Are ghosts biblical?

Is it biblical to believe in ghosts? For a large part of his Christian life,

Pastor Andre says, the obvious answer was no. In this episode he comes back

to the question, looks at some evidence and offers some tentative

conclusions. "My short answer is that yes, I think that it is biblical to

believe in ghosts." "But probably not the way the culture means it." And on

seeking them out he is as firm as he gets: "absolutely under no

circumstances are you to initiate contact with the dead."

Andre works with a very modest definition of a ghost, a disembodied spirit

of a deceased human being, which doesn't say anything yet about hauntings

or seances or mediums or poltergeists. The question is much more basic:

does scripture recognise departed human spirits as a real category, and

does it allow for the possibility that they may sometimes become

perceptible to the living? The Old Testament has vocabulary for the dead,

the shades in Sheol. Isaiah didn't say, don't consult the dead because

there are no dead people to consult; he says God's covenant people should

go to their God. In 1 Samuel 28 the narrator simply calls the figure

Samuel, and Andre thinks the simplest explanation is that Samuel does

actually appear. Necromancy is forbidden, in Deuteronomy 18 and for

Christians too, not because these things are not real but because they are

incredibly dangerous practices and because God's people ought to go to the

Lord. Saul's sin is seeking unauthorised access to the invisible realm, and

that gives the principle: the reality of the invisible realm does not imply

that human beings have permission to access it however they choose.

In the New Testament the disciples cry "it is a ghost" (Matthew 14:26), and

in Luke 24 the risen Jesus says a spirit does not have flesh and bones as

he has. Andre is not trying to turn this into Jesus teaching us about the

reality of ghosts: Jesus is teaching them about the reality of his

resurrection. At the transfiguration Moses, who did definitely die, is made

perceptible to living human beings, and there's no seance, no portal, no

practice of necromancy: the door is opened by God from above. To argue from

Hebrews 9:27 that the dead cannot appear is, Andre thinks, putting too much

weight on it; if anything, what it rules out is the concept of

reincarnation. And scripture doesn't give us the grounds for saying that

every apparent ghost is a demonic deception. It might be a deception. It

might have a perfectly natural explanation. It could be something genuinely

supernatural.

So what do we say to someone who says, I saw my dead mother? Don't just

default to "you've got a demon or you're crazy". Listen carefully. But that

doesn't mean that we immediately validate and believe everything either.

Scripture does not teach that ghosts routinely wander around the earth

haunting houses, and it shuts the door on occult curiosity: we don't summon

the dead, we don't seek revelation from them, we don't cultivate psychic

abilities. Why the dead sometimes become visible, Andre says he doesn't

know. Occasionally God does lift the veil between the realms, but human

beings don't control those moments. God controls them. That realm belongs

to God, and our task is not to master it, but to trust the one who rules

both heaven and earth. That is why Christians don't need to fear ghosts:

Jesus Christ is Lord of the realms.

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser

- Meredith Kline

- 1 Enoch (the Book of the Watchers)

- Scripture: Isaiah 29:4, Isaiah 8:19, Genesis 6, Job 26:5, Psalm 88:10,

Isaiah 14:9, 1 Samuel 28, Deuteronomy 18, Matthew 14:26, Luke 24,

Matthew 17, Hebrews 9:27

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Between-Two-Realms?sub_confirmation=1

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