A wonderful Christian friend died recently, after months in a cancer ward. Later, the nurse commented that near the end she occasionally saw him looking not at her but back and to the side a bit. She inquired, and he said matter-of-factly, “There’s an angel standing there.”
The writer to the Hebrews touches on some of the highest and profoundest subjects of Christian theology. By verse three, he has already declared the deity of Christ and indicated God’s handling of the sin problem. Before the chapter ends he has told us who made the universe and even intimated how it will end. In fact, “what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Heb.11:3.)
One of the most difficult concepts he raises is the intermingling of physical and spiritual. We generally keep the two worlds separate in our thinking, but he blends them into one. For instance, he says we are to “approach the throne of grace with confidence” (Heb.4:16), or “we have this hope for an anchor of the soul” in “the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus…has entered on our behalf” (Heb.6:19-20), or “we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.” (Heb.12:1.) Where does physical leave off and turn to spiritual? Old Testament writers have taken this same approach, from Moses and Joshua right down to David, Isaiah, and Zechariah.
Modern writers, too, have made the spiritual realm visible through physical eyes, from Charles Williams and C.S.Lewis of 70 years ago, to Frank Peretti of just yesterday. An acquaintance read Williams’ All Hallows’ Eve and remarked that he “hadn’t realized until about chapter two or three that the heroine was dead.” In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis gives a highly imaginative picture of one demon writing to another: “The Enemy [God] takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into...’sons’.” My third example, Peretti’s This Present Darkness, gives the reader a constant view of both sides—the physical protagonists and the spiritual angels and demons just out of sight. To quote: “…a little demon clung to him, its taloned fingers entwining Marshall’s legs…”
These fictional works can be great fun to read. The crunch comes when we realize that behind all these stories is truth. There is more than a pretty—or horrific—story here. There really is a spiritual dimension. According to the Bible, that dimension is more real than anything we see. Going back to the book of Hebrews, we read, “It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.” (Heb.9:23.) In other words, the design of the tabernacle, as defined by God to Moses, was only a model, so-to-speak — a “photocopy”. And all the bulls, goats, sheep, and doves killed on Jewish altars were “inferior”.
With the help of the New Testament, and especially the book of Hebrews, we can look at Old Testament history and see reference to the real thing, which is, in Bible terms, the spiritual thing. For starters, the Psalms are full of allusions to the tabernacle or the temple. David says, “He will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock.” (Psa.27:5.) Do we really think David meant the cloth and fur tent? Very unlikely. He meant “the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man” (Heb.8:2), and his refuge was a spiritual one. And speaking of rocks, what point would there be in David’s climbing onto any rock in Israel? The apostle Paul shows us the spiritual reality: “That rock was Christ.” (1 Cor.10:4.)
Theophanies are recorded in a few places in the Bible. When God appears as a man, his host, for instance Abraham or Joshua, recognizes His quality and is awed (Gen.18:1-5 or Josh.5:13-6:5). But when God appears in His spiritual power, in his unrestrained reality, He says, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Ex.33:20.)
Another powerful expression of the spiritual realm is recorded by Isaiah: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.” (Isa.6:1.) We think of a vision as not real—as pretend—like a dream. But more likely Isaiah was seeing into the real, the spiritual world.
One last example from the Old Testament is Zechariah, and the description is pure Peretti: “He showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.” (Zech.3:1.)
The Bible event —the world event—that means the most to every Christian is the crucifixion. Christ died for our sins. But here, again, the visible and physical is secondary to the spiritual. The old preachers used to tell us that God covered the scene in darkness while He laid our sins on Jesus. Psalm 22 is the earthly, physical story of Jesus on the cross—His pain, His emotions, His thoughts. But Hebrews shows us the spiritual picture: “He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.” (Heb.9:12.)
Maybe we can’t often see the spiritual world with these eyes. But Paul said, “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.) To bring this into God’s perspective, our Lord Himself said, “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” (John 3:12.) If we make the effort and break through into the spiritual realms we can speak directly to a High Priest who can “sympathize with our weaknesses” because he “has been tempted in every way, just as we are.” (Heb.4:15.) In other words, prayer is a direct entrance into the spiritual realm. Pray, and you cross that bridge that puts you among the “heavenly things” with Jesus.
