Objection 86: How do you harmonize with your belief in the unconsciousness of man in death with the Biblical account of the Witch of Endor, who brought up Samuel to talk with King Saul? (See, 1 Sam. 28:7-19)
The enigmatic passage in 1 Samuel reads, in its entirety:
Saul then said to his attendants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.”
“There is one in Endor,” they said.
So Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the one I name.”
But the woman said to him, “Surely you know what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land. Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?”
Saul swore to her by the Lord, “As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this.”
Then the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?”
“Bring up Samuel,” he said.
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 ghostly figure coming up out of the earth.”
“What does he look like?” he asked.
“An old man wearing a robe is coming up,” she said.
Then Saul perceived it was Samuel, and he bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the ground.
Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”
“I am in great distress,” Saul said. “The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has departed from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or by dreams. So I have called on you to tell me what to do.”
Samuel said, “Why do you consult me, now that the Lord has departed from you and become your enemy? The Lord has done what he predicted through me. The Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hands and given it to one of your neighbors—to David. Because you did not obey the Lord or carry out his fierce wrath against the Amalekites, the Lord has done this to you today. The Lord will deliver both Israel and you into the hands of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The Lord will also give the army of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”
This story is narrated in a straightforward manner, with no intentional indication that things are not as they seem. But as we read closer, we will see that there are important clues that there is something else going on here, something darker and more sinister, something that perhaps the narrator himself is unaware of.
First, everyone uses variations of the phrase “bring up.” Saul says, “bring up for me the one I name,” the medium says, “whom shall I bring up,” and “Samuel” says “why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”
But if Samuel was in heaven, why does he need to be “brought up”? We might well ask, “How do you believers in the immortal soul doctrine harmonize this with your beliefs?” You believe that the righteous dead are up in heaven, not on earth, and certainly not below the earth, such that they need to be ‘brought up”? Surely you believe that Samuel went to heaven when he died, so wouldn’t he need to be “brought down”? Wouldn’t it be people who are in the grave or in an even worse place “down there” whom we would speak of as needing to be “brought up”? Speaking colloquially, people in hell need to be “brought up” whereas people in heaven need to be “brought down.”
Second, if it really was Samuel, where has he gotten his body? Believers in the immortal soul doctrine believe that a disembodied consciousness floats off to heaven; by contrast, we who believe in “soul sleep” believe that we receive a glorified body at the resurrection. Popular theology does not posit that each person is resurrected individually with a glorified body; to the contrary, to the extent that they address this issue at all, they teach that the disembodied redeemed receive their new, glorified bodies only at the Second Coming. Certainly, Satan has no power to actually raise the dead, and God’s omnipotence was not at the disposal of this medium, who by her own acknowledgement was under an edict of death for practicing her dark sorcery. (See Lev. 20:27; Deut. 18:10-11.) So where did “Samuel” get his body?
Third, “Samuel” in foretelling Saul's death, which was to be by suicide, declares, "Tomorrow, you and your sons be with me." Really? Again, are we not to believe that Samuel, a good and faithful messenger of the Lord, is in heaven? But are we to believe that Saul—who (1) has disobeyed God to the point where his throne was taken away, (2) is reduced to visiting a proscribed necromancer to get counsel from “Samuel” regarding the upcoming battle, and (3) will commit suicide the following day—will also be in heaven? Won’t he be going to hell? Scripture tells us that when Saul consulted a forbidden medium, it was the last straw. God’s rejection of Saul was now final. (1 Chron. 10:13-14)
Really, we marvel that those who believe the doctrine of natural immortality ever bring up this incident.
The reality is this: Samuel was not there in the chambers of the Witch of Endor. Samuel was then, and is now, in the grave awaiting the Second Coming of our Lord. A demon, or perhaps even Satan himself, was there impersonating Samuel, saying things that Samuel might have said, things that sounded plausible enough to Saul to complete a masterpiece of satanic deception.
Why doesn’t Scripture clearly state that Satan was impersonating Samuel? Because, at this point in time, the concept of the adversary, or Satan, was not understood to the Bible writers. If we read Genesis 3, for example, the serpent is just a serpent. We forget that. We automatically read “Satan” where the text says “the serpent,” because we are so accustomed to reading later Scriptural knowledge back into Genesis. But in fact we are not told the serpent’s true identity until the last book of the Bible (Rev. 12:9).
Note that this story of Saul and the Witch of Endor is from Samuel, and then note this glaring contradiction:
Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.” (2 Samuel 24:1)
Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. (1 Chronicles 21:1)
In Samuel, God incites (or tempts) David to conduct an illegal census of Israel; in Chronicles, Satan incites (or tempts) David to conduct an illegal census of Israel. Which is correct? Chronicles, of course. At some point between the writing of Samuel and the writing of Chronicles, the concept of Satan, the adversary, had come to be understood by the Bible writers.
And what do we know about Satan? Satan is the tempter (Mat. 4:1-11), whereas God does not tempt us to sin (James 1:13-15) but rather makes a way of escape from temptation (1 Cor. 10:13). Satan tempted David, not God. It would have been horribly unjust for God to tempt or incite David to number Israel, and then kill 70,000 men as punishment for something He had prompted. (1 Chron. 21:14; 2 Sam. 24:15) Fortunately, we know this did not happen.
We are told that, “the living know that they will die, but the dead know not anything.” (Eccl. 9:5). See, also, Psalm 146:4 “His spirit departs, he returns to the earth; In that very day his thoughts perish.”; Psalm 6:5 “For there is no mention of You in death; who can praise You from Sheol?” Job 7:9-10 “As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come back up. He never returns to his house; his place remembers him no more.”
Note carefully that last Scripture reference. Job 7:9-10 tells us that he who goes down to the grave “does not come back up” (until the resurrection, of course—Job 19:25-26). As we pointed out above, everyone involved in this story referred to someone being “brought up.” Well, if the dead do not come back up, as Job tells us, who did the Witch of Endor “bring up”? The uncomfortable truth, for those Christians who dabble in spiritualism and the occult, is that mediums, spiritists, and necromancers cannot raise up your dead loved one. At best, or rather at worst, you will see a demon impersonating your departed loved one.
Here is the danger of spiritualism, mediums, necromancy, and all other attempts to communicate with the dead: The dead are dead; they cannot hear us, nor can they speak to us. When we attempt to communicate with them, we open ourselves up to demonic influence; fallen angels may take the form of our dead loved ones, they may appear to us and tell us things that are not true. We cannot risk being influenced by demons.
What was Satan’s message for Saul, as he impersonated Samuel? Saul clearly did not receive a divine message; he was not told to seek God and repent, so that even at that late juncture of his life, he might have been saved eternally. He received a dark message of discouragement. He was told that it was too late to alter his life’s course, that he was irretrievably lost. What a debilitating message of defeat and doom Saul carried into his final battle!