For at least ten years reports have proliferated of Muslims converted to Christianity through dreams.

A California magazine recently published the results of a survey of over 600 ex-Muslims who now follow Jesus. "Although dreams appear to play a minor role in the conversions of Westerners, over a quarter of those interviewed [as former Muslims] emphatically confirmed that dreams and visions played a vital role in their conversion, and helped them in difficult times," the survey said.

Others have found the percentage higher. Karel Sanders, a missionary in South Africa, reported that among African Muslims, "42 percent of the new believers come to Christ through visions, dreams, angelic appearances and hearing God's voice." According to Dawn's Friday Fax, a website that focuses on missionary reports, Arabic-speaking moderators explain supernatural experiences such as dreams, visions and healings through prayer to Jesus. "This is a hot topic in our region. People from all over the Middle East call us, telling how they were healed through prayer in Jesus' name," they quote one missionary as saying. "Muslim listeners often call to tell us about dreams and visions of Jesus, wanting to know what that means for them."

The same is expressed in "I Dared To Call Him Father," a riveting book by a wealthy former Muslim Pakistani woman named Bilquis Sheikh who came to Christ through a series of mystical happenings -- starting with the presence of evil, which she felt was connected to the recent slaying of a persecuted Christian.

"The strange prickly feeling grew inside me as I walked slowly along the graveled paths of my garden," she wrote in a book that has just been re-released. "I stopped my walk and looked around. As I leaned over to grasp the tall green stems, something brushed past my head. I straightened in alarm. What was it? A mist-like cloud -- a cold, damp unholy presence -- had floated by. Of course there wasn't anything out there. Was there? As if in answer, I felt a firm, very real and uncanny tap on my right hand."

This experience led to a series of dreams that -- like so many we now hear -- culminated in the conversion of this Muslim woman. Are such dreams more prevalent now -- with the world situation as it is? Or have they always occurred?

We know that dreams can be important. We think of Abraham. We think of Joseph, the father of Jesus.

But they are also crucial in our own time and in the case of Sheikh, whose husband had been a general and Pakistan's minister of interior, they formed an important part of her conversion -- if not the important role. As she explains in this well-written book (which was first published in 1978), she had been brought up in a Muslim faith which believed that although Jesus was born of a Virgin, He was not God's Son. Still, Sheikh felt moved to explore the Christian Bible -- and that's when it all began.

In one dream, recounted Sheikh, "I found myself having supper with a man I knew to be Jesus. He had come to visit me in my home and stayed for two days. He sat across the table from me and in peace and joy we ate dinner together.

"Suddenly, the dream changed. Now I was on a mountaintop with another man. He was clothed in a robe and shod with sandals. How was it that I mysteriously knew his name, too? John the Baptist. What a strange name. I found myself telling this John the Baptist about my recent visits with Jesus."

That was the dream -- and it was peculiar -- caused her to question everyone who might know -- because up to that point, Sheikh had not yet come across the name of John the Baptist in her reading of the Bible.

She became a Christian. So have thousands of others. The reports have included villagers in places like Morocco. We first heard about this in the early 1990s.

"A follower of Jesus from Guinea tells of a person in white who appeared to him in a dream, calling him with outstretched arms," states the California publication. " This sort of dream, in which Christ appears as a figure in white, is a frequent pattern in missionary work among Muslims."

The examples are multitudinous. A Muslim from Malaysia saw her deceased Christian parents in a dream, celebrating in Heaven. Jesus, in a white robe, told her, "If you want to come to me, come!" She did.

Another convert, this one again from the Middle East, said he was lying in bed with a severe headache. A white figure with a wonderful, peaceful face appeared, laid his hands on his head three times, and the following morning the intractable headache had ceased.

A man from western Africa saw a religious Muslim in hell, and a poor Christian, who could not even give alms, in heaven. A voice explained that the decisive point was not the alms, but the faith in Jesus.

Meanwhile, a missionary working among the Tausugs, the Philippines' largest Muslim group, reports that a number of faithful Muslims "saw Jesus" in their dreams following last Ramadan (this again according to Dawn's Fax). One man dreamed of Jesus killing a huge dragon in a duel and the following day had the same dream again -- which opened him to the Gospel.

A member of the Yakan people in Basilan Province dreamed that the Prophet Mohammed could not look Jesus in the eye. When he told his cousin, a Christian, of the dream, his cousin told him that the dream meant that Jesus is greater than Mohammed.

There are stories of spiritual warfare. There are accounts from Turkey. There are stories of miraculous healings. There are stories from Iraq. A team belonging to "Athletes in Action," a missionary athletes' movement, reported from their visit to the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan that "one of the journey's most interesting experiences was to listen to a large number of people telling how they became Christians. Previously, they had been atheists or Moslems. Some told us how God had spoken to them in dreams. Others told us how they had had headaches for days after hearing about Christ. As soon as they decided to become Christians, the headache was gone. One woman told us that on the night she heard about Jesus, nothing happened until she went to sleep. While she slept, she had a terrible dream, in which a satanic figure told her 'You will never escape from me.' But now she has also become a Christian."

There are numerous reports that many of the Berbers living in the Algerian Atlas Mountains are coming to Christ through similar dreams and visions, forming mostly underground cell-churches. Ahmed Ait Ben Youcef, a native Berber now living abroad, said he found Christ in a way that seems typical for previously Islamic Berbers: "We Berbers always believed in God, but many seek their own way under the pressure of the Islamic Arabs. We young people yearned for the right way for our lives and prayed to God for guidance. One of my friends died in a traffic accident. The following night, I dreamed that he, another friend, and I drove to a bright gleaming city surrounded by a white wall. My friend told us that he now lived there."

An Egyptian Moslem was reading the Gospels according to yet another report and had just reached Luke Chapter 3 when a strong wind swept the room and a voice said, "I am Jesus Christ, whom you hate. I am the Lord you are seeking." He decided to follow Jesus that day.

So widespread are such reports that entire websites are now devoted to such anecdotes -- albeit often careful to maintain anonymity. A well-informed source, who for obvious reasons remains unnamed, reports that a former Islamic "Imam" or spiritual leader has led 3,000 Moslems to Jesus, coming to his belief in Christ through appearances and dreams in which a white Man told him to study the Bible. His method is simple: in conversation, he asks others "Have you seen a white man in your dreams recently?" If they have not, he tells them "I was just wondering. Thanks." If they answer positively, he continues by asking whether they are interested in learning who this white man is. And who is not interested in the identity of a mysterious person who appears in their dreams? The ex-Imam then shows them several Bible passages in which a white-clothed man is mentioned, explaining, "That is Jesus. He wants to speak with you, because He wants you to follow him."