DEATH AND BEYOND

who have allowed their lives to be used by evil angels to carry out their purposes in this world.
This narrative makes it clear that God had forsaken Saul. This was due to his wilful and unrepented of disobedience. Saul had committed the unpardonable sin of not listening to the voice of God, the voice of conscience. He had rejected the Holy Spirit. Now he turned after the alternative supernatural power that exists in our world by going to familiar spirit. The Bible talks about ‘turning after’ mediums and their spirits. If we do this it is a turning from God who has promised to guide us and give us wisdom, to a turning after alternative guidance from evil angels. It is clear that it was not God who answered Saul’s request for guidance. God had not answered him while Samuel lived.

Would God answer the prayers of a person who was wilfully sinful against Him and totally unrepentant? In particular, would God choose to use the angels that He had cast out of heaven because of their sins, along with their human agent, to speak to another deeply sinful one of His own created beings? Did not God Himself describe this kind of activity as an abomination?

Deuteronomy 18:10-12. In this account, it is clear therefore, that the communication did not come from God.
Also Saul, seemingly, had not seen the spirit himself. He asked the woman to tell him what he was like. ‘What sawest thou?’ He deduced from the woman’s description that this old man was Samuel. The spirit appeared to be wearing a mantle and this was the clothing of prophets. Elijah and Elisha wore such a mantle. Saul perceived, that is, he understood it in his mind, that the spirit the woman was seeing was Samuel. This, after all, was the one he had asked for and was expecting.

What the spirit told him was true. It was predicted that Saul and his sons would die the next day, and it happened precisely as the spirit had said. It could be argued that this had to be the spirit of Samuel, returned from the dead’ to make this prediction. Samuel after all, was known as a ‘seer’ – one who, through God, made predictions. Does not this prove that the spirit was truly Samuel returned from the dead? But spirits, evil angels, often do make predictions. Many times they are right, but this does not mean they are bringing messages of God to us.
In the Bible God tells us that, in the day we die, our thoughts perish. This spirit however told Saul, that David would have the kingdom and that he, Saul, would die. It told Saul about his disobedience. How could the spirit have all this knowledge that would confirm in Saul’s mind that this was authentic? The dead ‘know not anything’, and the Bible tells us in v3 of this chapter that Samuel was dead and all Israel had mourned for him and he was buried in Ramah, his own city. The Bible information is that Samuel’s thoughts had perished, and he was asleep in death. The devil, however, was alive then. He was alive when Jesus came to earth. Revelation tells us that he will be alive – and his angels - until he is destroyed by God at the end of the world as we know it now. The devil and his angels have supernatural powers, and sometimes forecasts that are made by evil spirits come to pass, although we cannot explain how.

We must remember all through this account, that God had forsaken Saul. Verse 6 makes clear that God refused to communicate with Saul. So it was not God that was talking to him. The Bible teaching that the dead are asleep shows that it was not the prophet himself come back from somewhere. If it was not God, and it was not the dead Samuel, then it was the third option that the Bible gives - an evil angel with supernatural powers. It is also a fact that Saul knew instinctively that the battle would go against him from the difference in size of the armies.

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