This page exists so that nobody has to take the article on trust. Every source it rests on is listed here with what it actually measured, who wrote it, and which way it cuts.
A catalogue of the sources behind the article: how many Muslims have become Christians, what share report a dream or vision of Jesus, whether the dream came before or after contact with Christians, what Islam's own texts say a Jesus dream means, what psychology and anthropology predict, and which reported cases can be checked.
It is deliberately not a reading list of things that agree with this site. Sources are tagged by the direction they cut, and a reader who wants only the material that undercuts the article's verdict can filter for undercuts and read those.
How to read an entry
Direction is judged against the popular Christian claim the article tests: that Jesus is appearing to Muslims in large numbers, often with no prior contact with Christians, and that these dreams cause conversions. supports means the source shows the dreams are real, common, or hard to explain naturally; undercuts means it deflates the numbers, shows the natural mechanism, or exposes fabrication; mixed means both; background means it supplies a base rate or a text the argument needs. Assigned by what the source shows, not by what its author believes. Several missions sources are tagged undercuts because their own numbers deflate the popular story, and several secular ones are tagged supports because they leave a feature unexplained.
Verified. full means the text was read from a file in the source library or the open web; paragraphs means an in-copyright book read in whole paragraphs on archive.org through bin/iapdsearch.py and not stored; snippets means Google Books search-inside snippets only; abstract means the abstract alone; citation means known only through another source. Nothing is quoted verbatim in the article unless it is full, paragraphs or snippets, and the article's footnotes say which.
Field definitions
| Field | Values |
|---|---|
topic |
counts, dream-share, timing, islamic-texts, psychology, anthropology, symmetry, narrative, exposure, base-rate, case, fraud, critic |
camp |
missions, academic, secular-survey, muslim, christian-critic, advocacy, media, government |
method |
survey, interview, compilation, content-analysis, ethnography, review, testimony, journalism, primary-text, experiment |
direction |
supports, undercuts, mixed, background |
verified |
full, paragraphs, snippets, abstract, citation |
Coverage and its limits, stated plainly. Three research dossiers built this catalogue (research/muslim-conversion-numbers.md, research/explanations.md, research/cases-and-corroboration.md), from the source library, Eric's research notes, archive.org search-inside, publisher sites and the open web. No JSTOR read and no hoopla borrow was spent. Known gaps: the four missiology theses that supply the Morocco and South Africa dream timings (Greenlee 1996, Maurer 1999) and the Palestinian prompting finding (Greenham 2004) were not obtained and are known only through Strähler 2005 and Martyn 2018; the Fuller questionnaire's tables were never published; Doyle 2012 and Trousdale 2012 were read only in snippets; and no survey anywhere asks Muslims how often they dream of Jesus.
The counts: how many Muslims have become Christians
Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census
Miller, Duane Alexander, and Patrick Johnstone. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 11 (2015), article 10.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190416112431id_/http://www.religjournal.com/pdf/ijrr11010.pdf
camp: missions topic: counts method: compilation direction: mixed verified: full
Key figures: country rows sum to 9,779,100 for about 2010; Indonesia 6,500,000, which "includes their children"; the rest of the world 3,279,100; world range by eye from Figure 1 about 6.7 to 17 million; fewer than 200,000 in 1960.
The only global census, built from Operation World, the World Christian Encyclopedia, Joshua Project data and unpublished mission documents. Supports the claim that conversion is real and large in absolute terms; undercuts the popular framing because two-thirds of the total is one Indonesian community of the 1960s, and because the authors themselves list fund-raising and re-baptism as sources of inflation. It does not count dreams at all.
How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020
Pew Research Center (9 June 2025).
camp: secular-survey topic: counts method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
Key figures: 2,022,590,000 Muslims in 2020; about 1.3 of every 100 adults raised Muslim have left for anything, and as many have joined; no switching data for 84 countries, set to zero by assumption, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.
Pooled surveys from 117 countries. Undercuts any claim of mass conversion in the countries it can see, and is blind exactly where the dream stories are set. Also the source of Pew's refusal to use GAMAAN's Iranian figures.
Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions
Lesage, Kirsten, Kelsey Starr and William Miner, Pew Research Center (26 March 2025).
camp: secular-survey topic: counts method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
Key figures: 41,503 adults in 35 countries, 2024; Muslim retention 91 to 100 percent everywhere but the United States (77); raised-Muslim adults now Christian: Kenya 8 percent, Ghana 6, United States 6, elsewhere zero; Indonesia "Fewer than 1%" left or entered Islam.
The Indonesian result is the sharpest test of Miller and Johnstone's 6.5 million and confirms that it is an inherited community, not living switchers. The Kenyan figure rests on about 130 respondents.
Iranians' Attitudes Toward Religion: A 2020 Survey Report
Maleki, Ammar, and Pooyan Tamimi Arab. GAMAAN (August 2020).
https://gamaan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GAMAAN-Iran-Religion-Survey-2020-English.pdf
camp: academic topic: counts method: survey direction: supports verified: full
Key figures: 39,981 online respondents inside Iran, effective n 1,911; Christian 1.5 percent, Shi'ite Muslim 32.2, none 22.2, atheist 8.8, Zoroastrian 7.7; about 47 million in the target population.
The one measurement of Iranian conversion, by two Dutch-based academics with no church behind them. Supports a hidden movement of several hundred thousand. Its own caveats (network effect, self-selection, no replication, a Zoroastrian share 250 times the census) are in the article, and the Christians are one leaver in forty.
Selected Findings of the 2016 National Population and Housing Census
Statistical Centre of Iran (2018).
camp: government topic: counts method: survey direction: background verified: full
Key figures: Table 3: 130,158 Christians of 79,926,270 in 2016; 23,109 Zoroastrians.
The baseline subtracted from GAMAAN's 1.5 percent. A convert has no legal category in Iran, so the census cannot see conversion at all.
Survey supports claims of nearly 1 million Christians in Iran; World Watch List 2026 Iran dossier; 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Iran
Article18 (27 August 2020); Open Doors (December 2025); United States Department of State (2024).
https://articleeighteen.com/news/6701/ · https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/iran/ · https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-report-on-international-religious-freedom/iran/
camp: advocacy topic: counts method: compilation direction: undercuts verified: full
Three files that together trace the "one million Christians in Iran" figure. Article18 admits that pre-2020 estimates were "extrapolations … largely based on contact with Christian satellite television channels" and quotes a 2019 UK tribunal calling the million not "remotely plausible"; Open Doors moved from 1.24 million to 800,000 with no published method; the State Department's ethnic-church estimates sum to 27,000 to 100,000 against Article18's 300,000, and it misdates the census count. Undercuts the circulating figure while leaving GAMAAN's measurement standing.
The Future of the Global Muslim Population
Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life (27 January 2011).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/
camp: secular-survey topic: counts method: survey direction: background verified: full
Used for one table: 139,184,000 Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa in 1990 and 242,544,000 in 2010, the denominator against which the "six million a year" claim fails.
Dreams, visions and Isa; Global Muslim awakening
Denison Forum (8 September 2021); The Tide (10 June 2024).
https://www.denisonforum.org/resources/dreams-visions-and-isa-an-awakening-in-the-islamic-world/ · https://www.thetide.org/global-muslim-awakening-dreams-visions/
camp: missions topic: counts method: compilation direction: undercuts verified: full
Two ministry web articles that carry the popular "millions" figures. Traced in the article: "millions of Muslims … have embraced Jesus" is Garrison's all-history baptism count relabelled, and "between one and five million" Iranians is a broadcaster "speculating".
The dream shares and the timing
Why Muslims Follow Jesus
Woodberry, J. Dudley, Russell G. Shubin and G. Marks. Christianity Today 51, no. 10 (October 2007): 80–85.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2007/10/why-muslims-follow-jesus/
camp: missions topic: dream-share method: survey direction: mixed verified: full
Key figures: about 750 questionnaires, 30 countries, 1991–2007; dreams and visions 27 percent before the decision, 40 at the time, 45 afterward, overlapping; lifestyle of Christians ranked first, answered prayer second, dissatisfaction with Islam third.
The largest sample and the source of most circulating percentages. The 27 percent "before" is the only figure that could mean the dream started the process; the authors say the survey "does not claim scientific precision", and the per-country tables and dream contents were never published.
Muslims Tell … 'Why I Chose Jesus'
Woodberry, J. Dudley, and Russell G. Shubin. Mission Frontiers (March 2001): 28–33.
camp: missions topic: dream-share method: survey direction: mixed verified: full
The same Fuller questionnaire at an earlier stage: 120 of about 600 forms, some filled in by "those who knew them well". "Over one-fourth" said dreams were key "in drawing them to Christ and sustaining them", the origin of the circulating "a quarter" figure. Its own definition of the "preparatory dream" is one that "confirms thoughts or conversations one has been having about Christ", which is the timing finding in the authors' own words.
A Wind in the House of Islam
Garrison, David. WIGTake Resources, 2014.
https://archive.org/details/windinhouseofisl0000garr
camp: missions topic: counts method: interview direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
Key figures: 82 movements in history, 69 current; more than 1,000 interviews in 45 movements; all baptisms "no more than two to seven million, or less than one-half of one percent".
The most-cited advocate of the movements, whose own totals deflate the popular story and who never gives a dream percentage; searching the text for "percent", "a third" and "dream" finds none. Supports the reality of the dreams as a common testimony; undercuts "millions dreaming". Every name and many places are changed by policy, so none of its cases can be checked. Also read for its case stories ("Ahmed", "Ali Akbar", "Fatima", Zakaryas).
Coming to Faith in Christ: Case Studies of Muslims in Kenya
Strähler, Reinhold Immanuel. DTh thesis, University of South Africa, 2009.
camp: academic topic: dream-share method: interview direction: mixed verified: full
Key figures: 17 urban converts; dreams or visions 8 of 17 at least some, 6 of 17 much; ranked seventh of the factors; supernatural factors peak in the interaction phase, after contact.
Grounded-theory interviews with direct prompting about dreams. Dreams are real and not rare here, but they follow the lifestyle and witness of Christians and confirm a process under way.
Conversions from Islam to Christianity in the Sudan
Straehler, Reinhold. MTh dissertation, University of South Africa, 2005.
camp: academic topic: dream-share method: interview direction: mixed verified: full
Six converts; three reported a dream, none of Christ. Its literature review is the only route found to Greenlee 1996 (Morocco, "just under half", dreams at the introductory stage), Maurer 1999 (South Africa, the "final stepping stone") and Gaudeul 1999 (two reasons why dreams are frequent); every figure attributed to those works in the article is Strähler's summary and is labelled as such.
In Search of Meaning and Identity: Conversion to Christianity in Pakistani Muslim Culture
Syrjänen, Seppo. Finnish Society for Missiology and Ecumenics, 1984.
https://archive.org/details/insearchofmeanin0000syrj
camp: academic topic: timing method: interview direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
Key figures: 36 interviews; 15 (42 percent) any supernatural experience; 10 (28 percent) before the decision, of which dreams 4, visions 2, voices 4.
The best-controlled early study, with source criticism of the testimonies. Dreams come "when they had been torn by severe doubts" after "reading the Bible for some time"; one convert reproduced Revelation 1 "word by word" without recognising it; two who denied any experience later reported one. Also the source of the 1922 Persia mission report showing the pattern is a century old.
The Role of Pre-Conversion Dreams and Visions in Islamic Contexts
Martyn, Sam. Southeastern Theological Review 9, no. 2 (2018): 55–74.
https://www.sebts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/STRIssue9.2_Martyn.pdf
camp: missions topic: timing method: content-analysis direction: undercuts verified: full
Key figures: more than 120 published testimonies; 44 with a pre-conversion dream or vision; Jesus present in 28; order stated in 38, of which 36 had met Christians, Scripture or both first.
The single strongest piece of evidence on initiate versus confirm, from a sympathetic author. Also carries the Greenham prompting finding, the Barrick "all had prior contact" report and the Barrick fabrication theory, and cites Padwick's 1939 diary for the same white-robed figure in the 1930s.
Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World?
Doyle, Tom, with Greg Webster. Thomas Nelson, 2012.
https://books.google.com/books?id=cTWZEZed02oC
camp: missions topic: dream-share method: testimony direction: mixed verified: snippets
The book most responsible for the popular story. Its "about one out of every three" is a field impression with no source; it defers to "more precise surveys" at "a little over 25 percent"; it calls dreams "just the door opener" and ranks love first; and it says "No one says a dream recipient goes to sleep a Muslim and wakes up a Christian." Names and details changed by policy. Read only in snippets; a full reading would need a library copy.
Review of Doyle, Dreams and Visions
Gilley, Gary E. Think on These Things Ministries (posted 20 August 2014).
https://tottministries.org/dreams-and-visions-is-jesus-awakening-the-muslim-world/
camp: christian-critic topic: dream-share method: review direction: undercuts verified: full
The review that turned Doyle's "one in three converts had a dream before conversion" into "one-third of all Muslims come to Christ as a result of dreams", changing the population and the causation. Used as the traced origin of that claim. The library key carries the book's year; the posting is 2014.
When Muslims Dream of Jesus
Carlson, Darren. The Gospel Coalition (31 May 2018).
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/muslims-dream-jesus/
camp: missions topic: dream-share method: review direction: undercuts verified: full
A distortion to flag: turns the 120-form 2001 subsample into "600 Muslim converts", turns "drawing … and sustaining" into "led to their conversion", and presents the 2001 and 2007 reports as independent confirmations when they are one dataset.
Living Among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-Making and Ex-Muslim Christians
Miller, Duane Alexander. PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014.
https://era.ed.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/84a8bb6c-e89f-438d-91b3-e13e71162918/content
camp: academic topic: timing method: survey direction: mixed verified: full
Thirty hand-picked missionaries and ministers; seven noted more dreams, one thought they were only reported more; an Arab-world minister describes asking Muslims whether they have had such a dream, which is prompting; a missionary complained of too many dreams of Mary. Carries the More than Dreams "without knowledge of the gospel, or contact among Christians" claim, the strong form the article tests.
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus; No God but One
Qureshi, Nabeel. Zondervan, 2014; Zondervan, 2016.
https://archive.org/details/seekingallahfind0000qure_m0l1
camp: missions topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
The best-documented ex-Muslim dream account: dated, written down the same morning, a named friend phoned the same day, a mother's rival Islamic reading. Undercuts the "no contact" form (three and a half years of debate, dreams requested as confirmation, interpreted with a Christian's study Bible, no figure of Jesus in any of them); supports the reality and decisiveness of the experience for the person. Also the Christian side's own statement that God reaches Muslims "in the midst of this struggle" through dreams. No God but One adds one second-hand Iraqi case with no name or place.
Becoming a Follower of Christ
Das, Rupen. Perichoresis 16, no. 1 (2018): 21–40.
https://reference-global.com/download/article/10.2478/perc-2018-0002.pdf
camp: academic topic: symmetry method: review direction: undercuts verified: full
A review reporting that Buddhist- and Hindu-background converts to Christianity also name supernatural encounters, dreams and visions as critical points (Hilderbrand 2016; Iyadurai 2015). The Muslim figures therefore need a comparison base rate before they can be read as special.
The Islamic texts on dreams and on Jesus
Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 91 (Interpretation of Dreams) and Book 60 (Prophets)
Bukhari, Muhammad ibn Isma'il (c. 846). sunnah.com, Muhsin Khan translation.
camp: muslim topic: islamic-texts method: primary-text direction: mixed verified: full
Hadith 6983 (a good dream is one of forty-six parts of prophecy), 6984 (from God or from Satan), 6985 (tell good dreams, conceal bad ones), 6993–6994 (whoever sees Muhammad has seen him; Ibn Sirin's qualifier "only if he sees the Prophet in his real shape"), 3439–3440 and 7026 (Muhammad's dream of Jesus at the Ka'ba), 3448 (Jesus's return). Supplies the cultural expectation that true dreams are divine and a pre-existing picture of Jesus as a dream figure; the guarantee against satanic impersonation covers Muhammad only. Read from sunnah.com with the Arabic; not mirrored, per the site's terms.
Sahih Muslim, Book 42 (The Book of Dreams)
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (c. 875). sunnah.com.
camp: muslim topic: islamic-texts method: primary-text direction: mixed verified: full
Hadith 2263a gives the three-way classification, including "a suggestion of one's own mind", so the tradition itself has a category for self-generated dreams; 2261a and 2266a parallel Bukhari.
The Qur'an, Saheeh International translation
api.quran.com v4, translation 20.
camp: muslim topic: islamic-texts method: primary-text direction: background verified: full
12:4, 12:100, 37:102 and 48:27 on true dreams; 3:45, 4:157–158, 4:171 and 43:61 on Jesus as Messiah, "a word from Him", not crucified, raised to God, a sign of the Hour. A Muslim already believes Jesus is alive with God; the same texts deny the cross and his divinity.
Tafsir al-Ahlam al-Kabir (attributed to Ibn Sirin)
Arabic digital edition, archive.org item maktabah2000_gmail_20150723_0433.
https://archive.org/details/maktabah2000_gmail_20150723_0433
camp: muslim topic: islamic-texts method: primary-text direction: supports verified: full
The standard dream manual, the one Qureshi's mother used. A Jesus dream means the dreamer is "a beneficial, blessed man"; al-Hasan's Jesus teaches a Muslim formula; a dream of turning Christian means ingratitude to God. Tagged supports because it shows the culture's own interpretation leads away from conversion, which is the asymmetry the article leaves standing. The attribution to Ibn Sirin is pseudepigraphal (Lamoreaux 2002, citation only); translations are the project's own and need an Arabic reader's check.
Dreams and Interpretations (attributed to Ibn Sirin, Hathurani's English)
archive.org item dreams-and-interpretations.
https://archive.org/details/dreams-and-interpretations
camp: muslim topic: islamic-texts method: primary-text direction: supports verified: full
The abridged English manual in circulation: "Seeing oneself embracing Judaism, Christianity or the religion of the Fire-worshippers indicates that … he will still oppose and refute them." Same direction as the Arabic manual.
How Muslims dream, measured
Significance of Dreams among United Arab Emirates University Students
Salem, Mohamed O., Mohamed A. Ragab and Said Y. Abdel Razik. International Journal of Dream Research 2, no. 1 (2009): 29–32.
https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/article/view/150
camp: academic topic: anthropology method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
350 students; about a quarter had made a social decision on a dream, a third or more had religious dreams (Qur'an, angels, jinn, Laylat al-Qadr), half consulted dream books. The only survey found of how many Muslims act on dreams. The religious themes are Islamic, not Jesus.
Spiritual and religious imagery in dreams: A cross cultural analysis
Salem, Mohamed O., et al. International Journal of Dream Research 6, no. 2 (2013): 94–97.
https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/article/view/10333
camp: academic topic: anthropology method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
100 UAE and 100 Canadian women, one dream each: 3.49 religious images per dream against 0.07; prophets in over 20 percent of the UAE dreams. A dream of a prophet is ordinary for a devout Muslim; the unusual part of a conversion dream is which prophet, what he says, and what the dreamer does.
The Dreams of Islamic State
Edgar, Iain R. Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 4 (2015): 72–84.
https://pt.icct.nl/sites/default/files/import/pdf/8-the-dreams-of-islamic-state-by-iain-r.-edgar.pdf
camp: academic topic: anthropology method: ethnography direction: undercuts verified: full
An anthropologist's account of the true-dream tradition across Sunni, Shia, Salafi and Sufi Muslims, istikhara incubation, and dreams that catalyse jihad. The pattern "contemplation, then a vivid command or message dream" is the strongest naturalistic account of how a Jesus dream closes a decision already forming. Cites David Cook's unpublished database of some 5,000 historical dream accounts.
Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination
Mittermaier, Amira. University of California Press, 2011.
https://archive.org/details/dreamsthatmatter0000mitt
camp: academic topic: anthropology method: ethnography direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
Cairo ethnography. Dreams send Muslims to Christian saints' shrines and they stay Muslim; a Sufi shaykh dreams of Jesus and stays a shaykh; Coptic conversion stories follow a fixed plot; the 1968 Zaytoun apparition was first seen by Muslims, drew millions, and produced no documented conversion wave. Cuts both ways: the stock plot supports the narrative-reshaping account, and the Egyptian default of absorbing Christian figures into Islam supports the article's asymmetry.
Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (April 2010).
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2010/04/sub-saharan-africa-full-report.pdf
camp: secular-survey topic: base-rate method: survey direction: supports verified: full
More than 25,000 interviews in 19 countries. "Received a direct revelation from God": Nigerian Christians 44 percent, Nigerian Muslims 21; the Christian figure is higher in every country but Guinea Bissau. Undercuts the idea that Muslims are more primed than Christians for such reports; the wording (revelation belongs to prophets in Islam) is a confound.
The psychology of visions and dreams
Sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths
Luhrmann, T. M., et al. PNAS 118, no. 5 (2021): e2016649118.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2016649118
camp: academic topic: psychology method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
Four studies, over 2,000 people, five countries, one preregistered. Porosity (a cultural model of a mind open to outside forces) and absorption predict who reports sensing gods, with standardised slopes of about 0.2 to 0.65; less secular settings and charismatic Christians report more. Predicts more religious-presence reports in the Muslim world; says nothing about which god appears. No Muslim sample.
When God Talks Back
Luhrmann, T. M. Vintage, 2012.
https://archive.org/details/whengodtalksback0000luhr
camp: academic topic: psychology method: experiment direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
Vineyard evangelicals; a randomised month of imaginative prayer on the Gospels raised "sensory overrides"; nearly half had heard a voice when alone; "Buddhists have visions of Buddha and Hindus have visions of Krishna." Predicts more Jesus experiences in Muslims who have watched the JESUS film or prayed to be shown the truth; not in the unexposed.
Culture and hallucinations: overview and future directions
Larøi, Frank, et al. Schizophrenia Bulletin 40, Suppl 4 (2014): S213–S220.
https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/40/Suppl_4/S213/1873600
camp: academic topic: psychology method: review direction: mixed verified: full
Non-clinical hallucinations in 10 to 15 percent of the population, up to 80 percent of the bereaved; ritual hallucination in 62 percent of 488 societies; Saudi patients hear more religious content; "such hallucinations must conform to local cultural expectations." That rule is the test the Jesus dreams fail to fit, since the culturally expected figure is not Jesus. Also the Schneerson comparison, handled in the resurrection article.
Psychotic Experiences in the General Population: 31,261 Respondents From 18 Countries
McGrath, John J., et al. JAMA Psychiatry 72, no. 7 (2015): 697–705.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2298236
camp: academic topic: base-rate method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
WHO household surveys. Lifetime hallucinatory experience 5.2 percent, visual 3.8; Iraq 1.1, Lebanon 1.6, United States 8.2. Gives no support to a high Middle Eastern base rate of waking visions; most Muslim reports are dreams, which the instrument excludes.
Lifetime prevalence rates of sleep paralysis: a systematic review
Sharpless, Brian A., and Jacques P. Barber. Sleep Medicine Reviews 15, no. 5 (2011): 311–315.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079211000098
camp: academic topic: psychology method: review direction: mixed verified: full
35 studies, 36,533 people: 7.6 percent general population, 28.3 percent students. The hallucination themes are malevolent intruders and assault, which fits only the subtype of report in which Jesus rescues the dreamer from a dark presence.
Explanations of sleep paralysis among Egyptian college students and the general population in Egypt and Denmark; Sleep Paralysis Among Egyptian College Students
Jalal, Baland, et al. Transcultural Psychiatry 51, no. 2 (2014): 158–175; Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 203, no. 11 (2015): 871–875.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1363461513503378
camp: academic topic: psychology method: survey direction: mixed verified: abstract
Cairo: 43 percent of students report sleep paralysis; 48 percent of the general population blame the jinn. Culture supplies the identity, and the identity it supplies is a jinn, not Jesus. Full texts paywalled; abstracts only.
Beliefs about sleep paralysis in Turkey: Karabasan attack
Jalal, Baland, H. Sevde Eskici, Ceren Acarturk and Devon E. Hinton. Transcultural Psychiatry 58, no. 3 (2021): 414–426.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1363461520909616
camp: academic topic: psychology method: survey direction: mixed verified: full
Restates the Egyptian figures (71 percent supernatural explanation, 41 percent ruqyah) and adds Istanbul, where 37 percent used dua, Qur'an recitation or amulets against the next attack. The remedy culture supplies is the Qur'an.
Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations: pathological phenomena?
Ohayon, Maurice M., et al. British Journal of Psychiatry 169, no. 4 (1996): 459–467.
camp: academic topic: base-rate method: survey direction: undercuts verified: abstract
4,972 Britons: 37 percent hallucinations while falling asleep, 12.5 percent on waking. A figure at the bedside at night needs no unusual mechanism; what remains to be explained is content and outcome.
The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation
Bulkeley, Kelly. Pastoral Psychology 58 (2009): 93–106.
https://www.bulkeley.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PP-The-Religious-Content-of-Dreams-2009.pdf
camp: academic topic: psychology method: content-analysis direction: mixed verified: full
Two long dream journals of Christian women: Jesus in 2.2 and 0.2 percent of dreams, and in the larger series never as a character who interacts with the dreamer. A Jesus who talks to the dreamer is rare even for Christians, which is why continuity predicts such dreams follow exposure, and why they are worth explaining at all.
Dreaming of God and the Role of Faith in Everyday Life
Schredl, Michael, and Jan-Hendrik Mönch. Pastoral Psychology 72 (2023): 469–478.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11089-023-01083-x
camp: academic topic: psychology method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
452 Germans, mostly theology students and clergy: 20 percent had ever dreamed of encountering God, about 2 percent of dreams, tracking how much faith mattered in daily life. Supports the continuity account: devout people dream of the god they are devoted to.
The Hallucinations of Widowhood
Rees, W. Dewi. British Medical Journal 4, no. 5778 (1971): 37–41.
https://www.bmj.com/content/4/5778/37
camp: academic topic: base-rate method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
293 widowed people in mid-Wales: 46.7 percent had hallucinations of the dead spouse, 14 percent saw them. Grief predicts the person grieved, not Jesus; cited to rule bereavement out. Worked in full in the resurrection article.
At the Hour of Death
Osis, Karlis, and Erlendur Haraldsson. Hastings House, 1977 (third edition 1997).
https://archive.org/details/athourofdeath00osis
camp: academic topic: symmetry method: survey direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
Deathbed apparitions in the United States and India follow the patient's religion: Christians see Jesus, Mary and angels; Hindus see Yama and Krishna. A radiant man in white is named by the viewer's faith. Used for that one point; the near-death experiences article uses the book in full.
The symmetry test: dreams that convert people to other religions
Conversion Dreams in Christianity and Islam
Davis, Patricia M., and Lewis Rambo. In Dreaming in Christianity and Islam, Rutgers University Press, 2009, pp. 175–187.
https://archive.org/details/dreaminginchrist0000unse
camp: academic topic: symmetry method: content-analysis direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
Four conversion dreams, two Christian (Oswald, Caedmon) and two Islamic (Samau'al al-Maghribi, 1163; "Kathleen", 1990s Britain). The same features in all four: crisis, a dream unlike other dreams, a holy person of the new religion, a scripture reference. "For Islamic conversions, the dreamer experiences an Islamic holy person."
Conversion to Islam: A Study of Native British Converts
Köse, Ali. Kegan Paul International, 1996.
https://archive.org/details/conversiontoisla0000kose
camp: academic topic: symmetry method: interview direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
70 converts: 14 percent reported a mystical experience before converting; 26 percent named a spiritual or inexplicable experience as chief factor; Sufis 35 percent against 4 percent. Kevin's "very clear" unwanted dream of being Muslim has the shape of many Jesus-dream stories. The first per-convert rate in the other direction.
Islamic Da'wah in the West
Poston, Larry. Oxford University Press, 1992.
https://archive.org/details/islamicdawahinwe0000post
camp: academic topic: symmetry method: content-analysis direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
72 published testimonies of Western converts to Islam: 71 gradual; 3 (4 percent) with anything supernatural, including Germanus's dream of Muhammad and Aitken's bright light with a voice quoting John's Gospel, read as Jesus calling her to Islam. The mirror image of the Muslim Jesus-dream, and the most useful symmetry number found.
How conversion stories are told
Understanding Religious Conversion
Rambo, Lewis R. Yale University Press, 1993.
https://archive.org/details/understandingrel0000ramb
camp: academic topic: narrative method: review direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
The stage model, and "biographical reconstruction": groups may require converts to tell their story to the group's satisfaction (Beckford, Taylor; Staples and Mauss). Predicts that published testimonies converge on the receiving community's template and that dreams move earlier with retelling.
Language and Self-Transformation: A Study of the Christian Conversion Narrative
Stromberg, Peter G. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
https://archive.org/details/languageselftran0000stro
camp: academic topic: narrative method: interview direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
American evangelicals' conversion narratives as performances in a "canonical language", "a creation of a particular situation in the moment of its telling". Does not show that any dream did not happen; shows why a testimony cannot be read as a plain report.
New survey shows record number of SAT-7 viewers; Survey: Millions of Non-Christian Iraqis Watch Christian TV
SAT-7 (25 November 2016); Cole, Ethan, The Christian Post (22 March 2009).
https://sat7.org/new-survey-shows-record-number-of-sat-7-viewers/ · https://www.christianpost.com/news/survey-millions-of-non-christian-iraqis-watch-christian-tv.html
camp: missions topic: exposure method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full
Ministry-commissioned audience surveys (IPSOS 2016, 21.5 million viewers of three Arabic channels; InterMedia 2009, 18.8 percent of Iraqis), neither with a published method. Even at a discount, they show that a Muslim with no Christian contact has very likely seen Jesus on a screen.
The base rate outside Islam
Baylor Religion Survey, Wave I (2005) and Wave II (2007)
Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, Gallup fieldwork. ARDA.
https://www.thearda.com/data-archive?fid=BRS2005
camp: secular-survey topic: base-rate method: survey direction: background verified: full
Key figures: "I personally had a vision of a religious figure while awake": 6.0 percent weighted (own computation from the data file), Evangelical 7.7, unaffiliated 1.0; "a dream of religious significance" 23.2; "the voice of God speaking to me" 14.6 (19.1 in 2007).
The only national item found about a waking vision of a religious figure. It does not name Jesus, so it is an upper bound. Wave II dropped the item and is used only for the 2007 voice figure.
Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (9 December 2009).
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2009/12/multiplefaiths.pdf
camp: secular-survey topic: base-rate method: survey direction: background verified: full
49 percent report "a religious or mystical experience", up from 22 percent in 1962; the trend mixes four survey houses. No item on seeing Jesus.
Spiritual experiences (Spirituality Among Americans, chapter 4)
Pew Research Center (7 December 2023).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spiritual-experiences/
camp: secular-survey topic: base-rate method: survey direction: background verified: full
n = 11,201: 30 percent have "personally encountered a spirit or unseen spiritual force"; 53 percent (separate 2023 survey) "visited by a dead family member in a dream or other form". Encounters with the dead are at least as common as broad religious experience.
Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals; Religion in Latin America
Pew Forum (October 2006); Pew Research Center (13 November 2014).
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2006/10/05/spirit-and-power/ · https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2014/11/Religion-in-Latin-America-11-12-PM-full-PDF.pdf
camp: secular-survey topic: base-rate method: survey direction: background verified: full
"Received a direct revelation from God": general public from 3 percent (South Korea) to 41 (Nigeria), United States 26; Latin American Protestants up to 65 percent. A mass experience in Christian-majority countries, tracking pentecostal practice; broader than a vision of Jesus.
The Spiritual Nature of Man
Hardy, Alister. Clarendon Press, 1979.
https://archive.org/details/spiritualnatureo0000hard
camp: academic topic: base-rate method: compilation direction: background verified: paragraphs
544 of the first 3,000 self-selected accounts sent to the Religious Experience Research Unit mention a vision; no count of Christ; Hardy himself grants that hypnosis produces solid-seeming apparitions.
Exploring Inner Space: Scientists and Religious Experience
Hay, David. Penguin, 1982.
https://archive.org/details/exploringinnersp0000hayd
camp: academic topic: base-rate method: survey direction: background verified: paragraphs
The 1976 National Opinion Polls survey: "rather more than 36 per cent" aware of a presence or a power, including 26 percent of those who never go to church. Also Hay's criticism of self-selected archives and his remark that young people in tightly controlled religious groups "may mimic the whole thing".
The cases
Visions of Jesus: Direct Encounters from the New Testament to Today
Wiebe, Phillip H. Oxford University Press, 1997.
https://archive.org/details/visionsofjesusdi0000wieb
camp: academic topic: case method: interview direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
The only academic interview study of modern Christ-visions: 28 people, 1988–1993, recruited by advertisement, dreams excluded, "neither large nor randomly selected". The percipients "fit the profile of normal people who have aberrant perceptions". Its one large group case (Oakland 1959) rests on a pastor's estimate and a stolen film and, in Wiebe's words, "(nearly) evaporate[s]"; its see-and-feel pairing is reported by one party; its psychiatrist percipient called his vision "a product of my own brain". Also the source of the drifted Sundar Singh summary.
The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion
Streeter, B. H., and A. J. Appasamy. Macmillan, 1921.
https://archive.org/details/sadhustudyinmyst00streuoft
camp: academic topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: full
Sundar Singh's own account of 18 December 1904, printed by the Oxford New Testament scholar who interviewed him. The words heard are Acts 9:4; the authors accept "a real and definite Divine call" while granting that "the form in which it was received was conditioned by psychological laws" and that memory "cannot be implicitly relied on".
Die Legende Sundar Singhs
Pfister, Oskar. Paul Haupt, 1926.
https://archive.org/details/bwb_C0-AVS-913
camp: academic topic: case method: compilation direction: undercuts verified: full
A Zürich pastor-psychoanalyst's comparison of every telling with the missionaries' letters: the Bible-burning shifts between tellings, the first biography's first edition "knows nothing at all of the conversion", the Ludhiana register dates his enrolment before the vision, and his defender Heiler concedes legendary growth. Pfister treats the vision as a real experience resolving a conflict, not a fraud. Translations are the project's; the German is in the footnotes.
Oh God, What Next?; On Being a Jewish Christian
Montefiore, Hugh. Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; 1998.
https://archive.org/details/ohgodwhatnext0000mont
camp: academic topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
A Cambridge New Testament scholar's own account of a 1936 vision "in my mind's eye", told the same way three times, with the 1998 book adding that he had weekly Bible lessons. His "60 per cent of all Messianic Jews" claim is hearsay and is not used.
The Torn Veil: The Story of Sister Gulshan Esther
Esther, Gulshan, with Thelma Sangster. Marshalls, 1984.
https://archive.org/details/tornveil0000unse
camp: missions topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
The best-known named Muslim woman's vision in print: alone at 3 a.m., after three years of praying "Oh Jesus, Son of Maryam, heal me" from the Qur'an. The Lord's Prayer she learned in the vision is the one testable item, and the book gives no way to test it.
The Heavenly Man; Open Letter Regarding 'The Heavenly Man'
Yun, Brother, with Paul Hattaway. Monarch, 2002; Hattaway, Asia Harvest (after June 2005).
https://archive.org/details/heavenlymanremar0000yunb · https://www.asiaharvest.org/open-letter-heavenly-man
camp: missions topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: paragraphs
The cleanest paired-vision story in the Acts 10 pattern, every link Yun's own report 28 years later, the evangelist unnamed, and the human path visible (a boy known to want a Bible). The co-author's open letter concedes another claim in the book is "completely impossible in human terms" and records three house-church leaders' public dispute.
Miraculous Movements
Trousdale, Jerry. Thomas Nelson, 2012.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yzkn6KNKNvgC
camp: missions topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: snippets
The "Sheikh Hanif" and "Wafi" paired dream, undated and with "some details … adjusted"; "Jamil", whose dream verses were in a book he taught. Snippets only.
The Prophet Harris; Kimbangu: An African Prophet and His Church
Haliburton, Gordon MacKay, Oxford University Press, 1973; Martin, Marie-Louise, Eerdmans, 1975.
https://archive.org/details/prophetharris0000gord · https://archive.org/details/kimbanguafricanp0000mart
camp: academic topic: case method: compilation direction: undercuts verified: paragraphs
The two great African prophetic calls, often listed with Christ-visions, were not visions: Harris "did not see Gabriel with his eyes"; Kimbangu heard a voice saying "I am Christ", and his wife heard only his replies.
A Moslem Mass Movement toward Christianity in Abyssinia
Iwarsson, Jonas. The Moslem World 14, no. 3 (July 1924): 286–289.
https://archive.org/details/muslim-world_1924-07_14_3
camp: missions topic: case method: testimony direction: mixed verified: full
The earliest account of the Shaikh Zakaryas movement, from the mission that supplied his Bible. A real, dated movement begun by a vision whose content is not said to be Jesus, followed by years of comparing the Bible and the Qur'an; the missionary discounts the inflated baptism counts himself. Date conflict (1892 or about 1904) unresolved without Crummey 1972.
Center Creek Girl, Cripple Four Years, Is Instantly Healed
Fairmont Daily Sentinel, 3 September 1941, front page, as posted by the Baxter family.
https://www.bettybaxtermiracle.com/front-page-story
camp: media topic: case method: journalism direction: undercuts verified: full
The contemporary record of Wiebe's "Betty Baxter" case: neighbours present; her physician found "no serious organic trouble" and "a highly nervous disorder"; the family site now says "heart failure". The posted scan is cropped, so what the witnesses said they saw is unknown.
Did a Prominent Rabbi Find Jesus — and Does It Matter?
Kellner, Mark A. Washington Times, 16 January 2014.
camp: media topic: case method: journalism direction: undercuts verified: full
The Kaduri "Yehoshua" note: denied by the rabbi's son in the promoter's own film; the promoter writes "I do not insist the story is absolutely true"; Kaduri never said the Messiah he saw was Jesus.
Fraud, hoax and the critics
Mideast Leaders Falsified Ministry Reports
Miles, Jonathan. Christianity Today, 11 September 1995.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/1995/09/mideast-leaders-falsified-ministry-reports/
camp: media topic: fraud method: journalism direction: undercuts verified: full
The Derstine exposure: village-by-village checks found "a pattern of misrepresentation and staging of events"; the regional leader confessed "all is false", no martyrs, no sincere converts; $2.8 million raised in 1994. It does not say the fabrications included visions of Jesus.
Don't You Believe It
Fisher, Richard. Personal Freedom Outreach Journal, March 2008.
camp: christian-critic topic: critic method: review direction: undercuts verified: full
Used only for its observation that charismatic and evangelical tellers reshape the same story to taste, and for its two traced cases. Its generalisation about "Arab culture" is unsupported and is not used; it also overstates the Derstine case.
John MacArthur Responds To His Strange Fire Critics (Part 2)
MacArthur, John, with Tim Challies. challies.com, 11 November 2013.
http://www.challies.com/interviews/john-macarthur-responds-to-his-strange-fire-critics-part-2
camp: christian-critic topic: critic method: testimony direction: mixed verified: full
The cessationist position in its own words: skeptical of third-hand accounts, denies on 1 Corinthians 15:8 that anyone is seeing Jesus, yet allows that God may providentially use "people's thoughts and impressions". Shows that "from the dreamer's mind" and "God used it" are compatible for this wing of the church.
Were Muslim Girls Buried Alive by Their Father, Then Fed and Comforted by Jesus?; Disinformation As If Children Were Buried Alive In Egypt
Mikkelson, Barbara, Snopes (17 August 2007); Myth Detector (17 October 2023).
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/buried-treasures/ · https://mythdetector.com/en/disinformation-as-if-children-were-buried-alive-in-egypt/
camp: media topic: fraud method: journalism direction: undercuts verified: full
The "Miracle in Egypt" e-mail traced to an unnamed source, a claimed national broadcast never found, and a nineteen-year life.
Bearing True Witness; Liberty University statement on Ergun Caner
Christianity Today editorial (28 June 2010); Liberty University Board of Trustees (25 June 2010).
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2010/06/bearing-true-witness/ · https://theaquilareport.com/full-text-of-liberty-university-on-dr-ergun-caner-case/
camp: christian-critic topic: narrative method: journalism direction: undercuts verified: full
The standard inflated ex-Muslim testimony, judged by the evangelical institution that employed him: the conversion real, the details false. The editorial names the incentive, "narrative one-upmanship".
Scripture
The King James Version of the Bible
Project Gutenberg ebook 10; verses fetched from bible-api.com (translation kjv) on 30 September 2026 and recorded in research/bible-verses.md.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
camp: christian-critic topic: critic method: primary-text direction: background verified: full
Numbers 12:6; Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17; Matthew 2:12; Acts 9:3–6, 9:10–12, 10:3–6, 10:30–33, 16:9–10; Romans 10:14; Deuteronomy 13:1–3; Jeremiah 23:25–28, 32; Galatians 1:8; 1 John 4:1. Public domain.
Considered and not used
- Abdallah, Maher (host), al-Sharīʿa wa-l-Ḥayāt, "Christianization and its danger to Asia", Al Jazeera, 3 December 2000 (library
abdallah-2000). The Asia episode with Sheikh Ahmad al-Qataani, which refers back to the Africa episode that carried the "six million a year" claim. The Africa episode itself was not found, so the claim is cited through Miller and Johnstone's English rendering, and the arithmetic against it is the article's own. - Baylor Religion Survey, Wave II (2007) (library
baylor-2007). Folded into the Wave I entry; used only for the 19.1 percent voice-of-God figure. The waking-vision item was dropped. - Pew, The World's Muslims: Unity and Diversity (2012) (library). Checked for a question about dreams; it asks about jinn and the evil eye but not dreams. Not cited.
- Dobe, Timothy, Hindu Christian Faqir (Oxford, 2015), archive.org
hinduchristianfa0000dobe, read in paragraphs. Reports that in one telling Sundar vowed suicide unless he saw "Krishna or Buddha" (p. 46). Not needed once Pfister supplied the drift between tellings. - Ripken and Stricker 2006; Ayub 2009; Willis 1977; Speer and Carter 1922; Greenham 2004; Kronk 2010; Nelson 1973; Beckford 1978; Staples and Mauss 1987; Hilderbrand 2016; Iyadurai 2015; Padwick 1939; Cyril J. Davey's biography of Sundar Singh; Heiler 1925; Hosten. Each is cited in the article only as quoted or summarised by the source that relays it, and the footnote says so. None was read directly.
Not obtained
Each was sought and the routes tried are in the research dossiers. None is quoted in the article except through a source that relays it.
- Greenlee 1996 (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School): the Morocco "just under half" and the introductory-stage timing. Known through Strähler 2005. ProQuest would open it.
- Maurer 1999 (DTh, UNISA), In Search of a New Life: Conversion Motives of Christians and Muslims: converts in both directions in South Africa, the "final stepping stone" timing, and the right design for the missing like-for-like comparison. UNISA's repository was down.
- Gaudeul 1999, Called from Islam to Christ; Kraft 2012; Kronk 2010; Greenham 2004: known through Strähler 2005, Martyn 2018 and Miller 2014.
- Woodberry's full questionnaire tables (about 750 forms): never published; the 2007 article gives an address.
- The al-Qataani Africa episode (Al Jazeera, 2000) and the 2019 UK tribunal decision on Iranian converts.
- GAMAAN's 2022 and 2023 waves, for replication of the 1.5 percent.
- Snow and Machalek 1983, 1984; Green 2003 (JRAS); Edgar 2011 and his 2007 and 2010 papers; Lamoreaux 2002; Luhrmann, Nusbaum and Thisted 2010; Nuevo 2012; Kent and Wahass 1996; Pagel and Vann 1992: the standard statements behind points that Rambo, Edgar 2015, Larøi and Salem relay. A JSTOR read would open Snow and Machalek or Green.
- David Cook's database of some 5,000 Muslim dream accounts, the likeliest source of a historical base rate of Jesus figures in Muslim dreams; unpublished.
- Audited audience figures for Persian-language Christian channels and the JESUS film: only ministry numbers exist.
- Wiebe 2000 (Journal of Consciousness Studies); Beardsworth 1977; Hay and Heald 1987; Hay and Hunt 2000.
- Crummey 1972, "Shaikh Zäkaryas: An Ethiopian Prophet", Journal of Ethiopian Studies 10(1): the content of Zakaryas's visions and the date. On JSTOR; the best use of one read.
- The full Fairmont Daily Sentinel story of 3 September 1941; Danyun, Lilies Amongst Thorns (1991), the earliest telling of Yun's story; Doyle 2012 and Trousdale 2012 in full; Sharpe 2004 and Heiler 1925 on Sundar Singh; the primary Israeli reporting on the Kaduri note; Rose and Given-Wilson 2021 on asylum courts and converts' credibility.
- A statement from David Wood on Qureshi's 2004–2005 phone calls: none found in the sources read, and the one independent check the best-documented case allows.