How Christians Should Think About the Paranormal

Kymberli Cook:

Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and Culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director at the Hendricks Center. And today we are going to be talking about how Christians should think about the paranormal. We hope that this can be a really helpful time to tackle some of the mysterious and more disarming experiences and things that we hear accounts of, and just really work through how to think through the claims of those kinds of experiences, and navigating situations in which we find ourselves, knowing what… And not even knowing. That's probably a strong word in this environment, but trying to work through how to think biblically and theologically, and where to not overemphasize or underemphasize the spiritual world.

So we are joined by very distinguished guests today. On my right is a retired DTS professor who continues private practice and overseeing budding counselors. Linda Marten, thank you so much for being here. You're

Linda Marten:

Welcome.

Kymberli Cook:

And then to my left is Scott Horrell who… And just be prepared, this is a little bit long, in a good way. Professor of Theological Studies here at DTS and is also adjunct professor at SETECA, which is a seminary in Guatemala, Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary in Jordan and the Center for Theological Development in Mozambique. So he has been all over the world multiple times. It's nice to have you here.

Scott Horrell:

Thank you.

Kymberli Cook:

All right. So to get us started on this conversation, which is just really exciting. I've been looking forward to this podcast because I have a thousand questions and I'm sure that the people listening have a lot of questions as well. But to start off with, and just so everybody can get to know you all, how did you come to reflect on these areas, on the areas of the supernatural and the paranormal? And we'll get into what those words even mean in a second. But Linda, let's start with you. How did you come to be thinking in this area?

Linda Marten:

If I had been reincarnated, I used to be a cat, I'm sure. I'm curious about everything. So I've just been curious about everything. So I really got into it more in depth after my graduate work because I thought I was going to be a counselor and teach people appropriate boundaries and communication skills and those kind of things. So one day I was working with a client of mine, this while I was doing my doctoral work and she had come in with a pain in her side.

Well, I was doing projective techniques at the time, so I said, "Why don't you just close your eyes and let your mind's eye go down to that area of your body?" And so she sat there with her eyes closed and I said, "Go down there and look and tell me what you see." So she said, "Oh, it's really dark. It's really dark." See, I'm expecting some association with the memory or something like that. So I said, "Well keep looking." She said, "Oh, it's really, really black." I said, "Okay."

So she sits there quietly for a while and I'm sitting there quietly for a while. All of a sudden with her eyes closed, she says, "She's mine." I couldn't think of any graduate book where that had come up.

Kymberli Cook:

Prepared you for how to answer in that moment.

Linda Marten:

All I know is the hair on the back of my neck went up. And interesting, what came into my mind immediately was my old catechism training where you memorized verses, "He who was in you is greater than he who was in the world." I felt comforted, but I was still lost. I didn't know what to do. But that's how I started.

Kymberli Cook:

Wow. What a cliffhanger of a start. Okay. Scott, how did you come to be interested in this area? Or reflect.

Scott Horrell:

Mine is not quite so dramatic because I've been in a lot of places. But when I went out with YWAM, I was 18 years old and we were in the town near the most remote of a little island called Tobago. Speyside is the name of the town. And the rest of the team had gone back to the capital three hours away. I don't know, I must have bumped into a pastor who said, "I'm a spiritual Baptist pastor. Would you like to preach at my church tonight? Which was a Monday night.

Well, sure I'm spiritual, I'm Baptist. Gotcha. I went there and he comes in. It was getting cloudy and rainy, and lightning too. He comes in with a bell to scare out the spirits. Water sprinkled around to attract the spirit and flowers to appease the saints. A few things like that. Well, I preached everything I knew. The Pentecostal Pastor showed up, so there's sort of an amen contest who could outdo the other. A little girl went to sleep and fell off her bench, which made a big-

Kymberli Cook:

Oh my goodness.

Scott Horrell:

… crash on the ground. I just walked out of there thinking, I have no idea what just happened, but it was strange. So welcome to the unseen world.

Kymberli Cook:

Again, we'll get to definitions in just a second with regard to what paranormal and supernatural and all of those things do and don't mean. But I'm just curious a little bit more, what does it look like to reflect in these areas? Because I find it interesting that you both tell a story. So is it largely experience based? What reading in the area or what… I mean, I'm not looking for some kind of certificate or credential, but just what has it looked like as you have reflected and thought about these areas? What does that even look like?

Linda Marten:

I'm always looking for answers. Because I grew up as a Lutheran, Conservative Lutheran and so we knew we had the right answers. And my mother had a bunch of sisters, but we knew my mother was the best of the sisters.

Kymberli Cook:

Of course.

Linda Marten:

Yeah, I mean that was helpful. And I lived in a state Iowa that had no poison spiders or poison things, so I knew I had the best of everything. And so I would assume everybody would agree with me because I had the best and I knew the best. As I grew up, I thought, "I wonder if everybody else thinks that what they think is right?" So now I became on a quest to is truth really… That I think is true, really true? And then I started questioning everything.

Francis Schaeffer apparently went through a time like that where he just threw it all out and had to start over too. So I felt like that. And forgetting what your question was, but that's how I got into it, is I was reading everything. Bridey Murphy, that was reincarnation at the time that book came out. I was reading things at Glossolalia. I never heard that. We, Lutherans didn't even talk let alone in tongues. So I would just…

Scott Horrell:

You interpreted a lot.

Linda Marten:

Yes,. So I did a lot of reading and some of probably, which you may touch on today and the slightly occult. I even read about ectoplasm and those kind of things, which, do you know what that is?

Kymberli Cook:

I do not.

Linda Marten:

That's all right.

Scott Horrell:

I don't either.

Linda Marten:

Oh really? They put a body dying on a bed and then they wanted to know how much the spirit weighed. So then at the moment of death, they could see the weight difference. They decided it was just a couple ounces.

Kymberli Cook:

Wow.

Linda Marten:

And then they used to do a Kirlian photograph to catch the spirit going. So I was curious about… Do you see what I mean? I used to be a cat? So I've been around.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. All right. What about you, Scott? What does it look like? What does it look like to reflect on these things?

Scott Horrell:

I think it's just been through the years, different things that have come up. And I haven't had a lot of direct experience, but I remember needing answers. Speaking Francis Schaeffer, I went to L'aBri, lived at L'aBri. Oz Guinness was writing his famous book, The Dust of Death. And about that time he was writing about the really dark, the occult. And he would explain to us that strange things are happening, things fall off shelves. There seems to be real spirit activity, even where I'm writing this in my own home. Well, I'd known a little, but I suppose then as a missionary and other things, you see that sort of thing more often than one would expect.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. So when we're approaching this topic for the first time in a serious way, and we're not just giving candy to some little children dressed up as ghost at our front door, when we're approaching it in a serious manner, what are we talking about? What are the definitions that we need to know? What are the areas that we need to know and that you would suggest a basic Christian or a basic pastor should be aware of?

So I've at least thrown out too. So there's the supernatural and the paranormal. Would you mind unpacking the difference between the two? Are there differences?

Scott Horrell:

Well, I'm normal. I'm not sure about everyone else. Normal would be the natural world that we live in. The experiences that we have supernatural, of course, are beyond what can be verified, really paranormal in some ways as well. The paranormal might be the broader term. Well, Linda, you might be able to help me here too. It is what from a naturalist world, we simply don't understand what's going on there.

Supernatural very clearly defines spirits or forces beyond us, but that are in some sense defined as spirits, ghosts, in some places, saints, God working, Satan working. So the supernaturals is the more elevated of the two. Paranormal can be that we just don't understand it. But it could be supernatural.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. What other terms we should know what they mean?

Linda Marten:

And things that maybe used to be considered paranormal. We just didn't have the science to understand it too. So knowing what is paranormal, the Northern Lights seems scary until they understood the temperature changed, the inversions of the whatever up there. A silly thing, but an example, I used to be terrified of sinkholes. As a child I read the paper and I read about a sinkhole. So I was probably nine years old. All I knew was all of a sudden the earth could open up and fall in and you could fall in it.

I knew that that happened with Moses when people disagreed with him, the earth opened up and some fell in. So I was very sensitive to sinkholes.

Kymberli Cook:

Oh my goodness.

Linda Marten:

Well, this is how children think. Fortunately, I moved-

Kymberli Cook:

Absolutely.

Scott Horrell:

And the whole world.

Kymberli Cook:

… a little bit beyond it. But as I grew older, I started reading about sinkholes and what causes them and how the earth erodes the sand underneath and it'll fall in. And then it took it out of the paranormal for me that it wasn't aliens who were underground sucking in bodies like the old movies showed. So that would be an example of sometimes we just don't know enough and sometimes it can be normal. I mean, ice cubes are paranormal to somebody who's never seen cold weather.

Okay. We'll get into a little bit more of those later on. So you've already talked about some things coming off shelves and definitely some kind of other entity speaking from the woman that you were counseling. So is there credibility to the stories of the supernatural that we are hearing? And for those who would really want to know, what does the Bible have to say about that and helping decide whether or not those are credible stories? Linda, let's start with you.

Scott Horrell:

Oh, great.

Linda Marten:

Well, I was thinking about stories in the Bible. Of course, there's always… Was it the Witch of Endor? Was it calling up Samuel?

Scott Horrell:

Indeed.

Linda Marten:

Lo and behold, she got him.

Scott Horrell:

Sure looks that way.

Linda Marten:

Yeah, it looks that way. So was that really Samuel? Can people come from the dead back into this realm? The Bible would suggest that happened, but we don't know what it really… I don't know. So I put that in with a lot of other things that I hear from clients or interviews or things like that. I know a lot of strange things do happen.

Kymberli Cook:

Scott, what would you add?

Scott Horrell:

Yeah. Sharon Begley in Newsweek, this goes back a few years, but she said that… I don't know what her source was, but she's well known religion writer, 40% of Americans believe that aliens may have come to earth and taken people captive. 40%. She talks about how there are quirks for her evolutionary process of forming our brain. So there are aspects of perception that just sort of like a kink in the machine. All of a sudden something that we perceive doesn't make sense.

And of course for us, for anyone, you already have some kind of a worldview that's behind you. You have a way of thinking. So, "Oh, that must have been an angel," when somebody else looking on might say, "No, you just were lucky." Or it might have been a spirit or might have been whatever else. But we do fill in the blanks, the gaps with what we think maybe should have happened.

So I, in fact, just this last weekend, taught on angels and spirits. This was a pretty calm class. They didn't want to say much. Sometimes people really do burst out with all these stories they have and I'm thinking, well maybe it was an angel but probably not. I'd be too much a skeptic. Other times it's very, very clear that something happened that goes well beyond what we can explain.

Kymberli Cook:

Can I interrupt you for a second?

Scott Horrell:

Sure. Please do.

Kymberli Cook:

So what makes it clear?

Scott Horrell:

What makes it clear?

Kymberli Cook:

When you hear that and you say, at least for you when you would be making that decision as to what a student would be saying, what would make it seem clear to you?

Scott Horrell:

One is where there seems to be no other explanation except the supernatural.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay.

Scott Horrell:

Dare I give an example?

Kymberli Cook:

Sure.

Scott Horrell:

One of our students who graduated with his THM, but he and his wife and two children, little children were in Cleveland, icy winter, 17 below at that point. And he ended up sleeping with one child and his wife another, which they never did. But in that, he had something of a vision or a dream that suddenly woke him up. And as he woke up in the middle of the night, then he heard glass break and he thought maybe somebody's breaking into the house.

So he started running down the hall and hit a thick cloud of smoke. He immediately woke up his wife and children with bare feet, ran out into the snow as their house literally burned down. The head of the fire department said, "How did you wake up?" This is a kind of fire that nobody wakes up. It sucks the oxygen out of the rooms and you're asleep before you know what hit you.

It was at that point that this man named Jake said, "The Lord wants more of my life than I've given him." And that's what led him to seminary. So how do you explain something like that? Maybe coincidence? But many times that which surrounds… Like Peter. He didn't know what was going on with him when the angel broke him out of the prison. And yet he thought it was all a vision until he's standing in the street, the angels left him and I'm really here. Something really happened.

Kymberli Cook:

I'm not in jail.

Scott Horrell:

So often it's hindsight that fills some of that in. That's how. It helps a little.

Kymberli Cook:

But I just want to be clear for anybody listening, we are saying, sure there are instances where some credibility might be in question, but as believers we definitely hold to a supernatural world and to a spirit world. And so we have really the vantage point that allows us potentially some explanation or understanding though that is a very loose, that we hold our explanations loosely because, again, it's outside of much of our understanding and even perception. And so we have to hold that loosely. But we do recognize that as opposed to somebody who would just say, "Well, none of that is true. It's only the material world and the books just fell off the shelf in the middle of the night. There's nothing wrong." That kind of thing. Would you guys confer concur with that or no? Okay.

Linda Marten:

I think-

Scott Horrell:

I was studying this very area.

Kymberli Cook:

I'm very interested.

Scott Horrell:

At 11 at night, all of a sudden a whole wall of books came crashing down. That has never happened before or since. It's freaked me out and my immediate thought was there's there's more going on here than just… I just put them back up. Same stuff. They've never fallen again. How do you account for that? I don't know, but I have my suspicions.

Kymberli Cook:

Yeah.

Scott Horrell:

So those things do happen that are difficult to perceive in other ways, but are possible other ways.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay.

Linda Marten:

Let me come out on that one.

Kymberli Cook:

Yes, please.

Linda Marten:

I have some equivalent things and it irritates me that there should be supernatural things that I then account to darker forces, and I get irritated at them. I mean, this is my reaction to it.

Kymberli Cook:

Unpack that for us.

Linda Marten:

How dare you? I mean, I'm a child of the king. We all know that. So I just pray against them and I don't like to think… Because I know a lot of really dark things because the client base I work with. I don't like to have that in the front of my mind. So when I go to the store, I don't look around and go, "What do you do at night? What ceremonies do you lead?"

I don't like to live there and I feel like it almost gives Satan too much of me. So I think the best of everyone. I'm cheerful. We joke and all that. I don't know what they do at night, but if I found out… So there's that element.

Kymberli Cook:

That's actually really helpful. That leads right into the next question. So if we do in some measure as believers recognize the supernatural, the presence and existence of the supernatural world, how do we think distinctively, Christianly, that's too many -ly's, but how do we think in a distinctively Christian manner about this area in a way that doesn't just take us to what we see in Hollywood or other, like the occult in what they might do, what might be real or not with what they do? How do we distinctively as Christians approach these areas? Linda?

Linda Marten:

I was going to respond to what Scott was going to say.

Kymberli Cook:

Oh, okay.

Linda Marten:

No, no. It's all right. Maybe I'll give you the philosophy of demomics that I cultivated.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay.

Linda Marten:

Okay? And this is part scripture and part my experience with them. I came to believe that demos are just like germs. They're around all the time because we were born into a fallen world. What that means is they're against the image of God in us. So we're in a fallen world with germs around us. And yet at the same time we are given through scriptures all the ways to live in a healthy way. When we live in a healthy way, germs don't typically bother us. In fact, we have a very good system to fight off germs.

So you don't worry about germs. You live a healthy life. You have good family, good relationships. You learn all the one another concepts in the Bible, how to forgive one another and confront one another and all these things.

What happens is when you get into woundings. Then in woundings the germ can get in. And those are what we have to be careful about. How do you deal with the wounding? See, because anything of the spirit world, the demonic world if you want to say would have us divide and conquer. They want divisions. Christ's last prayer was about unity. So all of his teaching is how to come together, how to wear shoes of peace and so forth. It's just opposite. You just think opposite and you know what the supernatural world would have for you. So I put it in sense simply because I taught first grade and third grade out of college and I found out that's perfect.

Kymberli Cook:

That's always the best way. My father always said, if you can't put the cookies on the lower shelf, you probably don't know what to begin with.

Linda Marten:

Very true, very true.

Kymberli Cook:

So just to followup on what you're saying, for clarity's sake, are you saying that when we look at the supernatural world, we should largely just presume it's demonic?

Linda Marten:

No, not necessarily. But when we sense an evilness to it, then those are the germs. If my hands are sticky, I don't assume that's something toxic. It's probably some sugar I've been eating. So no. I was thinking about, because I just saw the movie Titanic recently, a re-thing on the television. When the Titanic went down, people all over the world woke up in the middle of the night. They knew something had happened to their loved one.

Now, that's supernatural. That's not demonic, but it does speak of some sort of… It's intuition. My mother always had intuition, which was spooky or irritating. That's not demonic. So there is another aspect of the world that I don't even know what to call it, paranormal alongside the normal that is just not demonic.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. I just want to make sure.

Linda Marten:

Does that help?

Kymberli Cook:

Yeah. That's very helpful. I just want to be sure that we're all saying the same thing and talking through that. Okay. Scott, what would you say with regard to how to think Christianly about this general area?

Scott Horrell:

Well, pretty obviously, we start with the word of God and one of the primary texts, there's other ones as well, but should I read Deuteronomy 18?

Kymberli Cook:

Sure.

Scott Horrell:

Just a little passage of it. "When you enter the land, the Lord God is giving you do not imitate the detestable way of the nation's there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft or cast spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord because of these same detestable practices the Lord, your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God."

So there's a good structure and that continues right into the New Testament as to what we are to avoid and stand against really. I don't think it's in vain that like Ephesians 4 says, "Don't let the sun go down on your wrath, lest Satan get a foothold into your life." So along with a wounding, I think, Linda, I would add, when there's conscious sin in a believer's life, particularly sin repeated, justifying it, maybe getting away with it and all of that, that weakens a child of God, a soldier of God, daughter or son, it breaks down their armor in some ways and makes them also susceptible to, let's say supernatural and I would say demonic oppression because of that sin.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. So what I'm hearing you all say is that as believers we need to recognize the legitimacy of this dimension, of our existence, of our reality. And in doing that, as we do that we need to be very careful, be very careful in any instances, particularly like you've said, where there would be some kind of wounding emotional like relational, psychological, all of that. Right?

Linda Marten:

A lot of people have trauma background.

Kymberli Cook:

Exactly. And then as well as wounding from sin and continuous sin. Is it only with caution that we should approach the supernatural? As believers?

Scott Horrell:

May maybe we need to bring in also here, as believers, we have a holy spirit within us. And not many of the gift of discernment probably, but all of us should be discernful. We have the Holy Spirit within us. We have the word of God to guide us. And so word of God and listening, trusting step by step with our Lord protects us from all kinds of stuff. And a lot of things we just don't know. Where's this coming from? Is this of God? It is paranormal. Lord, keep me on track.

And you don't see the apostle, Paul or any the apostles going around as Ghostbusters. I mean they're not going in to spirit of centers and casting out everyone. Those problems usually came to them and then they dealt with it. I think of, where was it, Philippi, where Paul is preaching and Silas is with him. And it says that day after day, this girl who was a medium kept walking after them and saying, "These men are the men of God and they're telling you how to be saved." How does it get any better than that? That's advertisement you can't pay for.

But after, it says, many days, Paul became frustrated with that, turned around and cast out the demon and literally all hell broke loose on him and Silas. Of course, they were beat in prison and all rest, but he didn't go after it. In fact, he ignored it for a while. And maybe that's good for us to do typically too.

Kymberli Cook:

Do you have anything to add?

Linda Marten:

Yeah. I don't think it's good for me to obsessed about it. Because, I mean the whole thing is we are filled with the Holy Spirit and as believers we're sealed with the Holy Spirit. At least keeping ourselves open to his guidance. I mean he nudges when we're going too far the other way. I mean, I get nudged a lot because I'm curious, but then I always have to go… Because I'm always curious why somebody believes something I think is absurd. Why would they believe that? So then I let myself go into it.

But then I always say, "Is this scriptural? Well, if it isn't, then I know exactly what I either need to talk to them about or their error and then I can resolve something in myself." So I enter into more places with people just kind of like that's my nature and that's my nature with therapists. I don't assume. Although, I know another therapist that says he assumes everybody that comes in is lying to him. I assume they probably are, but they don't intend to or they intend to, but they're not really… And I will notice where they're not lying.

Kymberli Cook:

How do I think about that? Do I think, "Well, the Bible doesn't have anything like that really and it just says that God created the world, and okay, the universe, but the only creatures and beings it seems like that he largely created, at least at that point is given to me in Genesis"? And so to go beyond that is to really go beyond what I know with regard to origins and that kind of thing.

So if that's one of the things that's coming to mind, what would you guys say to help my mind try to think through, "Okay, if that is real, then does that mean that God isn't real and the Bible isn't true because it doesn't seem to have anything like that reflected in how to live a godly life? It says it's equipped for godly living. Well if that's the case and there are aliens, how do I live in a godly way with aliens?"

Linda Marten:

I clean my house to death.

Kymberli Cook:

What's your opinion?

Linda Marten:

Well, see, and that's the way I thought. I know exactly what you're thinking. Go ahead.

Scott Horrell:

Well, we might disagree some because the Bible is the word of God. God is really there. He's the sovereign one. And because the scriptures don't bring it up, I think we can… There's always ambiguities in life. And I think, "Well, the kids, let's keep firm in our faith, the Lord Jesus and let's entrust him." And if you're scared at night, like our kids would be in Brazil and we'd have spiritist works out in front of a house, sacrifices against us. But you trust Christ walk in and claim his power. And if there be any malignant spirit in the name of Jesus Christ, speak out loud. Don't shout, just tell them to get out of the home and leave those little children alone and that they can rest in the Lord and be safe.

But there are things we don't know. And I think the scriptures don't go there because we don't need to know in one sense. That may not satisfy the curious 10-year-old though. So Linda, help us out here.

Linda Marten:

I agree with what you're saying. One of the verses that Philippians 2:10, the one about God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him, meaning Christ the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. And this is what I always thought was so interesting, you know that one. Above the earth, on the earth and under the earth. And I thought under the earth. I know night crawlers are under the earth.

I mean, I'm from Iowa, I'm real simple like this. But I always was puzzled about that. I've since looked that up and they're talking about the tri-part way the old… They said heaven was up there with the stars. Earth was… Let's see, there's the heaven. It's a tri-part thing. The heaven was the sun and the stars and then the middle earth, and then the earth sat on top of what was left over which was just kind of under the earth. And that's where Lazarus, when he was in the bowels of… Help me out there. Lazarus-

Kymberli Cook:

Abraham's bosoms?

Linda Marten:

In bosoms. Okay, so that would be under the earth. Or not. Because then if you go to Genesis 6, and this is where a lot of other Christian researchers go to Genesis 6 and go, what happened where the sons of God thought, the daughters of men, and they were cast down and then kept out of their estate. They were almost cast to earth as punishment. So where are they? I don't know. But in one sense it doesn't matter because I end up where you do, Scott, which is Christ is above all and every knee will bow.

So I don't care who's under the earth. If they're coming out, and there are a lot of stories, especially if you go to Indian stories of their history of portals where they do come out. We still got Jesus, which is a name above all name. So I would end up talking to my children just like you would have where we have the authority in us that Jesus gave us.

Kymberli Cook:

That's the distinctively Christian view, regardless of what is-

Linda Marten:

Yes. Regardless if they're real or not real.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay.

Linda Marten:

So we have the medicine. If the disease is real or not real, we have the medicine for it anyway.

Scott Horrell:

And our Lord proclaimed victory over, you could say, Hades and Tartarus, the lower echelons, the abyss of powerful enemies of God.

Linda Marten:

He went down there and preached to them.

Scott Horrell:

And he has the victory and all of this. So the Holy Saturday, as it sometimes called between Friday and Sunday, I think is increasingly being appreciated as our Lord conquering the dead and proclaiming the, of course, good news to those Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. That's their salvation and perhaps being at that point taken into the heavenly, but certainly he has proclaimed his victory over the spirits of the underworld. So just so we talk about heaven being up, and so the other being down, that may be metaphor, but-

Linda Marten:

But maybe not.

Scott Horrell:

It's a different dimension.

Kymberli Cook:

So I do want us to just hit a couple other of the supernatural type entities that I referenced earlier. So we've already kind of touched on which is witchcraft and mediums. It seems like, especially Scott with what you shared, there's some clearer indications and biblical direction with regard to those and very much an assertion of their reality and a caution to avoid. So there are two more I want to talk about. I want to talk about ghosts, and I want to talk about the undead, and we have very little time.

So I'm going to pitch into you quickly. So ghosts, and we can start with the idea of Casper, the friendly ghost, but for those apparition type things that people think that they have seen, there's haunted tours pretty much in every single major city in at least the United States. What's your take on that and how should Christians think about it?

Scott Horrell:

Ghosts.

Linda Marten:

I hear about them a lot even when I was here because they knew of the professors, I'm one of the spooky ones.

Scott Horrell:

Scared me half to death sometimes.

Linda Marten:

That was just kind of… So they would come into my office and they would tell me their strange spiritual stories, whether they lived in a haunted house or dead grandmother kept advising them or just weird things. I mean, my answer is, "I don't know". That's my answer.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. So you-

Linda Marten:

Well, because my understanding of scripture is we don't stay around and haunt the places. So I don't know who's doing all this and I don't know, but it does seem like things happen. And so I don't know. I just didn't think of Casper.

Kymberli Cook:

Scott, do you have anything to add on ghosts?

Scott Horrell:

Of course, Lazarus and others came forth from the dead and at the resurrection at that point, but it is appointed to men wants to die and then the judgment. So what to do with these ancestral spirits and the ideas, and almost every culture from Eskimo to Polynesia to Zambia, what do you do with all that?

Kymberli Cook:

Which does seem like there's something really going on in that.

Scott Horrell:

It does, doesn't it?

Kymberli Cook:

It is a widespread concept.

Scott Horrell:

The passage I read out of Deuteronomy 18 didn't say, "That's not real," it said, "Don't consult them. Stay away from it." So we can dismiss it in a lot of different ways, but whatever it is, stay away from it. I mean, Moses could throw down Aaron's staff and it became a snake. But then Pharaoh brought his boys out and they threw down their staffs and they became snakes as well.

This isn't slight of hand, this isn't a trick you bought in New York City, this is real stuff. So the evil and the power of the supernatural is really there, but we're told to avoid it.

Linda Marten:

That gets you into the witches and the mediums and so forth, because it really bothers with me when people talk about, "Oh, let's get a Ouija board. Let's do this and that." And I'm thinking, "You don't know that you're opening up doors to the evil and the demonic that would love to come in and open doors and lighten you on things that are possible for you."

As you know, because I work with a lot of trauma clients, one man told me about lying there at age 16, and he looked at the foot of his bed and there was a face looking back at him. And they just stared each other for a while. And finally the face said, "What do you want?" And so he told the face… And you can imagine he wanted what a 16-year-old boy who wasn't yet popular in school, wanted all those things. And within a year he had all those things.

He later went on to become a head priest in a satanic covenant. There's a lot more to that story because God was after him too. But see, so all those things are real, but we're not to play with them or make room for them. There are a lot of things that opened the doors to them. One of my clients sent me the ad that Disney is starting a new series that's called Little Demon. It's Satan is now having a daughter who is the antichrist.

I mean, so look at all the stuff that's flooding our culture. One, to make it silly and we can play with the demonics. We can play with all this stuff because it's not dangerous. Well see, that's a trick. It is dangerous.

Scott Horrell:

And it makes it attractive and exciting.

Linda Marten:

Yes.

Scott Horrell:

Almost every psychic that I know of, and we have the John of God series on Netflix in the last two years. A lot of others as well. I've got Edgar Cayce who founded the Association for Religious Enlightenment. They often start out even as religious kids. Edgar Cayce loved the Bible and taught the Bible for 20 years in his church and didn't want anyone to ask the spirit in him as he go into a trance and give medical solutions around the country. Didn't want anybody asking religious questions.

He said, "No, I believe the Bible. But with time, okay, ask a religious question." And the psychics very often are, I'm going to say invaded by some kind of power. I'm going to say a spiritual demonic power, very young. But it's very beautiful, and everything they do seems to turn out lovely.

Linda Marten:

Always at the beginning.

Scott Horrell:

And with time… So even warning our children don't go there. Not everything you see on Disney is great, much less some of the other ones. So I think bathing our kids in prayer and helping them to learn to pray, to resist the evil one, though they don't understand it all is really a healthy thing to do.

Kymberli Cook:

Like Tolkien says, not all that glitters is gold.

Linda Marten:

Let me followup on that one because it's for mothers. There was a witch and she knew she was a witch, but she got ill in her latter years. And some Christians, Christian women started taking care of her. Well, she became a believer. And I saw an interview with her and even over the three years in between the first and the second, you could tell her face was softening after she became a believer.

She went back to the mother of two girls because her job as a young person was to go around and make friends with kids and entice them into things where they then could be abused and could keep secrets and get pulled into a cold, strange stuff. She was after these two kids and she could never get them. So she went to their mother who was an old woman at the time and said, "I'm sorry, I was a witch and my father was blah, blah evil," and on.

"I could never get your kids." "Why?" And she said, "I was so afraid for my children. I didn't know what to do. So every morning during breakfast, I stood behind them with one hand on each one of them, and I prayed silently for the Lord's protection over them that whole day." She said, "I did that every morning. Every morning, every morning." And the ex-witch said, "That makes sense now."

Scott Horrell:

Let me throw something.

Kymberli Cook:

Okay. We've got it. We've got it.

Scott Horrell:

I had lots of students who were involved in spiritism before they came to Christ in Brazil. And Juan was brought up in a spiritist family and trained to be one of their leaders in the future. And then his leader called a father of saints said, "But stay away from evangelicals. You have no power over them." It was like the lights went on. Well, why don't we have any power over them?

Kymberli Cook:

Fascinating. Okay.

Scott Horrell:

That's kind of cool.

Kymberli Cook:

So I would love to continue this conversation, but we are out of time and I'm sure that we will do more podcasts on this topic because there are very real things that need to be dug into even deeper to help other believers think through these issues and through these areas. But what overall I'm hearing is very much there is a supernatural world. We don't want to disregard that. And as believers, we believe it is there, but we are to treat it very cautiously and not to delve into anything really that seems to be outside of the indwelling of the spirit and the leading of the Lord through scripture and his community, and his people. Is that fair? All right.

Linda Marten:

And they can be set free.

Kymberli Cook:

Yes. And there is much power behind that spirit and his people. All right. So I want to thank you, Scott and Linda for joining us today. It has been a ball. Thank you so much for being here. And we want to thank you who are listening and we just ask that you be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.