SAMUEL'S "GHOST" & THE WITCH OF ENDOR

When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out at the top of her voice and said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul!" The king said to her, "Don't be afraid. What do you see?" The woman said, "I see a spirit coming up out of the ground." "What does he look like?" he asked. "An old man wearing a robe is coming up," she said. Then Saul knew it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground." 1 Sam 28:12-14

Ghosts and witches -- the subject of campfire stories and Halloween. So what in the world are they doing right here in God's holy Word? To be sure, this Bible story is one of those problem passages that scholars grapple with and speculate about. Was the apparition really Samuel, coming back from the dead? Was it a demon spirit impersonating Samuel? Was it a clever trick perpetrated by the palm reader? All of those ideas have been suggested. But let's start at the beginning.

In his earlier reign King Saul had banished all spiritualists and mediums from Israel in obedience to the explicit commands of the Law of Moses (see Ex 22:18; Lev 19:31; 20:6; Deut 18:9-13). Clearly God does not want His people consulting occultic mediums. He wants them to seek Him for the answers to life's riddles. However, Saul has long since apostacized from the faith and no longer hears from God. Now, in desparation over a looming battle with the Philistines, he decides to consult a well-known medium at Endor who somehow survived his previous purge. Disguising himself he asks her to conjur the spirit of Samuel. When Samuel comes forth, the medium screams in fear, Samuel remonstrates with Saul for disturbing him, and pronounces Saul's doom.

So what is happening here? Some say this was a demon spirit impersonating Samuel. We know that the power behind mediums and witches is demonic. Or was this just a hoax perpetrated by the medium? It is a well-documented fact that mediums and palm readers resort to trickery to convince their paying clients. Others say, whatever it was it couldn't have been Samuel. As Bible-believing Christians, we know the dead don't come back, and besides, "there's no such thing as ghosts!"

Well it's true that the dead don't come back. That's the rule. But every rule has its exception, and in my opinion this is the exception. This apparition was not a hoax because the medium screamed in horror at the unexpected sight of this "ghost" rising from the ground. Personally, I believe God intervened in this "seance" and brought Samuel back for one last confrontation with Saul. It wasn't the medium who called him up, it was God. And because He's God He can do as He deems best, even if His action doesn't fit our theological framework. We all need to make room in our theology for God to color outside the lines on occasion. A similar exception comes to mind -- when Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (see Matthew 17).

Let's just be sure we keep the exception exceptional. The danger comes when we try to make the exception the rule. As far as I know these two cases -- I Samuel 28 and Matthew 17 -- are the only cases in the Bible where the dead come back. And in one of these no medium is involved and Moses and Elijah speak only with Jesus -- not the observers.

Seances that profess to communicate with the dead are a hoax and have been from ancient times when necromancers used ventriloquism to trick their clients. Ample documentation is available that modern mediums use fraudulant means to manipulate their clients and keep them paying.

So let's allow the Scripture to speak without squeezing it into our theological box, but let's be careful not to use such passages as justification to replicate them today.

Source: http://pastorterrysblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/samuels-ghost-witch-of-endor.html