FOX News Claims Ghost Video Best Evidence of Afterlife Ever

In a heavily promoted piece about spirituality, FOX News 8 Cleveland claimed a video shot in a cemetery captured an eighteenth century apparition. The video can be seen on the FOX News 8 homepage.

While skeptics and believers will endlessly debate the intricate nuances of digital images and hoaxes, the account is more evidence of America's endless fascination with the supernatural.

For most though there will only be a cursory examination. As Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) so eloquently put it, "Being unable to cure death, sin, and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things."

In scripture Peter writes from a different standpoint, for him evidence of eternal things being something less tangible. To his first century audience he wrote, "Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy" (1 Peter 1:8).

For New Testament writers, sight was far more than a physical reality that could be captured on film. Paul himself would share, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you" (Ephesians 1:18).

Indeed throughout the Bible various metaphors are used to describe the spiritual life. Jesus spoke of being lost and then found, of being dead and then alive again, and at least one man spoke of being blind but now able to see.

Each of these are attempts to explain the unexplainable using the limitations of language alone. Jesus himself spoke of a type of knowing that comes by experience. This is not to say that all experiences are equally valid, but he spoke of the truth being something that was intimately known by the process of living it out in one's life.

The point of each of the writers of scripture is that God is knowable and immanent, as Tennyson said, "Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet."

For believers it is what happens on the inside that matters most. It is about a life that is made completely new and it is about a peace and a faith that cannot be shaken.

It is evident in people like C.T. Studd who wrote, "Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell."

In the end the best evidence of eternal things is not something that can be caught on tape or seen with the naked eye. Rather the best proof of all is a change of heart that knows what it means to be set free indeed.