Something Came Up Out of the Ground

Every October the same fight breaks out in the church. One camp says a kid in a dinosaur suit is flirting with the occult. The other camp says the unseen world is mostly pretend, and the only real monsters are the adults arguing about it.

I read both sides this week, a day after a fever of 103 put me in bed feeling like a 400-pound man was sitting on my chest. I’ve had asthma since I was 10, so I learned a long time ago to calm my thinking before it gets to my breathing. That night it took everything I had.

It’s easy to be a Bible scholar on your sofa. Lying there, I noticed both camps skipped the same thing.

The Bible never treats the unseen world as a costume. Deuteronomy 18 forbids consulting with familiar spirits and necromancers, and 1 Samuel 28 shows why. Saul went to the woman at Endor the night before he died, and when she saw what came up, she cried with a loud voice.

“And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.” (1 Samuel 28:13)

Something answers. That’s plain as day in the text.

But the Bible doesn’t put the devil’s real grip on people in a pumpkin either. It puts it in one place.

“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

The leash is the fear of death, and it works on people all year long, whether they're in costume or not. I stared right at it, my lungs unable to fill.

My grandpa spent years debating me about the Bible and hating priests. When throat cancer put him in a hospital bed, he asked for one. When faith gets tested, we want something solid.

So turn the porch light on or leave it off. Paul left room for that in Romans 14. But don’t spend October afraid of masks and the rest of the year afraid of dying.

Christ already took the power of death out of the devil’s hand.

P.S. These past few months have been hard on my family, and this fever knocked me flat. If Dead Hidden has helped you see what’s really in the Book, and you can stand with us right now, here’s a one-time gift link: https://buy.stripe.com/5kQ28s0Fm2wAdkygbRc3m0GThank you.