This is part 3 of a series responding to the teaching of another ministry regarding taking spirit trips to minister to stoicheion. In part 1, we suggest that this ministry is recommending deeply dangerous activity using deeply flawed biblical reasoning. In Part 2, we debunked the claim that stoicheion are “nature, earth, or tree spirits.”
In this post, we’ll turn to some of the proof texts this ministry used to biblically defend their practices and teaching that the Bible actually presents the existence of nature spirits throughout scripture.
Talking Rivers in the Bible
Does this passage from the Book of Revelation teach the existence of River Spirits, as the ministry in question asserts?
The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say,
“Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!”
And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!”
Rev 16:14-7
Claiming this passage teaches the existence of a river god shows an egregious example of ripping a verse completely out of context to argue something very bizarre. Put aside that the Book of Revelation is highly symbolic, let’s note that this is a book– not a collection of unconnected verses. The author has already told the reader where the angel in Rev 16 came from, and it’s not from the river.
Back in Revelation 7:1, some angels from heaven held back the wind. The passage clearly says these aren’t nature spirits, but angels doing things to the weather.
Revelation 8:3-5, an angel in heaven came to the heavenly altar, drew fire from the altar, and then cast the fire to earth, causing thunder, lightning and earthquakes. Again, not nature spirits.
In Rev 14:18, an angel came out of the altar to do things with fire, while calling on another angel to do things to vegetation. Finally, in Revelation 16, an angel came out of the alter to do things to the water.
These aren’t nature spirits. They’re angels from heaven doing things with nature.
The stones will cry out… nature spirits in the stone?
These teachers assert that when Jesus said the stones would cry out in worship, he was teaching about earth spirits. The passage is in Luke 19, when Jesus is entering Jerusalem and the crowd welcomed him like he was the King. Some Pharisees demanded he rebuke the crowd, and Jesus said, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”[ref]Luke 19:40[/ref]
The implication is if the crowd doesn’t worship, the spirits of the rocks in the earth will.
But Jesus is not asserting nature spirits with his words: he’s alluding to Habakkuk 2:11, a Messianic prophecy that says, “For the stone will cry out from the wall,” – in other words, Jesus is claiming that it’s appropriate for the Jews to worship Jesus, because he really is the King coming in the Name of Yahweh.
The stones aren’t even in nature – they’re in walls, and they aren’t local. They are the collapsed walls in Babylon. The prophecy, and Jesus’ use of it, isn’t alluding to nature spirits at all.
Mountain Spirits
Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name. Psalm 89:12
Psalm 89 declares that God made everything, including Mount Tabor and Hermon (two prominent mountains north of Israel). Hermon, of course, had cosmic geographic messaging attached. It was sort of Mount Doom, but the Psalmist reminds us that, although it was used as the gate to hell and had become the heart of darkness, God made it, and someday, it would function like it was supposed to function, and in so doing, would be worshiping the Creator.
All Creation Praises the Name of Yahweh!
The Bible is full of imagery of aspects of nature worshiping God. From mountains and hills, to animals and fruit trees, do these biblical declarations assert sentient spiritual beings of nature?
Of course not. They are a declaration of identity. When things operate as God designed them, they are in an act of worship, declaring by their functioning the sovereignty of God.
In other words, when aspects of nature function as God designed them to function, their functioning is an act of worship.
By comparison, when humans function as God designed them to function, their obedience in functioning is also an act of worship. As I wrote in my book, Peace in Your House, “As God’s imagers and representatives sent to bring the Kingdom of God to earth, all of the activity in our lives constitutes acts of worship.” The same goes for when aspects of nature function according to God’s rule – the Kingdom.
This nature imagery has nothing to do with sentient nature spirits.
Psalm 148 has many aspects of the creation praising Yahweh, including (in order) the heavenly beings, the sun and moon, the shining stars, the heavens, the water above the heavens[ref]This reflects the ancient conception of the universe, with water below the flat earth, the heavens/sky above the earth, then a dome, holding waters above the earth back, and above that, God’s throne/heavenly realm.[/ref], the great sea creatures, the weather, the mountain and hills, fruit trees and cedars, the beasts and livestock, creeping things and flying birds, the kings, princes, rulers, men, young women, old men and children.
Naturally the ministry in question reads this and thinks Nature Spirits!
My heart aches at this abuse of scripture.
The Psalmist is following the creation order of Genesis One [ref] see John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One or the more scholarly Genesis One As Ancient Cosmology for a detailed explanation regarding how the author is following the created order of functions and functionaries in Creation.[/ref], reaffirming God’s sovereignty, power, and the created order.
When the created order function as designed, they are worshiping God, not as sentience but as functionaries in God’s government. This all-powerful God is the God of Israel. The Psalmist is overwhelmed with this awesome realization!
As the created order worships God, so will I.
Do animals and other aspects of nature have spiritual existences? As this post explains, I certainly think so.
I also think certain spiritual creatures have globbed onto aspects of nature for their own purposes. Perhaps they like the life energy that emits from certain plants or sacred space. And many seers also have seen or heard them, perhaps interpreting them to be nature spirits.
Seers and prophets in the ancient world no doubt communicated what some of these spiritual creatures looked like, and idols were fashioned in their image: idols of animals, hybrids, monsters, and yes, trees.
In the next installment of this series, we’ll specifically deal with trees in the Bible, tree spirits, and the concept of sacred trees.