Can evil spirits also resurrect themselves through the process of resurrection?

Within this theological understanding, evil spirits can attain resurrection through cooperation with earthly people, not independently. When people resist evil, overcome trials, and fulfill restorative conditions with faith and gratitude, spirits can benefit. Prayer, supportive relationships, and responsible action sustain this process, whose ultimate hope is every spirit’s return to God’s love.

Yes. Evil spirits can also attain resurrection, but they cannot resurrect themselves independently through their own power. Resurrection means returning from spiritual death to spiritual life: leaving Satan’s dominion, recovering a relationship with God, and growing toward the maturity of God’s children. For spirits who died without reaching that maturity, this takes place through cooperation with people living on Earth. Even spirits deeply involved in evil are not excluded from restoration, although their progress requires the overcoming of evil, the fulfillment of responsibility, and God’s grace.

Biblical Foundation

The distinction between physical and spiritual death is essential. Jesus said, “Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60). Those capable of burying someone are physically alive, yet Jesus calls them dead. Similarly, the words “thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead” distinguish outward life from inward spiritual condition (Revelation 3:1).

Resurrection, in this context, concerns the restoration of a person’s relationship with God, not merely the revival of a physical body. Jesus describes the believer as one who “is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). Based on this, someone may begin to experience resurrection while still living physically, as selfishness and estrangement from God give way to faith, love, and goodness.

The accounts of Jesus delivering people from demons also depict interaction between spiritual beings and earthly people (Mark 5:1–20; Luke 8:26–39). These narratives portray destructive spiritual influence and Jesus’ authority to free those afflicted by it. They show the reality of spiritual influence and establish the biblical setting for understanding relationships between the spiritual and physical realms.

Other passages reveal that God’s saving concern extends beyond physical death. Christ “went and preached unto the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:19), and another passage says, “For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead” (1 Peter 4:6). These passages show that spirits in a fallen condition can receive truth and benefit from God’s restorative work.

The connection between the departed and the living is also expressed in these words: “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39–40). This passage reveals the interdependence of people in the spirit world and people on Earth, who work together for perfection.

The Meaning of Returning Resurrection

Human spiritual growth proceeds through formation, growth, and completion, corresponding to the stages of form-spirit, life-spirit, and divine-spirit. Spiritual maturity is not simply the passage of time or the acquisition of religious knowledge. It develops through receiving God’s love and truth and embodying them in actual life.

Two kinds of spiritual nourishment are involved. Life elements come from God: love, truth, grace, and spiritual guidance. Vitality elements arise from embodied conduct: what people do, how they speak, how they treat others, and how they respond to moral choices. Prayer and the reception of truth nourish the spirit, while truthful speech, responsible action, forgiveness, and service give that truth a living expression.

The relationship between body and spirit can be compared to a tree and its fruit. Fruit develops through its connection with the tree; similarly, the spirit matures through the opportunities supplied by physical life. Merely leaving the body does not automatically complete unfinished spiritual growth or remove a sinful character.

This is why an immature spirit needs a relationship with someone still living on Earth. Through returning resurrection, a departed spirit participates in earthly efforts toward goodness and shares in the spiritual benefit of those efforts. This is not reincarnation, nor does it mean that the spirit must take possession of someone’s body. It means that unfinished spiritual restoration is connected with embodied human responsibility.

God supplies grace and the possibility of restoration, but neither earthly people nor departed spirits become mature by having their responsibility erased. Restoration requires a genuine movement away from evil and toward goodness.

How Evil Spirits Participate in Evil

Evil spirits are departed human spirits whose dispositions and conduct remain entangled with selfishness, resentment, hatred, or wrongdoing. It is important to distinguish them from fallen angels, as returning resurrection specifically concerns the restoration of departed human beings.

Evil spirits in the spirit world act as object partners to Satan. An object partner is a responsive counterpart in a relationship of influence and exchange. In this case, the spirit responds to and reinforces Satan’s orientation away from God.

People on Earth may, in turn, become responsive counterparts to these evil spirits. The resulting sequence is Satan’s evil orientation, a spirit’s participation in it, and an earthly person’s expression of it through physical conduct. Selfish living, exploitation, and criminality are among the ways this relationship manifests.

This does not remove human responsibility. A person cannot excuse exploitation or violence by attributing it to an invisible influence. While this explains the theological reality of spiritual influence, it is not a method for diagnosing the specific cause of someone’s suffering. Human responsibility remains central.

The central problem is a repeating pattern: an evil disposition seeks another person through whom it can become action. Restoration requires that this pattern be interrupted rather than reproduced.

How Earthly People Help Resurrect Evil Spirits

An evil spirit may approach an earthly person without any intention of helping that person grow. It may seek to reinforce resentment, provoke wrongdoing, or continue a destructive pattern. Nevertheless, within God’s providence, an encounter intended for evil can become an occasion for restoration when the earthly person responds differently.

The decisive act is not simply suffering. It is resisting the impulse to do evil and overcoming the same kinds of temptations, victimizations, or troubles that originally contributed to the spirit’s wrongdoing.

For example, a spirit may have responded to betrayal during earthly life by becoming vindictive and harming others. If a living person encounters betrayal and refuses to repeat that response—choosing truthfulness, appropriate protection, justice without hatred, and forgiveness rather than revenge—the original pattern is being reversed. Likewise, where deprivation once led someone toward exploitation, an earthly person’s refusal to exploit others under similar pressure can establish a different moral outcome.

This illustrates the theological reasoning; it does not mean a particular betrayal or hardship reveals the presence of a specific spirit. The underlying point is that restoration answers an earlier failure with a faithful response under comparable moral conditions.

When an earthly person overcomes such trials, the spirit associated with the encounter can share in the resulting benefit. Even an initially hostile spirit may thereby be brought into a process that weakens its connection to evil and opens a path toward goodness. Evil itself earns no saving merit; the benefit comes from its defeat and from the restorative result God brings out of the encounter.

Indemnity, Gratitude, and Complete Resurrection

This process is also described through indemnity: conditions through which the consequences of sin are addressed and a damaged relationship with God is restored. It does not mean buying God’s love, declaring suffering good, or assuming that every sufferer deserves what has happened.

When earthly counterparts accept the results of an evil spirit’s activity as an occasion to fulfill indemnity and cleanse sin, and do so with gratitude toward God rather than renewed hatred, evil spirits can ultimately attain complete resurrection. The earthly person’s response changes the spiritual result of the encounter. Instead of producing another act of evil, the trial becomes a condition for overcoming evil.

The sequence matters. A destructive influence presents a temptation or trial; the earthly person refuses to cooperate with wrongdoing; faith and goodness are maintained; a restorative condition is fulfilled; and the associated spirit becomes able to receive the benefit of that victory. Gratitude expresses trust that God can bring restoration even from circumstances not originally intended for good.

Complete resurrection should not be confused with an automatic transformation following one painful incident. A spirit’s full restoration involves the conditions appropriate to its state and its eventual movement into harmony with God. This means that no depth of prior evil makes complete restoration impossible, though it does not mean wrongdoing or suffering automatically guarantees it.

Nor should gratitude be demanded from a victim as a test of faith. Gratitude toward God is not gratitude for abuse, and accepting a spiritual responsibility does not require accepting continued mistreatment. Seeking safety, reporting criminal conduct, and holding wrongdoers accountable can be expressions of goodness and responsibility.

The Strength and Support Needed to Endure Trials

Such endurance may require tremendous personal strength. Fear, anger, humiliation, grief, and exhaustion can make it difficult to resist destructive reactions. A call to faithfulness should therefore include real support rather than leave someone alone with an overwhelming burden.

Healthy family ties and trustworthy friendships are important. They can provide protection, encouragement, practical help, and the perspective needed to prevent suffering from turning into isolation or despair. Where family relationships are unsafe, support should be sought elsewhere rather than treating family loyalty as a reason to remain in danger.

Prayer, worship, reflection, and other spiritual practices help orient a person toward God’s love and truth. They sustain the inner resources needed to choose goodness repeatedly, especially when relief is not immediate. Their purpose is not simply to withstand a negative influence but to develop a character capable of truthful, compassionate, and responsible action.

Spiritual care can also coexist with medical treatment, counseling, legal protection, and other practical assistance. Nothing in this account requires interpreting physical or psychological distress as evidence of evil spirits or withholding ordinary care.

The Completed Understanding

The answer is therefore yes: evil spirits can be resurrected, but not as an isolated act of self-rescue. Their restoration is connected with God’s providence, the faithful choices of earthly people, the fulfillment of restorative conditions, and their own eventual turning toward goodness.

The ultimate hope is that all spirits will be resurrected. Their God-given conscience remains a basis through which they can respond to truth, recognize wrongdoing, and return to love. However deeply conscience may be obscured, evil is not their original, God-created identity.

God is True Parents: the source of parental love who seeks the restoration of every child rather than accepting any child’s permanent loss. Jesus’ image of the shepherd seeking the missing sheep expresses this heart: “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?” (Luke 15:4).

Thus, the search continues until every lost spirit can return to God’s love. This universal restorative hope does not trivialize evil or eliminate accountability. Rather, it holds that judgment, repentance, restitution, spiritual growth, and grace ultimately serve restoration instead of making alienation everlasting.

The biblical depictions of spiritual influence, the proclamation to the dead, and the shared perfection of the departed and the living thus form a coherent picture of returning resurrection. Its practical center is not fascination with invisible beings. It is the conviction that overcoming evil through goodness matters profoundly, both for earthly life and for the larger work of restoration.

Living the Principle

1. Understand trials without assuming their cause. Difficulties can become occasions for spiritual growth, but hardship alone does not prove the activity of an evil spirit. Focus on the good response you can make rather than on identifying an unseen cause.

2. Break the pattern of evil. Resist the impulse to answer cruelty with cruelty, exploitation with exploitation, or injury with revenge. Seek justice and protection while refusing to let another person’s wrongdoing determine your character.

3. Strengthen your prayer life and spiritual practices. Prayer, worship, reflection on truth, and consistent acts of service nurture the inner strength needed to remain faithful during hardship.

4. Receive strength through relationships. Cultivate safe family bonds, dependable friendships, and a supportive faith community. Seek professional or practical help when necessary; enduring a trial does not mean enduring it alone.

5. Practice gratitude without excusing harm. Where possible, give thanks for God’s presence, available help, and opportunities to grow. Do not confuse this with approving abuse, blaming yourself for victimization, or refusing protection.

6. Practice forgiveness and compassion with accountability. In this theology, even spirits involved in evil remain within God’s restorative concern. Reflect that hope by seeking the transformation of wrongdoers while maintaining appropriate boundaries and consequences.

7. Deepen understanding through daily responsibility. Study returning resurrection alongside the responsibilities it implies: truthful words, ethical conduct, repentance, repairing harm, and living for others. The central contribution to restoration is a life that makes God’s love tangible.

These answers explain the Bible in the light of the Divine Principle, the teachings of Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Read about the author, Sun Myung Moon.

Last reviewed: September 29, 2026

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