STAND FIRM: Holes in Our Story - The Unseen World
My heart through Stand Firm Ministries has been to encourage believers to remain faithful, and especially to encourage the emerging generation to stand firm. In my research, I’m convinced that one of the main reasons 65-80% of children raised in our churches leave the faith is because they don’t see the story they’re invited into as big as it truly is. This is heartbreaking because the upcoming generation wants to give their lives to a cause that counts, and we know that following Jesus is the greatest cause. There’s no more significant “cause story” in the world than the one told in Scripture. The story of truth recorded in the Bible, unfolding in the present and inviting us to be a part of it, encompasses all of reality. Our modern portrayal of that story often makes it a separate, unrelated narrative to the rest of the world. I know this isn’t what we want or long to convey. That’s why I spent so much time sharing my series of articles on The Epic Story of Truth.
If you followed that series closely, you saw the prevalence of some biblical topics we don’t include as much as others in the church and our conversations on the Bible today. I highlighted two of them — the end times and God’s continued plan for Israel. There’s a third subject that had traces in nearly every individual Bible story we looked at. The subject is in almost every event within the Bible. That’s the unseen world — Satan, angels, demons, and all that is in the spirit world. Now, we do address these things on occasion, but I have come to find out I didn’t have a biblical view of the actuality of angels and demons, nor did I realize the unseen world has prominence within Scripture. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I didn’t have a biblical view. Most of the treatment of these topics I hear isn’t what I would consider biblically solid. I let tradition and modern thinking shape my views rather than the Bible itself.
When I talk about having a biblical view of the unseen world, that comes by recapturing the first-century mind of the original audience of the Bible. We get small glimpses of the view of the audience that received the New Testament when reading the Bible, but their view of the angelic world is laid out thoroughly in the intertestamental writings. These are books written after the close of the Old Testament until the time of Jesus that aren’t included in the Bible. If you’ve picked up a Catholic Bible, they are the included “bonus” books. Though not in Protestant Bibles, they’re quoted in the Bible and even by Jesus. Studying those books is a loaded topic, but they are the closest we can get to understanding more about the Bible’s original audience mindset. I’ll address that topic later, as I am launching into a series on the unseen world of the Bible, but with this article, I wanted to give five reasons why this topic matters:
• The unseen world is a major part of the Bible. The spirit world is in the Bible a lot — likely more than we realize! Therefore, if it’s in the Bible, it’s important, and we must have a biblical foundation of the topic like we aim for with every other topic. In Acts 20, the Apostle Paul exhorts us to preach the whole counsel of God.
• Like when Jesus came in His first advent, the activity of the unseen world will ramp up leading up to His return. If you want to tally up a long list, go through the Book of Revelation and tally each time it talks about angels. You will have to be committed to finishing because it is a lot. There are also wild passages such as Revelation 9, which talks about fallen angels released from under the Euphrates River and demons coming out of the abyss. The Bible indicates that the unseen world will play a prominent role at the end of the age. We saw the same thing when Jesus came in His First Advent.
• We can’t understand spiritual warfare if we don’t have a biblical foundation of the spirit world. Though we may not talk about angels and demons regularly in the modern church, we do talk about spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare is real, but if we don’t have a biblical foundation of the spirit world, we can’t accurately prepare and fight this spiritual war.
• As paganism returns and grows in the United States, we all will be confronted with conversations about the spiritual world. Until the spread of Christianity, the Gentile world was dominated by paganism and spiritism. Therefore, as Christianity wanes in places, there will be a return to these practices. We are seeing this in the United States. There is a rise in paganism, spiritism and witchcraft. I’d argue that the first followers of Jesus were prepared to encounter these things, but we’re not today, as we have neutralized much of the spirit world of the Bible.
• The world is increasingly providing alternative explanations of the unseen world. The lost world has always tried to explain the spirit world in its own way. Today, we chalk up their explanations as mythologies and fairy tales, but then we do the same ourselves. Have you seen shows like History Channel’s Ancient Aliens? It could be that the Bible might have answers that we’re not providing the world around us.
— Jake is a state missionary and would love to share about the work in Northwest Arkansas and encourage your church to stand firm. (standfirmministries.com)
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Jake McCandless
Jake McCandless authors a weekly column titled, Stand Firm and Live Epic, through which he seeks to encourage the modern church to not just survive, but thrive in current times. He also addresses many end-times topics.
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