Some Christians will immediately laugh at the entire subject, waving their hand and saying that such an endeavor is a waste of time and is built purely on conjecture- thus emphasizing my point as to why we are becoming irrelevant. Those of you who know me, who have ministered with me, and have followed my writings know that I am not the type of person to devote time to meaningless activity or conjecture. You also know that If I am going to argue for a position, I have very good reasons for what I am arguing, and am going to present you with well thought out reasons.In other words, I'm not a "quack". All that to say, if there are those who laugh at such a post, it is because they have never taken the time to intensely investigate such matters. Furthermore, this is not a subject that I am writing about on a whim. I have spent years studying this. Such study has led to hard questions, which when I thought I found answers, led to more hard questions. I have done diligent study on this topic, and hope that you will benefit from the fruit of my labors. Why have I spent so much time on a subject that most Christians ignore? For one, to put into perspective some of my own experiences, as well as the experiences of other friends and people that I know. Second, I believe that Christians are missing out on being a relevant voice to a discussion that we should own. Not many people are venturing out in doing what I am doing, and I am convinced it is because they are blind to all that I have been saying thus far. Yet I will venture out on this subject because I believe in engaging our culture with the Gospel, and this is a prime avenue. I will venture out, because I am convinced that even though what I present here is not mainstream (simply because people won't look deeply enough into it) it will be one day. I want to help pave the way to that "one day." Therefore, I am going to give you a crash course in Ghostology 101. I might not win over every person to my point of view, but I can guarantee that I will give you reason enough to doubt your own, which will hopefully lead you on to further study.
Here is how these posts will unfold: First, we are going to consider some actual ghosts sightings. Now, I am not talking about what you hear on some of these shows on tv, where you have no idea of the credibility of the witness. I think paranormal investigation has its place and can be useful, but many of the shows on tv give it a bad name. Granted, some of these testimonies may be true, but considering the fact that many of these shows have been busted for faking things, it makes them very suspect. What I am talking about are eye witness accounts from police and sheriff deputies while trying to find missing persons; I am talking about Christians such as C.S. Lewis and J.B. Phillips. I am going to give you what I think are some of the most credible accounts around.
Second, we are going to examine the Bible stripped of our traditional concepts of ghosts, or in the words of Micheal S. Heiser, we are going to look at the "Naked Bible." We are going to remove our dogma of "Satanic ghosts" and see if the Bible gives us any other view. Though Satan can do these things, does that mean every instance is Satanic? Finally, we are going to talk about how if the concept of ghosts as departed human spirits is real, how does that fit in to what we learned about the afterlife (which is why I covered the afterlife first)? Also, throughout these post, I am going to answer many common objections to the view that I will be advocating.
I hope you're ready, because this is going to be a wild ride. I have been looking forward to this section, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do writing it.