Spiritual Warfare - 3 Floors or 1 Floor?

Does our spiritual universe have 1 floor, 2 floors or 3 floors?

Anthropologists have noted that the modern, scientifically sensitive,Western world reduces the spiritual universe.

What they mean is that people can conceive of spiritual reality in 3 different ways.

Historically most peoples have used a 3 tiered model that looks like this:

Heaven, God, Hell, etc.
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Earth’s spiritual world: Angels, demons, spirits
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Earth’s material world: People, animals, all matter

But in the West, the universe gets reduced to a 2 tiered world that looks like this:

Heaven, God
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Earth’s material world: People, animals, all matter


Or reduced even further to this:

Earth’s material world: People, animals, all matter

You can see the assumptions that are made with each view of the universe. The 3 tiered model assumes a world that has both seen (material) reality and unseen (spiritual) reality. It assumes that the spiritual world influences the material world. In other words, it believes that spiritual forces are at work all the time, not just a spiritual reality that we find after we die.

Most Westerners assume that that view is the result of leftover primitive superstitions that have been disproved by modern science. We assume that the world of angels, demons, miracles, etc. is the result of ancient peoples attributing powers to parts of the material world which they did not understand. But given the advent of the microscope, the telescope, particle physics, etc. we now know that such a world does not exist.

Some Western people still believe that Heaven is real. (Far less believe that Hell might exist!) And many Westerners have dispensed even with any afterlife at all. They are complete materialists.

I have gone from believing in a materialist one tiered universe to a full fledged belief in a more traditional (primitive?) view of a 3 tiered universe. In my next post, I’ll explain why.

Peace in Christ - Paul