DID THE WOMAN OF ENDOR RAISE SAMUEL?
By L. D. Santee
WITH the Bible understanding of the condition of Samuel at that time, the answer is easy. Eccl. 9:5, 6: “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything. . . . Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” But, as Paul says (1 Cor. 8:7), “Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge,” therefore, an examination of the question seems justifiable. Samuel enjoyed a long life, spent from his infancy in the service of God. As soon as he was weaned, his mother took him to the temple, and God soon commenced to give warnings and instructions through the child. He was the prophet of Israel, and multitudes sought the mind of the Lord through him. God is pleased when they come to inquire of His prophets. “Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.” 2 Chron. 20:20. Multitudes sought through them the divine guidance. Saul, when walking in the council of God, asked of the prophet often, and through him received the command of God to smite Amelek. The fifteenth chapter of First Samuel contains the command and also a record of Saul’s disobedience. He was cursed with that curse so common to kings, self-exaltation. Of Satan it is said, “Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty.” Eze. 28:17. Saul also had lost his humility; and in his arrogance heard the command, and marched against the nation that heaven had doomed to annihilation. What wonder that he disobeyed? When did pride ever yield obedience? Nebuchadnezzar had his reason taken away, because he ignored high Heaven. The punishment of Saul was different. Samuel said to him sorrowfully, “Thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.” 1 Sam. 15:26. In this connection, too, the prophet voiced that grand principle that exists for all time, and expresses the mind of God in His dealings with men. “And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” Verse 22. Saul repented, but it was too late; his downfall dated from his disobedience. He had been tested and failed, “weighed in the balance, and found wanting.” Like Esau, he had no space for repentance. His descent was rapid. Watching with jealous eye for his successor, he finally singled out David, and trying to compass his death, was in heart a murderer. He had also imbibed the ideas of the heathen in regard to the nether world. God, in the Law of Moses, recognized those that seek to familiar spirits, as being equally guilty with the murderer, and affixes the death-penalty. Ex. 22:18. Saul, in his administration, had executed this law, but now, forsaken of God, and desperate, he says to this guilty woman, “Bring me up Samuel.” And now comes the question at the beginning of this article, Did she do it? We remember the words of scripture in Eccl. 9:5, and we say at once, All her claims depend on that scripture statement being a falsehood. Again, God is pleased when inquiry is made of the prophets. “Believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.” But of the apostate king, the record is, “So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it.” Again we ask, Was it Samuel? Had he so changed, that what was once commendable, was now a terrible sin? Away with such foolishness; the spirit was a “familiar” spirit, and Samuel never was “familiar” with a class that was at enmity with God. Samuel, in his grave at Ramah (1 Sam. 25:1) “knew not anything.” He was “sleeping in Jesus,” while the evil spirit personating Samuel, was simply one of the “spirits of devils” (Rev. 16:14), and was in the service of him who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. It might be asked, if it was not Samuel, how could it tell so correctly the next day’s events? It is easy to answer when we know the power of familiar spirits. There is in the eye a “picture screen,” and through it, external objects are brought to our knowledge. Pictures are also thrown upon the screen internally. Our imagination throws a picture on this wonderful screen, and this picture can be seen by the spirits. Beyond that they can not read. Of the thoughts in the mind that are abstract, or that make no picture, they have no knowledge. Here, too, you have all the secret of mind-reading. Now, in the case of Saul, the frightened king had in his mind the death of himself and sons, and the defeat of Israel, and the spirit mercilessly read the “picture screen” and the woman prophesied to him the fears that filled his mind, the horrors of his imagination. The probabilities were so strong, that Saul expected the answer to be what it was, before he visited the woman. Isaiah says of this sin that, in part, caused the death of Saul, “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, . . . should not a people seek unto their God?”