The Reality of Ghosts: A Possible Biblical Explanation

 

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.