Judge the world? Rule over angels?
What Paul’s talking about in that puzzling verse is both mind-blowing and life-changing. The Bible connects the activities of supernatural beings with our lives and destinies. We will someday judge the world. We will rule over angels, just as Paul said. More about that later.
The reason Paul can say what he said to the Corinthians—and to us—is that the story of the Bible is about how God created us and desires that we be part of his heavenly family. It’s no accident that the Bible uses terms drawn from family relationships—such as sharing a home and working together—to collectively describe God, Jesus, the beings of the unseen world, and believers, you and me. God wants humanity to be part of his family and of his rule over creation.
We all know the concept as in heaven, so on earth. It’s drawn from ideas and even phrasing found in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:10). From the very beginning, God wanted his human family to live with him in a perfect world—along with the family he already had in the unseen world, his heavenly host. That story—God’s goal, its opposition by the powers of darkness, its failure, and its ultimate future success—is what this book is about, just as it’s what the Bible is about. And we can’t appreciate the drama of the Bible’s story if we don’t include all the actors—including the supernatural characters who are part of the epic but who are ignored by many Bible teachers.
The members of God’s heavenly host are not peripheral or insignificant or unrelated to our story, the human story, in the Bible. They play a central role. But modern Bible readers too often read right past, without grasping them, the fascinating ways the supernatural world is present in dozens of the most familiar episodes in the Bible. It took me decades to see what I now see in the Bible—and I want to share with you the fruit of those years of study.
But let’s not lose track of the question I asked at the beginning. Do you really believe what the Bible says? That’s where the rubber meets the road. It won’t do you any good to learn what the Bible really says about the unseen world and how it intersects with your life if you don’t believe it.
In 2 Kings 6:8–23, the prophet Elisha is in trouble (again). An angry king sends troops to surround his house. When his servant panics, Elisha tells him, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Before the servant can object, Elisha prays, “O LORD, please open his eyes that he may see.” God answers on the spot: “So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
Elisha’s prayer is my prayer for you. May God open your eyes to see, so that you’ll never be able to think about the Bible the same way again.