"THERE'S A GHOST IN FIRST CORINTHIANS 10!"

“Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. “ (I Corinthians 10:12)

My girls, then teenagers, “got” me with this one around ten years ago:

“There’s a GHOST in First Corinthians 10!” they happily announced to me.

“What are you talking about?!”

“Dad, there’s a GHOST in First Corinthians 10!” they repeated.

This bantering went back and forth for a few minutes. Finally, Amy opened up her N.I.V. (“New International Version” an easy to read interpretative translation very popular in evangelical circles) Bible to First Corinthians 10. There, in the margin was a drawing (obviously by my other daughter, Rachel) of a freindly ghost...like I remember the cartoon character Casper the friendly ghost!

Well, in a sense, there WAS a ghost in First Corinthians 10!

Next they tried it on my very intelligent son Jon who has a tendency to be critical, opionionated, outspoken, and easily annoyed. He entered into the same kind of discussion with them I’d had, except that he was more annoyed and intellectual about the whole thing. Before even turning to the passage, he began ridiculing the N.I.V. and assuming there was some sort of a ridiculous mistranslation in the N.I.V. in chapter ten!

That Bible with the ghost in First Corinthians 10 is now in the home of Amy and her husband David in Springfield, Missouri. A year ago when I was out there, I informed David there was a ghost in First Corinthians 10. As I expected he was confused and skeptical, and then got a laugh when he saw the ghost!

I took a short walk this afternoon and experienced something that made me think of the ghost in First Corinthians 10. I was walking along and saw a few people in a parked four-door compact car. I did a double take, because in the back seat I saw what appeared to be a ghost. Well, I knew it wasn’t a REAL ghost! It DID look like a person is a ghost costume, however! I saw a figure covered in what looked like bright white satin...perhaps an adult ghost costume. Earlier in the afternoon, I’d been out and encountered a little boy and his mother- the little boy was dressed up in a Batman cape. Now that I encountered the “ghost” it almost seemed like maybe now people dress up for Patriots Day like they do for Halloween! As I got closer to the compact car, it turned out there was a girl, probably in her late teens, kneeling on the back seat and slightly bent over. That WHITE was her JACKET! At a distance, there was the optical illusion of a person in a ghost costume sitting in the car!

There’s an old expression “seeing’s believing”.

Do you know, that’s not necessarily true?!

Most of us have been to so called magic shows where a rabbit appears to supernaturally appear out of a guy’s arm or a bowling ball instantly turns into a red and gold handkerchief...things like that. Such showmen tell us, “The hand is quicker than the eye”.

Sometimes we get way too intense about things and take things way too seriously!
Friendships have been broken; family members have refused to speak to one another, over something that HAPPENED...well, they SAW it...or did they?

People have joined dangerous cults because they “saw” something that “proved” the cults’ veracity...so they thought.

Yes, we evangelical and Pentecostal Christians get made fun of a lot for saying it’s important that people study and know their Bibles, especially their New Testaments inside out so they won’t be easily deceived. And that’s true, and good advice.

In closing, don’t forget, there’s a ghost in First Corinthians 10!