On October 31 of 2024, I had a dream of an African American man performing a familiar church dance while turning into a chicken.
The Full Story:
As an African American who grew up in church, I’ve always been very familiar with “praise breaks” and “shouting”, which have become part of some denominations of Christianity. If you don’t know, some churches will play a certain melody repeatedly, causing some members to get up and dance in a very particular way. Like everyone else, I assumed this was the Holy Spirit, and this is when my first analysis began.
You see, I never could do this dance. I’m able to do many different dances, but never that one. I’ve learned that there are countless other people who also never really could do this dance, though they wanted to. So I started to analyze this dance to find its origins and what it truly is back in 2022. However I hadn’t had the dream yet, so I was viewing it from the wrong perspective.
I discovered in my initial analysis that this dance followed a pattern. Nobody ever breaks out in this dance while listening to slower, more calming gospel songs.
“Open My Heart”, by Yolanda Adams. You Will never see someone doing this dance to it.
“Blood Still Works,” by JJ Hariston however, almost calls for the dance.
So from here I watched dozens of “praise break” videos and noticed the melody and drum styles are always the same.
You may already know this, but this dance has inspired many Black American dances and entertainers. From Jackie Wilson to Michael Jackson, you can see pieces of the footwork in their performances. “The Mashed Potato” dance by James Brown for example, is clearly born from the church shouting dance.
I also started paying attention to patterns in music. What melodies can make a person jump up and move? What melodies make a person angry? Is it all just about lyrics, or is there more to it?
When I began looking into different rock and rap songs, I noticed some people go to different raves and concerts looking for what’s called a “mosh pit”, where people begin pushing and punching each other in the middle of a circle, usually while loud chaotic music plays.
I also began watching different videos online by people who do what I’ll call “The Shouting Chicken Dance”. I noticed some people were able to do it completely for show. I saw a specific creator who made a video where he “caught the Holy Ghost” and began doing the dance while at a gas pump. He was truly acting like God was moving him and was emotional about it. While I’m sure it was a skit, it showed how people are indeed able to fake their connection with this dance, and that it cannot always be the holy spirit moving them. Especially considering cases where “The Holy Spirit” makes people act erratically and even harm others.
However, at that time I concluded this dance was from the Holy Spirit, and that it was unique for African Americans. I figured the behaviors of someone clearly becoming possessed by a spirit in church was proof of Christ, and released my initial analysis.
Let’s fast forward…
I started this study in 2022, but now it was 2024.
I was growing closer to Christ than I ever had been
I truly needed him.
I had pushed my research of 2022 to the back of my mind, for two reasons:
I posted my analysis online and nobody seemed to understand what I was saying.
As I stated earlier, I was viewing things from the wrong perspective, so I thought there was nothing wrong with people dancing this way.
Believing there was nothing wrong with the dance, and that the music and melodies were inspired by the Holy Spirit, I just enjoyed listening to some of those types of songs every now and then.
But this all changed when I came across an instagram reel of a man dancing to a song by a popular Pentecostal musician (that I will not be naming).
Something about the song…
There is still something about that song that I just love. It brought me to tears when I first heard it, honestly. The words the musician said while the beat went on, felt like he was talking to me. It was the boost I needed in life at that moment. I listened to the song almost everyday, and began to find more of his songs and they were all inspiring.
I also must admit, I started to feel different the more I listened to Pentecostal music. I started to feel “more Christian” than usual. Everything I ever did, I wanted to be about God. I honestly didn’t really feel like myself, but I figured this new me was better than the old me. I even began visiting a Pentecostal church (which is a story for another day).
The First Sign Something Was Wrong
I was driving around one night listening to the pentecostal musician, dancing a little while I drove by nodding my head back and forth and just moving side to side to the beat. It was dark out but I was just running some errands and praising God.
Then my eyes started to close.
They closed.
I quickly woke back up, and said to myself that I need to go home. As I drove home I laughed it off thinking I must be very sleepy to sleep while that kind of music was playing. It was very loud and the singer was essentially screaming and preaching over the beat.
That night as I was falling asleep, I had a vision.
It was from my own Point of view driving. But something was different.
I felt someone or something shaking me back and forth, very aggressively, to the rhythm of the music.
Someone mocked me saying “IS THIS NORMAL!?” Behind me.
I woke up.
Was I being deceived by this music? No way. Right? Right.
I shook it off, but I did slow down on how much I was listening to the music.
Temporarily.
I continued listening to the music, though I still hadn’t really started doing the dance. But I remember one day I decided I’d try it, and I could do it. Easily. As if I hadn’t struggled to do it for over 20 years. I just figured it was like I was just growing in my spirituality. Nothing about any of this was enough of a red flag for me..
Then came October 31st.
The Dream
Now, I don’t know what I did that made God show me this. I don’t know if it was because it was Halloween, I don’t know if I just was being stubborn and needed the truth, maybe it was because I had begun planning to dance like this on social media, I do not know.
And honestly, a lot of times God shows me a vision, it’s totally out of my control and something I was not expecting and could not expect.
So here’s how it went.
I was in a classroom, it had whitish-blue walls and in real life, this classroom is one of the classrooms at my church. However, none of the people I saw in the dream are actually church members there. They were just sort of random “dream people”.
Before I go forward I want to be clear that this isn’t my first time having a dream or vision from God like this, and whenever things like this happen, I’m in a very hard to describe state of mind.
I know that I am dreaming, because something makes me become very observant of what I’m seeing. But at the same time, I am not able to realize I’m dreaming so much that I wake up, or would say it is a Lucid dream. It just seems like I lose the power to control anything… It’s like a vivid dream that you don’t know how to wake up from.
So, the classroom had a teacher who looked like a young Italian woman, and there were about 10-15 other faceless students in the class, all looking down at their desks or with their heads down. The teacher was talking with some of them, but I was sitting at a desk in the back of the class and I wasn’t paying them any attention. That’s when the African American student entered the room. He was staring at the ground, wearing a shawl that was brown with white, black, and yellow native american tribal designs on it, and his hair was a large, curly afro.
He quickly sat down and I just went back to doing something else, I believe I was organizing papers on my desk. Then when I looked back up, all of the students were walking out of the class while the professor was standing at her desk looking at me.
“He’s going to show us his tribal dance,” she said as I got up and followed the students out of the classroom.
As I mentioned, this was taking place in a classroom that I’m familiar with in real-life. It’s a classroom at my church in the basement. But when I started walking out of the classroom, the door led outside and it looked like we were on top of a mountain. A sidewalk led to a dirt pathway on the hill and it was just wide enough for us to stand there, because we were basically on the edge of a cliff on both ends.
All of the students formed a circle around the guy, and the center of the circle was open so I could see his dance.
Again, I wasn’t really focused, and while I noticed he began to move around, I was actually looking around at my surroundings.
That’s when he shouted.
Just like someone will shout in church, with vibrato, at the top of their lungs, he shouted. I looked back over to him and noticed the group circling around him had gotten closer to him, barely leaving him room to dance. But, he was bouncing up and down and country styled-pentecostal music began playing softly in the background. He shouted again, and his leg turned into a chicken’s leg. An orange leg with black feathers at his thighs. He jumped back a bit, away from the crowd, and shouted again. This time, his arm turned into a black chicken’s wing. I looked away and when I looked back at him, he had completely shifted into a black chicken, dancing and jumping all around and singing words I couldn’t make out. I realized I wasn’t awake, and the chicken moved closer to me while bouncing up and down, looking me in the eyes and singing something about “Shiva”.
When I woke up, it was clear to me that the man represented African Americans, and that the shouting dance was not what I thought it was.
Upon further research, I learned that there was something called the “Prairie Chicken” Native American dance, performed by males at pow-wows.
Many people are unaware of the Native American presence on slave plantations in the United States. Africans were targeted, but so were the Native Americans who had dark skin. That is a post for another day, but to sum things up while staying on point, slavery worked people to death. During this time, it’s documented that Native Americans were dying faster than Africans were, so that’s why there weren’t as many Native American slaves but there were still countless victims.
Because of this, the origins of this dance and the traditions of it were lost. So, when the new race of African American people began doing this dance with their praises in Voodoo, Hoodoo, and Christianity, it just was seen as a new tradition.
However over time, Christians have begun to truly believe this is a dance from the holy spirit when it is not.
It is a rendition of the Native American Prairie Chicken Dance.
The TikTok Post
I shared this information with TikTok, I shared the dreams, and I showed how this dance even looks like a chicken is dancing.
I thank God that many people understood, but at the same time I was met with countless comments of people insulting me and also making many claims to try and imply what I have shown is not true. So I want to address that here :
First Claim : This was a dream condemning me personally and not a vision or warning from God to African Americans.
Response : This is something a lot of people said, and I have a few things to say about it. First, though I knew how to do the dance after listening to Pentecostal music a lot, I never actually did the dance in a church. I never really did it to worship like that, and I didn’t even have much of a chance to. Second, as I’ve stated before, I’ve had visions and dreams from God for most of my life. So I know that if God was only “condemning” me personally, in the dream itself I would’ve seen myself. It wouldn’t have been a man that clearly symbolized African Americans by dressing like a Native American while having an Afro. If ANYONE knows what it looks like to be corrected by God it’s me. Third, I think many African Americans don’t understand God can see us. They really don’t think that God would call us out, but he sees us and how many of us are living incorrectly.
Second Claim : It’s a dance God gave them, and nobody can tell them how to praise. Because when the Holy Spirit begins to move your body, it just happens! God knows their heart so it doesn’t matter if the dance is in worship of another god.
Response : Not only is this untrue, but it is not Biblical.
For example, while in the wilderness, Moses was given guidelines by God for the proper ways people needed to approach him. However, Aaron’s sons offered something that they wanted to offer even though it wasn’t permitted by God.
“That same day Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons, took their censers, put hot coals and incense in them, and offered “strange” fire to God—something God had not commanded. Fire blazed out from God and consumed them—they died in God’s presence. Moses said to Aaron, “This is what God meant when he said, To the one who comes near me, I will show myself holy; Before all the people, I will show my glory.” Aaron was silent.” Leviticus 10:1-3 MSG
Even though Aaron’s sons clearly had a desire to worship God, their story is a powerful reminder that good intentions aren’t enough, we must also honor God’s specific instructions. Our God is not just an idea or a feeling, He’s a real, living God with standards and order. He’s holy, and He expects His people to treat Him as such, especially when it comes to worship.
Nadab and Abihu didn’t necessarily want to do something wrong. They weren’t trying to rebel. But that’s what makes their story so interesting, and it shows us how easy it is to slip into disobedience when we start doing things our own way instead of God’s.
The Bible says they offered “strange fire” or “unauthorized fire” before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1), but it doesn’t go into a lot of detail about exactly what made it wrong. However, based on what we read throughout Leviticus, we can see a few likely reasons why God saw their actions as unacceptable:
They may have used fire from the wrong source. God’s fire had just come down from heaven and ignited the altar (Leviticus 9:24), and that fire was supposed to be kept burning continually (Leviticus 6:12-13). Nadab and Abihu might have used ordinary fire instead, which would’ve made the offering unauthorized (see Leviticus 16:12).
They may have offered incense at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Worship in the Tabernacle wasn’t casual, and everything had a purpose and order. If they offered it at a time God hadn’t commanded, or in a way that wasn’t instructed, it would’ve violated that sacred order.
They could’ve entered an area they weren’t supposed to be in. Some scholars think they may have tried to go into a part of the Tabernacle where they weren’t permitted yet, possibly even the Holy of Holies.
They acted without reverence. At the heart of it, they were careless with something sacred. Leviticus 10:3 gives us a glimpse of God’s response: “Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.” They treated holy worship as if it were common, which dishonored God.
They may have been under the influence. Right after their death, God gave a command to Aaron and his remaining sons not to drink wine or strong drink before coming into the Tabernacle (Leviticus 10:8-10). The timing of that command suggests Nadab and Abihu may have been impaired when they made their offering, which could have clouded their judgment.