What is a Spiritual Being?

In the opening pages of the Bible, God creates two overlapping realms, the heavens and the earth. This is where the drama of the biblical storyline takes place. Many of us are familiar with the earthly drama. Humans are given a wonderful garden to rule on God’s behalf, but they lose access to this paradise because of a foolish rebellion. But the biblical authors want us to see another set of characters, the inhabitants of the heavenly realm who are also heavily involved in this earthly story.

For lots of different reasons, many modern readers of the Bible don’t notice these characters or don’t know what to make of them. Most of our modern portrayals of angels and demons are based on deep misunderstandings of what the biblical authors are trying to tell us about these creatures. Spiritual beings play a really important role in the biblical story, and that’s what this video series is all about.

Host of Heaven

In the Intro to Spiritual Beings video, we explore how the “host of heaven” in Genesis 1: the sun, moon, and the stars, are depicted as spiritual beings and how the snake in Genesis 3 is also on the roster of spiritual beings. This creates a double Heaven and Earth dimension to the entire storyline of the Bible.

Spiritual beings are complex, but are part of the unified narrative of the Bible.

Once we rediscover how the biblical authors saw the world, we can begin to understand the storyline of the rebellious spiritual beings that are at work behind the human rebellion. This also enriches our understanding of the role of humans as the “image of God” and of God’s plan to exalt humanity to rule over a unified Heaven and Earth. It is this exalted role that humanity forfeits in its rebellion and that is recovered in the story of Jesus, the first human who is elevated to rule over Heaven and Earth the way God intended.

In this series, we’re going to profile all of the spiritual characters in the Bible and see how they fit into the world-picture of the biblical authors and how they figure in the larger storyline of the Bible. So let’s put our brains into learning and processing mode and dive in together!