The event begins in Numbers 21 with the people complaining and turning away from God.  A highly unusual rash of venomous snakes came into the camp, and many people died.  These snakes were so poisonous that anyone who was bitten died; there were no exceptions.  The people came to Moses, and Moses went to God for a solution.  God’s unusual solution was:

The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.

So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived. - Numbers 21:8-9

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. – John 3:14, 15

Isaiah 53:5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

The following account is not secondhand or in any way fictionalized. This is a personal account of my own experiences.

A group of people enters a old building, armed with all sorts of electronic equipment and digital cameras. They come from all walks of life, a college student, a grandmother, an engineer, but they all share in common one purpose: to discover evidence of ghosts and therefore a paranormal world. This activity takes them out of the mundane, depressing ordinary world of the physical existence.

This scene is played out hundreds of times each night across the western world with the newfound “hobby” of ghost hunting or paranormal research. The popularity of this activity has been heightened by such high quality radio programs as Coast to Coast a.m. and television programs as “The Ghost Hunters.”

This pursuit used to be one I participated in with great zeal. Armed with the latest Digital Video camera and audio recorder, I would cruise locations ranging from historical graveyards to modern-day office buildings in search of evidence of a life beyond our physical existence. I most certainly did come away with evidence.

The interesting thing was the more I searched the more I found. At first this phenomena would only occur at the locations I was visiting. However, the phenomena began to follow me home. At first, there were strange movements I would see the corner of my eye. The phenomena began to elevate and until not only I was experiencing these things, but other people were experiencing them as well.

The problem was these experiences were no longer fun. Shadow people, semitransparent dark blurry forms of human like shapes, would be seen regularly running down my hallway towards my bedroom. Family members began to have bizarre dreams and incredibly vivid nightmares. If these manifestations were only happening to me, I could’ve passed it off as vivid imagination. When precious family members began to be negatively affected I realized the seriousness of the situation.

The height of this activity reached the pinnacle shortly after there was an unusual murder in the otherwise quiet suburban neighborhood in the third most safe city in America according to the FBI. We also began to have UFO sightings, and incredibly bizarre buzzing or whirring sounds flying over our neighborhood. My son while walking on a trail near our house, saw an upright red-cloaked creature with animal-like legs as clear as day.

Several teenagers in our neighborhood had been experimenting with occultic conjuring on a hill above our neighborhood. Occultic symbols that I was familiar with due to my research, began to be painted like graffiti on one of the high-voltage transmission line towers. A feeling of dread enveloped the area.

The only thing I did know was that I and my family were oppressed by some very dark forces. The spiritual world was very real to me. All of the “happy thoughts” and New Age appeals to the “protecting light” had no effect on this activity. I cannot tell you how terrible and dreadful some of these experiences were.

In desperation, I appealed to the son of God, Yeshua, known in the Western world as Jesus. After I gave my life to Yeshua, the oppressive activity stopped. Activity continued, and to some degree continues today, for the others in the neighborhood. However, for me and my family, we are at peace. While it may sound corny or hokey to you, I know for certain that when I pled the blood of Jesus and asked for the forgiveness of my sins, this unleashed a far greater restraining power over these dimensional experiences.

I can’t say for certain that all the activity we experienced was caused by my paranormal research. Clearly there are those in the neighborhood who were practicing Occultic worship and perhaps even overt Satanism. However, I do know one thing for certain. If you seek communication with the spirit world you can very well open the door to negative entities that masquerade as dead humans. Ghost research is very much like a Ouija board; it is a vehicle of communication.

Ghost researchers often see the danger in séances and Ouija boards. However, the very act of this hobby-research is reaching out in hopes of communication with this spirit world. When you run a digital recorder in hopes of Electronic Voice Phenomena, you are inviting an entity to talk to you. In my opinion, opening up yourself to the spirit world in this manner is akin to putting a fresh steak in the middle of the jungle full of hungry, cunning and deceptive tigers.

Lots of ghost research websites promise protection via happy thoughts and mysticism. For example:

The first most important thing to do is to envision oneself in a “Christ like” white lights, . . . Also remember that it is important that you believe that God and his angels will protect you because this protection is only as powerful as you believe in your heart it to be.
- http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/deliverances/dangers.htm

Instead of saying strictly Christian based prayers, we gave her prayers of protection based on Michael the Archangel
- http://ezinearticles.com/?Does-Religion-Play-A-Part-In-Ghost-Research?&id=877912

In my experience, “visualizing” yourself being surrounded by imaginary light is not going to cut it in protection. Despite what you may hear, human beings cannot use mental power against multidimensional entities of incredible potency and cunning, anymore than you can use mental, positive thoughts against an oncoming locomotive. The spiritual world is very real and can manipulate our physical world. As for the conjuring of Angels, the Bible is very clear that good Angels do not respond to prayer and worship; it is the fallen angels who seek worship.

Ghost research for the sake of science is one thing, but most people are not doing it for science; they are hoping for experience. So if you’re so inclined to want to experience the spiritual world, I would invite you to seek God through Yeshua. I know that He makes the spiritual world for me very real now in a very positive way. I don’t need to creep into darkened buildings to know that there is a world beyond my physical reality. Now instead of dark oppression, I have daily amazing things happen to me that could not be coincidence, and are very positive. I still maintain a research into this world that most people don’t believe in. However, now I am not on my own, but relying on God in his infinite word for guidance. For me, all is supernatural now

– DryWind

The Bible challenges the superstitious belief of a purely ethereal spirit world by setting up a heirarchy of realms. For example there is Sheol (the abode of the dead), the Earth, Heaven, and the very highest- the throne and mountain of God.

The the Bible speaks of the Sides of the North as being a holy realm, which is above all and something our physical mind cannot understand – a completely transcendent place.   It is far more than a mountain; in fact the great mountains of the earth are only limited “models” or facsimiles to Zion, like the way a simple paper airplane “models” a greater reality of a super-jumbo airliner.

Psalm 48:1-2
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised In the city of our God, In His holy mountain.

Beautiful in elevation, The joy of the whole earth, Is Mount Zion [on] the sides of the north, The city of the great King.

The archangel who rebelled against God pledged in his pride to ascend to this realm: 

Isaiah 14:12-15
“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations!

For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’

Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit.

Instead of the dimension above all dimesions, God casts this being into the lowest abode.

The Bible has much to say about the landscape of the complex hierarchy of the multidimensional realm that is unseen to us, yet affects nearly everything on this earth, from personal lives to geopolitical realities. Above all this reality is God, who sent his son to redeem us lowly humans from being continual victims of the forces of darkness and of death itself.

Joe Jordan – Spiritual Warfare and the Abduction Phenomena (MP3)

As we enter 2009, I invite you to listen to this pivotal interview with MUFON director and Alien Abduction researcher Joe Jordon in this interview on Future Quake radio from this last August. Joe outlines the spiritual warfare and a high level of deception in the Abduction Phenomena.

Joe Jordan is President and co-founder of CE-4 Research Group. He is also MUFON State Section Director and Field Investigator for Brevard County, Florida, home of Kennedy Space Center. Joe works in Product Development and Engineering in the transportation industry. Joe Jordan says “”I am probably the most hated man in UFOlogy.”

Special guest to Drywind.net, Dr. Stephen M Yulish is the author of many books including The Great Harpazo Deception, Invasion Israel and many others. He was a member of the research group NICAP in the 1960s after reading Project Bluebook. He studied astronomy and exobiology at Case Western Reserve University and graduated in 1969. He eventually became a History Professor at The University of Arizona for seven years where he visited Allen Hyneck’s Tucson group. He became interested in Bible prophecy after he had a head on collision with Jesus Christ in 1988.

First published in UFO Digest

Last year, independent, nontraditional, religious scholar, Patrick Cooke, did a series of articles onThe Bible and the Paranormal, UFO Digest, 7/ 3, 17, and 25/07 which I critiqued in my articlePatrick Cooke’s The Bible and the Paranormal: What He failed to Tell You, UFO Digest 8/21/07. Patrick is a earnest researcher but I believed that he misled the readers by designating all paranormal activities in the Bible as inherently positive and without any negative consequences While the Word God says instead: “There shall not be found among you …one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead,. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Sure Saul did call up the dead spirit of Samuel by using the medium, the witch of Endor, (1 Samuel 28:11), but he did so against God’s warning not to do such things and he died for doing it.

“So Saul died for his trespass which he committed against the Lord, because of the word of the Lord which he did not keep, and also because he asked counsel of a medium, making inquiry of it, and he did not inquire of the Lord. Therefore, He killed him.” (1 Chronicles 10:13).

Therefore, even though the Bible speaks of the reality of paranormal activities like witchcraft and mediums and omens that doesn’t mean that one should participate in these activities anymore than one should participate in murder, incest, adultery or homosexuality even though these activities are also mentioned in the Bible and are warned against as well.

Patrick also misinformed the readers, I believe, by his understating of the concept of hell in the Bible .Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven; see Mathew 5:22, 10:28 and 23:45 as well as Mark 9:47 etc. Likewise Patrick overstated the paranormal abilities that Jesus said any of us could all have because Jesus said we had to “Believe in Him first (John 14:12) and this is a very important necessary condition that he neglected to mention.

I also criticized Patrick’s belief in ghosts in the Bible (and anywhere else for that matter) because of the statement “Once to die and then the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

But, in the spirit of this Christmas season, however, I must now admit that I have found something in the Bible that might give credence to Patrick’s statement about entities in the Bible “roaming around the earth in a ghostly body.” Ghosts in the Bible? Was Patrick correct? Maybe! Just maybe!

Both the Old Testament:

“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12: 2).

“The dead will live. Your corpses will rise and the earth will give birth to departed spirits” (Isaiah 26:19).

and the New Testament

“All in the tombs shall hear his voice and shall come forth those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29),speak of a resurrection at the end of time to either eternal destruction or eternal bliss.Former UCLA Economics Professor and now a leading Messianic Jewish theologian, and a man whose judgment I respect, David Stern, in his 1998 book,The Complete Jewish Bible: An English Version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and Brit Hadashah (New Testament), translated Isaiah 26:14 as “The dead will not live again; the ghosts will not rise again for you punished and destroyed them and wiped out all meaning of them.”

The King James Version of Isaiah 26:14 is

“The dead will not live again; the deceased spirits will not rise”

The interesting fact is that the word dead in both is the Hebrew word Rephaim (giants) which actually refers to a people.

“It is also regarded as the land of Rephaim where people are as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim.” (Deuteronomy 2:20-21).

“There also we saw the Nephilim. The sons of Anak (Anakim) are part of the Nephilim and we became like grasshoppers in their presence” (Numbers 13:33).

These people, the Rephaim and Anakim were an offshoot of the Nephilim. Dead Rephaim, or dead Nephilim, have no souls and thus may have roamed the earth in ghostly bodies as Patrick intimated. Thus we humans have souls and await judgment in the end of days and cannot wander as ghosts, but soulless Nephilim (Rephaim) possibly could. Consequently, maybe so called ghosts in the Bible and in other places past and present are in reality dead Nephilim (Rephaim) who will never be resurrected and wander the earth aimlessly? These soulless entities are demonic in nature and thus share with their father, Satan, the power, ability and will to deceive us humans. These ghosts try to deceive us that our family and friends are still accessible to us from beyond the grave which goes against Scripture and ultimately denies the need for a Savior.

Who again are these Nephilim/Rephaim?

When the sons of God (fallen angels, possibly extraterrestrials) mated with the human daughters of men (Genesis 6:2) and their offspring the Nephilim(Genesis 6:4) were on the earth in those days and also afterward (Numbers 13:33). The New Testament tells us a great deal more about these actions that took place during these days of Noah. It speaks of angels who did not keep their own abode and whom God has kept in eternal bonds under darkness (Jude 6) for pursuing strange (human) flesh (Jude 7). God did not spare these (fallen) angels when they sinned and sent them to hell (2 Peter 2:4). The extra biblical book ofEnoch called these fallen angels Grogori and stated that 200 of these so called Watchers descended to earth. They are also discussed in the Dead Sea Scroll,Genesis Apocrophon, and other Apocryphal and pseudopigraphal writings.

Therefore, there must have been hundreds or maybe thousands of offspring generated from these unholy unions which God destroyed in the Great flood(Genesis 7:23) to prevent the contaminating of the Messianic bloodline to come. But as discussed earlier we saw later eruptions of these hybrid soulless children later called the Rephaim and Anakim as more fallen angels descended to earth. The apostle Paul continued to warn women thousands of years later to cover their heads so not to tempt these fallen angels (1 Corinthians 11:10) When these Rephaim (Nephilim) offspring died, their souls were condemned not to live again or to rise (resurrection) as humans will.

As a consequence, the only way that Job could experience a spirit passing by his face causing the hair of his flesh to bristle up (Job 4:15) was if it were a soulless dead Nephilim (Rephaim) wandering the earth in a ghostly body. Patrick may have been correct, but even if he were, it was unfortunately for the wrong reasons.