Once we have completed this study on biblical worldview in a few weeks, we will not have exhausted the subject, but we will have made some great progress. I’d like to turn our focus to the spirit world. I am amazed at how much interest the secular world has in the spirit world. It is virtually everywhere you turn. Harry Potter books are some of the most popular, Lord of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia as well. There are also movies and mythologies and television shows and ghost-type stories. The world seems very interested in the spirit world, at the same time, for the most part, it denies the true spirit world of Scripture and the Great Spirit of Jesus Christ and the Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
As we look at that and think about that, we recognize that these interests in the spirit world that we see in books and movies are fantasy. These are things people make up, they are imaginary, they are fun, I suppose, and people love them. Disney brings this fantasy world to children’s shows and there are more serious shows and movies for the more mature and older audience. People enjoy them, but it is pure fantasy.
The only source of authentic teaching about the spirit world is found in Scriptures. We are only given a glimpse about what is going on in the spirit world. We want to pick up that glimpse and see some of the things that the Bible says about that.
One of the things we would mention is that the spirits and the spirit world do exist. There are creatures that God has created that are spirits. They do not have bodies. They do not procreate. They do not die. They are normally unseen. They are spirits. They could be among us or around us at any given time and we would not know it. That is what the Scripture teaches about the Spirit world.
In Ephesians 6:12, it says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” The Greek word used here was just heavenlies, but most translations say heavenly places. The spirit realm is where the spirit beings live. There are both good spirits, such as angels, and evil spirits, such as the demonic creatures. All of them inhabit the spiritual realm of the heavenlies. They seem to have the ability to roam the earth. To come down upon the earth and do things among us. Some of those spirit beings can take on physical shapes and we find that in the case of Satan, for example, and we find it with the good angels that the Lord allows them to take on human form. In that sense, they do not have human form or bodies, but they can take on those forms on occasion as well. Their home seems to be in the heavenlies, that is where they reside, although they can come to the earth as well . . .
