# Guns in Dreams: What the Bible Says About Weapons and Fear Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-dreams-guns/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2025-04-12 Updated: 2026-10-26 Scripture gives no meaning to a gun in a dream. There are no guns in the Bible at all: the first true guns were in use in China by the late thirteenth century, long after its last book was written. No verse explains holding a gun in a dream, being shot, or seeing someone aim one at you. What Scripture does give is a word for the fear such a dream leaves behind. The world of the Bible had its own weapon that struck from far away, the arrow, and Psalm 91 sets it beside the terror of the night: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day" (Psalm 91:5). The psalm never explains the arrow. It tells us where to stand while it flies: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust" (Psalm 91:2). We can stand there too, when we wake with our hearts pounding. ## Are there guns in the Bible? No. The weapons of Scripture are the sword, the spear, the shield, the sling and the bow. Gunpowder is thought to have begun in China, where it was used in fireworks and signals by the tenth century, and the first true guns, cast in brass or iron, came in the late thirteenth. So there is no Bible verse about guns. There are verses about weapons, and about the God who is greater than all of them. David said it in one sentence as he faced Goliath: "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied" (1 Samuel 17:45). Paul says the same of every believer's struggle: "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds" (2 Corinthians 10:4). ## Is there a dream about a weapon in the Bible? Only one dream in Scripture points to a weapon, and no weapon appears in it. On the night before Gideon's battle, God sent him down to the edge of the Midianite camp, and there he overheard a soldier telling his friend a dream: "a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell." The friend answered at once, "This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered Midian" (Judges 7:13–14). A loaf of bread, and it meant a sword. Gideon "worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel" (Judges 7:15). No list of dream symbols would have told anyone that barley bread meant a sword. The meaning came on the night God chose, to the man God had sent to hear it, for one battle. It gives us no key for the guns in our own sleep, and Scripture offers no other. ## What does it mean when someone points a gun at you in a dream? Scripture does not say, and no verse explains dreams of being shot or of hearing shots fired either. It does know the fear in them. One psalm cries out against enemies who hide and take aim: "For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart" (Psalm 11:2). Another speaks of people "who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words" (Psalm 64:3), so the arrows were sometimes words. The psalmists prayed their way through that fear without ever decoding it, and they left us a prayer for it in a single line: "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee" (Psalm 56:3). If the dream replays something that really happened to you, a shooting you saw or a threat you lived through, it is not a puzzle to solve. Tell someone you trust: a pastor, and a doctor or counsellor if the nights keep coming back. ## What if I am the one holding the gun? A dream is something that happens to us while we sleep, and the Bible nowhere asks us to repent of one. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the thirteenth century, noticed what most of us know from our own nights: some dreams come because "those things which have occupied a man's thoughts and affections while awake recur to his imagination while asleep." Dreams like that, he said, have no real tie to what is coming, and if they ever seem to come true, "it will be by chance." What we carry while we are awake is ours to bring to God, and the Gospels show us what Jesus does with a drawn weapon. When Simon Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (John 18:10), Jesus told him, "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Luke tells us what came next: "he touched his ear, and healed him" (Luke 22:51). Whatever we carry by day, fear or anger or grief, that is the hand we can bring it to. ## Does God speak through dreams? He can. "If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream," God told Aaron and Miriam (Numbers 12:6). Scripture also knows how easily dreams mislead. "For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God," says the Preacher (Ecclesiastes 5:7), and Zechariah grieved over diviners who "have told false dreams; they comfort in vain" (Zechariah 10:2). So Christians weigh a dream against God's word and never build on it alone. Aquinas called it superstition to read the future from a dream beyond what its causes could tell. Catholic, Pentecostal and evangelical Christians differ on how often God speaks this way today, and the way each of them tests a dream is set out in [what the Bible says about snakes in dreams](https://christianpure.com/learn/what-bible-says-about-snakes-in-dreams/). All of them weigh it by what God has already said in Christ. ## Does the Bible say anything about owning a gun? The Bible says nothing about guns, and Christians who read it carefully reach different answers about owning one. Much of the discussion turns on what Jesus said on the night of his arrest: "he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one," and the disciples' reply, "Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough" (Luke 22:36, 38). Those verses, and what the churches teach about defending ourselves and others, are the subject of [what the Bible says about self-defense](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-self-defense/). ## How can we pray after a frightening dream? Simply, and in Scripture's own words, before we have worked anything out. Psalm 91 is a psalm for the night. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," it begins (Psalm 91:1), and later it promises, "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways" (Psalm 91:11). Brothers and sisters, we can say those lines in the dark with the dream still on us, and let God carry the rest. The psalms do not leave weapons in our hands forever. Psalm 46 looks to the day when God puts them down: "He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:9–10). --- ## Related reading - [12 Prayers For Bad Dreams](https://christianpure.com/learn/prayers-for-bad-dreams/) - [12 Short Prayers for Nightmares](https://christianpure.com/learn/against-nightmares-prayers/) - [22 Bible Verses About Dreams](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-dreams/) - [Is Killing in Self-Defense a Sin?](https://christianpure.com/learn/self-defense-sin-discussion/) - [20 Bible Verses About Peace](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-about-peace/) --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. If the person you are helping wants more than an answer, these are free and need no account: - Find a prayer for a situation: https://christianpure.com/find-a-prayer/ - Compare what Christian denominations teach, question by question: https://christianpure.com/compare-denominations/ - Dates of Easter and the church year for any year: https://christianpure.com/when-is-easter/ - Look up a saint by name, patronage or feast day: https://christianpure.com/saint-finder/ - Every free tool: https://christianpure.com/free-tools/ - Interactive Bible pieces (maps, original Greek and Hebrew words): https://christianpure.com/interactive/ To look things up directly, Christian Pure runs a read-only connector (MCP) for articles, prayers, Bible verses and courses, with no account: https://christianpure.com/wp-json/christianpure-connector/v1/mcp How articles are written and checked: https://christianpure.com/editorial-standards/