The Unseen Realm
Some new thinking
If we're to understand the unseen realm we will need to go back to the beginning of time to what George H Pember describes in his book as 'Earths Earliest Ages'. In the beginning we find God - the creator of all things including the Heaven and the Earth (Gen 1:1).
Contrary to the thinking of most evangelical Christians, the Scriptures never tell us that he did this original creation in 6 days. In Gen 1:2 we discover that the earth was without form and void - the same words that are used to describe confusion and emptiness - in other words chaos. God never created chaos and so something must have happened between verses one and two to render the earth in this state. This is known by some as the 'Gap Theory' and in our opinion this makes much more sense than any so-called evolutionary theory.
The reforming of the earth and the creation of human kind then took place in 6 literal days as described in the Bible.
So what took place to render the earth chaotic?
In Job 38:4-7 God asks Job a number of questions relating to when he laid the foundations of the Earth and tells him that the stars sang together whilst the 'sons of God' shouted for joy. Who are the sons of God? Clearly divine beings (part of the unseen realm).
Western worldview
Christians in the West appear largely uncomfortable with, and disconnected from, the supernatural – both the good and evil sides - which we call the ‘unseen or spiritual realm.' We tend to live at a rational and material level and our worldview is more materialistic than spiritual.
There is truth in what Walter Wink says:
Angels, spirits, principalities, powers, gods, Satan - these, along with all other spiritual realities, are the unmentionables of our culture. The dominant materialistic worldview has absolutely no place for them.
However, this isn't true of everyone; New Age practitioners, neo-pagans, occultists, alternative medical and health adherents, horoscopes addicts, etc, are open to various forms of the spiritual and sadly often get more than they bargain for! In his book ‘The Spiritual World And How We Access It,’ Harold R Eberle says:
Remove the supernatural from Christianity and you no longer have Christianity. Without the miraculous and the spiritual, you have very few pages left of the Holy Bible. Still, many Christians deny present-day experiences related to the spiritual world. At best, they are fearful of the supernatural realm, reluctant to talk about it, and warning others to stay away. At the same time, the world is intrigued with the spiritual realm. Popular television programs are incorporating supernatural phenomena and paranormal experiences into their stories. Young people are being reared on videos portraying every aspect of the invisible dimension. Occult and mystical teachings are a part of their daily diets. The world is paying money to witness mystical phenomena reported in magazines and portrayed in our movie theatres.
Christians often say: ‘we mustn't see demons everywhere’, but do we see them anywhere? Are we teaching the next generation to ‘drive out demons’? (Mark 16:17) If not, why not?
Paul Hiebert, Professor of Anthropology at Fuller Theological Seminary, in an article in ‘Missiology’ (January, 1982, pp. 35-47) and later reprinted in ‘Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues,’ observes that the Western two-tiered view of the universe leaves out an entire dimension seen quite readily by people of non-Western cultures. The worldview of most non-Westerners is three-tiered: the cosmic, transcendent world on top; a middle layer featuring supernatural forces on earth (unseen powers, magical forces, evil eye, mana, and spirits which are very much a part of everyday human life - e.g. a person becomes ill because of a curse or a spirit attack) and the empirical world of our senses on the bottom. This blind spot in the Western world view Hiebert labelled as ‘the flaw of the excluded middle.’
His model was quickly picked up by missionaries and missiologists working among non-Western populations, especially those working in areas such as Spiritual Warfare. It was used to give legitimacy to demonic and spiritual explanations of phenomena which had been previously overlooked by Western theology, anthropology, and missiology, all of which tended to look for so-called ‘natural’ explanations for the observed phenomena.
George Otis Jnr in his book ‘The Twilight Labyrinth’ says of Christians with a Western worldview:
We have been desensitised in our intuitive responses to supernatural stimuli by the drumbeat of socially correct science.
Non-Western worldview
Whilst Christians in the West have comparatively little experiential/experienced qualities to their walk, it’s a very different scenario in the non-Western world. David Burnett, in his book: ‘Unearthly Powers’, says:
Power may be understood in various ways: physical, political, economic, social and religious. The secular worldview tends to regard all power as originating from within the material world. Even those powers which many would regard as being religious in nature are described in psychological terms. In contrast, primal worldviews see such powers not only as being real within the empirical world, but as having their primary origin outside the visible world. This concept of the existence of unseen powers which influence human life is one of the basic assumptions in all primal worldviews, and is perhaps the greatest difference from the secular view.
Although, according to primal worldviews, these powers cannot be directly perceived, they are considered to permeate the whole of daily life. They influence the success of the farmer in his work in the fields, or the wife in her cooking or as she looks after the children.
Hebrew/biblical/Celtic worldview
The indigenous British church, the Celtic church, was more familiar and in touch with the unseen realm and had a more Hebrew/biblical worldview than the church in Britain today. At the heart of this was recognition of the reality of evil and a faith and strength in the power of the risen Christ. Jim Wallace on his website says:
The Celtic Christian worldview - which resonates strongly with the Hebrew traditions found in the Bible - runs counter to the compartmentalised, materialistic, spiritually evacuated worldview of modern Western society. For many, the reality of the physical world around us is our primary and only focus. Although some would acknowledge the reality of the realm of God, they see it as transcendent - a long way off from us - and unless one is about to die, basically irrelevant to daily life.
Between the physical realm and the realm of God is the realm of the spirits, or 'the unseen'. For ancient cultures an understanding of the realm of the spirits was crucially important for their understanding of reality.
A very important foundation stone for the Celtic and Hebrew worldview is the way they saw and encountered God in their everyday life and work . . .the amazing extent of God's revelation of himself in and through the created order. This understanding of the heavens and earth and the unseen dimension in, through and over all things had a profound impact on the way the Hebrews and Celtic Christians encountered God in all of life.
For the Celts, being Christian meant more than mere knowledge of Christian teachings. It was more than simply comprehending book learning with the mind - knowledge of God included all of the senses. This means refusing to live with the dualism of the sacred and the secular, or the physical and the spiritual. All reality is inter-permeated with the unseen. For too many of us life is somehow divided up between church and work, the spiritual and the worldly.
For the Hebrews and the Celtic Christians, the spiritual or unseen realm was one with the created order. It did not exist in a separate or removed dimension; it was in union with all of life in creation. The spiritual dimension of life is the heart or essence of every created thing, both seen and unseen. We need to understand that what we have generally called 'the spiritual realm' was, to the Hebrew mind, simply the unseen realm.
Clearly, we’d do well to get back to our roots!
Relationship to the unseen realm
We read a lot in the Bible about the unseen realm but what do we understand by it, and how do we relate to it? For example, what do we understand by the term ‘heavenly places’? (Ephesians 2:6). How do we tap in to the ‘powers of the age to come/Kingdom of God’? (Hebrews 6:5). How do we understand the ‘principalities and powers’ described by the Apostle Paul? What do we understand by demons and spirits? How do we see the relationship of angels, good and bad, with us and the nations? And what about the role of, and our relationship with, the person of the Holy Spirit - how do we understand this and how real and/or developed is it? And what do we know about the first, second and third heavens and dimensional portals/gates? These are all important questions which, as we explore them, will help us to have a more rounded and Biblical view of the unseen realm and, more importantly, help us to engage with it.
The Apostle Paul, according to Michael Green, speaks of the ‘heavenlies’ not merely as the dwelling place of God but as the surroundings of the material world. Martin Scott in his book ‘Sowing Seeds for Revival’ says that the spiritual/unseen realm and the material realm relate closely and even intersect each other; what happens in one sphere is mirrored in and affects the other. An example of this can be found in 2 Kings 6:15-17:
When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. ‘Oh, my lord, what shall we do?’ the servant asked. ‘Don't be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ And Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, open his eyes so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.
Scott develops this interaction between heaven and earth further:
A belief in heaven and the interaction between heaven and earth means that our primary role is to bring the order of heaven to earth as expressed in the Lord’s Prayer. . .
This interaction between heaven and earth can be seen strongly in the letter to the Ephesians where our warfare is ‘in the heavenly realms’ (Eph 6:12) and we (who are on the earth and in the church) are seated with Christ in heavenly places now (Eph 2:6).
Heaven then is not so much a place to go, or a place related to a future, post- death experience, but is more a description of a position or dimension of power, authority and reality that affects the affairs of humanity on earth. It is the place or dimension where the will of God is being done in all its fullness, without the presence of evil. It is this that we are praying to be manifest on earth.
From the Bible we know that we can experience ‘the age/dimension to come’ now, because it is already here (Hebrews 6:4-5). We’re seated with Christ in heavenly places, (Ephesians 2:6) and it’s from this place and dimension, (seated with and in Christ) that we can exercise the power and authority Martin refers to as ‘heaven,’ or as we might say, the ‘having already come’ Kingdom of God!
Principalities and powers
We also know from the Bible that what Paul calls the ‘principalities and powers’ were created by God and are part of the ‘seen and the unseen realm’:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph 6:12).
For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities - all things were created through him and for him (Col 1:16-17).
All authority in heaven and earth is given/has been created by the Lord. The following scripture speaks of earthly rulers:
Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right (1 Peter 2:13-14).
Angels and the nations
Angels are the ‘powers’ in their ‘heavenly/spiritual’ form, and in Deut 32:8 we read:
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.
Hebrew tradition and an ancient and biblical belief/theme, identifies these ‘sons of God’ with the ‘heavenly council’ (Psalm 82:1, Psalm 89:5, Job 1:6, 1 Tim 5:21). The concept that God is surrounded by a council or host of divine beings who serve him, runs throughout the Bible. These angels were understood to be guardian angels appointed over the nations and devoted to the nation’s welfare. We see further evidence of this relationship of angels to the nations in Dan 10:12-14:
Then he continued, ‘Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.’
Daniel’s vision pictures two of God’s angels virtually held in a standoff for 21 days by the prince/angel of Persia. In Isaiah 34:1-5, where we see a further aspect of the relationship and connectedness between angels and nations, we see the Lord’s wrath simultaneously poured out on the angels and the nations:
Draw near, O nations, to hear, and hearken, O peoples! Let the earth listen, and all that fills it; the world, and all that comes from it. For the Lord is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host, he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter. Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood.
All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll.
All their host shall fall, as leaves fall from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree. For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have doomed.
God’s justice was first seen in heaven. He dealt with the guardian angel or angels before coming against the people of its nation. Isaiah 24:21 also alludes to this:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
On earth as it is in heaven!
What we’re seeing here is another part of the ancient worldview - what happens on earth is the result of what happens in heaven; the heavenly aspect of the ‘Powers’ affecting what is happening on the earth. This process however can also be reversed, and Wink speaks about this in his book ‘Naming The Powers’:
Michael’s role in Revelation 12 is inexplicable apart from the angels-of-the-nations motif. . . This victory has been made possible somehow by the blood of the Lamb and the witness of the martyrs on earth (v11); as the heavenly guardian of the elect, Michael is thus empowered to act against his ancient enemy (v9). The usual sequence (as above, so below) is here reversed , breaking the heavenly deadlock. Now ‘as below, so above’; the suffering of Christ and the martyrs makes possible the expulsion of Satan from heaven.
So what we’re seeing here is that what happens on earth can also have an impact in heaven.
Angels on assignment
Whilst the fallen angels are against us and the purposes of God, the good angels, those who haven’t rebelled, are for us. Jack Hayford the pastor of The Church on the Way says:
The unseen realm is constantly described in the Bible as immediately present in our midst, not as a distant reality but as a present one. Angels are not occasionally present in the Bible - they are constantly manifest! The word 'angel' appears over 250 times in the pages of God's eternal Word, the Holy Bible! Angels are described not only for the things they have done, but as well the things they are assigned to do in our day. These invisible servants and warriors are brought to bear upon the present day lives of believing Christians.
Surprisingly enough, there are more direct references to angels in the New Testament than in the Old Testament. A careful study will reveal that the New Testament activity of angels usually revolves around the ministry of Jesus and the establishment of his church on earth. They minister (Greek word used ‘diakonia’), referring to their 'serviceable labor, assistance’. They are ministering spirits, or heavenly assistants, who are continually active today in building the Body of Christ - advancing the ministry of Jesus and the building of his church.
We should welcome and call in prayer for the activity and support of these good angels. Just to mention the reference to the angels of the churches in Revelation, most scholars associate these with the leader/pastor of the church. This could be true since ‘angel’ can also mean ‘messenger’, but we believe that the church in any given locality has been assigned an angel to work with them, with some responsibility toward God for how we’re doing.
First, second and third heavens
The Bible also talks about the first, second and third heavens as part of the unseen realm. We know from the Bible that Jesus passed through the heavens (Heb 4:14) and in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, the Apostle Paul says:
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows. And I know that this man - whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.
What does this mean? And what are the other two heavens? Or indeed are there only three heavens? Most commentators describe the three simply in terms of 1) the sky, 2) the sun moon and stars, and 3) God’s dwelling place. This may well reflect a Western worldview. The Jews in the early Christian era/apostolic age also believed the heavens were divided into three. Among many ancient people however, there was the concept of a multiplicity of heavens. It has been suggested that the rabbis at one stage held to the view that there were seven heavens.
Another view (with variations on a theme) is now gaining ground/momentum within certain quarters of the church, many of whom (although not all) are involved in ‘Spiritual Warfare’. It goes something like this:
i The first heaven is made up of the atmosphere, a material heaven, the physical heavens of the sky and outer space, and it has its own hosts, like birds, planets, stars.
ii The second heaven is what Paul calls ‘the heavenly places’ in Eph.6:12, a spiritual heaven around us today. In this dimension of the unseen are both angelic forces – some good and some demonic.
iii The third heaven is the one that Paul was caught up into, which is where God dwells – the Throne Room.
Biblical prophecies point to the end-time generation as a people who will be anointed with the Holy Spirit to witness many things through visions, dreams and spiritual encounters:
And afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke (Joel 2:28-30).
A number of Christians, many in the prophetic ministry, around the world have experienced a journey into the heavens. Michael Sullivant (Metro Christian Fellowship, Kansas) and Michael Schiffmann (Target Europe, Hanover, Germany), have related similar stories about themselves. On one occasion, Michael Schiffmann was taken ‘in the Spirit’ to a place recognisable as a room, full of books, like a library. Some time later, he was talking to Michael Sullivant, who remarked that he had had a similar spiritual experience. They compared their recollections and realised that the Lord had taken them both, completely separately, to the same place.
Dimensional gates or portals
A current term that many are using is ’dimensional gates/portals,' and whilst the film makers and occultists also use this description, the latter as part of their counterfeit, it’s good language to describe a spiritual reality. To go to heaven, it would appear that you have to pass through what one would describe as a ‘dimensional gate.' You move out of one dimension/reality into another. As we know angels also come the other way from ‘heaven to earth.' We read about one such ‘dimensional gate/portal’ in the Bible in Gen 28:10-18. Here we read the story of Jacob and the ladder reaching to heaven:
Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done that I have promised you.’
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’
Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.
Many Christians today are growing in the conviction that divine portals into the heavenly realm exist around the earth. One definition of a portal is where heaven and earth, the unseen and the seen, fuse together. It’s where the different realms overlap. The City of Jerusalem is considered by many to be a portal, indeed the major one on the earth. Some Christians believe that the enemy is trying to capture Jerusalem to close off this portal.
In Moravian Falls, North Carolina, Rick Joyner has shared that he and his staff have had numerous angelic visitations on their property that was once owned by Count von Zinzendorf and the Moravian community of faith. They believe that several portals exist on this land.
According to John Paul Jackson, a heavenly portal is a spherical opening of light that offers divine protection by which angels and heavenly beings can come and go without demonic interference. God has designed portals to begin in the third heaven, travel through the second heaven and open upon earth. Sadly, while many in the New Age movement recognise the existence of portals, the portals they recognise are those of the second heaven. A web search threw up over 55,000 websites, including many on space portals (mainly New Age mixed with alien visitations) and spiritual portals (mainly New Age, Vedic and Egyptian). Many erroneously think they are hearing from God when actually they are being deceived by the counterfeit.
N T Wright has said that in the Orthodox Eucharist the liturgy takes place ‘in heaven’ since, in their theology, that is exactly what is going on - heaven and earth are not distant spheres, but actually overlap and interlock supremely in Jesus, but thereafter in the Eucharist. In his book ‘New Heavens, New Earth’ he says:
The Holy of Holies was not just a place on earth where one might sense the presence of God - it was the place on earth where heaven and earth intersected in a quite literal sense. A proper understanding of heaven is not as a place remote from the present world but rather as a dimension of present reality normally kept secret. A veil which is normally present is suddenly pulled away so that what is usually invisible becomes visible.
We could also learn from the Celts. They believed there were places like Bethel and Peniel, (Genesis 28:10-17 and Genesis 32:22-30) where heaven touched earth. They called these ‘thin places’ - geographical locations where a person could experience only a very thin divide between past, present, and future times; places where a person is able, possibly only for a moment, to encounter a more ancient reality within present time; or places where perhaps only in a glance we are somehow transported into the future; a thinness between the seen and the unseen realms, enabled by the Holy Spirit. They also referred to nights like Christmas Eve as ‘thin times.’ Times, when whatever it is that separates this life from the larger truth we cannot see or touch, is stretched so thin we can almost peek into another dimension.
As mentioned earlier, while living in Babylon, the prophet Daniel encountered angels who had battled with principalities. As the prince of Persia ruled the nation, the portal to the third heaven was stopped up so that nothing could flow from the source. It may well be that the Lord is calling us to take back these places, so that his angels can come and go unresisted in our midst. According to John Paul Jackson in an article entitled ‘Heavenly Portals’:
Often, the key to open these heavenly portals resides in the actions of our hearts. At Pentecost, the key to unlocking the portal was the unity of the believers. Scripture says they were ‘in one accord’ when suddenly, a portal was opened. A sound from heaven was heard that resembled a mighty rushing wind, filling the whole house. A supernatural manifestation that looked like flames of fire appeared on the believers. (Acts 2:1-4)
We need the person of the Holy Spirit
We want to be a people ‘living in the overlap’ between the seen and unseen realms - experiencing an ‘open heaven’. So how do we achieve this? Clearly, it’s the role of the person of the Holy Spirit to open up and enable Christians to engage with the unseen realm. New Agers and neo-pagans use other forbidden means to connect with the unseen. A dynamic and living relationship with him is essential for every Christian – nothing is known except by the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Gordon Fee in his book: ‘Paul, the Spirit and the People of God’ says:
The Spirit as an experienced and empowering reality was for Paul and his churches the key player in all of Christian life, from beginning to end. If the church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and to recapture Paul’s perspective: the Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God’s own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people in the present world while we await the Consummation.
Is this our experience? Is the Holy Spirit leading and guiding us in this way? Is he opening up the unseen realm and releasing supernatural phenomena to us? Or has he become simply a vague ‘influence’, an ‘it’ rather than a person? Sadly, for many we think this is the case. Billy Graham has, we think, rightly said:
If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, ninety percent of the church would go right on as though nothing had happened.
A developing and mature relationship with the Spirit is essential if we’re to understand and engage in meaningful ways with, and in, the unseen realm. So we ‘fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ (2 Cor 4:18)
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal