“Can ghosts and evil things get me?”
Let’s see. There are indeed “ghosts” in the Bible.
The King James Version uses the word 109 times, though not in any sense that should keep us up at night. All occur in one of two expressions: “Holy Ghost” (an antiquated way of referring to the Holy
Spirit) or “give up the ghost” (which just means dying).
In modern translations the word is used whenever
superstitious people saw something they couldn’t explain, and wrongly assumed
they were being visited by spirits. The disciples saw Jesus walking on the
water and cried, “It is a ghost!”
Like most reported ghost sightings, it wasn’t.
One Possible Exception
There is a possible exception in the story of King Saul and the Medium of En-dor in 1 Samuel 28. On the verge of battle against the Philistines and desperate to know the outcome in advance, Saul consults a witch very much
against the Law of Moses and against all common sense. The woman is asked to
bring up the dead prophet Samuel to tell him what to expect. The king cannot
see this spirit, but apparently the medium can.
There is a certain amount of legitimate terror in the story,
but it’s not fear of ghosts. The medium is afraid of being executed
for witchcraft, and Saul is overwhelmed with fear for his own future because of
the message she gives him. Whether the medium actually spoke to the ghost of
Samuel or whether she saw a demonic deception is left to the reader to decide.
In any case, the Bible is not a place where we customarily
find visions of dead people roaming around and troubling human beings, nor is it a
place vampires, werewolves and other monstrous, fictional beings tend to
frequent. I for one find that comforting.
Evil Spirits and Demons
Angelic and demonic spirits are another story, however, and I assume when you say “evil things”, you mean the latter. There are plenty of New Testament accounts of
demon possession or oppression to consider in the gospels and the book of Acts. Some Bible scholars seem to think it was simply a Jewish quirk to attribute things like paralysis, blindness, deafness, loss of speech,
epilepsy, melancholy or insanity to the work of evil spirits, but this
explanation proves woefully inadequate when we come to stories like that of
Legion, from whom the Lord Jesus is said to have driven many unclean spirits, or the
story of seven Jewish exorcists who tried unsuccessfully to expel an evil
spirit with whom they had a dialogue. Other than insanity, diseases don’t usually talk.
Bear in mind that these sorts of stories are not common, and
they peaked in the first century A.D. I have heard several demon possession
tales in my lifetime, but none that can be confirmed beyond reasonable doubt.
The fact that the Bible doesn’t give Christians a lot of guidance about how to
avoid being controlled by demons suggests to me that this is unlikely to be a
major issue for believers to worry about.
Telling Fortunes and Divination
The New Testament accounts of driving out evil spirits do
not tell us much about how the possessed or oppressed people became afflicted in
the first place. Luke records the story of a slave girl with a spirit of divination. She would have been something like a fortune teller. Did she become possessed
because she was seeking to know the future, or did she know the future because
she was possessed? We are not told.
Still, the association between evil spirits
and the ability to prophesy is also found in the Old Testament, where King Saul
was harassed by an evil spirit that sometimes made him say things he didn’t plan or control. This is also the case in the gospels: demon-possessed people knew things most ordinary
people didn’t. They correctly identified who Jesus was, crying out in fear, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God?”
If only the Jewish religious authorities had been equally perceptive.
The Search for Secret Knowledge
The connection between demonic activity and the search for secret
knowledge is an old one, and a dangerous thing to pursue. Like Saul, men and
women play games with the greater spiritual powers, and endanger themselves in
doing it. If you are concerned about being “gotten” by an evil spirit, it is wise
to avoid going where evil spirits are traditionally thought to be active. Stay away from
people who claim to tell the future.
In Israel, men and women who consorted
with evil spirits were to receive the death penalty. There was good reason for this. The apparent surge in demonic activity we
observe occurring in the time of Christ may have had something to do with the
fact that under Roman authority, the Jews were no longer legally permitted to enforce
this particular provision of the Law of Moses.
Occupied Houses
One thing that is notable about Saul’s spiritual oppression
was this: it started when the Spirit of the Lord was no longer present with him. That seems to strongly suggest demonic control of a genuine believer in Jesus
is not possible, since Christians are
permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Evil spirits seek out empty houses to live in, not occupied ones.
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