What about Ghosts? Part One of Two Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us. —Luke 16:25–26 NIV1984, from Christs parable in which Abraham replies to the rich man in torment The ghost of Kate Batts may well be the most-documented phantom in American history. So famous is the legend that, prior to becoming president, Andrew Jackson is said to have investigated this notorious poltergeist (noisy ghost) himself. While the legend continues to be sustained by sophists, sensationalists, and storytellers, Scripture hardly supports the notion that spirits of the dead can return to harass the living. First, as the Bible makes clear, souls of the departed are either comforted in the presence of God or in agony absent his loving presence. Such is the case in Luke 16. Upon death, the soul of Lazarus experienced comfort in Abrahams bosom. Conversely, the soul of the rich man experienced torment in hades. Neither was permitted to return to the land of the living. Moreover, the very notion of communicating with the dead (necromancy) is denounced in Scripture. Thus, when the departed Samuel appeared to the living Saul, the witch of Endor immediately recognized the occasion as a non-normative act of God—a divine display of judgment rather than a haunting (1 Samuel 28:3–25). While the witch may have been able to delude the gullible via the guise of conjuring, she was far from self-deluded. She was well aware of the fact that Samuels appearance in the land of the living was in spite of her deceptions, not because of them. While she trafficked in delusion and the demonic, she was wholly incapable of conjuring up the ghosts of the departed. Todays Daily e-Truth is adapted from my book, AfterLife: What You Need to Know about Heaven, the Hereafter, and Near-Death Experiences » Did someone forward this Daily e-Truth to you? Get your own free subscription to receive biblical truth in your inbox every day.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:10:06 +0000
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