In 2018, Mount Kilauea, an active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, erupted violently and unexpectedly. Though the volcano had been erupting regularly for some years, the
eruptions were easily contained within the caldera near the volcano’s summit. But scientists were taken by surprise with the force of the 2018 eruption, which sent multiple flows of lava down the mountain slopes, destroying over 700 homes before reaching the ocean, where the lava rock immediately cooled and established 875 acres of new shoreline on the southeast coast of the island.
I remember watching news stories of the eruption. In one scene, a lava flow approached a neighborhood road. As soon as the lava touched the asphalt, it crumbled in the heat. An automobile was sitting on the side of that same road. As soon as the lava touched the car’s tires, they deflated, and eventually the entire car sank into the lava and was consumed. It was an awesome display of the power of the forces that lie just below the Earth’s surface.
This past summer, my family and I were able to visit Mount Kilauea. We were on the Big Island of Hawaii to work with the Kona Church of Christ for the month of July. While touring Volcanos National Park, I listened to a park ranger explain all about the Hawaiian volcanos while I watched Kilauea, which was still smoking from its most recent eruption just a few days before. The ranger explained that the Earth is made up of three layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core. The crust is the thin outer surface. It makes up only 1% of the Earth’s total volume. The mantle, which is mostly composed of molten rock—the rock that shoots out of erupting volcanos—makes up around 84%, while the core makes up the rest, or 15% of the earth’s volume.
Consider the significance of these geological facts. The earth’s crust, that thin outer shell, is what we live on. It’s what we cultivate. We build houses and roads and schools and businesses on this surface. It’s all we see on a day-to-day basis. And there’s so much to see. Deserts and oceans, fields and forests, cities and icy tundras—there’s so much that we haven’t come close to discovering all that there is to know about just this one percent of the total volume of the earth. Yet, just beneath this surface layer there is tremendous power, and 99% of the reality of the earth is invisible to us, such that we rarely even consider it. But it is indeed there. And sometimes it makes its power felt with earthquakes or volcanic eruptions or tsunamis that can bring devastating effects to life on the earth’s crust—especially if we are caught by surprise, unaware of the activity going on underneath the surface.
The Bible shows us that while we inhabit this physical realm, there is a vast spiritual reality that powerfully effects the life on the surface. We cannot see it, but when we understand it, we can see its effects. In speaking of spiritual things, Jesus says, in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” Just as we cannot see wind itself, but can only see its effects, we cannot see the spiritual elements, but we can see their effects in the physical world.
Yet worldly people continue to deny the existence of the spiritual realm, and many do not believe in the existence of the soul. Christians believe the human person has a body and a soul. The soul—the mind, the will, and the emotions—directs, animates, and empowers the physical body. Jesus says, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Jesus wants us to place primary importance on the spiritual realm, yet most of the time we concern ourselves only with what we see and feel on the surface.
More than just the dichotomy of body and soul, a whole spiritual universe exists beyond our physical senses. In 2 Kings 6:15-17 the prophet Elisha opens the spiritual eyes of his servant so that he can see an entire army of God’s angels surrounding an earthly army. Paul explains that our primary concern is a spiritual battle when he says in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 that “we do not wage war as the world does,” with physical weapons. He even more clearly describes the spiritual battle in Ephesians 6:12—“For 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.”
If talk like this makes you nervous, you can take comfort that God provides spiritual armor (Ephesians 6:13-17), and that Jesus has already won the war, having established himself over all spiritual powers through his conquering of sin and death at his resurrection. Jesus did not only come to rescue us from our sins, but to conquer the spiritual realm and establish his reign over all things, physical and spiritual. Paul explains this concept in Ephesians 1:19-21—"That power is the like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted when he raised him [Jesus] from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in this present age, but also in the one to come.”
The scientists were caught by surprise when Kilauea erupted in 2018. Their instrumentation and their understanding of the forces underneath the Earth’s surface were too crude for them to be able to anticipate the virulence of the eruption. As disastrous as that eruption was for the people living below the volcano, an even greater disaster awaits those who live blithely on the surface of reality and deny the existence of the spiritual realm. Such people will be unaware and unable to stand up to the spiritual powers that will become all too apparent when the final eruption, the second coming of Christ, brings the end of time itself and the physical universe with it.
-Nick Boone
First Published in the Words of Life Bulletin
