Joel and Ben from Right Response Ministries dissect ghost stories like Anne Boleyn's, rejecting the "stone tape" theory in favor of biblical analysis. They argue that Nephilim spirits and fallen angels exploit superstition to deceive humanity regarding reincarnation and transgender issues, framing death as an enemy rather than a friend. By tearing down spiritual strongholds based on ungodly beliefs, Christians must resist these ancient entities waging war through ideology. Ultimately, the hosts warn against entertaining comforting apparitions, asserting that true hope lies solely in Christ's victory over death, not in deceptive supernatural narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Henry VIII's Psychic Energy00:15:00
In a saga steeped in intrigue and ambition, Henry VIII orchestrated a seismic shift in history to wed Anne Boleyn, reshaping the very fabric of religious authority to dissolve his union with Catherine of Aragon.
His fervor was unmatched, driven not only by desire, but by an unyielding thirst for a male heir.
With his dynastic aspiration unmet, Henry's gaze turned once more in search.
Of progeny.
Yet, in a stunning twist of fate, Anne Boleyn's story took a harrowing turn.
Instead of a graceful exit akin to Catherine's, she met a fate wrought with treason and execution.
The echoes of Henry's reign and the tumult of Anne Boleyn's marriage still reverberate through the annals of time.
It's whispered that her spirit lingers among us.
One chilling account dating back to 1864 speaks of a vigilant guard encountering the spectral figure of the former.
Queen clad in ethereal white.
Startled, he lunged with his bayonet only to find his weapon passing through her ephemeral form.
But it's during the Yuletide season, Anne's favorite time of year, that sightings peak.
She is said to wander the grounds revisiting cherished moments beneath the ancient oak or strolling along the banks of Eden Lake where fleeting memories of joy and love once bloomed.
These spectral apparitions offer a glimpse into a past.
In passion and intrigue, where the boundaries between the living and the dead blur with haunting allure.
There you go.
That's a famous ghost story many people are aware of.
Is it a real ghost?
I mean, what?
What am I doing?
Look, let's get right into it.
The Haunted Cosmos guys are here.
We are the ghostbusters of reformed Christendom.
Yep, that's for sure a ghost no, I mean.
So we're going to talk about what Actually, is a ghost?
We're not going to sit here for 45 minutes and tell you guys there's no such thing as ghosts, but we're going to talk about what is a ghost.
Because the problem, we're always going to be coming from a biblical perspective because we want to talk about what's true and we want to honor Christ.
And so we're not sitting here saying there is no such thing as a ghost, but they should be understood in proper categories.
And if you think that Anne Boleyn, that it's actually her spirit, And that she was able to raise from Sheol and just God giving her some license and walking around Cash, you know, around Christmas time each year.
And walking around.
You know, that she just gets to go and visit the park and feed the ducks, you know, and that she doesn't have to remain.
I just don't know how to square that with scripture.
So, in terms of it actually being, this is her, her spirit, that is difficult.
But in terms of this is something and that it is spiritual, that we can talk about.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's probably in this kind of topic, what it's at least helpful for me.
I think would be to talk through each of the possibilities, some of the theories.
And let's just look at them from a biblical perspective and see.
One of the first ones that comes to mind for me, Joel, and it might not be the same one for you, Ben.
I don't know.
But you hear this a lot, a kind of stone tape theory, which is a theory that we'll get to the disembodied spirit kind of theory.
It's Brian's favorite theory.
It's my favorite theory.
Because it's one of the theories that I've heard Christians try to hold to.
In a way to circumvent that problem, that we'll talk about of the spirit of a human being wandering around outside of Sheol or outside of, you know, at this point, the spirits of saints going to be with the Lord, right?
So the stone tape theory is the idea that human beings impart a kind of psychic energy.
Again, I'm not endorsing any of this yet.
This is the theory.
You just lay out the theory.
Yeah.
And then later you'll say, 100 demons.
We always lay it.
Hanukkah's most the joke is there is the Hanukkah's most team has investigated the issue and determined it was demons, right?
So, but to be fair, just because some people don't like that, um, a lot of stuff is demons.
Well, that's actually not because I've listened to enough of you guys, that's actually not.
We don't always say, yeah, we don't know, yeah, because we also say fairies a lot, yeah, we say exactly.
We're gonna do a whole episode on on fairies because it could be demons, but it could be fairies, it could be uh, witches.
And getting into elemental spirits, and what is that?
Is that actually different classes of spiritual beings?
So, stone tape theory is that human beings, and in some iterations of the theory, even animals, certain higher animals, have psychic energy that they impart on the environment around them.
And so, this gets into lots of other issues like mediumship, where mediums will claim to see your aura, which is just your psychic energy emanating out of you, your immaterial self and material self, and blended together.
Emanating energy, and that when there are particularly intense psychic energies, that these can actually leave a residue on the environment.
So, hence the stone tape theory, similar to how a vinyl record is made.
Right.
You have, you know, scratches in a vinyl, first in a wax blank or in a softer material that this needle is imparting the sound waves into the vinyl.
And then you put another, you know, reader in that groove and it can play it back.
So, under certain conditions, those will replay.
You know, in a case like Anne Boleyn, and then, you know, divorce, beheaded, died, divorce, beheaded, survived.
We've got a lot of death surrounding the royal family at this time.
Just in general, in old places, in Civil War battlefields, in places that saw a lot of death or grief or the loss of children or, you know, the Tsar and his family.
This is all over the place.
And this tends to be the kind of haunting, quote unquote, that.
Just replays the same kind of scene over and over.
You look up in a window on a certain night of the year and you'll see the woman dressed in Victorian garb.
Right.
Or if you go out into the castle hallway at this time of night, you just might see.
Right.
And so this theory attempts to get around the idea that this is actually the soul of that person.
Gotcha.
And instead just says this is the residue.
This is the replaying tape.
It's the world's memory.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
It's less the person and their spirit, which is somewhere else.
And it's more.
The world itself.
Yeah, with that I can't.
I couldn't help but think and this is probably a stupid question, which i'm, it's one of my giftings uh, to ask stupid questions but um hey, there's no such thing.
There's no such thing unless we determine a lot.
I've said that before and then i've i've read some youtube comments yeah, and you're like there actually are, unless you ask a stupid question, there's no such thing right, exactly?
Um, but this would be.
I could see someone not me, i'm going to do this I could see someone asking for a friend uh, who would say, well, are certain places in certain parts of the world uh, perhaps more porous, Right, that something is like more akin to a diamond, it's gonna be hard to scratch, but maybe, particular places, you could get a deeper groove.
People do associate geological characteristics of an area.
There are whole, I mean, the thing about ghost world is that because it's not truly, it's almost none of it is truly empirical.
It's not replicable.
You can't put it in a test tube.
People can just come up with theories that sound plausible.
So they might say things like, well, where you have more limestone in the ground, this is, we see a highly correlated.
That's pretty much what I'm thinking.
But with that, my point is, but if that was a factor and however you word it, the point is that it would be, it would be.
A couple factors and not just one.
It would be uh, the nature of the event.
What happened?
Was it traumatic, was it treacherous?
Was it this?
Was it joyful?
But then, not just what happened uh, but also the place where it happened.
It happened in this particular place where, or it happened in a lake and water has memory, you know absolutely, because traumatic things happen everywhere and really good things also happen everywhere.
But I I don't think the idea of a thin place is outside the realm of possibility at all.
I think that there might be geographic areas that lend itself uh, or that lend themselves much more to um, whatever this is yeah, whether it's stone tape or something else, right in the thin place.
A lot of time, people are actually in in that kind of iteration of this theory, which encompasses ghosts and a lot of other activity, that is truly beyond a stone tape theory now and into more of a.
There are places where the realms cross over yeah, more thinly.
But so what about uh, examples in scripture?
Bethel would be one, Mount Hermon would be one, Mount Zion would be.
This truly is the house of god.
Mount Sinai would be one.
These high places, yeah.
Do you think that that is a thin place, or do you think that they're arbitrary, not arbitrary in the sense that God just picked randomly?
but arbitrary in our mind of the mechanics of how these places work?
Or do you think that they, in their nature somehow, lend themselves more to spiritual encounters?
So this is now crossing over into other types of phenomena as well.
I do think that bringing some of these together, stone tape type of psychic energy theory, along with the place mattering.
I think that we can tend to too quickly, as modern Christians, not understand how much our thinking has been shaped by modernism and materialism, and too quickly totally dismiss anything and be like, no, people are just, there's no such thing as psychic energy.
And I'm not saying that we should be going to mediums or auras or things like that.
I think there's a lot of deception.
We'll get to it.
Yeah.
Certainly in this episode.
But I do think that once you start to understand the way that God made the world and people, You start to realize that we don't know everything and we are much more complex things than we understand.
Things like I often even consider the fact that placebo medicines really do affect the health of a person.
People can have a real serious illness or condition and they'll go on a trial of medication and one group gets sugar pills and one group gets the real thing.
And the sugar pill group, Some of them will genuinely, because they believe that they're receiving a medication, this new thing, you know, they will improve.
Right.
Just by the mere thinking of it.
And we're not even saying that that's like, oh, and so therefore, like.
Therefore, psychic energy in.
Or we're not seeing the power of positivity or manifesting it.
But there is something to be said.
Like, if somebody's struggling with heartburn and you give them a pill and they think it's real and they're convinced that heartburn will no longer be a problem, and then they actually report that heartburn has been less severe.
Well, that's not the power of positivity.
That could be a number of things.
One could be well, one thing that induces heartburn is stress.
And they have now a sense of security and peace that they've been offered a solution.
So, therefore, they're less stressed.
So, therefore, they have less heartburn.
And none of that is necessarily magical.
That's it's cortisol.
And even, even the you know, things like a lot of you know, take grounding or earthing, where people have are starting to get into studies of like what happens when you, um, you know, attach your body directly to the earth and there's an earth circuit.
We're electrical machines, like you just are like walking barefoot, yeah, on the ground and negative ions from the earth.
You know, there's all this, and it will, there are studies that show that it seems that this kind of thing.
Reduces inflammation in the body and a lot of other positive effects, where modernism we've kind of reduced ourselves to this hermetically sealed off from the world, bag of flesh, bag of atoms, and that it's silly to start thinking, just because a whole lot of the world, that of paganism and esoterica and things, they make radical, grandiose claims and they're so woo woo that we sometimes can fall in the other ditch yes,
and fail to realize we are wonderfully made, Right.
We are these insanely fine-tuned electrical machine, electrical magnetic physical machines that also happen to have a soul.
Magically made.
We are, the world is magic.
I mean, it really is magic.
So we came from dust is literal magic.
Ultimately, on the stone tape theory, I reject it formally as an explanation of what we call hauntings.
But with that, real quick, because this question was burning in my head also, in terms of like attaching yourself to the earth in certain places.
And like, so then that got me just thinking like tethering.
Um, in terms of uh what, what about?
Like, what one added element with this?
The, the stone tape?
Um, like Samson in his hair, or is it?
What about like talisman?
Like a talisman?
Yeah yeah I, I don't.
I don't like the idea of talismans, apart from a uh, a Deus ex Machina type right idea, where the lord has sovereignly said, your strength is in your hair yeah right, just just because.
Or the Urim, the Umim and the Thummim right, it's not just man can't do right, man can.
However, what's interesting?
This is actually really fascinating.
It goes back to something that you were saying about a lot of the new age esoterica people that seem to be noticing things in the world that are actually there.
Like the fact that mandalas can help restructure a glass of water.
Maybe.
Potentially.
Yeah.
And Christians are prone to see that and think, that's witchcraft.
I cannot do that.
And that's not witchcraft.
That could just be noticing something in nature that God's given us.
Bobbing says this in Christianity and Science.
He says that man is connected to the world that he's in with every fiber of his being.
And then later he says that everything that we see in the world is pointing us towards something unseen.
Everything that you see is pointing you towards something unseen.
And to think, to have the reaction of, well, Christians can't do that because the New Ager discovered it, is peak modernist cope.
Because what you're effectively saying is that we've discovered everything that there is to discover.
That Christians are done.
And that's completely antithetical to the whole gospel.
Christians are just getting started.
Demons and New Age Tricks00:16:48
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Right.
So there's, you know, as far as talismans go, where I was actually going with that is that the medievals actually thought quite highly of charms and talismans.
They would do this thing called a witch cake, which sounds really bad.
And it probably was foolish, but it sounds bad.
It probably also was bad.
Right.
But what they're doing is if they felt that their crop yield was bewitched.
not by someone else, but just by nature.
Or if they felt that they were sick and they were bewitched in their sickness or there was an unclean spirit in them or something like that, they would bake a witch cake, which included the mixing of flour that was old with urine, which is really gross, and then some honey and some other stuff.
And they would feed it to their dog.
And if the dog ate it and kept it down, then it worked.
And the curse would go away.
If the dog spat it up, it didn't work.
And they actually weren't cursed.
It was just, they're just having a bad day.
But they did this.
all the time.
They did this with their crop yield.
They would sprinkle charms around their plants.
They would sing charms in the form of verse over their bees to make them obey the beekeepers, things like this.
And I'm not saying they were right to do that.
In fact, I don't think they were right to do that.
They were not.
But the point is, is that the reason they did that is because there were other people doing that that seemed, and it seemed to work.
Right.
And so they were trying to redeem the times that they were in by saying, no, no, no, that's the Christians now.
That's the again, I don't think they were right to do that, but you can't have so much arrogance that you look back at those people who were trying to make the best of the times that God placed them in and say they were basically pagans.
They didn't actually believe in the gospel because they tried to do that.
That's so foolish of you.
They would probably think the same about you if given the opportunity because you watch Netflix and you watch pornography on Game of Thrones.
Our errors aren't their errors, so they would be able to see errors of ours.
That I do think we can look.
The fundamental talismans is a great point, actually, about this, and the witch cakes and things like that.
That human beings are tremendously prone to deception of, and superstitious deception is one of the greatest ways to trick a person.
So a lot of what I think is fundamentally operative when you're looking at things like talismans and hauntings that are, you know, hauntings or poltergeist activity or things that are related to an object, there's the classic story of my.
My brother returned from a tour in the Middle East and he brought home this you know jewelry box and when he All of a sudden, he got sick every time, and there was darkness and depression.
And then he realized that he needed to get rid of the box.
He threw it away.
So when he returned home, it was sitting on his bed.
Exactly.
I don't think that that necessarily isn't true, but I think what is happening is important.
And it's the reality that unclean spirits are ancient, malevolent, highly intelligent, and know how to trick people.
And there are many other spirits.
So they will make your superstitions come true.
Right.
They will.
So they might make.
The witch cake works.
They might make the object seem haunted.
This is the thing that this is why we come back to demons so often, is because demons are a Swiss army knife in the sense that they're an intelligence.
They can show you what you want and they can make your idea prove out.
And real quick, just a little demonology, because we talked about this in other episodes, but in case the order of the episodes comes out differently and they haven't heard that yet, I like what you said.
They're ancient.
And part of what that includes is that they're skilled, they're knowledgeable, they're a formidable opponent.
Sometimes Christians can be naive and arrogant and thinking, you know, I'm going to go and, you know, like I mean, especially, you know, I came from the charismatic world and there were some, this doesn't, you know, characterize everybody, but there were some, you know, cases of people literally doing, you know, like a seven day fast and locking themselves, you know, collectively, a group of people in a building or a room and they were going to pray.
And we're going to ask for the demonic spirits over this region to reveal themselves and tell us their names so that we can cast them out.
And that reminds me of a little story, you know, the seven sons of Sceva.
Yes.
Where they get their butts kicked.
They do essentially the same thing.
We're going to go and beat up the demons because Jesus did it and Paul did it.
And so we're going to do it too.
And they go to beat up the demons.
Except in this scenario, it's 7v1, you know, and the result is that the seven, and I'll just, you know, for the listener, you can use your imagination, but the Bible says that they leave.
They leave naked and bleeding.
Yeah.
Which, however, that plays out just doesn't sound like that.
Nothing.
When I think of combinations that I do not want to experience, nothing naked and bleeding.
Naked and bleeding.
That's not a good combo.
Remind me when we get to our witches episode.
I'm just going to tease it right now, guys.
Remind me to talk about Jeremy Wade and the fishing show, River Monsters.
River Monsters with the witch episode.
One of the best.
Because there's a rabbit trail I want to go down now, but it's a witch episode rabbit trail.
Oh, nice.
Incredible self control.
But getting back.
Okay.
Getting back to our ghosts.
We've got stone tape.
I don't think stone tape is necessarily true.
In fact, I don't think it is.
However, I do think that the spiritual realm will attempt via superstition to deceive and show you what you want.
So I think you will see the possibility of stone tape type hauntings at exact places where human beings would expect them as a way of deceiving people.
So from the perspective of man, for all intents and purposes, you can say stone tape theory might be possible.
The problem is that it's not technically by definition of stone tape theory as it's known.
It's that the demons are manipulating your superstitions.
Now, I have two primary theories behind all hauntings.
Uh, to to account for the ones that are the vast majority, which are very negative experiences, and also some of the ones that i've heard from patrons of the show that i'm like I have no way of conceptualizing why that would happen, because it seems overwhelmingly positive and for the show, just for the listener.
Um, check out this series.
It's coming out.
If you want to binge and get every single episode, become a Patreon supporter and you can actually have access access ad-free and watch every episode.
But also uh, go on over, watch us, but also watch Haunted Cosmos.
And so go on YouTube, subscribe, Haunted Cosmos.
They already have dozens of episodes available.
And if you join their Patreon, you can get like 40, 50 more episodes.
I think a second show called The Dusty Tome.
So if you like this, you need to also check them out.
We did, I think it was close to a two-hour episode on hauntings as well.
And we went through all the different types of hauntings, the residual, the the crisis separation.
Yeah, the crisis separation.
The concept of a ghost as the disembodied spirit of a loved one or of a person in general.
So I have two, right now, working ideas that I've been tossing around on how I would conceptualize these things.
And the first is really basic.
And it's that the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim are oftentimes characterized through mythology as tricksters.
Yes.
And a trickster varies in degrees of malice.
Sometimes it's just like.
Like a bell witch type thing.
You can go listen to our show and hear about the bell witch, which actually is not a witch, it's a.
It's a, it's like a poltergeist.
So it's kind of a confusing title there, but a poltergeist type phenomenon where stuff's moved around in the house and maybe it never gets worse than that.
It's like Winston right, it's a pink is too small or it's too big.
Right, I rearranged your cups.
Oh, I took the salt out of your salt shaker and the pepper out of your pepper and switched them so that when you went to salt your fries you peppered them.
Oh, my goodness oh, but then you'll never recover.
It might be the prank that I dropped an anvil on your head while you were sleeping.
Right.
Oh, the prank is that blood's pouring out of your walls.
Correct.
And I poisoned you and you died.
And your son is stuck in a cave.
Yeah.
So, varying degrees of malice.
They never really get right in the middle where it's actually funny.
But that seems to be characteristic of a trickster type entity through all mythology and history is that maybe it's trial and error, although that sounds dumb because of their ancient nature.
But I like to think of a demonic entity.
Especially as the disembodied spirit of a Nephilim, as a Gandalf type character, but bad.
Where they came to the world long ago.
They've lived 300 lives of men.
300 lives of men I've walked, and now I have no time.
And but they uh but they had to actually learn, they didn't they're not omniscient, right?
But they do know a lot or omnipresent, and they're definitely not they can't read your mind, they do know a lot, they can travel to different places, maybe I don't know.
But anyway, so so yeah, that's how I explain a lot of the normal hauntings that are bad is well, it's the disembodied spirit of the Nephilim, they're tricking the person, the trick has varying degrees of malice and effectiveness.
And real quick, in terms of omniscience, they are not omniscient, God alone bears these kinds of incommunicable attributes of omniscience, omnipresence.
Um, but that again is not to downplay the situation.
So imagine they're very like.
Think of a tv show um, that's like like.
Think of, like a Sherlock Holmes.
You know like um, he can't read your mind, he's just a man, but he can pick up on yeah, every little cute.
Yeah, imagine the best negotiator or the best uh FBI, you know, have you heard of mentalism wicked, you know right, so you can't find more, or even think about an L Ronder Gandalf type right, and then take that guy though and say he's been um, he's been a professional detective With a high IQ, and he's been doing it for 6,000 years.
Yeah.
If you can teach people this cold reading, a lot of charlatans use cold reading.
And you think.
They look at your reactions, mentalism, even just the idea, though, that some of the, again, if you're tricking someone and you're really smart and you've lived 300 lives of men, then you are going to be able to also present the weakness of, look how silly I am.
Look how wrong I was.
Another point, though, that's important on this point is that we have biblical data for this.
Yeah.
In the form, especially of the, The prophet, the foreteller, the fortune teller in the book of Acts, where this young lady has a spirit in her that is allowing her to do divination and foretelling the future.
And she's walking around.
Paul gets so annoyed that he ends up casting the demon out.
And we know that it was a real ability, not only because the scriptures just presented as that, but also because now her owners, her masters, lose a bunch of income.
Yeah, right.
Because it was profitable.
Right.
Because if it was just a trick that the slave girl herself was performing, Then she could just be able to keep doing it.
Right.
Paul casts out a demon, but there is no demon.
She just keeps up the grift.
But we see this.
She can't.
There actually is supernatural aid, and now it's gone.
And we see this in other accounts.
The Bell Witch is another example where the entity will seem to know things that are happening far away.
And in this time, before telegraph and telephone and texting and email, that was a big deal.
Insane thing.
If they could know, you'd have to literally write a letter and ask someone, what was happening at this time in this place, 40 miles away.
And they'd be like, Lo and behold, the entity knew and was correct.
And not because, so just like the omniscience, not omniscient, can't read your thoughts, but incredibly powerful.
But we don't know how long it takes a demon to go 40 miles away.
Exactly.
And so then with omnipresence, they're not omni, God alone is omnipresent, but demonic spirits, they are spirit.
And so you think, like, oh, well, it's just, it's everywhere.
No, no.
The spirit still has a geographic locale.
Yeah.
But could it travel in 60 seconds, 40 miles away, and then right back?
Or have a messenger?
Maybe there's Portal work together with a network of real quick before we continue with the show.
You need to be aware that you're merely watching one episode of what's actually a 10 part series covering all things under the banner of high strangeness.
The 10 episodes include the following number one, the lost city of Atlantis has just recently been discovered, episode number two, Hollow Earth, the last living dragons and primary water, episode number three, biblical giants, their clans.
Sizes and supernatural abilities.
Episode number four, mythological giants.
Hercules was actually a Nephilim.
Episode number five, everyone has been wrong about Bigfoot.
Episode number six, fairies, the elemental spirits.
Episode number seven, the biblical case for the existence of mermaids.
Episode number eight, ghosts.
That's not your grandma, that's a demon.
Episode number nine, witches, necromancy, and familiar spirits.
And lastly, episode 10, angels, their classifications, physicality, and And sexes.
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Celebrating Life Against Evil Spirits00:15:03
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Yep.
You were going to say, though, your second.
Yeah.
My second.
Let's hear your second.
This is one that I hold.
I don't even hold it.
It's so loose.
I'm so nervous.
Okay.
No, you've heard it.
No, you've heard it actually.
I don't really like it, but I'm just trying to conceptualize a way in which you actually could have what you think to be a ghastly encounter that's positive.
So that sounds bad.
That sounds like it's not allowed, but let's give it a shot.
So there are two primary views of the creation of the soul.
There's creationism and traducianism.
Creationism says that at every conception of a human being, when conception is achieved, a soul is made.
It's uniquely made by God right there.
The other view, traducianism, says that the soul is generated as a part of conception, that you actually receive your soul from normal generation from your parents.
God doesn't have to do anything.
There's not a uniquely new creation.
But you don't necessarily inherit the soul, but it's more akin to that idea.
And the explanation One basically is just saying the timing is still the same, but one, the soul comes from the parents, the other, it comes from God.
Yes, exactly.
And the explanation that's been given in defense of Traducianism, which was a view held by Martin Luther, Augustine Waffled, Calvin Waffled, they both kind of landed on creationism later in life, but they also didn't think about it all that much because you shouldn't.
We don't have a lot of information, it's a gray area.
And the Bible seems to speak in both ways at different times.
One of the defenses that's been given for Traducianism is a scenario like this.
So you're at a family party, you're an old man, and you have your grandkid sitting there in front of you.
And your grandkid walks just like your brother, but they never met.
But I mean, the same gait, the same exact way of sitting in a chair, they have the same mannerisms, but they never met.
Traducianism would say, well, maybe one way to explain that.
Is that the soul was generated from the parents, and so they inherited a sort of like a piece of their great uncle's mannerisms in a way.
That's kind of the defense.
So, my idea is what if, this is going to sound crazy really now, but what if when you have a uniquely positive experience that you can't explain other than, well, I saw the ghost of my grandfather?
What if it's not the ghost of your grandfather?
What if it's just some sort of memory that you have that's been passed down through your lineage?
That you're now getting to share in that's sweet, that's good, that's something positive.
What if it's some sort of soul type memory or something like that?
Traducianism would allow for that category.
How does the mechanics of this work though?
Because we're talking about apparitions.
I see my grandfather.
Are you saying there's some sort of soul vision that it wasn't really there, but it was kind of like an inherited memory.
I'm not talking so much necessarily about seeing.
Okay.
Although that I think that could be possible is your mind has this memory.
Your soul and body are intimately connected at every point.
You think you see it.
Right.
If you pull on the thread of the body, you're pulling on the thread of the soul as well.
They're a tapestry that's woven together.
And so maybe you're your mind is remembering something that your soul carries with it.
I don't know.
Like I said, I don't even hold this.
It's just an attempt.
But another one that I think is helpful, and this is actually a real story, is someone wrote to me and they were saying that their father used to always wake them up when they were little kids, like babies and toddlers, by squeezing their toes.
They squeezed their toes and that's how they woke them up.
I heard this one.
And the father passed away.
And this is sort of a crisis separation thing too.
And the day that the father passed away, the daughter woke up feeling like someone was pinching her toes.
Right.
In the same way that the father used to do.
And she woke up and it was this really sweet memory, actually.
She was like, oh, wow.
It wasn't a horror thing.
It wasn't a horror thing.
And so at the funeral service, she finds her brother and says, like, you'll never believe this.
But the weirdest thing, like my foot fell asleep and it felt just like, and he was like, no, I had the same thing.
Wow.
The same morning that the father passed away, they didn't know that he was gone.
And there was some sort of, and so it just makes you wonder.
It makes you sit back and think, I don't know.
Yes, there could be trickery there where they were already Christians, first of all, but there could be trickery there where they're trying to make them think that death isn't what it seems and actually the Bible's not right and the soul lingers and it doesn't just go away immediately.
But it could also be like, what if it was just a gift?
What if it was a divine grace that they had this sweet memory of their father and it actually played out for them and physically manifested?
Yeah, I feel like I think that's fair.
I think there's multiple scenarios and I'll say them super quick, but one is it could be the trickster thing that even though they are Christians, It could be that.
It could still be a demonic spirit trying to trick them, giving them a bad theology that the soul lingers because the Bible says to be absent in the body.
There's not a hangover.
That's where I get it.
It is not the soul.
I get the most trepidation because I've heard stories like this from Christians.
I've heard far more of them from non-Christians to whom it has given false comfort that death is not an enemy.
Look, my buddy, he showed up to the barbershop afterward.
I knew he was already dead at that point.
So to me, it's very, very dangerous to entertain the idea of post-death appearances of family members, even as a comfort, because of how often that has been used.
So I can't emphasize enough.
I don't think that this is a form of, I don't think it's any of it.
We hear, but what I was going to say is, so one, I think I would lean pretty heavy on the trickery scenario because you're right.
And I like what you said, death as an enemy.
A lot of times, well-meaning people, spiritual people, and even Christian evangelical people, you know, this isn't, you know, we're not mourning a funeral.
This is a celebration of life.
And they'll even use phrases like death as a door that really actually, when you stop and think about it, death becomes a savior, that this life, this world, this body, this flesh, that that's the enemy.
And yes, my body is subject to decay, right?
There's sickness and disease.
And within the members of my being, my flesh, Romans chapter 7, I find this law at work.
When I want to do good, evil is right there.
So there's a sense of battling against the flesh and it's sinful.
propensity.
So not only its physical limitations and weakness and subject to decay, but also its sinful desires.
And then this world is absolutely fallen and these kinds of things.
And I think certain creatures, Jonathan Edwards would say this.
I think you guys agree.
Some creatures are more fallen than others.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Particularly evil and in the fair.
Golden labs are not as fallen as great white sharks.
Yeah, that's right.
Great point.
Pitbulls.
Pitbulls are horrible.
Shouldn't be eradicated.
And I think arguably also dragons, which are real.
And it's not, you don't have to necessarily say that every dragon, although perhaps some, but you don't have to say every dragon is actually the form of.
A fallen angel like Lucifer.
You could also say no, some dragons are animals, but in the fall though, that uh, particular animal, a dragon um, is particularly cursed yeah yeah, particularly wicked, like a great white shark and, and I would say far, far worse and so.
But all that being said, and I think, dragons may still exist today, so we can talk about that, let's be honest, that's.
I put that at like a 95 percent or, oh yeah, so almost right up there, the Gospel Of Jesus Christ, saved by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone, that's 100 dragons.
We're going to put it at a solid 93 95, I mean Wow.
It's a close second.
But then what's really important is, but in between there, primary water.
Primary water.
That's a 98%, 99%.
And we're not joking.
That is like primary water is a thing.
We can't help but laugh.
Let's be clear.
We're talking about certainty, not importance.
Right, right.
Not importance, but certainty.
No one clips this out and they're like, Joel Webbin believes that primary water is almost as important as the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Not importance, but certainty.
Like I'm certain that my wife's name is Megan.
The same certainty of salvation by grace.
But one is more important than the other.
One is of much greater.
For the record, it's the gospel one.
Anyway, so all that being said, here's the deal.
So it could be trickery, absolutely, to get people not to be afraid of death.
Because here's the thing.
In God's mercy, the judgment of death.
So one, death is not a door.
Death is not your friend.
Death is not the savior.
That's what I was getting at.
The body being sinful and the body subject to physical decay and weakness.
People, Christians, will even pick up on this language that the body and the physical world, that's the enemy and death is the savior.
Death becomes the savior.
Save me, death, from this.
And that's what cult leaders.
People forget that, like, we were not made to be disembodied.
We weren't made to leave the world.
We were made to stay here forever.
And none of this is contrary to the very real doctrine, Romans 8, that death is an enemy that God has enslaved to serve his people's good.
Exactly.
And that's my point.
So, one thing it's an enemy.
It will be defeated.
It will be the last of Jesus' enemies to be defeated upon his final physical return.
Also, Jesus, when he's weeping, right?
That Jesus wept at The graveside of Lazarus, shortest verse in the New Testament.
It also doesn't just say he wept.
So there is a grief for his friend and these kinds of things.
Jesus is sympathetic to loved ones dying.
But there's more than just that.
There's also in the same text where it says that he was greatly troubled in spirit.
And if you look into what that, he was angry.
And I think there's a few reasons why.
One, he's angry at the unbelief of all the people there because he's the resurrection and the life.
And they're all grieving, not just grieving the loss of a friend, but they're grieving as though the resurrection power to raise Lazarus from the dead is not.
present and it is.
It's literally present.
Right there.
Standing right next to you.
So you're grieving with despair, unbelief.
Believe.
Believe.
So I think he's angry at their unbelief.
But also, I think he's angry at his old enemy.
At death.
That he one day will give the death blow to death and lay death in its grave, but has not yet done that.
Yeah, he's a jealous God.
And yeah, and so I think he's looking at death and say, I know you should, yeah, brute.
You should fear God.
Yeah.
Like one of the most ancient hymns of the faith.
It includes the line that Christ trampled down death by death.
Amen.
He hated it.
He hates it.
And so all that being said, any experience that would cause you to think death is less of an enemy and less formative, because all that, so one, we've established death is an enemy of Christ.
But secondly, death is, it's not the door, not your friend, not the savior, but death is, although an enemy in God's divine and manifold providence, death, although God's enemy, it is also God's tool and one of the premier tools that drives mortal creatures.
Toward a need for a savior.
If it weren't for my awareness, right?
Other animals don't have a cognitive awareness of their mortality, but we do.
Momentum mori, right?
Like a skull on the desk.
I'm writing, I'm working, I'm doing these things, but I'm constantly reminded.
And there's even a degree of that that's morbid and unhelpful, but there's a degree of that that is very helpful.
That it's death is this constant awareness that is driving me towards.
I mean, there are multiple days that I will spend time in prayer because.
One of the things that gets me there is love for Christ.
You betcha.
The power of the Spirit.
You betcha.
But also just the reminder that my life is a vapor.
One day I'm going to be lower down, six feet under dirt, and I'm going to have to stand before the living God who will lay every thought bare.
I can't escape death.
And because I can't escape death tomorrow, I better run to Christ today.
So anything that makes death seem trivial or trite or happy or light actually takes away one of the big incentives and driving forces to push people towards the gospel.
And that is something that a malevolent spirit does.
Absolutely.
And they do it by putting on a face of softness and light and kindness.
That's a big thing with the crisis apparition.
Exactly.
Is that it makes non-believers feel like they should be comforted.
In worst cases, we heard one about a guy who committed suicide and his apparition appeared to his friend.
And he was so happy.
He was so happy to her.
He was like, yeah, I just feel great.
Like I love you so much.
This is the barbershop one?
Yes.
And so this woman is like, wow.
I'm glad he murdered himself.
Oh, I'm so glad about that.
Yeah, I'm so happy.
Because he's happier now.
He was so sad.
Yeah.
It's not a celebration of life.
It's a mourning of death.
And it's even okay appropriately to be a little angry.
Yeah.
It's a celebration of, if it's a celebration of anything, it's a celebration of those who can mourn as those with hope because of Christ's victory over death.
But even then, it's in the face of the state.
We don't mourn as those without hope, but we mourn.
You're not actually celebrating.
You're still mourning.
The distinction between the Christian and the Christian.
Well, I think we can say we're celebrating.
The victory of Christ over it.
That is the hope.
We're sermoned as those with hope.
I'm glad I am celebrating the resurrection.
I'm glad that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, but not celebrating death.
We're not celebrating the resurrection yet because it hasn't happened.
But that is the hope.
The hope is a celebration of the surety that Christ has done that.
I'm comfortable calling that a celebration.
What all of the ghosty kind of stories do, though, is they try to get you to celebrate that the immortality of your own spirit.
The escaping from the tether that's been weighing you down in life.
You see this with, it's the same thing that happens.
And then once you die, you're not a coward.
Reincarnation narratives are the same.
Yeah.
Oh, you go to a medium.
A lot of the things they'll tell you is, oh, wow, you know, you and your best friend, you guys knew each other in a past life, and you guys, you know, we had neighboring farms, or, you know, you and your wife, you've been married 16 times so far, and you're just, you're going to reincarnate.
Just do try to build up your karmic bank account so that you'll be reincarnated to a higher.
It's all the same play.
The Deception of Ancient Beings00:04:23
It just has a different face.
Yeah.
It's the same exact play.
And that's what makes me, that's why, again, Haunted Cosmos, that's why we so often say, It was the demons.
It was the demons.
Because a lot of the time it is the demons, and they're smart enough to come up with different plays.
And when we say demons, just, and we talked about this in an episode we did on angels, but when we say demons, I think that is a good way of understanding the Michael Heiser type of thing that there are fallen angels, but then there are also demonic spirits that are not necessarily an angel fallen from heaven, but the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim that have nowhere to go.
Neither above nor beneath for now.
The unclean spirit bound to the earth.
In this age.
And I think we'll probably talk about this in our fairies episode.
That there's also other categories of, at least potentially, potentially of spiritual fallen beings.
Like this is one of those things that's speculative and we don't know for certain.
But whether it's one class of being or there are multiple classes of fallen being, they're certainly going to try if they're going to try to do anything other than just their sheer hatred of the image of God.
Yeah, right.
They are going to try to deceive you.
Yeah.
Yep.
And they're going to do so in the way Paul warned, as angels of light.
Right.
Through just as often as they're going to use horror and death and carnage.
We see it in the transgender phenomena as well, that often they will convince human beings to believe that black is white, white is black, that death is a friend, that true life is actually the enemy, that they'll try to convince you of the opposite of everything good.
Right.
And even, you know, the series you did with Isker and Adi Robles and.
You guys are talking about trash world, the same thing that gives the hauntings and all of this supernaturalist stuff.
It's the same class of being in league with human sin, not to downplay human sin, right?
And sinfulness that makes trash world, yeah, right?
It's all different fingers of the same black hand, but it's evil people who are being assisted.
Oh, yes, the catalyst in the equation, the evil people is the control, but the catalyst in this equation is, and again, the emphasis on ancient, these are thousands of years old, these spirits, they're not omniscient, they're not.
They're not equals with God, not even close.
They're not omniscient.
They're not omnipresent, but they're 6,000.
I mean, they're old.
They know things.
They're learned.
They know what works and they can give technology and techniques and skill and knowledge and ancient knowledge and things to those who are willing to make a deal.
They have the Bible memorized in Latin, Greek, English.
I mean, these are beings that they can spin words.
They are powerful.
They can spin ideologies.
This is, again, we've talked about this.
First, 2 Corinthians 10 3 to 5.
It's why it's important for the Christian to understand that they don't wage war with flesh and blood, but with the powers and principalities in heavenly places.
But we have spiritual power to tear down every stronghold.
And it's important that this is connected and lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
So the spiritual strongholds are wedded to ideologies.
Words are their most important weapon, beliefs are their most important weapon.
So they'll show you what they need to get you to cling on to.
A demonic belief or an ungodly belief.
Because that's what will sink your ship at the end.
It's what you believe to be true.
Your praxis will follow your belief.
What you do will follow what you believe.
Yeah.
Fantastic episode.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Joel.
There you have it.
Ghosts.
They're demons.
Tune in next time.
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