Our world today is fascinated with the paranormal world of ghosts and aliens. Hollywood has capitalized on this craze with all manner of movies and reality television shows. Mediums, Psychics, and ghost hunters abound with so-called communications from dead ancestors. While we know that we live in an age of deception and fraud, allowing us to see some so-called communications as fake, there are others that seem to be accurate in sharing information that could not possibly be known by a stranger. What is Truth about haunted houses?
A haunted house by definition is a home that is inhabited either permanently or occasionally by the disembodied spirits of a departed person. The spirit is believed to have been a former inhabitant or a person familiar with the house or the property. The house or property is referred to as haunted because of the unexplainable supernatural activity occurring around the house or property.
Often an unusual death, a violent murder, or some form of shedding of blood has occurred at or near the location. In other words, each instance seems to be linked with death and shedding of blood. If these places are possessed by a spirit, then the real question becomes this: Is this the spirit of a departed person, or is it actually a familiar spirit, which the Bible warns against us seeking after?
We are all a tripartite being of body, soul and spirit. (I Thessalonians 5:23) At death the spirit and soul depart from the body, and the body returns to the dust of the earth. (Eccels. 12:1-7) When the Old Testament Patriarchs died, the Bible teaches that at death they ‘gave up the ghost’ and were ‘gathered unto their fathers’. (Gen. 25:8, 17; Gen. 35:9)
The Old English word for ghost, used in the King James Version of the Bible, is the inner spirit of the person, that part which is eternal. When the human spirit departs from the physical body it retains a similar appearance and feature of the physical body that it indwelt. (I Cor. 13:12) Giving up the ghost is a phrase used to describe the departing of soul and spirit from the physical body. After the spirit departed, the early patriarchs were said to have been ‘gathered to their people’; this in turn is used to refer to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their spirits were all gathered into one place, which in the Old Testament time was a chamber called ‘Sheol’, the world of departed spirits, somewhere under the earth. (Luke 16:19-26)
Christ gave up the ghost when He breathed His last breath and cried, “It is Finished.” Christ told one of the two thieves, “Today you will be with me in Paradise”. (Luke 23:43) They both died before sunset that day. Christ had previously told His disciples that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a whale, He would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Christ was not just in the grave for three days and nights, He actually descended into the Paradise chamber (Abraham’s Bosom) to preach to those spirits imprisoned under the earth. Ephesians 4:9-10, “Now this, “He ascended” – what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.”
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by Whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison.” (I Peter 3:18-19)
After Christ cried, “It is finished!”, from the cross, His Spirit descended into the chamber for the righteous as He preached the Good News of His Resurrection to the spirits of the righteous dead. This was called ‘Abraham’s Bosom’ in Luke 16:22, and would have included Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons, David, the prophets, and all people who died in a covenant relation with God under the Law of Moses. Many of these lived under the Law of Moses for 1500 years, thus Christ preached a three-day message of what He had accomplished on earth and what was about to take place when He ascended.
Matthew 27:51-53 says, “Then behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks rent, and the graves we opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep (died) were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city (Jerusalem) and appeared to many.” These ‘saints’ were Old Testament saints whose souls and spirits joined their bodies as they were resurrected and seen alive in Jerusalem. The Bible tells us that when a person departs through death, a righteous person’s soul and spirit will be brought into Paradise in the third heaven. (II Cor. 12:1-7), but a sinner or unbeliever who dies without a redemptive covenant with Christ is separated into the place called ‘hell’. (Luke 16:22-23)
The important point is that once the human spirit is placed in one of these two chambers, there is no indication that theses spirits are permitted to freely roam the earth or to return to the locations of their former homes and ‘haunt’ the places where they once lived.
To be continued….