mormon and sponsored by the Interpreter Foundation:

“For a Wise Purpose in Him”
The 2026 Small Plates of Nephi Conference

May 29-30, 2026

The program for the conference is now up, as is a list of the presenters. It should be a very rich offering, and I hope that you will be able to attend, whether in whole or in part.

A 1919 Wikimedia Commons public domain image of the Camp of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai by Adolf Hult (1869-1943)

Something new has appeared on the never-changing website of the Interpreter Foundation: Jonn Claybaugh has provided another of his concise sets of notes for students and teacher’s of the Sunday School curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Come, Follow Me — Old Testament and Teaching Helps (2026) May 4-10: Numbers 11-14; 20-24; 27 — “Rebel Not Ye Against the Lord, Neither Fear”

The Himalayan peaks Shivling and Meru at sunrise
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I recorded a roughly hour-long interview with Nathan Gwilliam this afternoon for his podcast Why We Believe. (It may be trimmed down to 45-minutes before it goes up.) I’m not sure when my particular installment of the show will go up online, probably in about a month, but I’ll try to remember to announce it here when it does. I know, since they follow this blog, that there are a fair number of masochists out there. This one’s for you!

The northern entrance of the Joseph Smith Building at Brigham Young University in Provo (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

From the newsroom:

Religion News Service: “Worship attendance at churches up for the first time in decades, according to new report: Researchers from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research said the median congregation grew from 65 in 2020 to about 70 today. That is not enough to erase earlier declines, but it is noteworthy.”

Deseret News: “‘Secret lives of Mormon-adjacent wives’: Social media reacts to ‘Secret Lives’ Orange County spinoff: Even diehard fans of the original series seem perplexed that the spinoff is still holding on to the ‘Mormon Wives’ title”

I myself am thinking of proposing a Secret Lives of Mormon Wives series for either Los Angeles or New York City, to further pursue the goal of (as I’ve heard it explained) expanding what it means to be a “Mormon.” I already have the basic core of the cast lined up: Zahra al-Masri, Yael Abramowitz, Mata Hari**,** Tamar Steinberg, St. Teresa of Ávila, Lara Croft, and Aisha bt. Muhammad. I’m also planning to approach Caitlyn Jenner and Andrew Tate. (Hugh Hefner would have been a great member of the cast as well, but his agent says that he’s already committed elsewhere.) Then we just need to get them photographed in front of a temple somewhere. AI should be able to help with that.

A view of Monet’s garden at Giverny, by Art Anderson (Wikimedia Commons public domain image) Since I have no photographs of Eden or Paradise, this will have to do for now.

Earlier this evening, I read a few more pages in the book by Reggie Anderson, written with Jennifer Schuchmann, that I mentioned here a couple of days ago. It’s entitled Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters With the Hereafter (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2013).

Dr. Anderson grew up in a quite believing Baptist family in rural Alabama, and he himself was religious until a terrible family tragedy destroyed his faith. He describes at some length how, when he was very young, he was exceptionally close to his relatives Jerry and Jimmy Alday in Georgia, typically spending summers with them raising fruit and transporting it to market and helping them with their sales both. They were good men and devout Christians. The family tragedy is what he calls the “Alday Massacre” but what Wikipedia labels the “Alday family murders.”

Three convicts escaped from prison in Maryland in May 1973, picking up a fourth person on their eventually way to Florida. First, though, they killed a nineteen-year-old man in Pennsylvania in order to steal his car. Then they headed south. Near Donalson, Georgia, in Seminole County, they murdered six members of the Alday family – five men (Jerry, Ned, Jimmy, Chester, and Aubrey Alday) and one woman (Mary Alday), whom they raped repeatedly before killing her.

The young Reggie Anderson spent the next seven years not only rejecting the existence of a deity who could have prevented those appallingly brutal murders but didn’t, but also — paradoxically but, in psychological terms, understandably — feeling bitter anger toward God. During his first year of medical school, though, in (of all places!) his Gross Anatomy class, he began to dimly sense the remarkable complexity of the human body and, from that, to intuit the existence of a designer.

However, it’s an extraordinarily vivid dream that he has while camping in the woods during a break from his medical studies that really turns him around. He recounts the dream on pages 79-83:

I opened my eyes to the most fantastical countryside imaginable: everything was vivid and radiant. All of my senses were finely tuned, like I had awakened in some enhanced version of reality. In front of me, a picturesque meadow was filled with vibrantly colored wildflowers. Pops of yellow, orange, red, blue, and indigo swayed with the breeze like living rainbows. The green was the lushest green I’d ever laid eyes on; the hue so saturated, it seemed like a new color to me. The spender before me was stunning! . . .

I inhaled the most fragrant scent, so light and pleasing — like a mixture of citrus and lilac . . . (79)

Everything felt so real, more intense and tangible than my ordinary life. My senses seemed to awaken and open like a flower to the sun. I could see, hear, touch, smell, and feel things as never before. I didn’t feel like I was in a dream; I felt like this was the real life I’d always been searching for. This was more real than my life. (80; italics in the original)

Those who are familiar with accounts of near-death experiences will be familiar with the reported hyper-reality of the dream and with the description of lush and even unfamiliar colors. And those who read the passage that I cited two days ago will now recognize the significance of his reference to “the familiar fragrance of lilac and citrus.”

More importantly, though, he says that he saw Jimmy, Jerry, Mary, Ned, Chester, and Aubrey Alday, who had been viciously murdered in Georgia in 1973. And they looked happy and unscarred. They belonged where they were, and they were joyful.

More importantly still, though, Dr. Anderson believes that he met Jesus. And he when he emerged from his dream, he was a Christian.

A thirty-ish Friedrich Nietzsche in Basel, Switzerland, around 1875
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

I’m not entirely confident that this omnibus document from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ is safe enough to go through in one sitting. I suggest that it be read in small doses, with time for recuperation (e.g., for brief inspirational readings from Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, or Albert Camus) interspersed between them: “Latter-day Saints Around the World: April 2026: Programs in the Philippines seek to support literacy, and an educational facility strengthens learning in Liberia: Newsroom features stories from its dozens of Church websites worldwide to show what members and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are doing to serve their communities. Today, we feature news from Fiji, Liberia, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines and Taiwan.”

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In this Gospel, Jesus' first miracle is not recorded, and the narrative begins with a voice crying in the wilderness. Which Gospel starts with John the Baptist's ministry?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Luke John Matthew Mark