p. 80 | HE IS A SPIRITUALIST

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 5, 1892

HE IS A SPIRITUALIST.

THE Los Angeles Express of November 21 gives a report of a sermon by Dr. J. S. Thomson, at the Church of the Unity, on "Saul and the Woman of Endor," from which is taken as proof as usual that the dead are conscious. Of course, if the parable teaches the conscious state of the dead, it teaches Spiritualism. So Dr. Thomson says:—

I am not a Spiritualist; I never was and never will be a Spiritualist. At the same time Spiritualism has revealed facts, and has been a genuine revelation to many. . . . There was a wave of materialism setting in several years ago that threatened to sweep away and destroy the churches and Bibles. Just at that time the thing called Spiritualism started up. There was a terrible battle, and notwithstanding free love and 95 per cent. of fraud, Spiritualism won the day. Through this system of belief thousands have been brought back to a sense of immortal life, and the black ocean of materialism has been changed into paradise. I don't owe a single thing to Spiritualism, for I never needed it; others did.

Again he says:—

The strongest statement in the Old Testament of the reunion of friends beyond, is found in this story: "To-morrow you and your sons will be with me."

Dr. Thomson is a Spiritualist. He may not belong to any circle or association, but he is a Spiritualist, nevertheless, holding confessedly to all their cardinal points of belief. The evidence of familiar spirits, of demons, is taken by him in preference to that of God's word. The simple facts concerning Saul and the witch of Endor are these: Saul had departed from God, so that the Lord answered him no more in his appointed ways; God rejected him as king; Saul then went to this woman, who had a familiar spirit, and this familiar spirit simulated Samuel. Yet modern divines would have us believe that what God would not do by prophet or Urim, he did do by a woman belonging to a class the very existence of which among his people God had prohibited, and for consulting which he slew Saul. See 1 Chron. 10:13, 14. Another fact is that the spirit, representing himself to be Samuel, lied when he said, "To-morrow shall thou and thy sons be with me;" for Saul was alive when the morrow passed. Read Isa. 8:19, 20. Truly "His watchmen are blind."