Welcome to Day 1581 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomNot of This World – Worldview WednesdayWelcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! Wisdom is the final frontier in gaining true knowledge. Our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, seek out discernment and insights, and boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; this is Gramps; thanks for coming along on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Today is Day 1581 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, we will continue reviewing the book from Dr. Michael S Heiser titled “Supernatural.” The book is an abbreviated version of his more comprehensive book, “The Unseen Realm.” I highly recommend both of these books. Creating a Biblical Worldview based on how the Old and New Testaments connect with God’s overall plan for humanity is essential. This book review will help us understand what the Bible teaches about the unseen world, and why it matters.
Not of This World
In Jesus’ well-known prayer in the garden of Gethsemane before he was arrested for trial, he said of his followers in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+17%3A16andversion=NLT (John 17:16), They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Believers were certainly in the world, specially tasked by God to carry the gospel to every nation (Matthew 28:19–20), but they were not of the world. This paradox—being in the world but not of it—was telegraphed to early Christians in several memorable ways.
Sacred Space, Holy Ground, and God’s PresenceIn chapter 8 of Supernatural, we talked about the concept of sacred space. For Old Testament Israelites, God was utterly other. The space his presence occupied was set apart from all other space. That wasn’t a denial that God was omnipresent—in all places at all times. Instead, it was a way of marking the territory on which he chose to meet with his people. That was one of the purposes for having the tabernacle and the temple. The concept of sacred space was not only the rationale for many of Israel’s laws and rituals, but it also reinforced the idea of cosmic geography‌—how the world was divided among the lesser gods and the Most High God, the God of Israel.
The notion of sacred space gets brought into the New Testament in a dramatic way. All we need to ask is, “Where is the presence of God right now?” While God is everywhere, he dwells explicitly within each believer. Believe it or not, you are sacred space. Paul very clearly wrote in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+6%3A19andversion=NLT (1 Corinthians 6:19) Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God?
The same is true of the ground where believers gather as a group. Writing to the church at Corinth, Paul told them collectively in 1 Corinthians 3:16, Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? He told the Ephesian believers they were “members of the household of God … a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19, 21–22).
The implications are startling. Most of us are familiar with Jesus’ statement in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+18%3A20andversion=NLT (Matthew 18:20), “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.” But viewed in the context of the Old Testament idea of sacred space, that statement means that wherever believers gather, the spiritual ground they occupy is sanctified amid the powers of darkness.
Yahweh’s final chosen dwelling place in the Old Testament was Israel—the temple in Jerusalem. Israel became holy ground