Are all Earth-bound spirits ("ghosts") demonic?

[Anonymiss]

From what I've recently learned that according to the Bible - we either stay in limbo (like a very long sleep) after we die or stay in a temporary Heaven or Hell (makes more sense to me - given the near death experiences many have), until judgment day..

Like to hear your thoughts on this.

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

B.W., a moderator here has written a book about his Near Death experience. I suggest you read it:

A Land Unknown: Hell's Dominion - B.W. Melvin

FL

[cslewislover]

There is also a small book on near death experiences (ndes) in the Anker series. It is very good, and concludes that many, or most, near death experiences appear to be demonic. This is because many nde experiences lead people away from Christ instead of closer to him. There're examples of people simply knowing, from their own personal moral perspective, that what they saw "didn't seem right" (for example, criminals knowing they did wrong and not repenting of it, yet being welcomed in heaven). Anyway, you need to trust what the bible says, and not go by all ndes. There are ndes that do appear to be Godly, like B.W.'s.

[Cross.eyed]

I back FL's recommendation of B.W.'s book, A Land Unknown:Hell's Dominion.

I loaned my copy to a Christian brother.
Two weeks after reading it he said he couldn't quit thinking about it!

It's an easy read and will give you lots to think upon.

[ugo]

I tend to think all "ghosts" are demonic.
There are two instances of people returning from the dead to visit people who are themselves still in the physical. God sent them. But apart from this I think the rest are demons. The new age and occult is full of people deceived that thier grandftaher, thier spirit guide or whoever is visiting them. The demons goal is to keep people from Christ, to keep them in the dark, to deceive, to kill, lie and steal.

[ageofknowledge]

This guy has something to say about it his NDE: http://paleoconservatist.blogspot.com/2 ... ience.html

[Swimmy]

Speaking of NDEs. Theres some cases where the person died and experienced nothingness. One of these incidents I read awhile back caused a Christian who experienced this event turn to atheism. Why did they experience nothingness in death? Or are these merely fabricated stories since they seem to be in such a minority?

[cslewislover]

If there was really nothing, and they were nothing, then how could they experience it??? Maybe this is a fabricated story.

[Swimmy]

Well obviously you cant actually experience nothingness in nothing. But they claim when they died there was nothing. Like they cease to exist. Until the doctors brought them back

[cslewislover]

I wouldn't mind getting the new edition of the Ankerburg booklet on this subject. I can't cite his older one since I had gotten rid of it. I'll try to get it soon and post some additional info here.

[Jac3510]

I don't believe in ghosts. I'd be curious to do a broader study, but it seems to me that our idea of a ghost is actually rather modern. There were a few stories of ghosts in antiquity -- the epic of Gilgamesh seems to be the oldest -- but these seem more directly related to spiritism than anything else. The idea of "haunting" seems to come from the Greeks.

Now, I'll say again that I could be very wrong about that. I've not studied it very much at all. I'm sure you can find stories from various cultures which would then need to be classified. In any case, it is clear that the only direct OT reference to a ghost is related to spiritism and clearly very out of the ordinary; outside of that, the entire practice of communing with the dead is forbidden. I don't think we can infer from that that communing with the dead was actually possible. By NT times, people had pretty clearly come to believe in ghosts (the disciples thought Jesus was a ghost both when He walked on the water and after his resurrection). But that, again, could have more to do with the infusion of Greek mythology into people's thinking than anything else.

Besides that, the OT, in and of itself, seems to have a general leaning toward soul-sleep. Obviously, a lot of people disagree with that, but I find absolutely no evidence of substance dualism there. I think it can be infered (rightly or wrongly) from the NT and then read back into the OT, but from a strictly historical perspective, I doubt ancient Hebrews would have thought much of our modern ideas on ghosts.

So any "real" ghost experiences, I would probably take as demonic. The rest--along with the vast majority of NDEs, I'd take to be psychological phenomena.