Rediscover the invisible dimension hidden within the very text of your Bible. The Invisible Dimension: Spirit-Beings, Ghosts, and the Afterlife is a new book by Matthew D. Arnold, published by Anamchara Books, that encourages readers to take biblical writers seriously when they speak of the heavenly realms and their inhabitants.
This is the book I have been longing for!
Kenneth McIntosh: Water from an Ancient Well
Instead of attempting to read the Bible through a 21st-century mindset – itself steeped in our inherited cultures, rich in dogmas, creeds, confessions of faith, and other influences – The Invisible Dimension helps the reader immerse themselves in the variety of contexts of the biblical writers, whether culturally, historically, theologically, or literary, by exploring the writers’ worlds in their particular times and places. What did the words they used mean to them when they wrote them down?
The exhaustive research, sensitive approach, and multiple “aha!” moments make this an adventure of a book.
Peter Laws: the Matt Hunter series, The Frighteners and the Frightful Podcast
It begins with a brief overview of how public interest in the paranormal is on the rise in the world, examining the surprises that lie within the various polling statistics on the paranormal and supernatural. Rather than being an atheistic culture in the West, we are entering an age where these things are readily spoken of and even big business is cashing in on the zeitgeist. Everyone seems to have or know someone who has a spooky story and many are now willing to share it with millions via podcasts and TV shows.
The Invisible Dimension begins by exploring some of the spirit-beings in the Bible: angels – how did we get the word in our bibles? What are the cherubim and seraphim, and how does their imagery morph throughout the biblical texts? Who are the mysterious watchers and what is their role in various places in the Bible? What did the writers understand as the origins of evil spirits, and what were demons (or daimons)? We then explore the many different words that describe ghosts, spirits of the dead, in the Bible (yes, there really are ghosts mentioned in the Bible, explicitly and implicitly by certain words).
Matt Arnold is a well-informed guide to these esoteric topics, offering insights that may be surprising, while remaining always faithful to what the Bible actually says.
John Drane: Introduction to the Old Testament and Introduction to the New Testament & Olive Drane: Through the Eyes of a Child
The Invisible Dimension then explores the evolution of the Hebraic afterlife, from being gathered to one’s ancestors to the ideas of what the heavenly realms meant. It looks at the underworld – what the writers understood it to be like – and the work of Christ between the crucifixion and resurrection.
Having broken open those ancient wells within the text and laid the groundwork to show that the biblical writers did believe in an invisible dimension filled with various spirit-beings, The Invisible Dimension then examines the favourite prooftexts used by some to try and negate the afterlife as some form of inactive stasis, as well as their attempts to try and exorcise ghosts from the biblical texts (some of which we have in the Articles Database). We are then treated to an exploration of various Bible passages that we view through the lens of the invisible dimension, giving the reader much hope for when we pass through the veil and a deeper understanding of the redemptive work of Christ.
The Invisible Dimension then bravely takes on the challenge of uncovering early Judeo-Christian practices of praying for the dead, revealed in various biblical texts and in their extra-biblical writings and beliefs, which are carved into their burial stone markers. These research discoveries changed the mind of its Protestant author about the practice of praying for the dead!
Matt Arnold does something very different in this volume, going back to the biblical texts and digging deep to understand them in their own contexts. The supernatural phenomena Arnold describes offer new scriptural insights into a reality filled with wonder and enchantment.
John W. Morehead: co-editor of The Paranormal and Popular Culture and The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters
The author finishes The Invisible Dimension with a personal story that shows how these rediscoveries in the Bible can be used today to bring peace to those who may be unquiet in the afterlife, contained within the invisible dimensions.
You can find The Invisible Dimension at the publisher’s site, Anamchara Books and on Amazon.
Matt Arnold is the editor of The Christian Parapsychologist Journal, a publication of The Churches Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies. He graduated from Cliff College with a distinction-level master’s degree in Pioneering Ministries and Fresh Expressions, where his thesis Paranormal Hauntings and Applications in Deliverance Ministry: A Critical Investigation won the prize for the best master’s thesis. Since then he has continued his research into the paranormal and the Bible, writing articles for various publications as well as his website Ghosts, Ghouls and God. He is a frequent guest on radio and podcasts, and he lectures across the UK.
I need this book
How to get the book?
Hi,
You can buy the book from Amazon or Anamchara Books, or any other good bookshop.
Thanks
Does this book build on the work of Dr Michael Heiser?
Hi
Thanks for your question. Indeed, The Invisible Dimension: Spirit-Beings,Ghosts and the Afterlife incorporates a Deuteronomy 32 worldview of Heiser, and references his materials, as well as many of the resources he himself points to in his own works. Heiser made a few brief writings on the spirits of the departed, which, together with many other materials of a similar viewpoint help to firm up a biblical perspective of the way the afterlife evolves over time in the biblical texts. His approach to using source materials is similar to The Invisible Dimension, by taking a contextual approach: historically, literary, culturally and theologically to read the biblical texts with the mindset of the original writers.
Heiser is famous for saying that he refused to protect his readers from the Bible, and The Invisible Dimension takes the same attitude – if what’s discovered and understood as what the original writers meant might butt up against modern interpretations that have departed from the faith first received, the book sticks with the original understandings. This means some of the things might sound unfamiliar, or even be seen as heretical by certain Church Traditions. For example, it shows the biblical writers understood and teach that the spirits of the departed don’t cease to exist / aren’t in a stasis state, but are alive and fully experiencing the intermediate afterlife before the resurrection. Yet famous Reformers Calvin and Richard Baxter, as well as others, both taught these things, despite many churches who favour these teachers abandoning such ideas because they’re inconvenient to their own viewpoint.
The Invisible Dimension prefers to present the reader with factual information about the biblical texts, in their contexts, presenting the variety of beliefs about the afterlife and ghosts, as the texts are written and compiled, together with looking at how the beliefs in the New Testament arise from a combination of the Old Testament and the Jewish literature that continues to be written between the Old and New Testaments (the Deuterocanonicals (sometimes called The Apocrypha) – something Heiser was very keen that his readers understood where our New Testament teachings come from).
The Invisible Dimension breaks open the ancient wells of knowledge and understanding of the biblical writers on these topics, and reveals a much deeper and richer world of both the writers and our own world. It holds to the faith first received (James 1). It won’t protect you from your Bible, but it will help you fall even more in love with it and the Author behind it.
I hope this helps you see where it fits in with Michael’s works and way of reading the Bible through the eyes and minds of the original authors.
Every blessing and Happy Easter! He is Risen – He is Risen Indeed, Hallelujah!
Matt