Most of us are familiar with ghost stories. On TV, there are reality-type shows about people exploring haunted houses, abandoned insane asylums, and dingy prisons (which would all be pretty creepy, ghosts or not) where they document their supposedly “real supernatural experiences” with night-vision cameras. Every year, they come out with movies like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY which tells the story of people living in a haunted house…again, using those weird night-vision cameras. There have even been a few movies that involve someone who’s alive who ends up FALLING IN LOVE with a ghost! Imagine how hard it would be to to make THAT relationship work! Disney/Pixar is coming out with a brand new animated movie in November called COCO that deals with a boy who becomes a ghost and has to solve some kind of mystery about his family before he gets stuck as a ghost forever! Usually in movies and tv shows, we see a lot of stories about someone who can talk to ghosts and help them to somehow solve their own murder or to help them “walk into the light”. And of course, there are all of those nasty, downright evil ghosts that need to be busted using lasers and high-tech traps in movies like GHOSTBUSTERS!
Hollywood aside, what’s the deal with ghosts? Did people believe in ghosts in the Bible? Are ghosts really dead people with a terrible sense of direction, wandering around looking for the light? And if they’re not dead people, WHAT ARE THEY? Do they REALLY have answers to all of our questions? Those are some questions we tackled this week.
DID PEOPLE IN THE BIBLE BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?
People have been telling ghost stories for thousands of years! There were even a few times where Jesus's disciples thought that HE was a ghost because when they were around Jesus, some abnormal stuff was happening.
In Matthew 14, when the disciples were in a boat in the middle of a storm it says, “A little while before morning, Jesus came walking on the water towards his disciples. When they saw him, they thought he was a ghost. They were terrified and started screaming”. (Matthew 14:25-26)
Can you picture that? You can’t really blame the guys for being freaked out--- after all--- they were witnessing someone WALKING ON TOP OF THE WATER. In that case, when Jesus got into the boat with them and saw that he wasn't some spooky apparition, it says, “The men in the boat worshipped Jesus and said, ‘You really are the Son of God!”(Matthew 14:33)
Another time where the disciples thought that Jesus was a ghost was after he had been killed on the cross and appeared to them in Luke 24:37-39: “They were frightened and terrified because they thought they were seeing a ghost. But Jesus said, “Why are you so frightened? Why do you doubt? Look at my hands and my feet and see who I am! Touch me and find out for yourselves. Ghosts don’t have flesh and bones as you see I have.”
Again, you can hardly blame the disciples for thinking that Jesus was a ghost—they saw him killed in public in front of hundreds of eye-witnesses, and Roman soldiers were REALLY GOOD at the whole “killing thing”. Jesus wasn’t just “a little dead”—he was COMPLETELY dead. They buried him! So, the fact that Jesus stood right in front of his followers a few days later—where they talked to him, touched his wounds and even ate with him, again proves that Jesus wasn’t just an ordinary dude! This was one of the most amazing things to ever happen in all of history (which is why Easter is still celebrated THOUSANDS of years after it all happened)!
ARE GHOSTS DEAD PEOPLE WITH A PATHETIC SENSE OF DIRECTION—SEARCHING FOR A LIGHT?
The Bible gives us a pretty clear answer to this question—and it sounds like, after we’re dead, we won’t have a chance to go sightseeing, haunt the bully at school, or to team up with someone who’s alive to solve crimes like in the movies.
Hebrews 9:27 says that, “We die only once, and THEN we are judged”. What that’s getting at is that AFTER we die—barring some kind of miracle where God raises one of us from the dead—we’ll stand before God and he’ll judge us based on whether or not we’re tight with him and have experienced his forgiveness through Jesus. (Despite what people think, the Bible tells us that's the only thing that matters to God. Simply being a "good person" isn't as important.)
Ecclesiastes 9:6 says that dead people, “will never again take part in anything that happens on this earth”
Job 7:9-10 says, "Just as a cloud dissipates and vanishes, those who die will not come back. They are gone forever from their home—never to be seen again".
2 Corinthians 5:8 gives a pretty awesome promise for Christians—it says that death shouldn’t be something scary, but we can even be CHEERFUL about it, because when we die, we’ll be “AT HOME WITH THE LORD”. I’ve been to some REALLY sad funerals because I didn’t know if the person had a friendship with Jesus, and I’ve also been to some Christian funerals that were AMAZING…because they were times of celebration; celebrating someone’s life, celebrating that they’re in heaven and celebrating the fact that I’ll see them again one day! This verse says that for Christians, when you die, you’ll be with Jesus!
So, the Bible is pretty clear on this one—ghosts AREN’T dead people. When you’re dead, there’s no coming back for a visit or haunting the dude who got your order wrong at McDonalds.
WHAT ARE GHOSTS?
OPTION A) GHOSTS ARE FAKE
The fact is, that a lot of the people who claim to chat with ghosts are people looking for a quick buck—even con artists who study human behaviour and look for gullible people to take advantage of—to fool people into believing that they have special knowledge from beyond the grave or they have the ability to ask their dead loved one a question! Even though there are HUNDREDS of shows about ghost hunters…they never seem to catch any, but still manage to make thousands of dollars in the process!
OPTION B) GHOSTS ARE EVIL SPIRITS (DEMONS)
It seems really weird in our modern, intelligent, skeptical society to say that evil spirits exist—although in some countries, they don’t have a problem believing that at all. Whenever I’m feeling sceptical about the whole thing, I have to remember that Jesus and his disciples encountered evil spirits quite a few times in the Bible!
In Matthew 4, Jesus spent time praying in the wilderness and experienced temptation by Satan (the devil)
In Mark 5, Jesus encountered a man who was possessed by evil spirits and was harming himself, and Jesus actually HAD A CONVERSATION with the evil spirits and commanded them to come out of the man! And this was done in front of a ton of eye witnesses!
In Acts 19, it says that there were a lot of people in the city of Ephesus who were practicing witchcraft and were encountering evil spirits…and after they became Christians, they burned those books and experienced freedom from the evil they were dabbling with!
In Acts 16, it tells us that there was a young slave girl who was basically a medium (someone who would listen to evil spirits and tell people what they said about their future for money)—and she was bothering Paul and Silas as they travelled around and told people about Jesus. Acts 16:18 says, “This went on day after day until Paul got so exasperated that he turned and said to the demon within her, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And instantly it left her”. What’s so cool about that is that they were actually thrown in jail because her slave owners couldn’t make any more money off of her!
Yes, there’s lots of places in the Bible where people encountered evil spirits, but the common thread in all of those encounters is that Jesus is WAY more powerful, and that as Christians we can be protected from a lot of that stuff. When people even mentioned Jesus’ name, it sent the evil spirits running! The Bible tells us that there’s no such thing as a friendly ghost—and when people think they’re seeing or communicating with a loved one from beyond the grave, when they think that it’s harmless fun—if it’s not a scam, then they’re messing with evil spirits! It’s not ALL the stuff of Hollywood, and it’s not ALL make believe--- which is why the Bible gives us some pretty solid warnings about it!
In Deuteronomy 18, God spoke to the people of Israel and told them to be careful about hanging out with their neighbours—because most of those neighbours didn’t care at all about following God or doing what was right. “Be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there…Do not practice fortune telling, or use sorcery, or interpret omens, or engage in witchcraft, or cast spells, or function as mediums or psychics, or call forth the spirits of the dead. ANYONE WHO DOES THESE THINGS IS DETESTABLE TO THE LORD”.
That’s one reason why a lot of Christian parents won’t even let their kids watch or read stuff that involves witches, ghosts, or magic…because the Bible warns us to stay away from that kind of stuff! A few years ago, a big craze on Youtube was people putting pencils on their hands, wanting to talk to an evil spirit. Some people have Ouija boards which you can buy at Toys R Us to make a game out of talking to spirits. The Bible says not to mess with that stuff, because when you do, you’re basically welcoming evil spirits into your life!
Isaiah 8:19-20 says, “Someone may say to you, ‘Let’s ask the mediums and those who consult the spirits of the dead. With their whisperings and mutterings, they will tell us what to do.’ But shouldn’t people ask God for guidance? Should the living seek guidance from the dead? Look to God’s instructions and teachings! People who contradict his word are completely in the dark”.
I love that passage! It says that if we need directions or want answers about life, it’s kind of dumb to try to consult dead people or visit someone who claims to see the future, when we have a direct line to God! We can ask him for help, we can look to the Bible for wisdom and to help us know what we should do with our lives. The Bible tells us that there ARE evil spiritual forces at work in our world, and their goal is to trick and deceive us, to have us place our faith in things besides God, and to pull us away from the God who loves us and wants the best for us—and because of that, we’re warned to keep our distance from those things.
That doesn't mean that you can't watch COCO when it comes out in theatres (unless your parents don't want you to), but anytime we ghost stories in movies or TV shows, we have to be aware of the fact that those are just STORIES…they’re works of FICTION…they don’t tell us how the afterlife REALLY works.
In EVERY ghost story I’ve ever seen, one of the main messages is that if someone is “good”, or if their ghost manages to solve their own murder, they’ll end up walking into the light at the end.” And while that’s a really nice thought and a nice way to wrap up those stories, according to the Bible- that’s not true!
In John 14:6, when his disciples asked Jesus how to get to heaven, he told them, “I am the way, the truth, and the life! Without me, no one can go to the Father”. It’s through Jesus that we can have a friendship with God, be forgiven of our sins, and one day be a part of heaven when we die. It has nothing to do with solving the mystery of our own deaths, completing some kind of checklist after we die, doing more good things than bad things in life, or successfully haunting our friends and family (and we can all breathe a sigh or relief about that last one).
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Ask your teen if they can think of any tv shows or movies that deal with the supernatural or ghosts. Why do you think people watch them? Why do you think some people visit psychics or people who claim to be able to communicate with loved ones from beyond the grave?
2. In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life! Without me, no one can go to the Father”. How does this compare to the "messages" we see in movies or TV shows about ghosts and the supernatural?
3. Why do you think the Bible contains warnings about things like dabbling with witchcraft, consulting spirits, or visiting psychics? What does Isaiah 18:19-20 say about where we should look for answers about life or the afterlife?
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